Climate Change Prediction is bunk...

Climate Change Prediction is bunk...

[All resident "pretend scientists" have been blacklisted, so you won't be heard :-]

redstate.com

Watch: Actual Scientist Destroys the Idea That Climate Models Can Predict Climate Change Brandon Morse

Everyone in the Church of Climate Change, from Al Gore to Bill Nye, likes to cite scary climate models that show the world either flooding, freezing, or dying in some gruesome way because of man's inability to jump on board with the left's climate centered regulations. But are these climate models to be trusted?

Not by a long shot.

According to physicist William Happer, an actual scientist, no computer is powerful enough to compute all of the factors and subtle changes to accurately predict any foreseeable changes to the climate.

We can barely figure out an accurate prediction for weather for the next day, what makes people think climate models would be any different? To make this point, Happer teamed up with Prager U to give people the real story behind climate data, and how what you're being fed by climate fear mongers and the mainstream media isn't just inaccurate, it's a flat-out lie.

Happer begins by giving his highly impressive bonafides, having taught at Princeton to Columbia for decades, and peer-reviewed hundreds of papers as well as co-authored several books. One of these books was about the effects of carbon dioxide on the environment.

"In short, I know a lot about the earth's atmosphere and climate," said Happer. "I also know a lot about long-term predictive climate models," he continues. And I know they don't work. They haven't worked in the past. They don't work now. And it's hard to imagine when, if ever, they'll work in the foreseeable future."

Happer goes on to explain that weather is about as complicated as the human brain. There are so many variables, factors, and unknowns that predicting what the weather is next to impossible.

"For the purposes of illustration, let's just focus our attention on water," said Happer. "The earth is essentially a water planet. A major aspect of climate involves the complicated interaction between two very turbulent fluids: the atmosphere, which holds large amounts of water (think rain and snow), and the oceans, which cover fully 70% of the earth's surface. We can't predict what effect the atmosphere is going to have on future temperatures because we can't predict cloud formations."

"It's devilishly difficult to predict what a fluid will do. Trying to figure out what two fluids will do in interaction with each other on a planetary scale over long periods of time is close to impossible," he adds.

As an example, Happer reminds us of Hurricane Irma predictions in regards to its path. All the models showed the hurricane hitting the east coast of Florida, yet it defied all predictions and headed west up the gulf. Despite all the real-time data, the predictions were still wrong.

Happer then moves in on climate prediction models for the kill, asking if "any rational person" could "believe that computer models can precisely predict temperatures decades from now?"

"The answer is, they can't. That's why, over the last 30 years, one

been wrong," said Happer. "They're wrong because even the most powerful computers can't solve all the equations needed to accurately describe climate."

Happer then went after the "scientists" that write these models.

"Instead of admitting this, some climate scientists replace the highly complex equations that describe the real-world climate with highly

unmanageable details, modelers "tune" their simplified equations with

whatever result the modelers want."

"That's not science. That's science fiction," said Happer.

...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
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Reply to
Jim Thompson
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Oh, that's SO silly. One can discredit an idea, but not destroy it. The Galileian refutation of Plato's theory of gravity has given way to a general relativity argument of geodesics that basically looks a lot like Plato's notions.

'Actual Scientist' indeed! Grandstander with ambiguous and misleading PR-approved script, I'd say.

Well, we knew about manmade weather involvement, the nuclear "global winter" scenario, before 'climate change', 'AGW', or even 'global warming' became recognizable topics. So, there's unknowns (unless you have full knowledge of all human actions for the next few centuries?). There's also thermodynamics, which tells us about heat, and predicts climate change in unassailable ways, while 'local weather' air temperatures, in all the microclimates of a large planet, can vary from long-term projections.

There's no 'kill' in imprecision of projecting local variations in a complex system. Those local variations aren't global heat.

Happer hasn't said anything relevant.

Reply to
whit3rd

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Happer is a crook:

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Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

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Happer's attitudes are a lot more predicrtable than climate change

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He knows about magentic resonance imaging, rather than climate science, and his opinions about climate science seem have to be bought and paid for.

That Redstate chooses to publish denialist propaganda is no surprise - the Koch brothers have a strong financial interest in preventing action on slow ing down anthropogenic global warming, and they seem to fund a lot of US ri ght-wing luancy.

Jim-out-of-touch-with-reality-Thompson seems to be just as gullible as John Larkin in this area, which is to say very gullible indeed.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Most consultants charge for their time. That doesn't make them crooks.

How much does Al Gore get paid to make a speech about global warming? He's not even an expert.

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Something like $150K I think.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  
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Reply to
John Larkin

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I know Will Happer, (well we exchanged some emails in the distant past.) He is Mr. Optical Pumping. (maybe that should be Dr.) Just because weather can't be predicted, doesn't mean climate can't. I can't predict the various swirls of water in my creek, but given local rain fall I can predict the water flow.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

Most consultants restrict themselves to consulting about subjects they know something about. Happer is a professor in nuclear magentic resonance imagi ng.

What he's selling when he writes opinions on climate change is his status a s a professor at Princeton, not his expertise. If he wasn't a crook, he'd h ide the affiliatiation when he was talking about stuff he doesn't know much about.

He's shared in a Nobel Peace prize awarded for work on informing the public about climate change, and written a couple of books on the subject which h ave sold well. He's not an academic expert, but he has done enough work on the subject to be a lot better informed than - say - John Larkin or William Happer.

His speaking fee reflects fact that he has a well-known name - and can suck in a large (and potentially generous) audience. Elementary free-market eco nomics means that the fee needs to large enough to cut the number of speaki ng engagements down to a managable number.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

At present, neither can. We've had ice ages, warm periods, little ice ages, millenia of radical stuff before the late CO2 increase. Why?

AGW is at present more religion than science. Most people have figured that out by now.

You can't predict the rainfall a month from now.

The claim that weather is unpredictable but climate is predictable can only be made because it can't be verified. When the doomsday predictions fail, the predictors just extend the time scale.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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Reply to
John Larkin

There are, of course, limits to the predictability - but there is still useful predictability.

To argue by analogy, take another system that is usefully characterised by a mean plus a random component plus a threshold level: a digital comms system.

In that we cannot predict which bits (weather) will be be error bits, but we do know that if we shift the mean towards the threshold, there will be more error bits (climate). The number of error bits is defined, of course, by the complementary error function.

In addition, once the mean gets near the threshold, the number of error bits rises extremely rapidly; the complementary error function is the steepest cliff I've dealt with. The steepness means the number of error bits is a useful warning that the mean is so close to the threshold that a /small/ increase in the mean will cause a catastrophic degradation of the comms channel.

And that is why the /rate/ of /extreme/ weather events (errors) is a sensitive indicator that the climate (mean) is approaching the knee at which everything becomes intolerable.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Duriing the current interglacial, it looks as if it is mostly ocean current s moving around - like El Nino versus La Nina, but on larger scales and wit h a multidecadal period.

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We need the data from the Argo buoys on the deep return currents before we can expect to make much sense of it.

The flip between ice ages and interglacials is more complicated - the two m ajor contributors are ice sheets over the more northern parts of the northe rn hemisphere, which increase the albedo of the planet as whole (so we've g ot less heat absorbed from the sun) abd the drop in artmospheric CO2 level from 270ppm during an interglacial to about 180ppm during an ice age.

Twaddle. You can't be bothered understanding enough of the science to see t he difference between scientific evidence and religious dogma, while having absolute faith in the nonsense you read on denialist web-sites, which you treat like some kind of divinely inspired revelation (even though the Koch brothers aren't gods).

Farmers can predict it well enough to know when to plant their crops.

Agriculture is obvious evidnece that climate is predictable.

And nobody is predicting any actual doom - though sea-level rise - when it happens - is going to be remarkably inconvenient.

You don't actually cite any climate change predictions that have been made and falsified.

Your favourite denialisit web-sites have picked up what reporters have clai med that climate scientists have said, which the reporters subsequenty publ ished in newspapers, but I've yet to see them come up with a peer-reviewed paper from a reputable journal which they can jeer at.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

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I don't know enough to make any (useful) comments. There has certainly been exaggerations and other malfeasance by some climate scientists. Because 'they know better' and know what's good for us. But that doesn't make all the data wrong.

Maybe we have to take a step back even farther than climate, we can certainly talk about the energy budget for the Earth and the average temperature. Just because it's complicated doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and declare it impossible.

(I need some electronics/ physics problem to think about, all I'm doing is building, testing, documenting.)

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

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I like your analogy.

But in order to get an accurate prediction of the average BER, you need to know the exact nature of the signal and the exact nature of the noise. You need to know the magnitude and statistical distribution of the random nois e.

Lets take another analogy.

We have all done simulations of electronic circuits that we then usually bu ild as prototypes. We start with the specified characteristics of the do zen or so components, build a simulation and then build one in real life. How often do the two results agree? Often they don't. That's when the l earning process begins. We start to add in the unspecified parasitic chara cteristics of the components and the connections, adjusting the model until it agrees with the observed performance in the lab. Only then can you say that you have an accurate model. And your model is going to have limited ability to accurately predict operation in regions outside of what we teste d.

I think EEs that have actually used computer modeling have a good understan ding of their usefulness and their limitations.

Would you trust an unproven model to set national economic policy?

Reply to
makolber

Oh, so now Happer is an expert in computational complexity theory, too? Also an expert in climatology? Is there any scientific discipline he's _not_ qualified to speak on? Probably not.

Reply to
bitrex

What qualifications does Happer have to make (assuming the journalist paraphrased him correctly, which is often unlikely) absolutist claims such as "no computer is powerful enough to compute all of the factors and subtle changes to accurately predict any foreseeable changes to the climate."

Where is his research scholarship in computer science or complexity theory? Papers? Journal articles?

Reply to
bitrex

But arguments _against_ the current evidence by guys like Happer more-or-less reduce to "I have meditated on the topic of global warming, and I have determined it to be untrue."

That isn't science, that is mysticism/occultism.

Yeah sure.

Would you trust a crystal ball, consulting the spirits, or placing your trust in a loving personal God to make everything OK more? That's what the anti-AGW right would prefer you do.

Reply to
bitrex

The history of mathematics and science is littered with the corpses of proofs and theorems which were simple, easy to construct analogies for, understandable by any "rational person" - and dead wrong.

Reply to
bitrex

That is to say AGW could be bunkum, but Happer's "simple arguments that anyone rational person could understand why it can't be true" almost certainly are.

Reply to
bitrex

Watch: Actual Scientist Destroys the Idea That Climate Models Can

I don't disagree. However many EE models are poor, e.g. consider spice models of opamps :( I've even been approached to create some digital models with a "we don't care if they are accurate" mentality; I declined to quote.

The question, as you alluded to above, is to what extent the model is proven and unproven.

Some aspects of climate science are well understood and easily modelled, e.g. analogous to the complementary error function in a comms system. Others are less well understood, e.g. what the mean value and threshold value might be. Nonetheless, if errors are increasing, it is clear that the mean is getting uncomfortably close to the threshold - /whatever those values are/.

Ditto if extreme weather events are becoming more common.

Naturally one should be careful to avoid the "I see more X now that I'm actively looking for X" syndrome.

So, to that extent, an unproven model can be used to rule out some futures.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Yeah, these guys are never climatologists or computational scientists or chaos theorists they're always these antediluvian ex-DOD/DOE physicists who worked on SDI.

Reply to
bitrex

Yeah, these guys are never climatologists or computational scientists or chaos theorists they're always these antediluvian ex-DOD/DOE physicists who worked on SDI. Space lasers, pew pew!

Reply to
bitrex

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