Note: The video has been updated to reflect the fact that Climate Models Fail is now available for sale in Kindle and pdf formats. I also replaced the word “employed” with “used” (as suggested by many viewers) and corrected one of the years discussed in the video.
# # #
This YouTube video provides a preview of my new book Climate Models Fail. The book discusses and illustrates how the climate models being used by the IPCC for their 5th Assessment Report show no skill at simulating surface temperatures, precipitation and sea ice area.
Climate Models Fail is now available for sale in Amazon Kindle and .pdf editions.
My writing style definitely leans to the technical side, as visitors here well know. To make it easier to read, Climate Models Fail is being proofread by someone without a technical background. Her suggestions have been great.
And for those wondering, the cover art is by Josh of Cartoons by Josh.
A note about the video: In addition to providing an overview of climate model failings, I also threw in a few jabs at the IPCC that many of you will enjoy.
The climate models have been dead for years, yet still, zombie like, they walk the Earth.
BDTP,– you’r right and it is time the climate ”scientists” got to grips with explaining why they have been wrong all this time. It can’t be the money.
Bob Tisdale:
Thankyou for the fine preview in the video. I will get the book.
Richard
Nigel Farage Kicks Ass!
dbstealey says: “Nigel Farage Kicks Ass!”
Go, Nigel!
So has Cook classified this as part of the 97% yet?
I have followed your posts with interest and I am glad that you have now drawn the threads together into a book.
This is hugely important and the problem now is how to get this into the mainstram and into political consciousness. (In the Farage video, the problem is encapsulated by Barroso’s response, which is symptomatic of the EU attitude to almost everything.)
There is now a groundswell that green policies are have disastrous economic effects and your book will provide important ammunition for politicians who are becoming increasingly sceptical of the IPCC narrative.
@- climate models are like maps, they include all the features we know about at the level of detail that can be represented on the scale at which they work. But like maps they are always ‘wrong’ in the sense that they are incomplete and may miss significant features of the landscape.
As everyone knows that does not make a map useless. The map can still describe the large scale features, and the experience of encountering a feature in reality that is not on the map enables the map to be corrected and improved.
Climate models did not feature the real world experience of a significant slowdown in land surface temperatures while the TOA energy imbalance persists. But that does not automatically invalidate all the features that the models HAVE got right. The continuing accumulation of thermal energy that the models feature is not invalidated by their errors in how rapidly that is represented as a rise in land surface temperatures. The continued rise in SST and sea level and melting ice was projected by models, but they underestimated the ice loss and ocean warming in the opposite direction to their overestimate of land surface temperature rises.
The models have certainly been better maps than the ‘null hypothesis’ that the climate landscape would be flat in all its features with only ‘natural’ variation over the last few decades. Each decade has been significantly warmer than the preceding decade for around a century now. That includes warmer oceans, poles and summers with cooling of the stratosphere. That is not compatible with a null assumption of climate, but does fit the basic and complex model predictions. What the models have failed to do is correctly project the partition of the increased energy from rising CO2 between the various thermal sinks that it can enter. The models are also bad at local detail. Regional variation is not well represented although the extended and increasing drought in the American SW was a projected result from models that has been validated.
In modern science all complex systems are now investigated using computer models of the underlying physical, chemical and biological processes in whatever detail the technology allows. The problems and inadequacies of such ‘maps’ of reality are well recognised, models of heart cells or tectonic processes also suffer from the same map problems that climate models suffer, but they are not then abandoned, as with maps, the very flaws they exhibit enable advances in our understanding of the real world.
To quote an old assessment of models made a Bayesian:-
“”essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful”
G E P Box
Haven’t the models also failed in predicting upper atmospheric temperatures, the spatial distribution of heat, and water vapor content?
The hurricane scare stories are also failures, by the same actors but not specifically in the GCM models.
Couple of thoughts… First, maybe add some intro/outro music … If the funding is available it might make the information more accessible if it was presented in a format similar to the videos on this site: http://overpopulationisamyth.com/ .
The old joke is very apt in this case:
Q: How do you eat an elephant?
A: One bite at a time.
Thanks Bob for taking another bite (a big one) out of the IPCC elephant
Tom
Anthony,
Mr. Tisdale’s video prologue and Dr. Soon’s wonderful video [yours was great too, but this is a suck up free blog] prompt the following request. Is there room to link the various categories, sea level, air temperatures, etc. into a new linked category containing the videos?
As a lay person, they help me quite a bit.
Imagine $100million supercomputers in the hands of those who, at worst, can’t use an excel spreadsheet stats package
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/17/phil-jones-demonstrates-that-math-is-hard/
and, at best, feed in noise, spurious, selected Yamal single tree data and upside -down lake sediment series.
http://climateaudit.org/2011/06/21/amac-upside-down-mann-lives-onin-kemp-et-al-2011/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/28/hey-ya-mal-mcintyre-was-right-cru-abandons-yamal-superstick/
http://junkscience.com/2013/06/14/skeptic-steve-goreham-gives-michael-mann-a-twitter-fit/
Also, how in the name of the Methusula tree (wiki) can models replicate the past or future if the data keepers have an algorithm that ;annually changes the temperature record as we go along?
However I nevertheless remain a believer in serious, damaging Climate Change. With $2 Trillion bucks and counting globally in CAGW research and mitigation (windmills, solar, animal flatulence retention programs….), we can all agree this is serious change$$$.
Compared to the most interesting man in the world, my two cents are probably worth only about 2 cents but here goes for your introduction which has to grab the non-science minded viewer’s attention – and keep it:
00:24 “We live on the land surfaces of our planet called Earth but we’ve heard …”
Some people may take this the wrong way thinking you are insulting their intelligence that they might be too stupid to know the name of our planet – completely missing your inference equating Earth with dry land. My suggestion is to avoid such inferences so my re-write would be:”Although we live on the land surfaces of our planet, 70% of it is covered with water.”
But then I’d also throw in a jibe referencing an eco-terrorist ‘anthem’ movie – Waterworld. So, continuing: “Truly, we are living on a water world.” ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/5715354/Earth-faces-Waterworld-as-global-warming-lasts-centuries.html )
00:50 “And this takes place on annual, decadal …”
If my wife doesn’t stop reading/watching at “decadal”, bet you $10 she will at “multi-decadal”! My suggestion is:”It is recognized that our climate changes over a variety of time periods. These time periods range from one year, dozens of years, hundreds of years and even thousands of years.
00:54 “Therefore, the surface temperatures of the ocean are very important in discussions of global warming or ..the lack thereof.”
Suggestion, spike your point and leave the hint of a dig against CAGW for later: “Therefore, the surface temperatures of the ocean are absolutely essential in any discussion about global warming.”
video: “modellers employed by the IPCC”
are you sure about that?
The divergence between predictions and reality has been a compelling feature of the analysis of the climate models.
Noting the “Ice Free Arctic 2013” feature at the top of the page, it occurred to me that it might be interesting to graph the divergence between prediction and reality for that, too?
Just a thought …
Greg Goodman makes a good point: The IPCC gets to have its cake and eat it too: They compile work of those they approve of. They do not actually employ modelers or run models, as I understand it.
I will review the entire work (for my 2 cents worth), but based on your excellent writing over several years, I am expecting this to be a really good addition to your body of work.
Each decade has been significantly warmer than the preceding decade for around a century izen:” now.”
But we knew that without the models. We did not need AGW*3 based models and the ‘null’ hypothesis that it was not warming. to tell us that it is warming.
A map that tells us what we already know , that the world is round, but get the continents in the wrong place and the wrong shape is worse that NO MAP since it will incite you to head in the wrong direction.
That is precisely what AGW hypothesis “maps” have been doing for us for the last three decades.
WRONG DIRECTION.
Greg Goodman says:
Which brings up the broader point – who is this here IPCC anyway? Perhaps a mention that, ” the IPPC is a program of a large well known political organization … the United Nations.”
Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years John C. Fyfe, Nathan P. Gillett and Francis W. Zwiers
“Recent observed global warming is significantly less than that simulated by climate models. This difference might be explained by some combination of errors in external forcing, model response and internal climate variability. Global mean surface temperature over the past 20 years (1993–2012) rose at a rate of 0.14 ± 0.06 °C per decade (95% confidence interval). This rate of warming is significantly slower than that simulated by the climate models participating in Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5).”
More evidence to back up what Bob is describing.
Thanks, Bob.
PS. Poor Izen, left whimpering about models being inaccurate but useful. Would you please make sure that gets into the AR5 SPM, especially the INACCURATE part.
Gary Pearse says:
Imagine $100million supercomputers in the hands of those who, at worst, can’t use an excel spreadsheet stats package
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/17/phil-jones-demonstrates-that-math-is-hard/
That’s a smart gibe that shows you’re not as smart as you seem to think.
Criticise Jones for a number of things if you like. There’s plenty of scope. But don’t kid yourself that using a spreadsheet is an indispensable qualification for a scientist and that not being familiar is in anyway a fault.
I’m less impressed with those who need to use a spreadsheet. It means there’s at least half a chance they know how to use a computer.
izen says:
September 13, 2013 at 5:08 am
climate models are like maps…
Ok. Trouble is, they aren’t based on reality. They are maps of an imaginary world, one which the hopelessly brainwashed and clueless such as yourself may like visiting, but not very useful in the real world.
oops; I’m MORE impressed with those who don’t need to use a spreadsheet. It means there’s at least half a chance they know how to use a computer.
If the models had been set up honestly or correctly, the errors would be spread above and below the data. If all the models show predictions that are to high, it is a reflection of bias, model outputs tell us more about the model makers than they do about the future. When they look at this the “climate scientists” will simply try to adjust the data to fit the models. I wonder if a group of runway fashion models might be as accurate in their predictions.
Izen said “…….The models have certainly been better maps than the ‘null hypothesis’ that the climate landscape would be flat in all its features with only ‘natural’ variation over the last few decades……”
Izen,
I do not have a technical back ground but I will state with certainty that you personally do not know what our planets ” ‘natural’ variation” is or should be. This lack of reference reduces the Brilliance of everything that you wrote to Bull Shit.
Question; Has anyone run any of the questionable models with the CO2 forcing parameters turned off and compared the output to the measured conditions? It might be a usefull exercise.
The Parent Signature on the scorecard on the cover of the book says: “Mrs P.”.
Rajendra Pachauri’s Mom I presume?
Indeed the models have failed, the elusive hot spot has been more elusive than than the fabled “G” spot. The canary of AGW the warming arctic has cooled and the canary lives.
The satellite system measuring temp to prove global warming, has proved no warming. The giant fudges applied to the temperature data have failed to cover the declining temperatures.
Failed models are only the tip of the iceberg, a politically inspired faith based system of manipulation is the problem. Declaring CO2 a pollutant is a crime against humanity, disproving AGW is only 10% of the battle, it is getting honesty elected into the political heart of our countries that will end this non-sense.
@izen
The fact that science and engineering use computer models has nothing to do with the validity of the climate models. Real scientists and engineers know the limitations of their models. Meteorologists, for example, will tell you the weather models are only accurate for a few days, for instance, while climate modelers insist they can accurately predict the global climate decades in the future.
The fact that models are useful in understanding a problem or how a complex system MAY work does not mean a model outputs facts or data. All computer programs are constrained by the universal law of GIGO — Garbage In equals Garbage Out.
The fact that the models don’t accurately reflect what is happening in the real world means the modelers don’t accurately understand the problem or are unable to properly express the functioning of the climate system using a computer program.
BTW: The climate model code I’ve seen looks like it was written by second-year junior college students.
Good stuff, Bob Tisdale. The data on lack of Pacific SST warming since ’91 got my attention immediately. What is your take on the latest theory that Russian Subs have been capturing Trenberth’s missing heat thence releasing it in the unplumbed, darkest oceanic depths?
Bob Tisdale,
Your achievement speaks well for your future.
Thanks for your many contributions.
I think model funding is already significantly and negatively impacted by US Congressional sequestration. Your book may extend the impact.
I get frequent emails from the AGU complaining about sequestration.
John
“Meteorologists, for example, will tell you the weather models are only sorta accurate for a few
dayshours…”There, fixed it for ya.
Mike M says: @ September 13, 2013 at 6:21 am
Which brings up the broader point – who is this here IPCC anyway? Perhaps a mention that, ” the IPPC is a program of a large well known political organization … the United Nations.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Bob, You might also want to read what the IPCC mandate is all about.
Most people think current climate science is funded to find out what causes the weather to vary but that is not what the IPCC is actually looking at. The whole basis of the current climate science funding is “understanding of human induced climate change” and not about understanding climate and that is why the models are wrong.
izen says: “As everyone knows that does not make a map useless.”
Dr. Freeman Dyson says: “Their computer models are full of fudge factors.”
Basically, Izen is floating the idea that the degree of GCM’s being ‘wrong’ is so small you will not even notice it if it was a map. In truth, if GCM’s were like a road map, it will have roads that may or may not actually exist, roads with swapped names/ route numbers, roads that run perpendicular to their true direction and street addresses adjusted to make you believe you are traveling in one direction when you are actually going in another:
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
@izen
“Each decade has been significantly warmer than the preceding decade for around a century now.”
This is so demonstrably incorrect that I guess no one is taking the time to say it. Why bother?
Izen, the temperature has been going up and down in a 60 year cycle. Yes, there is a general trend, but there is nothing like a continuous rise. It is up and down decades at a time. The models do have some things right, but not temperature, and the heat accumulation seems to be pretty iffy too. The proof is that teams are out looking for missing heat in the oceans.
When the clouds are dealt with correctly, we can get back to relying on models.
Low Sun but high UV ?
http://www.aemet.es/es/eltiempo/observacion/radiacion/ultravioleta?l=barcelona&f=anual
http://www.aemet.es/es/eltiempo/observacion/radiacion/ultravioleta?l=madrid&f=anual
http://www.aemet.es/es/eltiempo/observacion/radiacion/ultravioleta?l=valencia&f=anual
izen
You state: “…Each decade has been significantly warmer than the preceding decade for around a century now. …”
I call BS on that statement! The decade of the 30’s, preHansenizing, is still the warmest decade in past 150 years. Just compare Hansen’s temperature trend published in 1999 with his most recent trend and see how much he has magically cooled that decade.
The ’70 were nearly 0.5C cooler than the 30’s. It is a sine wave Of approximately 60 year period. The decade at the peak of the cycle will be the warmest, and the decade at the bottom of the cycle will be the coldest.
The GCM’s, including the most recent version, are an EPIC fail. Someone using a simple 60 year sine wave and a 0.58C/century linear trend would have been far more accurate over the past 12 decades than any of these models. They are essentially worthless in their current form because they minimize natural variability and elevate the impact of CO2 contration changes by two orders of magnitude.
If the models don’t match observations, CHANGE THE MODELS!
Bill
Izen, if you had bothered to do a fundamental analysis of GCMs, and looked at how their most important features actually work mathematically, and what results the CMIP3 archive produced for AR4, then you would realize how false your comment above is. AR4 cherry picked studies and ingnored a wealth of observational data to conclude UTrH was roughly constant. It admitted the models did poorly on clouds, ignored that every piece of evidence shows a positive cloud feedback is at best overstated and at worst flat wrong. Now, this was not an accident, because CMIP5 models are equally failing at things like the pause and cloud feedback, and leaked AR5 WG1 SOD repeats the errors. All extensively documented in my book chapter and in subsequent posts at Climate Etc.
When you know a map is wrong, you fix it rather than rely on it.
Ray:
At September 13, 2013 at 6:41 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/13/a-video-preview-of-climate-models-fail/#comment-1415972
you ask
I answer: THEY CAN’T.
It seems I need to post the following yet again and I apologise to all who are bored with seeing it again.
None of the models – not one of them – could match the change in mean global temperature over the past century if it did not utilise a unique value of assumed cooling from aerosols. So, inputting actual values of the cooling effect (such as the determination by Penner et al.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/07/25/1018526108.full.pdf?with-ds=yes )
would make every climate model provide a mismatch of the global warming it hindcasts and the observed global warming for the twentieth century.
This mismatch would occur because all the global climate models and energy balance models are known to provide indications which are based on
1.
the assumed degree of forcings resulting from human activity that produce warming
and
2.
the assumed degree of anthropogenic aerosol cooling input to each model as a ‘fiddle factor’ to obtain agreement between past average global temperature and the model’s indications of average global temperature.
More than a decade ago I published a peer-reviewed paper that showed the UK’s Hadley Centre general circulation model (GCM) could not model climate and only obtained agreement between past average global temperature and the model’s indications of average global temperature by forcing the agreement with an input of assumed anthropogenic aerosol cooling.
The input of assumed anthropogenic aerosol cooling is needed because the model ‘ran hot’; i.e. it showed an amount and a rate of global warming which was greater than was observed over the twentieth century. This failure of the model was compensated by the input of assumed anthropogenic aerosol cooling.
And my paper demonstrated that the assumption of aerosol effects being responsible for the model’s failure was incorrect.
(ref. Courtney RS An assessment of validation experiments conducted on computer models of global climate using the general circulation model of the UK’s Hadley Centre Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 5, pp. 491-502, September 1999).
More recently, in 2007, Kiehle published a paper that assessed 9 GCMs and two energy balance models.
(ref. Kiehl JT,Twentieth century climate model response and climate sensitivity. GRL vol.. 34, L22710, doi:10.1029/2007GL031383, 2007).
Kiehl found the same as my paper except that each model he assessed used a different aerosol ‘fix’ from every other model. This is because they all ‘run hot’ but they each ‘run hot’ to a different degree.
He says in his paper:
And, importantly, Kiehl’s paper says:
And the “magnitude of applied anthropogenic total forcing” is fixed in each model by the input value of aerosol forcing.
Thanks to Bill Illis, Kiehl’s Figure 2 can be seen at
http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/8167/kiehl2007figure2.png
Please note that the Figure is for 9 GCMs and 2 energy balance models, and its title is:
It shows that
(a) each model uses a different value for “Total anthropogenic forcing” that is in the range 0.80 W/m^-2 to 2.02 W/m^-2
but
(b) each model is forced to agree with the rate of past warming by using a different value for “Aerosol forcing” that is in the range -1.42 W/m^-2 to -0.60 W/m^-2.
In other words the models use values of “Total anthropogenic forcing” that differ by a factor of more than 2.5 and they are ‘adjusted’ by using values of assumed “Aerosol forcing” that differ by a factor of 2.4.
So, each climate model emulates a different climate system. Hence, at most only one of them emulates the climate system of the real Earth because there is only one Earth. And the fact that they each ‘run hot’ unless fiddled by use of a completely arbitrary ‘aerosol cooling’ strongly suggests that none of them emulates the climate system of the real Earth.
Richard
Greg Goodman says: “‘video: modellers employed by the IPCC’
“are you sure about that?”
Yup!
From Websters:
em•ploy
transitive verb \im-ˈplȯi, em-\
: to use (something) for a particular purpose …
I love the way Izen attempts to explain, how a broken clock accurately indicates, the correct time, twice per day, and therefore is a valid instrument, and extremely useful to the climate community. Such biased warmism is constantly winning thinking minds over to the skeptical viewpoint. We need to do nothing more than let such speak, as often, as they can.
Bob T, you’ve come a long ways baby and the journey was certainly interesting. Thank-you and good luck. GK
@ izen says: September 13, 2013 at 5:08 am
That is either a bald faced lie, or the worst example of plain stupidity ever. Even after the “adjustments” to the data sets, the 1930s were still warmer than the 1940s. And that is just one example.
Science is not about lying izen.
lurker, passing through laughing says: “Greg Goodman makes a good point: The IPCC gets to have its cake and eat it too: They compile work of those they approve of. They do not actually employ modelers or run models, as I understand it.”
See my reply to Greg Goodman
Gail Combs: Thanks. I had the same idea. This is from page 20 of “Climate Models Fail”:
More than 20 years have passed since the IPCC’s first assessment report in 1990, and the climate science community still cannot simulate natural factors that can cause global warming over multidecadal periods — or that stop it cold in its tracks. There’s a very basic reason for this: in their consensus-building efforts, governments have only paid for research about the hypothetical impacts of manmade greenhouse gases. They did not fund research to determine why climate has changed and will change in the future.
Just look at how the IPCC defines its role. The following quote is from the IPCC organization History webpage:
Today the IPCC’s role is as defined in Principles Governing IPCC Work, “…to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”
Climate science is now anchored, stagnating, unable to free itself of an astronomically high percentage of peer-reviewed climate science studies, which blame manmade greenhouse gases for climate change, without comprehending the natural factors that actually cause multidecadal variations in temperatures and precipitation.
Bob T:
So from Webster, (“something”– not someone) the models are employed by IPCC, not the modellers. Goodman is right and you should change your sentence.
izen says:
To quote an old assessment of models made a Bayesian:-
“”essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful”
Yes, but some are worthless or even dangerous in that they mislead (intentionally?) as do the IPCC computer models. Any good an engineer must sorts out the junk from the useful models. This skill is lacking in the global warming/climate change community. I can’t help but think it is intentional since the facts are clear and are being ignored.
Bob, your work on ENSO is fanastic. thanks.
fantastic that is.
Bob,
I watched the entire video and it is excellent , congratulations and best wishes with the excellent book.
I plan to selectively distribute your video link since it is clear, easily understood, yet thorough.
Keep up the pressure on the CAGW believers.
I agree. Many readers will not see it Bob’s way, and he will “lose” them to some degree.
Do all computational climate models fail indeed? Is there not at least a single one of them (with a specific parametrization scheme or whatever), which is not falsified by measurements collected during the last one and a half decade?
If there is one (or more), the way science is supposed to proceed is to abandon all falsified models immediately and keep working on the surviving subset.
I am getting curious now. In case the latter subset is not empty, what is their long term forecast and how it differs from the full ensemble average used by the IPCC?
RICHARDSCOURTNEY POST AT 08:20AM SEPT. 13TH. Is quite good and said well.
Berényi Péter:
Your post at September 13, 2013 at 9:34 am asks and says in total
Firstly, I draw your attention to my above post at September 13, 2013 at 8:20 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/13/a-video-preview-of-climate-models-fail/#comment-1416063
It explains why your question is misplaced; viz.
at most only one and probably none of the climate models emulates the climate system of the real Earth.
However, I recently answered your specific question on another WUWT thread. That answer is at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/05/statistical-proof-of-the-pause-overestimated-global-warming-over-the-past-20-years/#comment-1409041
I copy part of that post to here.
I hope this is a clear and sufficient answer.
Richard
Bob Tisdale said:
“To make it easier to read, Climate Models Fail is being proofread by someone without a technical background. Her suggestions have been great.”
Bob, if I didn’t already admire you, that statement ALONE would give you huge brownie points in my book! THANK YOU. It’s not that I don’t like the technical side, I LOVE IT. I just don’t always understand it. I plow through it because the “truth” is what matters to me, and if it’s in there, I want to find it. But many people don’t care and will ignore anything they don’t easily comprehend. The simpler the message, the easier it is to spread to the masses.
So thank you for considering the viewpoint of the less technically inclined BEFORE going to print and taking the suggestions of your proof reader to heart. It matters!
Bob, thanks for posting. I always enjoy and appreciate your posts. It is a good video.
Most people who are not experts need slides/graphs that fully incorporate the point consolidated within the slide/graph. Implicit relationships do not get across effectively.
To help convey your point you may consider adding a second trace on each temperature anomaly chart to indicate atmospheric concentration of CO2 over the same time frame. The disparity will then more effectively be related.
I wonder what the target audience is for this book. I always try to look at things from the perspective of those without a science or engineering background. Why? Becasue I seem to be surrounded by them. How will they react to this video and the book? Eyes will begin to glaze over pretty quickly I fear. Too many graphs and too much jargon. People want to hear a story and be entertained. A video with cartoon charactors might be an idea. It’s got to have great imagery, relationships, emotions, personal growth, etc. Mountains of dry facts are deadly boring. Water World is one of my favorite movies. It exaggerates beyond reason what the world would be like with no ice to communicate the message. A great story not easily forgotten. It is now part of the culture and consciousness. Is it any wonder we find educated adults who think the Arctic and Greenland are ice-free?
Bob Tisdale,
LOL! My favorite line (among many good ones) was your last (I heard it as if directed at a bunch of Climatologists sitting before you in a lecture hall, mouths hanging open in dismay at what they’ve just seen and heard): “Have a nice day.”
Bwah, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaaaa! , all you pseudo-scientists grubbing for government $$, your climate models are CRAP!
(Re: your target audience, I see it as: 1) motivated laypersons like Aphan and I who are not put off by “multidecadal,” etc..; and even more, 2) genuine scientists (and journalists) who either mistakenly believed in the validity of the climate models or who knew they were junk, but needed a way out of the CAGW jungle. Your book is the way out. WAY TO GO!)
Well done!
A fan,
Janice
P.S. Josh, GREAT artwork, perfectly underscoring Tisdale’s message. “Mrs. P.” – lol.
=====================================================================
Hmmm….Bob, you are right but I think many will read that line as “hired by the IPCC”. Perhaps change the sentence to something like, “Video: modellers whose models are used by the IPCC”.
(Of course the modellers themselves are being “used” also but in another sense.)
Bob Tisdale,
For your future thoughts on climate modeler’s bias you might consider Craig Loehle’s book (link below) ‘Becoming a Successful Scientist: Strategic Thinking for Scientific Discovery’. It has a wonderful section on general bias and also scientific bias that discusses in particular the (IIRC) toolmaker’s fallacy / bias.
http://www.amazon.com/Craig-Loehle-PhD/e/B0034NGGNA
John
richardscourtney says:
September 13, 2013 at 9:54 am
The problem is the ‘Texas sharpshooter fallacy’.
Indeed it is. And, as you can see, I am not a great fan of complex computational climate models fitted to a single run of a unique physical entity either.
Still, eliminating already failed models is a must, their “projections” should be excluded from all analyses, their funding be discontinued. And we may even learn something important along this way, by seeing what makes the difference between immediate failures and somewhat tenable ones. It does not mean of course any one of the remaining models could be used to forecast future climate states, much less their average behavior, but in my reading these models originally were not even meant to do that, they were only heuristic tools to make forming conjectures easier, to be verified experimentally later on.
Salvatore Del Prete says: “fantastic that is.”
Thanks, Salvatore. I liked “fanastic” too.
Mike M says: September 13, 2013 at 7:30 am
Nor are such “fudge factors” limited to the computer models – as at least one of the modelling crowd has acknowledged:
Carefully chosen fudge – “gold standard” science explained
Bob Tisdale, thanks for a great introductory video; I suspect your book will be a tremendous aid to those of us who fall into the category of “statistically-challenged” 🙂
excellent video clip Bob. I will certainly be buying a copy of the book in one form or another
TV series coming up: When Climate Models Fail!
And it was my idea! I expect my name on the credits, and a large slice of the royalties.
Sod Webster. Here’s what the real dictionary says:
employ
verb
[with object]
1 give work to (someone) and pay them for it:
the firm employs 150 people
[with object and infinitive]:
temporary staff can be employed to undertake the work
(as adjective employed)
83 percent of employed people were working in full-time jobs
•keep occupied:
the newcomers are employed in developing the technology into a product
2 make use of:
the methods they have employed to collect the data
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/employ
Berényi Péter:
In your response to me at September 13, 2013 at 2:51 pm you say
YES! And the misuse of the models for provision of forecasts has resulted in their discredit (which is sad).
Richard
Bob Tisdale says: @ September 13, 2013 at 8:41 am
Gail Combs: Thanks.
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Nice.
This is a really important point to get though to people. It is the reason papers that do not give a genuflect to CO2 as the main climate control knob are never discussed or included in the IPCC reports. They are outside the mandate.
As my husband just remarked they were given the mandate to determine the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin and now they have lots of computer models determining that number and even computer simulations of the probable dances….
Just to be clear, my comment http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/13/a-video-preview-of-climate-models-fail/#comment-1416210 was meant more along along the lines of correcting a typo.
I made it before I watched the video. It would probably be tough to go back and edit a video already out there. But if the line is in the book then I do think that you should be clear that you don’t mean the modellers are being paid by the IPCC since that is not what you meant
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Treasure maps maybe. Only the pirates got rich.
Izen: You are wrong about models. You compare sample groups against a null hypothesis, not predictions. When you make a prediction you use forecast skill. You measure forecast skill by comparing your models predictions against other models predictions. It’s the only way of knowing how good a model is.
Bob Tisdale: After reading your first book, I found your technical posts much easier to follow. Your book was well written and as I mentioned before, was able to walk the reader through the subject matter without being insultingly simplistic, while still being simple to follow.
I have not yet watched the video above… however, I will buy your book in pdf format when it comes out. I know you will let us know! I think anyone who benefits from your contributions here should buy your books for two reasons. 1) It will help us better understand your contributions. 2) Your contributions are valuable and we should support your efforts.
It is interesting that Izen would quote George Box at the end of his comment on models. I think the author of the 1978 ” Statistics For Experimenters” along with Stu and Bill Hunter, would be appalled at models in use today in the climate debate. Statistical models are to be used in conjunction with Mechanistic models as we fine tune our understanding of the world. Statistical models help frame the questions that help fine tune the mechanistic models, not the other way around. The end goal, as in any scientific endeavor, is to end up with better mechanistic models that explain the energy balance that our earth experiences.
Ric