There has been a development over the last 10-15 years or so in the scientific peer reviewed literature that is short circuiting the scientific method.
The scientific method involves developing a hypothesis and then seeking to refute it. If all attempts to discredit the hypothesis fails, we start to accept the proposed theory as being an accurate description of how the real world works.
A useful summary of the scientific method is given on the website sciencebuddies.org.where they list six steps
- Ask a Question
- Do Background Research
- Construct a Hypothesis
- Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
- Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
- Communicate Your Results
Unfortunately, in recent years papers have been published in the peer reviewed literature that fail to follow these proper steps of scientific investigation. These papers are short circuiting the scientific method.
Specifically, papers that present predictions of the climate decades into the future have proliferated. Just a two recent examples (and there are many others) are
Hu, A., G. A. Meehl, W. Han, and J. Yin (2009), Transient response of the MOC and climate to potential melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet in the 21st century, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L10707, doi:10.1029/2009GL037998.
Solomon, S. 2009: Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Published online before print January 28, 2009, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0812721106
Such studies are even reported in the media before the peer reviewed process is completed; e.g. see in the article by Hannad Hoag in the May 27 2009 issue of Nature News Hot times ahead for the Wild West.
These studies are based on models, of which only a portion of which represent basic physics (e.g. the pressure gradient force, advection and the universal gravitational constant), with the remainder of the physics parameterized with tuned engineering code (e.g see).
When I served as Chief Editor of the Monthly Weather Reviews (1981-1985), The Co-Chief Editor of the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences (1996-2000), and as Editor-in-Chief of the US National Science Report to the IUGG for the American Geophysical Union (1993-1996), such papers would never have been accepted.
What the current publication process has evolved into, at the detriment of proper scientific investigation, are the publication of untested (and often untestable) hypotheses. The fourth step in the scientific method “Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment” is bypassed.
This is a main reason that the policy community is being significantly misinformed about the actual status of our understanding of the climate system and the role of humans within it.
Dr Svalgaard:
I am hardly the one to be persnickety about typos. I sometimes think that I have dyslexic fingers.
Typos can provide a primitive sort of amusement, however: Angles pushing around planets does sound like the beginnings of British imperialism.
Arthur Glass (12:30:01) :
Angles pushing around planets does sound like the beginnings of British imperialism.
Considering that I’m a Jute I’m not disagreeing….
Benjamin P. its really a difficult thing to constrain numerically.
Thanks. That’ll do. I’ve been trying to peer inside the Earth to find a central core nuclear reactor that’s driving a ‘weather’ system in the mantle and core. But I’m told that there’s no such reactor. Drat.
Arthur Glass: Unfortunately, these are the ‘tenured radicals’ who have been running the asylum for the past thirty years.
It seems that many people’s world views become rigidly fossilized for the rest of their lives into whatever they happened to believe at the age of about 20.
evanmjones (12:09:44) :
Quite hard to believe, Evan.
It’s what I saw, and I was taking an active interest. In Essen there were plenty of pigeons, but they all looked the same. Not even black or white or piebalds, but complete uniformity (they were somewhat smaller than the NYC variety). I did not see a single sport the whole time I was there.
It’s the German way Evan. Everything must be DIN standard 😛
DaveE.
I think a lot of the problems arise when the media and politicians refer to model-derived projections and hypotheses as “new proof” or “confirmation” of anthropogenic global warming. And I think that the IPCC reports also give a false impression that the models are proving something.
At most, these models are indications of the possible results of altering input parameters…Because the inter-relationships of those input parameters are not well understood and have to be simplified and/or approximated.
Models are great tools. In my experience in oil and gas exploration, I’ve seen lots of very elegant models that turned out to be wrong…Non-uniqueness has to be at least as big an issue in climate science as it is in geology and geophysics.
>> Benjamin P. (10:09:34) :
There is that word model right in the definition of theory!!! <<
So it is.
>> I am not trying to say theory and model are interchangeable. <<
I am. A theory is how we (collectively) model reality. It’s supposedly our best estimate of how things work.
>> I am saying that we use models for the predictive aspects of theories. <<
We do that too.
>> I am saying that in most cases, the theories we have come to love and know rely heavily on models for us to be able to use them. <<
Notice that I consider theories to be models.
>> And in reality, my original comments were to point out how silly it was for David Holliday (19:15:47): to say “Anyone who thinks a prediction based on a computer model is science is an idiot!” because computer models permeate almost every single field of science. <<
Mr. Holliday must not consider orbital (formerly celestial) mechanics to be a science. I wouldn’t try to manipulate those equations in real-time (or at any other time) without a computer.
Jim
Leif Svalgaard (08:17:52) “An abbreviated description of Jupiter’s motion [which is enough for ordinary navigation – the full theory has an order of magnitude more terms] operates with 498 epicycles…”
What is the number for Earth?
Leif Svalgaard (11:33:19) “I can live with that as long as they stick to their discipline and it has no effect outside of that.”
–
Jack Eddy:
“You are not one of them. They distrust you. Your degree means nothing and your name is not recognized.”
“[…] many of the most significant discoveries in science will be found not in but between the rigid boundaries of the disciplines: the terra incognita where much remains to be learned. It’s not a place that’s hidebound by practice and ritual. I have always tried to keep moving between fields of study.”
“[…] avoid the danger of being too comfortable in too narrow a niche.”
“[…] without fear there is no learning.”
http://engr-sci.org/history/climate/eddy1.htm
>> anna v (12:40:54) :
My POV on this <<
As you wish. I just think you’re unnecessarily backing yourself into a corner with a restrictive view of models.
>> GCM include not only integrations (numerical ones) but also boundary conditions. In no way one can confuse them with the theory used. <<
Neither do I confuse a model of a 100 Watt audio amplifier with Ohm’s Law, but both pass the test for model-dom.
>> BTW a theory can never be proven true. It is always up for falsification though. One contradiction can falsify a complete theory : a yoggi levitating for example. <<
This is an interesting little tidbit that I agree with (not that I know much about the complete theory of yogi levitation). I’ve noticed that some on this blog talk about “proving” scientific theories as if it’s something that can be done.
Jim
idlex,
“That’ll do. I’ve been trying to peer inside the Earth to find a central core nuclear reactor that’s driving a ‘weather’ system in the mantle and core. But I’m told that there’s no such reactor. Drat.”
No, no such reactor! Just lost’s of well dispersed “mini-reactors” but not some central and localized phenomenon.
I’ve done lots of reading on mantle dynamics, perhaps I can help you some if you let me know what you mean when you say “weather system in the mantle and core” or at least what you are thinking.
@ur momisugly Dave Middleton (14:00:12) :
Unfortunately for us, the media and politicians tend to be scientifically illiterate
Also, I would say that climate models only get better and better as we learn more about those variables. Again, I don’t think you would meet a single climate scientist who would try to make the case that the models are perfect and could not be better.
Paul,
considering epicycles were created to explain planetary orbital paths as viewed from the Earth in an Earth centric universe, I would expect that number to be 0.
Paul Vaughan (15:51:23) :
What is the number for Earth?
Strictly speaking for the Sun :-), but it does not matter which one is the origin. There are 195 cosine terms [cycles] in the abbreviated simple theory for the Earth [to arc second accuracy].
“Considering that I’m a Jute I’m not disagreeing….”
Well, the Danes did have a go at running Britain, or a sizeable chunk of it, for the better part of a century.
Arthur Glass (11:46:32) : ” The simplest theory [‘most adequate’ in your terms] is that Angels push the planets around according to God’s wishes, end of story.”
Leif’s trenchant refusal to correct his ‘Angles’ to ‘Angels’ may well bespeak rather more than you think. If he refuses to correct it, it might be that it wasn’t a typo of his at all, as you believe. The ‘angelus’ is a ‘corner’.
There is at least one theodicy I know in which the the moral order, as it ranges from demons to angels, is arranged in an circular fashion, in which the demons are denoted by Zeroes (no rotation), and the angels by Ones (complete rotation), and in which “the extremes meet” pleasingly, since no rotation is identical to complete rotation through 360 degrees (or 2 pi radians). In this system, an ‘angel’ is whoever subtends an angle greater than zero. And the greatest angels are called Angles. See?
No?
I thought not.
But anyway, he’s a Jute rather than an Angle.
Benjamin P.: I’ve done lots of reading on mantle dynamics, perhaps I can help you some if you let me know what you mean when you say “weather system in the mantle and core” or at least what you are thinking.
Well… , I suppose you know that there are General Circulation [computer] Models (GCMs) of the atmosphere. I’ve been wondering if there might be GCMs that apply to the interior of the Earth, and that just as there is a weather system above us, there might also be a weather system below us, beneath our feet.
Such models would, in principle, be exactly the same as each other. It is just that the underworld climate would proceed at an excruciatingly slow pace relative to the fast-moving atmosphere above, because it is so dense and viscous. And while the subsurface ‘weather’ might proceed extremely slowly and cyclically, it might be able to explain long term processes like 100,000 year repeat Ice Ages.
I believe that the central core of the Earth is currently regarded as ‘solid’. But what is meant by ‘solid’ except that it changes very, very slowly? We seem to be living on the surface of a spinning thing whose interior hardly changes at all, but whose unstable and volatile external atmospheric surface is almost entirely chaotic. How strange!
idlex (17:57:44) :
Leif’s trenchant refusal to correct his ‘Angles’ to ‘Angels’ may well bespeak rather more than you think….
Nice theory, but fails the observational test. If you actually check my reply was [and pay attention, now]:
Leif Svalgaard (11:54:34) :
Arthur Glass (11:46:32) :
” The simplest theory [‘most adequate’ in your terms] is that Angels push the planets around according to God’s wishes, end of story.”
Angles and Saxons and Jutes, O my!
I’m on the wrong side of Snow’s divide 🙂
idlex (17:57:44) :
Leif’s trenchant refusal to correct his ‘Angles’ to ‘Angels’ may well bespeak rather more than you think….
Nice theory, but fails the observational test. If you actually check my reply was [and pay attention, now]:
Leif Svalgaard (11:54:34) :
Arthur Glass (11:46:32) :
” The simplest theory [‘most adequate’ in your terms] is that Angels push the planets around according to God’s wishes, end of story.”
Angles and Saxons and Jutes, O my!
I’m on the wrong side of Snow’s divide 🙂
2nd try.
idlex (18:28:29) :
We seem to be living on the surface of a spinning thing whose interior hardly changes at all,
All a question about perspective. There are convection currents and hot spots that provide changes in the interior [but slowly]. These slow changes over time [and the Earth has had a lot of that] has completely re-modeled the surface features [such as continents] every several hundred million years. Go back in time and the continents were all assembled close to each other, pangea, from whence they drifted apart. This process may have repeated itself some 7 or 8 times in the past, teaching us something about the immensity of geological time.
Leif Svalgaard (17:27:09) “There are 195 cosine terms [cycles] in the abbreviated simple theory for the Earth [to arc second accuracy].”
Thank you.
Do you know of a website (or publication) where I could find the list of periods (or frequencies) and amplitudes (for at least the most dominant terms)?
With apologies to Dr. Svalgaard our knowledge of solar physics is very imperfect but it is a beacon of light compared to the Stygian darkness of what we know or understand of the processes deep in the Earth beneath our feet.
We know that on a planetary scale they are immensely powerful, think of the Deccan plains, and we believe from what little evidence we have they act over very long, geological, time scales. Except for local events, such as the odd volcano.
So we assume, rightly or wrongly, that in effect the thermal energy from the Earth’s core reaching the surface is more or less constant: and tiny compared to insolation. But we cannot actually measure this to better than about a magnitude since most of it eventuates beneath the oceans.
So we end up with ab initio arguments as to what is actually happening down there.
There are odd puzzles such as the abrupt rise in background radiation between 1908 and 1910, ignore what Wiki tells you about this occurring later and being due to atomic tests. It is wrong.
We have Kaiser Bill’s battleships sitting at the bottom of Scapa Flow and their steel dates the rise to between the above dates. The cast iron from for example the Forth Bridge, 1880, confirms the low background, whereas the structural steels of the 1920s confirm the abrupt rise long before any atomic device.
We don’t know why. It might have been the Great Siberian Meteorite but that seems unlikely.
More likely it had something to do with volanic activity but if so we still don’t know what.
And we did see the the rise in background radiation from atomic tests in odd ways. In the 1950’s X ray fims were often packed between sheafs of yellow paper made, I believe, from esparto grass. In due course an atomic test would show up as faint speckling on the film from the fallout taken up by the esparto grass.
Kindest Regards
Paul Vaughan (20:43:31) :
Do you know of a website (or publication) where I could find the list of periods (or frequencies) and amplitudes (for at least the most dominant terms)?
You can go to here:
http://adswww.harvard.edu/
and search for Bretagnon, the select his 1988 paper:
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1988A%26A…202..309B
Title: Planetary theories in rectangular and spherical variables – VSOP 87 solutions
Authors: Bretagnon, P. & Francou, G.
Journal: Astronomy and Astrophysics (ISSN 0004-6361), vol. 202, no. 1-2, Aug. 1988, p. 309-315.
Sorry, boys, but NYC pigeons have not “evolved”.
I did not say they had evolved into a different species. I said they had evolved though natural selection. And so they have. Their coloration has evolved dramatically over fewer than twenty pigeon generations.
The factors involved are the changing coloration of the buildings, and the incursion of serious competition from crows (the latter of which were very uncommon in the city until years after the clean air act became effective, but are now fairly common).
The result was a much healthier and variegated pigeon population. New York pigeons are an artificial subspecies in the first place, and are thus less fixed in their genetic makeup.
They are the same species they always were.
Well, the New York variety was created in London by deliberate crossbreeding. So “always” becomes somewhat moot. Rock doves have been around a while and any number of subspecies have evolved since they first beat it out of North Africa (probably with the interglacial).
Evidently the liberal education you received, so pumped to promote evolution, failed to teach you just what that phenomenon actually is. And that’s a big part of the problem: liberal theology masquerading as education.
As for what they teach in the schools, sometimes what they “pump” is wrong and sometimes it is right.
Actually, I got quite a conservative religious education (Anglican nuns), and evolution was not mentioned one way or the other even once so far as I recall.
I’ll start disbelieving in natural selection (the processes of which are not perfectly understood) when I start believing that God put the fossils there to try man’s faith. And maybe I’ll start believing in runaway global warming when the globe actually starts to warm at 0.4C/decade.
I like the Essen Germanopigeon feldgrau theory, actually.
David Holliday (22:07:42) :
*Shrug* Call it what you like.
And as I thought was made previously clear, you are traditionally expected to use the thought experiment or the model or whatever to come up with some outcomes for the theory which are experimentally testable. That’s quite different from saying that the predictions themselves are not part of science (they are).
Re: Leif Svalgaard (21:34:51)
Thank you.
That led me to the various works that cite that paper, the general overview …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_variations_of_the_planetary_orbits
…, and the directory
ftp://ftp.imcce.fr/pub/ephem/planets/vsop87/
.
Now, let me see if I understand:
You have STERN reservations about barycentric influences on SOLAR ACTIVITY, but you are not claiming barycentric frequencies do not affect earth orientation parameters?
Paul Vaughan (00:27:21) :
Now, let me see if I understand:
You have STERN reservations about barycentric influences on SOLAR ACTIVITY, but you are not claiming barycentric frequencies do not affect earth orientation parameters?
A barycenter is just the location of the mass-weighted average radius vector from any point you wish to choose to the center of mass of all the [or an arbitrary collection of] bodies in the Universe and does not influence anything. Usually [to get a finite and more manageable and useful number] one chooses to only consider bodies within the solar system [in some sense – because even that is ill-defined], or for another barycenter, the Earth-Moon system, in which case the barycenter becomes the center of mass for the collection of bodies chosen. Again, the barycenter does not influence anything, as it is arbitrary in the sense that one can choose any arbitrary collection one wishes.
Now, the Sun, planets, Moon, etc have tidal effects on the Earth Orientation Parameters and on similar solar parameters, and those tidal effects can be felt if the measurements are accurate enough. The tidal effects are always in the same direction [slowing down the central body if the revolution of the revolving bodies take longer than the rotation of the central body – which is almost always the case, exceptions are Phobos and sun-grazing comets] and do therefore not lead to cycles of anything, apart from being extremely small in most cases as they decrease with the cube of the distance.