Essay by Eric Worrall
Because when your models can’t predict the climate, what you really need is a bigger computer, right?
Supercomputer Gadi crunches climate change
By Marion Rae
Updated June 23 2022 – 6:26pm, first published 6:23pm
New funding will unlock powerful Australian simulators to give the world’s scientists a better chance of tackling climate change.
…
The inaugural director of the new facility, Andy Hogg, said cutting-edge computer simulations and models will crack open climate change, extreme weather events, and past and future Earth systems.
“This will not only mean more powerful and insightful research, but hopefully better decisions for the pressing challenges and acute stresses our nation and world face,” Professor Hogg said.
But he says computer models are only as good as the people behind them.
“We are creating an open source weather, climate and Earth system modelling powerhouse that anyone across the globe will be able to access,” Prof Hogg said.
Based at the Australian National University, the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator can calculate predicted weather and climate conditions from a few hours to many decades in the future.
…
Read more: https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7793124/supercomputer-gadi-crunches-climate-change/
Open source sounds promising. But perhaps Professor Hogg should have also mentioned, climate modelling systems are also only as good as the data they use. As Anthony Watts and many others have documented, much of the world’s climate data could charitably be described as junk.
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Might it not be better to program it to solve the problem of how to make the grid cope with solar cutting out, heaters being turned on and EVs being plugged in during early evenings? If the bloody thing puts out any result that isn’t ” its worse than we thought” they will get a bigger one, and we are headed there no matter what you would find if science just shut up and did it’s job.
This is false.
A reliable analytical model only needs fundamental constants to produce a useful result.
For example, ocean surface cannot sustain a temperature above 30C and ocean water cannot exist below -2C. So I predict, to the first order, that the average global surface temperature will be 14C; the average of the two extremes.
This result will be proven more accurate than any current climate model. In fact, if you look at warm ocean regions like Nino34, the CIMP3 models of 2000 vintage are already provably wrong per attached with forecast 2020 temperate averaging around 30C and sustaining above 30C for months already. The actual Nino34 temperature has a very slight negative trend of minus 0.16C per century over the satellite era.
A structural engineer starts with fundamental properties like Young’s modulus and then use analytical models to determine stresses based on loads and then checks against yield strength to see if the structure holds up. Ability to actually determine the load cases comes with experience. For example, a dam spillway design will be based on some probable flood data and that data can be highly variable.
Empirical relationships are useful where the system is not well understood but beware system non-linearities. For example, the albedo of the clouds above oceans has quite a sharp minimum at 27C.
You are correct with regard to structural models. But the global Climatr Change models are trying to solve an initial-value problem, so those initial values are critical toward getting to a correct-ish answer.
No – the climate system is self-regulating. It has stood the test of time with massive internal and external changes as well as severe shocks.
A climate model should be able to start from any conditions and end up stable. That is the first step. If it cannot do that then it is bunkum.
I can confidently predict that no open ocean water can or will sustain a temperature above 30C. It is physically impossible with the current atmospheric mass. That should be a hard limit in all climate models. In fact, if they were useful analytical tools, they would arrive at that value no matter the starting conditions.
Yet tropical waters are above 30C in summer.
Yes for maybe August. Just like the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal in April.. But they cannot sustain above 30C and if you are looking at waters around Florida they are not open ocean. The surrounding land causes mid-level air divergence from the Gulf of Mexico.
You silly people post your arcana and make your little jokes while the leftists run roughshod over the real world. The “climate change “ scam is winning while you debate the number of angels on a pinhead. Speak up, grow a pair and engage!
Please enlighten us on your successes. What? Letter to the editor? Contact your local member? Harangue people on street corners?
Thanks for asking, Alexy. First, stop treating this as a scientific matter. It’s a political matter. Second, make your voice heard where it will make a difference, not here. Third, be clear and strong about the truth. “Climate change” is a lie, pure and simple, call it out as such and don’t equivocate. Finally, understand who the enemy is and fight them on every front. The enemy is the international left, the UN, the WEF, leftist oligarchs like Soros and Fink and Gates. Instead of blithering on about albedo and ENSO, understand you are in a war and start fighting.
It is a scientific matter. That is the basis of climate change rhetoric.
How do you propose I fight these entities? Wave my fist? Buy a pitchfork?
I will reask you the question I asked Patrick.
What have you done that has been successful?
Please provide (at least) three concrete examples of these “places where your voice will make a difference”.
Please provide templates for how we should phrase our contributions in those places to ensure that they “will” indeed make a desired “difference”.
Please provide answers to the question actually asked.
The only way to change the warmist’s propaganda is to make the argument that warmer is better. Most people do not care about the science, mainly because it is too far over their heads so they instead react emotionally. Sales 101. It will be much easier for people to accept warming as good rather than to teach them science that they have no desire to learn.
I couldn’t agree more.
We can disagree on whether there is any enhanced greenhouse effect due to elevated CO2, we can disagree on whether fossil fuel burning has raised the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere in the first place. We can bicker about whether aerosols are a minor or determinative factor to observed temperature rise. We can dispute whether the observations are being validly collected such that maybe there hasn’t actually been any real rise.
We don’t need consensus on these points. If we agree that there is no climate emergency, and any minor warming from whatever cause is likely to be beneficial, that should be the main message. The “cure” threatens to k!ll us, and the sickness, is imaginary.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Maybe they can let it loose on the power question here in Aust. 1st the sun does not shine at night therefore no Solar Power. 2nd the wind does not always blow, today is the almost perfect example not a breathe of wind, therefore no wind power either. You work it out, where is our power coming from. Could it be coal.
It will all be fine once they replace coal with magic…
Thorium Liquid Salts Cooled Reactors https://www.copenhagenatomics.com
A PC in the hands of an excellent programmer can overachieve. A supercomputer in the hands of a charlatan will always underachieve but does at least get twelve hour clock time right twice a day.
What if nature doesn’t want to follow our human logic because randomness offers her so much more freedom and excitement?
Another team of programmers overestimating their ability to simulate the real world.
Quote:“Professor Andy Hogg, Chief Investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes.
Investigator?
…….not researcher or scientist?
Centre of Excellence?
Climate Extremes?
They really do lay it on thick – just who exactly are they trying to convince?
Australia National University?
Super Computer
Are they:
A small start but at least they got Climate Extremes correct, with Australia being a desert that’s the only sort of weather and climate you will ever get there
## As John McEnroe famously raved at Wimbledon a long time ago…
You Can Not Be Serious?
I would remind Prof Hogg, “Pig swill in, Pig swill out” or something like that.
No-one know better than Andrew McC. Hogg that carbon dioxide cannot be a signficant driver of atmospheric temperature (Glacial cycles and carbon dioxide: A conceptual model, Geophysical Research Letters, 2008) but, fortunately for is career, he doesn’t know it.
good at what?????
and computer models can predict climate..well as people behind them?
“A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention … with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequilla.” — Mitch Ratcliffe
PS : Slashdot’s “Quote (/ Quip) for the day” about a month ago, which made me LOL …
Australia? what is the “CO2” content of electric energy there?
What are the induced “emissions”?
Good luck with this project, I wish them well. It can help clear the forest from the trees.
Processing faulty models faster and in more detail will make them better.
The goal of the supercomputer is to impress people.
The prediction is decided in advance (a coming climate crisis)
Seems to impress people, coming from a supercomputer.
They could make the same wrong prediction on the back of an envelope.
But most people wouldn’t believe that.
Could it solve the American inflation?
If you don’t know the natural rules , a supercomputer is useless !
Computers give us answers but do they solve problems? I am aware they can solve math problems but that isn’t what I am talking about. They give us information but just because you have more information that doesn’t solve the problem.
The problem is not the computer. It is the programme. The programme is useless. Why? Because there is not enough data to make it work, and they have designed it to need that data, instead of writing a programme that can work with the data available.
The programme, as a result, has to simulate data, and then feed it into itself, to pretend to work. Unsurprisingly, the programmer of the simulation always creates exactly the data needed to have a climate catastrophe as the output.
I am not sure if the better analogy is a self-unplugging robot or a clockwork orange.
It would probably help a lot if they actually started using models instead of linear progressions of unrelated data.
can calculate predicted weather and climate conditions from a few hours to many decades in the future
A few hours? I think we can agree most adults can already do that.
“you think it will rain later?”
“Nope”
I thought that the science was settled. So why do they need more calculations?