[Vision2020] The scientific debate on climate change: 67 comments

Wed Jun 19 15:40:51 PDT 2013

I'm just googling.  Naively, I expected to easily find climate model predictions and how they prevailed against real-world data, but I didn't.  The funny thing is, you can find people like Roy Spencer and Judith Curry showing where the models fail by under-predicting warming, and you can find more mainstream climate scientists showing where the arctic ice cap is shrinking faster than their models expected, or that sea level rise is worse than expected.  Nowhere could I find a simple plot of how each climate model is doing wrt real-world observations.

If I had went to the trouble and expense of making a climate model and I intended to show that it had predictive ability, I'd make a website that showed (in real-time as data filtered in) how that model was doing in the various channels it had predictive ability in.  I'd show what the initial conditions were, and some background on why those values were chosen.  I'd show what assumptions were made and why.  I'd even provide the code for the climate model itself, so that coding mistakes could be identified easier.  I would probably throw installation instructions in there, while I was at it.

The predictions would have error bars, at the 95% confidence level, as would the real-world observations.  The minute the error bars for the observations strayed out of the 95% confidence for the ability of the model, "good" or "bad", that model would have failed.  That would trigger an exhaustive analysis of why the model failed, and would probably end up in a paper being written and submitted for peer review describing the results of the analysis.  The results of the analysis would result in either a fix for the old model or a completely new model being written.  Rinse, lather, repeat.

That's just for basic science.  If I though world leaders might be trying to use my model to base policy decisions on that would affect thousands or millions of people, I'd probably be even more strict.

Paul

________________________________
 From: Joe Campbell <philosopher.joe at gmail.com>
To: Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> 
Cc: Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com>; Moscow Vision 2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 11:45 AM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] The scientific debate on climate change: 67 comments

What are the websites where you are finding this "information"? Websites like "American Thinker," where you can read other articles like one which opens with this quote: "Leftists seem to harbor a profound ignorance 
of geography, history, and other hard facts which anyone involved in 
politics ought to know.  How exactly do they get away with it?" Nothing biased about that statement!

On the Spencer website there are responses to the article that make some interesting points including one person who states that the graphs (models vs. empirical data) are "broadly consistent" since they are in the same graph quadrant. Meaning the empirical data suggests global warming, just not at the rate that the models suggest.

Here is another interesting commentary on these studies: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/08/01/climate-science-once-again-twisted-beyond-recog/185135

On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 11:20 AM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:

The point is that the climate models are predictions, and those predictions are not turning out well in precise areas, and that means they have a problem.  They should be comparing the predicted data with the observed data and trying to find out exactly where they are wrong.  Are they inflating the positive feedback values for clouds?  Are they not putting enough emphasis on solar changes?  Are they not taking ENSO into account, are they not taking the jet stream into account?  Whatever the problem is, if they want skeptics to accept their climate models as accurate, they have to show how well they predict future data.  This isn't some kind of egregious task set before them, it's basic science.  Their climate models are in effect hypotheses, and the observations will either validate those hypotheses or fail them.
>
>So why, when you do a google search for climate models vs. observations, do you turn up mostly Spencer and Curry's work, but not that of more mainstream climate scientists?
>
>Paul
>
>
>
>
>
>
>________________________________
> From: Joe Campbell <philosopher.joe at gmail.com>
>To: Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> 
>Cc: Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com>; Moscow Vision 2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com> 
>Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 10:18 AM
>
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] The scientific debate on climate change: 67 comments
> 
>
>
>Is the point that it might take an extra generation for the polar ice caps to melt? When you are talking about climate change I fail to see how "less dire" isn't still DIRE.
>
>
>
>
>On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 10:15 AM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>The observations I'm talking about are temperature measurements.  They tend to be much less dire than the predictions.  Here is one example: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-observations-for-tropical-tropospheric-temperature/
>>
>>Paul
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>________________________________
>> From: Joe Campbell <philosopher.joe at gmail.com>
>>To: Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> 
>>Cc: Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com>; Moscow Vision 2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com> 
>>Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2013 8:52 PM
>>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] The scientific debate on climate change: 67 comments
>> 
>>
>>
>>Observations? Skeptic observations? What is the observable data you allude to?
>>
>>On Jun 18, 2013, at 4:48 PM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>That's cute.  If you erased the words "SKEPTIC MODELS" and replaced them with "OBSERVATIONS" and then drew, say, the Incredible Hulk in the other corner it might be a funnier cartoon.  Or maybe Iron Man, or even the boxing kangaroo from the old bugs bunny cartoons.
>>>
>>>Paul
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>________________________________
>>> From: Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com>
>>>To: Moscow Vision 2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com> 
>>>Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2013 3:24 PM
>>>Subject: [Vision2020] The scientific debate on climate change: 67 comments
>>> 
>>>
>>>
>>>http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=15488
>>>
>>>The scientific debate on climate change
>>>Filed under: 
>>>	* Climate Science
— david @ 24 May 2013 
>>>by Jill and David Archer
>>> -----------------------------------------
>>>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>>>=======================================================
>>>List services made available by First Step Internet,
>>>serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
>>>              http://www.fsr.net
>>>          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
>>>=======================================================
>>>
>>>
>>=======================================================
>>>List services made available by First Step Internet,
>>>serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
>>>              http://www.fsr.net
>>>         mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
>>>=======================================================
>>
>>
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20130619/961529e9/attachment-0001.html>