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The Forum > Article Comments > The limits of climate models > Comments

The limits of climate models : Comments

By Peter Ridd, published 17/12/2010

Climate models use crude parameterisations for the really important things and should be treated with caution as long as they do

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This article raises a number of issues that I think are most important.
Firstly it brings home the basic truth that climatic analysis is inevitably Physics. That, for me, is important because I am sick and tired of people rabbiting on about a species called 'climate scientists'. 'Climate science' can legitimately be viewed as being an example of applied science, overwhelmingly applied Physics. 'Climate science' is not a branch of science, it is an application. (Even less is it THE science, you know, that thing that is 'settled')
Secondly it emphasises the importance of accuracy and knowing how accurate a piece of data is. The data being inserted into models is inevitably of variable accuracy. Those rubbery figures are put together using a number of assumptions. Of course the outcome of that process has vast error bars. To operate, as 'climate scientists' seem to do, as if they had highly accurate predictions available is simply wrong - bad science. Recent claims that 'if we keep emissions below xyz% we can hold temperature rise to 2 degrees' is palpable rubbish.
The greatest tragedy that has/is happening re the climate isssue is the degredation of science itself. No longer is evidence the driving force; instead we have opinion, consensus and negotiation. It is a rot that is widespread
A couple of weeks ago I was at a supposedly 'technical' panel dealing with water useage in Far North Queensland rivers. Clearly what is required is analysis, measurement of issues such as current flows, their variation and flow regimes required for maintaining the ecology of the streams. I was appalled when it was made clear that a driving force was 'negotiation', negotiation between water users, mainly irrigators and (presumably) environmental scientists and environmentalists. Do not let the facts get in the way; this lot are making more noise. Deeply discouraging. But that is how far science has been degraded.
Posted by eyejaw, Saturday, 18 December 2010 9:55:23 AM
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579

A price on carbon will make many left wing politicians RICH.

http://www.generationim.com/about/

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2086494/posts "Maurice Strong"

http://www.marketswiki.com/mwiki/Richard_Sandor

http://www.envex.com.au/ BOB CARR

and so it goes on....and on...and on.... The Greens, the Left, Democrats and Labor.. all on the 'make' though policies they try to implement.
Posted by ALGOREisRICH, Saturday, 18 December 2010 1:06:56 PM
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579: Just a question. In what sense is carbon dioxide 'unclean'? You DO know plants breathe the stuff, right?
Posted by Jon J, Saturday, 18 December 2010 3:22:28 PM
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Plants do live on it; plants were doing quite well before the atmosphere was overloaded. Nature has it's own balance and that it seems has been overdone by man made carbon. It's the worlds most common additive to the atmosphere, by man, so it's got to go.
The trees around the world have been depleted, concrete laid on the ground, it's too much to ask from nature to right mans wrongs.
That is what you are up against 'nature' When has nature ever been defeated.
So pull ya finger out and get on with sustainable life.
Posted by 579, Saturday, 18 December 2010 4:10:59 PM
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Ludwig
I have asked in here numerous times who is the "we" referred to by advocates of AGW policy. In particular, do you presume to include people who don’t agree with you, or whose interests would be violated by such policies?

No-one ever answers. The idea that there is a single unitary decision-making entity
a) is false
b) serves to cover the real, and literally lethal, conflicts of interest that must be advanced by any policy agenda.

It is not enough to say that there will be great disadvantages without policy action. There will be great disadvantages with them! The issue is precisely the knowledge which you assert does not matter.

While there are people going hungry in the world, AGW policies are restricting food production on a massive scale in the most productive countries. Energy production is being restricted, and prices raised. These negatively affect human welfare.

Now obviously if the advocates of policy action do not count the detriments to human welfare of their policies, then anything will seem advantageous! And that is the only method by which they are able to conclude that their policies would be worthwhile. Once we take into account their downside, we are able to see that they are afflicted with multiple fatal flaws of positive science, epistemology and ethics.

The raw data of the climate sciences are merely reams of temperature measurements for places and dates. To make sense of them requires statistical operations, which requires data manipulations, which requires value judgments that are *not* supplied by the data. The climate science worldwide is riddled with manipulations unidirectionally *up*. If the same adjustments were made to the same degree *down*, they would show global cooling.

Science does not supply value judgments, so those climate scientists who allege the urgent need of global warming policies are not speaking in their capacity as scientists. But if we subtract from their number those with a vested symbiotic interest in global warming policies, what a different landscape of professional opinion emerges!

But even if the climatology were conceded, which it’s not, the problems of ecological…
Posted by Peter Hume, Saturday, 18 December 2010 4:31:18 PM
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The particular conditions of the distribution and abundance of species are notoriously obscure, even to ecologists. It is simply false to assert, with a wave of the hand covering entire continents, that temperatures slightly warmer automatically spell ecological disaster. If anything, the opposite is true. Where are there more biomass and biodiversity, at the poles, or at the tropics?

Even if the ecology were conceded, which it’s not, the inescapable fact is that there are many people today whose lives depend on modern fuels and production which the effect, and the purpose, of AGW policies is to disrupt. Yet while many prominent environmentalists openly dream of genocide, not AGW policy advocate will admit that these policies will cost one life, let alone hundreds of millions.

As a matter of ethics, how do you decide who will be forced to forego which benefit now, for whose benefit when? And how do you value a certain known related life now, versus an uncertain unknown life in 10,000 years time? Who would be qualified to decide that? And how? And why? These unanswerable questions do *not* provide support for AGW policies – on the contrary.

The potential for corruption and free-riding on a grand scale is already obvious. Ethically, how do you justify that? If we can’t calculate, and can’t even know that such policy action would be worth it in its own terms, how can you possibly advocate such destructive, corrupt and anti-social measures?

People in general don’t use alternative energies because they are so much more expensive. If you who advocate quitting fossil fuels as a highest priority won’t pay for alternative energies at your own expense voluntarily, why should those who disagree with you, and who may be right, be forced to pay for them under compulsion?

The idea that all the scientists blithely assume, is that government has the knowledge, the capacity, and the selflessness to manage the world’s ecology and economy. Far from being scientific, this idea has no basis in evidence or reason and is no better than a completely irrational superstition
Posted by Peter Hume, Saturday, 18 December 2010 4:33:24 PM
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