Dr. Judith Curry lets an announcement slip in comments.
My understanding of climate is not helped much by climate models. Stay tuned, our big paper on natural internal climate variability just got accepted by Climate Dynamics
Ask yourself why the common sense stuff that I say is regarded as news.
Source: http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/17/consensus-denialism/#comment-381667
I understand also that there’s a meaty essay coming in a major newspaper by Curry, I know which one it is, but I don’t want to give anti-skeptic zealots a head start into pressuring the editor ahead of time. They’ll just have to ask he be fired afterwards like they usually do.
According to comments in this post, David Appell has been quoted as saying:
“The distressing thing is how some people are all ready to attack models, instead of helping make them better.”
My response to Mr. Appell’s comment is: “Who says Dr. Curry’s “attack” won’t improve the models? When you live in an ivory tower, everything looks white. If someone doesn’t come along and explicitly tell the modelers that their models are wrong, why should the modelers change anything?”
A least Dr. Curry’s remarks might get the modelers thinking–but I quit believing in miracles when I was still a child.
If Mr. Appell needs (but doesn’t wish to be) to be told his precious models are useless for the purpose then he has no hope of improving them, nor would he see a need. Mr. Appell – you should pay attention when people tell you what you later ask them to tell you. The models are crap.
The kind of crap Judith faces from the AGW crowd is exactly the sort of thing an ex-Scientologist faces after leaving the cult. Endless personal attacks, smears, and denunciations based on her lack of allegiance to The Truth. It’s another indication that climatology isn’t a science any more, as much as a religious cult that makes it very hard for its members to leave and strike out on their own.
Eustace Cranch says:
September 19, 2013 at 8:08 am
Make the models better? Here’s a suggestion: Dart Board.
Lots cheaper too.
…………
Eustace -have you taken account of the beer required to make darts sociable?
And, dare I suggest, reasonably accurate in the hands of a skilled practicioner.
Does that sound like climate astrology?
I hope not, Sir!
Auto
“My understanding of climate is not helped much by climate models.”
Why would it be. Climate models are simply someone else’s understanding of climate, digitized into a computer model. The computer won’t do a damn thing until someone puts their ideas into it. The next step is to run the model and see if it fits reality. We did that. It doesn’t.
Time to digitize and run a different understanding of climate, preferably one that includes a bit more recognition of the real world and what we know about it.
It was an ideology long before the IPCC was founded and Dr. Curry stuck to the party talking points for a very long time.
She’s still a statist consensus player and creates a very limited skeptical position. That becomes the object of hate of warmists but at the same time it’s all very much within the AGW meme and the frameworks. “The Pause” being an example, a euphemism for “complete observational AGW hypothesis failure” but skeptics will continue to accept the talking points. By doing so it advances and holds on to warmist gains even as it appears to undermine their argument. It’s a form of minimized concession in a debate, Dr. Curry is an expert at this.
Dr. Curry has yet to own up and I expect she never will. Any thinking person knew in 1975 or 1980 at the latest where climate science was going and what the politics were that she shared with the consensus drivers. Model opinions are trivia at this stage, skeptics still behave like house slaves. It’s all 25 years too late to earn a pardon.
Paul Westhaver says: September 19, 2013 at 9:31 am “It’s [turtles] all the way down.”
Bart – thanks for the link, excerpted below for public edification.
This suggests a new collective noun: “an infinitude of turtles”.
One could also say “an infinitude of worthless climate models”, programmed by “an infinitude of dyslexic climate modellers”, yielding “an infinitude of exaggerated global warming predictions” (er, sorry, “projections”).
John said above:
Our green friend David Appell had the first comment on Judith’s blog entry, which is entitled “Consensus Denialism.” Here is what he said about Judith:
“The distressing thing is how some people are all ready to attack models, instead of helping make them better.”
OK David, here are some helpful suggested steps to make the climate models better:
1. Adjust the Surface Temperature (ST) database downward by about 0.05 to 0.07C per decade, back to about 1940, to correct for a probable strong warming bias in the ST data.
2. Decrease the ECS (sensitivity) to about 1/10 of its current level, to between 0.0 and 0.5C. If ECS exists, it is much smaller than current estimates.
3. Eliminate the fabricated aerosol data to enable the false high ECS values used in the climate models. The aerosol data was always provably false (Google “DV Hoyt” ClimateAudit). For example: http://climateaudit.org/2006/07/19/whitfield-subcommittee-witnesses-to-be-questioned/
4. Include a strong natural cyclical variation based on either the PDO (~60 years) or the Gleissberg Cycle (~90 years) – see which one fits the ST data best.
Other than that, the models are great! Actually no, not so great – the models have probably “put the cart before the horse” – we know that the only clear signal in the data is that CO2 LAGS temperature (in time) at all measured time scales, from a lag of about 9 months in the modern database to about 800 years in the ice core records – so the concept of “climate sensitivity to CO2” (ECS) may be incorrect, and the reality may be “CO2 sensitivity to temperature”. See work by me and Murry Salby:
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVCps_SwD5w&list=PLILd8YzszWVTp8s1bx2KTNHXCzp8YQR1z&index=3
BTW, this does not preclude the possibility that increases in atmospheric CO2 over the past ~century are primarily due to human combustion of fossil fuels, but there are other plausible causes – (Google “mass balance argument” Engelbeen Courtney). For example:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/19/what-you-mean-we-arent-controlling-the-climate/#comment-961108
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/05/the-emily-litella-moment-for-climate-science-and-co2/#comment-712585
So good luck with those models David =- hope this helps to make them better. 🙂
Regards to all, Allan
Meanwhile, back at the Turtles, all the way down:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
The most widely known version, which obviously is not the source (see below), appears in Stephen Hawking’s 1988 book A Brief History of Time, which starts:
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s tortoises all the way down!”
—Hawking, 1988[1]
In 1905, Oliver Corwin Sabin, Bishop of the Evangelical Christian Science Church, wrote:
The old original idea which was enunciated first in India, that the world was flat and stood on the back of an elephant, and the elephant did not have anything to stand on was the world’s thought for centuries. That story is not as good as the Richmond negro preachers who said the world was flat and stood on a turtle. They asked him what the turtle stood on and he said another turtle, and they asked what that turtle stood on and he said another turtle, and finally they got him in a hole and he said. “I tell you there are turtles all the way down.”
—Sabin, 1905[2]
Many 20th-century attributions point to William James as the source.[3][4] James referred to the fable of the elephant and tortoise several times, but told the infinite regress story with “rocks all the way down” in his 1882 essay, “Rationality, Activity and Faith”.[5] In the form of “rocks all the way down”, the story predates James to at least 1838.[6]
In 1854 the story in the current form appears, attributed by bible skeptic Joseph Barker to preacher Joseph Frederick Berg:
My opponent’s reasoning reminds me of the heathen, who, being asked on what the world stood, replied, “On a tortoise.” But on what does the tortoise stand? “On another tortoise.” With Mr. Barker, too, there are tortoises all the way down.
—Barker, 1854[7]
There is an allusion to the story in David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (published in 1779):
How can we satisfy ourselves without going on in infinitum? And, after all, what satisfaction is there in that infinite progression? Let us remember the story of the Indian philosopher and his elephant. It was never more applicable than to the present subject. If the material world rests upon a similar ideal world, this ideal world must rest upon some other; and so on, without end. It were better, therefore, never to look beyond the present material world.
—Hume, 1779[8]
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again….keep your eyes open for new, catastrophic articles discussing ocean acidification. The “lesser known twin” of global warming is soon about to become an only child, and it will want all the attention.
http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/pacific-ocean-perilous-turn-overview/
You improve the models by turning them off.
Rule of climate ‘science’ when the models and reality differ in value its reality that is in error ‘
so models all the way is no problem , because they can never be ‘wrong ‘ its only peoples perception’s of reality which is getting in the way of their ‘truth’
CRS, DrPH says:
September 19, 2013 at 12:27 pm
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again….keep your eyes open for new, catastrophic articles discussing ocean acidification. The “lesser known twin” of global warming is soon about to become an only child, and it will want all the attention.
Oh yes, they try this all the time.
However when one looks at the CO2 map of the oceans it is very difficult to explain an “acidification”
http://sciencenordic.com/co2-map-provides-quality-control-climate-research
Watch where the CO2 is high in the surface water and how much does it exceed other regions (more then double)
Dr Judith Curry is the Goddess of Science !
Worth remembering: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” — Richard Feynman
And since people have difficulty with such things these days, there are three variations of interest:
1. Belief that experts are ignorant.
2. Lack of belief to the one way or the other.
3. Belief that experts are not-ignorant.
If you state that: ‘Consensus of a Subculture’ (Common Wisdom for a Small Common) and ‘Theories/Models Are Empiricism’ are proper science then there is only one of those three choices available. And regardless of whether your choice for ‘science’ is 1 or 3 then the other is ‘anti-science’ or ‘science denialism’ by definition.
I don’t care which definition anyone picks, nor should you, so long as they abide by all the consequences of that belief. eg. If you pick 1 as science, then an expert must provide *proof* that others can exercise, not a magic show, to demonstrate things. If you pick 3 then, because the Pope, Catholicism is science; and Public Policy should not run contrary to it.
Standard Red Herring on offer: Feynman is produced as an expert, so agreeing with Feynman proves you pick 3. Nope, it’s a proposition and may be accepted or rejected on other grounds. But Feynman was an ‘expert’ on the philosophy of science. So if 3 is your answer, then he cannot be wrong according to your belief. Which leads to an absurdity. If 1 is your answer, then it hardly matters. Your belief is not contingent on Feynman’s quote.
In all cases, if 2 is the answer, then the only solution is for scientists to produce their proofs of their claims. Which is the same notion as 1.
Tom G: Excellent article.
We certainly need to continue to kick them while they are down. They must never be allowed to rise again to peddle blatant lies disguised as “science” in the pursuit of hidden political agendas.The Left, who dominate the CAGW agenda will surely rise again to install the ultra green agenda they dare not tell us about. If it were so great, why not tell us all? No, they know the People would not approve, but they do it anyway, because THEY think it is good for us. Yeah, sure. Now is the time to go on the attack and have the warmists fully exposed and their acts of treason adequately punished, and I do not mean the BS of saying “sorry.” “Sorry we lied and subverted science in the quest of destroying society and humanity to install an insane Fabian Utopia with us Lefties as the inheritors of the earth with the rest of you as our slaves.” (sob, sob) Perhaps a vote on the correct punishment as a warning to those that may try this again.I shall start the vote- extreme public torture and stripping of all assets. Big businesses that have been complicit(Bilderburg group, I am writing to you) will have to find new CEOs. Punishment is not so much retribution as a warning to those that may transgress in the future. The issue here is that the crime is the highest category of treason the human race has ever seen thus far.
There seems to be delight in the mystifying the prevarications of political activists. There is a simple explanation of their tactics – which makes the limited ‘denier’ – ‘warmist’ axis of climate possibility explicable if you compare it to an equally artificial and irrelevant construct : left – right politics. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100027748/the-real-reason-for-agw-post-normal-science/
High Treason says:
September 19, 2013 at 1:56 pm
Thos. Jefferson said ‘…for I have sworn on the altar of g-d eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.’
I agree with you both.
I know models exist. There are people known who make them. But God? Show me some evidence!
We should have a model that predicts the accuracy of climate models by factoring funding sources and relationships to governing bodies. I’d be willing to bet some interesting trends would emerge that would have these very same people arguing against the use of models
Tomorrow, Gina McCarthy will announce Co2 limits for new power plant sources. She will say that the science is settled on the matter and that the country needs to control carbon else climate calamities will rage out of control. My point is this….the scientific debate better find leverage on the regulatory calendar and quick…
The “only projections” excuse would work much better if the IPCC and friends did not then go on to treat the average of projections as predictions suitable for guiding, or even dictating, the policy decisions of governments world-wide. They’re projections, so not subject to validation, on the one hand, but “highly likely” predictions on the other.
One or the other. Not both.
“internal” = Total BS
Scott Basinger says:
September 19, 2013 at 8:13 am
Mosher had a good suggestion a while back that we pare back on the models which have proven to be inaccurate and focus on a couple of the better models.
============
If 50 people predict the future, 1 will have a better prediction than all the rest, simply by chance.
Fire the editor of a major newspaper? For factual reporting? No, not even the Team can do that…. They should also not bite the hand that feeds them. It is unwise to offend an editor who decides what his newspaper will report… he (she) could be the vengeful type, and instead of fawning adoration, climate alarmism reports could take on a distinctly skeptical edge.
@ferd berple 7:25, @Scott Basinger 8:13.
You are both right. There is absolutely no reason to trust all 29+ models as equally probable, which is what the ensemble does. This is one area where Bayesian updating can really add value by changing the weights on the candidate model and enrich the weight of the models closer to the observations and deweight those most disconnectd to the observations. This is something that can be iterated as more data and more measures are considered.
None of the 29+ are the cause of the observations. So there is no cause and effect. So what we are looking for is the probability that each of the 29+ models could have produced the observations. That will be all very low probabilities, but some will be relatively much bigger than others.
That alone will not be enough. We should also include in some non-GCM “Null Hypothesis” models that can also make projections and we calculate probabilites that each of these Null models can predict the observations. Wouldn’t it be fun if one or more Null models made it into the top five weightings.