Reposted from the Fabius Maximus Blog
By Larry Kummer, Editor / 11 Comments / 18 January 2020
Summary: After 30 years of climate policy gridlock, we can decide to take an obvious path to a better future. Or we can continue the same stupid methods that have produced only futile bickering. A nation that cannot wisely make such simple choices has no future.
We will choose our path to the future.
A decade ago, I began watching the public policy debate about climate change, run by a constellation of major institutions – an example of America’s political system in action. Time has shown it to be dysfunctional (like so much in our America), resulting in three decades of policy gridlock. Summing it up, Steven Mosher of Berkeley Earth; said “We don’t even plan for the past.”
Three decades of gridlock, so advocates of policy change have responded by more loudly shouting their propaganda. The latest round began with activist George Monbiot’s November 2018 column in The Guardian: “The Earth is in a death spiral.” Of course, it is just a lie. The IPCC and major US climate agencies have said nothing like that. Worse, the leaders of both sides have become like WWI generals. Disinterested in political solutions, they only want victory – and no longer care about the costs to society.
How can we break the gridlock?
Policy-markers’ decisions depend on reliable forecasts of future climate change. For answers, they see debates about key aspects of climate change conducted in journals and blogs. Much like the current round of debates about models’ forecasts (see the most recent round at Climate Etc). This is stupid. Really stupid. The people involved are not stupid. Most are brilliant and knowledgable; many are volunteers. But the process is stupid.
Neither journals or blogs are suited for this job. The research for the Manhattan Project and Apollo were not done in journals and blogs. They were centrally-directed programs run with lavish funding, tapping a wide range of America’s science and engineering talent. The climate policy debate has tried a different and bizarre methodology for 30 years. It has failed. Let’s try something that has worked before – and can work again.
“Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.”
— Not said by Einstein. Said by Alcoholics Anonymous, people who know everything about dysfunctionality.
A rational approach
Climate models are the center ring of the climate policy debate. Policy-makers need to know that models’ forecasts provide a robust basis for policies that will shape the economy and society of 21st century America – and the world.
That requries validation of models by experts. Human nature being what it is, those experts should be unaffiliated with the groups that designed and run the models (an insight from drug effectiveness testing). The cost of such a project would be pocket change compared to its importance.
America has a wealth of people and institutions capable of doing this. The National Academy of Sciences could be the lead agency in a Federal project to validate climate models. They could mobilize experts in the required wide range of fields.
Operational leadership could be provided by the Verification and Validation Committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). See their Guide for Verification and Validation in Computational Solid Mechanics, their Standard for Verification and Validation in Computational Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer, and An Illustration of the Concepts of Verification and Validation in Computational Solid Mechanics. NOAA and NSA could assist. There are probably other expert groups that could help.
This is the opposite of relying on blogs and academic journals to lead the policy debate (a process that would be considered primitive by a colony of cherrystone clams).
This is the opposite of the IPCC’s methodology. It is focused, not broad. It requires a review of climate models by experts unaffiliated with their creation and operation. It uses proven methods relied upon in science, engineering, and business.
Conclusions
The policy gridlock has consumed scarce political resources for several decades, diverting attention from other severe threats (e.g., destruction of ocean ecosystems). If climate alarmists are correct, the gridlock burns time needed for action. Even if they are wrong, these kinds of hot political debates can put fanatics in power – with horrific consequences.
If implemented, this project will not change the climate. But it could break the gridlock. If it shows that models are reliable guides, it could quickly make effective public policy possible.
Why would we continue to rely on the processes which have failed for so long when there is an obvious, easy, and relatively fast alternative? When you have an answer to this, you will have gone to the heart of the climate change debate.
For More Information
For more about this see After 30 years of failed climate politics, let’s try science! To learn more about model validation, Wikipedia provides links to a wide range of authoritative sources. See here and here.
Ideas! For your holiday shopping, see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about our future: “Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.”
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information about this vital issue see the keys to understanding climate change, and especially these debunking our mad policy client debate …
- Climate scientists can restart the climate change debate – & win.
- Thomas Kuhn tells us what we need to know about climate science.
- Daniel Davies’ insights about predictions can unlock the climate change debate.
- Karl Popper explains how to open the deadlocked climate policy debate.
- Paul Krugman talks about economics. Climate scientists can learn from his insights.
- Milton Friedman’s advice about restarting the climate policy debate.
- We can end the climate policy wars: demand a test of the models.
- A climate science milestone: a successful 10-year forecast!
Activists don’t want you to read these books
Some unexpected good news about polar bears: The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened
To learn more about the state of climate change see The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change
“The earth is in a death spiral”
and it will stay in a death spiral that gets worse and worse
It’s a climate emergency
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/12/23/climateemergency/
“We don’t even plan for the past.”
Maybe we could begin to, as soon as he/they get done changing it.
Climate change is just a smokescreen.It is not about pseudo-science. It is really about elites getting paid three million a day for not producing electricity.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2020/01/19/green-madness-wind-farms-paid-up-to-3-million-per-day-to-switch-off-turbines/
George,
And so, what is your proposal for a next step to resolve the policy debate?
After all, is the four millionth comment here saying that climate change is fake a useful contribution to this discussion?
Larry, in the private sector, resolution is done all the time. Whole useless departments are let go. Individuals get fired. They can “policy debate” all they want, but not get paid to do it. This is how this will end. Either through direct attrition or drying up of funds to pay for it.
So yes, continuing to prove that man-made climate change is fake, is the most useful contribution to ending this malevolent discussion/fraud.
philincalifornia, spot on. Betting you work(ed) in the private sector.
Apart from from a small handful of countries, in most places the debate is not about whether humans are changing the climate. (Yes there are countries outside the US)
Loydo
Debate????
In most countries people don’t debate climate change because they are to busy trying to put food on the table. ( my estimate is 5 of 7 billion people on earth fit in this category).
The alarmists in the remaining 2 Billion don’t debate they preach.
Wow, Loydo, you are really clueless. Read Waza’s correct reply to your nonsense.
PS How’s your mom’s basement?
The assumption is that climate models can be tested. How can that be done when the underlying natural variability of the earth’s climate system is unknown? In other words, climate change is the sum of anthropogenic and natural change. Added to that, climate is a chaotic system. It cannot be modelled.
It’s been settled for decades, so say the likes of Al Gore, etc. The next step is obvious. Confiscate all guns. Eliminate free speech.
I propose that we free up the carbon cycle so the biosphere can expand! Othewise, we will run out of food!
Does anybofy here get hungry?
“Climate models are the center ring of the climate policy debate. Policy-makers need to know that models’ forecasts provide a robust basis for policies that will shape the economy and society of 21st century America – and the world.”
CLIMATE MODELS ARE WORTHLESS AND LARRY KUMMER YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF FOR BELIEVING IN THIS STUPID SCAM. NOAA has a graph on their website of Outgoing Longwave Radiation from 1974 to 2019. It shows no trend. If there was global warming, there would be consistent negative OLR. The graph does not show that. So NOAA’s own measurements prove that this CO2 scare is a scam.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/teleconnections/enso/indicators/olr/
It is not about science. It was never about science. It is about political power. Evidence: rejecting nuclear power out of hand. Rejecting forest management to prevent wild fires, see: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/01/19/fight-fires-with-facts-not-fake-science/
Completely reasonable politically impossible.
People who want to be problems not solve problems
Germany shuts down nuclear plants and then has to keep more coal plants operating. for many more years than other European nations !
A Forrest Gump energy plan.
Richard Green – I think Forrest Gump would have had a much better plan.
Mama says “Stupid is as stupid does.”
Indeed Farmer Ch E retired, Forrest wasn’t the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer, but he was good at spotting stupid by what it did.
My proposal, Mr. Smarty Pants Larry Kumquat, is to encourage very radical environmental policies that turn off the average person, who does not follow climate science beyond a headline or two — probably a majority of Americans.
The climate alarmists have ALREADY become unusually radical in the past two years — let’s encourage them to be even more radical !
How about we encourage them to demand a $1 a gallon tax on gasoline for building windmills ?
How about a $1 a pound tax on meat for building solar farms ?
How about we donate glue so climate protestors can glue themselves to streets, or buildings, or better yet, to each other !
Anything that hits wallets will turn off most people.
Study US climate change polls — American support for man made warming is strong … but the amount of money people say they are willing to spend on stopping climate change is tiny.
And I have to assume they exaggerate how much money they’d really want to contribute — answering a polling question will include virtue signaling, yet people still DO NOT say they’d be willing to spend much of their own money for fighting climate change (assuming that would be possible).
I conclude US citizens’ support is a mile wide, and an inch deep.
You can’t change climate beliefs using real science, that were never created using real science in the first place !
It would be easier to teach my cat geometry, than to change a leftist’s mind (except to move them further left).
The coming climate crisis is a secular religious belief, with minimal science — the science suggests it might be slightly warmer in 100 years, or maybe not — common sense suggests people will like a slightly warmer planet.
Of course none of this matters — we only have 11 years left.
Exactly. “Futile bickering” about phony climate change is a trillion dollar a year industry. Why would anyone want to change it? I mean actually going out there and digging real trenches and filling them in? Like with an actual shovel? Educated people can do it online, including the not producing electricity part.
Funny how Susan Solomon’s thousand-year half-life for man-made CO2 has been disappeared from the narrative. That doesn’t fit the calculators that the charlatans don’t even own or wouldn’t know how to work anyway.
Don’t forget to vote.
Curious you are partly correct. Though one doesn’t have to dig far to figure out the ultimate goal. Western democracies’ capitalist economies have been built on cheap reliable energy. Take away fossil fuels and make energy unreliable and we will have seriously weakened our countries. All one has to do is look at where the Leftist greenies put the pressure. They praise China but attack the USA specifically and any other western democracy. Gee! I wonder what form of government the Left prefers.
Then why does the UN not even have climate change anywhere near the top of it’s critical lists. It’s at the bottom. Come up with a viable solution to any potential threat that will actually do anything and no more fear tactics like polar bears are going to die off. That was sure a big hoax. My step brother on the west coast of Alaska said everyone up there got a big laugh out of it. While roasting bear steaks!
Knuckleheads. Anyone that looks at climate on geologic timescales knows the gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments is for show. An extra 1-1.5 degree C over the next hundred years will be a huge benefit to humans. It will get us back to near optimal temperature levels experienced during the Roman and Medieval Warming periods in which mankind flourished. IF sea level rise accelerates under those conditions, well, Charlie Sheen’s grandkids can’t live on the beach in Malibu. Boo, hoo.
Why doesn’t any ever mention subsidence any more?
The US is 6% of the world’s landmass. Over 150 years the US has extracted ~42 trillion gallons of water from the ground.
Conservatively lets say 200 trillion gallons have been removed from the ground world wide in 150 years.
Lets say by evaporation, rain, runoff etc I believe around 2/3 or more ends up in the ocean.
265 gallons to the ton, 1 billion tons to a gigaton. 265 billion gallons for a gigaton.
360 gigatons to raise sea level 1mm, which is 95.4 trillion gallons.
Don’t you find it odd no one ever talks about this? Well the only side “talking” at us won’t mention it, trying to bring it up earns us a label.
360 gigatons of water would be 95.4
The Earth may not be in a Death Spiral, but it is spinning out of control
better learn to adapt, it is the only option.
Larry Kummer
“Policy-
markers’makers’ decisions depend on reliable forecasts of future climate change.”Mark,
Thank you for catching that! Fixed (at the original post).
“Uninterested” would be correct in that context, not “disinterested”.
John,
Nice catch: “uninterested” sounds better. However, they have the same meaning. From the Merriam Webster –
Disinterested: “having or feeling no interest in something.”
Uninterested: “not interested in or concerned about something or someone.”
Mirriam-Webster
“In today’s usage, disinterested most often means “not biased,” whereas uninterested simply means “not interested.” “
It’s a UK/US thing. In the UK we maintain the distinction between the two words and meanings. In the US “disinterested” can mean either.
misinformation is saying your lies are the correct ones and the others aren’t, disinformation is only presenting one set of lies, uninformation is a statement that connects to neither qualitative nor quantitative data
That’s how the US defines mis/dis/un.
Ignore the media, they’re trying to guide the ignorance by changing what words mean.
The US isn’t disinterested or uninterested, they’re misinterested. If the content of the information has no impact on their daily lives it glides right over them. Only the crazy and stupid support climate change in the US, they’re trying like children who repeat your behavior at completely inappropriate times.
What you will find interesting is that all the way from top to bottom of the intellect and education curve in the US there are people who see climate change as bullshit for different reasons from simple physics to complicated systems to understanding statistical theory through an understanding of engineering and data collection all the way to having experienced the single continuous unchanging lie in all it’s liveries for forty years. The moment you explain to almost any US citizen that there are fabricated input numbers and limiting equations on the “models” and that the “models” attempt to linearly connect temperature and CO2 they’ll stare at you and realize the news and internet are lying to them.
The moment you explain to them that the measurements used are ONLY land surface temperatures and include thermometers without valid accuracy and thermometers beside airports and air conditioners you will find your breaking point between stupid idiots and people who don’t believe the bullshit.
RobH
Do not agree, a disinterested party in the US is someone that doesn’t have a stake in the game. Just because the word is often misused in the US doesn’t mean that misuse is a correct meaning.
Knit picking about a word puts the climate policy debate into a whole different perspective.
nitpicking = fussy or pedantic fault-finding.
“nitpicking over tiny details”
I just had to comment on that, sorry
Larry,
The way ‘disinterested’ is often used is to indicate [often in a legal sense] that a particular party is not conflicted, and therefore capable of independent judgement. ‘Uninterested’ is certainly used in the more general Merriam Webster sense.
Like your post, as always. However, would like to point out that the Manhattan Project had very clear, concise and agreed goals from day one. I don’t see how you can assemble an enquiry for your present purpose with the same sharpness and clarity, let alone guarantee ‘disinterestedness’
Mothcather,
“I don’t see how you can assemble an enquiry for your present purpose with the same sharpness and clarity,”
Why? Validation of the CMIP models is sufficiently precise. I doubt the Verification and Validation Committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) would need more detailed instructions. The NAS could look at this from a broader perspective (and perhaps bring in other groups with expertise in model validation).
” let alone guarantee ‘disinterestedness’”
This is politics. There are no “guarantees.” But relying on a diverse set of people from outside the climate science community would suffice, imo. This is a commonplace task in politics – as in staffing the many boards and committees that run the government.
If you are waiting for the perfect solution in politics, you are just letting others make the decision.
… and if you assembled a panel that came up with “the CMIP models cannot be validated”, do you think for one moment that would settle the matter? I fear that a sufficient level of authority could not be projected via this mechanism to make much difference to the debate.
Larry, I have to agree with mothcatcher.
The Manhattan and Apollo projects were not faced with strong opposition from ‘activist’ virtue signalling fraudsters, either wanting to set up globalist authoritarian government and to destroy Capitalism, or just to fill their boots with taxpayer’s subsidy money.
And how are going to avoid those same fraudsters who are also active in NASA, NAS etc?
Stop digging, Larry. “Disinterested” is the correct term for technically objective or “having no skin in the game”. The “Uninterested” would find the subject boring, hence you probably wouldn’t want them anymore than a sleeping juror.
Better for “disinterested” would be – no longer having an interest. Like “disused”. Uninterested suggests never having had an interest.
The two words aren’t synonymous.
“Disinterested” means “impartial”. “Uninterested” means, well, “not interested”.
The OED does allow that it now can be substituted for “uninterested” informally.
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/disinterested?q=disinterested
I agree and it is an important distinction.
I agree that it’s a valuable distinction, which should be preserved, like that between “swath” and “swathe”, which has until recently been better maintained in the US than the UK, perhaps thanks to our larger agricultural sector.
Another annoying usage in this century, even by those who should know better, is imagining that “begging the question” means the same thing as “raising” a question.
Language is an ever evolving construct. words and phrase can and do have multiple, sometimes even contradictory, meanings. while “begging the question” when used as a logical/rhetorical construct does not mean the same thing as “raising a question”, when it’s used in modern vernacular, however, it does. sorry if that gets your knickers in a bunch, but that’s the way it is. And that’s perfectly fine, particularly in light of the fact that the phrase “begging the question” started out as a mistranslation from Latin to begin with.
Larry
“NOAA and NSA NASA could assist. There are probably other expert groups that could help.”
Mark,
Another great catch! Thank you!
You aren’t in the “dog house” on purpose. Something about your IP address.
It would be an utter waste of a good consensus if somebody doesn’t hurry up and invent soylent, and of course, the necessary repressive regime to go with it. How else to control this unruly mob of individualists and sceptics? We need order here!
A harsher version of this post:
We need to do something that changes the balance of opinion among decision-makers and the public. Hence this proposal for a tool often used, of proven effectiveness. That none of the key figures in the climate wars is interested in it demonstrates the depth of the problem.
Climate scientists (and their associated activists) on both sides have become like WWI generals. They are uninterested in any political solution other than victory. Their advice is always “once more over the top.”
They are not just part of the problem. They are the problem.
“On both sides”, Larry?
How are the “World War I generals” on the skeptic side holding things back? I assume that is your contention.
No Larry the problem is not scientists, the problem is the world’s most powerful industries with vested interests, their insidious disinformation campaigns, their obcsenely well-funded lobbying and their buying off of politicians.
There are no well organized climate skeptic propaganda efforts happening…let alone any BIG WELL FUNDED propagands efforts. Isn’t happening.
Even the oil companies are standing in line with their hands out to grab some of the $Trillions that could be handed out IN THE NAME OF climate.
On the skeptical side there are around a billion busy people in the West who are old enough to recognize the lies and propaganda that come EVERY DAY ON EVERY SUBJECT from the power grabbing left…through their Mainstream Media.
And that natural skepticism is greatly fortified by the horribly wrong predictions year after year from the Alarmists…too many to mention.
All the money and all the propaganda is coming from the left. Nobody that isn’t actively looking for Climate debate information EVER HEARS ANY SKEPTIC CLAIMS…the press won’t report anything from the skeptical side.
I believe the NAS also wants victory at any price. Any credible group that can do this job will soon be discredited by the angry mob that supports Greta Thunberg if they don’t see the results they are looking for. This is identity politics – democrats simply can’t say “oh look, that new committee is right, we should give up the fight.” They’ll say “Oh, another committee claiming to be unbiased, just like the wackos at WUWT.”
David,
“I believe the NAS also wants victory at any price.”
What’s the basis for that belief?
“Any credible group that can do this job will soon be discredited by the angry mob that supports Greta Thunberg”
Belief that solutions are impossible is a distinguishing characteristic of America today. Saying “it won’t work” is the easy way to seem wise. It puts us on the fast-track to decay.
The solution is to replace the least efficient burning generators immediately with more efficient and newer CCGT plants and progressively with fission plants, so we don’t burn more energy than we save connecting up low density, widely dispersed, unreliable generators that need backing up with diesel anyway… The big “Manhattan” money can then go to finally cracking the Fusion issue…
No one on the green side will support that solution no matter how many billion lives are at risk….
The French already decarbonised 90+ percent of their generating capacity years ago, and saint Greta had not one good word for them…
Michael,
“The solution is to …”
For thirty years we have had people declaring that solution is to do this or that. It hasn’t happened. Let’s try something different to make something happen.
“No one on the green side will support that solution no matter how many billion lives are at risk….”
Well then let’s try a different next step.
There is no other “first step” that they will accept. The fundamental problem here is that the “AGW” crowd isn’t truly interested in climate change. They’re interested in power and promoting “climate change” panic is the mechanism that which they have chosen to gain that power. That this is true is quite evident any time someone points out problems with their data, methodology, or models.
You cannot negotiate with someone who is simply not interested in negotiating. You cannot compromise with someone who simply will not compromise.
For thirty years we have had people declaring that solution is to do this or that
the most self-unaware post of the day.
Well then let’s try a different next step
no, let’s try the actual *first step* namely prove there’s a problem that needs solving. Until you do that (and you and your fellow alarmists haven’t, not in all the decades this “policy debate” has been going on) you can’t come up with any reasonable next step.
To its credit, France has “decarbonized” most of their electric generating capacity, mostly using nuclear fission with some hydroelectric in the mountainous areas of France (Alps, Pyrenees, Massif Central), and some wind power along the west (Atlantic) coast. They have not decarbonized their transportation system, although their tax system favors the use of diesel fuel over gasoline. For home heating, they are largely dependent on natural gas from Russia.
Strangely enough, Germany, which had a very strong chemical industry in the 1980’s, shifted away from nuclear power over the past 30 years, betting on wind and solar in a country north of the 45th parallel with lots of cloudy weather, and now electric power is much more expensive in Germany than in France.
The United States made a huge strategic mistake in turning away from nuclear power in the 1980’s, after the relatively minor Three Mile Island incident, followed by Jane Fonda’s “China Syndrome” propaganda movie. The USA could get away with this due to its massive reserves of coal, and recent advances in fracking the Marcellus Shale have made natural gas abundant, which is cleaner than coal. France has very little coal or natural gas reserves, so their embrace of nuclear power was a response to necessity.
If the USA government is really serious about reducing CO2 emissions, how about loosening the regulations on nuclear power plants, instead of making them nearly impossible to have permitted? Even if CO2 emissions are not a problem, nuclear power can still provide abundant energy after the coal, oil, and natural gas run out.
The solution is obvious: Do nothing. Reality will take care of the (non) problem…
Exactly Greg.
It’s too late to do nothing because a multi-billion dollar industrial complex has sprung up to do something.
+100
No Larry, we’re not saying that solutions can’t work. Not at all. What we’re saying is that there’s no climate problem and no need of a solution.
Gridlock is the solution that works great to prevent the green socialists from getting what they want. That’s a solution that has been more or less working for 30 years and I hope we can keep gridlock going for another 130 years. Not doing anything about a non-problem is exactly the correct solution.
Make gridlock great again!
Charles/Larry,
The difficulty is not how we validate or indeed who validates, it is how do we get honest inputs into the debate. Over the decades you have observed activities, surrounding the climate debate, we have seen well respected organisations such as NASA and NOAA adjust raw data, simply to assist in their position that the world is warming. Even data they put into the public domain just twenty years ago, is being adjusted to make it come into line with “expectation” of a warming trend induced by increased CO2 apparently?
I think all reasonable people accept, the world has warmed since the little ice age. Indeed if that were not the case we would still be in the little ice age!
The issue we realists struggle with, is how to find honest unadulterated un-adjusted un-homogenised data that we can rely on, and thus make a judgement.
When you look at the prime advocates driving the debate of the supposed climate change crisis, is it any wonder people are confused and doubtful about what is science and what is politics? Look at the headliners promoting “human induced climate change” all heroes of the left. Al Gore, Greta Thunberg, Alexandria Occasio Cortes, Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, David Attenborough, George Monbiot and…. the list goes on. There isn’t a science qualification among them. Then we have the so called experts, Micheal E Mann, someone who has been shown up for the incompetent scientist he is. Despite his now totally discredited hockey stick generating algorithms, he is still afforded air time to tell the world the Australian bush fires are an example of global warming/climate change. Nothing could be further from the truth, as every resident in rural Australia knows, but the media suck it up and broadcast his nonsense pearls of educated wisdom because he is a scientist…apparently.
The left are using the court system as if it is theirs alone, to personally command and use as a battering ram, destroying any and all, who oppose their position. Perhaps the time has arrived when the right of centre and the normal members of society in general, start to use the legal system to rein in these climate charlatans who are making life difficult and expensive for us all. They resort to law for no other reason than they can.
One thing is certain, the constant resort to legal challenges and restraints, has nothing to do with climate change.
Attenborough studied geology and zoology at Cambridge. Monbiot studied zoology at Oxford. I haven’t checked the others. I don’t agree with their positions but that’s no reason to make assertions without checking them.
Rob,
Not sure the pair of them achieving arts degrees count, but I don’t want to get into semantics about what qualifies as a suitable science qualification.
The difficulties the world is now facing, as it turns its back on reliable cheap energy of almost unlimited availability i.e nuclear simply because some uneducated and partially educated arts degree activists have decided they know what is best for the world, is what we have to resolve.
Monbiot has already announced capitalism is the destroyer of the world, and Attenborough thinks walrus tumbling of cliffs in panic because polar bears are approaching is due to increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
When supposedly educated individuals come out with the nonsense the pair of them do, we have to question why they get so much exposure via the mass media outlets. They clearly have an agenda, and it is not going to help the majority of humanity.
No, the difficulty lies in the near impossibility of validating climate models.
If you google on verification and validation, you get a bunch of stuff that does not apply to computer simulation models. In the case of computer simulation models, the main requirement is crystal clear. The model must accurately represent the physical system. Everything else is noise and bafflegab.
The base problem is that we do not sufficiently understand natural climate change to be able to say what difference anthropogenic CO2 has made. In other words, the models do not accurately represent the physical system.
CommieBob,
“No, the difficulty lies in the near impossibility of validating climate models.”
I’ve discussed this with several people who do model validation professionally (the advantage of living in the San Francisco Bay Area). None agree with you.
I suggest that we try. If they can’t do it, they’ll tell us. Then we’ll think of something else to try.
Larry, I seriously question the “several peoples” qualification if they’ve seriously been telling you that nonsense, assuming they even exist. argumentum ab auctoritate didn’t work when it was “97% of scientists”, and it doesn’t work when its “several people” from “the San Francisco Bay Area”.
I suggest you prove the problem is a real problem before trying anything else. I won’t be holding my breath as better than you have argued for trying without proving and failed.
I’m not sure what they’re disagreeing with.
I don’t see how you can get around that problem for computer simulation models of physical systems.
Is someone seriously saying it’s OK if a model does not accurately represent the performance of a physical system? I don’t want that person within a mile of any safety critical systems. Period.
Really Larry, I’m gobsmacked.
At present there is an attempt for the modellers to correct baselines and then boast how predictive the models have been and a lot of people who only read headlines say, “See, they were right after all”. The more extreme models are at the heart of the alarmism and I agree with Larry, there should be independent groups (are NOAA and NASA disinterested?) that can evaluate the outputs of the models and report back on their validity or lack of it. The shotgun predictions, with so many models calculating different futures should result in many failures. This would allow sceptics to point to the headline and say ‘See, they were wrong after all”
Yes, sure. Let’s ask Gavin Schmidt to weigh in. Maybe Jim Hansen, too. How about Al Gore? If two out of three agree it’s a crisis, who are we to dispute it?
Agreed, commieBob.
The word Larry won’t say is “testing”.
– validation means: compare a “model” to it’s hypothesis; when the model represents the hypothesis the model is valid to represent the hypothesis.
– not necessarily the model represents REALITY.
____________________________________
this model outputs are tested over decades against reality and gained little credibility.
– “validation” for masking missing credibility.
Thank you for responding with some sanity to this post. Climate change alarmists and the green lobby know that they cannot win through the ballot box, and so they have found and are finding ways to usurp democracy, through the courts as you say and through lobbying policy makers behind the scenes of democracy. The general common sense of the voter is the last bastion of sanity against the insanity of climate change alarmists. I become ever more bewildered by the psychosis that treats CO2 as a dangerous gas. If we come out unharmed, I hope there will be a reckoning with science and the media. I hope that never again will scientists be allowed to indulge themselves in policy making.
Imagine if you will, A world were people believe, that the temperature of the planet can be controlled by giving more money to government.
That’s the crazy world we live in now.
Larry,
How is that a helpful insight at this time? How will that help resolve the policy debate?
Skeptics can keep repeating their mantra while the alarmists gain strength. It’s probably not a successful tactic.
Larry, helpful or not the other Larry correctly describe the policy debate in a nutshell. Look at all the proposed “solutions” to the “problem” (such as carbon credits) they all involve giving more money and control to government and none of them actually do a darned thing to “fix” the “problem” they claim to be about.
Climate policy 2020
Small modular nuclear reactors.
Gas powered plants in the mean time.
Solar and wind tied to pumped hydro if you need to satisfy a small % of the population.
Done.
That just about covers it if you dislike coal and oil. Of course none of that will not happen as there is someone opposed to something all the time. Laughable 1st world problems stifling easy fixes to a smallish issue.
The Left want us to suffer, so they can blame Capitalism. They want control over everything, especially us.
It’s the heads we win, tails you lose “solution.” There are myriad scientific reasons why the “climate crisis” is a scam designed to exert more power over the people and establish a repressive regime to control and loot them. This doesn’t argue compromise. In a sane and healthy country, the climate crisis mongers would be recognize by all for the despots they are.
The doomster stuff has already been thoroughly debunked by nature and alarmist failed forecasts. An Apollo or Manhattan project is exactly what the Green New Deal is all about. Sceptics are absolutely on the right side of this “War” to prevent this very threat.
The numbers are in and the worst we can see after 42% of a century since Hansen’s hyperbole on climate is some modest warming a 20% increase in global “leafing out” of the magnificent Great Planetary Greening and attendant doubling of harvests on reduced acreage. This latter BTW is the only palpable unequivocal evidence of climate change and it’s the one thing that ‘can’t be spoken about’ by doomsters! It makes fossil fuel burning many orders of magnitude net positive in any cost benefit analysis even before including it’s contribution to prosperity spreading around the world.
Larry, what is stupid is that we haven’t begun to relax on this and get on with continuance of the galloping spreading prosperity. What your missing is we are also heading for peak population in coming decades and this will mark the end of the mouldering Euricentric Marxism and Malthusian stuff. This climate is their last ditch effort. You must suspect this a little.
Gary,
“The doomster stuff has already been thoroughly debunked by nature and alarmist failed forecasts. ”
See the news. See the polls.
What you believe is not the definitive verdict for America. Other people have to also be convinced.
I am also of the opinion that it will take nature to prove that the alarmists have been wrong from the beginning. Public opinion on the issue of agw will fall into the two camps which we see now. A portion of the population believe the story, and the rest do not believe the story.
Hi Larry- According to Gallup only 5% of Americans consider environment/pollution/climate change as the most important problem and only because CC is lumped in with real problems like clean water/air and habitat destruction:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/Most-Important-Problem.aspx
Do you really think modelers incapable of quantifying orbital, solar, cloud and oceanic influences can model GLOBAL climate? Do you really think the ~1C warming since the horrific LIA is dangerous despite the vast observational evidence to the contrary. Do you really think going from 300ppm to 4-500ppm CO2 is dangerous when its geologic range is 180-7000ppm and when life thrived with CO2 many times higher? Should the small cabal caught hiding data and methods, falsifying data, subverting peer review in climate science and admitting in private their uncertainty be allowed to control the major temp records and dictate the dialogue?
See the news. See the polls.
Larry, opinions (and that’s what you just directed everyone to see) don’t change reality. You are advocating for spending money on a non-issue all because the “other side” keeps halloring louder and louder. Your solution is to give a scam legitimacy. That’s not a solution that capitulation and appeasement. It’s those who are advocating that it’s a catastrophe and its all mans fault to actually prove it before we waste money finding a “solution”. Their continuing failure to even attempt to provide that proof is all the proof you need that they are wrong. Until then gridlock is a perfectly reasonable “solution” – better nothing gets done that doing something that is unneeded and won’t solve the non-problem in any event.
Polls that provide Climate as one of the “answers” aren’t believable.
I know a lot of people and there are ZERO % of them that actually ever think about the Climate as a big problem. None are living like they believe it. None are being harmed by Climate “more than ever”.
According to the PC police they are SUPPOSED to care…so they will give the Climate lip service on poll responses…IF IT IS LISTED ON THE POLL. If the responses are open, Climate bats around .050.
If climate models could predict the future, then stock market models could predict the much simpler stock market. The winnings from stock market forecasting could then be invested to pay for climate change and there would be no need for carbon taxes or cap and trade
However, the future cannot be predicted because it exists only as a probability. It is only when we realize the future, when tomorrow becomes today, that the future becomes something that is tangible and predictable. But there is very little value in predicting the present.
IPCC 2 recognized the truth of this, but it has been ignored by climate science because it would put a whole lot of climate scientists out of work.
Ferdberple,
It’s nice that you have an opinion. But the debate will continue until enough others agree with you (or disagree). That is, other people’s opinions also count.
The ‘Futile Bickering’ is most likely the object of the exercise ?
Absent the appearance of hostile extra terrestrials, what is there other than CC that can serve as as the sort of backround ‘Danger’ that human societies have always had ?
Or looking at it another way, if the world were to dismiss the obligatory Turnip Ghost fear, then those who get themselves elected to govern may have to turn their attention to matters of real import ? That would raise the possibility that they might be shewn to be the unqualified mountebanks that most really are :O
An even scarier prospect would be that of the nice middle class folk presently flocking to the likes of Greta and XR, having to find fulfilment from within their own selves. Thats a prospect that could keep Concerned of Guildford awake at night. 🙂
Fanakapan,
“The ‘Futile Bickering’ is most likely the object of the exercise ?”
So you believe that alarmists do not seriously want their policy proposals implemented? Wow.
Larry,
Do you believe that the average XR supporter imagines a future where they themselves will be prevented from taking flights to foreign holidays ?
Or to use another example, the too many people on the planet one. Do you believe that the serious Alarmist counts themselves amongst the too many group ?
Worrying about extreme calamity that in reality is unlikely to happen does seem to hold an attraction for us as a species ? CC is double plus good in that regard as it offers so many the opportunity to profit from the phantasm. 🙂
Well, Larry, when the Green New Deal was put up for a vote in the Senate not a single senator voted for it, not a single one (including all of it’s co-sponsors). They all chose to vote present rather than go on the record voting for it.
The people doing the futile bickering don’t have enough knowledge to have a meaningful opinion. There are some futile bickerers who have motives, mainly monetary to keep bickering.
History I- All of this mess has evolved out of the formation of the United Nations Environment program and spearheaded by Maurice Strong, a Canadian oil baron, in 1972. UNEP has had some helpful programs aimed at undeveloped countries but most of its effort has been pointed towards identifying the extent and causes of human-caused global warming.
UNEP headed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to further solidify UN control of climate moneys.
UNEP and the World Meteorological Org. founded the IPCC in 1988. Initially is did some real science as evidenced by this quote from the 3rd report:’
“In research and modeling of the climate, we should be aware that we are dealing with a chaotic, nonlinear coupled system, and that long-term predictions of future climate states is not possible. ”
That has not changed one whit since, although most people ignore it. All climate models have unfixable problems starting with the fact that no one knows what processes, known and unknown are involved. The second problem is computing power. Chaotic process such as turbulent flow in both air and water finally resolve at ~1mm. This means the models should be based on a 1mm grid. The computing power to do that is simply impossible. The computer would require all the mass in the known universe. Quantum computing may be fast enough to do it, but we don’t know. The second computer problem is that the math is all done to a fixed word length which limits accuracy. Any inaccuracy will propagate in following iterations and the error rapidly expands to the limits of calculation rendering the results useless.
There are numerical computing algorithms that can help get around this limitation but they can’t get an actual correct value. So, while the error accumulation may not blow up the calculations there is no way to know if they are actually related to real time conditions. For something like a new airplane design they do a pretty good job at getting close, but the airplane still has to be tested literally to death, especially in critical areas. The original F-18 fighter is a good example. It was carefully designed, tested, retested, and finally approved. But shortly after extended flight ops started many of the planes suffered violent vibration and a couple actually lost one or both rudders.
The problem was traced to some contours on both sides of the upper fuselage. Under certain conditions they would generate a very powerful vortex the hit the rudder leading edge and flipped from side to side. The fuselage was impossible to fix so they added a vortex generator on each side the caught the offending vortex when it formed and forced it away from the rudder(s).
The current programs all have procedures such as limiting the rate of change allowed, self-adjusting parameters, and other tweaks to at least get results that look possible.
So, after all that, good luck getting forecasts of weather or climate much beyond a few weeks or a few years.
“The research for the Manhattan Project and Apollo were not done in journals and blogs. They were centrally-directed programs run with lavish funding, tapping a wide range of America’s science and engineering talent.”
Sounds good, but this is a political/bureaucratic fight not a scientific one. Look at the difference between the Apollo program and the Shuttle. The first turned the engineers loose to meet an objective, the second was as done to maintain a bureaucratic organization that was looking for a reason to keep it’s funding and it managed to kill two crews and lose two ships through it’s incompetence.
The people who would be picking the team for your project are the same ones that already have a political agenda of using CAGW to gain control of both the country and the world. This is just the latest lever they’re using to convince people that they need to let them run things. Instead of a single dictator leading it, we have a cabal of politicians and bureaucrats.
Bear said,”The people who would be picking the team for your project are the same ones that already have a political agenda of using CAGW to gain control of both the country and the world. This is just the latest lever they’re using to convince people that they need to let them run things. Instead of a single dictator leading it, we have a cabal of politicians and bureaucrats.”
Naming these politicians and bureaucrats is necessary. This ‘thinly veiled narrative’ can’t continue without key people who are controlling the narrative.
By reflecting away 30% of the ISR the terrestrial albedo, sustained by the atmosphere, makes the earth cooler than it would be without that albedo/atmosphere.
Because of the non-radiative heat transfer properties of the terrestrial surface BB LWIR radiative energy upwelling from the surface is not possible. There is zero “extra” energy for the GHGs to “trap.”
The surface is warmer than ToA per Q = U A dT same as the insulated envelope of a house.
If the above statements are correct the greenhouse effect does not exist.
Zero GHE, Zero GHG warming, Zero CAGW.
It’s that simple.
It’s all science.
It’s all over.
Nick,
“It’s all over.”
While it is nice that you have an opinion, public policy debates are about other people’s opinions. The debate will continue until we come to some kind of broad agreement on this issue.
Those seeking aggressive policy measures have skillfully played the long game, gaining support from many or most of America’s key institutions.
Under these circumstances, declaring “its all over” is a bit odd.
“The Long March Through the Institutions”, was always intended as a long game strategy. When the Frankfurt School adopted that policy for change in the 1930 they knew it would take generations to achieve their hegemonic dream position. Here we are three generations on, and they are all but in total control of the levers of society, including the levers of government, even if they are not actually on the ballot for election.
The Marxists just do not give up. Oh, and they certainly don’t allow democracy to change their game plan either.
“America has a wealth of people and institutions capable of doing this. ”
This is the BS….America has not statistically contributed to global warming
…all of the increase in CO2 has come from China and the developing world..many times over
If this wasn’t a $c@m….. people would be honest and putting the blame where it is
How exactly do you compromise with someone who wants to kill you?
Let them beat you half to death?
Latitude,
Me: “America has a wealth of people and institutions capable of doing this. ”
You: “This is the BS. America has not statistically contributed to global warming”
That’s the worst misread I’ve seen in many years. Let’s replay the tape to see what you missed.
“Doing this” has nothing to do with emissions. I am referring to America’s experts in model validation.
wasn’t a misread on my part at all…
I’m sick and tired of any of it being America’s problem…on any level
..so what if America validated every model out there
China has climate scientists too….China not going to do one thing about it…neither is the rest of the developing world
..if you believe this global warming crap…until they are held responsible….everything else is just pissing in the wind
Larry: As an ME, I have used a number of engineering models that have been validated and “certified” meaning that they can be used in support of real world engineering projects such as building or machine design. There are not 32+ models for, say, truss design that give different results. We do not use the average on ensembles of multiple runs using multiple models to determine if a bridge will be strong enough to be safe. In fact if we modeled the same structure with two different models and didn’t get the same result (within 1-2%) we’d want to know why.
If I was asked to lead a project to validate climate models, I’d start by throwing out the 25-30 that have been farthest from the observations over the last 2-3 decades. But if you actually buy and read the ASME Standards cited in the post, you’d find that validation ultimately relies on physical experimentation for comparison of model predictions to actual physical measurement. You would do this many times with a wide range of materials and designs and replicates. The process also involves rigorous evaluation of the measurement accuracy and uncertainty of inputs to the model such as dimensions, tensile strength, thermal properties, modulus of elasticity, etc. Finally, engineering models need to include a proper analysis of error propagation and uncertainty of the final result. Oh, and acceptable model performance in terms of deviation from experimental results must be stated in advance.
So, in reality, if I were asked to lead a project to validate climate models following the requirements for engineering models, I’d decline on the basis that the climate models do not meet the basic requirements of engineering models.
Yup! Have fun trying to model a chaotic system!!
I’ve tried it in several geological situations where value/sample correlation was nil!
Spent hundreds of hours tring to make any model (besides a random model) work!
Solution: A chaotic model.
Predictability? Zero! (by definition)
But that puts a lot of over-educated specialists out of work! Oh, no!!
That was the first thing their education didn’t teach them!
Rick C PE,
Excellent summary of rigorous validation methods for engineering design models, where the input variables (material properties, dimensions, thermal exposure range, etc.) are testable, repeatable, and well documented, as are the model outputs.
We have no such well documented understanding of the input variables to climate models. We aren’t even sure which input variables are of primary, secondary, or tertiary importance, let alone well documented data for each, as well as for their confounding interactions. We can’t begin to construct a robust climate model that has a chance of validation because we don’t sufficiently understand the basic input variables and interactions thereof.
Additionally, model mesh (or ‘grid’) size is of paramount importance in engineering models, as well as climate models. The current climate models are forced to use mesh sizes at least 100 times larger than is required to include modeling of cumulonimbus rain cloud development, heat and atmospheric momentum transfers, and storm dissipation because we are already greatly exceeding our available computing power. Instead, these critical aspects of atmospheric heat and water circulation are ‘parameterized’ (read: kluged or fudged) into the climate models to reduce calculational power demand. These modeling ‘kluges’ can swing the model output results to provide any kind of ‘result’ the modeler desires. It renders model validation impossible. Until such greatly improved computing power becomes available, we can’t even pretend to construct a basic climate model.
Finally, we have no means of testing the climate models outputs in a rigorous fashion to ascertain their predictive accuracy and/or repeatability. Hind casting is not a validation of model outputs for predicting future climate performance. We need repeatable test methods for verifying climate model outputs… and we have nothing better than “Wait and see what the real climate does in the next 100 years.” to get an indication of our 100 year old model prediction! And even a positive correlation then does not validate the model!
To summarize,
1) We don’t understand our global climate well enough to define and document all of the primary, secondary, and tertiary input variables, along with their confounding interactions, to construct even a basic climate model representative of our global climate.
2) We lack sufficient computing power (by at least a 100X model mesh size factor) to support even a rudimentarily comprehensive climate model in operation.
3) We have no acceptable means of repeatably testing the climate model outputs for validity or rejection.
It takes a very high level of hubris to ignore these issues or declare they can be solved by a ‘Manhattan’ style project or ‘Green New Deal’. It takes even higher hubris to use deliberately induced fears of atmospheric CO2, the fundamental plant food that sustains all life on planet earth, as the justification for further wastefully huge expenditures on this ‘Green New Deal’.
The CO2 increase is mostly natural. The IPCC estimates of global CO2 releases into the atm from human activity since 1750 coupled with the proven 5yr half-life of atm CO2 from the fortuitous 1963 tracer experiment (aka 14C Bomb Spike) together cannot be reconciled to explain the observed rise in atm CO2.
Those in physics generally don’t understand biology. The Earth is a dynamic system moderated by biological responses. Even the planet’s form is deeply changed from what it would have been if life had never arisen. NASA’s OCO2 studies of CO2 in the atm show seasonal and diurnal signals of CO2 change that dwarf anything humans do.
There will never by any reasonable debate, because the Left intend to gain control, and they will never give in. They have to be crushed, at least politically. However, that can never happen while they control media and schools, particularly the latter.
Even if we save this generation, the Left will be back with new messages for a new generation intending to fool them, and give the Left yet another chance to take over. We must take back education.
The Left created our fascist economy combining the power of corporations with govt. Any doubt given Google, FB, Twitter, etc., who select the information we get to make decisions, provide the data needed on us govt need, and control free speech in the name of “protecting” us?
Yet, for decades, the Left hiding in the Democratic Party have used govt powers of taxation, regulation, and law to force companies to comply with and promote their policies. The Left (deeply corrupt of course) pick the winners and losers in corporate America, protecting their markets and crushing competition when they comply. Now the Left reach down to the Mom and Pop stores to control commerce in the name of social justice. Give me a break. It’s a racket. Chicago mob rules. Thomas Sowell did call our economy fascist.
This isn’t Capitalism, folks. This is the product of the authentically fascist Left. Fascism always was a creature of the Left, always will be. Even Mussolini said so. He was a former leader of the Italian Socialist Party, praised by Trotsky as being “our best student”.
It only takes letting the Left win once. Venezuela, or at best Britain, follows.
Could you possibly list the so called “costs to society” that the “generals” of the skeptics “no longer care about”?
MarkW,
“Could you possibly list the so called “costs to society” ”
Better yet, I’ll repeat the ones listed in the post.
We’re not ready even for the inevitable repeat of past extreme weather.
…that’s because our vaunted “climate models” can’t even hind – cast! You want to use such a useless tool in forecasting??
What model do you suggest predicts a chaotic system when “prediction” isn’t possible in a chaotic system? (or any prediction is equally valid!)
How many slaps with reality is it going to take until you wake up?
Here’s a thought: let’s institute climate cultist policies in the counties that voted for Hillary. We’ll give this a whirl for 10 years, with Trump voting counties as the control subjects. Hillary voters will only be allowed to move to other Hillary voting counties during this time frame. They need to suck it up and pay the price for their beliefs.
That is basically my solution to all things politics.
Let the Looney Toons have their policies, but they must be 100% voluntary. All social programs should be voluntary: social security, medicare, Medicaid, and instead of dolling out cash for welfare they can skip a step and directly hand out food and government can operate apartments instead of section 8, and if you want free university training then you can pay a special tax towards paying for that for the rest of your life.
Basically, if you think it’s societies job to take care of you then that should come with sacrificing your personal freedoms, not having others sacrifice for you.
What’s insane is your belief that you can find these dispassionate experts who are capable and willing to honestly examine the climate models and pass judgement on them.
What’s even more insane is your belief that anyone will listen to these experts once they pass their judgement.
This conflict has always been political, it’s never been more than a cover to push policies that are otherwise rejected.
Actor John Cusak this past weekend at a Bernie Sanders rally declared that we have only 10 years to save the world from “climate capitalism”.
https://news.grabien.com/story-john-cusack-we-have-10-12-years-save-planet-climate-capitali
Mark says:
“What’s even more insane is your belief that anyone will listen to these experts once they pass their judgement.”
I see this as a real problem as much as i like Larry’s idea to validate the models. First there are good competent individuals that have already falsified the models but they are being ignored of savaged. Pat Frank’s work concludes the models tell us nothing about the future. Christy and McKitrick show that one of the results, the hot spot, central to all the models is missing. Harde and Berry show that human emissions do not control atmospheric concentration so the models reliance on emission pathways is in error. None of these and many more findings are the work of biased crackpots. I would like to believe that Larry’s reviewers would be able to get the attention of the world and think it is worth the pittance it would take to produce but am skeptical of that happening. I think it was NOAA that formed a study group on acid rain similar to the one proposed here that was mostly ignored by the media and most of the world.
“What’s insane is your belief that you can find these dispassionate experts who are capable and willing to honestly examine the climate models and pass judgement on them.
What’s even more insane is your belief that anyone will listen to these experts once they pass their judgement.”
Exactly. If the conclusion is that the models aren’t fit for purpose, Michael Mann will call all those involved “industry shills”. Simples.
The irony is that Michael Mann is a chaotic scientist! And yes, “chaotic scientist” is a contradiction in terms!
“They were centrally-directed programs run with lavish funding…”
Yes, central planning is the answer. It did wonders for the Soviet Union.
More self important claims.
What a simplistic absurd notion!
“Validation of models by experts”; exactly what has been the problem for thirty years!
It’s that the so called “experts” have by and large been the center of the problem!
James Hanses, Phil Jones, BOM, NCAR, a host of Journals and news media, etc. etc are all part of the scam!
Nor is “validation” a cure all for bad models!
In the ‘real world’, where lives depend upon the models used to be accurate; they are validated and certified! Plus the modelers and engineers who use those models are held responsible for their findings!
That identifies the key ‘missing’ action; i.e. responsible!
There are many sub actions that are co-dependable; e.g. predictions within testable real world time scales that typically align with ordinary calendars or accounting periods; hour, day, week, accounting period, month, quarter, biannual, year, etc. etc.
Then when those models and predictions fail to materialize during the shortest time frames; people are demoted or lose their jobs. In today’s world, these fakirs and false prophets are praised, revered and protected.
Distant vague predictions are not testable! Something that is alleged to occur in fifty years must have initial effects! Demote the fools who make time distant predictions and require that they state exactly when, how and quantitatively define the initial alleged effects.
Failure to perform these minor requirements or when their predictions go astray must always hold those who make the predictions responsible!
ATheoK,
It does not appear that you read the post.
““Validation of models by experts”; exactly what has been the problem for thirty years!’
That’s what the post says, in the sense that basic model validation methods have not been used – nor have they been done by people unaffiliated with the operation of the models.
“It’s that the so called “experts” have by and large been the center of the problem!”
Yes, it’s obvious that you didn’t read the post. Try again, more slowly.
“they are validated and certified”
Wow. I’m pretty sure that the experts on the Verification and Validation Committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers know how to do their jobs.
I agree with your call to do IV&V on climate models, and with the notion that there is no shortage of un/disinterested people to do the job. I would go further, and have another contingent of people do IV&V on the methods by which raw temperature measurements are manipulated, since the results of all of that manipulation yield the initial conditions for climate model runs (and the numbers used in plots of temperature anomaly). In addition, I’d like to see an independent review of all of the proxy temperature “data.”
All of those things need to be done. President Trump thought so, as well, and tried to have Red Team reviews to accomplish them.
The response was a deafening outcry from the global warming/climate change activist community that these things should never be done – for some fuzzy reasons that left no mark. When climate researchers refuse to provide their data and methodologies for IV&V on the grounds that the independent validators and verifiers will just try to poke holes in them, there can be no progress. Poking holes in scientific research is what makes science…science. If data and the methods by which they are analyzed are beyond scrutiny, then we can never come to any scientific conclusions that can be accepted as true, and any policy decisions made on the basis of who shouts the loudest will have no connection to reality.
What really needs to happen, first and foremost, is to establish the fact that no decisions can be made on policy until the quality of the research (I won’t even call it science), and its conclusions, are independently reviewed and found to be sound – or not.
Good luck with that.
Will Happer says that Trump could very well do this in his second term, when he no longer has to worry about being re-elected. Activists don’t want this to happen and were vehemently against it when it was suggested in Trumps first term. The reason for their opposition is obvious. They know as well as we do that an honest appraisal of their gravy train will derail it!
The idea that CO2 is the primary driver of global atmospheric temperature change has already been falsified by a half billion years of climate history, is being falsified by current observations and will be falsified by future changes. The knowledgeable warmists know this already, but believe that fighting climate change will bring desired results. They are arguing that the ends justify the means, which might be true if the nefarious means produced the desired ends. History tells us that never happens!
‘Issues’ are the horses that would-be tyrants ride to power. When they get there, they invariably shoot the horses!
+100
It isn’t about the climate – it is about controlling your money, thoughts and actions. AOC’s former chief of staff said so clearly.
Every time socialist fruitloops come up with a disaster scenario, usually blamed on Trump, we need to prepare a Manhatten Project? Somebody show Larry Klummer a chart of climate model projections versus actual climate changes so he can forget models, which don’t seem to be able to handle chaos at all. Call me when Miami Beach no longer allows tourists.
Ron,
It’s nice that you have an opinion. But political debates end when Americans come to broad agreement on them.
If you won’t participate, others will decide the issue. You will have to live with America’s decision.
Larry, please note that the activists, politicians and profiteers of all stripes have gone far beyond the science (IPCC, etc.) in asserting that current weather disasters are arising from CC. Others, including Roger Pielke, Jr., have repeatedly shown the contrary; extreme weather is not becoming more frequent nor destructive. What makes you think alarmists will become less strident if they are given additional information?
“Others, including Roger Pielke, Jr., have repeatedly shown the contrary”
Yet Pielke Jr still thinks we need to mitigate CO2.
The entire premise of this article is correct and interesting EXCEPT that there are now so many corrupted groups and individuals in power positions wanting to dupe the public and policy makers that I fear the only way out is to entirely blow up the whole warmist argument.
It has been clearly demonstrated from the inception of Global Warming that power corrupts…The more power is seen to be available through this (or any other vehicle) the more corrupt become those who pursue it.
I am particularly sad though that science itself has become corrupted to the core and that is precisely why the premise of this article, though nice in principle, will not work.
Al,
I’m always impressed that the most common response to proposed solutions is to declare solutions are impossible and hope for the end times. Especially before actually trying solutions.
“I am particularly sad though that science itself has become corrupted to the core and that is precisely why the premise of this article,”
So you believe that we cannot find honest scientists and engineers to do such a project? Wow. Too pitiful a world view to comment on. I’ll just say that for 30 years I have worked with such people – and your statement is quite false.
Larry,
I am absolutely certain we can find honest trustworthy engineers and scientists to head up any inquiry ever needed. What is in question though, is whether the political movers and shakers will pay any attention whatsoever, to the opinion of honest men and women, if that opinion is not in line with the political objective being progressed by those commissioning politicians.
We already have some very highly qualified scientists declaring climate alarmism is not based on any science. They are ignored and called “deniers” We have a climate activists, who gained world wide attention and respect, for stopping atmospheric nuclear testing, he stopped whaling activity, he stopped the slaughter of seal pups for fur coats, he founded Greenpeace, that activist is Dr Patrick Moore, yet even he, is dismissed by the Green Socialists as not worthy to comment!! Why do they dismiss his rational educated views about CO2 so easily? It is simply because his views do not fall in line with the Green Socialists objectives, so his views must be dismissed.
We are living in increasingly troubling times. WE must accept we have a battle on our hands and we must start to fight back while we still have the resourced to do so.
The climate alarmists zealots dismiss rational arguments, they are completely irrational they are fixated and beyond reasoned debate. The solution to this destruction of civilisation by the Green Socialists is not to be found in quiet debate. they have gone beyond listening to alternate well found debate. The rational, sensible, educated and scientific voiced in Venezuela arguing against policies leading to impoverishment were ignored, by the political decision makers. Impoverishment was put into place. The residents in California can argue against the legislation that is being progresses, but still it is progressed. Normal people want abundant cheap energy, they are denied it. Normal people want fire safety programmes implemented that save lives, they are ignored, as fuel load builds in the hills around major conurbations. The rational views, the sensible views, the scientific views are all being ignored. California will become as desperate as Venezuela.
The battle is for who ultimately has authority over our lives? Is it us as free individuals, or is it bureaucracy as decided by the un-elected the unrepresentative but very “woke” bureaucrats?
As a famous politician once said, it matters not what the high and mighty want, the people always win in the end. He didn’t allude to the cost…..
Larry, I’m always impressed that the most common “solution” alarmists like you (and yes, that’s what you are. every now and again, you post an article like this one that exposes your true colors)propose is always more government and less freedom. You don’t try solutions until you prove there is a problem to be solved. otherwise what is your solution to the invasion of the invisible pink unicorns? don’t say they don’t exist, come up with a solution (one that involved spending lots of money and resources) because that’s exactly what you are proposing for the non-problem of CAGW.
What climate change as they are defining it? Maybe an investigation into who is profiting from the transition to save us would help.
It says so much to point out that all of the policy changes that have been happening and may will continue to happen in future depend on our ability to predict the future using climate models that have never been validated. Anyone who takes a few seconds to think about it knows our ability to predict the future is severely limited and that the future each “expert” predicts is largely just a manifestation of their own biases and preferences. I agree that model validation as a formal process should be a given, but even then we should treat model outputs as suspect. Validation only applies to times past not the future. However a validated model may well be useful for predictions that don’t exceed a modest time window. Beyond that errors have a habit of accumulating and often creating self-replication chaos. The current suite of models for global climate have never been properly validated, with the exception of many volunteer efforts to compare them to reality with spectacularly disheartening results. Yet we put at risk the foundations of human society and the health of the biosphere adopting unproven technologies to avoid an unproven future. Running with scissors is a peculiarly human fetish.
Andy,
“Anyone who takes a few seconds to think about it knows our ability to predict the future is severely limited”
That’s bizarrely false. Many people have taken much more than “a few seconds” and have come to different conclusions.
Larry, just because many people have deluded themselves doesn’t make it “bizarrely false”. The fact (and it is a fact) is that our ability to predict the future *is* severely limited. You need only compare the overwhelming majority of failed medium- and long-term future predictions compared the very sparse successful medium- and long-term predictions about, well pretty much anything (not just climate) to see that fact for yourself.
At this stage I trust none of the institutions There have been too many lies, exaggerations, schemes.
I’m not convinced that we actually measure the temperature accurately, let alone e leaving interpretation up to bureaucrats.
MS,
“At this stage I trust none of the institutions ”
So what’s your proposed next step to a solution? Decisions have to be made. Walking away from self-government just means that others will run America.
The biggest myth of government is that “something must be done.”
Such a great film that could never be made today.
Keep self governance (and keep government small), get rid of the international organizations—stop using fear to justify power grabs.
Let’s hope that Trump wins in 2020.
I too am skeptical that another government agency or commission will help. Government sponsors programs that benefit government. Better, I think, to reform the agencies we already have. Our president ran on a swamp draining platform. How about some new personnel and budget cuts for NOAA and NASA? Why can’t Trump start at the top and say, e.g., “Give me a report clearly explaining temperature data alteration in one week, or resign”? Why don’t we require Gavin Schmidt and other agency officials to testify under oath about this? Imagine them under questioning from Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre. Alarmists avoid debate. Those who receive government funding, whether academics or public servants, are accountable to the public. They do not have the option of refusing to discuss on the grounds that the question is settled and the debate is over.
Larry, why must “something” be done about a non-problem? because the “other side” keeps howling about it being a “problem”. Prove that it’s a real problem, then and only then must “something” be done. Just like all the other alarmists, you keep skipping over that crucial step of the proving the problem to be real rather than asserting it.
John,
You just don’t get it! We ‘need’ another Manhattan Project.. or a huge Green New Deal to validate the non-problem of atmospheric CO2 and determine a robust non-solution to the non-problem. Larry is glad you have an opinion…. but that doesn’t fund a huge new program to ‘fix’ the climate models, validate them by creating new non-validity methods, and produce a robust non-solution to the loudly asserted but weakly supported AGW non-problem. Trust him! He has some friends in the San Francisco Bay area that assure him they can validate those triply invalid climate models, if they only have enough of Other Peoples Money to fund their California lifestyles. Why would anyone be skeptical of that???
Larry,
A solution for what?
Life saving warmth relative to 170 years ago? Record crop yields with decreasing footprint? Massive greening of Gaia? Reduction in poverty, famine or increasing longevity? More moderate weather-the warming is a moderation of winter nights, not an increase in summer highs? Bouncing off the dangerous geological lows in CO2 during the last glaciation?
Can you really not perceive the benefit of aligning global resources toward providing clean water and cheap electricity to the 2B in need rather than “solutions” to a fantastic climate for life on earth?
The only policy I’d back is one that furthers Global Warming. The alternative, global cooling, would be disasterous.
Sadly, I’m unaware of any agency or organization that is pushing a policy that supports Global Warming. My policy preference has no representation.
I also note that all the agencies and governing bodies pushing anti-Earth policies (policies attempting to prevent us from perhaps reaching the temperatures of the Holocene optimum ever again) push solutions that give money and control to themselves without any evidence that any of their policy solutions would have any effect on Global temperatures.
We know humans are clever and can adapt to myriad climates, from the Poles to the Tropics and we already know the costs of adaptation to those climate regimes. We don’t know if humans can control the various existing climates and there’s no evidence that any amount of money spent would provide control over those climates.
It seems to me we should keep our money in our pockets and spend it only when we need to adapt to changes.
Here is my challenge to the climate alarmists: Lead by example. Stop using all fossil fuels. Stop driving a car. Stop heating your house with gas or propane or oil. Stop using a water heater fueled by fossil fuels. Stop cooking with gas. Cut your use of electricity by the percentage which comes from fossil fuels. Nationwide that would be 63%. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 And if you don’t like nuclear power you need to cut another 19%.
You could also stop breathing because the concentration of CO2 in your breath is nearly 100 times that in the atmosphere.
What? You don’t want to do any of that? Well then vote for politicians who support the green new deal and they’ll make you do it by force of law.
David,
“Here is my challenge to the climate alarmists”
Do you seriously expect them to take your challenge?
After 30 years of both sides’ fun rhetoric, perhaps we can move on to trying likely next steps.
capitulating and appeasement are not the best of next steps. So, no, Larry “Nevile” Kummer, your “likely next steps” are unwanted and unneeded. Prove the assertions of the alarmist first, then get back to us about appeasing next steps.
I expect them to put up or shut up. Hopefully once they try it they will realize how much they like fossil fuels.
Unfortunately they never do either. They won’t put up and they certainly don’t know how to shut up (though they’re very good at trying to get those they disagree with silenced).
Why not instead of a USCRN, a global CRN. Immediate results that are indisputable…is the surface of planet Earth in a runaway warming event, is it not, or is it cooling? And cheaper than the alternatives.
That would make too much sense.
Because thermometers scattered all over at 2m height tell us nothing about the heat content of the atmosphere. Someone will unscientifically average them all together and say “See?! Told ya!”
I’m fine with the gridlock, given that the alternative would be the ruination of individual freedoms, economic devastation and worldwide famine.
Why even give legitimacy to the idiocy? The only climate change concern society should have is what are we going to do about the inevitable return to glacial conditions? You can’t wish away reality with pseudoscience, and I have never heard a legitimate solution to this legitimate problem.
This approach only works if you assume climate is a one-dimensional “science” issue. A “scientist” studying sea level may arrive at a conflicting conclusion from one studying agriculture, or one studying energy. The arbiters of conflicting recommendations will be politicians and courts. Climate science is a new and an immature field of study. Even experts in established fields can’t agree on recommendations. Although dietary science is an established field, a current brouhaha from the Journal of American Medical Association describes a Backlash Over Meat Dietary Recommendations.
Doubtful solution.
First, climate models can’t be validated because there is no sufficiently complex, credible test case to validate against. They provide insight into climate physics. They cannot provide reasonable policy.
Second, there is no process which cannot be subverted with political trickery.
Third, leftists never admit defeat or to being wrong. They simply double down.
The difficulty is restoring trust.
“Neither journals or blogs are suited for this job. The research for the Manhattan Project and Apollo were not done in journals and blogs. They were centrally-directed programs run with lavish funding, tapping a wide range of America’s science and engineering talent.”
PLEASE!
The internet didn’t exist during the time the Manhattan Project and Apollo were being developed!
There is absolutely *no* reason why journals and blogs today can’t do the job. WUWT is a prime example. Academics tend to not like journals and blogs because they don’t offer the “lavish funding” you mention. Anyone who thinks that there aren’t thousands of people out there who can do a very good job of critiquing scientific data collection, analysis, and conclusions is only fooling themselves.
What Kevin Kilty said, plus, trusting the NAS on this would be a massive, huge mistake. In fact, giving the government the power to enforce any of this, or putting it in the form of a “Manhattan Project”, would be a colossal disaster.
This is one of the scariest policy proposals I’ve ever read for a non-problem. Kill it with fire, drive an oak stake through its heart at midnight, this should NEVER be official policy.
w.
Willis The Red Team Blue Team idea looked like the most promising way forward in the 30 year stalemate, however as we have seen political survival will always be the strongest force in the universe. My guess would be that you and many other regulars here on WUWT will still be banging on in another 30 years.
Best regards Gibo
Larry’s busy so let me see if I understand the general principles so that I can fill in for him.
It’s nice that you have an opinion, Willis, but how do we move the socialism train forward if we don’t come up with a believable way to fool the bubbas into accepting the mythology? We’ve been lying and cheating for 30 years but we still have capitalism. That’s a travesty! Gotta stop the gridlock. Maybe you should re-read the article, REAL SLOW. Because you’re a demented nitwit and I’m certainly not responding to comments in order to consider insights from the likes of you. Or god forbid, change my fixed opinion in the slightest way. I have a blog so that my opinion is always right and I can make sanctimonious proclamations, condescending to all the fools who dare to have a different view. Do you also try to argue with the television? No clue that it’s a one-way conversation?
The entire premise of the article seems to be that gridlock is a problem. Gridlock was designed into the US constitution by design. The notion was simple, decisions should mostly be local (state level or smaller). If we need to force everyone across a diverse set of states and communities to do something or comply with something, then there has to be sufficient agreement on the course of action to overcome the intentionally designed into the system gridlock. Otherwise it shouldn’t be done at that level.
The notion that gridlock is a problem presupposes that it is a good thing for a centralized small group of elites to decide something for everyone else without achieving that overwhelming level of concurrence. That is the road towards a totalitarian mindset, or at best the “tyranny of the majority” feared by the founders of the U.S.
Well said Ed H, well said indeed.
Ed H,
As I read through all the comments, and especially Larry Kummer’s responses to others, I had a steadily increasing impression of an elitist’s certainty of the worthiness of his ‘solution’, if only the rest of us had half a wit to see its superior perfection.
Having read your comment, I heartily agree. Well said, Sir!
How many times do I have to observe that ClimateChange™ is nothing to DO with climate change?
It is a marketing exercise to convince people to let go of their wallets and their democratic rights. That is all.
What happens to soda when you warm it up? It gets flat faster, since it is out-gassing co2 (carbonation)
The day I hear “the other side” mention out-gassing from the oceans as they periodically warm, as well as the fact historically they will subsequently cool (and what happens then), is the day I will feel “the other side” is not trying to con me by using unbalanced fallacies to steamroll what is yet to become a rational conversation.
But they aren’t correct. NOTHING they’ve projected has actually happened. They’ve NEVER been able to separate any climate/weather events into what was Man’s fault and what is natural. Surrender to the wrong just to break “gridlock”?
I prefer “gridlock” that prevent’s loss of freedoms, improved living conditions, “The Green New Deal”, etc. from becoming a worse reality for us to live in than the worst of the failed CAGW predictions.
Better read this Reuters article on BIS
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1ZJ19E?__twitter_impression=true
Early on, the article states: “The number of extreme weather events has quadrupled over the last 40 years.” This statement is demonstratively incorrect; Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. and others have shown conclusively that extreme weather events have not increased in frequency nor severity.
Since Reuters won’t fact-check basic statistics, it is Fake News. The AP is on-par with Reuters.
In order to validate any of the climate models, one must first specify the intended use and must then develop and agree to acceptance criteria for the outputs and for the important component processes being simulated. What accuracy and precision are required? What independent measurements will be used to evaluate the outputs, not only for the final output but for the components? One quickly sees the impossibility of validating any of the GCM’s. This is from the perspective of a mechanical engineer in the pharmaceutical industry for 28 years, beginning in 1982. It was around that time that the FDA implemented mandatory guidance requiring process validation. Validation became central to nearly everything we did.
If there is to be disinterested expertise applied to the climate question, what comes to mind is root cause analysis. The NTSB, for example, does a pretty good job of it. At this point, I have seen nothing to authoritatively rule out natural causes for whatever climate trends have been reported. The debate is not so much about the models themselves, but over the claims that a bad thing has happened – harmful warming – and that a cause has been identified – i.e., emissions of non-condensible greenhouse gases. Climate science and the policy debate is indeed a train wreck, but there is no scene of an actual climate catastrophe to even examine for clues.
Could a low risk geo engineering project combined with some co2 reduction be common ground ? The geo engineering doesn’t have to be turned ON but the system be built and ready to flick the switch if need be. My understanding is the cost is not high compared to eliminating fossil fuels, and certain geo engineering is low risk.
Here is a CNBC story today which is most appropriate for this post, … https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/20/davos-experts-urge-world-leaders-to-listen-to-climate-change-science.html
The theme is that we must act now, NOW. The science is settled, act now. All politicians need to listen to and obey what the scientists are telling us, or we are DOOMED. That is the reality of where the climate one sided debate sits at the moment. Sceptics have never had a seat at the table.
goldminor,
“The theme is that we must act now, NOW. The science is settled, act now.”
NO!
When Davos-world-leaders-wan’t-action-now then they can every time build new wind Parks until the means are exhausted.
It’s clear to see that the financial Wells of the greens are drying out, watch their beggar’s TV adds.
Rearguard actions are the nastiest and Larry Kummer is just a defeatist.
Libdems are defeated, Macron can’t hold his pledge to “take every climate scientist” to jobs in France, Russia and China have their own interests.
Germany stands befor the ruins of 30 years miscalculation of its dues.
Trump will NOT, like Obama and some others, give “the lame duck” for a legislation period.
Period.
Apollo and the Manhattan projects were pass-fail programs capable of incremental verification as the programs progressed. The ultimate pass-fail verification occurred within the lifetimes of those involved in the programs.
Engineering models have been verified many times by actual outcomes. Their predictions can be tested and verified in the near term. They can be trusted to a large degree because we have physical evidence all around us that they work.
Weather models allow forecasting near term weather and their output is continuously tested but even those models do not always agree. Would we develop weather policy affecting a significant percentage of the world GDP depending on the accuracy of a 14 day weather forecast?
How do we verify climate models? Their projections/ predictions/ forecasts are for outcomes beyond our lifetimes? Some scientists have shown that the near term climate model “forecasts” aren’t very good. Climate models have been tuned to correlate well with historical observations of our chaotic weather system. Does correlation with past observations necessarily validate their use or utility in predicting future climate?
Last question. Even if climate models are somehow validated to a reasonable degree and the models project/ predict/forecast an unacceptable future climate, does that also validate the methods by which we can control the climate?
Today’s climate hysteria is similar to the Red Scare in the 50’s. The latter gradually subsided after McCarthy was exposed for what he was. Let’s do the same for government funded alarmists. Put them on camera, under oath, and have them questioned by knowledgeable skeptics. Maybe the hearings will show that skeptics are the fools. That would also be a positive result. Wouldn’t the alarmists like to see the red-faced skeptics slink away quietly? They think the evidence for their position is overwhelming and so their champions should make quick work out of the skeptics. Why aren’t they calling for such hearings?
Phillip Goggans January 20, 2020 at 10:32 am
Today’s climate hysteria is similar …
The new censorship –
https://www.google.com/search?q=climate+hysteria&oq=climate+h&aqs=chrome.
Climate hysteria the Unwort of the year:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Climate+hysteria+the+Unwort+of+the+year%3A&oq=Climate+hysteria+the+Unwort+of+the+year%3A&aqs=chrome.
Ain’t that good news, man ain’t that news.
Decadal Changes of the Reflected Solar Radiation and the Earth Energy Imbalance
Climate change may come, but what’s about the direction ?
Abstract: Decadal changes of the Reflected Solar Radiation (RSR) as measured by CERES from 2000 to 2018 are analysed. For both polar regions, changes of the clear-sky RSR correlate well with changes of the Sea Ice Extent. In the Arctic, sea ice is clearly melting, and as a result the earth is becoming darker under clear-sky conditions. However, the correlation between the global all-sky RSR and the polar clear-sky RSR changes is low. Moreover, the RSR and the Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) changes are negatively correlated, so they partly cancel each other. The increase of the OLR is higher then the decrease of the RSR. Also the incoming solar radiation is decreasing. As a result, over the 2000–2018 period the Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) appears to have a downward trend of −0.16 ± 0.11 W/m2dec. The EEI trend agrees with a trend of the Ocean Heat Content Time Derivative of −0.26 ± 0.06 (1 σ
) W/m2dec.
Climate Sensitivity of GFDL’s CM4.0
And so far about models:
Abstract
GFDL’s new CM4.0 climate model has high transient and equilibrium climate sensitivities near the middle of the upper half of CMIP5 models. The CMIP5 models have been criticized for excessive sensitivity based on observations of present‐day warming and heat uptake and estimates of radiative forcing. An ensemble of historical simulations with CM4.0 produces warming and heat uptake that are consistent with these observations under forcing that is at the middle of the assessed distribution. Energy budget‐based methods for estimating sensitivities based on these quantities underestimate CM4.0’s sensitivities when applied to its historical simulations. However, we argue using a simple attribution procedure that CM4.0’s warming evolution indicates excessive transient sensitivity to greenhouse gases. This excessive sensitivity is offset prior to recent decades by excessive response to aerosol and land use changes.
Creative model tuning fixes all problems.
The lead is correct on the Manhattan and Apollo Programs, yet misses the point precisely.
Both of these programs, with a national mission orientation, had no tools whatsoever to go on, even with plenty of capable people.
These proposals were brilliantly new, forward looking, not a mere iterative “improvement”.
Exactly this national mission orientation is the target of the whole “endangered atmosphere” escapade of Margaret Mead (1975 Conference ) notoriety . That anthropologist declared the human species to be a herd, to run from fear, and to scatter before teenagers. This marked the onset of the destruction of the US economy, culminating in “gender considerations” for every opinion of the day.
Now Pres. Trump gets it – he is being hampered in every possible way. It is not about “atmospherics”, but mission. Back to the Moon is a good step. The mission-creep of forever wars must be replaced with really hard goals.
Fusion power, delayed for decades, inherently very difficult, and extremely interesting, needs a Manhattan Program. The behavior of active self-organizing plasma will revolutionize all CFD. The methods for this are not yet public, so yes the NAS have a lot to do.
Great missions to make us great again!
After all, a mission, being of the future, comes from the future, so not part of the problem called the present gridlock.
The models already have been invalidated because observations show they run too hot. Additionally, they are programmed based on the premise that human causes are the driver of climate change which makes them defective for investigating natural causes.
Mr Kummer says “That requries validation of models by experts.”
Of course they are validated, in time, by the lead expert – nature.
The problem is that the usual response to a failed model is to “dis” the expert…
“..and just where did this “nature” person get there doctorate…” etc.
Mr Kummer’s way forward will only happen if it is made law.
(and both sides are prepared to accept the outcome – don’t get me started on referendums)
The problem with climate policy is that the climate models, even in an alternate universe where they are 100% reliable and validated, are NOT sufficient for climate policy. There’s still two legs necessary to defend a mitigation-related climate policy:
1) The *impact* models must be validated and accurate. This isn’t remotely the case.
2) Mitigation policy must produce better outcomes than adaptation policy, considering both the cost of the policy and an appropriate discount rate for the time the cost is incurred. This isn’t remotely the case, either.
The obvious solution to the “climate policy crisis” is to recognize that current proposed mitigation policy is both expensive and ineffective, and that the climate impacts current and future are not at all likely to be catastrophic. Even the inflated RCP 8.5 impacts only project a world *far* richer than our own will just be less rich. Climate change is slow, we have plenty of time to adapt later if needed.
Climate contrarians cannot win this war. Climate establishment (=the IPCC and the scientists supporting it) has the science on their side because they can define what is the correct climate change science. The tide will turn only then when the mother nature drives the temperatures downward. Then the media will turn 180 degrees.
What makes you think climate policy gridlock is a bad thing?
Climate action in any form is as morally unacceptable as it would be futile.
“That reqiries validation of models by experts …”.
Only Mother Nature can validate the models.
How are those Global Climate Models validated? The GCM’s are evalated by how well they reproduce the global surface temperature record. The bogus, bastardized global surface temperature record.
Garbage validating Garbage. Garbage being manipulated to validate Garbage.
The real global temperature profile is where any investigtion ought to be focused. We need to use the real global temperature profile (as warm in the recent past as now) before we can validate the GCM’s First things first.
From the above article under “A Rational Approach”: “Policy-makers need to know that models’ forecasts provide a robust basis for policies that will shape the economy and society of 21st century America – and the world” and “(Such methodology) uses proven methods relied upon in science, engineering, and business.”
Uhhhh . . . since when has any model of any given, largely-stochastic process such as CLIMATE forecasting (let alone Wall Street forecasting, business trend forecasting, technology forecasting, political forecasting, societal changes, etc.)—looking forward in excess of 20 years—ever been demonstrated to be “robust”? Obviously, the existing raft of IPCC-touted, supercomputer-enabled, science-based climate models have failed miserably in this regard.
The best any such models do is basically curve-fit past data and then perform a relatively short-term (2-5 year) extrapolation into the future. This approach does not come close to being “an obvious solution” to anything.
“Futile bickering” is another name for speaking truth to power. If consensus was desirable, we’d still be living in Dark Age Feudalism.
The models have been discredited; it’s already happened. The Warmistas are led by an austistic dropout who cannot read or write – there’s your “scientific” expertise!
The problem is not global warming. Warmer Is Better. The problem is the amoral kleptocracy and the sheeple who follow them obediently. The solution is rationality, revolutionary rationality, even if the rational people are greatly outnumbered. Never give an inch. If you don’t like it, tough.
PS – The irrationals are losing. They know it. The Warmistas are a failed movement heading toward the dustbin of history. That’s why the Larrys of the movement are begging for debate now, even though they declared the debate over 25 years ago.
No, this is just wrong. You can see it is wrong by two things. One, that the activists commonly demand policies which will have no effect on what they claim to believe is the problem. Wind power, Paris, electric cars… Two they refuse to demand things which they should believe are essential. Demolishing the suburbs and malls, abolishing cars, China reducing on a grand scale, India stopping increasing emissions.
So, whatever anyone shows about the models will be irrelevant. The demands will continue. It will have zero effect. This is not about climate at all. This is about finding bad reasons for policies we want to do on instinct. The desire will not go away just because some learned body pronounces.
In fact I think the more obvious it gets that the climate hysteria is delusional, the stronger will be the belief and the more bitter the agitation of the believers. Read ‘When Prophecy Fails’ for an explanation and example of why and how.
Making a nuclear bomb or “validating” climate models (whatever that might mean) are problems in technology. The issue of what we should do about our warming climate is political. In a sense IPCC AR5 WG1 lays out the technical capabilities of the models used, it is the other WGs where the issues really arise.
So independent validation simply becomes another, not particularly new, input into an already highly charged political debate. IMHO it will just be another footnote along the way, and won’t change the politics.
Part of the issue is the politics talks to a popular belief system (particularly in the west) about our relationship with nature and the environment. It can be seen in the confusion between clean and renewable energy. If the only worry was GHGs then the focus would be on the former, but in many circles its not (come to NZ where we are curtailing NG exploration when coupled with CCS/U it is the way to low cost clean H2 for our long-haul transport fleet – we have to be renewable).
It is therefore difficult to see a silver bullet, but I comfort myself that either as the cost of mitigation bites causality will come under political pressure, or that mother nature will refuse to oblige with the worst of the prognoses.
“Climate models are the center ring of the climate policy debate. Policy-makers need to know that models’ forecasts provide a robust basis for policies that will shape the economy and society of 21st century America – and the world.”
The problem is that the climate models have been universally wrong at predicting temperatures. The only model that has come close, (see Roy Spencer’s blog) has been the Russian model. Imagine that The Russians are conspiring to interfere in our elections by debunking climate alarmism with a climate model that actually does a reasonable job of predicting temperatures.
A second problem is the temperature record itself. We only have satellite data going back to 1979. And ground based temperature data is full of holes. Major parts of the world still without reliable data and the historical record is full of gaps around the world on land and sea. Furthermore, the raw data shows that the mid 1930’s were as warm as today, until the Alarmist’s at NOAA get through with their adjustments (well documented by Tony Heller). So before any conclusions can be made about long term warming, we need an honest look at the temperature record by a variety of scientists, evaluating all of the adjustments for their credibility. One example documented by Tony Heller – NOAA modified Iceland temperatures to favor a warming trend without any consultation with climatologists in Iceland. When they were exposed, they restored the original data. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but the ground based temperature data is managed by gatekeepers with a distinctly alarmist bent. They believe that they are making the right adjustments, but they are blind to their own biases which lead to flawed justifications.
Larry
I appears to me that you are hoping for a scientific consensus from an ‘expert group’ that will ultimately result in beneficial policy. The problem is consensus is a truly a political paradigm for managing diverse opinions. Consensus in science is not a particularly good thing and probably impedes scientific advancement as much as it helps it. I know, you’re “glad I have an opinion”, but it doesn’t help solve anything. Maybe it helps in uncritically accepting expert scientific consensuses!
The way ahead is clear but is being addressed by none of the participants in the present lucrative Climate Free-for-All. It is simply to continue to prove again and again that ‘man-made climate change’ is fake and a stalking horse for socialist control. Doing nothing is the most useful contribution to ending this false and malevolent fraud.
The problem with this approach is using computer models of the predicted future to make the decisions. There is ample evidence that most computer models of the climate, when run using 1980 as a starting point, have over-predicted the actual observed temperature rise over 40 years by a factor of 2 or 3. By the scientific method, a computer model that failed to predict the recent past cannot be trusted to predict the future.
Until a computer model can be developed that does accurately follow observed temperature trends (and can be demonstrated over a period of 10 years or more), predictions from computer models should not be used to affect major policy decisions.
Another reason for the current “gridlock” is that many of the supposedly disastrous effects of a warming climate (rising sea levels, increased frequency and strength of hurricanes, floods, and droughts) have not actually occurred. Every time some localized natural disaster (such as a strong hurricane, snowstorm, tornado, flood, or wildfire) occurs, alarmists loudly warn about “climate change” to a compliant media, but those who compile the long-term average frequency of occurrence of weather disasters also take into account the lulls, when most people go about their business without paying much attention to the weather.
Those clamoring for replacement of fossil fuels with wind or solar or some other “renewable” energy rarely consider the huge cost, both in economic terms and in terms of disruption of people’s lifestyle. The other question becomes, if we don’t change our lifestyle, how do we know that an increase of 1 to 2 degrees Celsius of the average temperature is necessarily bad? Ask a resident of Canada or Scandinavia or Russia, and they would probably welcome a warmer climate, while any temperature increase would be minimal in the tropics. People are not willing to make a huge sacrifice in their lifestyle for minimal “gain”.
The current gridlock, where lots of wannabe policy-makers fly to exotic resorts to discuss climate change, but generally agree to disagree and meet again next year without taking any concrete action, is probably beneficial to humanity. After a few more decades of no major climate disasters, people will get tired of the paranoid “shepherds” crying wolf every year, and learn to ignore them, while the extra CO2 in the air will make the Earth greener and more fertile.
The so-called “surface station data” are packs of lies, not fit for policy purposes. The books are cooked to a crisp by agenda-serving gatekeepers.
The land “data” are “adjusted” beyond recognition. Then the “SST data” are further “adjusted” because they don’t agree with the baked land “data”. And of course the sea “data” are even more fictional than the land “data”, having been collected by radically different methods from varying depths, then subjected to unlimited tampering.
The land “data” are fictional, while the sea “data” are pure fantasy.
The CACA corruption of science reeks of political corruption. All one needs know is the extent to which the CACA Team has gone to keep real science from being practiced.
“Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.”
Also called “practice”.
There not only is no climate crisis, but Earth’s present climate is the best in about 800 years.
The effect of perhaps 200 more ppm of plant food in the air over the next 80 years will only contribute to making things even better, however slightly.
But with the greening of the globe thanks to more plant food, states will need to clear fireprone vegetation.
Indeed the solution is obvious. The data already proves the effect of CO2 on the environment is either small or negligible. Thus having access to abundant, inexpensive an reliable energy is Paramount. It is the lifeblood of any modern economy and provides the greatest ability to adapt to any changes in climate, either warmer or colder… or none at all. Plus the increase in CO2 is great for plants and our food supply.
The Manhattan and Apollo projects had simple goals. The first in response to a real and immediate threat and the second a fixed goal with a finite end point. Even putting a man on the moon nowadays would involve deciding whether it should be a woman of colour or some other from the alphabet soup. Don’t even think of sticking a chimp onboard and should the astronut’s diet be meat/gluten/preservative/sugar/salt free organic with no pesticides and fair trade? What about the emissions and Environmental Impact Study and who is going to be on the International Planning Committee and from which countries for starters bearing in mind the aforesaid concerns about a representative cross section of humankind?
How’s Elon going tacking SpaceX onto the EV thing and tapping the billionaires for tickets?
CAGW the idea, is a threat to our civilization.
Money corrupts. There is more and more money and political power, connected with CAGW and more paid NGOs staff who push/lobby CAGW policies in our politics and our news outlets.
…there are now ex-senior EU/UK/US government officials that have been hired for newly formed divisions, in major brokerages/banks, who are working to get a piece of the CAGW justified world taxation, carbon trading, and money distribution.
CAGW is the idea .. is being used as justification for a world tax…
… starting with aviation. EU wants a carbon tax, Option 1: calculated for all planes travelling over EU territory/another, Option 2 for all planes landing or leaving from EU.
… a second EU tax, is calculated on how a country is preforming to meet their climate commitments.
…and of course, there will need be an EU/UN super bureaucracy, to hand out the money.
We need to stop CAGW the idea, stop the fighting over the science, mitigate the damage on our countries and start addressing other problems, including planetary change.
… CAGW the idea does not change the fact that socialism/fascism does not work as it leads to institutionalized corruption.
This is fascism.
https://news.grabien.com/story-john-cusack-we-have-10-12-years-save-planet-climate-capitali
“And Bernie respects us enough to tell the truth, the hard truth: We have a ten to twelve year window to radically transform our energy systems, or climate change, predatory capitalism, and endless war economies will rob us of the right to any future at all.
“And as we can see literally every day, the house is on fire. But as Bernie tells us, this is no time for despair, it’s no time for anything but action. Because if we stand together, with him, the future is still indeed unwritten. And there’s nothing more powerful than a movement whose time has come. We have never had a movement candidate this close to power with a revolutionary movement he’s led and built, ready-to-go, all the way to change the country and help heal the world.
P.S.We can stop the climate wars with science. Models are useless when there are physical assumption mistakes based on know observations.
We need to find something first, however, to discuss with the CAGW thinkers and blogs that is more neutral and that is real/not scientifically complicated/controversial.
… the fission device breakthrough is the subject to start with. There is a game changing new fission reactor design, that is as cheap as a coal plant to build, mass producible, no catastrophic failure modes, containment vessel not required, walk away safe on loss of electric power/control equipment, control room staff, and so on.
Simple subject, game of thrones infighting to keep the status quo, emotions at 11, and a disruptive civilizational changing breakthrough that was built and tested 50 years ago, which there is now a joint US/Canadian regulatory team working on..
We can only win the Climate war with science IF WE GET A SEAT AT THE TABLE !
Somehow, Trump must commission an AUDIT of the temperature records. Temperature data is being altered in a way that *just happens to exactly reflect the consensus CO2 effrcts*. That ain’t no accident.
After that audit, there should be wholesale terminations of science contracts of the fraudsters and their Univetsities.
The idea that the National Academy of Science is capable of nonpolitical oversight of a scientific debate is wishful thinking. I spent 4 years contributing to the conceptual design of a 200 BEV Accelerator that eventually became Fermi Lab near Chicago. At the time,1965, the project was considered the “scientific prize of the century”. Several States were in competition to land the project. The NAS was designated by DOE to oversee the site location. There were no standing group of scientific experts at NAS so it broke down the project into a number of 3 person subcommittees, selected non NAS members, & put 2 scientists favoring the Illinois site on each sub committee. The fix was in aided by the National Academy of Science.
2nd attempt Mods there is no foul language in this
Larry,
the problem with your “solution” is you are assuming there is no negative impact from believing in the seriously bad climate models and lets just believe they are true…..
This is just another spin on the precautionary principle from one biased view only.
even if the climate keeps doing what it normally has been then lets look at the consequences of the current policies due to this belief.
People are dying as a result of the policies now. We have just seen examples here with the fuel loads for bushfires here in Aus. and like Germany we have record numbers of people unable to pay their electricity bills having to choose between heating and cooling & eating. Germany is having the same problems with winter time deaths increasing.
So your toe the line will just make this worse killing more innocents, placing more money in pockets that don’t deserved it , making the poor poorer, business and home energy unreliable. Money that could have been spent on say building a water pipeline from our northern territory (tropical wet season) down our east coast drought proofing the country, or research into viable baseload power sources.
Now take the next step. it gets colder and all the countries have turned to unreliable wind and solar and no planning for cold events so millions more stave and bankruptcies go through the roof and of course those unreliable energy sources perform so much better in the cold.
To me the downside of going ahead is far greater than any upside in giving in and going along with this scam.
So fight this scam and demand proof in reproducible data and facts before believing anything to do with this cult.
I have news for you. The climate models have been validated already, many times. They’re wrong.
Anyone who relies on them for forecasting is either a zealous climate alarmist or intellectually challenged.
Two possible sceptic pathways could be:-
1.Offer to help. I am an engineer I want to help. Let’s look at the options. Let’s analyse the problem and then make decisions how to address the problem.
Take sea level rise – if analysed correctly from a Engineer or town planning point of view there is not really a problem due to the lead time.
2. Accept climate change is real and put it together with all other problems. Once again let’s help.
Ok let’s look at education of women in developing countries and compare with climate change- which should we fund?
Huge admiration for the homage to Harvard Lampoon’s “Bored of the Rings.”
Well played, sir. Well played.
Interesting summary, but there seems to be one important sentence missing. This would be the sentence that begins, “If the computer models are shown to be useless for projecting future climate,…”
I’m curious about how you might finish that sentence. By the way you concluded the article, it seems that you are assuming that the computer models will be found to be fit for purpose, but what if they aren’t? Do you honestly believe the alarmists, as entrenched as they are, would be happy to admit that there is no discernible problem we can solve based on the available evidence, so we can leave the climate and weather to nature and move onto other things?
There is a key difference between Manhattan and “Climate”
Manhattan was for a device.
Climate is for propaganda only. There is no device. There is no possibility to make an experimental check.
Humanity did not invent a tool to deal with such problems.
It is not possible in principle.
(Apollo was for Hollywood)
goldminor,
“The theme is that we must act now, NOW. The science is settled, act now.”
NO!
When Davos-world-leaders-wan’t-action-now then they can every time build new wind Parks until the means are exhausted.
It’s clear to see that the financial Wells of the greens are drying out, watch their beggar’s TV adds.
Rearguard actions are the nastiest and Larry Kummer is just a defeatist.
Libdems are defeated, Macron can’t hold his pledge to “take every climate scientist” to jobs in France, Russia and China have their own interests.
Germany stands befor the ruins of 30 years miscalculation of its dues.
Trump will NOT, like Obama and some others, give “the lame duck” for a legislation period.
Boris Johnson’s UK has our whole attention.
Period.