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.
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The massive downgrade of predicted temperature increase by the UKMO to 2017 is very worrying. Given their track record one is forced to conclude that the UKMO forecast will mean that temperatures will rise spectacularly over the next 5 years
richard telford says:
January 8, 2013 at 3:33 am
“This is a particularly clueless argument, in that it has been shown to be bogus many times over. Weather forecasts are an initial value problem. Climate projections are a boundary condition problem. This is well known. ”
As someone who has worked professionally in computational fluid dynamics for over 25 years, this statement by Mr. Telford is quite incorrect. All of the GCMs use time-marching schemes for coupled parabolic-hyberbolic differental equations describing the basic conservation laws of atmospheric physics. Future surface conditions are not known a priori, as would be required for a boundary value problem – but then if you knew the future, why would you need to predict it? (True elliptic BVPs require knowledge of conditions at all system boundaries – e.g. heat conduction in a metal plate, modeled using Laplace’s equation. This is all basic mathematical physics).
Some scientists fool themselves into thinking climate is a boundary value problem because they “fix” the boundary conditions in the future (hence “projections” versus “predictions”), which of course is equivalent to pure guessing given the non-linearity of the coupled system of differential equations modeling the air and ocean.
For those who want to read further about this, the Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. reference cited earlier is a good one.
Who is Maurice Strong?
An interesting fellow. Wikipedia gives some details on the man. The most important details have to be picked out from between the lines.
Some facts: born in Manitoba, made money in the oil business of Alberta, somehow wound up at the UN. In 2005 he accepted a $989,000 bribe from the Korean Park, and enscounced himself in Beijing when this became known, safe from prying eyes and bothersome questions. Still heads the IPCC. Strange world, hunh?
The historical Percent Correct (PC) charts have a period from 1981 to 2010. What would be interesting is a study on the improvement in accuracy for successive forecasts. If someone was to obtain the dataset these PC charts are based on then a study of each successive forecast as to whether they became more accurate over time would be revealing.
If the technology and methods improved as expected then obviously the forecasts would get more accurate. If there was no improvement or a even a degradation in forecasts then it would be necessary to determine the cause. Not to completely anticipate that outcome, but when did it get worse (?) would be revealing.
My slow dial up connection and not knowing where to get the data prevents me from doing it but perhaps others are interested.
Bob Ryan says:
Mr. Lynn says;
I also found this to be quite insightful. It makes me think that we are confronted by a form of “Scientism” that seizes on some “laws” as eternally valid and determinative, and like Biblical literalists, the believers can be certain how the future will unfold.
Years ago, I had a discussion with a distinguished professor concerning research showing that proximity to electric fields were dangerous to human health. I asked he ever took personal action based on such research. His response was he knew the researchers, and they weren’t unplugging their refrigerators or turning off their AC. If the researchers didn’t see a threat, despite their own findings, then he saw none.
Tie the pay of climatologists to their predictions, including margins of error, and I suspect all discussion on global warming would grind to a halt. The margins of error would increase to cover a wide range of possible climates, and it would become clear that those who most understand the climate are not willing to risk their money on their own predictions. If they aren’t willing to risk their money on their own theories, then surely we shouldn’t risk ours.
I know there are examples of corrupt, inept, unconscionable people in the private sector; it is a function of the range of human characteristics. I chose not to enjoin the debate in the article about the merits of government versus private sector involvement in different aspects of a society. We still don’t know what should be done by each. It is the central issue in all significant political changes, from the fall of Fascism, through collapse of communism, to the emergence of State Capitalism in China, to the recent US election. Exploitation of climate and environment for total political control was the theme of Vaclav Klaus’s book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles”.
The important difference between the two sectors is accountability. It is very unlikely any private sector endeavour could produce meaningless results, let alone publish them, as Environment Canada (EC) did, without some accountability, whether to a Board, the Shareholders or the Marketplace. It is more likely they would try to hide them knowing their jobs were on the line. If caught they would go to jail. Ironically, their behaviour is used to argue for more government involvement or control.
In government I don’t get to vote for who and how Environment Canada is run. I can vote for politicians who may make bureaucrats accountable, but it is very difficult. Bureaucrats know; they can outlast a politician, the politician will lose an election because of their failures, they control the information going to the politician, that even if a new set of rules and regulations are introduced by the politician they determine how much and how effectively they are implemented. All these factors are more problematic when a science issue is involved because very few politicians know or understand science. This was an issue I confronted when I appeared before the Canadian Parliament on the ozone issue.
All these are reasons why Maurice Strong worked through the WMO and the national weather agency bureaucracies. He exploited Mary McCarthy’s observation: “Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.” The key was he controlled some bureaucrats who then appointed like minded people to the IPCC.
Others have grappled with this problem of bureaucracies. The US Founding Fathers of the US gave the public some control over senior bureaucrats who are elected. They also realized the only control politicians have over bureaucracies is funding so they gave control of the purse strings to the people through Congress.
In Canada, Prime Minister Harper cut funding to Environment Canada (EC) set up by the same Assistant Deputy Minister who chaired the 1985 meeting IPCC formation meeting. Prior to retiring this person established the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Services (CFCAS) with $61 million from EC. In the month he retired he took over as Chair of the Foundation. Most of the money went to climate research by people producing ‘proof’ of the AGW hypothesis. My commentary in an article on this persons actions drew another lawsuit. At that time I chose not to fight because of the cost. Interestingly, in newspaper articles he wrote protesting the cuts he never mentioned he was the person who organized the funding or even that he had been an ADM.
Everyone must be accountable, but how do you do that without establishing a police state? As Cicero asked, “Quis custodet ipsos custodes?”
(It’s time to stop, I am starting to sound like Lord Monckton.)
I have particularly enjoyed the contrast between the posts of richard telford vs Frank K., ferd berple, Richard M and so many others. Kudos to those who attempt to educate the clueless about chaos.
Basic truth about our world is often imparted by simply homilies. Some pundit (often attributed to Mark Twain) said:
“Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.”
Think about it….
I prefer this version of the Feynman quote.
“It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.”
Adrian Kerton, Henry Galt and others:
The climate scientists saying that the pause in global warming (which they didn’t predict) is only temporary and it will take off again soon, reminds me of the old story of the man who saw someone walking along the road spreading a powder everywhere.
“What are you doing?”
“Putting down the Elephant Powder. It keeps the elephants away.”
“But this is the Highlands of Scotland. There aren’t any elephants here.”
“I know – works well, doesn’t it?”
richard telford, a specious argument. There will be growth of uncertainty due to initial value errors, combined with propagation of those errors through stepwise calculations that include serially re-initialized intermediate states, all of which employ a model also subject to theory-bias. When the propagated uncertainty exceeds the bounds of the model, the mean expectation value no longer has any physical significance; no predictive value whatever.
Using your coin toss analogy, a climate model prediction of future temperature is like attempting to predict the persistence runs of heads and tails in a sequence of coin tosses. The claim to know specifics of climate after hundred years is like claiming to know that the last 100 tosses of 10,000 tosses will all be tails. All that, with initial value errors, propagated errors, imperfectly constrained bounds, and missing bounds due to an incomplete theory. Fat chance.
Tim Ball says: January 8, 2013 at 9:23 am
The important difference between the two sectors is accountability
==========================
With your finger you have touched the nub of the problem. Even elected officials are not held fully accountable.
Maurice Strong was smart enough to recognize the possibilities. He admits to having “a few millions”, but no one knows how much he is worth. The Tongsun Park affair erupted in 2005. The investigators had a $890,000 check traced back to Sadam Hussein, made out to and cashed by Strong, but Strong decamped to Beijing where he remains unmolested by any bothersome investigator. To those who understand politics, this means that Strong had the “right kind” of protection- and seemingly in two different administrations, and probably more.
So yes, accountability is a problem.
Dr. Ball, “Climate is the average of the weather, so if the weather science is wrong the climate science is wrong.”
And this is why those who claim it will be warmer in Canada in six months are fools. If we can’t predict the weather three days from now, how can we know this summer will be warmer than this winter. Foolish people who try to tell us the future of the climate like that. Unbelievable that whole sectors of the economy such as agriculture and tourism rely on such nonsense.
Also, the WSJ gave out that Strong had deposited his papers at Harvard, some 685 boxes of documents. The article did not say anything about a contribution, but perhaps Harvard now feels a certain hopefulness toward Mr. Strong.
So it’s true, Strong is smart enough to recognize the possibilities, and he knows how to win friends and influence people. Interesting fellow.
sceptical:
Your post at January 8, 2013 at 10:58 am competes with Richard Telford’s woeful contributions as being the daftest post in the thread. It says in total
What do you think “climate” is?
Oh, sorry, it was silly of me to have asked you that.
If you were able to think then you would recognise that average summer weather (i.e. summer climate) is warmer than average winter weather (i.e. winter climate).
Knowing what summer and winter climates are gives no information on how they are likely to change.
But, like Telford, your understanding of such issues is limited to what you can copy-and-paste from SkS or other warmunist propaganda sites.
Richard
“…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.”
A key point: Palmer believes that what the IPCC achieve OVERALL is good, though their work to predict the changing climate is very poor. He doesn’t want to stop the machine because, though it may be saying it is headed to Brisbane, while it is actually headed for Darwin, Palmer believes that it is a good idea to end up in Darwin.
Is this not the corruption of the end justifies the means?
I sympathize. But I do not agree. It is not legitimate to tell all those paying passengers that they are headed for one destination while you and your friends know otherwise. It is manipulative and dishonest.
If I were Palmer, I’d say, “I’m sorry that what I have to say undermines a large part of the IPCC, but …”.
Frank K. says:
The boundary conditions that are prescribed are not “future surface conditions”. They are the basic top-of-the-atmosphere energy balance conditions involving radiation emitted and absorbed by the Earth system. The point is simply this: Although the detailed evolution of the weather…and even of the climate (in the sense of whether it will be warmer or colder or wetter or drier than average) over, say, monthly to yearly timescales…is sensitive to the initial conditions, the future climatic conditions in response to increases in greenhouse gases is not. This is clearly seen in climate models…If you perturb the initial conditions, some things are sensitive to this and some things are not. Let’s make a list of what is sensitive and not sensitive to initial conditions —
Sensitive:
(1) Weather, especially about a week or more into the future.
(2) Regional climate over monthly to yearly timescales relative to the local seasonal means.
(3) The evolution of various climate fluctuations such as ENSO.
Not Sensitive:
(1) The basic response of the climate system to the perturbations in the distribution of solar energy that occur on a yearly time scale, or in other words, the seasons. For example, we can predict with high confidence that the average temperature in Rochester, NY in January will be colder by somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 C than the average temperature in July. We can also predict with high confidence the difference in the average temperature in January between, say, Rochester, NY and Miami, Florida.
(2) The basic response of the climate system to perturbations in radiative forcing caused by things such as an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Admittedly, just because the predictions of climate change due to the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases is insensitive to initial conditions does not mean there are not still important uncertainties associated with such predictions, such as uncertainties in the response of clouds to this radiative forcing…or uncertainties regarding thresholds for dramatic shifts in things like ocean currents that could lean to sudden climate shifts, as have occurred in the past.
However, these uncertainties are quite different in nature than the uncertainties due to chaos, i.e., the sensitivity to initial conditions. It is thus not particularly scientifically literate to make the claim that because we can’t predict the weather a few weeks in advance or because we can’t predict whether this spring will be unusually warm or cold or wet or dry in some region, it therefore follows that we can’t predict the seasonal cycle or the response of the climate system to a significant increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.
‘The Met office has revised downwards its projections for climate change through to 2017… (and) the recent slowdown will continue.’
Before we all breathe a collective sigh of relief, Roger Harrabin, the BBC’s Environmental This morning on BBC 4’s Today programme, presenter John Humphrys released a highly misleading news bulletin stating, ‘The Met Office does not believe that global warming will be as severe as it had previously predicted.’ He later expanded that, ‘The Met office has revised downwards its projections for climate change through to 2017… (and) the recent slowdown will continue.’
Check the broadcast here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01pp565/Today_08_01_2013/
Scroll forward 2 hrs to 2.0.0 and 2.05.30
mpainter says:
re: Maurice Strong
You might find this interesting:
“Socialist Maurice Strong is the man behind curtains ”
from:
UN Infects Science with Cancer of Global Warming by Edward F Blick
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/EDBLICKRANT.pdf
sceptical says:
January 8, 2013 at 10:58 am
….And this is why those who claim it will be warmer in Canada in six months are fools…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So tell me on July 1 2013 will it be warmer or colder than the average temperature of that day in Smithers BC and by how many tenths of a degree?
Environment Canada has a pitiful service record, weather prediction has been a joke in the arctic since 1990s.
The EC site brags about Environment Canada’s Science, go and see, its quite sad.
Not science, oh no, “EC’s science”, something they created themselves?
Sort of like the science archive they do not have, when asked for the science supporting the policies they propose.
On the bright side, they have made it crystal clear, how little the taxpayer needs their services.
Its nice when bureaucrats are this helpful.
Toss enough coins my way and I’ll predict the result you want.
That is hilarious –
Almost of their predictive “successes” coincided with the “Normal – White” areas of all the maps.
So are they really saying there is no climate change ?
richard telford says:
January 8, 2013 at 3:33 am
“This is a particularly clueless argument, in that it has been shown to be bogus many times over. Weather forecasts are an initial value problem. Climate projections are a boundary condition problem. This is well known.
As an imperfect analogy, predicting a toss of a coin from the angular velocity and momentum is difficult – small errors in the initial estimates of the parameters will rapidly escalate and cause errors. In contrast, estimating the distribution of head and tails is much easier.”
If that is so easy, Richard, then why did the IPCC’s model fail even at the relatively simple task of modeling the past 16 years of stagnant temperatures. Did Hansen not adjust the “average global temperature” up enough?
Now, there are a lot of apologetic texts by IPCC climate modelers that explain how totally unimportant local details like precipitation are for the “boundary condition problem” that climate models “solve”…
Again, what have you and those apologists to show for? Nothing. Empty words. The models all fail. Do we have to pay you and the other rent-seekers up to the year 2100 until you admit scientific bankruptcy? Or much rather, scurry off silently into the dark of night never to be seen again.
Almost ALL of their …