WUWT readers may remember ultra climate activist David Roberts, a self described “climate hawk” who wrote regularly for Grist, and became so burned out he had to take a year off from the “climate wars” to recharge. It seems that hiatus may have done him some good. In case you’ve never heard of it, the web magazine “Grist” is sort of like a Pravda version of the Whole Earth Catalog. They have a staff, a budget, and a swanky downtown office. Unlike climate skeptics, it’s a well funded organization.
Roberts as you may recall, once called for Nuremberg style trials for climate skeptics. Here’s what he wrote in 2006:
When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these [climate skeptic] bastards — some sort of climate Nuremberg.
Over on Vox.com a few days ago, David Roberts wrote an essay about climate modeling uncertainty loops. In his Vox essay, Roberts noted that climate modeling didn’t really have any skill out to the year 2100::
Basically, it’s difficult to predict anything, especially regarding sprawling systems like the global economy and atmosphere, because everything depends on everything else. There’s no fixed point of reference.
Grappling with this kind of uncertainty turns out to be absolutely core to climate policymaking. Climate nerds have attempted to create models that include, at least in rudimentary form, all of these interacting economic and atmospheric systems. They call these integrated assessment models, or IAMs, and they are the primary tool used by governments and international bodies to gauge the threat of climate change. IAMs are how policies are compared and costs are estimated.
So it’s worth asking: Do IAMs adequately account for uncertainty? Do they clearly communicate uncertainty to policymakers?
The answer to those questions is almost certainly “no.” But exactly why IAMs fail at this, and what should be done about it, is the subject of much debate.
One of the other things he notes is that climate model uncertainty is probably underestimated. Bold mine.
Or to put it another way: Think about how insane it is to try to predict what’s going to happen in 2100.
There is a school of thought that says the whole exercise of IAMs, at least as an attempt to model how things will develop in the far future, is futile. There are so many assumptions, and the outcomes are so sensitive to those assumptions, that what they produce is little better than wild-ass guesses. And the faux-precision of the exercise, all those clean, clear lines on graphs, only serves to mislead policymakers into thinking we have a grasp on it. It makes them think we know exactly how much slack we have, how much we can push before bad things happen, when in fact we have almost no idea.
In the view of these researchers, the quest to predict what climate change (or climate change mitigation) will cost through 2100 ought to be abandoned. It is impossible, computationally intractable, and the IAMs that pretend to do it only serve to distract and confuse.
Yep, but as we head into Paris and COP21, will anybody be able to stop the freight train built on this uncertainty? Perhaps, there are signs it may already be coming off the rails. Climategate 4 anyone?
Stay tuned.
Note: within about 10 minutes of publication, the first paragraph was updated to include a link to the “climate hawk” label mentioned in the title.
That’s why they do projections, not predictions. That is an important legal distinction.
Yes a “legal” distinction, but not a “logical” distinction.
For a newcomer it looks like a prediction, and that’s what they rely on, in the best warmist traditions.
Just as there is a difference between the law and justice.
The difference between a prediction and a “projection” is pure sophistry. They still use it just like a prediction, demanding extreme poverty creating measures based on it.
AR5 describes “projections” precisely, as usual for the IPCC: “the simulated response of the climate system to a scenario of future emission or concentration of greenhouse gases and aerosols … distinguished from climate predictions by their dependence on the emission/concentration/radiative forcing scenario used…”.
In other words, a prediction (an RCP scenario) of emissions is input to a climate model, which generates projections.
The large number of combinations of scenarios and models generates the familiar and almost meaningless spaghetti graphs. Hence the importance of running the models with actual emissions from after they were created — compare the results with the temperature history. This will test the models, and perhaps restart the now gridlocked public debate about climate change.
Details: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/24/climate-scientists-can-restart-the-climate-change-debate-win-test-the-models/
I think you are using the wrong definition of “projection”. I think this one is more appropriate for the people who design and use GCM’s for “projections” :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
4. A prediction or estimate of something in the future, based on present data or trends.
How are they going to argue that it is different in court? If they are going to describe it as an extrapolation, they have waffled too long about it being from first principles.
Climate modeling has no skill whatsoever, let alone out to 2100.
I’ll give them 50/50 on the chances of getting it right for the next hour or two.
Beyond that, it goes down rapidly.
Not to troll you, but it seems there is one prediction (not model) which we should follow with interest. The prediction is that GISS global temp index follows k times log CO2. Not that RSS would look the same, though. Skeptic in me says GISS is biased to match the trend. Who knows why Karl paper was taken in.
Shaun Lovejoy’s correlation graph:
https://eos.org/opinions/climate-closure/attachment/presentation9
Mark Steyn had similar comments.
“Mr Roberts is almost certainly right. But he’s unlikely to find any takers for that line among the warm-mongers at next month’s Paris climate jamboree.As I explain in my new book, the IPCC used Michael E Mann’s ridiculous hockey stick to sell certainty: 1998 is the hottest year of the hottest decade of the hottest century in, like forever.
“Given the zillion-dollar alarmism industry it fueled, it would be asking a lot for its beneficiaries to back away from that to something more qualified. And thanks to the cartoon climatology of Mann’s stick, there are millions of starry-eyed activists who now think the very concept of “uncertainty” is a denialist plot.”
http://www.steynonline.com/7262/the-certainty-of-uncertainty
“Climate hucksters” is a more apt label.
Imagine, in 1815, year of Napoleon’s final defeat, trying to predict 1900. How could anyone of that year imagine steam railways, iron battleships with 16-inch guns, the telegraph,undersea cables, internal combustion engine cars, and the system of industrial mass production that made it all possible?
Truly, predicting future climate is insane.
Napoleon and Hitler could have used some global warming.
?
Yes. intriguing!
I’m still waiting for climategate 3. When did that come and go?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/13/climategate-3-0-has-occurred-the-password-has-been-released/
As I understand it, it came but with an email number so large it’s taking a lot of sifting through. My guess is that nothing of interest has yet been found. My hope is that the searchers haven’t given up on the job (albeit understandable).
Excommunicated he will be. The warmunist religion admits no doubt.
The “saddest of the sad realities” on the ground is this: insofar as I know, no climate model yet developed even grossly ‘rearcasts’ (oppose of forecast, … retro-casts / rear-casts / back-casts / before-casts / aft-casts (fore :: aft on ship)) the existing well regarded and measured last 250 to 350 years of the State of the Climate on this here planet.
Oh, I bet there are a number of readers here would could almost effortlessly cobble together pretty graphs of Milankovic cycles, of Solar Sunspot cycles, of the phase of Jupiter and the precession of the center-of-gravity of the Solar system itself, and demonstrate that there ARE definitely closely correlated cycles and meanderings that tie to the general state of the climate on Orb Earth. I’m sure of it. Vulcavic, Tisdale, more.
(TRUST: I’m totally with you guys… but is any of the correlations also mechanistically inclusive of the trends for the future which must also include elevated CO₂ levels along with the secondary consequences of the same?)
My point is perhaps just an overheated acknowledgement of the main entry’s point: it is patently ridiculous to predict the climate in 100 years. In 85 years (2100 CE). And by interpolation, it is almost as patently ridiculous to project climate in the next 50 or even 25 years. 10? Not so ridiculous, because one can always get away with … “the changes in the next 10 years will be approximately on the trend-line of the last 50 years”, and have it be almost certainly true.
Which if it is … points to the fact that the world in 2020 or 2025 or 2030 isn’t going to be a sweltering hot-box, but a modestly greener, modestly warmer, modestly more clement place to live. And I’d bet good money on that outcome.
GoatGuy
Tell that to ISIS, they seem to have a death wish.
Damn near everyone in the civilized world is willing to grant it.
A Climate Saul on the road to Damascus? Fact has, for the moment, triumphed over faith and Mr. Roberts is sore beset. There are plenty of former Believers posting on this and other blogs. Anthony, Judith and Jo are all persuaded by the science. Such an agony of Doubt in Climate Change™ deserves better than merely reiterating past sins.
Hmmm… Grist funders
Processing the funding applications must be a (lucrative) full time job….
Within the frame-based scientific domain, accuracy is inversely proportional to the product of time and space offsets from an established reference. Predictions of events 100 years, 10 years, even one year into the future are tantamount to prophecy; albeit possible in shorter frames due to the reasonably narrow envelope that bounds likely evolutionary paths. The system is chaotic by virtue that is incompletely and, in fact, insufficiently characterized and unwieldy. Climate change is not a scientific, but rather a risk management problem.
If Ridley is correct, then funding for climate change research should be stopped. If the consensus is correct, and the science is settled, there is nothing left to research and hence funding for climate change research should be stopped. The only case one can make for funding climate change research is that this site (wattsupwiththat) is correct and there are gaps in the science and uncertainties in those areas without gaps. That is. If you believe that climate change research should be funded, you are, by definition, a denier.
They seem to be trying to prove to us 3%’ers that they are correct, and to convince us by making ever more crazy claims. The world burns and they are paralized because we are unconvinced (or something).
“3%’ers”…lol!
Just to be clear — Roberts is questioning Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) used to estimate social and economic effects of climate change.
He is not questioning the foundation on which the climate change debate rests: global climate models. Without confidence in GCMs, IAM’s would get little interest. Challenging GCM’s would make Roberts a heretic.
Here’s a description of the difference:
“Integrated assessment models generally include both physical and social science models that consider demographic, political, and economic variables that affect greenhouse gas emission scenarios in addition to the physical climate system.
“ General Circulation Models (GCMs), however, focus on the physical climate system alone. Many IAMs do include some form of climate modeling scheme in their routines, such as zero-dimensional or 2-dimensional energy balance models, but due to computing time limitations it is currently infeasible to integrate a full 3-dimensional GCM with a human dimensions model to create an IAM.
“Until computers become fast enough to significantly reduce computation times, IAMs will not be able to configure a full GCM into their model structure, and must rely on simpler forms of climate models to forecast changes in climate based on future scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions and other significant variables.”
http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mva/iamcc.tg/mva-questions.html#iams_vs_gcms
Well….. Lomborg for doing similar research has been labelled an heretic…
I noted that, too, EofFMW. IAMs are not GCMs, and Roberts expressed no skepticism of the model projections or of the basic AGW assertion.
IAMs – an interesting acronymical attempt at assuming the powers of the great “I AM.”
à la Exodus 3:14
IAMS is pet food. https://www.iams.com/dog-food
I hate to burst the bubble here, but Roberts is talking about asseessment models (ones that incorporate economics), not climate models.
Maybe the criticisms he raises about models apply to both kinds, but that is not what he is saying.
Predictstance is futile.
Think so ?, you should try handicapping (horses).
It gets worse 🙂
Wait for the believers in CAGW to use this uncertainty to support more stringent regulations – “Well, with this uncertainty, we might have +5C by 2050 – so we need to outlaw private vehicles today and restrict jet travel to governmental officials…”
….and CAGW researchers, advocates, high priest, green politicians and of course their staff”
PREDICTING THE FUTURE is a dangerous business.
Predicting local weather conditions just a week in the future is difficult enough.
My own climate predictions, however, are 100% accurate.
Here is my climate prediction for the next 150 years:
The climate will change.
Here is my climate prediction for the past 150 years:
The climate will change.
Now, you might accuse me of being pretty dumb for not knowing exactly what the past climate was … but … goobermint bureaucrats keep changing the past climate, so it is impossible for me to be more precise.
It is possible that in 100 years, after many adjustments to “cool” a decade that seemed hot to the people who lived through it, the 1930s will be in the history books as a mini ice age, with snow bowls, not dust bowls.
And climate change will be said to have started in 1975.
Sure, Anthony : we shall “stay tuned” !!!!!
Any person can prove that it is difficult, if not impossible, to predict future climate events from temperature records. Just take a graph of paleo temperatures, cover up some of the right hand side (no peeking!) and try to predict by extrapolation from the earlier temperatures – the ones you can see.
This difficulty applies with any multi-factorial system when you try to predict from the dependent variable with only partial knowledge of the system drivers. As K. K. Steincke said (but attributed to many people): “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.”
‘Think about how insane it is to try to predict what’s going to happen in 2100.’
actually it is rather smart for you know that you will not be around to be reminded of your BS claims and so have to answer as to why you got it so wrong . Where as if you make a predict for for the short term , say 5 years time, then it is very likely you will be .
If your going to get paid for these then its doubly smart has you can always get your money no matter how badly wrong you are.
Reblogged this on The Arts Mechanical and commented:
No kidding. Computer models are only effective in constrained environments with defined boundaries and few variables, like flow inside a duct. Using them to model climate and actually expect anything useful beyond a week or so is fooling ourselves.
Value of IAM’s: Combine Economic Models which don’t reflect economic reality and GCM’s which don’t reflect climate reality. How can you combine two invalid models to = a valid model?
homogenization, of course
They can’t predict what will happen tomorrow, how can they predict what will happen n 2100? And who cares anyhow?
Those IAMS are more like the product of the other IAMS (dog food ) …(8>))..
… better still the homogenized final product of dog food……….
Why don’t we want nicer weather and more abundant crops, again?
I know, it’s lost me why no one seems to want that.
Especially as the warmer weather appears to consist mainly of not quite as cold night time temperatures, and Winter starting a little later, and lasting not quite so long such that Spring arrives a little sooner.