Love him or hate him, it is worthwhile to understand where he is coming from, so I present this video: The emergent patterns of climate change
According to TED:
You can’t understand climate change in pieces, says climate scientist Gavin Schmidt. It’s the whole, or it’s nothing. In this illuminating talk, he explains how he studies the big picture of climate change with mesmerizing models that illustrate the endlessly complex interactions of small-scale environmental events.
Video follows, comments welcome.
The transcript is here: http://www.ted.com/talks/gavin_schmidt_the_emergent_patterns_of_climate_change/transcript
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” We know what happened over the 20th century. Right? We know that it’s gotten warmer. We know where it’s gotten warmer. And if you ask the models why did that happen, and you say, okay, well, yes, basically it’s because of the carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere. We have a very good match up until the present day. ”
and if you tell the models ahead of time that’s what happened….
Those computer games can not tell you something you don’t know.
And despite these claims of model skill, they consistently over predict warming.
He describes the climate model as scaling of components of 14 orders of magnitude. From the microscopic seeds of the clouds to the whole of the planet. He does not mention the sun. For me, his credibility is already lost at 1:32.
Here’s a tip to all the CAGW computer modelers,
Why don’t you wait until your model is proven to work (AKA Release Candidate) BEFORE you release it into cyberspace? Or clearly label it as Pre-Alpha (might work sometime in the future – or not)?
That’s what the professionals do with THEIR software.
“The models are skillful.”
That phrase was repeated several times, so it must be the take-away message. But it is one thing to tune the models to forecast the past and quite another to accurately forecast the future.
Gavin: “The climate models are skillful.” Yeah…uh huh….and the Pope isn’t Catholic, either, is he Gavin?
The models predicted warming. We have not had warming for seventeen years. More the pity because warmer is better.
I understand that Donald Sterling raves about “skillful models.”
Dear Gavin, unless you are carrying the error range of every number you feed into your model all the way through every calculation and out into the result, what’s coming out is not skillful, it’s fecal.
” And we’re going through the 1930s. There’s variability, there are things going on, but it’s all kind of in the noise.”
If data shows variation, it’s noise. Except when its AGW.
This dissonance pretty much says it all.
His description of the incredible complexity of the climate at the beginning were an excellent argument against the science ever being settled.
Let’s not forget that inconvenient warming of the 30s-40s has been disappeared so that the models can align with temps.
The climate has been warming slightly since the end of the little ice age with some ups and downs along the way, There has been no warming these last 17 years. The models can’t predict a damn thing. Gavin lied. Does he really believe what he is saying?
‘he explains how he studies the big picture of climate change with mesmerizing models ‘
Like a rabbit staring into headlights, well that does explain why he leaves his common sense and any scientific ability he has behind him, his ‘mesmerized by the models ‘ so simply unable to ask any questions of what they tell him .
Please repeat and re-repeat, Climate is a chaotic system, chaotic system cannot be modeled. Again I will point out private financial companies once attempt to “model” the stock market, to predict it direction to make money, they found out rather rapidly it did not work. When private money is at risk, modeling was put into the ash heap of history. Note to Gavin quit wasting taxpayer money.
Sorry, but I’m gonna call [snip] on that. Trying to say models in the 70’s suddenly ‘come good’ and then later, reflect the real world obs – is utter Bulldust. For one thing the models are trained on that recent data!
He announces the scale of the problem really well in the initial minutes – then proceeds to demonstrate how computer models can wipe out that scale problem over a few decades! ROFL – I don’t [snip] think so………
Sorry Anthony – but this isn’t worth squat in my humble opinion…….
How can he say the models are skillful? In what sense? They don’t predict the short term accurately, the medium term accurately, and so far they haven’t predicted the long term accurately (always running too hot over since their inception). I don’t think they can even hind-cast the past accurately.
I don’t know how he can stand there and say the the models are skillful. That just completely false.
Can I skip the 12-minute hate?
The climate is very complex, very many factors to consider. We can and do write millions of lines of code for our models. Our models are so good we can not tell you accurately what the weather will be next week, much less tomorrow. But trust us, we know what will happen a 100 years for now.
If you look at the three global graphics at the end, the “do nothing, do something, do a lot” options… I sure as hell hope those computer models are wrong, because I think almost certainly mankind will choose the first option and do nothing.
FORTRAN; riiiiggghhhhttttttt…
I think it is good and right to post such videos here. The fact that we can all see the gaping flaws in Gavin’s arguments doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we can get a glimpse of what he is about, and formulate strong responses to his arguments. That is the task that lies ahead – we shouldn’t waste too much time patting ourselves on the back and saying “I told you so!”
I want my twelve minutes of watching Gavin’s TED talk back.
He seemed proud they are still using the FORTRAN programming language and consider the C language new?
To his credit he did say that the models are always wrong.
Yes, he also says they are also “skillful”? Yes, like a competent thief, turning our tax money into colorful, animated doo-doo.
Notice that Gavin did not compare the predicted (or projected) warming of the past decades with actual observations.
Ira
The whole matters. But just look at the minimum ice trend for the Arctic since 1979. That proves it.
“Emergent” hmm where have I heard this before. Oh yeah, Willis’s ’emergent phenomena’ that serve as a governor on climate overheating. I and others have stated before that something as good as Willis’s emergent phenomena and other climate findings won’t be out there long before they begin to be stolen. They are just too good. Okay, Gav has only used the word emergent, half of the idea but that’s a start.
Ya see, it will be stolen by the classic method of finding another word for phenomena. Remember the poetic “Continental Drift”? After vilifying Alfred Wegener for 40 years, for describing it in 1912, it was re-born as plate tectonics (sounds dental mechanic) in the 1950s to much acclaim by Alfred’s tormentors. I know the latter came with a solid explanation and I know there will be someone here belonging to the geological fraternity that will dump on Alfred Wegener again. He’s a bit like the MWP and the LIA that so much effort has been made by the Team to bury. We don’t do this to Eratosthenes whose speculation that matter was made up of atoms with no hooks for air, little hooks for liquids and lots of hooks for solids, probably because there were no established philopsophers painting themselves into a corner by angry dismissal on the subject.