IPCC Crushes Scientific Objectivity, 91-0.
By Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Unquestionably, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed to build the scientific case for humanity being the primary cause of global warming. Such a goal is fundamentally unscientific, as it is hostile to alternative hypotheses for the causes of climate change.
The most glaring example of this bias has been the lack of interest on the IPCC’s part in figuring out to what extent climate change is simply the result of natural, internal cycles in the climate system. In Chapter 9 of the latest (4th) IPCC report, entitled “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”, you would think the issue of external versus internal forcing would be thoroughly addressed. But you would be wrong.
The IPCC is totally obsessed with external forcing, that is, energy imbalances imposed upon the climate system that are NOT the result of the natural, internal workings of the system. For instance, a search through Chapter 9 for the phrase “external forcing” yields a total of 91 uses of that term. A search for the phrase “internal forcing” yields…(wait for it)…zero uses. Can we really believe that the IPCC has ruled out natural sources of global warming when such a glaring blind spot exists?
Admittedly, we really do not understand internal sources of climate change. Weather AND climate involves chaotic processes, most of which we may never understand, let alone predict. While chaos in weather is exhibited on time scales of days to weeks, chaotic changes in the ocean circulation could have time scales as long as hundreds of years, and we know that cloud formation – providing the Earth’s natural sun shade – is strongly influenced by the ocean.
Thus, small changes in ocean circulation can lead to small changes in the Earth’s albedo (how much sunlight is reflected back to space), which in turn can lead to global warming or cooling. The IPCC’s view (which is never explicitly stated) that such changes in the climate system do not occur is little more than faith on their part.
The IPCC’s pundits like to claim that the published evidence for humanity causing warming greatly outweighs any published evidence against it. This appeal to majority opinion on their part is pretty selective, though. They had no trouble discarding hundreds of research papers supporting evidence for the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age when they so uncritically embraced the infamous “Hockey Stick” reconstructions of past temperature change.
Despite a wide variety of previous temperature proxies gathered from around the world (see figure below) that so clearly showed that centuries with global warming and cooling are the rule, not the exception, the Hockey Stick was mostly based upon some cherry-picked tree rings combined with the assumption that significant warming is a uniquely modern phenomenon.
As such, they rejected the prevailing “scientific consensus” in favor of a minority view that supported their desired outcome. I suspect that they do not even recognize their own hypocrisy.
As I have discussed before, the IPCC’s neglect of natural variability in the climate system ends up leading to circular reasoning on their part. They ignore the effect of natural cloud variations when trying to diagnose feedback, which then leads to overestimates of climate sensitivity. This, in turn, causes them to conclude that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations alone are sufficient to explain global warming, and so no natural forcings of climate change need be found.
But all they have done is reasoned themselves in a circle. By ignoring natural variability, they can end up claiming that natural variability does not exist. Admittedly, their position is internally consistent. But then, so is all circular reasoning.
Our re-submitted paper to the Journal of Geophysical Research entitled “On the Diagnosis of Radiative Feedback in the Presence of Unknown Radiative Forcing” will hopefully lead to a little more diversity being permitted in the global warming debate.
I don’t think the IPCC scientists are as opposed to this as are their self-appointed spokespersons, like Al Gore and numerous environmental writers in the media who get to over-simplify the climate issue without ever being corrected by the IPCC. Natural climate change continues to be the 800 lb gorilla in the room, and I suspect that some within the IPCC are slowly becoming aware of its existence.
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Scott A. Mandia (18:16:40) : BTW:
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2009/media/1021climate_letter.pdf
Letter to US Senators by several science agencies.
I was told that many of the heads of these societies are activists and political appointments. Many Chemical Society members were outraged and protested that the President purported to speak on their behalf.
In any case I have two questions on an issue raised their letter. I know they are too big and busy to answer, but maybe you could answer for me.
They say “If we are to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change, emissions of greenhouse gases must be dramatically reduced.”
1. By how much do emissions have to be reduced and how much temperature change will this bring about according to you?
2. How much less fossil fuels have to be burned by the western nations to achieve this reduction?
Peter Taylor in his book (see above) refers to the global cloud thinning & increased SW flux to the surface, over 1985-2000, as reported by observations summarised by Palle & others. See Palle et al, 2005 & also Pinker et al, 2005, Wielicki et al, 2005 and Wild et al, 2004;2005).
http://www.iac.es/galeria/epalle/reprints/Palle_GRL_2005.pdf
Peter Taylor commented on this in an earlier Roy Spencer thread on WUWT; Roy’s testimony in Washington.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/22/roy-spencers-testimony-before-congress-backs-up-moncktons-assertions-on-climate-sensitivity/
Peter Taylor, 24/7/2008 at 15.52.05, commences
“What surprises me in all these discussions is that Roy Spencer’s conclusions are rather obvious when the satellite data – as used by Palle and others, are studied – the period of ‘global warming’ currently attributed to carbon dioxide also corresponds to a global cloud thinning (ISCCP data) and increased Short Wave flux to the surface of the order of 6 watts/sq m over many years compared to the computed CO2 radiative forcing by Long Wave radiation of 1.8 watts. This radiative flux data supports Spencer and should have shown IPCC that something was wrong”.
What interesting is how IPPC 2007 in WGI “swept these data observations under the carpet”. As Peter Taylor points out the IPPC has a prior commitment to AGW & you will not find in their summary reports any serious effort to cover possible non AGW reasons for the warming experienced in 1975-2000.
Scott A. Mandia (18:03:14) :
Clone,
save your breath
Scott A. Mandia (18:03:14) :
My, what a big strawman you have. Size must matter to you guys.
BTW the quoted “swept these data observations under the carpet” is mine, not Peter’s.
Scott Mandia I would simply ask you this question… if you truly believe what you said:
“We all know why Realclimate is arguably the best climate blog out there but, as I have said on other blogs, the discussions can be a bit much for the non-scientist.”
As you stated on Real Climate here (@50):
http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=1108
Why is it that this “best climate blog” moderates out any questions I pose politely to it? In particular I posted two questions relating to Briffa’s tree rings, and both were moderated into the bit bucket.
A climate blog presenting only the views the moderators wish the world to see cannot be presented as the “best climate blog.” This is self-evident. For a blog to have any gravity it must allow polite discourse on both sides of the debate.
Your bias is patently obvious.
Scott Mandia,
You and RealClimate are in a very small echo chamber: click
Geoff Larsen (18:55:38) :
Peter Taylor is an ecologist/environmentalist and if it were not for this global warming/climate change scam could be doing valuable work. A real pity that this is diverting attention from real problems.
Unfortunately, who will listen to people like him after this scam is over?
DaveE.
Spam filter grabbed my last post 😉
DaveE.
[Rescued. ~ dbstealey, mod.]
Further re. Peter Taylor’s book. In Chapter 13, Dissent & Consensus, he gives a summary of data which in his words are “among the most crucial measurements with regard to the validation of any predictive power in the models relating to global warming”.
i) the flux of short-wave (SW) radiation at the surface of the earth and its trends; and the flux of long wave (LW) radiation up from the surface, particularly over oceans.
ii) the percentage changes in global cloud coverage , its spatial distribution, particularly over oceans.
iii) the power of cosmic radiation to ionise and create cloud condensation nuclei
iv) the complex interaction of variable UV radiation over the peaks and troughs of the 11-year solar cycle with the stratosphere/troposphere heat exchange system and the strength and spatial distribution of the jet stream.
v) the rate of change of the Atlantic conveyor, particularly in the down-welling zones of the subArctic.
vi) the past accumulation and recent rate of change of ocean heat content, particularly in the period post-2000, and major ocean basin oscillations such as the PDO.
vii) the complex interaction of oscillations of 30-70-year timescales in the Arctic, Pacific and North Atlantic; and longer 400-and 1500-year low-frequency oscillation in either solar magnetic or ocean conveyor belts.
Peter draws on his experience with modellers. “In my past work I have witnessed the tenacious resistance of modellers upholding their modelled “reality” and its predictions in the face of new data from the real world. This new data is ‘not believed’ because it conflicts with the model and, vice versa, data that does not confict with the model is not subject to the same critical appraisal”.
He then goes on to discuss how dissent is treated within the IPPC.
Back2Bat (05:19:54) :
“However their conclusion is in part what one would expect from an academy like this in times like these, that we should move to mitigate…” Patrick
Precisely. Nearly everyone seems to think that it is “prudent” to restrict carbon emissions. However, it is almost certainly not economically prudent or it would already have happened. The Great Depression was a major cause of World War II which killed 50 – 80 million and caused huge environmental damage.
Most scientists are economic ninnies is my experience. Science is simple compared to economics, IMO. But that makes sound economics very simple: Liberty plus enforcement of basic laws against fraud and theft
I like how you think, Back2Bat. Except on a grand scheme of things….science is is not simple. It is equally as complex as economics.
And one other correction: Good scientists are not “ninnies” in any way shape or form.
But I GET your point…and like how you think.
CHRIS
Norfolk, VA, USA
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
As a temperature specialist, building engineering and a professional that designs for and creates emissions I want to update you on work we have done looking for the elusive source of heat that would be required for man to heat the atmosphere.
Here is a link to urban heat island creation that couldn’t be seen before. I did time-lapsed infrared imaging of buildings before sunrise to see what created urban heat islands. Imaging building development in 3 minute increments after the sun came up produced amazing information. There are 3 infrared videos at the link, the 3rd one shows what an urban heat island does to the inside of the building and how forestry products are represented. This will make it easier to see why California and others get knocked off the electrical grid except they are reacting to symptoms. http://www.thermoguy.com/urbanheat.html
“Our re-submitted paper to the Journal of Geophysical Research entitled “On the Diagnosis of Radiative Feedback in the Presence of Unknown Radiative Forcing” will hopefully lead to a little more diversity being permitted in the global warming debate.”
Good luck getting this past the peer review nazi’s.
Scott A. Mandia (18:03:14) :
@ur momisugly tallbloke (08:56:12) :
The models are far from perfect and will never be perfect but they are very good at many things and getting better all the time. Here is what climate models do well:
Thanks for the big cut n paste Scott. I wonder if I can get you to realise that a computer model, like a chain, is only as strong as it’s weakest link. Due to resolution and computing power issues, the models cannot model cloud well. Since the cloud feedback is much greater than the radiative forcing of co2, this pretty quickly leads to meaninglessness when the models are used to predict the future. The co2 forcing relies on an overblown estimate of aerosol feedback, which observations are cherry picked for their match to reverse engineered aerosol feedbacks which keep the co2 forcing on track with the temperature record. It’s a circularity which undermines the validity of the models, and prevents their use for predictive purposes, since we don’t know future aerosol levels any more than future temperature levels.
In a chaotic non-linear system such as climate, small errors in starting conditions quickly take the result away from any connection with reality. I’m afraid this just is how it is, and it doesn’t really matter how much NASA spencds on new computer kit or crystal balls.
Nice comment, tallbloke.
Here’s a good example about computer modelling, in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “The Black Swan,” about balls hitting each other on a billiard ball table, used to explain why prediction (and modelling) is so complicated:
“If you know a set of basic parameters concerning the ball at rest, can computer the resistance of the table (quite elementary), and can gauge the strength of the impact, then it is rather easy to predict what would happen at the first hit. The second impact becomes more complicated, but possible; and more precision is called for. The problem is that to correctly computer the ninth impact, you need to take account the gravitational pull of someone standing next to the table (modestly, Berry’s computations use a weight of less than 150 pounds). And to compute the fifty-sixth impact, every single elementary particle in the universe needs to be present in your assumptions! An electron at the edge of the universe, separated from us by 10 billion light-years, must figure in the calculations, since it exerts a meaningful effect on the outcome.” (p. 178)
…How many variables and impacts are there in climate modelling?
It comes from this work apparently: http://www.phy.bris.ac.uk/people/berry_mv/the_papers/Berry076.pdf
Scott A Mandia:
Thank you for your link to your own site. I have to say, you are indulging in circular reasoning on this. Where people here have cited evidence against the IPCC position, your rebuttal is to link to your website containing, wait for it – the IPCC position.
Where are the references to Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, Pielke, Eschenbach? You have omitted them because they don’t fit into your view point.
You have dredged up the same old vostock CO2/Temperature record and didn’t even mention the fact that CO2 lags temperatures by the order of several hundred years! You failed to mention that in the geological timescales, CO2 levels have been 5 or 10 times higher than they are now, and do not show any correlation with temperatures.
You show a met office graph of CO2 emission projections going parabolic, when so far the increase has remained linear.
You show Atkins paper on stratospheric temperatures (2008) but failed to cite Lindzens paper (2009) that shows there is NO greenhouse gas signature in outgoing radiation.
You failed to cite the fact that Argo data shows not oceanic warming since 2003.
You failed to cite the fact that radiosonde and satellite data fail to confirm the tropical mid troposphere warming predicted by the models.
In fact most of what you’ve cited is the same old stuff that’s been debunked over and over.
Scott A Mandia:
“I have already discussed why UHI is not a factor and I never said anything in my posts about catastrophic global warming. I guess it depends upon what one thinks is catastrophic.”
Actually, what I said was UHI, poor siting and boundary layer flow disturbance, not UHI alone as you imply. These are NOT different words for the same thing – they are different although related phenomena that aren’t even dealt with.
#5: See the Kaufmann et al. paper to see why I am not just taling about a few years.
The Kaufmann paper. Wasn’t that another one of those proxy studies that attempts to get rid of the MWP? Is that the same Kaufmann who won’t release his raw data and methods? Hmm. Not sure if I’m convinced on that one.
#7. Your link on climate models is broken so I am unable to view it. However, when you write “There is considerable confidence that Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs) provide credible quantitative estimates of future climate change, particularly at continental and larger scales” I have to ask “confidence by whom?”
Many credible scientists include Pielke sr. and Spencer have pointed out the logical fallacies upon which these models are based, yet you still choose to believe in them.
Based on everything you have written so far, I can only conclude therefore that you have not come here looking for truth but to prosletyze.
I am responding to this because my profession includes buildings and their energy systems. Urban Heat Islands are not a city or development, each building is becoming an urban heat island depending on shade, green space or exterior finish.
Meteorologist and Environment Canada pass on the very important information through building codes on how my professions are to design and build buildings. We are supposed to build and insulate for very specific regional temperature extremes to be sustainable. Building code tells us to “watch out for solar radiation”
The horrible part is we couldn’t see how a building is functioning and they are signed off as compliant with everyone accepting responsibility through their insurer. In deregulating the building industry, anyone can chop down trees and go to a retail store to paint their building black if they want without realizing what they are doing.
As soon as the sun comes up and with that radiation interacting with those exterior finishes of buildings, they are generating heat. The problem is they aren’t insulated for it as the hottest temperature we have documented is over 200 degrees F or 94 degrees C. Given that 212 F or 100 C is boiling, we are super heating the atmosphere and responding with AC(refrigeration & big electrical loads) On a February day when it was 32 F or 0 C, we documented 170 F or 77 C. That was one building when they were all cooking while snow was on the roof.
UHI(each building) is generating heat and every new building is doing the same. FYI, we are addressing this through Environment Canada because it isn’t definable as sustainable. The link above will show you the heat generated without C02 produced and we are showing Canada that capturing carbon won’t stop the heat. In development we can’t scrape the ground of everything living to put up development because the surface of the exposed area is being radiated and generating heat on the surface of the planet.
Scott Mandia (18:03:14) Oct 21
So you dazzle us with 17 things that apparently the AOGCMs predict accurately.
Fine.
It would be nice if you could provide us with a detailed forecast of the next 10 years, in writing as a pdf, open access, including for each continent and region, temperature anomalies, general precipitation, ocean surface temperatures, and Arctic and Antarctic extents.
If this is not forthcoming, it will be obvious to everyone why.
tallbloke says:
And, you know it is overblown how exactly? It is true that the uncertainty in the aerosol forcing is one of the factors that limits the quality of the constraints on climate sensitivity obtained from the instrumental temperature record. Better constraints are actually provided by other empirical data (in combination with the instrument record although other data actually contributes more to determining the constraints).
And, yes, we don’t know the future aerosol levels just like we don’t know the future emissions of greenhouse gases. However, this does not stop us from coming up with different plausible scenarios. And, the fact is that there are very good reasons why it would be folly for us to just continue to increase and increase the aerosol emissions, in particular that they have other negative effects. Furthermore, aerosol emissions in the troposphere have a short lifetime and, as a result, current concentrations are pretty much just determined by current emissions; by contrast, CO2 (and, to lesser degrees, the other greenhouse gases) accumulate in the atmosphere so that even if emissions were frozen at current levels, the concentration would continue to increase.
And yet, a climate model would correctly predict that the climate here in Rochester in January is considerably colder than it is in July. Why is that? Could it be because some aspects of the system are determined by more general principles and are thus not sensitive to the initial conditions even if the detailed evolution of the system is?
By the way, they run climate models with perturbed initial conditions and indeed see this affect of chaos…and yet over a long enough period of time, this different runs still show the same general climate response to the increases in radiative forcings.
tallbloke (04:28:33)
“In a chaotic non-linear system such as climate, ..”
Important point. The chaotic non-linear / non-equilibrium pattern formation aspect of climate is sometimes presented as if it was a side-salad or peripheral issue to climate. But it is the main course. It needs to become the dominant paradigm for real progress in understanding to be made. For the damage done by the AGW movement to begin to be undone.
For example: the question of negative or positive climate feedback. Feedbacks are at the centre of the debates about climate dynamics and so-called “forcings”. A chaotic nonlinear paradigm results in predicted outcomes (yes some of us still believe science should make testable predictions) that are diametrically, 180 degrees, opposed to the predictions of a linear reductionistic-mechanistic paradigm.
Richard Lindzen has examined clearly the issue of positive and negative feedbacks [1]. This is both in the “global” context of ERBE satellite measured fluxes at various wavelengths, and in the context of more local phenomena such as the Atlantic and Pacific oceanic oscillations. He correctly separates the two. While the linear reductionist-mechanistic (LRM) paradigm might apply to global radiative fluxes, more localised smaller scale
phenomena are most likely to be better understood in a chaotic non-linear (CN) paradigm.
What am I talking about? What is the difference between these paradigms?
Negative feedbacks, in the LRM paradigm, basically oppose any force causing a change with a force reversing the change, so that status quo returns. Anti AGW scientists and commentators like negative feedbacks since they can be expected to oppose AGW.
Positive feedbacks on the other hand result in runaway self-reinforcing change, and are thus popular with the AGW proponents. In fact the basis of the AGW position is arguing how a small CO2 forcing can initiate positive feedbacks with the help of water vapour and other factors.
In a nutshell: negative feedbacks return the system to status quo, while positive feedback drives sustained unidirectional change. This is the LRM paradigm.
The CN paradigm is quite different. Here, negative feedback is given another name: friction. Friction is when a forced change sets in motion processes which act to oppose the change. And in non-linear, non-equilibrium dynamic systems, friction has one major outcome: it stimulates the emergence of pattern formation. A system becomes fruitful with rich emergent patterns when it is far from equilibrium and in the bifurcating non-linear regime
and friction is present in the system.
The literature is replete with experimental studies substantiating this thoroughly well-established theory. (“friction + pattern + formation + non-linear” in Google scholar just yielded 15500 hits). Examples of such systems include:
The classic Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction,
Rayleigh-Benaud convection,
Catalysed CO oxidation on a Pt surface,
Coastline formation by sea currents on sand,
The formation of pattern in mammalian trabecular bone,
And many more. So while negative feedback causes a simple return to status quo (whatever that is) in the LMR paradigm, negative feedback or friction causes the emergence of pattern and structure in the CN paradigm.
What about positive feedback?
Positive feedback kills emergent pattern. Feedbacks have to be suppressed in order for rich and complex patterns to emerge. The Pt-catalysed oxidation of CO, studied by Matthias Bertram and others shows this clearly [2]. The system generates rich and complex geometric spatial patterns, but these collapse into a set of uniform sinusoidal oscillations when the gas pressures are adjusted to increase feedback in the system. Another, biomedical study
shows that in the biochemical regulation of bone turnover, inactivation of the gene for OPG which acts against osteoblast-osteoclast coupling (feedback by yet another name) results in a debilitating genetic bone disorder where complex trabecular bone pattern collapses into an abnormal and pathological series of parallel plates [3].
So while in the LRM paradigm positive feedback is what produces unidirectional sustained change, in the CN paradigm, it reduces complex and pattern-rich structure into simple periodic structure. So it actually opposes sustained change.
Oscillations by the way are the norm for a planetary ocean and atmosphere system such as ours which is under continuous periodic forcing from the Milankovitch, solar and other cycles, and which in response – as a dynamically chaotic / non-linear system – generates intrinsic oscillations of its own. The type of feedbacks in the system determine the nature of the oscillations. Negative feedbacks (friction or damping) result in complex pattern with for instance log-log power law scales of magnitude. Positive feedback, by contrast, reduces oscillation to a simple wave.
That’s what I mean about the outcomes of feedback being opposite according to the LGM and CN paradigms respectively. According to the CN paradigm, the AGW camp needs therefore to be arguing for negative, not positive feedback.
If you want to see a nice video of emergent pattern in a non-equilibrium system under periodic forcing, please go to:
http://chaos.ph.utexas.edu/research/vibrated_cornstarch.htm
and click on the link for “see a movie”.
Note that by emergent structure in the climate context one can include things like ice ages, El Nino and La Nina ocean current events, Pacific and Atlantic and other oceanic oscillations, the MWP, the LIA, the CWP, and others. Richard Lindzen points out [1] that negative feedbacks are generally underestimated, since systems will try to return to equilibrium via negative feedbacks. Basic thermodynamics dictates that applied forces induce opposing forces.
Thus complexity and rich emergent pattern can be expected as the order of the day.
[1] Richard S. Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi, Geophysical Research Letters, July 14, 2009.
[2] Bertram M et al. Pattern formation on the edge of chaos: Experiments with CO oxidation on a Pt(110) surface under global delayed feedback. Phys. Rev. E 67(3) 036208 (2003)
[3] Salmon PL. Loss of Chaotic Trabecular Structure in OPG-Deficient Juvenile Pagets Disease Patients Indicates a Chaogenic Role for OPG in Nonlinear Pattern Formation of Trabecular Bone. J. Bone Miner. Res., 2004; 19 (5): 695-702.
Joel Shore:
“And you know it is overblown, how exactly?” See link for “Consistency Between Satellite-Derived and Modeled Estimates of the Direct Aerosol Effect” by Gunnar Myhre.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5937/187
“And yet, a climate model would correctly predict that the climate here in Rochester in January is considerably colder than it is in July. Why is that? ”
As a rough guess, how about increase in insolation?
“By the way, they run climate models with perturbed initial conditions and indeed see this affect of chaos…and yet over a long enough period of time, this different runs still show the same general climate response to the increases in radiative forcings.”
The reason why they show the same general climate response over a long enough time is simply because they have been programed with enormous postive feedbacks which overwhelms natural variability (chaos) in the long run. That should be obvious.
A model is just that – a model. Just because it displays “chaos” does not in any sense imply that is it modelling reality. Chaos can be generated with even quite simple systems.
Scott A. Mandia (18:03:14) :
Scott, I believe that you are to be commended for your patience and moderate tone that you display in your postings. You used an exhaustive game plan to answer a good # of postings, and that is admirable. Nevertheless, you probably will not be surprised to hear that you did not persuade me. In fact sometimes, you seemed to be unresponsive to the issues and other times you seemed to be unaware of modeling and regression traps. I would like you to know that at one time I was a sincere and active believer in the AGW crisis, but my position changed when I dug deeper into the issues and understood the shortcomings of the eight arguments you posted (and others). To be sure this posting is not giving you anything concrete to base a critical response; if there was an purpose to do so — if I believed that you would sincerely consider the objectgions — I would do so. But I am extremely short on time, and it seems prudent to move on. I have listened to you twice (actually more, considering your multiple postings), and I believe that you have listened to me once. So it seems that we will continue to disagree.
Joel Shore (10:53:32) :
“By the way, they run climate models with perturbed initial conditions and indeed see this affect of chaos…and yet over a long enough period of time, this different runs still show the same general climate response to the increases in radiative forcings.”
Of course they would . . . that is how they are built!
It’s nice that climate models can predict decreased temperature during the winter months.
Hopefully they can also predict a lowering of temperature during the hours of night, as well. The fact that they can (hopefully) perform these simple tasks is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for considering them valid.