Wrong Prediction, Wrong Science; Unless It's Government Climate Science.

Guest post by Dr. Tim Ball

In a comment on the WUWT article about the abject failure of UKMO weather forecasts, “Slingo Pretends She Knows Why It’s Been So Wet!”, Doug Huffman wrote, “Each forecast must be accompanied by the appropriate retro-cast record of previous casts” (January 6, 2013 at 7:06 am). I pointed out years ago that Environment Canada (EC) publishes such information. They expose a similar horrendous story of absolute failure. This likely indicates why it is not done by others, but provides adequate justification for significantly reducing the role of the agency.

Both EC and UKMO predictions fail. The failure parallels Richard Feynman’s comment.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.

If your prediction (forecast) is wrong; your science is wrong. Unlike the IPCC, they cannot avoid the problem by calling them projections, not predictions. They can and do avoid accountability.

Initially I thought EC was admirable for publishing results. Now I realize it only shows arrogance and sense of unaccountability: we fail, but you must listen, act, and keep paying. It underscores the hypocrisy of what they do. More important, it shows why they and all national weather agencies must be proscribed. It is time to reduce all national weather offices to data collection agencies. When bureaucrats do research it is political by default. The objective rapidly becomes job preservation; perpetuate and expand rather than solve the problem.

EC is a prime example of why Maurice Strong set up the IPCC through the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and member national weather agencies. EC participated and actively promoted the failed work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from the start. An Assistant Deputy Minister (ADM) of EC chaired the founding meeting of the IPCC in Villach Austria in 1985. It continues, as they sent a large delegation to the recent Doha conference on climate change. Their web site promotes IPCC work as the basis for all policy on energy and environment. They brag about their role as a world class regulator. All this despite the fact their own evidence shows the complete inadequacy of their work.

They display their failures on maps. Pick any map or period and it shows how a coin toss would achieve better or at least comparable results. Here is their caption for the maps.

” The upper panel shows the seasonal air temperature or precipitation anomaly forecasts. The forecast are presented in 3 categories: below normal, near normal and above normal. The lower panel illustrates the skill (percent correct) associated to the forecast.”

The maps are for temperature and precipitation for 12, 6 and 1-3 months.

Everyone knows that regional weather forecasts are notoriously unreliable, especially beyond 48 hours. This fact weakened the credibility of the IPCC predictions with the public from the start. Some supporters of the IPCC position tried to counteract the problem by saying that climate forecasts were different from weather forecasts. It is a false argument. Climate is the average of the weather, so if the weather science is wrong the climate science is wrong.

Some experts acknowledge that regional climate forecasts are no better than short term weather forecasts. New Scientist reports that Tim Palmer, a leading climate modeler at the European Centre for Medium – Range Weather Forecasts in Reading England saying, “I don’t want to undermine the IPCC, but the forecasts, especially for regional climate change, are immensely uncertain.” In an attempt to claim some benefit, we’re told, “…he does not doubt that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has done a good job alerting the world to the problem of global climate change. But he and his fellow climate scientists are acutely aware that the IPCC’s predictions of how the global change will affect local climates are little more than guesswork. The IPCC have deliberately misled the world about the nature, cause and threat of climate change and deceived about the accuracy of their predictions (projections), for a political agenda.

Some claim the failures are due to limited computer capacity. It makes no difference. The real problems are inadequate data, lack of understanding of most major mechanisms, incorrect assumptions, and a determination to prove instead of falsify the AGW hypothesis.

Einstein’s definition, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” applies. However, EC do the same thing over and over with results that indicate failure yet fail to make adjustments as the scientific method requires. What is more amazing and unacceptable is they use public money, are essentially unaccountable yet demand the public and politicians change their energy and economic policies. On their web site, they state; “The Government of Canada supports an aggressive approach to climate change that achieves real environmental and economic benefits for all Canadians.” They could begin by reducing EC to data collection. Their failures are more than enough to justify termination in any other endeavour. Another is their involvement and political promotion of well documented IPCC corruption.