Discussion > In Praise of the Unfinished
Some of the most impressive feats of modelling the real world have been done by computer animators. They’ve built upon the skills and observations of earlier paint artists and used computers to create imaginary characters that are increasingly persuasive. Like their predecessors they know that to generate realistic people, they must start with an armature that moves like a real person.
For some reason, climate modellers think that they can animate the flesh without accurately creating the armature. It doesn’t matter how good the short term forecasts are, they’re just the skin pigment of the cartoon creature. Of course they’d claim that the physics is the basic frame upon which they base their animation but they’ve never demonstrated the body’s ability to walk, let alone lead a natural existence.
Animators have wisdom beyond that of climate modellers because they’ve recognised how hard it is to simulate real movement (with all the imperfections that make it realistic) so they often use living, breathing actors to do what computers balk at and provide the basic movements. They then clothe the basic shape with cgi flesh. Even where computers create the raw movements, an artist’s mind or the original voice artists’ actions guide the motions. Climate modellers are trying to simulate all the imperfections of reality from basic principles and I can’t help thinking that they’re fooling themselves.
Even more fundamental, a script writer provides the real spark of life that so far, no computer can generate. He or she, determines where the story and the characters will move and why. It is a seductive thought that people are harder to predict because we have free will, but the environment contains enough variables to give every impression that the climate has a mind of its own.
I don’t know if Slingo’s talk included the basics but to have any faith in their models I’d want to see ones that can simulate the long term patterns before they move on to the small scale or decadal forecasts. At the very least the models should be able to emulate the last few glaciations and the rough pattern of the last 15,000 years.
If there is one rule that we have to keep in mind when comparing movie animation with climate modelling it’s that no matter how realistic it gets, it’s still not real.
TinyCO2
Very helpful thanks Tiny. There was silence on 'the last few glaciations and the rough pattern of the last 15,000 years' as far as I can remember. What was impressive - to me, I realise this is extremely subjective, which I will come to - was how, gradually, the GCMs have reproduced well-known patterns of currents of both air and oceans. This though does not convince me of their ability to predict, say, globally averaged temperature anomaly a hundred years in advance. To take a little statistic which was also notable by its absence, in any detail, from Slingo's talk (again, going from memory).
I'll try hard to get started properly soon but this was worth pre-emptive insertion!
Richard Drake
I googled "in praise of Julia" and ended up here. Poetic justice? For the GCMs are certainly unfinished, as Julia Slingo made clear at the IoP on Tuesday. And this thread in response will also be, by my own lights, for some time. One reason is that I intend to email Dr Slingo to see if she will let us have her slides. That is bound to fill in some of the known unknowns in my own notes. Other things - that were said or implied but weren't in the overheads - will remain hard.
Here's my F-Framework for what was said, five categories into which I might want to put different things:
1. Factual
2. Fair
3. Fudged
4. Farcical
5. Fraudulent
There are interesting boundaries between 1 and 2, as philosophers would tell you, and between 4 and 5, as Michael Mann's lawyers would. I won't be putting anything Slingo said in 5, largely because I agree with what Shotover wrote in reply to John Shade at 7:29 PM on Thursday:
Talking of Shotover, here are helpful accounts from attendees so far:
1. The Colonel himself
2. Rob Long
3. Yours truly (and earlier here)
4. Guy Leech (and here).
My first comment was on Twitter, in response to fraternal greetings from Shotover the evening of the talk:
'Talk for grown-ups' has become the categories Factual and Fair, of which, happily, there was much. 'Infantile' has become Farcical. Unfortunately there was some of that too - in my estimation, obviously. All of us would probably put some statements in different categories from other sceptics. And it makes a difference being there. One of the best things in the whole evening for me was arch-sceptic Piers Corbyn generously praising Dr Slingo for the maturity of her account before launching into an extended sales pitch for his own forecasting product - the Fair followed by the Farcical from one of our own side there, not for the first time!
Anyway, I've given the Framework. I want to start with some of the Factual - and Fascinating it was too. Richard Betts may well be able to help me Fill in some of the holes there. I'm hoping.