Dr. Judith Curry lets an announcement slip in comments.
My understanding of climate is not helped much by climate models. Stay tuned, our big paper on natural internal climate variability just got accepted by Climate Dynamics
Ask yourself why the common sense stuff that I say is regarded as news.
Source: http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/17/consensus-denialism/#comment-381667
I understand also that there’s a meaty essay coming in a major newspaper by Curry, I know which one it is, but I don’t want to give anti-skeptic zealots a head start into pressuring the editor ahead of time. They’ll just have to ask he be fired afterwards like they usually do.
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It’s a hell of a world when common sense has to fight to be heard alongside patent lunacy.
And pressuring publishers to fire people who allow criticism of an established theory to appear in print is considered to be pro-science?
The science channel on cable with its motto “question everything” now has a clearer understanding of science then the actual scientists involved in the research.
What is the world coming to?
If you want to make God laugh, show him your model outputs.
“My understanding of climate is not helped much by climate models.”
Hmmm. This should be interesting!
Alas, climate “models” are simply computer codes which presumably solve a set of non-linear, coupled differential equations, and their associated boundary/initial conditions, forcing/source terms, and sub-models, which supposedly faithfully represent the dynamics of the Earth’s climate system. Those who think they contain proper representations of ALL the essential physics so as to achieve accurate predictions are fooling themselves…
Yes, it’s time to jump all over them while they are sinking down. Normally, I would think it reprehensible piling on when an antagonist is down but these guys have nine lives. For example, Ehrlich, the most get-it-wrong Malthusian of them all, is still being feted by a shrewdness (perhaps someone can suggest a better collective noun) of top scientific institutions including the (once) illustrious Royal Society. He was the big push behind the coming ice age in an earlier generation and he simply morphed into an CAGW type – it didn’t take any orientation, it just had to be against humans. He may even start protesting natural variation and blame it on humans, too.
We cannot appropriately odel or predict the pattern when a child puts a drop of food coloring into a glass of water. How in the world could we model the complex interaction between the atmosphere, space, and the mixing in undergoes daily? No chance.
And judging by the failure of the climate modellers to re-assess their models in the face of the significant disparity between their models and reality I think it is fair to also say that;
The climate modellers understanding of climate isn’t helped much by climate models either.
Judith,
“Ask yourself why the common sense stuff that I say is regarded as news.”
Profound statement, well said.
It seems as though this applies to lots of things that are going on today including global warming, climate change, alternative fuels, and government spending .
Thanks for speaking out from a community that has gone astray and few are willing to do so.
“a shrewdness ”
My favourite collective noun is a “bidet”, as in a bidet of non-executive directors.
So called because they add class but no-one quite knows what they are for!
The extreme AGW paradigm is dying the death of a 1000 cuts.
Looking forward to the new paper and the Curry’s editorial article.
Chris Marrou says:
September 19, 2013 at 6:28 am
“It’s a hell of a world when common sense has to fight to be heard alongside patent lunacy.”
Spot on. Here in the US our ruling class has bought into Political Correctness lock, stock, and barrel. They look down upon us with considerable anxiety. Not many years ago, I commented at websites dedicated to politics or national issues. No longer. My comments are restricted to websites that discuss science only. The reason is that Political Correctness has not yet become dominant in science, though the IPCC and such folk have tried ever so hard. Scientific Method continues to have traction in science and it does not mix with PC.
Any one have a short list on the next prominent alarmist who is going to publicly go soft?
Some models are useful, if only to tell you that your batch of CPUs are still responding.
Our green friend David Appell had the first comment on Judith’s blog entry, which is entitled “Consensus Denialism.” Here is what he said about Judith:
“The distressing thing is how some people are all ready to attack models, instead of helping make them better.
Is your end goal to understand climate, or to get your name in the newspaper?”
Here is my comment back to David:
“David, aren’t you the green advocate that claimed, falsely (on Roger Pielke Jr.’s site) that the IPCC doesn’t “make predictions”? Only makes “projections” (a weasel word if there ever was one)? And used a very snide tone to imply the Pielke was knowingly hiding things from readers?
Within minutes, an expert who relies on the reality of IPCC documents, not “I wish it was like this” fantasies, quoted chapter and verse for you, from an actual IPCC document which said that they were projecting various outcomes.
But your snide, accusatory tone keeps up here. Kind of like you are denying actual facts, again, no? This time the are facts about actual temperature trends.
Judith’s goal is not to get her name in the papers. You may have read about all the nastiness that someone who leaves the IPCC island voluntarily will be subject too. Judith would have been much more comfortable NOT doing what she does, NOT getting her name vilified. But thank goodness she has decided that bringing science back to its roots of inquiry was more important to her than the comfort of not being constantly attacked.
Yes, her goal is very much to understand climate. You do that by examining factual data. You make models better by comparing them with on the ground factual data.
Judith’s goal is to understand climate, contra your snide comment.
Your goal, on the other hand, is to attack those who are trying to understand both reality, and the failure, to date, of climate models.
You owe Judith a public apology. I don’t expect you will give it, but I will think more of you if you do.”
The extreme AGW paradigm is dying the death of a 1000 cuts.
I am not so optimistic. I think the next year is going to resemble a bad Zombie movie. CAGW is neither alive, nor dead, and will be haunting our daily lives with much ugliness and screaming.
Get out the pitchforks and don’t worry about “piling on”. Zombies do not play fair.
If you learn nothing else from “B” movies, don’t turn you back on zombies. In the 2012 Presidential Election Mitt Romney thought the CAGW zombie was dead and ignored it. Now, “It’s Baaaack!” and Romney is a dead man walking.
/(tongue only partially in cheek)
I’m flipping TV channels for background noise, antenna usually only gets in two digital useable stations. The one side/add-on channel has Godzilla vs. Megaguirus. Science literacy at its best, they have an orbital satellite weapon that shoots miniature black holes.
Has there ever been any Godzilla movie ever that wasn’t “But the models assured us this would stop him!” After all those many decades, did they learn nothing?
How refreshing to to have a climate scientist bring us back to the scientific process as it was meant to be carried out–without a predetermined outcome!
@Jean Parisot at 7:20 am
Any one have a short list on the next prominent alarmist who is going to publicly go soft?
You mean like Richard Muller, who says he was a skeptic when he formed BEST, but has converted [back] into a believer of CAGW after much objective study?
An alarmist who publicly goes “soft” is not to be trusted. Instead of going “soft” they have to go “FOIA“, go “Snowden”, go “John Dean“. They have to give up the goods on their former bretheren. They have to do real damage to the “Cause.” Short of that, they are likely just going “Peter Gleick”
So David Appell is saying that one should not attack models, but strive to make them better? Yes, that would be nice if the models worked better…He hasn’t seen the paper, only Judith’s comment that models don’t help her understand climate. Her comment seems to me to be a statement saying the models don’t appear to provide valid data and thus are invalid as sources of information or prediction. I’m sure her paper will list the shortcomings of models and possible solutions to aid in improving them – she is a real scientist after all. And that is what real scientists do: point out flaws and provide explanations. Even better, (IMHO), is where they follow the falsifiability process and show how to predict outcomes where predictions work or break down.
Judith is trying to work out the science of why we should, or should not, follow the outcomes of climate models as if they mean anything more than weather predictions greater than five to seven days or the farmers almanac.
I consider that to be a valid investigation of what is starting to look like a pseudo-science – climate models…
@kadaka
“After all those many decades, did they learn nothing?”
Well, it appears they learned that they are not able to predict global temperature rise based on CO2 and other forcings. That much is clear enough. I guess that is a ‘null result’ and null = nothing.
How much simpler science would be if nature only worked as “common sense” told us it ought to work.
“I am not so optimistic.”
Agreed. It is now an ideology, a religion and the Alarmists simply ignore evidence contrary to their position (which is pretty much all of it sans the erroneous models), and chant their mantra ever-louder.
I’ve noticed when confronted with evidence showing AGW to be baseless people initially respond with a counter-article usually from Skepticalscience because the site name sounds objective and high-brow, or desmogblog, realclimate etc.
When their article is easily debunked and exposed as baseless smears and often lies, they respond with the I would rather believe 97% of climate scientists than fringe nutters.
When the 97% figure is torn apart easily, particularly the Cook ‘study’ they resort to the old pseudo-precautionary principle, claiming that even if the science is wrong we’re still doing the right thing for the planet.
When confronted with the fact that the poor people are going to suffer and in many cases die they simply don’t believe it and claim that the tribal life is romantic, natural and the way we’re meant to live, they say this as they message on their Iphone and drive home to their warm homes.
Cognitive dissonance and ignorance is hard to fight.
To; Theo Goodwin
“The reason is that Political Correctness has not yet become dominant in science, though the IPCC and such folk have tried ever so hard. Scientific Method continues to have traction in science and it does not mix with PC.”
Unfortunately, that is not quite correct in all fields. I invite you to read this post on my blog to see how political correctness tainted paleoanthropology for a long time before new discoveries made things OK.
http://suspectterrane.blogspot.com/2010/04/neanderthal.html
In my usual style, this was framed for my students at university, but if you spend the five minutes to read it, you will see what I am talking about.
Make the models better? Here’s a suggestion: Dart Board.
Lots cheaper too.
John says:
September 19, 2013 at 7:26 am
Whoa! Excellent! Saint Judith she is.