Discussion > Let's get real about climate models
aTTP
So Hansen was wrong in his claims about sea level rise.
golf charlie
aTTP, perhaps with your expertise, you could review Jones et al 1990 (Phil Jones was co-authored by various, including Tom Karl)
This paper used Chinese records to dispel the notion of UHI having any impact on temperature records. It all sounds a bit mysterious, but the IPCC seemed to think it important.
golf charlie
Golf,
You really are going to great lengths to avoid actually answering the question. In case you've already forgotten, I'll repeat it:
what did climate science experts say should have happened by now, but didn't?
Bear in mind, that the question is based entirely on a claim that you made earlier on this thread.
...and Then There's Physics
aTTP Sea level rise. Hansen.
The question I have asked and you have ignored relates to your belief in Mann's Hockey Stick.
If Hansen's claims about sea level rise are excluded under YOUR rules, try my enquiry above about Phil Jones and UHI data.
golf charlie
aTTP, there is the small matter of Global Warming. I am sure some climate scientists mentioned that somewhere or other, but there isn't much evidence of it, if the 50+ papers by climate scientists, trying to explain the pause are to be believed. If they are all wrong in your opinion, then what?
Urban Heat Island,
For those interested, I remember being told in the mid 70s (?) that London was always warmer than the surrounding countryside. I accepted this, and assumed this was common knowledge. In about 2002/3 I was told this was not true, and had been disproved (I can't remember the exact words) 'ages ago'. I forgot about it. In the summer of 2009 (ie before Climategate) I found out it was known as Urban Heat Island, and found some articles by Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit about 'Jones et al 1990' although I had no idea who any of the people were.
Since ClimateGate, I found my way back to Jones et al 1990, and Climate Audit, and from there, to WUWT and Bishop Hill, via Real Climate etc.. I remain happy that what I was told in the mid 70s, was true. Claims in summer 2015 about Heathrow record temperatures were ludicrous. The data for Jones et al 1990 was 'lost'. It remains a defence for many claims about station data, and moves etc.
golf charlie
Mike, I find it objectionable when people affect to be knowledgeable about things of which they are ignorant. Such pretension is de-rigeuer here, where everyone is an expert on the weaknesses of models or indices or the strengths of satellite records, when in fact they know next to nothing about these things. People can claim that models are "not to clever about humidity" or that they have "unrealistic levels of aerosols to modulate the temperature" as if these are original criticisms (I'm not picking on the Cat, they are just recent examples) or they can trot off lines like "climate is a coupled non-linear chaotic system" as if they know through deep experience whatever that might mean (if Martin said it I'd believe him, but I doubt he would). Such talk is mostly just pretentious BS. I admit my ignorance frequently because I'm keen not to be seen to play the same game, whereas you obviously prefer it (or more likely are impressed/fooled by it).
What you see as 'lies' by celebrities or by commentators with an MSc in climate communications or some such fluff is just ignorant noise, not dishonesty. If I sympathize with any "skeptic" talking point it is with complaints about such stuff. If it stopped there I'd have nothing to complain about. But your (collective) complaints of lies and conspiracy go to the heart of science and the scientific community and are damaging (perhaps intentionally) not just to climate science but to public opinion about science as an institution in general.
Your examples of "lies" are worthless tosh in any normal sense of lying. They are the sort of thing that, as you throw them backward and forward among yourselves, grow from interesting research into "lies". It is hard to believe you would take them seriously, but knowing "skeptics" I would not be surprised if you were to say that the weatherman was 'lying': he said it would be sunny but it rained!
Raff
Mike, I find it objectionable when people affect to be knowledgeable about things of which they are ignorant. Such pretension is de-rigeuer here, where everyone is an expert on the weaknesses of models or indices or the strengths of satellite records, when in fact they know next to nothing about these things.[...]
Jan 12, 2016 at 2:28 AM | Unregistered CommenterRaff
And you do, right?
michael hart
Golf,
Unless I've missed it, you haven't provided a single example of something climate science experts said should have happened by now, but didn't. I think Raff's recent comment nails it.
...and Then There's Physics
...and Then There's Physics
Could you supply a definitive list of people you regard as climate science experts which will save effort and time being wasted by those of us who might rise to the challenge when you come back with
Al Gore, James Hansen, Dr David Viner, Mike Mann aren't climate experts
SandyS
Sandy,
Why not just provide the examples? We could always delve into the details of whether or not they qualify as climate science experts once you've done so. Clearly there is at least one person here who thinks that a group that they describe as climate science experts have made predictions that have not come true. Let's find out who these people are and what it is that they claimed should have happened, but didn't.
...and Then There's Physics
You are an arrogant bastard, raff, aren't you?
You don't have a clue about what people who post on here know or don't know. Just because you appear to be proud to be an ignorant prat does not mean that everyone else is as well. And in any event I don't believe you are as ignorant as you make out. You know more about science and about climate than you try to make us believe and all this "I don't know" stuff us flannel.
What I do know is that there are those who contribute to this site (and I'd look up the word 'contribute' if I were you because it doesn't include either you or the Seer but does include Entropic Man, misguided as some of his stuff may be) who must have spent considerably more time than you trying to understand climate science and have reached conclusions based on the work they have done, whether they are "climate scientists" or not. The point being that you don't have to be anything other than fairly intelligent to grasp the basics and realise that a lot of climate claims simply do not pass any "sniff test".
Whether climate scientists are liars or not is really quite irrelevant which is why trolls like you and the Seer are so keen to divert the discussion, just as various of your "colleagues" are obsessed with finding out who funds those organisations that disagree with them. It prevents people from discussing the facts or — more importantly — the socio-political objectives which underpin the global warming enterprise. Since the scientific basis for anthropogenic global warming is threadbare to start with and getting more so with each day that passes the only course left to the true believers in the cause is to prevent the rest of us from looking to closely at what they are really up to.
Call it 'the pea under the thimble' or 'the elephant in the room' or 'the man behind the curtain', it all comes down to the same thing: lies, obfuscation, a determination never to concede an inch, never to debate or discuss and always to divert attention away from anything that might challenge the paradigm.
And — to drag this back to the thread topic — models are a part of that obfuscation. As RG Brown has said more than once on WUWT, not one of the models has been validated and not one of the models is correct. So pretending that taking any sort of average tells you anything about anything is ludicrous. But that doesn't stop the scientivists because it doesn't matter. They serve a purpose and that purpose is not science.
Mike Jackson
...and Then There's Physics
Nope, you give me a list.
SandyS
"Do you understand what a forcing is?"
Yes, it's an unknown that completely invalidates climate models from being used for any sort of future projection.
Although they're very useful for predicting what has happened when you plug in the right values.
Nial
"For those interested, I remember being told in the mid 70s (?) that London was always warmer than the surrounding countryside. I accepted this, and assumed this was common knowledge. In about 2002/3 I was told this was not true, and had been disproved (I can't remember the exact words) 'ages ago'."
Golf Charlie, the effect isn't urban areas being warmer than rural areas, if the urban areas stayed static this wouldn't affect temperature station readings over time. The effect is that some temperature stations started in the country and have slowly been engulfed by urban sprawl as cities have expanded.
There are a lot of examples of this happening, off the top of my head Hansen allowed 0.05 Deg C to compensate.
Nial
Sandy,
I'm not hugely interested. Feel free to make claims that you're unwilling to then back up. It's exactly what I expect.
Nial,
Yes, it's an unknown that completely invalidates climate models from being used for any sort of future projection.
You could have just said that you didn't know. No need for some complex response that basically says the same thing.
...and Then There's Physics
Around the turn of this century, I was told that global temperatures could rise as much as 10°C by 2100, though the effects of other “pollutants” we are pumping out should ameliorate this to about 5°C. I was a bit sceptical, but accepted it, as… well, what did I know? The models at the time all showed it to be true, so who was I to argue?
I then saw the infamous Al Gore film, and was suckered into the scam; ice caps were melting, sea levels were rising, nations were soon to drown, and we would no longer see snow in the UK. In seeking more information, and quite how a trace gas could have such an impact, I trawled this interweb thingy, to find that there was quite a lot of conflict about it, and it was this conflict that made me suspicious – the claim by the True Believers that any who dared question this “Truth” were “deniers”, every bit as reprehensible as those who denied the holocaust of the Second World War. I then found the Climategate e-mails, and began browsing; I watched a TV “documentary” which attempted to debunk many of the claims made about these e-mails, which made me doubt my own readings of them. Luckily, I was able to check the claims made – each and every tale “debunked” was taken out of context, and the programme was an obvious whitewash. The main thing that appalled me was the open discussion about means to destroy the career of a fellow scientist just because he, while peer-reviewing one of their papers, threw doubt upon their methods and conclusions. By now, even I was beginning to see that observations were not matching the models, yet the claim continued that the models were right, and we were all heading towards what was then termed “thermageddon”; the heat that had previously been obvious in atmospheric readings had miraculously changed direction, and was hiding elsewhere. While I am no expert in this field, I am aware that the probability of heat being selective as to where it is stored is basically zero – the person making such a claim has to be a charlatan, no matter how important he is or how beautifully he dresses his theory up to be.
A few things that myself, Mike Jackson, Golf, Charlie, and many others on this site do have knowledge of is that the atmosphere is a huge, complex mechanism, that we have only really begun to examine in depth. To draw any conclusions on flimsy evidence is not a sensible way to go, in any science, yet conclusions are being drawn with the intention of making drastic – perhaps even catastrophic – effects upon civilisation, particularly western civilisation, but also in suppressing development of the less wealthy of this world, and these conclusions are being made on the flimsiest of flimsy evidence, from data collected over no more than a few decades in a system that has demonstrated that it works on timescales of centuries and millennia, in a complex array of interlocking cycles that we are only just beginning to identify, and have yet to find all – or even anything – that might influence them.
Radical Rodent
To summarise the above: it does not require great knowledge to note that none of the models produced forecast projected the present pause/plateau/hiatus in global warming, and none have yet explained it; nor does it require great knowledge to know that, when a model is formatted upon the increase in CO2 being the significant factor in its projections, then altering the amount of CO2 in the model will alter its projections; nor does it take great knowledge to notice that, if the model is formatted with CO2 as its principle driver, and, despite CO2 continuing to rise, the observations do not match the models’ projections, then it is highly likely that the premise that CO2 is the driving factor is WRONG. If you have any knowledge about these three, simple points yet you insist that reality has to be otherwise, then you are either a fool or a liar. Which are you?
Radical Rodent
...and Then There's Physics
You're the one that made the accusation saying we had nothing to offer; all I want is a list to search as you will come back with that doesn't count because because because, and are unwilling to come up with anything with which to test your claim. Unlike university lecturers my time is precious and not all of it spent on internet blogs.
As a toe in the water to prove that you're not a man of straw. How about this from 1986 by Hansen which actually falls in his lifetime unlike most of his other claims which few people will live to see? He is talking about the USA specifically, allegedly with the best surface temperature records.
And predicted to increase by 3 or 4 degrees sometime between 2010 and 2020
He chose a good year to make this prediction and still failed contiguous 48 states have changed since 1901
SandyS
SandyS: I suspect that we are soon to find that Hansen is not a “climate science expert”. On that premise, I think it would be an idea to create a list of those who would be acknowledged as “climate science experts”. This could get interesting.
Radical Rodent
aTTP, thank you for confirming Jones et al 1990 should not be relied on, and that Phil Jones and Tom Karl cannot be relied on in climate science. There is a fair amount of climate science that depends on Jones et al 1990.
Your continued avoidance of answering anything about the Hockey Stick is noteworthy, but remains typical and unexplained.
Just so it is clear, Climate Scientists have never made any claims about Global Warming, Sea Ice, or Sea Level Rise. There is no reason for the taxpayer to fund anything at all.
golf charlie
> > Yes, it's an unknown that completely invalidates climate models
> > from being used for any sort of future projection."
"You could have just said that you didn't know. No need for some complex response that basically says the same thing"
We've established the models are useless without knowing actual forcings.
You've said you need a crystal ball to know future forcings.
Forcing (values) are therefore unknowns that completely invalidates climate models from being used for any sort of future projection.
Sorry, I presumed you could make the mental leap.
Nial
Mike, I see your problem.
...I don't believe you are as ignorant as you make out. You know more about science and about climate than you try to make us believe and all this "I don't know" stuff us flannel.You really are impressed by blog rhetoric. I'm scientifically literate, yes. I know hugely more about climate science than the average laymen. But what I really know and understand (as opposed to being familiar with) about any aspect of climate science is not greatly different from zero. This is almost certainly true of the majority of commenters on this and other blogs. If you don't understand this you will be mislead at every turn.
Ratty, I think you are showing how little you understand of climate models.
Sandy, your link is to a US newspaper. Temperatures are probably in F no C. And newspapers have a poor reputation for getting the story right, so whether Hansen really said that I doubt.
Raff
Aahh… Hear that? That is the sound of goalposts being moved, yet again.
Radical Rodent
aTTP, presumably Cook et al (the 97% Consensus paper) can also be ignored, on the grounds that no climate scientist was involved.
Who is going to tell the US President?
raff, can we ignore all blog rhetoric, such as your own? Can we really rely on anything purporting to be climate science?
aTTP, can we only rely on peer reviewed climate science papers? Thank you for confirming Al Gore has no relevance in climate science, which I don't recall asking.
golf charlie
raff
What do you know something about it? It appears you don't know anything about any of the things we discuss on here but that doesn't stop you shooting your mouth off endlessly on every aspect of climate and endlessly claiming that what we say is wrong or at least doesn't meet you own personal criteria for being right.
I fail to understand why you are so insistent that our views on any subject we raise is wrong seeing as how you profess ignorance on virtually all of them.
As for lying ... there are enough self-appointed climate experts around who set out deliberately to mislead. if you and the Seer of Blackford Hill choose not to categorise that as lying then I'm sure we can have a nice little discussion on semantics some time. The end result is that politicians and the general public and naive little activists like Westwood and Thompson spout inanities which other gullible celeb-followers take as gospel because one of their heroes says it is so.
Which is why Lenin called them "useful idiots".
And "climate experts" does not just mean scientists. In fact most of the genuine scientists in that field try to be careful about what they say. It is the "experts" and the pseudo-environmentalists that are the problem.
But if you want some examples: I'm still waiting for the "ice-free Arctic" we were promised, and that famous "hot spot". And there's the increasing number of hurricanes that we are still waiting to materialise. And this increase in the rate of sea level rise that isn't. And the "ocean acidification" which turns out to be an infinitesimal reduction (perhaps; none of the real experts in that field seem to agree) in alkalinity.
You may not call any if these things lies but that suggests a very inelastic interpretation of what lying entails, don't you think?