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.
Didn’t Einstein do something similar and later said:
“It was the biggest blunder of my life.”
The other Phil says:
August 20, 2014 at 5:58 am
“I see some unfair over-reaction.
ETH is making two points:
1. The models are generating predictions that are too high ETH proses that models should be adjusted to produce better predictions. Does anyone seriously object to this? Isn’t this what many in this forum are advocating?”
See – the problem is that the warmists claim to know that there lurks a danger in the future. So they’re kinda predicting something, even though they go to great sophistry to avoid the word prediction. Nevertheless we all know that the question is, do the models have predictive skill.
Now OF COURSE they can “fix” their models to get a better hindcasting. But what does it do to the predictive skill of the model? Does the predictive skill go up or down?
Well how could one test that? A question that the warmist climate modelers have evaded for the last 40 years and will continue to evade for the rest of their careers, of course.
And what does it do to the claims of the warmist climate modelers that their models are objective pure incorporations of physical laws themselves? Well it wrecks this preposterous claim completely of course.
That’s why I would say, let’em adjust to their heart’s desire; it will make for a great blink comparator at Steve Goddard’s.
yes. Nutty isn’t talking about fixing the models. He is talking about ad hoc fiddling with the model output to achieve desired results.
This is ad hoc fiddling with the observational data at the point of comparison with the already ad hoc fiddled model predictions to achieve desired results.
Indeed, you should use the right empirical average – the whole way thru the process. Use the correct empirical average to rederive the physical principals, and to redefine the model parameterizations, and to retrain the model, etc, etc, etc. That is not what the rectal fedora crowd are proposing. They just want to take the existing model outputs, and fudge them toward their idea of what those outputs should have been, and then fudge the observations at the point of comparison to match … all the while maintaining the faulty models with their WAY TOO HIGH CO2 sensitivity, so as to keep the doom and gloom future intact.
Ad hoc fallacy. Unscientific bullshittery.
philjourdan says:
August 21, 2014 at 6:34 am
Shortly after it was first broadcast. So makes that about … oh 1980 ish?
Mind you, it helps if you were actually alive, or indeed sentient, when H2G2 was first broadcast.
Jtom says: August 20, 2014 at 9:05 am “Perhaps this phrase has fallen out of favor, but it certainly describes what is being proposed: correction, fudge factor(noun) a quantity that is added or subtracted in order to increase the accuracy of a scientific measure.
My professors had a distinct disdain of students using fudge factors, especially if no scientific basis was used to justify them other than to arrive at an expected answer.”
They sound like my Physics master at school, who referred to “Cook’s Constant” and “Fudge’s Formula”. Cook’s Constant was the amount you had to multiply the answer you got to get to the right answer. Fudge’s Formula was basically “Experimental result x Cook’s Constant = Correct answer.
The cunning old gentleman did, on at least one occasion give, amongst our homework, a question with parameters carefully set so that the calculated answer came out at exactly one tenth of the answer that everybody knew. It was, IIRC, to calculate either the specific heat of copper, or to calculate the water equivalent of a calorimeter. Those who got the correct (calculated) answer got full marks. Those who got that answer, but said something like: “To the best of my understanding the answer should have been such and such. This suggests that the observations or the parameters given were in error.” got a bonus (though none of us would have used such wording!) Those who worked it through, realised they had got an answer not in accordance with their prior knowledge, and slipped in a correction somewhere to get the ‘right’ answer got nothing. Excpt a bit of embarrassmnent and a perpetual reminder never to use CC and FF again.
BTW, not all the MSM is bad. Today’s “Weekend Australian” has an article entitled “Heat is on over weather bureau revising records”. Written by Graham Lloyd, the Environment Editor. A couple of paragraphs – “But the loss has been the catalyst for an escalating row that raises questions about the competence and integrity of Australia’s premier weather agency, the Bureau of Meteorology, stretching well beyond the summer storms. It goes to the heart of the climate change debate – in particular whether computer models are better than real data and whether temperature records are being manipulated in a bid to make each year hotter than the last.”
A figure shows the “Rutherglen annual average minimum temperatures, with raw data from 1913 to 2010 showing a cooling of 0.35 degrees C per century, and the “Data after ‘homogenisation’ showing a “warming of 1.73 degrees C per century.”
I think the article itself may be paywalled, if so, go to: http://joannenova.com.au/2014/08/the-heat-is-on-bureau-of-meteorology-altering-climate-figures-the-australian/
SAMURAI (August 19, 2014 at 9:13 pm) says “We’re witnessing an attempt by CAGW grant grubbers to abandon the scientific method to save their precious hypothesis from disconfirmation.“.
Close. We’re witnessing a form of gatekeeping, ie. retaining control of the narrative. The hypothesis itself doesn’t really matter very much, and they will happily change it if it can be done in a way that keeps the same people in control of the narrative. Basically because nothing is happening in the real climate, they can retain control indefinitely with frequent minor adjustments and statements to keep the goalposts moving (sorry about the mixed metaphor). If warming re-starts, that’s easy, of course. But if it becomes obvious that Earth is cooling, then expect them to seamlessly morph the hypothesis into its opposite. They did it before in the 1970s, when they switched seamlessly from ice age to global warming. They reckon they can do it again if they have to, and switching from global warming to climate change is just one bit of advance preparation.
As Max Planck said “Science progresses one funeral at a time.”. Regrettably, the world of science is still just as unscientific.
Oh, not another quote from Professor “nutty” Knutti! This guy is really a disgrace for the reknown ETHZ and far away from a scientist