Scientists Issue Unprecedented Forecast of Next Sunspot Cycle

FOR SALE: One 2006 Predictive Flux-transport Dynamo Model. Make offer…..

They might have fared better picking lottery numbers.
How much do these guys pull down in a given year anyways. And what sorts of bennies do they get?

WOW !
I am shocked, just stunned !
Imagine, a group of politically correct, rainbow of diversity, product of current public school dogma types, masquerading as scientists publishing such a robust report !
Your going to tell me that their work was done in collaboration with the U of Washington’s climate research center ? ! NO !
Well, the scientific community can certainly sit back and have a cold one now, this debate is over !

You sucked me in. I read the whole thing and finally saw the the date the prediction was issued. I should have been more wary when reading as our own site publishes failed computer model prediction stories all the time. In fact, we have a site category that lists these stories (“Failed Predictions – Model/Human”), here:
http://www.c3headlines.com/predictionsforecasts/
Needless to say, scientists who develop computer models, and come to believe in their amazing forecasting ability, should really stay away from press releases on roll-out. Since that won’t happen, it would be great if at some point computer model scientists would gain some perspective and humility from the constant failures.
C3H Editor

Good one! I didn’t catch on till nearly the end of the article.
OT – browsing NCAR/UCAR pages led to this item highlighted in UCAR’s “Press Clips”:
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/is_there_a_better_word_for_doom/
featuring Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt et al.

Of all the thousands of stock trading systems that are back tested and are going to make you a fortune, non have yet found the capacity to read the future.
Idiots are always willing to accept a forcast of the future as if it already existed.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
The date of this NCAR News Release is March 6, 2006
 
Did they ever publish a correction?  Perhaps even an apology?
–Mike Ramsey

I seem to remember that, back when they said that, they had the audacity to say that they were pretty much infallible in this field.
Hubris. Overwheenin’ Pride. Arogance.
The best advice I can offer to these folk is:
Atone, ye sinners, and ye shall be forgiven!
🙂

Mausumi Dikpati (leader of the forecast team) is not giving up on this prediction! Last month, this article ( http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17102-solar-cycle-will-be-weakest-since-1928-forecasters-say.html ) had the following to say:
“The panel now expects the sun’s activity will peak about a year late, in May 2013, when it will boast an average of 90 sunspots per day. That is below average for solar cycles, making the coming peak the weakest since 1928, when an average of 78 sunspots was seen daily.”
…
“But not everyone on the panel expects the coming cycle to be weaker than average. “The panel consensus is not my individual opinion,” says panel member Mausumi Dikpati of the High Altitude Observatory in Boulder, Colorado.
Dikpati and her colleagues have developed a solar model that predicts a bumper crop of sunspots and a cycle that is 30% to 50% stronger than the previous cycle, Cycle 23.
Because it is still early in the new cycle, it is too soon to say whether the sun will bear out this prediction, Dikpati says. “It’s still in a quiet period,” she told New Scientist. “As soon as it takes off it could be a completely different story.””

I’m sure the chief forecaster is old enough not to be alive in 2012 or so.

It seems to be in our nature to think that we know everything. I wonder if this is part of our psychological mindset. If it has not been done already, sociologists or perhaps psychologists could have a field day analyzing people’s responses to global events such as swine flu and global warming. Assuming that they can maintain professional detachment from the events happening around them.
Perhaps it’s the times we live in but we seem to have lost a sense of proportion over such events. It is claimed by Kofi Anan that 300,000 die because of an unsubstantiated consequence of “global warming”. How many die of wars, polluted water, disease, malnutrition, smoking, traffic accidents etc.?
From http://saintseminole.awardspace.com/stats.htm & others
47,000 die in the US every year because of the flu & respiratory diseases (USA Today)
112,000 die in the US every year because of obesity
418,000 die in the US every year because of smoking
39,000 die in the US every year because of traffic accidents
1.2 million die in the world, annually, in traffic accidents
and so on…

Really, the sunspot cycle prognosticator boys desperately need to just STFU until they’ve got some hard observable facts to base a new forecast on. They’re making Jeanne Dixon look good at this point. Shameful.

So, we see that they (the team) have NOT changed their press release – despite two out of 7 years of their FIRST prediction being completely wrong: 2007 – 2009 being completely flat, rather than rapidly increasing to apeak of 2013.
What changed – so their predictions for 2007 and 2008 can be updated? What did NOT change – to indicate that their program was right, but off in its initial conditions? What did they correct in their program? Why are they being paid – if they REFUSE to update and revise their program’s predictions when proven so abjectly wrong?
How can they tolerate their hypocrisy and stubbornness?

Guess this means my iphone climate modeling app isn’t going to do that well. . . ,

“The CAGW disinformation machine often employs boring, rhetorically-challenged advocates who deliver their messages of fear and confusion in inaccurately measured and untested absurdities.” M. Bryant

“The next sunspot cycle will be 30-50% stronger than the last one . . .The scientists expect the cycle to begin in late 2007 or early 2008, . . .”
Contrast:

May 8, 2009: A new active period of Earth-threatening solar storms will be the weakest since 1928 and its peak is still four years away, after a slow start last December, predicts an international panel of experts led by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

It will be interesting to see whose prediction is closer to reality.

When I was in business school I spent a lot of time studying models of economic and financial forecasting. The first thing you learn in this process is that it is a fundamental mistake to assume that the future is going to resemble the past. You can construct a model to “predict” the past with incredible precision, but when you apply it to the future it doesn’t work very well. If that were not the case, there would be models that predict the future behavior of financial markets with tremendous precision.
The problem with models is, when it’s actually your own money at stake, you usually lose your money. That’s the case here as well.

Really, someone create a Facebook Quiz on Cycle 24 at this point –it will have at least as much validity and more entertainment value.

That’s the great thing about these solar cycle predictions – we don’t have to wait long to know if they were accurate. Hopefully this lull is actually providing an incredible learning opportunity for solar scientists and is also reminding them of how much they DON’T know about the sun just yet.
This prediction was correct(ish) in one regard – this next cycle is starting late!

Aww … Now that’s just cruel! 8^D
`

I give high marks for at least being bold and precise in their predictions, but I’m sure one doesn’t have to give them a call to advise them to be a little more humble in choosing a confidence level in the future.
The most telling thing here about all models – particularly the climate models that AGWers also attach 95%+ probabilities (am I wrong in thinking that the probabilities of interdependent events 1, 2, 3,…,n is P1*P2*P3*….Pn). Can one have such high probabilities for each factor that when multiplied out they would arrive at 95 or 95% or even 65% probability? Indeed, in the field of possible climate “causing” factors, solar cycles are the most predictive of all – wouldn’t a climate scientist just love to be able to predict future climate so accurately as one can predict solar cycles – say be a year or two off. And yet, even with this sinusoidal behaviour we can be so off the mark.

I think it is daft to give the discredited Dikpati paper prominence without at the same time publishing the papers that discredit it.
See the devasting critiques by see Choudhuri, Chatterjee and Jiang.
In this regard see Choudhuri, Chatterjee and Jiang (2007). Using solar dynamo modelling, these authors predict a very low amplitude for Sunspot Cycle 24 similar to the prediction of Svalgaard et al 2005. Kapyle (2007) compared the solar dynamo models of Choudhuris, Chatterjee and Jiang (2007) and Dikpati et al (2006), concluding the Choudhuri et al model the superior of the two. Amongst other things, the model used by Choudhuri et al provides that the poloidal field generation is intrinsically random whereas the model used by Dikpati et al uses sunspot area data as a deterministic source for the poloidal field.
The Choudhuri et al model is considered the more realistic of the two. Secondly, the Choudhuri et al model was published in 2004 and subject to scrutiny by scientists. The Dikpati et al model has not been published.
See further: http://en.scientificcommons.org/piyali_chatterjee
AND
Choudhuri, A. R., Chatterjee, P., and Jiang, J. 2007. “Predicting the solar cycle 24 with a solar dynamo model” ArXiv Astrophysics e-prints, arXiv:astro-ph/0701527 18 January 2007.
Kapyla, P., 2007. “Solar cycle – modelling and prediction” on website: http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=140 March 2007.
Svalgaard, L. and Cliver, E. W. 2007. “A floor in the solar wind magnetic field” The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Can be found on Dr Svalgaard’s website.

Mike Bryant (20:18:09) :
“The CAGW disinformation machine often employs boring, rhetorically-challenged advocates who deliver their messages of fear and confusion in inaccurately measured and untested absurdities.” M. Bryant
I can see we are in the presence of our betters. But sorry Mike, we considered your frightfully incisive little dithyramb and rejected it for the quote of the week.

At solarcycle24.com, they are talking about a sunspot number of around 70 at the next solar max.
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=629&page=18

Long ago, before cheese was invented, I was a teacher. My task was to purvey various principles of English law to the willing but not necessarily able. One thing I learned very early on was that my students would cross-check everything I said against the content of a variety of textbooks and academic papers. If it wasn’t in writing it was treated with utmost skepticism.
That’s fair enough, people far more experienced than me and with far better paper qualifications wrote the books and articles. Or so one might think. In fact there were instances of my explanations being questioned on the basis of articles and books written by people whose experience and qualifications were indistinguishable from my own. It was all done very politely, but it was clear that most students presumed what they read to be more reliable than what they heard.
Over time my name appeared at the bottom of articles in journals and on the title pages of books (not many and not very good ones) and the result was that I then had authority in their eyes. What I said in lectures and tutorial classes might have remained the same but they were now words of confirmation rather than of dissent. The written word was very much King.
I wonder whether we are seeing the same thing with the spewings of computer models. Once something has been spewed it seems to be presumed that it is correct. That is not an entirely illogical approach, after all the models are set-up and operated by people with strings of letters after their names. It is logical to accept the word of people far better qualified than you are, what is not logical is to accept the word of a computer. Yet we seem to find that the authority afforded to computerised results is greater than the authority given to the word of those who fed the computer in the first place.
It’s a recipe for overstatement and for the weakening of critical analysis. Not good.

Hello Lief 20:29:17
I read your review. Did the final version make the changes you suggested?
I could not find a link to the final version, sorry
Also I note this comment… “Our model has demonstrated the necessary skill to be used as a forecasting tool”…
I would think that it would be necessary for the model to have actually correctly forecast something to make this statement, what do you think?
Regards
Michael

Heh. Had me at the end there.
How dreadfully aweful that forecast panned out…goodness.
I think it would be wise for someone to grade these fools on the performance of their models and see how useful they really are.
Accountability lacks and accuracy is wishful thinking in these fields it seems.
But people wholeheartedly believe them to translate to reality. That’s not only arrogant, it’s just stupid!
Yeah that’s right! I said it…cuz it had to be said! Stupids!

Talking about the past: 1998 article from BBC news
Scientists blame sun for global warming
Climate changes such as global warming may be due to changes in the sun rather than to the release of greenhouse gases on Earth.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/56456.stm

Excellent investment opportunity: Get someone to pick up the tab for your computer game development, then hide the source code.
I would expect something funded by NSF to be open source, where the idea is that if you get it wrong, someone else can come along and try to improve it, especially if they have an understanding of the underlying processes.
No advancement possible there.
Wonder what thier justification was for the funding?
Even when you get an HST award, you can normally only keep the data proprietary for 1 year, after which the data becomes public record.
How did they get 98% when it got SC14 wrong, and butchered SC12??
Hmmm…. maybe I am in the wrong business. If I dust my C off, I could write a program to generate loops and fill them with color so that the image matches all the Solar Cycles, and sell it to NSF for a couple million.

NCAR – in my mind, a four-letter word, and I don’t mean that kindly.
Aren’t they also running a program to enlighten TV meteorologists of the reality of AGW? I believe I’ve seen a model on their site that shows how, if it wasn’t for all the CO2 in the atmosphere, the climate would have been cooling for the past 20-30 years or so. Here’s a rhetorical question – do they do any real science?
It is Archimedes who is thought to have said, “Give me a fulcrum, and I shall move the world!” Some of today’s ‘scientists’ have left facts behind and seem to believe, “Give me a computer, and I will create the reality that suits my purposes.”
The abusive misuse of all that computational power is really sad.

It would be good to know how many independent parameters are in the Dikpati model. If there are more than four, it is a foregone conclusion that they could match curves to extant cycle data.
Luckily, we will not have to wait long to see whether the cycle 24 prediction is falsified.

You set us up… leaving the relevent dates until the end of the article. Quite amusing, actually.
So is this failure of the 2006 prediction unprecedented? Or prescient?

“…using a computer model…”
Well, must be right then. After all, computers are going to attain consciousness one day. I read about that in Frankenstein or something.

“Rick Sharp (18:18:29) :
FOR SALE: One 2006 Predictive Flux-transport Dynamo Model. Make offer…..”
Ummmm….. a James Hansen coal protest sign.

“Rick Sharp (18:18:29) :
FOR SALE: One 2006 Predictive Flux-transport Dynamo Model. Make offer…..”
Ummmmm… an MIT “wheel of climate”.

“Rick Sharp (18:18:29) :
FOR SALE: One 2006 Predictive Flux-transport Dynamo Model. Make offer…..”
Ummmm…. a peer-reviewed Steig et al paper.

I think I’ll bookmark this post for reference the next time some commenter suggests that peer-reviewed studies are inherently superior. Here we have a prime example of a paper that was subjected to peer-review with a rigor and diligence that I strongly suspect exceeds the level generally provided and it still turned out to be quite a load of [snip]. Saved ya some work there mod. Like the old saying says you can’t make a silk purse out of sow’s ear.

“Rick Sharp (18:18:29) :
FOR SALE: One 2006 Predictive Flux-transport Dynamo Model. Make offer…..”
Ok, I got it—I’ll give you an October 2008 GISS data set! 😉
I really want that 2006 Predictive Flux-transport Dynamo Model!!

“rbateman (23:01:47) : If I dust my C off, I could write a program to generate loops and fill them with color so that the image matches all the Solar Cycles, and sell it to NSF for a couple million.”
Tempts one to switch sides.

And to think we give the ‘Weathermen/women’ a hard time with their predictions!

tokyoboy (19:29:19) :
You can also be young enough not to be alive in 2012.
(No threat intended)

Hhmmmm! As my late father used to say, “modern technology is infallible, right up to the point when it doesn’t work!”.
I suspect they’ve been using some left-overs fromt he Met Office’s models perhaps. BTW, they managed to get the forecast right for 3 days so far!
Slightly OT – over at climatereaslist Piers Corbyn has invested in a new calculation device much as the Met Office has recently done, only his costs a little less! Well worth a look at this incredible technology!

Darn, another bait and switch tangent using divine might.

Leif Svalgaard (23:26:26) :
The polar field precursor method has now performed reasonably well for three cycles and may be on track for number four, which in any case will be yet another test.
Is there a published prediction somewhere, predating cycle 21, demonstrating this?

Their model was brilliant at predicting past solar cycles but failed spectacularly within a couple of years when attempting to predict the future. Does this sound familiar?
Of course, the current sleeping sun may have been caused by a step change that could not have predicted on the basis of our current knowledge. But, becoming ever more cynical in my old age, I would lean towards another explanation: that, despite all their talk of physical processes, their model was little more than an exercise in curve fitting. If so, then their claimed success in hindcasting previous solar cycles is a perfect example of circular reasoning.
This piece is excellent because there is a clear parallel with climate models. They are brilliant at forecasting climate that has already happened, but they fall at the first hurdle when it comes to forecasting the future. All the models, including NASA Model E, predict a continuous rise in the global temperature. Of course, it hasn’t happened. The world is no warmer than it was ten years ago (I suspect that’s what they really mean when they say ‘things are even worse than we thought’). Could it be that the climates models, too, are little more than than exercises in curve fitting?
I suspect it will be many decades before we understand the climate engine sufficiently to make meaningful predictions. Indeed it may never be possible due to the chaotic nature of weather and climate. Even if I believed in AGW I would still regard those MIT researchers as fools. Claiming they can predict the global climate in 2100 with a high degree of precision is such obvious nonsense that it does make me rather sad about the state of science. I think that, as science has always been self-correcting in the past, things will improve and climate science will become honest. But I’m not holding my breath.
Chris

jlc (02:08:32) :
Most of us here are not familar with Klingon grammar.
The Klingons never even named their star, they knew it all came down to Targ gas. This model is without honour.

I’m sure that once the apropriate adjustments have been made to the observed data, the predictions will be spot on.

Kinda lika the thermohaline ocean circulation theory, isn’t it? Maybe there should be a magazine for debunked scientific ideas, that way people would realize the importance debunking wrong theories has in the advancement of Science. It could be called something like “Not Science”…

While the model certainly appears laughable in short hindsight, I’m willing to cut the researchers a little slack. Eccentricity and naivete know no bounds in science and too often passion and belief are honestly mistaken for truth and rigour. The press release gives a few clues as to why this model went off the rails. Predictive models are a saleable quantity and universities are known for their propensity in modern times to push their research efforts to market. That appears to be the motivation in this case. The release has all the earmarks of a university marketing office looking to catch cash for the school. Competitiveness amongst faculty will tend to encourage them to get on the gravy train. Prestige, cash and workload may be in the balance. Academic eccentricity only tends to be tolerated these days from those who’s wackiness is profitable or sufficiently tenured as to be immovable.
The model does have a “marketable” feature: to demonstrate clearly the fragility of rearward looking models to accurately predict the future. Interestingly, the curve fit presented by the model also tends to correlate at some level with “global warming”, if you are to accept it exists. While this failed model doesn’t automatically point to the inherent failure of the currently fashionable climate models, it also provides no support for their utility.

Still the same mistake, again and again, with predictive models.
1) sorry guys but it’s very easy to fit a model with 8 cycles….too little data. Any model can be tuned to fit 8 cycles…even a poor polynom. It means nothing, certainly not a proof that the model is accurate.
2) when you get a model of a natural phenomenon (where chaos, diverging equations play a large role) which is 98% accurate…a big red sign should blink in your head: “THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE”. There is chaos…no model can predict it…if you have a 98% accurate model it means you have tried to model chaos instead of only modelling the part which can be modelled. You are bound to fail in the future.

Maybe we need a book burning session. These scientists are now making things up instead using the good ol “We just don’t know” and “we can’t get any of our models to converge”. This is getting really stupid when you have an event that there is no data to match. I wish the media would just go away because journalism is tabloidism now.

FatBigot (22:11:17) :
I wonder whether we are seeing the same thing with the spewings of computer models. Once something has been spewed it seems to be presumed that it is correct. That is not an entirely illogical approach, after all the models are set-up and operated by people with strings of letters after their names. It is logical to accept the word of people far better qualified than you are, what is not logical is to accept the word of a computer. Yet we seem to find that the authority afforded to computerised results is greater than the authority given to the word of those who fed the computer in the first place.
This problem has been with us since the dawn of computer based simulation. I agree that it’s understandable for a lay person to accept the results based on their expectation that the “with strings of letters after their names” actually represent knowledge and integrity. Today, sadly, they don’t. In this case, with this group of clowns, all they have actually “proved” is the uselessness of models that haven’t been through IV&V. And the dishonesty, incompetence or both of those who refuse the IV&V process.
Leif Svalgaard (22:11:18) :
… I asked her [Dikpati] how she could have faith in the correctness of the programming if the code was such a mess, but never got a good answer. Another argument was something about ‘intellectual property’ [of taxpayer funded work???].
She can not have any faith in her model, and she knew it. Whenever I began the verification part of IV&V, the very first step was to CLEAN UP THE CODE. That is what reputable scientists, such as Choudhuri, do. I wouldn’t even think about validation until I had confidence the code was actually modeling what it claimed to model. Based on what you wrote, I’ll surmise Dikpati had “patched” it to effectively “jump to desired answer” and wasn’t about to let you discover that. (I’ve seen that behavior too many times, so she’s not alone. in fact, I know of at least one major $$$$Billion program that was recently canceled because their simulation based evaluations were caught out as junk as a result of this kind of behavior.)
You’re also absolutely correct about ownership. If she developed it on the US governments nickel, the government owns it. Period. At one time, companies would mix their own funds with the governments to claim proprietary rights, but acquisition regulations (both FAR and DFAR) started blocking that long ago.
Thanks for providing the background that illuminates what kind of “scientists” these people are. I look forward to the day when acquisition authorities begin looking into these “research” programs.

Mod, please use this one instead of the previous where I forgot a tag.
FatBigot (22:11:17) :
I wonder whether we are seeing the same thing with the spewings of computer models. Once something has been spewed it seems to be presumed that it is correct. That is not an entirely illogical approach, after all the models are set-up and operated by people with strings of letters after their names. It is logical to accept the word of people far better qualified than you are, what is not logical is to accept the word of a computer. Yet we seem to find that the authority afforded to computerised results is greater than the authority given to the word of those who fed the computer in the first place.
This problem has been with us since the dawn of computer based simulation. I agree that it’s understandable for a lay person to accept the results based on their expectation that the “with strings of letters after their names” actually repressent knowledge and integrity. Today, sadly, they don’t. In this case, with this group of clowns, all they have actaully “proved” is the uselessness of models that haven’t been through IV&V.
Leif Svalgaard (22:11:18) :
… I asked her [Dikpati] how she could have faith in the correctness of the programming if the code was such a mess, but never got a good answer. Another argument was something about ‘intellectual property’ [of taxpayer funded work???].
She can not have any faith in her model, and she knew it. Whenever I began the verification part of IV&V, the very first step was to CLEAN UP THE CODE. That is what reputable scientists, such as Choudhuri, do. I wouldn’t even think about validation until I had confidence the code was actually mmodeling what it claimed to model. Based on what you wrote, I’ll surmise Dikpati had “patched” it to effectively “jump to desired answer” and wasn’t about to let you discover that. (I’ve seen that behaviour too many times, so she’s not alone. in fact, I know of at least one major $$$$Billion program that was recently canceled because their simulation based eveluations were caught out as junk as a result of this kind of behaviour.)
You’re also absolutely correct about ownership. If she developed it on the US governments nickel, the government owns it. Period. At one time, companies would mix their own funds with the governments to claim proprioetary rights, but acquisition regulations (both FAR and DFAR) started blocking that long ago.
Thnaks for provideing the background that iluminates what kind of “scientists” these people are.

One thing I have found over the past 20 years is that as soon as you think you understand the local climate characteristics you are interested in, they change……..so you don’t any more.
Their programme obviously worked for several cycles, which would have been useful if it’d been around then………..but it wasn’t, because the data wasn’t available………
Maybe it tells us something about the complexity of understanding the sun?

Speaking of the next cycle…
SOHO is showing the sun breaking out with speckles, including one in the recently revealed plage area that rotated into view a couple days ago. And midway between the two groups is a SP (stuck pixel).

It´s the summer coming, their last opportunity to market global warming. HE´ll be back soon…Get ready…it will be really cataclysmic; this time he will be supported by the envoy himself and escorted by an armed task force.

UK Sceptic (00:23:07) :
And another one gone, another one gone
Another one bites the dust…,
Just a little interesting trivia: the lead guitar who played that rock anthem is an astrophysicist with a PHD. Rock on! He might even be reading this thread!

That pic looks like it’s from the 70’s. That was the first thing I thought. Photoshopped to add the laptop.
o/t but this is bugging me. How do people get away with this stuff? I did a search and found this site where this man said:
“Over the past century and a half, we’ve increased the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere from about 270 parts per million (ppm) to about 387 ppm–more than 40 percent. All of that increase is human-caused, and its effect is to increase the retention of heat in the atmosphere. It warms the earth, destabilizing climates globally.”
I read ‘opinions’ like this and feel compelled to thank you, Anthony, again and again for this wonderful blog.

Wonderful.
1) A friend of mine long ago worked for a major oil company where teams of engineers and geologists modeled oil reservoirs so they could forecast the response to waterflooding. The models always matched history, but never accurately predicted the future. There are a lot of unknown unknowns down there.
2) In 2005 two Russian solar physicists bet Dr. James Annan $10,000 that the global temperature ten years from then would be cooler, not warmer. Annan developed one of the climate models, and his pride of authorship will probably cost him $10,000; how could there be any unknowns not already reflected in the climate models?

I was trained as a Biologist.I wanted to be a classic field Biologist,or barring that Forestry,instead I went into aviation-and did a lot of related work.Still have an interest in Science (or I wouldn’t be here) .However.Sitting and running computer models-and not having the least bit of skepticism,-but _believing_ them is what I have problems
with.Observing and still not seeing what is happening is the definition of insanity…
BTW-nice work Mr. Watts…:)

Come on guys. Their model has proven to be inadequate, that’s all. I don’t fault them for having a theory in the first place, then building a model to test it. That’s how it works. There are competing theories among solar scientists, and that’s a good thing.
Unlike the whole AGW shell game.

Alternate thread title: “Could they have been any more wrong?”
I remember reading this release originally in 2006 as well as digging up Landescidt’s predictions and thought “well, this will be interesting….”
They are getting housed by a dead guy….

annav:
They should have published thier code along with thier paper so that every one who comes along later will understand that curve-fitting to complicated systems is not the best way to advance science. Otherwise, it’s too easy to bet on the horse that won the last X number of races.
All they are really showing is that the current run of cycles has changed behavior, and nothing more.
If someone wants to explore in this area, they could possibly identify discrete sets of cycles, and show how they have changed behavior one set to the next, for example.

I wonder whether we are seeing the same thing with the spewings of computer models. Once something has been spewed it seems to be presumed that it is correct.

In the late 1970s, animal rights protesters were claiming that animal testing of drugs was no longer necessary because the drugs’ effects could now be tested on cells simulated in computers. At the time this seemed silly to anyone with a modicum of awareness of biology and computer simulation technologies. But it was reported to the public before evaporating without explanation.

Such a scaring prediction fits the aims of those who fund scientific research and which eventually will back the convenient and politically needed escatological view:
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself. Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead.” – The First Global Revolution, a report by The Club of Rome.”
http://www.green-agenda.com/spiritualunitednations.html

Leif Svalgaard (20:29:17) :
“I believe that all reviews should be published [as an electronic supplement to the paper] and I have never insisted on anonymity in reviewing. IMHO, the review is as important to the public as the paper itself.”
Amen! That would tell the world how rigorously the paper was reviewed and what elements were in question. Good luck in getting that past The Team.

Leif,
I respect your general scepticism even when it contradicts my own favoured viewpoints because it makes me refine and if necessary correct my ideas.
Could you suggest any evidence that, in your opinion, would reveal the Earth’s climate as being more sensitive to minor solar changes than is currently accepted ?
As you know, I think that oceanic variability modulates those small solar changes. Up to a point you seem to accept that.
Can you suggest any specific data that could resolve the issue either way ?

The more science relies on government funding, the more it is susceptible to distortions arising from political factors. IPCC is primarily a political entity, and like all political entities has a vital interest in its own continuation. The scientists promoting AGW are also self-interested. If they produce objective analyses showing that AGW is a minor factor, or a non-factor, in future climate then they have no rationale for continued funding of research in this area.

Leif Svalgaard (11:16:38) :
Thanks, yes, it is instructive.
We have yet to see something like
ftp://howard.astro.ucla.edu/pub/obs/drawings/1997/dr970125.gif
From a cursory scan of 96 and 97 ( looking at the large files 🙂 ) I will still bet on a weak 24 cycle.

E.M.Smith (12:05:37) :
ontinuing on your OT
reminds me of Mediterranean anemia, the recessive gene protects from malaria, but when two appear in a child, the child dies before teens. A stiff price to pay for protection of the tribe, but evolution does not ask, whereas addictions are voluntary choices.
I had an aunt who was prescribed smoking for her asthmatic lungs, go figure, back in the 1940s.
In the evils of nicotine add that the dose from a single cigarette could start a spasm on plaque coated arteries that would dislodge some of it and create a heart attack, an embolism or what have you. Russian roulette after a certain age.

Micky C (MC) (04:34:42) :
That was funny, indeed.
Jack Green (05:43:35) :
Maybe we need a book burning session.
[i] Jack, never! Never ever think about it!
Even when they consist utter nonsense,
they do document that nonsense.
And that is something worth documenting.[/i]
Retired Engineer (06:13:43) :
Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.”
Universe: “So ?”
[i] @Retired Engineer. My version:
Descartes: I think, that I am.
Universe: So wattsupwiththat? [/i]
BTW: every numerical model, created to simulate the
past quite nicely, has lost it’s freedom to prognose
– even – the nearest future.
They way I did learn it:
– you have to learn from past and successfully try
to understand it.
– then, you may – more or less – understand the presence.
– if yes, you may – somehow – get a very raw guess of
what will come.
@Leif
sorry to bother you. You did provide the link to the adjusted
– to 1 au – 10.7 cm flux. I couldn’t find it. Can you repost it, please.
KlausB

Leif, thank you, I copied it.

jeez. i wouldn’t chuck their concept just because it’s having trouble modeling a chaotic system. heck, let’s throw away meteorology! they might be on to something, even if it isn’t completely correct. the whole global warming “debate” has poisoned the atmosphere.

“Could it be that the climates models, too, are little more than than exercises in curve fitting?”
In my humble opinion, the answer is clearly “yes,” when you consider the following:
(1) The warmists are using more than one model;
(2) These models cannot all be right, since some predict a lot more warming than the others;
(3) All of the models fit history pretty well.
In any event, it seems to me that a necessary condition for being able to predict surface temperatures on a 100 year time scale is to know what caused the Little Ice Age. If we don’t know what caused the LIA, there’s quite possibly an important forcing which is not being accounted for.
The other possibility is that the climate is chaotic on that time scale. In my opinion, many people are too dismissive of the possibility that we cannot predict temps over the next hundred years just as we cannot predict when the next big hurricane will hit New York City.

You know, I wonder how accurate these simulations are in the first place? Also, how practical they are in predicting the effects on our world?
Speaking of Change, You might enjoy my latest blog, leave a response if you can!
http://tinyurl.com/lh4pa7
Jordan.

correct italics
hunter (17:26:26) :
Anthony,
OK.
Is ‘failure’ OK?
Yes, failure in a scientific endeavor is absolutely A OK, otherwise we would not be talking of science research but of engineering.
When in high school I was taught the following but cannot quote the original author: Knowledge is like a circle , the more you know, the more there is that you do not know, as the growing perimeter of the circle increases the contact with the unknown. Science explores the unknown with primarily the brain and its imagination secondarily with diligence and dedication. Often there be tigers, dragons and bogs, quick sand and chasms. Sometimes there is a breathtaking view of something incredibly beautiful and incredibly useful. Were it not for the explorers who fall in the bogs and are caught by quicksand, the beautiful and useful would remain unknown.
brazil84 (17:58:09) :
“Come on guys. Their model has proven to be inadequate, that’s all. I don’t fault them for having a theory in the first place, then building a model to test it. That’s how it works. There are competing theories among solar scientists, and that’s a good thing.”
It’s one step above the AGW shell game in that it makes clear and falsifiable predictions. Still, Dr. Dikpati deserves our scorn for what is very likely an exercise in curve fitting and self-deception.
A complex simulation of a complex pheonomen which simulation matches history is very likely to be wrong.
Read the above paragraph. If scientists were not intrepid explorers there would not be any science to talk about. If they were fearful of ridicule and failure, they would not walk a step into the unknown. They have to believe they have got the pope by the beard ( substitute $#%^), as a greek proverb says, to have a chance of being effective in their speculations. Just a chance, like explorers for gold.
It is OK to be wrong in a scientific model/theory. Feynman himself was wrong about the parton model, but it did provide the fertilizer from which quantum chromodynamics sprung and could be proven. We would not accept that climate is chaotic, weather up, had we not fallen on our faces with this AGW nonsense. It is the mistakes that build the next level of scientific understanding and chaos and complexity are new and rapidly growing inter disciplinery tools. Climate modelers will be forced to use them pretty soon, as will probably sun modelers, but these tools are new, and their need will be based on the failure of models like Dikpati et al ( if it fails).
Unfortunately the damage to science by the politicization of climate is incredible and will be lasting, like the damage Lysenko did to biology in the soviet union, and worse, because it is world wide.
Evidence of this is the attitude of quite reasonable skeptic people on science in general.

anna v,
Thanks for speaking up and granting your permission.
Does that mean we are agreed AGW is a failure as science and policy?

Leif Svalgaard (13:21:14) :
if the result turns out to be wrong or contradicted by later research AND it was hyped at a press conference, either the PR person(s) directly responsible should be disciplined [fired, demoted, decapitated, …
Trouble will be what to do if the researcher is not a scientist, say a railways’ engineer like the one at the IPCC or a Nobel prize winner…

112,000 die in the US every year because of obesity
A little starvation could fix that number right smartly.

klausb-
I believe the measurement you’re looking for is “-ish”.
I can’t find the link right now, the pertinent server seems to be down….

A Model only works when you know the variables. You can’t understand every thing about the sun by just watching it. Even looking at the past is too short in time. Sometimes you just have to wait.

Adolfo Giurfa (08:30:40) :
I”f there were a universally accepted research budget”
Just imagine, for example, by the United Nations…Absolutely NO!
Here we come into language difficulties. By universal I did not mean global. Rather something reasonable as for example a percentage of the GDP for a country, accepted universally, i.e. by all, within the country. A budget that should be divided to institutes and not persons. It is the creation of researchers as contractors that in my opinion has created the mess of AGW. Gives them carrots for sloppy science and self advertisement and filling the pocket.
Ideally researchers should be like monks, dedicated and chasing their vision. They should be given a salary in order to live well and respectably and no incentives to make more personal money out of their work.

Ok… What we should do, what you should think, what is happening, oh my God, we need to know everything!! Are things warming up, cooling down, is that star blinking faster than the other? Cyclic solar blabla under harmonic feedback of gravitational blabla and the plasma convection releasing blabla… The urge to give your opinion and postulate, argue, etc.. is sooooo tiring.. Humans are soooo pathetic. One year its this, the other year its that. (baby voice: We have to learn more! we want to learn more! we want to know why! tell us why! explain to me why!. Have you ever stopped for a instant, so small an instant, just for a moment, and maybe realize that this kind of unrelentless thirst for “knowledge” throught scientific reasoning will never give you an answer on “why” things are the way they are but only “how” they are? And even so, the answers to the “how” will always bring up more questions.
Big scientist heads with big ideas. A life of work in the field for what? Recognition for trying to understand something that doens’t need to be understood? Laws of physics that fall into the logic of your interpretation? When you are thirsty, very thirsty, and you long for a glass of water. When you take that first big gulp of water out of the glass, does the quenching of your thirst depend on your understanding of why your thirst is being quenched? NO. And trying to understand everything else just kills the moment. Hey! look! the sun! aint it beautiful? Oh yes but did you know that the sunspot count on the sun is now under 11 and the 10.7 flux is at 67? NO AND WE DONT CARE. The sun shines, and it helps us get warm, it makes plants grow, and it did well before you guys tried understanding why, and will still do well after you stop trying. The functioning of things is far from depending on puny arrogant humans who think highly of themselves and of their oh so precious knowledge of things. The Earth doens’nt need you. Neither does the sun. You just destroy everything on your path like locusts, and then try to pose as redeemers of the world. You are pathetic useless, and lost. Nature’s solution to Nature’s problems is provided naturally by Nature. Humans only interfere with normal process of things. Nature doesn’t NEED your understanding. It just needs you, and all your stupid arrogant friends, to leave her alone.