What went wrong?
A major peer-reviewed climate physics paper in the first issue (January 2015: vol. 60 no. 1) of the prestigious Science Bulletin (formerly Chinese Science Bulletin), the journal of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and, as the Orient’s equivalent of Science or Nature, one of the world’s top six learned journals of science, exposes elementary but serious errors in the general-circulation models relied on by the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC. The errors were the reason for concern about Man’s effect on climate. Without them, there is no climate crisis.
Thanks to the generosity of the Heartland Institute, the paper is open-access. It may be downloaded free from http://www.scibull.com:8080/EN/abstract/abstract509579.shtml. Click on “PDF” just above the abstract.
The IPCC has long predicted that doubling the CO2 in the air might eventually warm the Earth by 3.3 C°. However, the new, simple model presented in the Science Bulletin predicts no more than 1 C° warming instead – and possibly much less. The model, developed over eight years, is so easy to use that a high-school math teacher or undergrad student can get credible results in minutes running it on a pocket scientific calculator.
The paper, Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model, by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, Willie Soon, David Legates and Matt Briggs, survived three rounds of tough peer review in which two of the reviewers had at first opposed the paper on the ground that it questioned the IPCC’s predictions.
When the paper’s four authors first tested the finished model’s global-warming predictions against those of the complex computer models and against observed real-world temperature change, their simple model was closer to the measured rate of global warming than all the projections of the complex “general-circulation” models:
Next, the four researchers applied the model to studying why the official models concur in over-predicting global warming. In 1990, the UN’s climate panel predicted with “substantial confidence” that the world would warm at twice the rate that has been observed since.
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The very greatly exaggerated predictions (orange region) of atmospheric global warming in the IPCC’s 1990 First Assessment Report, compared with the mean anomalies (dark blue) and trend (bright blue straight line) of three terrestrial and two satellite monthly global mean temperature datasets since 1990.The measured, real-world rate of global warming over the past 25 years, equivalent to less than 1.4 C° per century, is about half the IPCC’s central prediction in 1990.
The new, simple climate model helps to expose the errors in the complex models the IPCC and governments rely upon. Those errors caused the over-predictions on which concern about Man’s influence on the climate was needlessly built. |
Among the errors of the complex climate models that the simple model exposes are the following –
- The assumption that “temperature feedbacks” would double or triple direct manmade greenhouse warming is the largest error made by the complex climate models. Feedbacks may well reduce warming, not amplify it.
- The Bode system-gain equation models mutual amplification of feedbacks in electronic circuits, but, when complex models erroneously apply it to the climate on the IPCC’s false assumption of strongly net-amplifying feedbacks, it greatly over-predicts global warming. They are using the wrong equation.
- Modellers have failed to cut their central estimate of global warming in line with a new, lower feedback estimate from the IPCC. They still predict 3.3 C° of warming per CO2 doubling, when on this ground alone they should only be predicting 2.2 C° – about half from direct warming and half from amplifying feedbacks.
- Though the complex models say there is 0.6 C° manmade warming “in the pipeline” even if we stop emitting greenhouse gases, the simple model – confirmed by almost two decades without any significant global warming – shows there is no committed but unrealized manmade warming still to come.
- There is no scientific justification for the IPCC’s extreme RCP 8.5 global warming scenario that predicts up to 12 Cº global warming as a result of our industrial emissions of greenhouse gases.
Once errors like these are corrected, the most likely global warming in response to a doubling of CO2 concentration is not 3.3 Cº but 1 Cº or less. Even if all available fossil fuels were burned, less than 2.2 C° warming would result.
Lord Monckton, the paper’s lead author, created the new model on the basis of earlier research by him published in journals such as Physics and Society, UK Quarterly Economic Bulletin, Annual Proceedings of the World Federation of Scientists’ Seminars on Planetary Emergencies, and Energy & Environment. He said: “Our irreducibly simple climate model does not replace more complex models, but it does expose major errors and exaggerations in those models, such as the over-emphasis on positive or amplifying temperature feedbacks. For instance, take away the erroneous assumption that strongly net-positive feedback triples the rate of manmade global warming and the imagined climate crisis vanishes.”
Dr Willie Soon, an eminent solar physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said: “Our work suggests that Man’s influence on climate may have been much overstated. The role of the Sun has been undervalued. Our model helps to present a more balanced view.”
Dr David Legates, Professor of Geography at the University of Delaware and formerly the State Climatologist, said: “This simple model is an invaluable teaching aid. Our paper is, in effect, the manual for the model, discussing appropriate values for the input parameters and demonstrating by examples how the model works.”
Dr Matt Briggs, “Statistician to the Stars”, said: “A high-school student with a pocket scientific calculator can now use this remarkable model and obtain credible estimates of global warming simply and quickly, as well as acquiring a better understanding of how climate sensitivity is determined. As a statistician, I know the value of keeping things simple and the dangers in thinking that more complex models are necessarily better. Once people can understand how climate sensitivity is determined, they will realize how little evidence for alarm there is.”
First of all, congratulations to the authors for their persistence in pushing through the peer review process and getting the paper published in a prestigious journal. Well done.
Second, it is interesting how carefully the authors have read, cited, compared, and extracted information from the IPCC reports. To anyone who expresses respect for the IPCC and its reports, this is an important, nonignorable paper. In a sense it is a landmark, or a standard: the GCMs will be useful when they are consistently more accurate in their predictions that this model.
Third, I shall be interested to see whether this model survives testing against out-of-sample data: with the best parameter estimates available today, will its computations of the global mean temperatures over the next two decades be reasonably accurate? If they are the most accurate among the set of predictions, will the model then be the best model to use for planning purposes?
The paper is well worth reading.
I am most grateful to Mr Marler for his encouraging words. Given the extreme exaggerations inbuilt in the more complex models, I am going to stick my neck out and say I’m reasonably confident that our model, simple though it be, will outperform the billion-dollar brains over the rest of this century. Of course, it is tailored to do just one thing: predict the rate of temperature change in response to a forcing, and in particular to the manmade forcing from CO2. In this respect, our task is much easier than that of the general-circulation models, which are trying to represent thousands of features of the climate that we do not trouble ourselves with.
The point, really, is that if all we are wanting to know is how much warmer the world is likely to be as a result of our environmental footprint, complex models are neither necessary nor particularly valuable, particularly given the sheer quantity of unknowable unknowns in the climate object. Better to concentrate on what we do know – not least the fact that the Bode system-gain relation is inapplicable to the climate. Remove that equation (which belongs to electronic circuitry but not to dynamical systems with irreversible feedback responses nor to systems with outputs that are the instrument of self-equilibration) and the “climate crisis” vanishes. They are using the wrong equation, and that is the sole reason for their finding climate sensitivity to be high.
I shall have more to say on the problem of the Bode system-gain equation in a forthcoming reviewed paper in another climate journal. The paper has been accepted, but must wait its turn for publication. More when it appears.
Bottom line: now and in future, our model may well prove better suited to planning for temperature change than any of the general-circulation models.
Sir Harry Flashman January 16, 2015 at 8:11 am quoting someone over at a website andthenetheresphysics.wordpress.com
You apparently didn’t think about the authors’ statement here. The comparison is to design of an electronic circuit because that is, probably, the predominate experience of the authors with feedback systems. However, no other system, however constructed, involving feedback is any different and the point of the authors was to suggest that greater positive feedback would result in wild climate swings at are not observed. It is a valid point that people on the AGCW side of this debate fail to acknowledge.
Ditto. There is no intelligent design claim in this paper that I can find.
Why didn’t these two admit they either didn’t read the paper or didn’t understand it and leave it at that?
Finally, the truly unforgivable sin in this effort is that of bringing the forcing portion of a complex model, requiring the efforts of experts to explain to the layman, within the grasp of the hoi polloi. The high priests don’ t like that!
Kevin Kilty is right on all points. The reason why we have mentioned the Bode system-gain relation is that Bode (1945) derived it from observations of electronic circuits. It is designed to be applicable only to dynamical systems with two characteristics: a reversible output if the closed-loop gain exceeds unity (in a circuit the current flicks from the positive to the negative rail); and an output that is the instrument of self-equilibration (in a circuit, the voltage is a bare output and has no effect on the feedback response). On both counts, the climate is not that sort of dynamical system. Take out the Bode equation and the absurd doubling or tripling of the 1 K direct temperature response to a doubling of CO2 concentration is swept away, leaving a climate sensitivity that cannot be higher than that 1 K and could – if feedbacks are as robustly net-negative as the long history of temperature thermostasis deduced from the ice-cores suggests – be a good deal less than 1 K. That is why this paper is important.
“High priests don’t like that!”
#####
The inner sanctum has been violated.
I am glad that the paper is busily being downloaded (according to Monckton).
I think the problems with downloading have been from security software at the site due to a sudden jump in the access of a particular file. That hints to how many folks peruse this blog.
Just to confirm that the paper continues to be downloaded. Now over 3000 downloads – far in excess of any other paper in the same issue. People are interested.
Kevin Kilty
You ask of Sir Harry Flashman and Brandon Gates
I answer because the history of those two is that they only post to provide ‘knocking copy’.
My above answer to Brandon Gates which is here concludes saying
That is also true of Sir Harry Flashman. Time is saved by scrolling past their information-free posts.
Richard
OOPS the link to my above post dis not work. This is it in full
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/16/peer-reviewed-pocket-calculator-climate-model-exposes-serious-errors-in-complex-computer-models-and-reveals-that-mans-influence-on-the-climate-is-negligible/#comment-1838003
Richard
@Socks:
Trolling again, I see.
How many times are you going to ask that stupid question? It has been answered, chapter and verse, but you are still acting like an immature child incessantly asking, “But, why …?”
And of course, the planet is recovering naturally from the LIA. Prove it’s not. The onus is on you.
As usual, you give an an inane answer to the fact that nothing being observed is unprecedented. Apparently that bothers you to the point that you have to give a flippant response. But the fact is that there is nothing either unprecedented or unusual happening. Thus, you lose that particular point.
Your final question is just more pointless, inane nonsense. It makes no sense at all. So, maybe you’re simply off your rocker? From your questions, it appears that way to me.
Finally: show respect, and earn respect, and you will get it. Stopping with your senseless, whiny questions would be a good first step.
“the planet is recovering naturally from the LIA. ”
…
What is the physical process that causes this to happen?
Sockrats:
The late warming trend circa 1977-97 was due to increased insolation via reduced cloud cover as verified by cloud data. Previous warming trends cannot have been AGW because of the too slightly anthropogenic CO2 portion of the atmosphere.
Overall, the Holocene has been coolingthe last 6-8 thousand years.
Wake up and stop wringing your hands over CO2.
Mpainter.
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The supposed “recovery” from the LIA started around 1850-1900
…
Your “1977-97” claim doesn’t explain the “recovery”
In response to Mr Socrates, the physical process by which global temperatures recovered following the end of the Little Ice Age was the remarkable increase in solar activity, particularly in two periods. First, the 40 years 1695-1745; then the 70 years 1925-1995. See Hathaway (2004) and Solanki (2005) for further details,
A re-assessment of solar activity e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Revisiting-the-Sunspot-Number.pdf shows that there has been very little upward trend the past 300 years. In particular, there has not been any ‘Modern Grand Maximum’ higher than activity in the 18th and 19th centuries.
“…The recalibrated Sunspot Number series and a trend-less solar climate forcing (CL2.2) [EGU Vienna April 2015]: the high solar activity of the late 20th century does not exceed the levels of past centuries since the Maunder Minimum anymore, thus questioning the notion of a recent Grand Maximum and calling for redoing many long-term studies and reconstructions published over past years…”.
Sockpuppetrats:
The Little Ice Age was caused by lower solar activity during the Spörer, Maunder & Dalton Minima than before or since. In between those events, the secularly cold LIA enjoyed its warmer, counter-trend cycles. The stage was set for it during the Wolf Minimum, which served to start lowering the higher than present peak temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period.
Longer & deeper solar minima during the LIA, followed & preceded by higher levels of insolation & magnetic flux, explain both the recovery since its end & its initiation following the MWP. The early 18th century recovery from the Maunder was more rapid & lasted longer than the late 20th century warming. The LIA was cooler & cloudier than both warm periods before (Medieval) & after (Modern) it.
The same is true of the alteration of warm & cold secular trends ever since the Holocene Optimum & Minoan WP, which was followed by the Greek Dark Ages Cold Period, which was followed by the Roman WP, which was followed by the Dark Ages CP, which preceded the Medieval WP, which preceded the LIA, which preceded the Modern WP. The trend however has been down for 3000 years, as shown in multiple proxy data studies & by soil radionuclides around the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The peak warmth of each WP has been lower than for that which preceded it.
The same pattern is observable in prior interglacials.
Mr Svalgaard makes the interesting point that recent revisions to the “settled science” of the sunspot record no longer make the period from 1925-1975 a solar near-Grand Maximum. However, the naturally-occurring reduction in cloud cover from 1983-2001 (Pinker et al., 2005) must also be taken into account. As the Japanese pyrometer record shows (though not all such records from elsewhere show the same), surface temperature change is preceded by change in the number of sunlight hours at the surface. The clouds (and their interaction with changes in solar activity) may have more to do with changes in surface temperature than CO2 does. See Monckton of Brenchley, 2011, in the Annual Proceedings of the World Federation of Scientists’ Annual Seminars on Planetary Emergencies for 2010, for a discussion. The Chinese ambassador to Italy was present when I gave my paper, and his scientific counsellor sent it to Peking that night. Later I went to Shenzhen to brief Chinese leaders and businessmen on this and other uncertainties in the “settled science”.
Monckton of Brenchley
Many thanks for your promotion of the cloud cover issue. I have been attempting to promote the matter with no success since Pinker et al., published their paper in 2005. For example, in a letter of 3 November 2008 which I provided in reply to questions put to me by US Senator Inhofe I included this
Emphasis added in the above quotation: RSC
I sincerely hope your promotion of this important matter will prove successful.
Richard
Apparently, it seems that the way to deal with the problems of the low clouds is as Monckton to ignore them altogether. Homeopathy: less is more, nothing is best of all.
lsvalgaard
Oh dear! Your comment is another proclamation by you that you don’t understand anything about scientific modeling.
I will explain the issues of cloud cover in climate models for the benefit of onlookers
A model is a simplified representation of reality. I explain this here in this thread.
No model is a complete and perfect representation of reality: if it were complete and perfect then it would be reality and not a model of reality. A model is a simplified representation of reality.
There are many reasons why something is omitted from a model; e.g. it is not known, or its effects are known to be insignificant, or …
A scientific model includes a full explanation of its contents, and anything not included in this explanation is assumed to not be in the model.
Sometimes an effect is known to exist but cannot be modeled (e.g. because its behaviour is not known). When this occurs the modeler has two options; viz.
(a) omit the effect from the model
or
(b) include an erroneous representation of the effect.
There are times when either option may be the more correct but option (a) is usually better. This is because if the effect is known then its magnitude can probably be estimated. Hence, it is possible to estimate the maximum potential error introduced the model by omission of the effect. However, option (b) introduces an error into the model which cannot be estimated and may be larger than the actual effect.
The linked and quoted abstract says the NASA GCM lacks sufficient resolution for it to include correct representation of cloud effects and the abstract says that model includes an incorrect representation of cloud effects.
The abstract I linked and quoted says the NASA GCM includes an effect of cloud cover which is known to introduce an error of unknown magnitude which is probably greater than the effect of GHGs.
The model of Monckton et al. omits the effect of clouds and both I and Monckton have each stated the potential error introduced to that model by this omission.
Clearly, in this case the option chosen by Monckton et al. is preferable because it has quantifiable potential error but the possibly larger error of the NASA GCM is not quantifiable.
The following analogy may help understanding of the issue.
Most people prefer indoor plumbing (cloud effects) to be included in their home (climate model). But they will turn off the indoor plumbing if that plumbing has a leak (fault) which can damage the home.
Richard
Are you still beating that dead horse. Our Standard Models are not simplified in any way, shape, and form. The Models express all we know about how the systems work. We can use the Models to explore things we cannot experience first-hand, like the explosion of a supernova, or the end of the Universe. We can use the Models to explore things that don’t even exist [e.g. no reality].
lsvalgaard
I cannot fathom why you are still choosing to make a fool of yourself.
Models are simplified representations of reality.
As Matthew R Marler explained to you in this thread at January 19, 2015 at 2:02 pm
And at January 17, 2015 at 9:28 pm you wrongly claimed but have yet to retract
Please state what “evidence” you have of things “that don’t even exist [e.g. no reality]” to formulate your “evidence based representation” of them.
Richard
Based on observed evidence we construct a model. The model can then be used to tell us something about things that don’t exist. For example: a prediction of what will happen in the future [or what happened in the past].
lsvalgaard
You said
So I asked you
And you have replied
In other words, you construct a model of what you understand to be reality and use that model to investigate what your understanding of the evolution of reality indicates was and will be the state(s) of reality.
Of course, your model is a simplification because it is constructed from your best understanding of reality so cannot include all the known and unknown complexities of reality.
The model you describe is – as all models are – a simplified representation of reality.
Richard
Many thanks to Mr Courtney for his kind remarks about my work on the connection between variability in cloud cover and variability in temperature. I gave a paper on this topic at the World Federation of Scientists’ annual meeting on planetary emergencies in Sicily in 2910 and the paper was published in the annual proceedings the folloepwing year.
Excellent paper. It must be embarassing to those maintaining their multi-milliuon dollar GCMs, to find that a simple little model like this trumps all their models.
Next, K. Kilty says:
Why didn’t these two admit they either didn’t read the paper or didn’t understand it and leave it at that?
For the same reason that the big money modelers do not do the stand-up thing, and congratulate Lord Monckton et al for their efficient, simple, and accurate improvement. The base nature of those high priests simply doesn’t allow them to congratulate anyone who builds a better mousetrap.
Dbstealey….you ought to thank Monckton for answering the question you have been asking for some time.
…
He has provided you with a measure of AGW
Wrong as usual, socks. Lord M has provided a better model.
I suggest you read his paper……and pay close attention to his acknowledgement of the the role CO2 plays in temperature.
..
He has answered your question………his equation shows you the answer you have been looking for.
…
It’s called “climate sensitivity”
Here is my math model for the earth’s temperature anomoly out to the year 2100.
T = 0 +/- 1.
Let’s see how many AGW types offer congradulations to Monckton, Soon, Legates and Briggs for producing for sockrats this wonderful evidence of AGW. Sockrats, why don’t you go ahead and be the first?
It is sure looking that way, David Socrates. While you gloat, however, over this subtle-but-definite (if I am not mistaken and I hope I am!) support of AGW’s CO2 conjecture in the course of significantly qualifying what AGWers assert as to intensity,
I feel sick to my stomach…, but I haven’t given up hope!
If you are correct, Mr. Socrates, this is NO way for us Truth in Science warriors to fight a war. Truth, the WHOLE truth, is the only safe ground from which to launch our attacks. Any other ground is just shifting sand.
Perhaps, Christopher, Lord Monckton merely overlooked my question
(here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/16/peer-reviewed-pocket-calculator-climate-model-exposes-serious-errors-in-complex-computer-models-and-reveals-that-mans-influence-on-the-climate-is-negligible/#comment-1837423).
I hope so, for his not answering it is troubling. And if I should not be troubled, dear Lord Monckton, please, help me see why I should not be.
Well, David Socrates, I suggest you read Monckton’s paper, page 128, to be precise, where it says:
*******************************
I still stand by the main point of my comment of 3:25pm today, however. Assuming the opposition’s main thesis, without qualification, effectively adopts, sub silentio, the AGWer’s unsupported speculation about human CO2 emissions. This is no way to win a war.
Lord Monckton’s (et al) equation is a description of reality. It is not reality. See the difference?
Wrong as usual socks, and it gets tiring trying to educates someone with a closed mind.
There are no empirical, testable measurements quantifying AGW, because if there were…
…oh, forget it. You wouldn’t understand anyway.
“, and it gets tiring trying to educates someone”
…
English 101 failure…
..
The correct word is “educate” using the plural form indicates you are not well versed in the use of English.
who cares?
I believe you forgot the comma between “educate” & using.
Either that, or you are not well versed….
I note that ‘socks’ has again deflected, by changing the subject. As Tom Trevor says, ‘who cares’? Socks was wrong. That’s why he has nothing left, but to try and attack someone for grammar, or whatever he’s trying to do.
Now, regarding models vs measurements: as I have repeatedly stated, there are no measurements quantifying the fraction of global warming attributable to human emissions, out of total global warming [AGW and natural].
The lack of any objective, testable, empirical measurements quantifying the human fraction of warming drives the alarmist crowd nuts! They just cannot stand the fact that anyone questions how much — if any — global warming is due to human activity.
They don’t have any real measurements, which means one of two things:
Either AGW is so minuscule that it is below the background noise level, and thus cannot be measured using today’s instruments, or…
AGW does not exist.
I think AGW exists. But based on the total lack of any measurements quantifying AGW, it must be a very small number.
AGW also depends on the current atmospheric concentration of CO2. If CO2 is very low, then global warming from adding more may be enough to measure. But at current concentrations, even adding another 25% – 30% of CO2 will not make any measurable difference in global T.
The real world bears this out. And the lack of any global warming for so many years is the reason that alarmists are going ballistic: they predicted endlessly that a rise in CO2 would cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe. But that never happened. In fact, global warming has stopped.
The alarmist Narrative is sinking fast. It has taken five or six torpedoes, and it is going down. And not all the deflection, obfuscation or changing the subject will rescue them from total embarrassment, as the public decisively turns on them.
They are toast. That explains the immaturity and tone of Socks’s comments.
Poor Socks! He’s been studying so hard how CO_2 gives the Earth a FEVAH(!), I’ll bet he didn’t know he could save up to 15% with a fifteen minute call.
Tsk tsk tsk…
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Dbstealey doesn’t even read Monckton’s paper
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“the simple model determines the approximate fraction of the 0.8 K observed global warming since 1850 that was anthropogenic as 78 %”
…
On page 130
Babsy
..
Cheerleaders for a team have never added a point to the score their team has earned.
Mr Socrates has incompletely and thus misleadingly quoted our paper. We made it plain that, depending on the assumptions used, it was possible that less than half the warming since 1959 was anthropogenic.
Thank you, Lord M.
Socks will never understand, for whatever reason. But you’ve made your position clear to most readers and we appreciate it.
Excellent model, too. It adds to our understanding; always a good thing. It is certainly better than what the IPCC uses. Really, you should be paid with some of the loot they waste on GCMs. It would be money better spent.
PS…..what physical process is involved with “recovering” from the LIA?
Oh, brother, Socrates.
Answer: the same physical processes that caused the Medieval Warm Period.
[facepalm]
Hey Janice Moore
Tell all of us what physical process caused the MWP.
Janice, don’t rise to the troll bait. If anyone knew the answer to that question we would be on to discussing other issues.
And socks, note the word: “model”.
Dbstealey…
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If you want an answer to your question about AGW, I suggest you ask the great and powerful Wizard of Brenchley……because he knows more about it than you do.
…
So, the answer according to him…..is 78%
And Janice……
…
Your MWP…..was it global?….The jury is out on that question no?
And the absolute answer is
“Yes. The answer has been returned.”
“Yes. The Medieval Warming Period was global in scope and duration.
The subsequent Little Ice Age was global in scope and duration.
”
We are, however, fortunate that we are finally,naturally crawling out of the Little Ice Age towards more productive times. Although the CAGW religion is determined also to kill as many as possible, and force the remainder to live shorter lives in squalid unheated unlit misery in poverty and disease.
Janice, he’s a troll. Don’t respond.
And he still doesn’t understand the difference between a model and a measurement.
Go argue with Monckton………He’s much more knowledgeable about AGW than you
Well, LOL, Dave, I, — lol AGAIN, heh, — I just got here and saw your wise admonition to ignore Socrates. I am grateful for you, Stealey! I WOULD have, but for you!
#(:))
He serves up such big fat soft pitches that it is pretty hard to just let them slide on past, over the plate, into catcher’s mitt. And I don’t like walking…, but, I will.
Well, he can’t do any harm, at least not with what he’s muttering about at the moment.
P.S. (in a whisper) You know what I think… I think Mosher and Socrates and Gates are the same guy adopting a different persona for each, e.g., Gates gets pretty uptight about “Berkeley.” What?! Mosher is acting just like he really IS???
RACookPE1978
…
In your world the jury has returned a verdict. However, in the real world, I doubt you can point to an accepted reconstruction that shows it was global in scope. Was it regional? Yup. Did it occur in geographically dispersed areas? Yup… Did it occur in geographically dispersed areas in synchrony? ….Nope.
As I have said, the jury is still out on that.
..
I also ask you what is the physical process behind “naturally crawling out of ?????
This is the principal reason I can’t take this site seriously – the utter conviction with which commenters and posters proclaim to have received truth about things that remain massively uncertain, and in some cases are almost certainly wrong. Ironically, this is precisely what they claim AGW proponents are doing.
David Socrates.
Getting warmer between 600 and 710.
Getting warmer between 710 and 810.
Getting warmer between 810 and 910.
Getting warmer between 910 and 1010.
Getting warmer between 1010 and 1110.
Getting warmer between 1110 and 1210.
Getting warmer between 1650 and 1710.
Getting warmer between 1710 and 1810.
Getting warmer between 1810 and 1910.
Getting warmer between 1910 and 2010.
Getting warmer between 1650 and 2015. It is natural. If any is anthropogenic, and some part of the warming may well be anthropogenic, no one has stated what part is anthropogenic.
I stated yesterday that we do not know the reason the earth cooled and warmed before, and today’s theories fail to explain ANY recent rise and fall of global average temperatures.
Sir Harry Flashman
…
You have to admit that at times this site can be entertaining. Humorous in fact.
“Getting warmer” is not a physical process.
..
Again, can you tell me what physical process cause it to “get warmer?”
I stated yesterday that we do not know the reason the earth cooled and warmed before, and today’s theories fail to explain ANY recent rise and fall of global average temperatures.
1. I stated few minutes ago above that we do not know what caused that warming. I stated yesterday, and several times before that, that we do not know what caused that warming. Many readers here have stated we do not know what caused the warming.
It is NOT a problem nor hypocritical to state “We do not know.” it is, rather, honest.
It is dishonest to claim a cause without reason nor evidence. It is murder to claim a false cause that that, by artificially and deliberately limiting energy and deliberately raising energy prices, will kill millions and harm billions more over the next 85 years.
2. Because your CAGW religion cannot tolerate a recent change to global average temperature NOT caused by man-released CO2, Mann was rewarded so vigorously, and Mann’s hockey Stick was promoted so desperately for the simple reason BECAUSE it removed the Inconvenient Truths of recent global warming and recent global cooling several centuries BEFORE man’s release oif CO2.
If you do not know why it is getting warmer, then how can you possibly say we ” “naturally crawling out of…” anything.
…
If you don’t know, please don’t use the word “naturally”
” deliberately limiting energy ” ……strawman….that has nothing to do with global T
…
” deliberately raising energy prices,” another strawman…..has nothing to do with global T
…
” will kill millions and harm billions more over the next 85 years.” What is the make and model of your crystal ball? Are your predictions based on a computer model?
..
“Mann was rewarded ” What does he have to do with “naturally crawling??????”
…
Do you realize that political science has very little to do with real science? Do you know the difference between the two? I don’t think so.
” deliberately limiting energy ” ……strawman….that has nothing to do with global T
WRONG, [trimmed]! It is the CENTRAL TENET in your religion! The Earth has a FEVAH and the ONLY way to stop it is by a reduction of the POLLUTING GAS, Carbon Dioxide, by the world’s governments! Thanks, for playing, Champ!
Oh, that’s easy! It’s CO_2, the Magic Gas! There ain’t NUFFIN it can’t do! What did I win?
“Buffalo Breath”
…
Name calling is frowned upon, and is nothing more than an ad-hom technique used by someone that can’t argue the facts.
..
“limiting energy” is not a part of the hypothesis put forth by Svante Arrhenius over 115 years ago.
,,,
You can expand energy consumption for example by using solar, wind and nuclear.
…
Do you understand the difference between “science” and “political science?”
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No. I live with my parents in their basement. I’m very shy and don’t get out much except sometimes they take me for ice cream.
SHFlashman and socks,
Since you don’t like it here, and never have anything positive to say, why don’t you both just get lost?
Who needs site pests? We have enough as it it. Most of us just want to discuss facts. Not you. You would rather be a crybaby over being called a name. It’s not the first time. Try putting your too-sensitive ego aside. This is the internet. Discuss science instead. In fact, why not limit your comments to verifiable, empirical facts?
If you did that, you would not have much to say, isn’t that true?
Go ahead. Try it.
The planet is recovering from the LIA. Naturally.
It is the alarmist crowd that has the onus in this debate. YOU were the ones claiming that “unnatural” emissions are changing the climate. So the onus is on you to support that, and to fend off any attacks by skeptics.
You have failed. There is nothing unusual happening. There is nothing unprecdedented happening. Everything we observe is well within past *natural* parameters — EVERYTHING.
Therefore, your cAGW scare fails. QED
Because there are a few people on this site who retain some vestige of objectivity and critical thinking ability, and they may be worth talking to. Anyway, it would be easy enough to block me if I’m disrupting the echo chamber; but I reckon all this name-calling and piling-on drives valuable eyeballs.
“why don’t you both just get lost? ”
..
http://wattsupwiththat.com/about-wuwt/policy/.
“Respect is given to those with manners”
….
“The planet is recovering from the LIA. Naturally.”
..
You have not explained exactly what physical process is the cause for the “recovery”
..
” There is nothing unprecdedented happening.”
..
There has never been a biological organism on this planet that was able to dig down thru 2 or more miles of rock to extract and burn the sequestered carbon. THAT is truly unprecedented.
…
” Discuss science instead ”
…
Good!!!!
Explain to us why….” those of us up to speed on the subject know that global temperature (T) rises or falls the most at night,”
…
You said it, now what is the “science” behind your statement???
D. Sockrates,
Trolling again, I see.
How many times are you going to ask that same ridiculous question? It has been answered, chapter and verse, but you are still acting like an immature child incessantly asking, “But, why …?”
And of course, the planet is recovering naturally from the LIA. Prove it’s not. The onus is on you, because CAGW is your conjecture. But it has been decisively falsified. Why do you keep fighting your losing battle? You lost the debate. CAGW is evidence-free nonsense.
As usual, you give an an inane answer to the fact that nothing being observed is unprecedented. Apparently that bothers you to the point that you have to give that flippant response. But the fact is that there is nothing either unprecedented or unusual happening. Thus, you lose that particular point. Don’t you? If you thought you could refute it, surely you would at least try. But, no. You lose the point because of your non-answer.
Your final question is even more pointless, childish nonsense. It is wrong. It makes no sense at all. Are you simply nuts? That would explain it. From your incessant questions, it appears that way.
Finally: show respect; earn respect, and you will get it back. Stop with your senseless, whiny questions — that would be a good first step for you. You complain, but your own thread-jacking violates the rules here as much as anything. So man up, and defend your position here if you can. So far that has been impossible for you, so you deflect, and you change the subject, and you complain like a child. Everyone sees it, except maybe you.
You lost the debate, so you are lashing out and being a crybaby. Instead, try to act like a skeptic: the facts simply do not support your conjecture, so just re-assess. That is what a skeptic would do. You were wrong about your ‘carbon’ scare. So admit it, otherwise you look more than a little bit crazy.
Finally, socks says:
Go argue with Monckton………He’s much more knowledgeable about AGW than you
And both of us are much more knowledgeable than mr socks is. All sox is good for is asking inane, pointless questions repeatedly, and for running interference. He’s pretty good at those two things. But climate knowledge? He has a lot to learn.
You can tell we’re on to something when socksgate shows up! LOL!
Thank you, Janice.
He’s like a little kid who craves attention:
“But why …?” etc., etc., &etc.
My pleasure, Mr. Stealey. Thanks for your kind acknowledgement.
Downloaded and studied the simple model. Ran a few calculations, and have some interesting observations. First, thanks for the clear equation derivation and bounded parameter derivations (most from AR4 and AR5, so not quibbleable by warmunists- clever).
Second, the model can be backfit to the several recent observational energy budget approaches estimating TCR and ECS. My prefered paper is Lewis and Curry, TCR~1.3, ECS ~1.7, giving the simple model r transience ~ (1.3/1.7) = 0.76. That foots well with paper table 2 with f < 0.5 for time scales of a few centuries.
Third, it is possible to delve into AR4 and AR5 feedbacks at an observational level. Doing so shows gross selection bias by the IPCC. When surveying all the relevant literature, it appears reducing the positive water feedback by about half, and resetting the positive cloud feedback to zero or slightly negative, are observationally justified. AR4 details in the climate chapter of my book The Arts of Truth, and AR4/ AR5 in several essays in newest book Blowing Smoke. Together, these suggest an f~ 0.3 ( after L&C, ~ 0.25). Derived from Lindzens 1/(1-f) version of sensitivity explicitly in The Arts of Truth. Those values also foot well to the curves in paper figure 5. Higher than the posited f=0.1 max stable, but obviously still well behaved and "stable" even though not in that figures asserted "stable" zone. Just look at the figure.
So my only quibble with this paper is the figure 5 shaded stable zone. It would have been better to use the entire roughly linear portion of the curve out to ~0.5, or (to be risque, the inflection point at ~0.75). Otherwise, everything here can be footed to much other stuff. Instead of 1.0C for RCP6, you get maybe 1.7C with r=0.75 and f= 0.25-0.3. So what, as the higher value is not a problem for the planet. Remember, 2C from 1850 was an arbitrary Schellenhuber fiction done for political communication reasons, as he himself proudly proclaimed.
Again, thanks for the clear derivation and nifty new tool. This comment is simply trying to foot it to much else.
Mr Rud Istvan has done what we hope many scientists will now do: he has run the simple model for himself and has, in minutes, been able to draw some very interesting conclusions. We have taken climate sensitivity modelling out of the temple of the Archdruids and made it accessible to all.
I should be thanking you, not vise versa. Highest regards from someone who took a different approach, yet reached similar ‘truth’ conclusions. Explained in the books.
Thanks Rud. You’ve done what all the above trolls should have, wish they could have, or simply refuse to do.
The trolls, of course, miss the point entirely — the super-computer-byte-gobbling “models” don’t even do as well as a simple but solid equation. The real climate won’t conform to a simple equation, but that’s the point — how can such an equation do better than billion-dollar models running on megawatt-sucking supercomputers?
The Callender posts over at ClimateAudit demonstrated the same thing.
Nice work but I can’t get the web site your article is posted on – each time I try it gives me an error message. Periodically I have called for abolition of climate modeling based on their performance. They were introduced by Hansen in 1988 and his predictions were all wrong. They have not improved in 26 years meaning that none of them are any good, a reason for dumping them. Your work shows just how they got that way. Your first three points deal with feedbacks and you are on the right track but you don’t go far enough. There is no feedback, period, not even a “..new, lower feedback…” from the IPCC that counts. This follows from the Miskolczi greenhouse theory (MGT) and from existence of the hiatus/pause.The hiatus by itself nullifies the validity of the Arrhenius greenhouse theory, still used by the IPCC, and written into their model code. According to MGT carbon dioxide and water vapor form a joint optimum absorption window in the infrared whose optical thickness is 1.87. if you now add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere it will start to absorb, just like Arrhenius says. But this will increase the optical thickness. And as soon as it happens, water vapor will start to diminish, rain out, and the original optical thickness is restored. This is the exact opposite of the IPCC claim that water vapor triples Arrhenius warming. The added carbon dioxide will of course keep absorbing but the reduction of water vapor will keep the total absorption constant and no warming is possible. It is this warming that is prevented from happening by reduction of water vapor that would have been called greenhouse warming, the foundation stone of the alleged anthropogenic global warming. With that, AGW is proved to be nothing more than a pseudo-scientific fantasy, cooked up by over-eager climate workers to support their sagging greenhouse hypothesis. The huge sums of money used to fight it are a total waste. Any projects set up yo fight AGW should be defunded and the employees fired. In case you don’t think it possible, Richard Nixon fired ten thousand people when he cancelled the last three moon shots.
Mr. Arrak,
Several of us read Monckton, et. al. (2015) via Paul C’s link here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/16/peer-reviewed-pocket-calculator-climate-model-exposes-serious-errors-in-complex-computer-models-and-reveals-that-mans-influence-on-the-climate-is-negligible/#comment-1836916
The lyrics from the Shaker song “Simple Gifts” seem appropriate here:
In my book this is not a ‘model’, but just an exercise in irreducible curve fitting. The real climate models solve the governing equations that describe the physics [as we know it] on a fine grid of points across the globe with a time resolution of minutes and integrate the system of equations forwards in time. This is hard to do and they have evidently failed, so far. Curve fitting is easy and always works, but has no predictive value. People who fall for this and believe otherwise are just suffering from confirmation bias.
Dr. Svalgaard,
If you have the time, would you please reconcile (with your view stated at 4:44pm today) or explain your view vis a vis this comment by Johanus:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/16/peer-reviewed-pocket-calculator-climate-model-exposes-serious-errors-in-complex-computer-models-and-reveals-that-mans-influence-on-the-climate-is-negligible/#comment-1837394.
Thanks!
Janice
That is just hand waving fluff [with its categorical ‘all’]. Thus has no bearing on my comment, nor on Mr Monckton’s [as far as I can see]
In my book a “scientific model” is nothing more than a simplified version of reality. It does not have to be a complex computer code with fine grid points, but can be any kind of cognitive activity which makes some part or feature of the world easier to understand, define, quantify, visualize, or simulate. Models do not have to ‘predict’ the future. An ‘explanation’ of the past or present is equally useful.
So, in that sense, Monckton’s equation (below) is a very simple but useful scientific model, which explains why IPCC models run “hot” by computing the expected temperature response (ΔTt) to anthropogenic radiative forcings and consequent temperature feedbacks over any given period of years t, given the same anthropogenic forcings used by the more complex IPCC models. The correctness of this equation is elaborated in detail in the paper.
http://i57.tinypic.com/24vuycn.jpg
Most grateful to Johanus for his perceptive comment on the simplicity and utility of ours model.
Yes, indeed, thank you, Johanus, for your helpful response.
Read the paper. First we constructed the model. Then we ran it. It tracked observation better than any of the GCMs, first time. There was no curve-fitting, Any fool can do that, and with the tough reviewers we had the paper would not have survived if we had merely resorted to curve-fitting, less U generosity of spirit, please,
I’t is irritating that comments appear in random positions. My remark about curve-fitting was directed to Mr Svalgaard but has appeared out of sequence,
Can you post the computer code you used to “run” the model?
That is because you don’t know how to use a computer
The paper states “The simple model has only five tunable parameters”. Recall what von Neumann admonished us: “with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
Monckton,
Your comment has not appeared out of sequence.
Note the indents associated with the comments/replys. There were two Replies to Svalgaard & four intermidiate replies to those two Replies. Your Reply was the third.
… as of the Time stamp on this reply. There may be more Replies and intermediate replies before you read this (if you read this).
socrates says:
That is because you don’t know how to use a computer
That was directed at Lord Monckton??
Some folks are bigger fools/tools than we give them credit for. Lord M is a published mathemetician, thus he probably knows far more than you do about computers. So could you please take your ad-hom insults elsewhere, maybe to hotwhopper or a similar blog?
They would appereciate it. We don’t. ‘K thx bye.
Mr Socrates (below), a regular and silly troll here, whines that I have not produced any computer code because I do not know how to use a computer. The same remark might reply equally to him. The equations in the paper – which he has plainly neither read nor understood – are not particularly difficult to understand with a little effort, and, as more constructive commenters here have discovered by experiment, they can program even simple calculators to run the model – which was precisely the intention. The inference from Mr Socrates’ whining is that he is not only unable to operate a computer but even has difficulty with a pocket calculator. Or is it that he is paid to troll here? Certainly his points are not very grown up,
lsvalgaard
January 16, 2015 at 7:33 pm
The paper states “The simple model has only five tunable parameters”. Recall what von Neumann admonished us: “with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk”
====
..and with a GCM I can make it dress in drag and lip sinc to Donna Summer
It worked [got what you desired] the first time. So you never tested it with other parameter sets? Never did a parameter sensitivity analysis? When you said ‘tracked observation’ that implies there was a ‘track’, a curve that could be plotted revealing the track. Show us that curve. And show us the ‘tough’ review reports.
Mr Svalgaard persists in complaining that we did not test the model more than we did. With his customary nastiness he says this was because we got the results we wanted first time. Don’t be childish. We ran two detailed calibration tests, one to replicate a result published by IPCC, which used IPCC’s parameter value,ps, and another to compare the model with observed temperature change since 1850. The forcing value was calculated from the observed increase in CO2 concentration, not picked by us. Perhaps Mr Svalgaard would like to try reading the paper before commenting on it,
Dear Dr. Svalgaard,
Thank you for taking the time to write to waft away (heh) Johanus. I write again with great hesitation, for I barely understand what I am talking about, but, I have to say that Johanus’ comment just below this (at 6:15pm) is, in spite of your wafting, highly persuasive to me. I realize that I do not have the knowledge to intelligently discern, here. In fact, my grasp of the topic is so rudimentary that I feel kind of sheepish even trying to ask, BUT I AM ANYWAY!
#(:))
Okay. I’m finally asking my question:
Given: there is no evidence proving
(I don’t deny that there is laboratory chemistry to indicate the theoretical possibility under laboratory conditions)
human CO2 emissions drive any climate effects
(and also, given that ice core proxies offer strong indication that CO2 lags temp. by a quarter cycle, per Salby)
Q: Do you think there is a significant
(or highly likely or some other way of stating a confidence level)
possibility that the main reason that the IPCC’s models fail is because their assumptions about/assigned values for CO2 sensitivity are grossly in error?
Your Intro to Science Student,
Janice
The failure of the IPCC models is IMHO opinion due to that we don’t know how the climate works in enough detail on the small scales [e.g. clouds] to be able to model it applying the relevant physics. This is even more true of simple-minded curve fitting a la Monckton. His refusal to apply his ‘model’ to the climate since [say] 1850 speaks volumes. Einstein once said that one should make things as simple as possible, but no simpler. Now, it is Monckton’s prerogative to be wrong, and I will defend his right to be so. Bottom line: I’m not impressed. The paper does not pass the smell test, but, hey, most papers don’t, peer-reviewed or not [weren’t Mann’s and Hansen’s papers peer-reviewed as well].
Thank you, very much, Dr. Svalgaard, both for the thoughtful and well-informed answer and for the boost your bothering to reply gave to my self-esteem.
Janice
Janice Moore and lsvalgaard
I strongly agree with Leif when he says
However, the IPCC models (i.e.CMIP5 models) are also “simple-minded curve fitting” because they utilise completely arbitrary aerosol forcing to force a fit between model-derived temperature time series and measured time series of global temperature. See this Fig.2 from Kiehl’s paper.
The fact is that the Monckton et al. model manages to hindcast better than the IPCC models while using lower climate sensitivity. This demonstrates that there is no reason to trust the IPCC projections based on higher climate sensitivity although – as Leif says – whether the Monckton et al. model proves to be a better forecaster remains to be seen.
Richard
Mr Svalgaard (below) says I have “refused” to apply the simple climate model as far back as 1850. Since the model is specifically designed to address the effects on temperature of anthropogenic CO2 enrichment of the atmosphere, which were negligible till 1950 and near-non-existent in 1850, this crass statement of his shows that he has not read the paper before choosing to snipe at it in a characteristically petty and unconstructive fashion. Do grow up.
Isvalgaard:
What you say about understanding and modeling the detail is true. However, this is very difficult. From other fields, it is very difficult to produce an animation of waves breaking on a beach that looks realistic; it is only recently with high speed photography that we can model the movements of a bird’s wings. In the Earth Sciences, key processes, even though they are well understood are difficult to model – porosity in a petroleum reservoir comes to mind. How is this addressed? Collect a lot of detailed data and force the model to honor the data. This will tend to make up for deficiencies in the model. As one professor taught me – all models are wrong! – there is no such thing as a perfect gas, an inelastic solid, or a rigid body!
The reason the models fail is not necessarily because the models are wrong. It is because most of the measurements are too sparse. Without good finely spaced data, the models are just glorified video games, and also have no predictive value. Collecting data in the Earth Sciences is expensive. It oil companies could get away with running models on a sparse grid instead of collecting more data, they would.
Walt, thanks for the help, but (see Bob Tisdale’s book: Climate Models Fail) the GCM’s can’t even hindcast.
Walt,
You may find this interesting (if you missed this when it first appeared on WUWT): http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/27/another-uncertainty-for-climate-models-different-results-on-different-computers-using-the-same-code/.
Not that it directly speaks to your point about sparse data, but quite illuminating!
Thanks again for responding. Being ignored here today makes me so grateful for those of you who have considered me of high enough worth that I merit a response.
Janice
If the models fail, they are wrong.
And where is the ‘good finely spaced data’ that validates Monckton’s ireducible simple-minded ‘model’. To me it smacks of homeopathy: the less data, the better.
One reason why the models are wrong is that they are using incorrect physics. The Bode system gain equation, for instance, is inapplicable to a climate with strong net-positive feedbacks, and strong net-positive feedbacks are in any event contra-indicated by the paseo-temperature record.
Janice: “The GCM’s can’t even hindcast”.
You’ve heard of “20/20 Hindsight”?
Here we have “Legally Blind Hindsight”.
To quote a baseball metaphor -“They couldn’t get to first base even if they were walked”.
“You may find this interesting (if you missed this when it first appeared on WUWT): http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/27/another-uncertainty-for-climate-models-different-results-on-different-computers-using-the-same-code/.”
Janice – I am aware of this. One of the reasons that the same code gave different answers on different machines is that the arithmetic on different machines has different accuracy.
The key problem was that when the were computing scalar products (dot products), the were summing series with alternating signs. This produces numerical instability.(You can see this effect by trying to calculate exp(-x) using a power series where terms are rounded to six decimal places at each step of the calculation).
The scientists at Lawrence Berkeley developed code (ARPREC) which uses arbitrary precision arithmetic. This solved the numerical problem – in other words, the same code gave the same answer when run on different computers. (Whether or not they all told the truth or just told the same lies is up for discussion.) Needless to say, the paper that describes this (it only really mentions Climate Models in passing) is no longer available on line.
While this is in response to you, Walt D., I write here mainly for other readers just to correct any potential misimpression created by your focus on the floating point math issues of the GCM software discussed on the thread (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/27/another-uncertainty-for-climate-models-different-results-on-different-computers-using-the-same-code/)
I cited above.
The MAIN point that was made (along with an exceptionally fine discussion of math and computers, IEEE standards, etc…) was summarized nicely by Brian H in his comment of July 28, 2013, 12:22pm (here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/27/another-uncertainty-for-climate-models-different-results-on-different-computers-using-the-same-code/#comment-1373459) on that thread:
(emphasis mine)
Janice: Here is the article, from 2000, I was referring to: “Using accurate arithmetics to improve numerical reproducibility and stability in parallel applications ”
Yun He, Chris H. Q. Ding
Published in: Proceeding
ICS ’00 Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Supercomputing
Pages 225-234
ACM New York, NY, USA ©2000
table of contents ISBN:1-58113-270-0 doi>10.1145/335231.335253
you can find it here.
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=335253
It identifies very serious numerical problems with the climate models prior to 2000.
Thank you, Walt D..
And, just to close the loop, here is the link to the abstract (and also where one can purchase the paper) of the paper discussed in the thread I linked to about GCM software:
Song-You Hong, Myung-Seo Koo, Jihyeon Jang, Jung-Eun Esther Kim, Hoon Park, Min-Su Joh, Ji-Hoon Kang, and Tae-Jin Oh, 2013: An Evaluation of the Software System Dependency of a Global Atmospheric Model. Mon. Wea. Rev., 141, 4165–4172.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-12-00352.1
Leif Svalgaard: Curve fitting is easy and always works, but has no predictive value.
Curve fitting sometimes works, but can’t be relied upon until the resultant model has been tested against out of sample data. Successful curve-fitting can be used by others in deriving or validating more complex models, as when Kepler influenced Newton. They are not the only examples. We shall have to wait and see whether their model fits subsequent data.
Curve fitting might work in extremely simple situations, which does not describe our complex climate system. Of course, my comment had to be seen in that context. Kepler’s curve fitting was not curve fitting in this sense, but was simply a construction of the orbit based on observations, not trying specifically to fit a model [he had a model, but it was completely wrong http://www.georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/kepler.html ]
We shall have to wait and see whether their model fits subsequent data
The authors are not that humble [as they should be], but baselessly and brazenly bassoon that their model already demonstrates its worth. As you point out, it does not.
Ms Svalgaard is unscientific in repeating that our simple model is a curve-fitting exercise. I have already explained that there was no curve-fitting. Besides, depending on the choice of parameter values, it is possible to replicate the IPCC’s results, as the paper makes clear. That is how we calibrated the model. Does Mr Scalgaard bear some sort of a grudge?
Mr Svalgaard (below) says we baselessly but brazenly bassoon that our model already demonstrates its worth. Read the paper before sneering about it. What we actually say is that the simple model has its limitations, but it has its uses too. We also make it explicit that the new model – for obvious reasons – is not a substitute for more complex models. However, the first time we ran it with parameter values that seemed to us to be reasonable and proportionate, for reasons explained in the paper, it correctly back cast recent observed temperature change. We thin our model may well prove closer to the mark on climate sensitivity than the complex models in future decades. But, as with all predictions, only time will tell.
lsvalgaard: [he had a model, but it was completely wrong http://www.georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/kepler.html ]
The model that he started with was wrong. After he conjectured that the paths might be ellipses, he calculated parameter values that yielded the paths approximately as modeled values. As he became more confident in his modeling results, generalizing from planet to planet, he became less rigorous in checking the procedure.
Kepler observed [by plotting out the orbit from Tycho’s observations] that the orbit of Mars was an ellipse. No concept here of introducing a ‘model’.
lsvalgaard: Kepler observed [by plotting out the orbit from Tycho’s observations] that the orbit of Mars was an ellipse. No concept here of introducing a ‘model’.
Are you asserting that an ellipse is not a model? Or that something that looks like an ellipse is an ellipse because it looks like one? Kepler confirmed by calculating model values that the observations were closely approximated by the computations from the mathematical ellipse.
No, Kepler did not ‘confirm’ the model that the orbits were ellipses. He discovered that fact, grudgingly.
lsvalgaard:No, Kepler did not ‘confirm’ the model that the orbits were ellipses. He discovered that fact, grudgingly.
Are you sure that you know about this? Kepler certainly did the computations necessary to confirm that the planets had ellipsoidal orbits, once he adduced that they might..
Leif Svalgaard, you quoted the following and linked to a cite that had it:A ‘model’ is an evidence-based representation of something that is either too difficult or impossible to display directly.
It seems to me that you are not adhering to that definition, but adding and subtracting from it as you go along, as with your claim that the “Standard Model” is not a model because it is not a simplification of a more complex model, and your claim that the Monckton et al model is not a model because it entails “curve fitting”. Neither of those narrowings is actually part of the definition.
The real climate models solve the governing equations that describe the physics [as we know it] on a fine grid of points across the globe with a time resolution of minutes and integrate the system of equations forwards in time.
OK, but the definition of model does not require that a model solve governing equations.
You have some things backwards. The Standard Model is not a simplification of nature. It is nature’s reality: http://www.stfc.ac.uk/images/web/1297_web_1.png where is the ‘simplification’ of a more complex reality? In fact, earlier versions of the Standard Model were much more complex, with hundreds of different particles, and several fundamentally distinct forces, which if ‘models are simplifications of reality’ imply that reality is even more complex. E.g. there was a magnetic force and an electric force and a weak force. The modern Standard Model show that reality is simpler than the earlier models by showing that those forces are just different aspects of the same underlying force, so reality turned out to be simpler than our models. Thus it is not a characteristic of a model to be a simplification of reality, often it is the other way around. Now, we can, for other purposes, e.g. educational, choose to construct a simplified model, that is a completely different issue.
Yet the standard model equation cannot yet reconcile gravity with the other forces. Like all models, it’ll the standard model is not a complete description of reality, and would not be even if gravity were eventually unified with the other forces.
Leif Svalgaard: The Standard Model is not a simplification of nature. It is nature’s reality:
Yes ! You got it !
As always, anything I say has the caveat ] ‘as far as we know’.
As in the past, we have always found that reality is simpler than our models. It is very likely that when we figure out how to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity it will be within an even simpler underlying reality.
For those having trouble with the link!
The hyperlink in the original post is bad. Here is the correct link:
http://www.scibull.com:8080/EN/abstract/abstract509579.shtml
That page includes a link to a PDF of the paper. However, it generates a file named simply “Why”. You can rename that file, if you like, and give it a PDF extension. But here is a direct link to another PDF of the paper:
http://wmbriggs.com/public/Monckton.et.al.pdf
Either route should get you a PDF file of 1,546,492 bytes. It is, by the way, a very well-made PDF.
Why has this so called “model”, like the rest of them, failed to forecast the lack of warming for the past 2 decades?
Does this model, include and predict the formation and effects of key climate negative feedbacks such as thunderstorms for example? I think not. It is not a model. It is just a simple formula. GIGO (Garbage in, garbage out).
Just like the ill-fated Evans’ Notch ‘model’ so applauded by Monckton. Perhaps Monckton could comment on how those two ‘models’ support each other… What their common physics is…
Mr Svalgaard, as so often these days, is being petty and unscientific. The timescale for Dr Evans’ predictions is nowhere near past, so there is no basis in observation for the suggestion that his proposed model is “ill-fated”. A more adult, objective approach would surely be preferable.
You fail to comment on the support [or lack thereof] of your ‘model’ and the ill-fated Evan’s Notch theory [an example of GIGO], and instead resort to more ad-homs [as per your M.O].
Mr Svalgaard continues to be petty and unscientific. Only time will tell whether there is “support” for our model. Only time will tell whether Dr Evans’ model is “I’ll-fated”. Wait and see, and don’t prejudge these matters. No scientist would behave as you are behaving here.
You persist in non-responsive and vacuous commentary and continue to evade my very reasonable requests. An honest scientist would do his utmost to respond to such in a substantive way.
What requests?
This is a big reason there should have been a computer-code “instantiation” – a basic but real “program” – written by the authors of this paper: Code makes it a lot clearer whether an analysis is successfully modelling, or is merely formulaic.
Repeatedly advising various people inquiring about such code (which is a leading claim of the project and its authors) to RTFM could be tacit recognition that this is not a model.
Additionally, an implied expectation that every person reading a given set of parameter-descriptions will write the same code, also suggests a formula, and not a model.
The ocean-heat anecdote Monckton mentions, and the use of an open array is favorable, but millions of spreadsheets use the same array technique, and are pure formulas.
Mr Clayton seems not to have grasped that a model need not be complex to be a model. And several commenters here have had no difficulty in writing the simple code that is required, or in simply using a pocket calculator. Stop whining.
Mr Clayton also appears unaware that a model may be represented by code written in different ways that nevertheless generate the same results if the same parameter values are used.
Try reading the paper before commenting on it.
I came to the topic of models & modelling, when the instantiation method in vogue was the vacuum tube (British “valve”) Operational Amplifier. A dominant sub-current of tension among practitioners pitted Single-Amp versus Multi-Amp (often single vs multi tube) circuit-design camps against each other. (Quasi-religious circuit-complexity tensions had predated OpAmps, and their use in modelling, and this had probably continued/spilled over into the new modelling-venue/application.)
Models that run on a single tube (or transistor) based opamp, are (thus) by definition encapsulated within a single (mathematical) “operation”.
The operation implemented by an opamp (speaking here of esp. ‘homemade’ or bread-boarded or ‘(lab)-bench-amps’, which would be the norm in modelling-research), can be highly specific and “tuned” (in the vernacular of our current discussion). They combine an explicit “formula” or “calculation”, with a robust model-analogy. In one & the same package.
A model, under this simplicity-driven paradigm, is said to be “reduced”. Workers then seek (compete) to create (or at least claim) an “irreducible” model, which of course is the characterization applied in Monckton et al.
When using an electronic (analog) circuit to model (reduced or irreducible) medical or biological or climate questions, the difference between the mathematical operation (or formula) and the intended model-analogy is explicit. It is the circuit itself that ‘enforces’ the distinction between the two components of the formula-analogy dualism.
Thus, it was imperative that one publish his opamp circuit design, alongside his model-proposal. Today, we achieve the same necessary dualism-explication goal, by writing an example-program, which exposes the model, and clarifies the formula-model distinction.
Our model, when reasonable and scientifically justifiable parameter values are adopted as explained and justified carefully in the paper, comes visibly closer to observed temperature change than the more complex models. If you want perfection, pray.
“Tony” should appreciate that our model has come far closer to predicting outturn than the general-circulation models.
The model is capable of encompassing any feedback sum, net-positive, net-zero or net-negative.
and to fitting to any curve.
Mr Svalgaard continues childishly to repeat himself. As a scientist would know, a model is not a curve-fitting exercise. Nor, in making our own best estimate of anthropogenic warming using the model, did we use curve fitting to choose the parameter values before the model run. We chose the parameter values, ran the model and found that the output was far closer to observation than the GCMs. A scientist would know that that is nit curve-fitting. A bearer of grudges would, however, continue in the teeth of the evidence to assert tha we had indulged in mere cypurve fitting. That would not have passed oeer review,
Repetition seems to be necessary to coax any responsive comments from you. So, show us the ‘first’ try computed curve that “tracked” the observations. This is a very reasonable request that you could easily comply with. Failure to do so would count very strongly against any interest in your musings.
Mr Svalgaard should have read the paper before commenting on it.
There is a long running and pointless argument about this effort being a model or just a formula. Here is a formula and a model E=IR. Yes, Ohm’s law. As a model it isn’t correct in any detail. It assumes a linear relationship. It’s formulaic. Is it useful? I cannot imagine doing electronics without it. So, the model in this paper is too simple to be correct in the details. Fine. But is it useful?
I would say that it is, seeing that its point is, according to the authors themselves, to 1) demystify a complex topic, 2) illuminate the climate forcing at issue in the debate, and 3) allow one to play with feedback and learn why certain values of feedback are non-credible or even non-physical. A full climate model would do a very poor job of illustrating such things–like using a searchlight to read a book. Even climate models that happened to be very accurate would do a poor job of this and we have no such accurate models at present. I believe that the arguments made though it regarding feedback are pertinent–and I do not say so because I have questioned the positive feedback issue for twenty years, but because explaining how a system with large positive feedback is not driven to the rails, as the authors say, is essential to the credibility of estimates of sensitivity.
Then someone just above asked why this model could not explain the hiatus or even map climate history forward from 1850 to today. The answer is that it is not constructed to do so and was not its purpose. The authors stated clearly that it is not a global climate model. Look, if someone tells me they have a widget that will do X and Y but not Z, I don’t judge their efforts by insisting it do Z and harping on the failure. It’s like insisting that Ohm’s law is deficient because it cannot tell us what R should be in arbitrary circumstances.
If models were really being used, they would be built from fundamentals. Most of the science relating to climate is unknown, such as cloud formation. This makes it impossible to build a true model. Moreover the grid size used in the finite element approximations is so large as to exclude even major climate components such as thunderstorms. Imagine designing a bridge using FEM where the elements were bigger than the bridge itself!
Climate “models” are hence not real models of any sort. They aresimply black boxes with enough variables to do historical curve fitting, and include the unverified T=Fn(CO2), in order to support the theory they are built for. Pure GIGO.
Tony implies we used curve fitting. We did no such thing. Our model is a much simplified representation of the current state of climate physics. Time will tell whether it works better than GCMs.
I would define E= IR as both a definition and a predictive model. I believe you’ve written the same thing using slightly different wording.
Hey, Leif, Ted, et al. First, you all whine about providing code when I have already run the simple paper equation multiple times on an HP 12c…without even programing same. Trust me, I have programmed that ancient device to do more commodities trading stuff than most here could ever imagine. Just multiplying stuff does not require any programming at all…unless you want to explore the resultant space. I suggest you take some remedial math stuff.
Second, the parameteriztion is more important than the trivial code doing the computatioms. That was, I think, the core of their paper, and where I ‘disagreed’ on r and f. Only a little bit.
So either show up as competent, or get out of here permanently. Please.
I did not ask for the code. I couldn’t care less. Curve fitting is curve fitting is curve fitting. No stinking code needed.
In reply to Mr Svalgaard, we did no, repeat no, curve fitting. The paper would not have passed stringent peer review if that was all we had done. Please read the paper and think before commenting.
Santer once used this same argument with McIntyre.
The code was trivial, write it yourself.
Of course we were all of one voice.
Show your work.
A paper advertises the work.
Is the code trivial?
Good, then there is no bogus IP defense.
Is the code trivial?
Good, then supply it.
Made the same argument about GISStemp. Hansen released it
made the same argument about hadcrut, they released it.
Now days the only people refusing to release code are skeptics. Evans, Monkton, Scaffetta.
In the best tradition of Mann
Mr Mosher is sour and petty, as usual. The entire model is thoroughly laid bare in the paper. Every equation is there. Every parameter is there, with a reasonably thorough description of where it came from. Ther is no code to release, because the model is simple enough to be run without it,so we did not write any except for esoteric tasks not essential to the paper’s argument, such as the non-trivial spherical geometry to confirm the complex models’ value for the Planck parameter. It is not for us to instruct Mr Mosher in how to use a pocket calculator.
Other commenters have found not the slightest difficulty in using the model Om the basis of the detailed information provided in the paper, on a variety of devices from simple and programmable calculators to computers. So stop whining and read the paper and then, if genuinely interested, run through some of the worked examples and then have fun spchoosing your own parameter values. The model is just a model. It will produce the extreme predictions Mr Mosher seems to favour, if silly enough parameter values are chosen.
One suspects Mr Mosher’s true concern is not that the paper reveals too little but that it reveals too much. For the first time, it enables non-soeapcialists to do their own modelling, and to understand how climate sensitivity is actually determined, and to appreciate, therefore, how large the uncertainties are.
Moshe, Newton and Einstein didn’t provide “code” for their equations. One can write the code for calculating the volumes of parallelepipeds but why bother. It seems to me code, like its root meaning, is a way to obfuscate. If the problem can be solved with simple equations, one can throw together a code quickly for running iterations, but there is nothing magical about code. I believe someone upthread threw the simple code together in minutes to do just that.
If Mosher really gave a hoot about the code, he could devise it himself from the equations, as Monckton says.
So why does Mosher harp on the lack of a code?
Precisely my point. Parallelepiped-volume is a formula, and not a model.
It’s this confusion of a formula, with a model, that is the problem.
Had Monckton et al claimed they had a neat formula, a mathematical relationship explicating certain phenomenological aspects of climate, there would be no issue or problem.
But the claim has been for more than a formula. Calculations, in & of themselves, are not models.
Ted Clayton
You say
Sorry, but that displays lack of understanding of basic modeling principles. Indeed, most scientific models are presented as equations (e.g. E = IR) and many are derived by calculation.
A model is a simplified representation of reality.
Being simplified, no model is an exact emulation of reality; i.e. no model is a perfect and no model is intended to be perfect. If it were perfect then it would be reality and not a model of reality.
A model is constructed for a purpose and there are infinite possible purposes for models.
For example, a model of heat loss from a cow may assume that a cow is shaped as a sphere with the surface area of a real cow. And this simple model may provide an adequate quantitative indication of how heat loss from a cow varies with the cow’s metabolic rate. Thus, this hypothetical model may be very useful.
But that model of a cow cannot be used to indicate the movements of a cow. A model of a cow which includes legs is needed for that.
Another model of a cow may be constructed purely for the pleasure of the modeller. In this case it may be carved from wood and painted.
Most scientific models are merely descriptive (e.g. of blood circulation around a body) but the most useful are predictive.
A model may have many forms.
It may be physical, abstract, algebraic, numeric, pictorial or an idea. If its form fulfills the desired usefulness then it is an appropriate model; i.e. it can fulfill its purpose.
Science used models long before there were digital computers.
Richard
Richard Courtney,
In meaningful qualitative ways, analog models seem preferable to digitized and programmed methods, on computers. I learned modelling-approaches, before computer-methods had entered education. Later, I became interested in programming, and have compared digital versus analog model-principles since the Personal Computer became available.
But what we have here, in Monckton et al, is a focused campaign to enter a pre-existing digital computer climate-modelling game. These authors have directly addressed themselves to a specific type & form of contemporary modelling, and want a seat at this particular ‘game-table’. It’s a choice they made, not one that anyone else is projecting onto them.
Models are flexible, and variable, but the broader intellectual potential of the tool is not what Monckton et al are about, and this makes our response to them easier & simpler.
Can they sell their “analysis” in the market place of ideas, as a “model”?
Is it going to pass as a model, in the minds of buyers?
Ted
Monckton of Brenchley: One suspects Mr Mosher’s true concern is not that the paper reveals too little but that it reveals too much.
No. Steven Mosher has consistently supported the more modern standard, required (inconsistently) as I wrote above, by Science Magazine.
Ted Clayton: Parallelepiped-volume is a formula, and not a model.
If it is used in the calculation of the volume of dirt removed from a cut, then it is a model.
A ‘model’ is an evidence-based representation of something that is either too difficult or impossible to display directly. The dirt you talked about is very visible and there is a formula to calculate its volume easily.
lsvalgaard
You say
NO. A model is a simplified representation of reality.
The formula to calculate the volume of the dirt is a model of the dirt’s volume.
It is a simplified representation of reality because the precise nature and shape of the dirt cannot be perfectly known.
Richard
My definition of a model is the usual one employed [at least] in physics. E.g.
https://www.boundless.com/physics/textbooks/boundless-physics-textbook/the-basics-of-physics-1/the-basics-of-physics-31/models-theories-and-laws-195-6078/
lsvalgaard
I refuse to get into an argument about semantics about the definition of a ‘model’. However, I think the ‘dirt’ example demonstrates my choice of words is more useful than that which you apply.
The ‘dirt’ is assumed to be a perfect cylinder. That assumption is adoption of a simplification and, therefore, is a model. Recognition of this demands that the estimated volume of ‘dirt’ has uncertainty.
Richard
yet you persist, quibbling about semantics [go figure]. In physics, we have a very precise meaning of ‘model’ [and of ‘theory’ etc]. For example, the Standard Model in particle physics is not a simplified description of reality, it is our very best description, not made any simpler. Same with our Standard Model in Cosmology. No simplification here, either. In either case there are underlying reality we do not know or understand or choose to ignore, so our models cover that up.
lsvalgaard
You say to me
Well, yes. This conversation began because I refuted the assertion of Ted Clayton that Monckton et al. had not presented a model but had only provided an equation. That refutation is a semantic argument and is here.
Your comments support the untrue assertions of Ted Clayton.
And you seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing. The remainder of your post I am answering says
“Very precise”? Really?
You asserted that
and you linked to a page which said that. I replied that I did not want to have a semantic argument about choice of words but explained that for practical reasons I prefer my choice which is
A model is a simplified representation of reality.
Importantly, in my explanation to Ted Clayton (which I have linked from this post) I wrote
You now support that by saying
That is merely another example of what I had said.
Very importantly in the context of your quibbles, you have asserted
“A ‘model’ is an evidence-based representation of something that is either too difficult or impossible to display directly.”
and you have also asserted
“Same with our Standard Model in Cosmology. No simplification here, either. In either case there are underlying reality we do not know or understand or choose to ignore, so our models cover that up.”
Perhaps you would attempt to
(a) equate those two assertions
and
(b) try to explain how a description has “No simplification” when there is an “underlying reality we do not know or understand or choose to ignore”.
In summation, the “quibbling” is yours. It is incoherent and it is illogical.
Richard
The difference is that a simplification is something made simpler. The Standard Models are not made simpler, but are the very best descriptions we have of their phenomena. If you choose to employ a non-standard, homemade definition of ‘model’, it is your choice and your loss.
Matthew R Marler said to Ted Clayton;
The volume-formula itself, like those of the other simple Euclidean solids, gives only the ‘same answer’, every time, no matter what’s going on or the goal. Now, one might see a modelling context based on the type of spoil being excavate; the haulage distance to a dump or storage, or the equipment being used…
But the volume per se doesn’t ‘stand for’ something else; isn’t being employed in an analogous or representative role. Doesn’t simplify or encapsulate reality or a component of it.
It is for sure true that models versus formulas can blur at some interfaces; and that what serves as and therefore is a model, can morph & ‘depend’. Very true.
The legal Prudent Person Test is surely applicable, when it is explicit that part of the goal of model-development/deployment is to induce audiences to accept, and verily to incorporate and apply our proposed model, in their own work & career. If we can’t ‘sell’ our proposal to others, then it was a model only in our own private perception.
In the case of Euclidean solids and other elementary geometry equations, posing the volume-formula in & of itself as a ‘model’ will usually trigger a prudent person’s BS-detector.
In the privacy of our own bedroom or the space between our ears, we can do anything we want. If we’re going public with it, and hope others will adopt it, then we have to mind the envelop with those bounds in view.
lsvalgaard
I said to you
and your response supports that view.
I quoted you and asked you for two clarifications when I wrote
Your reply says in total
Well my “homemade definition of ‘model’ ” is more useful and more accurate than your “homemade definition of ‘model’ “, but if you insist on yours then that is your loss.
You have not answered (could not answer?) my first question (a).
I will spell out the issue for onlookers.
You asserted that
1.
“A ‘model’ is an evidence-based representation of something”
and
2. the “Standard Model in Cosmology” is of something which has “underlying reality we do not know or understand or choose to ignore”.
It is not possible to equate those two assertions because there cannot be “evidence-based representation of something” that has “underlying reality we do not know or understand”: if we had evidence of the “underlying reality” then we would know what it is.
And your answer to my second question (b) is fatuous.
If a description is simpler than reality then the description is made simpler than reality when it is made; i.e. it is a simplified representation of reality. That is not altered by the fact that lack of complete knowledge prevents construction of an unsimplified description.
A model is a simplified representation of reality.
Richard
You seem to be on an ego-trip. Enjoy it. Don’t let my comments ruin your experience.
As to the questions: One is not obligated to answer or respond to questions [especially not when they are ill-posed], but It is possible to equate those two assertions because they are, indeed, “evidence-based representation of something” that has “underlying reality we do not know or understand”.
Your mistake is this “if we had evidence of the “underlying reality” then we would know what it is.”
For the Standard Models, experience has shown that there is always layers below what we have evidenced so far, so we presume that that holds generally. The Models describe what we have evidence for, and we are fully aware that there very likely are further layers [‘turtles all the way down’] on the way down to ‘reality’ [whatever that is], so there is no confusion [except perhaps in your mind].
lsvalgaard
Following my twice pointing out that you seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing you have now replied to me with a post that begins saying.
A more clear example of psychological projection is hard to imagine.
You rightly say there is no compunction to answer questions. There is also no compunction to answer posts, but you chose to make a fatuous answer to one question and to ignore the other in m y post so I addressed both.
I have already answered all the rest of your points and onlookers can see I have no “confusion” but I have explained why and how your assertions are incoherent and illogical nit picks.
Richard
No, I’m not arguing for the sake of the argument, but for your erudition as to what constitutes a ‘model’ in the physical sciences, e.g. http://www.learner.org/courses/essential/physicalsci/session2/closer1.html
‘One can drag a horse to water, but not make him drink’ seems to characterize the situation here.
lsvalgaard
I leave the last word to you because onlookers can assess the matter for themselves but I regret that you failed to “drink”.
Richard
You reached a low point in your commentary. Obviously the lack of drinking was yours.
Lsvalgaard
I saw your post at January 18, 2015 at 12:31 pm immediately it appeared and its nastiness gave me an initial reaction which was to respond. However, I had said I would give you the ‘last word’ so I ‘bit my tongue’. Despite that, after reflection I consider a factual reply is required to inform onlookers.
At January 17, 2015 at 9:28 pm you said
and at January 18, 2015 at 12:28 am you said
Then at January 18, 2015 at 1:11 am you claimed
To which I responded at January 18, 2015 at 1:11 am
The reason for my response was that your link refutes your claim and I was offering you a chance to retract.
The link does provide a bullet point which defines a model as you say, but it also provides another bullet point which defines a model as
So, your link was to a web page of an unknown source that provides two definitions of ‘model’. That is NOT “very precise” and is certainly not cogent.
Subsequently, at January 18, 2015 at 12:15 pm you provided another link this time to a web page for children at http://www.learner.org/courses/essential/physicalsci/session2/closer1.html
It says
That is a direct refutation of your assertion that [your] “definition of a model is the usual one employed [at least] in physics” and it is “very precise”.
However, it agrees with my explanation which is in my above post here where I wrote
I ask onlookers to check YOUR links for themselves and to decide which of us refuses to “drink” the information they contain.
Richard
You are still not drinking.
The link for children I thought would be suitable for you.
And who actually cares what you and I think? Physics does well with the usual definition of model regardless.
lsvalgaard
Your recent posts are not benefiting you.
If you could have provided links which supported your assertions then you would have.
You provided the link for children both because it was the best you could find – although it directly refutes your assertions – and you were amused by its provision being offensive.
I repeat,
I ask onlookers to check YOUR links for themselves and to decide which of us refuses to “drink” the information they contain.
To assist that, I again copy them to here.
https://www.boundless.com/physics/textbooks/boundless-physics-textbook/the-basics-of-physics-1/the-basics-of-physics-31/models-theories-and-laws-195-6078/
http://www.learner.org/courses/essential/physicalsci/session2/closer1.html
Richard
I provided that link because is is suitable for you. Perhaps simpler to understand. But I don’t deal in links. I am a practicing physicist and don’t need links to tell me what to do. As for benefiting: it seems that you have not benefited from the discussion.
To continue your education about models:
A model can also be looked at as an expression of our knowledge about a system. A good model expresses all we know about the system. Sometimes we choose to model only the essential features, so leave out things that we deem don’t matter [perhaps we don’t know all the details anyway]. In any case, with a model we can explore the system in ways that cannot be done direct manipulation of the system or perhaps even predict how the system will evolve in time and space.
lsvalgaard
Your arguing for the sake of arguing is becoming pathetic.
You claim
The only links in this discussion were provided by you and were unsolicited but you now say you “don’t deal in links”.
And the links you provided directly contradict your assertions which you now try to support by an appeal to authority citing yourself as the authority and by throwing and ad hom.
As I said, if you could have provided links which supported your assertions then you would have.
I have benefited from this discussion by learning much of you, and it saddens me.
Richard
As I said, I’m not arguing but educating.
lsvalgaard
I am pleased that you are starting to learn. You say
Well, yes. That consideration of a model agrees with my above explanation here and denies your subsequent assertions which I have been disputing.
I can only assume you were addressing yourself when you wrote “To continue your education about models:”
Richard
No, it was directed squarely at you. The essential point is that what characterizes a model is not that it is a deliberate ‘dumbing down’ or simplification, but that it can capture all we know about a phenomenon or all that we think are important. We do not simplify things for the sake of simplification.
lsvalgaard
I am fed up with your arguing for the sake of arguing.
I have not said, I have not suggested and I have not implied that a model is a “dumbing down”. I again link to my explanation that a model is a simplified representation of reality.
I shall ignore any more of your mental masturbation, insults and illogical verbal contortions which attempt to excuse your errors.
Richard
no drinking, thus. your loss…
Mr Istvan has it right. The model is an irreducible simplification of the more complex models’ approach to determining climate sensitivity. The discussion of appropriate parameter values is indeed at the heart of the paper, and Mr Istvan adopts a reasonable scientific approach when saying he disagrees with our choice of one or two values. He is, after all, free to substitute his own preferred values.
So I hope that people will do us the courtesy of reading the paper, thinking about it and then having a go at running the model for themselves, usin whatever parameter values they consider appropriate. Each parameter is discussed in the paper, so as to give some guidance on the appropriate interval of values.
Have some fun with the model. As we say at the end of our paper, it has its limitations, but it has its uses too.
There are calculators, and then there are programmable calculators. Why the distinction? Is it important?
The comparison between a formula or calculation, and a program or model, points to a watershed in intellectual, scientific and technological history. Ie, there isn’t a realistic comparison.
Formulas and direct calculations of course are not useless. They are indeed extensively used, and important to our well-being. But they are vastly eclipsed by computer (even HP-12C) programs and good models, for exploring, probing and investigating.
Mr. Monckton sees himself challenging an existing model-based (climate-study) paradigm, with an alternative – highly simplified – approach, which he refers to as a “model”. If his greater audience (his opponents with careers based on complex models) can successfully show his analysis to be in fact ‘merely’ a formula, and not a model, then his work will be dismissed for model-purposes.
It was incumbent upon Monckton et al to determine that their new, interesting and very likely useful addition our toolkit is actually a model, before it was dramatized as such. The easiest, best and most-convincing way to do that, is to write a nice example-program.
Resistance to requests for a code-example, suggests the analysis is already recognized as a formula, and not a model.
Ted Clayton
You say
The “addition our toolkit” is a model and your assertion that this needs to be “determined” is merely another display of your ignorance of basic modeling principles.
I explain what models are for you above here.
Richard
Richard Courtney,
Here on a skeptic blog, the natural tendency is to applaud any proposed model that tries to show the GCM King Has No Clothes. We’re generally a friendly audience, in that respect.
But what happens when the proposal encounters the general scientific community (which includes and largely acquiesces to the so-called ‘97%’)?
They will look for weaknesses & strengths, evaluate whether it’s something they feel comfortable getting firmly behind … or should shy away from.
Monckton et al made some smart choices in their paper. They use some of IPCC own computations. This will help folks say positive things, if they want to. The technical execution is professional, throughout. The rhetoric gets slightly ‘racey’, but Monckton’s hand can be very practiced & smooth at this sort of thing, and I think it’s an asset here.
Unfortunately, the accentuated claim that their nicely-made arguments can be easily coded-up as an important computer-program model, looks like a choice that many might see as over-hyped. Oh, it codes-up easily enough – but as a game-changing model?
If we wrote up a nice analysis of the parallelepiped, and tried to sell it as “model”, readers would mostly shake their head & mumble “That’s just a formula”. And that might be the overall reaction to An irreducibly simple climate model, too.
They should have either:
1.) Just put their analysis out there ‘cold’, and let folks ‘discover’ for themselves how/whether it codes easy as a convincing model. Or;
2.) Included their own little program, designed to highlight what they believe makes their proposal a real model, and not just a figurative parallelepiped-formula.
They could have ‘set the tone’, and ‘suggested the direction’ for the programming, but instead what we are tending to see is ‘plain ol’ formulas’.
It’s not too late.
Ted
Ted Clayton
Having displayed that you don’t have a clue about modeling principles, you now try to misrepresent me by writing
But I did NOT “applaud” the model under discussion: on the contrary, my above which is here begins saying
And, having failed in your disruptive attempts to pretend the paper of Monckton et al. does not present a model, you now complain that Monckton has “over-hyped” his report of it and say of Monckton et al. “They could have ‘set the tone’ “.
Which is it; Monckton “over-hyped” or did not “set the tone”?
Your two assertions are mutually exclusive.
And you say “They could have ‘set the tone’ ” by providing their own computer code. But they say their model is so simple that it only requires a pocket calculator. So, they DID ‘set the tone’ as you have defined it, and you have presented no suggestion as to why the “tone” they “set” is wrong and/or inappropriate.
You conclude your post I am answering by saying
It certainly is not too late for you to apologise for your ridiculous concern trolling.
Richard
Richard Courtney said,
Mr. Courtney;
When I compose a comment on a post or a reply to another comment, I am guided by several things:
1.) By far the largest audience are those who read, glance at or skim the post & the comments, without participating.
a.) This is where the real ‘action’ or ‘opportunity’ is.
b.) These people don’t know you or me, and don’t care.
i.) Silent readers are attracted to the overt content, and meaningful commentary.
ii.) Non-participating audiences avoid ‘private issues’ and personalization.
2.) The comments embody debate; often on several different stages & topics. I often try to let my remarks ‘touch on’ more than one of the active debate-forums.
3.) The author of the post is interested in “points” and “arguments” and “criticisms” – as well as plaudits and attaboys.
Bringing up the tail-end of the priority-queue, comes the other commenter himself.
Ted
Ted Clayton
I see that instead of apologising for your concern trolling you have iterated your attempt to misrepresent me when you now write
I again direct you to my post which provided significant criticism (n.b. NOT “plaudits and attaboys) of the paper by Monckton et al. which is here.
Richard
von Neumann famously said that with four parameters he could fit an elephant (he exaggerated). This paper seems to use “five tunable parameters” to fit a straight line. For that is all the output we are shown – a linear trend coefficient, which is supposed to be closer to observations than the models (though “observations” are hardly unanimous). The Fig 6 shown in this post is just bizarre. The only data claimed is a set of trends. Single numbers. Yet somehow drawing a diagram projecting these to 2040 is supposed to prove something?
Astonishing how the true-believers in the climate-Communist party line, such as Mr Stokes, complain that our model has as many as five parameters, and yet they are silent about the fact that the general-circulation models, with six orders of magnitude more parameters than that, can make an elephant waggle its ears at will still more easily. That is a truly dopey objection to our model – in fact, it is childish.
As for Fig. 6, it shows least-squares linear-regression trends, which – as anyone with an elementary knowledge of statistics might be expected to know – are straight lines. This figure has been much cited elsewhere as showing the startling discrepancy between the exaggerated predictions of the climate Communists and the far slower rate of warming evident in the real world.
Fig. 6 demonstrates that the climate-Communist theory is prone greatly to exaggerate the true underlying rate of global warming. This is a point made every month by my monthly analysis of the global temperature record. Watch out for the forthcoming annual update, where all five of the principal global-temperature datasets are compared, and the startling increase in the supposed warming rate demonstrated by the terrestrial datasets after the past year’s co-ordinated tampering is exposed.
Oh dear…First of all, there are not “six orders of magnitude more parameters” in general-circulation models. That is just nonsense. And, while there may be several parameters, like in Monckton et al.’s model, there are many, many more ways in which the parameters can be constrained because there is so much more output that can be compared to climatology. Also, the parameters in general are no even designed in such a way that they can be tuned to provide a better fit to the data for the global temperature record. Instead, they are tuned to better represent things on a more fundamental scale, like cloud fraction.
Second, Monckton’s name-calling (“climate-Communist party line”) shows his true colors: that he is some sort of market fundametntalist who subscribes to theological doctrines that are not based on the economic science of markets, with their virtues and limitations, but rather on fundamentalist beliefs. This is the only reason explanation for him referring to anyone who doesn’t sure these doctrines as subscribing to the “climate-Communist party line”.
I thought rabid fear of communism went away with the collapse of the Soviet Union (and the transformation of China into a Capitalistic economy,, albeit with still a repressive government). Apparently, I was wrong.
After reading many of the comments concerning provision of code I have to ask Monckton of Brenchley, why not acquiesce to this particular request. I’ve argued that the equations are simple and sufficient, but this is obviously the loose thread that critics have pounced on in some desperation. It means that nothing substantively threadbare has presented itself, so I think you have had a fairly easy time of it really. Someone upthread apparently has put a satisfactory probram together. Use it or have another written. At least you will see what else they have to move onto.
Regarding the model, I have to admit my scepticism runs deep and can border on being debilitating. It is perfectly clear probably to all, that any number of alternative models could be devised that would give roughly the same result. There is no guarantee in this science that “correct” models have much to do with reality. I recall the old observation that the height of ladies hemlines was a good fit to copper prices over half a century. Had some one guessed this absurd relationship at the beginning, he could have become a trillionaire on pure nonsense. The IPCC, indeed, has partially corrected their hottest models by adding aerosols. My biggest fear was, with all the funding for this modelling stuff, that someone was going to hit upon a ‘hemlines’ type program that would carry the day for a few decades and kill us all. Fortunately we were saved by hubris that caused them to cling to the 1990s climate catechisms. Give them the code and let them knock themselves out.
Whether or not you believe that CO2 levels drive temperature, within the class of models that do, Monckton’s models clearly dominates all the others in terms ability to model temperatures in the real world. It is true that Climate Models have much more lofty objectives than just modeling temperature. However, until they can produce output that looks like the real world they are useless – you may as well look at the Farmer’s Almanac.
Monckton I repeat here as this seems to be your latest comment a reply to your earlier comment.
Until you incorporate the millennial cycle peak into your work there is no possibility of calculating
any possible contribution of anthropogenic CO2 to climate change – see my original comment .You are simply arbitrarily assigning the temperature rise due to the natural solar activity cycle rise to its peak to CO2 – you just assign somewhat less than the IPCC.
Check this link in my original comment for a complete discussion.
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
. Best Regards and thanks for your herculean efforts to stop the UNFCCC – IPCC circus.
Indeed climate-Communist is a good name for it. On a political blog I post daily at all the liberal-left are full bore for the lie of AGW. While using the word ‘Communist’ might upset some tummies, it is accurate. And the Communist Chinese are playing it for all it is worth, witness their taking Obama to the cleaners recently. Yet the left in America trumpeted that as an Obama victory. Well, perhaps it was an Obama “victory”, if you catch my drift.
From yourself, a person who has taken a large brunt of cheap shots, so typical of Progressives, nee Communists, you are more than entitled.
“Fig. 6 demonstrates that the climate-Communist theory…”
Which is the theory that was published in the People’s Republic “equivalent of Science or Nature”?
Don says: “Indeed climate-Communist is a good name for it.”
It’s a good name for it if you are politically immature enough to consider anything Left of extreme right wing to be “Communist”. In fact, it is about as mature as if I were to call anyone to the right of Obama “a fascist”.
[But Obama’s supporters regularly do just that. .mod]
Struck a nerve, eh? 🙂
joelshore says:
Apparently, I was wrong.
True dat. Not for the first time, either.
Reblogged this on Ekstase Leidenschaft und Schmerz.
computer models wrong again….
After Stephen Wilde’s ozone-based hypothesis getting an airing last week, and now this simplified model from Monckton+Soon+Legates+Briggs, I suspect 2015 may be the Year of The Alternative Climate Models.
On the one hand, we must admit, by making a simplified model we are leaving aside a lot of complexities which could perhaps lead to more useful results in the short term if they were modelled (regional agricultural investment springs to mind).
On the other hand, the simplification to one number, globally average temperature, makes replication, inspection, and testing all so much easier. Not to mention that the lesser cognitive and computational resources required makes climate modelling affordable by the masses.
So affordable that now every man and his dog has made a simple climate model that performs better than the IPCC. When I say “better” I mean it uses 3 free parameters for the much maligned “curve fitting” phase up to 1990, then everything after 1990 is a model projection. The predictive value still seems pretty good for something so simple.
May the most accurate model win.
Probably the pocket calculator model will turn out to run too cool since the temperature keepers are still busy inflating temperatures. I think we need to take this job away from these guys so that we can at least compare the model results to reality.
The situation for warmists is dire. Since they fundamentally believe rising CO2 causes rising temperatures, and CO2 continues to rise, temperatures cannot be seen to decrease. They can talk around a plateau, calling it a “pause”, but they absolutely must prevent a decline. First they got rid of the high temperatures in the 1930s, then 1998 went, now 2014 is the new record. Yet future years must surpass this last one, in order to hide a decline. Cooling is not an option
By the way, I question this description of the journal that published the article: “the prestigious Science Bulletin (formerly Chinese Science Bulletin), the journal of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and, as the Orient’s equivalent of Science or Nature, one of the world’s top six learned journals of science”.
According to this list http://scienceimpactfactors.blogspot.com/p/science-overall.html, Nature and Science have impact factors of 38.6 and 31.0, respectively. The Chinese Science Bulletin has an impact factor of 1.32 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Science_Bulletin) I don’t see how it can be compared to Nature or Science with a straight face.
I’d be curious to know from the authors how they came to choose this journal to publish in.
joeldshore, you are a bright guy. How do you think these impact factors are calculated? They are calculated by the number of citations by other authors. What do you think would happen if you had hundreds of billions of dollars made available for hundreds of thousands of scientists who all agreed with each other and published in the same journals. More: what would you say would happen to impacts if the bulk of such papers were each authored by a dozen or more authors in the solidarity. What if they were to write papers like the recent one on the breakthrough discovery that cooking and heating with dung in a sealed hut in winter was bad for your health and they cited papers on carbon and CO2 in the high impact journals. Like peer review, the impact factors have been corrupted irrepairably.
So, you don’t like impact factors because they don’t give you the results that you desire. Then, by what standard is the Chinese Science Bulletin comparable to Science or Nature?
Joel:
It is the journal of the Chinese Academy of Science & NNSF, just as Science is of the AAAS.
joelshore says:
So, you don’t like impact factors because they don’t give you the results that you desire.
If that isn’t pure psychological projection, I don’t know what is.
The alarmist crowd hates facts that don’t give the results they want. Maybe that’s because their Beliefs are simply wrong.
joeldshore: According to this list http://scienceimpactfactors.blogspot.com/p/science-overall.html, Nature and Science have impact factors of 38.6 and 31.0, respectively. The Chinese Science Bulletin has an impact factor of 1.32 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Science_Bulletin) I don’t see how it can be compared to Nature or Science with a straight face.
Impact factors depend on the papers being cited by Americans and Europeans in articles in the journals that are counted for impact factors. the impact factor of CSB will rise as more and more people become aware of the high quality of Chinese science and science publication. Reportedly, Americans and Europeans are way behind the curve on this.
You would think that for a model driver like feedback, which is such an important but hard to quantify process, the climate model keepers would be constantly updating their models with adjusted feedback numbers so they can match measured temperatures. The fact that they don’t update their models, that they maintain feedback ratios that keep their models out of line with measurements even though they have little or no justification to support their values, tells you the climate model predictions purpose is more for political purposes than for science.
The link is not working for the access to the paper, error code instead.
https://3c-lxa.mail.com/mail/client/dereferrer?redirectUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scibull.com%3A8080%2FEN%2Fabstract%2Fabstract509579.shtml
To download the paper, go to scibull.com, click Current issue and find our oaoer, Why models run hot: results from an irreducible simple climate model.
Janice Moore: My apologies. My comment to your post on January 16, 2015 at 4:08 pm was intended for David Socrates’ post time-stamped January 16, 2015 at 1:58 pm.
Well, dear Babsy, how very kind of you, for I might well have taken that comment wrongly. Since, however, I had already been educated about “Babsy” by reading several of your posts, I was not offended in the least. And my guess turned out to be correct!
NICE RIPOSTE AND REFUTATION here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/16/peer-reviewed-pocket-calculator-climate-model-exposes-serious-errors-in-complex-computer-models-and-reveals-that-mans-influence-on-the-climate-is-negligible/#comment-1838347
Wish I had your wit!
Thanks again for considering me worthy of taking the time to address. Much appreciated.
Your Ally for Truth,
Janice
****************************************
@ur momisugly Socrates — Babsy shut you down better than any of us. In case you don’t get how, I will explain it to you. Her point boils down to essentially: SO WHAT! Heh, heh. What? That still makes no sense to you? Okay, here you go, Socrates, one more time: “So what” as in: THAT MONCKTON’S PAPER PROMOTES AGW DOES NOT MAKE AGW ANY MORE TRUE.
And truth (about human CO2 emissions, here) is all that matters.
Bye for now!
Until next time lololol,
Janice
Monckton’s paper does not promote global warming. It explains why there will be very little.
And that’s a suitably conservative position, during the ongoing near-standstill Pause.
But have Monckton et al in the course of designing their model(s), given special attention to the prospect of clear cooling, in the near future?
Many check the news closely, anticipating that ‘any ol’ time now’, trends suggesting a downturn will become hard to hide … and that the advent of even slight cooling will set off a furious melee of model-reexamination, and alternatives.
Since Monckton et al is in the alternatives-biz, it would be interesting to hear how they have scouted-out the cooling-possibility.
This sentence needs the end added to be grammatically correct (and to be completely candid). Given the first sentence, the two-sentence paragraph is, however, still: nonsense.
“Monckton’s paper does not promote global warming. It explains why there will be very little {global warming caused by anthropogenic emissions}.”
Ms Moore appears unfamiliar with the syntax of sentences in which terms are understood rather than explicitly stated.
I am considering writing and providing code for this model. If I do so it will be written in c# (pronounced c sharp) and runs on a Microsoft Windows O/S. I use a development technique called Test Driven Development whereupon I write a test first before I write any production code. What this means to you is your will be able to exercise the code from the tests, individually or by various groupings. This also means I do not have to provide a user interface (UI), at least not at first. You can step through the code, set break points to examine values. If that sounds to complicated for you, you will have to wait until I build a user interface for the code.
This will require some work from you however, you will have to install Microsoft Visual Studio :
http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/news/vs2013-community-vs.aspx
It is free.
I am still reading the paper, with the intent to understand every last bit of it, so I may not get to the coding for quite a while. I am also waiting on what next generation technology Microsoft is going to announce on the 21st of this month, next Wednesday.
I just downloaded Visual Studio Community 2013, from your link. I’ve used VB environments, and savvy the event-driven and forms-building approach.
I have also been reading the paper with an eye to coding it as a model. I agree that this likely to be a larger, rather than smaller undertaking.
I was thinking generally of a more-rudimentary programming environment, but the main thing is that others are familiar & comfortable with whatever is used, and if VB fills the bill, it’s fine by me.
I see your site online…
I confused Studio with VB. C(#) is ok too … but it looks like I do not meet Community 2013’s system requirements. There are multiple options available to me, though.
[snip – more krap from Doug Cotton, acting as yet another sock puppet, who is so oblivious he doesn’t seem to understand that banned means BANNED. I guess I’m going to have to complain to your service provider, since you don’t seem to be able to comprehend this – Anthony]
“Why have you not release your discovery to benefit humankind?”
Like everyone else has throughout history?
The braying of a Jackass.
Reblogged this on Norah4you's Weblog and commented:
When will Man ever learn? Pseudoscience and/or political science aren’t real Science. One has to use Theories of Science, good knowledge and good analyse-technique in order to go from point A = a Theory to point C a conclusion holding water due to good Akrebi!
Those who forget that they must prove that A leads to B and that B always leads up to C, they have lost their dignity hundred times over. Not to mention that bad input always leads to bad output. Corrections are nothing but humbug!