There’s not much I can say about this quote from the Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach as it stands on its own quite well.
The context of this quote is article on the bust of a forecast that was to be “snowquester”. You can cut the disappointment in the air with a steak knife. Achenbach muses:
Still, I blame the storm more than I blame the computer models. The models are pretty good. It’s Nature that messed this up.
I hope he escapes from his alternate reality soon, people must be looking for him.
Full story here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/achenblog/wp/2013/03/07/forecasts-and-probabilities/
h/t to Willis E.
UPDATE: Some people think he was being sarcastic or humorous. For example, from this part:
“I thought the forecast for Snowquester was pretty good, as total busts and epic fiascos go.” is clear as day, but I’ll translate for you: The forecasters gave it a good shot, but it wasn’t good enough. It was a total bust.
But there is also this:
The models in this case predicted serious snow in the I-95 corridor, but the storm “underperformed,” and didn’t drop snow intensely enough and consistently enough to cool down the warm layer of the atmosphere and the warm ground in the urban areas.
The storm “underperformed”.
I read the entire essay, but I didn’t get the sense that he was joking. I considered the possibility he might be before I wrote this post. The clincher for me was this update:
Update 2: I’m told via Twitter that my chaos line is incorrect. Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) writes: “Chaos in weather systems is technically deterministic – it happens even without introducing random elements.”
If this was a humor piece, somehow I don’t think he’s be worrying about details like that.
YMMV – Anthony
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I think he was be sarcastic. Further down he includes an update:
Correction:
I think he was being sarcastic.
“The models are pretty good. It’s Nature that messed this up.”
Ha Ha…Ha Ha Ha….HAHAHAHA…
Huh, it’s mother nature again, hasn’t she heard – 97% of scientists agree!
you should try reading the ‘article’ of the ‘Science Editor’ of the ‘Independent’, Steve Connor today Then take a look at the comments.
We have a new ‘study’, which is measuring ‘proxies’ for temperature, which PROVES (er, well does it?) that there has been incredible warming the past 100 years compared to relative stability the previous 10,000 years.
All the blog entries are basically taking the absent ‘deniers’ to task about how ‘everything is all proven’, ‘feeding carbon dioxide to the planet is like giving a drunk vodka’ and the like.
I do wish some of these bloggers were required to be cross-examined in a court of law where the concept of perjury was introduced to them upfront.
Nothing like some sanctions placed in front of zealots to make them examine evidence constructively.
The first principle of evidence is that a newspaper article isn’t ‘evidence’, it’s an expression of someone’s opinion of someone’s else’s interpretation of some ‘data’.
I blame reality for messing up the perfectly good predictions I get out of my crystal ball.
One day we will invent a computer so powerful that people will be able to download the contents of their entire brain into it and their simulated selves will live in a fabricated universe that will last forever. When that happy day comes, Achenbach, your models will be matched precisely by every storm. But please, Achenbach, for the sake of those of us that live in the real universe contending with real weather, keep your stupid comments to yourself.
What is John Mitchel’s PhD in the Grimm Brothers? (I assume he has a PhD and not pulled in off the streets to fill a vacancy).
Those who are hooked on extreme weather for their kicks have to go cold turkey when their dealer, Gaia, doesn’t come up with the goods.
I live just northeast of Richmond, and our local weatherguessers did tolerably well. They did quote Dave Tolleris of Chesterfield, and he is often more accurate than the National Weather Service or the Weather Channel. Snow totals are notoriously difficult to predict here because we are so often on the freeze line. Original forecasts a week ago had a large precipitation event, which then was expected to be mostly rain. As Wednesday approached, snow appeared in the forecasts, with the area east of I-95 (where I live) given a likelihood of 2 or 3 inches of heavy wet snow between two large blasts of rain. That’s pretty much what we got–about 1.5″ of heavy rain followed by a turn to snow at 9:20 a.m. (which had been predicted for as late as 2 or 3 p.m.). The snow came down heavily for over five hours and lasted just over six hours in all before dwindling to isolated flakes and drops of rain. Our snow was what would have been 5 or 6 inches without all the previous rain, but it landed on puddles or wet ground, and it took a while to start showing. Our eventual snow depth was 2 or 3 inches. By yesterday morning there was ice on the sidewalks, but the roadways were clear. The snow was utterly beautiful when falling, but I was grateful for a light impact. While a quarter-million people were without power in the mountains, 100 miles west of here, we did not lose power. It was cold, windy, and spectacular during the storm, just as the local weatherfellas had said. Most satisfactory. But the constantly-changing forecasts were a strong demonstration of the difficulties of predicting something as chaotic and complex as weather.
Reading these quotes I am reminded once again of how Richard Feynman explained this in his unique way
“Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.”- Richard Feynman
How ironic that John Mitchell, title is –‘Chief Scientist UK Met Office’, what a joke, truly unbelievable.
” Michel says:
March 7, 2013 at 11:52 pm
as a general rule: never be ironic in the media, you’ll be misunderstood and misquoted”
And its derivative corollary: “As a general rule, never be in the media, you’ll misunderstand and misquote…”
It is interesting to note that all these model predictions are based upon a significant amount of bollocks, buggery, & bullshit, until one invokes the Precautionary Principle, whereupon all things & everything, becomes possible!!!!
Here in Northern Ontario, they usually call for much more snow than we actually receive. It is the rare times that their estimates are realized. The ranges they give are exceeded only a couple times a winter. This is normal for us. — John M Reynolds
Yeh, I too think he was being sarcastic there.
Having read the source, I’d say this was meant to be humorous, and lets be fair there’s little enough of that in the climate science community
What’s a [i]Snowquester[/i]? After 6 pages of google looking for a dictionary meaning, I gave up.
Oops wrong HTML formatting; Snowquester
I live in NW Richmond. Although the forecasts varied, we ended up with about the snow predicted, with a heck of a lot of rain. If Mr. Achenbach was disappointed he should have spent Wednesday morning with me. The semiannual stack opacity reading certification was done by a contractor. It took a couple hours. Just standing around in 3-4″ of wet slush, periods of heavy snow, wind gusts approaching 40 and 32-34°F. Some air permits require an on site person certified to visually determine stack opacity. He could have joined the group of us fools and he would have gotten all the snowquester he wanted.
I think he was being sarcastic/ironic but considering the readership of the Washington Post, they will no doubt take his words literally.
Achenbach, like any good scientist, should have added a Snowqualifier to his Snowquester comment. But he didn’t and he isn’t.
(A “/sarc” tag would have been appropriate and appreciated.)
And John Mitchell?
“Chief Scientist UK Met Office” /sarc.
AndyG55 on March 7, 2013 at 11:08 pm
“Darn, why did I have to follow that link..
Alvin Lee is dead 🙁
Still love his guitar work !!”
damn, hadn’t heard that. “fastest guitarist ever”.
Nonsense here — weather forecasting is and has always been like this — and has always occasionally called it right — only to be wrong.
This says nothing about forecasting (other than what we already know about weather forecasting — that the weather doesn’t always cooperate), says nothing about models, says nothing at all, except maybe about the tendency of the press to hype things into scary disasters to attract an audience.
Give the weatherman a break! Like an umpire — he calls it like he sees it.
I would like to know the context of the quote from John Mitchel. On the face of above, he is a witch doctor not a scientist.
Epigraph to You Sane Men.