Posted on 10/17/2014 3:59:00 AM PDT by Rocky
The acronym GIGO, (Garbage In, Garbage Out) reflects that most working around computer models knew the problem. Some suggest that in climate science, it actually stands for Gospel In, Gospel Out. This is an interesting observation, but underscores a serious conundrum. The Gospel Out results are the IPCC predictions, (projections), and they are consistently wrong. This is no surprise to me, because I have spoken out from the start about the inadequacy of the models. I watched modelers take over and dominate climate conferences as keynote presenters. It was modelers who dominated the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), and through them, the IPCC. Society is still enamored of computers, so they attain an aura of accuracy and truth that is unjustified. Pierre Gallois explains,
"If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticize it."
(Excerpt) Read more at wattsupwiththat.com ...
Depends on what you mean by "work".
Al Gore is a billionaire. The EPA is much more powerful than it was 20 years ago. Australia almost crippled their economy. Fuel and heating costs are through the roof.
The models are working just fine. You just don't understand what they are intended to do.
Have your attention please...For the duration of the Obola outbreak here in America, we are going to need the climate change kids to sit in the corner over there as the adults deal with an actual crisis...Once Obola has been dealt with, then we will deal with you kiddies in the corner...
Well put. It is about power and control, not climate.
One of the commenters at the original article posted a link to a very good simple illustration of how these models fail:
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/the-seductiveness-of-models/
Let me know when the “adults” have solved that Ebola thing. I hope all the “adults” on this forum that contribute to solving the Ebola thing get appropriate recognition. Nobel prizes and such.
I’d settle for a No Obola prize...
There's nothing wrong with making models per se, but a model that fails to conform with verified observations is not worth anything. Moreover, a model that has to be constantly "tweaked" to give approximately correct answers is likewise useless as it has no predictive power.
Unfortunately, many scientists have been raised to become "button-pushers" who "turn the crank and out comes the (publishable) answer." Its relation to reality is only of incidental interest.
Bottom line is you have to have variables for every single atom in the atmosphere to an infinite level of precision or you aren't going to be able to get the model to reproduce itself, much less global climate.
Well, we can address #2. We are increasing our understanding of how the climate works. Will we ever completely understand it? I doubt it. But I'll give the scientists the benefit of the doubt, let's say #2 is solvable.
Number #3 might even be workable with good programming techniques. Hey, I'm a software (and modeling) guy, I can see ways to address this, but they are going to make the models even bigger, even slower. Let's give me and my kind equal benefit of the doubt and say we're clever guys/gals, we can figure this out.
The problem, well, problems are #1 and #4. We just aren't ever going to get better data. I guess if we wait around a hundred years or so we'll have a hundred years of pretty good, pretty accurate data. So let's say #1 can be addressed with patience. Of course, the AGW types don't want that. These hucksters want your money and they want it NOW!
#4 is the real problem child. You just can't get around the mathematics. You can eliminate variables that do not appear to contribute, but this introduces subtle errors that become significant during those millions of iterations (see #3). There is no free lunch, no shortcut.
The upshot is, the models are completely worthless for what many are trying to use them for - a means to "prove" their pet theory and excuse for a money/power grab.
"Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful."
"Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful."
Thanks for your remarks.
I’m not sure your item #3 can be solved. The climate seems to be a chaotic system. When you have to do thousands of iterations, one little difference can take you in a completely wrong direction. Before I would trust a climate model, I would have to see proven results over a long period of time. Longer than any human being can live. I would certainly not base government policy on climate models that have been developed in the past thirty years or so.
Good comments. Simple systems can often be described with mathematical formulas and modeled by computers. However, when someone tells me that he has modeled the planet’s climate, I am very skeptical. I certainly don’t want my life to be impacted by decisions made on the basis of such a model. Prove that it works. It will take centuries to do that.
You may be right re being a chaotic system, haven’t looked into it. I model mostly systems that include some stochastic elements. There is also an element of randomness to climate. Volcanic activity, asteroids, anything like that can come along and invalidate everything from then on...
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