Current peer review science, by attempting to explain away model failure, in fact confirms that the science is wrong
Guest essay by David M. Hoffer
It has become a favorite tactic amongst trolls to declare their belief in peer reviewed science. With this simple strategy, they at once excuse themselves from the need to know anything about the science, and at the same time seek to discredit skeptic arguments on the grounds that, not having been published in peer reviewed journals, they may be dismissed out of hand.
A retreat to authoritarian arguments in the face of dead simple observations is not new. It is a repeat of history. Not having learned from it, we appear to be condemned to repeat it. But both history and the current peer reviewed science are, if one steps back and looks at the big picture, on the skeptic side.
In the fifth century BC, Empedocles theorized that one could see by virtue of rays emanating from one’s eyes. Falsifying this notion required no more than pointing out that one cannot see in a dark room. Despite this simple observation, his theory enjoyed substantial support for the next 1600 years.
Galileo died while under house arrest for supporting the notion that the earth orbited the sun. His was convicted in part on the basis of peer reviewed literature of the time insisting that the movement of the planets as observed from the earth could be explained by the planets simply reversing direction in orbit from time to time. For nearly two thousand years, into the early 1800’s, when people fell ill, the peer reviewed literature confirmed that the best course of action was to let some blood out of them. The simple observation that death rates increased when this treatment was applied was dismissed out of hand on the premise that, if it was true, it would appear in medical journals. Sound familiar?
History is replete with examples of what seems today to be utterly absurd ideas. Ideas which stubbornly refuse to die, sustained in part by the equally absurd notion that evidence to the contrary was not to be accepted simply because it hadn’t appeared in the “right” publications. But is the notion of climate science today as easily falsified by simple observation? I submit that it is. We have the climate models themselves to upon which to rely.
For what are the climate models other than the embodiment of the peer reviewed science? Is there a single model cited by the IPCC that claims to not be based on peer reviewed science? Of course there isn’t. Yet simple observation shows that the models, and hence the peer reviewed literature upon which they are based, are wrong. We have none other than the IPCC themselves to thank for showing us that.
The leaked Second Order Draft of IPCC AR5 laid bare the failure of the models to predict the earth’s temperature going forward in time. In fact, if one threw out all but the best 5% of the model results…they would still be wrong, and obviously so. They all run hotter than reality. Exposed for the world to see that the models (and hence the science upon which they are based) had so utterly failed, the IPCC responded by including older models they had previously declared obsolete as now being part of the current literature:
Even with those older and supposedly obsolete models included, the models look to be complete failures. In other words, confronted with the data showing that thousands are dying from bloodletting, the IPCC is resurrecting old studies showing that three or four patients recovered once in an old study from a long time ago. They are point blank asking you to believe that planets reverse direction in orbit quite of their own volition. They’ve contrived a theory that you can’t see in the dark because the rays from your eyes must interact with light to work.
As ridiculous as that may seem, for the IPCC, it is (literally) even worse than that. For this we have the foremost climate scientists on the planet to thank.
Kevin Trenberth, arguably the most politically powerful climate scientist on earth, famously lamented in the ClimateGate Emails that we cannot account for “the missing heat”, a tacit admission that the models are wrong. Since then we’ve seen multiple papers suggesting that perhaps the heat is being sequestered in the deep oceans where, conveniently, we cannot measure it. If true, this also invalidates the models, since they predicted no such thing.
Dr Roy Spencer’s paper suggests that the heat is escaping to space. If he’s right, the models are wrong. More recently we have the paper by Cowtan and Way, which tries to make the case that the heat is hiding in places on earth where we have no weather station or satellite data. Pretty selective that heat, going where nobody can measure it, but not where we can. If they are right, then not a single model predicted any such thing, and so, once again, the models would be wrong. Spencer’s paper stands apart from the others because it doesn’t twist itself into absurd contortions in a blatant attempt to preserve the CAGW storyline. But make no mistake about it, all these papers are being published, not because the models (and the science they are predicted upon) are right, but because they are wrong, and obviously so.
No longer is the debate in regard to if the models are wrong. The debate is now about why the models are wrong. The models having fallen, the peer reviewed science they purport to represent falls with them.
But you need not believe me in that regard.
Just the peer reviewed science by the foremost climate scientists on earth.
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Decades ago, I read of an interesting psychological experiment regarding what Scientists could perceive in data.
It concluded that Scientists “believe what they are predisposed to believe”. They easily rationalize rejecting evidence that is not in agreement. They could not even perceive evidence that definitely contradicted what they believed.
In my years in Science, I observed that is pretty much the case — Scientists miss the “obvious” if it contradicts their beliefs. I even “fell” to it “once”. I swore I never would again. Then, despite my intentions, I partially did it once again. I still shudder thinking about it — apparently atypical.
Seems to have morphed from trolls to Galileo. Oh well…
Galileo observed the “four” moons orbiting Jupiter and later the phases of Venus. He knew from observation that the Geocentric Universe was wrong.
The Catholic Church was not the author of the Geocentric Universe. They can thank Aristotle for that – 300 years before the birth of Christ. Ptolemy in 140 AD would write several volumes on the Geocentric Universe, which was accepted by the Catholic Church because it was consistent with scripture which had the sun moving and the earth fixed.
The above point may appear a mere quibble but it is important to note that the Church did not originate the theory, they merely helped to enforce it. The scientists in Galileo’s day were adamant defenders of Aristotle and Ptolemy, more so than the Church.
Reading up on Galileo I get the sense he was an arrogant turd in the spirit of Michael Mann (not at all comparing the two on intelligence, only on how they treat others who disagree with their theories). The difference of course is that Galileo’s work offered an improvement in our knowledge of the universe.
David M. Hoffer, I enjoyed reading your commentary and thus I thank you for posting it. I also agreed with pretty much 100% of what you said ….. because it is what was needed to be said, …… and said again n’ again n’ again.
And you were 100% correct when you stated this, to wit:
“A retreat to authoritarian arguments in the face of dead simple observations is not new. It is a repeat of history. Not having learned from it, we appear to be condemned to repeat it.”
I believe it was the above statement that “sparked” a lot of posted commentary about Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, et el, which in my opinion was “much ado about nothing” simply because all their “trials and tribulations” were the result of “history repeating itself” during the 2nd Millennium AD.
Which by the way, was just a “repeat of history” that occurred at the beginning of the 1st Millennium AD. And we are now on track for a “repeat of history” in the 3rd Millennium AD iffen the “authoritarian arguments” win out over common sense and factual science.
If the “authoritarians” had not burned the Library of Alexandria in the 1st Millennium AD ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria ) …….. and the “authoritarians” (Church of Rome) had not mandated subservience during both the 1st and 2nd Millennium AD, …. then the likes of Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler et el would have had access to the knowledge of the world’s great astronomers such as Hipparchus (162 to 127 BC – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparchus ), … and therefore they would not have been subjected to said “trials and tribulations” during the Dark Ages of Authoritarianism .
Pippen Kool says:
December 30, 2013 at 6:05 am
“And reviewers normally help to point out the scientific flaws and thus strengthen the work.”
In the same way that ‘miasma’ was a supported/undisputed theory for so long?
Group think has been and always is a potential problem and thus peer review is not without its problems as has been mentioned many, many times.
True also is the fact that blogs can to easily descend into chaos with wild, unsupported (and unsupportable) rants becoming front and centre.
Welcome to the internet age.
Scientists do not “believe” – that is a term of religion. Scientists doubt.
Question everything.
By design peer review leads to consensus science. Otherwise scientists would have to accept for publication theories they did not necessarily agree with but had a faint hope the author could be right.
Steven Mosher says:
December 30, 2013 at 1:01 am
“3. You realize that some of the models perform better than others. Which performs the best?
and on what tests? Of the 2 or three models that cannot be rejected by statistical tests
how did you “falsify” them?!
Ahh…. Mosher appears.
I will see if I can get him to address this point as he has always run away in the past. I think the Las La La switch gets triggered in his head.
The Models are wrong. This is a fact not an opinion and it is a fact that can be proven rather easily.
Of course you cannot falsify them yet by just checking their forecasts against the real world as not enough time has passed to be definite. Also you cannot run an experiment with the Earth to falsify them.
However, there is another way to disprove any hypothesis. All you need to do is show that it produces an impossible result.
So what would be an impossible result for an accurate and correct model?
Well what does it output? It outputs a climate signal quantified by the Earths global temperature. This output is compared and graphed to past actual temperature data and is then taken forward to predict the future.
All the current climate models do very well on the back cast against data. Remarkably so really, over the 20th century as the temperature data shows rises and falls so do the models track it with little variation except for the shortest periods. Is that good?…….. NO!
You see the models average out a lot of the natural variation factors, mainly ENSO. The designers original argument for this was that it made the models simpler (true) and that anyway natural variation was so small it did not affect the main signal significantly. (false)
Now they say that ‘of course natural variation is strong enough to mask the true signal and for quite long periods, way longer than a decade’. They have to say that now of course because if they maintained their previous line, that it was too weak to have any significant effect, they would have had to ditch their models already.
So now both sceptics and warmists agree that natural variation (mainly ENSO) can completely alter the underlying modelled climate signal. Indeed the modelled climate signal, of a greatly accelerated warming rate, as compared to the 20th century, has been masked completely since 2001. Indeed it has cooled very slightly over this period. However, the warmists say ‘hey trust our models this is just natural variation doing its obvious thing’.
So we can see that the models and the temperature records are outputting different signals. One, a climate signal plus averaged variation and the other, the climate signal plus actual variation. It is now accepted that actual variation causes the models to drift well away from reality for quite lengthy periods. Therefore the fact that the models are currently drifting well away from reality does not prove they are wrong. Indeed it is a behaviour that only an accurate model would display in anything other than neutral variation. It doesn’t prove it is correct but it certainly doesn’t prove it is incorrect
So what would be impossible result for an accurate and correct model to output. Well clearly that would be a signal that does closely match the actual temperature data over the short to medium term. An apple doesn’t equal an orange no matter how you cut it. Only in the long run would the signals align. In the short to medium term an accurate model must run either hot or cold
So, given that ENSO has been doing its thing over the 20th century, the fact that on the back cast run the models track the temperature record very closely in all its up and down movements proves that these models are in fact false. That is an impossible result for an accurate model. QED.
In their hubris, the warmists when fiddling with their free parameters to make a great fit with the historical data, overlooked that they were trying to fit an apple to an orange! Or perhaps they didn’t think anyone would take much notice of them if they couldn’t even match the past.
So Mosher and Climateace You have the proof that the current models are false so what say you?
Alan
Mosher says: “They also have physics that is less well known.”
What physics is in the models that is “less well known”?
So far, two rousing defenses of climate models in this thread:
“Personally, I hope all the climate models are completely and utterly wrong. I hope that the oceans and deep oceans are not warming at all. I hope that atmospheric CO2 concentrations are completely irrelevant to climate. I hope that the chemical changes in the oceans….” by climateace (December 29, 2013 at 8:10 pm)
“7. The models are found on known physcial laws ( gravity for example) and radiative physics.
They also have physics that is less well known. When you reject the science in the models do you reject it all or only a part? how did you decide which parts? or do you reject it all?” by Steven Mosher (December 30, 2013 at 1:01 am)
OTOH several commenters have pointed out that models have failed and why (e.g. missing positive feedback). Perhaps climateace can justify his strawman by pointing to other replies where someone claims that “CO2 concentrations are completely irrelevant to climate” I didn’t find one in this thread but I have read that in other threads. But it doesn’t elevate the conversation here.
Mosher OTOH legitimately points to some of the complexities in climate models like how they use “less well known” physics other than widely agreed-upon radiative physics. One example is cloud microphysics explained here: ftp://texmex.mit.edu/ftp/ftp/pub/emanuel/PAPERS/ezr99.pdf One conclusion of the paper is that regardless of one’s choices from a “disturbing” number of parameters, all the models had too much warmth and moisture in the upper troposphere (aka missing hotspot) and that was due, in the author’s view, to inadequate vertical resolution. The elephant they do not mention is inadequate horizontal resolution, specifically the use of large grid cell buoyancy parameters as one of the inputs to the cloud simulations.
Essentially the entire premise of water vapor feedback cannot be tested in such models regardless of the correctness of their radiative physics.
A second failing of the climate models is their prediction of a shift of mid-latitude storm tracks to higher latitudes (along with a stronger polar jet). Nowadays we hear much from promoters of CAGW about increases in mid-latitude storms, seemingly unaware that that is a negative feedback. Either there will be more storminess (which we can easily mitigate) or there will be amplified warming. But CAGW cannot include both.
Climatace provides the perfect case for why he is wrong about peer review vs blog review.
The ability for him to come here and publicly blog review any of the posts is in itself demonstrative of the superiority of blog review.
Imagine where climate science would be taking our political machinery today were it not for the scrutiny provided by ClimateAudit, WUWT and alike? Imagine
What would the IPCC be getting away with? They would be peddling a grotesque array of advocacy papers containing fabricated data that was never subjected to any critiquing at all.
The commingling of the legitimate with the concocted has rendered climate science and the IPCC disabled.
In stark contrast to other sciences climate science has sought to smother the scrutiny peer review is intended to provide. The ease at which this field can do so is the real catastrophe.
Who’s to be blamed or credited with exposing the institution? Not the institution.
Climateace tries to equate the role of medicine, air travel and weather forecasting peer review to that which has occurred in Climate Journals.
His own effort to elevate the low brow path of climate science is getting the scrutiny it deserves.
Scrutiny is everything.
Climate science peer review has been so vulnerable to the influences of political agendas that it no longer resembles honest scrutiny at all.
Any pretense of reliability survival is delusional at best and purposefully mendacious at worst.
Everyone knows the blogosphere is also chock full of the open ended and limitless accusations of conspiracies gone wild.
But Climateace IS being purposefully mendacious by comparing the best of peer review to the worst of the blogosphere.
In doing so he is contributing to the devaluing, or smothering, of honest scrutiny.
Climateace says “give me the peer-reviewed stuff any time” because “they are more likely to be right more of the time than the bloggers”.
Then he puts his foot on the scales by listing some blogging offenses with an implied assertion that the “make stuff up and then move right along when logical heat is applied” problem
exists only on the blogging side of scrutiny.
People can decide for themselves where to place confidence.
Peer review is private, controlled and influenced.
Blog review is open, fully exposed and welcoming of all unfiltered scrutiny.
I’ll take the honesty of the later because we are far more likely to discover that what was “right” is terribly wrong.
Pal Review, Censorship and worse.
Thank you for a very interesting article.
Many young people have been very poorly instructed in the art of critical thinking, and have tremendous difficulty differentiating between politics and science.
An acquaintance of mine, a young college student and warmist, insisted to me that her professors taught only the facts and let the students make up their own minds, and from this factual presentation, she concluded that there was a climate “crisis” caused by carbon dioxide.
I engaged her in conversation in a non-confrontational way, and, in essence, asked her what particular facts convinced her of this claim, what the counter-arguments were, and why she rejected them. In the ensuing discussion, it became apparent that she knew nothing about even the existence of the so-called climate models, much less anything about why they might be right or wrong. Instead, her version of the “facts” on which she based her opinion was that “scientists” said it was so, and that the way she knew even that is that her professors had so instructed. Yet she stood by her claim that her professors let the students decide for themselves based on “facts”. I politely changed the topic, as I usually do when my interlocutor fails to recognize that their argument fails even basic logical sanity checks.
It seems to me that this little vignette captures the essence of not only the perplexing persistence of AGW nonsense in the public consciousness, but also many other troubling phenomena such as the otherwise inexplicable faith that central planning of a modern economy and Keynesian economics can actually work.
Perhaps a new term might apply to some peer reviews.
After the Kansas turnpike K-tag (electronic pass system)
Pal-tag. Past tense Pal-tagged.
An easy pass system for those with certain connections….
Pe
How much has the earth warmed since humans have burnt fossil fuels?
Is it 0.8c?
What is it exactly?
Can anyone tell me what the problem is?
….I’ve yet to see it.
What is the problem with such a slight temp increase?
Kate Forney says:
December 30, 2013 at 8:44 am
“Many … people have been very poorly instructed in the art of critical thinking, and have tremendous difficulty differentiating between politics and science.”
I agree totally with the above with only exception being that I would leave out the ‘young’ bit.
This is an excellent post. Whether or not all the details in the historic overview are accurate, the purpose of that overview here is simply to illustrate that the scientific authorities of the day can get it profoundly wrong, and hold on to their mistaken beliefs in the face of falsifying evidence. On this general point, there is so much evidence that we don’t need to get hung up on the details of one or the the other historical episode.
The author also does not purport that peer review is fundamentally useless. He simply implies that it cannot eliminate error, and that approval of a hypothesis by peer review becomes meaningless in the face of contradicting empirical evidence. It is not the proper use of peer review that he criticizes, but its abuse to support prerogatives of superior authority, which is widely practiced to fool the gullible. You can see the effect of this propaganda on half-educated members of the public clearly in newspaper articles and message boards, and even here on this thread, with poor souls like “climateace” making an exhibition of their confusion.
In my job, I’m regularly on both the giving and receiving ends of peer review. My field is far less politicized than climate science; still, I would say that at least 50%
of all peer reviews I get to read are clearly distorted by perceived competitive interests, and/or by plain ignorance. (My favorite remains a reviewer who criticized some of our chemistry but got fluorine and sulfur mixed up in the process; and the editor did not catch it and proceeded with rejection. Very funny in retrospect, but intensely frustrating in the fresh situation.) Whenever I see someone extolling the High Virtue of Peer Review, I conclude that they are either cynical or clueless.
Barry Marshall and his research on peptic ulcer disease is a much better example because it is modern and is a case-in-point example of how resistant the cronyistic world of modern science is to consider alternate theories and how defiant to the nonconformist it truly is. The man literally had to infect himself with the disease in order to get the establishment to realize what they knew to be true was actually wrong! Just like in this case, I expect it to take the arrival of a “Little Ice Age” for the cult to even accept the possibility of being wrong.
climateace says:
December 29, 2013 at 7:10 pm
Aphan
‘It has become a favorite tactic amongst trolls to declare their belief in peer reviewed science.”
There is no definition made by the author as to what constitutes a “troll” to him.’
I have just read the first two lines of your post and that was enough, methinks.
D Hoffer defines a troll as ‘someone who declares their belief in peer reviewed science’.
=======================
Ohh, boy. Trolls declare “belief” in peer-review. Therefore anyone who believes in peer review is a troll.
Bank robbers eat lunch, therefore anyone who eats lunch is a bank robber?
Please see my previous post in which I lament the utter lack of ability in many people to think critically.
re: climateace says: December 29, 2013 at 8:10 pm
Except, climateace, there is no 97% consensus – far from it, and those skeptical of AGW or who don’t believe in any significant AGW at all include some of the most eminent scientists of our times, quite a few Nobel Prize winners in the hard sciences, and even IPCC authors, along with tens of thousands of other scientists who are perfectly capable of telling when the scientific method is being violated and/or the actual body of science fails utterly to support a new hypothesis such as AGW. See a partial listing below. Yet people like you keep trying to pass it off as if there’s some big consensus of the knowledgeable scientists and the only skeptics are bloggers of questionable ethics. It’s an absurd position on your part at this point.
**1000+ peer reviewed research papers supporting skeptical arguments http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
**100 eminent scientists including Nobel winners and IPCC lead authors contesting Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW-e.g., human caused) who wrote the U.N. http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=d4b5fd23-802a-23ad-4565-3dce4095c360
**31,000+ scientists disavowing AGW, including over 9,000 Ph.D’s
http://www.petitionproject.org
**Over 1000 scientists worldwide disavowing AGW signed onto USA Senate report http://hatch.senate.gov/public/_files/USSenateEPWMinorityReport.pdf
or
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/9035/SPECIAL-REPORT-More-Than-1000-International-Scientists-Dissent-Over-ManMade-Global-Warming-Claims–Challenge-UN-IPCC–Gore
**100 plus scientists rebuke Obama as ‘simply incorrect’ on global warming, March 30, 2009
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/9764
[ Note: Many of the scientists are current and former UN IPCC reviewers and some have reversed their views on man-made warming and are now skeptical. Also note Nobel Laureate for Physics Dr. Ivar Giaever signed. Giaever endorsed Obama for President in an October 29, 2008 letter. See: Portfolio.com]
**Sixteen Concerned Scientists: No Need to Panic About Global Warming There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html
**Professor Lindzen has systematically destroyed every CAGW argument:
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02148/RSL-HouseOfCommons_2148505a.pdf
**Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’ In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”
**”Prof. Hal Lewis resigns from the American Physical Society, writing:
“The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.”
from: NoTricksZone by Pierre Gosselin http://notrickszone.com/
**One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”
Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Lüning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found. Well-connected to Hoffmann & Campe, he and Lüning decided to write the book. Die kalte Sonne [The Cold Sun] cites 800 sources and has over 80 charts and figures. It examines and summarizes the latest science.
Conclusion: Climate catastrophe is called off. The science was hyped.
**Dr. Lawrence Solomon, once a believer in AGW, realized belatedly, that he was wrong, because he found out that there were too many eminent Professors, who were skeptics and he decided to write a book, titled: “The Deniers” and he explained that he was sad about the enormous corruption among the doomsday “scientists”, especially when they were in the management of institutions like universities and weather-departments. http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/06/23/lawrence-solomon-supreme-skeptics/
**Like Professor Emeritus Robert Tennekens, a Dutch professor in meteorology, who after a 10-year stint lecturing in the U.S. was asked to lead the Dutch meteorological department in the Bilt, Holland. After he found out about the corrupt way his staff was following the I.P.C.C.’s computer-modeling, he tried to stamp this habit out, but because too many of his staff and colleagues had powerful friends in the then Dutch government, he was sacked from his job.
**Professor Bellamy the British botanist also received the sack, when he decided to speak out against the AGW corruption on B.B.C. That is not science, that is corruption, when honest people dare to speak out for the truth and then get sacked from their job/career.
**Professor Tim Flannery who was appointed by the Australian Prime Minister and who is paid Audlrs. 180,000 in tax-payers’ money to advise her on climate change, predicted over and over again for the last 5 years, that Australia by 2009 would be a total arid and barren place, with all the dams in the major cities totally empty. Well, since last year a number of states saw huge floods destroying their properties and crops as dams in Queensland overflowed and the same now is happening there and we in Sydney, New South Wales experienced the coldest days in our summer since 1916! [text from last three items copied from another commentator]
I can not argue your main point, because there is little to argue.
The models as presented by the IPCC are useless and wrong.
Simple test is the black box approach.
Ignoring the internal mechanism, know the inputs, access the output.
Compare output to real world.
These models are junk.
Unless you can redefine reality.
The choice by the IPCC to start hiding behind the average of the models, has now come to bite them,the average of diverging models is information?
Now Mr Mosher claims we must allow that some of these models might be more accurate than others, yes of course. But the promoters of these constructs had a choice, to select the most accurate or do what they did, projectile vomit a choice of probabilities, then average those.
If the IPCC had put forward those models it now claims are most accurate/likely, they might get some credit now, by claiming everything, they can prove nothing .
As useful as,”I predict the answer will be a number between 0 and 10, my esteemed computer models answer will be 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10.”
No matter what answer comes in, I am right.as long as the answer is in the range.
But my projection was completely valueless.
.
Peer review, like democracy, is a terrible system, except in comparison with the alternatives.
The problem nowadays is that there are many who claim to be scientists, but who practice “Post-Normal Science”, which is science subverted by politics. Peer review by Post-normalists, similar to review by the church hierarchy in the medieval period, is in serviced to Orthodoxy rather than truth, and must identified as such and rejected.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people,[1] by posting inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a forum, chat room, or blog), either accidentally[3][4] or with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[5] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[6]
This sense of the word troll and its associated verb trolling are associated with Internet discourse, but have been used more widely. Media attention in recent years has equated trolling with online harassment.
TROLL
Bad choice of words for this, the reason I like WUWT is that ALL are allowed to share their points of view on the topic. I hate when either side of this debate resorts to name calling and/or fallacies to promote their side. In essence they don’t do anything for their argument. The problem with the entire GW/CC is that people fall for the appeal to authority fallacy. A they 1ST don’t investigate/question the authority. 2nd they believe what is being told to them even if reality doesn’t match. 3rd is they don’t investigate the actual data, 4th they don’t investigate if the conclusion matches the data.
There is NO superior climatologist anywhere on this planet.
I am fortunate to live in an extreme climate, a large temperature normal temperature range, from -40°C to +40°C. Over my life time and that of my parents (1930-present) there has not been a climate change outside of the cyclical weather of the Canadian prairies. This is what first started my BS meter on what was being “sold” to me by the media. The arctic has not been changing outside of recorded history. Where I live has bee covered in “recent” geological times by miles of ice. I am fortunate enough to see the results of ice ages every single day. Common sense (not misread data) shows sea levels have not changed for thousands of years. Ancient ports are still ancient ports with relatively near the same levels. History shows that the North West Passage has been both Ice bound and Ice Free in the past. That Green land has been both Ice bound and green and fertile in the past. History shows that great multiyear heatwaves have existed in the past that completely changed the normal agriculture of the people. 17 years of cooling are now on the books. models cannot predict 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, now 17 years out. When looked at it both mathematically and computationally it is physically impossible to model climate for a time frame as small as 5 years. The BILLIONS of dollars wasted on both sides of this debate are a crime against humanity. The only winners are those that are able to profit from “hysteria” Yes climate should be studied, yes the effect of pollution on the planet should be studied, but jumping both feet into the IPCC continuing ever changing political tax on wealth and carbon is absolutely ludicrous. We are killing off our children’s ability to live and thrive comfortably in the future. In essence we are punishing them with politically created falsehood created to hold them in a tight energy grasp.
Model building is a science unto itself. Something as complex as a climate model could be easily wrong even though most of the science is correct. I was on an ERDA (DOE’s predecessor) review panel looking at the early climate models over 30 years ago. My conclusion was that the models were hopelessly complex and unreliable. All the environmental groups cheered because their position then was that global warming was a hoax cooked up by pro nuke types. R C Carlson co-author Solar Energy in Americas Future
It is wrong because it started out wrong with Hansen’s 1988 lecture to the Senate. He showed a temperature graph that went up and up until it peaked in 1988. That was the warmest point within the last 100 years he said. There was only a one percent chance that it could happen by chance. Hence it was 99 percent certain that it was caused by the greenhouse effect. To him it was the warming, not any physics or theory, that proved it was greenhouse warming. Then he gave figures. The 1987 temperature, he said, was 0.4 degrees higher than the 1950 to 1980 base line he used. But on May 25th 1975 The New York Times could still say that it was “well established” that “Northern Hemisphere climate has been getting cooler since about 1950.” Hansen continues to push warming and follows up with this claim: “The four warmest years, as the Senator mentioned, have all been in the 1980s. And 1988 so far is so much warmer than 1987, that barring a remarkable and improbable cooling, 1988 will be the warmest year on record.” This is factually incorrect. Satellite records show that 1987 and 1988 had exactly the same peak temperature, for the simple reason that they happen to be the two peak years of the 1987/88 El Nino. As to that improbable cooling, it did arrive by the year’s end when a La Nina moved in. As it happens, his El Nino is part of a group of five El Ninos separated by La Nina valleys in the eighties and nineties recorded by satellites. The 1987/88 El Nino is the middle one of this group. In case somene has forgotten, the ENSO oscillation consists of a periodic alternation of El Nino peaks with La Nina valleys separating them. What Hansen is claiming is that the existence of one particular El Nino peak of five that are part of an ENSO oscillation lasting from 1979 to 1997 proves that the greenhouse effect is warming up the world. Fact is, the global mean temperature during these eighteen years did not change at all because the center line of the oscillation remained the same. To elect part of such an oscillation as proof of greenhouse warming is complete stupidity. But obviously everybody has taken him at face value and never tried to question his work. You could try to excuse him because of his poor quality temperature records but as far as I go that is not an excuse. If you are a scientist you should know enough not to extrapolate noise and base a grandiose theory on that.
climateace says:
December 29, 2013 at 8:10 pm
Wow that was well done you hit every talking point from the team and try to sound like you hope it’s wrong to be balanced what a joke you are TROLL, troll on young man, troll on. ;>)