This quote from ETH Zurich is actually from another just published post, but it is so grating, so anti-science, that it deserves its very own thread to highlight it.
Here it is:
If the model data is corrected downwards, as suggested by the ETH researchers, and the measurement data is corrected upwards, as suggested by the British and Canadian researchers, then the model and actual observations are very similar.
Gosh.
This is like saying:
If we take all our economic projections for performance as suggested by our financial models, and correct it downwards, and at the same time, if we take all of our revenues and expenditures that are in the red, and adjust them upwards, out company will be on track and our investors will be satisfied.
Except, people go to jail for that sort of thing.
Each explanation for the hiatus that invokes a “natural” phenomenon downward limits the radiative forcing power of CO2 (including feedbacks).
CAGW requires a potential very high, all-inclusive radiative forcing for CO2. Each explanation for the hiatus pulls us away from the high-end potential.
It amazes me that the press does not wonder why the top-end and bottom-end of projected temperature rise by 2100 by the IPCC aren’t coming closer together each year. Billions of dollars of research and modeling work is not bringing us – officially – closer to a hard conclusion. If climate science is an actual science, it should narrow the certainty numerically as well as emotionally. Clearly, it is not.
What is 6 times 9? Answer 42. Douglas Adams prescient again.
This set me wondering…
Has anyone ever taken one of these great models, set the CO2 sensitivity to zero and run the model to see how well it hindcasts the observed temperatures?
I have an idea it might be quite close.
I build models for a living, albeit financial models. When our model predictions deviate from the actuals, we consider the model broken. It is tempting to simply keep adjusting the model to force-fit it. But in the finance world, no one would believe that the model was in any way predictive if we did that. The whole point of the model is to predict that if x goes up 3 points, y will go up 2 points. If y goes down 3 points, then the model is faulty, QED.
The Modelers Hippocratic Oath created by Wilmot states as a precept, “I will remember that I didn’t make the world and it does not satisfy my equations.”
How anyone who works with models could argue that the model is predictive when its forecasts deviate from the actual numbers is stunning. It defies the very definition of a working model. It is like a stove that does not actually generate heat. Not much of a stove no matter how you try to spin it.
Am I going mad, or has the world stopped making sense?
Mike Smith @ur momisugly 12:02
Heretic.
Reminds me of this old joke:
“So this man wants a new suit, and he goes to a tailor. The tailor puts him up on the platform surrounded by all those mirrors, takes his measurements, and says “OK, come beck in a veek, I’ll heve de suit ready.”
In a week the man returns to the tailor shop. “Here’s your suit,” says the tailor.
“Well, I’d like to try it on,” says the customer. So he goes in the dressing room, takes his clothes off, and starts putting on the suit. It’s all but impossible to get into the thing! Finally, he has it on, comes out, and gets up on the platform again.
He looks at himself, frowns, and says to the tailor, “This suit is terrible! Look at this! The jacket sleeves are so long they’re flopping! But the shoulders are so narrow I can’t even breathe! The pants legs are baggy! But at the same time, the pants squeeze my hips!” On and on he complains.
“Vait a minute,” says the tailor, interrupting him. “Here’s vut you’ll do. You’ll go like dis…” And the tailor shows him how to hold in his sleeves, hunch up his shoulders, tuck in the baggy pants with one hand, all at the same time, to “make it fit”.
A few minutes later the man emerges from the shop onto the street. He’s hobbling down the sidewalk, trying to walk while still holding his sleeve, hunching his shoulders, tucking the pants, etc, etc.
Two old ladies waiting for a bus across the street notice him as he struggles along.
“Oy!” says one of the ladies, shaking her head in pity. “Look at that poor man!”
“Yes,” says her companion, also shaking her head. “But doesn’t his suit fit nice!”
What is all the fuss about? Isn’t this what the hockey team has been doing for years?
Model output is NOT data. End of story
Charlie Hendrix has it right. But I might be persuaded to call the model results “imaginary,” since all modeling is an imaginary process.
“Says a lot about the peers, doesn’t it! .”
Did anyone not pee in it?
I guess it all rides on the definition of “corrected.” Leif et el are getting big props here for correcting their methods/data, so what’s the big deal? It might be as equally legit.
I have told my wife that if we adjust or “correct” down the medically recommended weight for her size and if we then “correct” the actual readings of the Scales then despite her ar$e being the size of a small country, the desired weight and our ‘actual observations are very similar’.
Any comments as quick as possible as I fear I may not live long…………..
Sounds like Tamino! If we take out the things that caused cooling, we can see that it actually warmed. 🙂
The way this is done in practice is that a version of Mannian Regularization EM infills another +1 into the left side input data for the calculation.
pyeatte says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:23 am
This is spooky – those guys are writing science fiction and trying to pass it off as real.
*
I write science fiction – and I’d never try something as stupid at that in a plot. So these guys are an insult to science AND to science fiction.
… and simply more compelling evidence that Climate Science is in an Epic Crisis.
– “Shaka, when the Walls Fell.”
So what? CO2 is supposed to be a well mixed gas and its concentration is increasing globally. Its greenhouse effect should be noted everywhere on Earth, not only in a convenient place where there are not weather stations.
Besides, how does CO2 warm the Arctic? What radiation does it absorb? The sun does not shine in the Arctic for half of the year and receives little radiation on the other half. My guess is the increase of temperatures due to the so called greenhouse effect should be minimum at the poles.
Why don’t we make, say, an annual ritual Correction Of The Temperature day, in which we correct the scales of all thermometers to fit the climate model output. This way we would have correct models, and enjoyable climate alarmism, with all the profits one makes from that, without harming anyone. We could continue to scare our children; drive our SUV’s and feel bad about it, and drink FairTrade cale smoothies to compensate our guilt.
Whatever we need to prove we are right and you are wrong we can find it in the ‘correctional bin.’ Adjustments to suit our policy. We can make lies, ‘truth.’
urederra says:
August 19, 2014 at 1:22 pm
“Besides, how does CO2 warm the Arctic? What radiation does it absorb? The sun does not shine in the Arctic for half of the year and receives little radiation on the other half. My guess is the increase of temperatures due to the so called greenhouse effect should be minimum at the poles.”
CO2 has its absorption bands centered at color temperatures of 200K and 600K; so it absorbs very well the IR radiation emitted by a blackbody with a temperature of -73 deg C. And of a furnace at 330 deg C.
So maybe it could have some effect at the poles; where they are very, very cold. Making them a tiny bit less cold.
Rule one of climate ‘science’ is after all , if reality and models differ in value its reality which is in error.
So this idea is just normal practice in this area , where facts come a very poor second to how ‘useful’ the message is.
Here’s an amusing quote in that vein:
The consensus way is to average.
I thought the “proof” of the scientific method was to predict results before they occurred. This study only predicts the past.