Guest Post by Ira Glickstein
As I continue to plow through Vol 1 Issue 1 of the new Journal Nature Climate Change, I came to the following amazing statement:
Communicating the value of climate modelling … requires confronting such apparent contradictions as the fact that increasing a model’s complexity — by adding the behaviour of clouds, people or ecosystem feedbacks, for example — may actually increase the uncertainty in climate projections. Atmospheric scientist Kevin Trenberth of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, has explicitly warned that unless such seemingly paradoxical results are communicated carefully, the more complex modelling being used in climate simulations for the upcoming fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may confuse both the public and decision-makers, thereby reducing their willingness to act. [My emphasis]
“Apparent contradictions”? Heck yes, and more than simply “apparent”! The Warmists finally understand that including the major natural cycles and processes that affect climate change in their models will make it that much harder for them to convince the public that human activities are the main cause and, therefore, changing our activities the main solution!
Yet, the title of the paper that includes the above quote is The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks – as if communications was the major problem, rather than the fact it is largely nonsense they are trying to communicate.
They base their opinion on Trenberth’s 2010 paper which includes these equally amazing words:
[An IPCC AR5 chapter] will deal with longer-term projections, to 2100 and beyond, using a suite of global models. Many of these models will attempt new and better representations of important climate processes and their feedbacks — in other words, those mechanisms that can amplify or diminish the overall effect of increased incoming radiation. Including these elements will make the models into more realistic simulations of the climate system, but it will also introduce uncertainties.
So here is my prediction: the uncertainty in AR5’s climate predictions and projections will be much greater than in previous IPCC reports, primarily because of the factors noted above. This could present a major problem for public understanding of climate change. Is it not a reasonable expectation that as knowledge and understanding increase over time, uncertainty should decrease? But while our knowledge of certain factors does increase, so does our understanding of factors we previously did not account for or even recognize. …
Trial and error
It has been said that all models are wrong but some are useful. …
Performing cutting-edge climate science in public could easily lead to misinterpretation, and it will take a great deal of work communicating carefully with the public and policymakers to ensure that the results are used appropriately. … what to do about climate change is a high-profile, politically charged issue involving winners and losers, and such results can be misused. In fact — to offer one more prediction — I expect that they will be.
[My emphasis]
When confused, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
Here is what they say (and what they may be thinking):
- Including important forcings, such as clouds, will increase uncertainty. (Yeah, we were much more certain when our simple models gave nice crisp conclusions that matched our political biases. Then we added some of the complexity of the real-world climate, and now the conclusions are uncertain. Could it be that our political biases are at fault? Nope, we just have to work on our communications tactics and “social and decision sciences” to sell this load of baloney to the great unwashed public.)
- The contradictions are merely “apparent” and the results merely “paradoxical”. (Yeah, if we merely communicate this stuff carefully so as not to confuse the public and decision makers and make them unwilling to act in the politically-correct way.)
- There are mechanisms that can amplify or diminish the overall effect of increased incoming radiation. (OOPS, we forgot about those effects that diminish the overall warming. How can we include them in a way that does not add to public uncertainty about our competence?)
- Scientific knowledge and uncertainty are supposed to increase over time. (So how come we keep looking dumber?)
- All models are wrong, but some are useful. (Why is it that as our models become less wrong they become less useful to our political agenda?)
- Public disclosure of climate science research results can lead to misinterpretation and results can and will be misused. (We better keep our climate research results away from the public until we get a chance to misinterpret and misuse them before the skeptics find out the truth behind our methods.)
The more we learn the less we understand is typical of immature natural sciences and a single, dramatic and reproducible finding in a mature area of science can upset the apple cart of whatever is currently used as the consensus, standard model. This is how normal science works and what Trenberth so clearly fears.
“… in other words, those mechanisms that can amplify or diminish the overall effect of increased incoming radiation.”
Increased incoming radiation. Where will that be coming from? I was under the impression that the Sun had no effect on this as it was a steady input.
Now if they would publish a K&T graphic based on temperature not W/m^2 we would see how silly the graphic is.
Sometimes its useful to take a statement and reverse the sense. just like the negative of a photograph can show more and in sharper relief .
by removing the behaviour of clouds, people or ecosystem feedbacks, for example — we will increase the certainty in climate projections. The simplified model that was used in previous AR’s, therefore, did not confuse both the public and decision-makers, thereby increasing their willingness to act
EO
Trenberth: “…may confuse both the public and decision-makers, thereby reducing their willingness to act.”
Nothing says more clearly that climate science is being orchestrated in such a way as to make people “willing to act”. By this they mean, sacrifice their lifestyle, their money, and their freedom.
Does this include publication in journals? If not then this is not following the scientific process which demands that others see if they can replicate your results.
“Is it not a reasonable expectation that as knowledge and understanding increase over time, uncertainty should decrease? But while our knowledge of certain factors does increase, so does our understanding of factors we previously did not account for or even recognize. ”
Well if your initial conclusions were correct, then making the model more accurate would decrease the uncertainty.
Unfortunately in this case the models were not designed to mirror the physical world, but the anticipated result. Which naturally leads them to be less accurate (to the made up anticipated result) and more accurate toward the actual physical environment.
The paper is simply stating what every scientist knows. It is basic mathematics. Many of the comments here are showing the level of ignorance of all science by those posting. There is a failure here to distinguish between precision and accuracy.
If you multiply two parameters with values of 2 and 5 in a calculation with each an uncertainty of 5% the result is 10 with an uncertainty of 5+ 5 = 10 % = 1.
But two parameters may not describe the reality of the situation. If you add a third parameter with a value of 1.5 and an uncertainty of 10% making the calculation more complicated but more realistic, the uncertainty in the result will 15 with an uncertainty of 5 + 5 + 10 = 20% = 3.
The oversimplified calculation may have a lower calculated uncertainty, with the calculated result lying between 9 and 11, but the more complicated calculation can be expected to real world situation and calculated result of between 12 and 18 is therefore likely to be more accurate.
The author is explaining that non-scientist are likely to be confused about this and it needs explaining. The responses here show how right he is.
To repeat. It is nothing unique to climate science in this. It is a fact of all scientific calculation.
Andrew30 says:
April 28, 2011 at 9:22 pm
netdr2 says: April 28, 2011 at 8:43 pm
“The alarmists and everyone else agree that the amount of warming from doubling CO2 is about 1 ° C.”
I disagree; show me the actual measured data that supports that conjecture.
*************************
OK everyone else doesn’t agree.
Dr Hansen and the British royal society have been quoted as using that value. So have skeptics like the editor of climateskeptic.com so it is widely accepted.
Paragraph 28
Application of established physical principles shows that, even in the absence of processes that amplify or reduce climate change (see paragraphs 12 & 13), the climate sensitivity would be around 1 ° C, for a doubling of CO2 concentrations. A climate forcing of 1.6 Wm-2 (see previous paragraph) would, in this hypothetical case, lead to a globally averaged surface warming of about 0.4oC. However, as will be discussed in paragraph The Royal Society Climate change: a summary of the science I September 2010 I 6 36, it is expected that the actual change, after accounting for the additional processes, will be greater than this.
http://royalsociety.org/climate-change-summary-of-science/
It is a computed value taken from Boltzmann’s equations on radiation of a black/gray body.
The point which some people missed is that it [1 ° C] is not a problem, the problem comes from the water vapor and the water vapor is going down instead of up as predicted. Without amplification the puny warming from CO2 is not a problem.
The Lorenz “Owl Eyes” look down on the climate models and the owl laughs.
Trenberth is channeling zombie Schneider, who stated that it’s A-OK to lie to the public in order to move the agenda forward. So recently Trenberth proposed replacing the climate null hypothesis with his very own cherry-picked “null hypothesis,” because temperatures aren’t rising like he wants them to; the ultimate authority – the planet itself – is falsifying AGW.
Articles like this one are a real public service. We can see by reading Trenberth’s own words that he is a real scoundrel – the poster boy for climate charlatans, with his snout deep in the public trough. There needs to be a reckoning.
Well as I mistakenly posted below; adding proper cloud behavior to the present models which give the wrong answers, would simply show that the whole thing is too chaotic to predict.
Why not try to learn what the climate IS first; before you worry about trying to predict what it is going to be.
I have long contended that any long term stable, predictable results in the integration of noisy, stiff, PDE’s, with incomplete or inaccurate starting and boundary conditions can *only* be an artifact of the solver and not an accurate model of the underlying system.
The reality is, that the nice clean results were fully based on the assumptions and biases of the model, not any physical reality. The fact that “frobbed knobs” can be set to match a given hindcast set yeilds no predictive value.
Interestingly, it is a logical fallacy of the same type as those in the Mann-ian temperature reconstructions.
The more uncertainty, the less doubt – that something must be done.
Someone should explain the uncertainties OF the risks OF the damage.
I have long contended that the temperatures since records began can be explained very adequately without resorting to CO2.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.gif
The warming from 1978 to 1998 was caused by excess El Nino’s over La Nina’s.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
There are more El Nino’s when the PDO is positive .
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/nasa-says-pdo-switched-to-cold-phase/
From 1940 to 1978 there were excess La Nina’s, and it cooled
From 1998 to present there were an equal number of El Nino’s and La Nina’s and the temperature stayed the same.
I have long contended that the temperatures since records began can be explained by natural cycles and no CO2 is needed.
There seems to be a 1/2 ° C per century ramp [from increased solar activity ] and a 60 year PDO cycle combined . We are at the top of the cycle and headed down.
The point is: If you subtract the natural ocean cycles there is almost nothing left so of course the human contribution cannot be very great.
This undermines the alarmists attaining their goals.
Philip Shehan:
At April 29, 2011 at 7:50 am you provide your interpretation of what Trenberth meant. That interpretation may be correct but if it is then Trenberth managed to hide his meaning very well.
And your explanation of uncertainty is wrong.
Richard
I think that this can all be summed up by the Chinese proverb:
“He who rides a tiger, is afraid to dismount”
In this case they have created a really ferocious industry killing tiger. What will it eat next if its not allowed to kill industries?
“Ian says:
April 28, 2011 at 8:15 pm
I’m a research scientist in endocrinology and have discovered the more I know the less I know, as every result leads to a whole heap of other questions. ”
I am a neurochemist and I have discovered that much of what I think I know is actually wrong or only right in particular circumstances.
The type of brain cancer cells I work on are noted for their increased expression of monoamine oxidase B. I somewhat accidentally discovered this morning that one of my ‘funny’ and very aggressive primary GBM cultures has next to no MAO-B, but stuffed to the gills with MAO-A.
“uncertainty” is the warmists ways of say “evidence that tends to disprove our beliefs”
We need a stronger word than hubris! To accept that the simpler models that left out major meteorological features like clouds led to more certainty about climate is the most assinine (I left the double ‘s’ in on purpose) thing I have heard thus far in this craziness. Scientifically, the only way to make sense of such statements is to have to accept that CAGW is a fact. If not, what yardstick is being used to decide that uncertainty is increased. When you say uncertainty is increased you are saying that you are less certain than you were before – this progress is totally lost on ideologues like Trenberth. To me, his remark that it was a ‘travesty’ that they couldn’t account for the lack of warming over 10 years, showed he didn’t know the meaning of the word travesty. Now I see that being a zealot, he meant that there is no question that the globe is in a runaway CAGW and it is a travesty that one can’t point to its manifestation (he would never consider that the hypothesis is wrong).
netdr2 says: April 29, 2011 at 9:26 am
“Dr Hansen and the British royal society.”, “editor of climateskeptic.com” “It is a computed value”
Feynman:
“Guess -> Compute the consequences -> Compare to Experiment/Experience (Directly to Observations)
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.
That simple statement is the key to science.
It doesn’t make a difference how beautiful your Guess is. It doesn’t make a difference how smart you are, who made the Guess or what his name is, if it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong!”
—
netdr2 your response appears to stop at the “Compute the consequences” phase; where is the “Compare to Experiment/Experience (Directly to Observations)” part?
Until that can is done the whole thing is conjecture, not science, if it is shown to disagree with nature, even once, then it is Wrong.
It has not been Observed; and I do not accept; that there is a consistent, predictable and demonstrable link between the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere and the global average temperature.
netdr2 your analysis of the effect of a 1 degree C rise in global average temperature in the context of carbon dioxide is a response to a relationship that has not been shown to exist, and gives the conjecture a credence that it does not deserve. Effectively you are saying “OK, but ..” , which means that you are accepting as science that which is not, and arguing the outcome of the conjecture rather than arguing in support of science.
I disagree with your position.
Andrew30,
Thanks for that Feynman quote on the key to science. It can’t be repeated too often.
However, as I read the comments above, I don’t see that you and netdr2 are very far apart. Netdr2 wrote:
“I have long contended that the temperatures since records began can be explained very adequately without resorting to CO2. …the temperatures since records began can be explained by natural cycles and no CO2 is needed.”
That is my position, too. CO2 may add some insignificant warming, but the effect is negligible and overwhelmed by natural cycles. And so far, the putative warming from CO2 is explained only by radiative physics models; it has not been demonstrated with testable, empirical measurements or observations.
But neither has warming from increased CO2 been falsified. To the minuscule extent that it may be occuring, it is harmless.
Seems to me that the more correct (less “wrong”) a model is, the less politically useful it becomes…
SSam says:
April 28, 2011 at 10:51 pm
OT from the closed thread, but this isn’t about that subject anyway.
Dave Springer says:
It’s time for the B/S to stop. Period.
I would like to see that, too. How do you propose making it happen?
In physics class we once approximated the heat dissipation of a running horse by assuming it was a uniform sphere. We all acknowledged that it was only a first order approximation and was at best a ballpark starting point, requiring shape, density and permeability corrections to even get close to the real answer. We never would have published a paper on that first order approximation, but we did use it as an upper limit approximation to check our answers against. I still bet our final answer was a bit high.
Why can’t “climate scientists” realize that their models weren’t much closer to the Earth climate system than modeling a horse as a uniform density spherical heat engine. Yes it gets very messy as you add all the real terrain and albedo effects of all the molecules in the system.
I believe meteorology is what chaos theory evolved from, and climate is just the integral over all space-time of weather. I haven’t studied it closely, but I think the sum over all time of a spatially chaotic system is chaotic. The chaos likely lives between upper and lower bounds, but between those bounds anything goes.
In other words, “I know what I know, don’t confuse me with facts”.
His statements indicate that the modelers know their results have a large uncertainty that they are hiding. Adding detail to a model doesn’t increase uncertainty, it only makes the uncertainty that was always there show itself? The uncertainty is greater in a model with less detail, it just isn’t being exposed. My guess is that adding clouds and other major drivers and feedbacks to the models will overwhelm any input from CO2. The models might begin to act like weather, chaotic, and reveal the models for what they really are, useless (at predicting climate).
How did this guy (Trenberth) end up in such an important position, one from which he can influence the economic future of the world? Reading his inane non-science gibberish made me feel dirty. He is no scientist, he is simply a tool of those who would like to control our lives. If he keeps it up, he will find himself looking for work, which would be a good thing.
Can anything useful be created by someone so biased?
Smokey:
This is where I disagree with netdr2;
“The point which some people missed is that it [1 ° C] is not a problem”
netdr2, is yielding to the conjecture that 1 degree C will occur.
Man: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?
Woman: Ok.
Man: Would you sleep with me for ten dollars.
Woman: What do you think I am; some kind of prostitute?!
Man: That has already been established, we are now only discussing price.
By yielding 1 degree C, the premise (more carbon dioxide = higher temperatures) is established, and the amount (1 degree – 6 degrees) becomes the argument.
The premise (more carbon dioxide = higher temperatures) must be confronted.
It may seem like a minor difference of position to you, but to me it is fundamental.