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The Forum > Article Comments > Climate Catch 22: big bucks, big bets and big mess > Comments

Climate Catch 22: big bucks, big bets and big mess : Comments

By Michael Kile, published 16/9/2013

IPCC lead author Hans von Storch says 'if things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models...'

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arh yes links to that world renouned science journal Qud-rant and packed full of creationst play book double speak. food for the far right but not for thought.
Posted by Cobber the hound, Monday, 16 September 2013 9:45:17 AM
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Well it just got worse because the front page of the Australian today carries a story from the UK Daily Mail that IPCC is now admitting its model is out by at least 40%, that the real temperature increase is not 0.2 degrees since 1951 but a more gentle 0.12 degrees. So much for climate models but then all models are only models in my experience. Don’t bet the house on them.
When you take this latest admission which according to WSJ will be published on Sept 27, 2013, in conjunction with the IPCC scandal of data falsification of a couple of years back, you have to wonder about the whole damn thing.
It is my contention that money backed science forces scientists into positions from which they cannot escape without losing their funding. Science is a process of test and retest, refine and move on. But when money is contingent upon particular outcomes that have financial impacts way beyond the actual science, then science by definition must become corrupted. Research budgets and research funding can literally dry up overnight if you cannot please your masters who are no longer the universities but the universities' funders or your direct funders. Science has become dogma because the funding insists on it. Science is never settled as philosopher Rupert Sheldrake so elegantly points out. It is by definition a continuous process but unfortunately financial interests are not interested in something that is not bankable. The IPCC with it massive funding must have truly struck an impasse if it is prepared to come out and admit its modelling is wrong. Their solution according to this piece is to give them even more money. More money for models is like a doctor saying to someone sick that the drug didn’t work because they didn’t take enough of it despite had had several massive increases in the dose rate previously.
Sorry, I think I am confused here with quantitative easing? Same principle maybe!
Posted by Bohemian, Monday, 16 September 2013 9:56:58 AM
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”if things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models...”

Translation for the unenlightened: get tenure if you can, go for long-term grants if you can't, and if all else fails, pay in big to your uni super fund and get a golden parachute from the taxpayer.
Posted by Jon J, Monday, 16 September 2013 10:10:56 AM
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Unfortunately Cobber the hound's level of low-grade circularity and personal abuse is all that make up the foundations of the vast and imposing edifice of climate "science".

(That means science consisting of assuming your conclusion in your premises, or asserting conclusion that aren't supported by your results, and refusing to publish your data, and refusing to publish your algorithms, and telling the world the science is "settled" and your critics are lunatics, while fretting to fellow-religionists that it's a "travesty" your theory doesn't explain the facts.)

The casual onlooker might have thought from Cobber's confidence that someone, somewhere else, somehow, had proved what he believes so as to justify that confidence.

But no.

Over and over and over again in this forum we have found the same. When challenged to prove what they assert, they are completely at a loss to do anything but assume it, appeal to absent authority, and disparage and abuse anyone who dares to question their beliefs.

The climate science - as riddled with every kind of dodgy malfeasance as it is - is the least of their problems. Even if they had established a tendency to warming, and even if they had established that it's man-made, which they haven't, they still wouldn't have begun to establish what they need to justify any policy.

None of them ever answers how they know that policy action would be worthwhile in terms of the values sacrificed to achieve it. All we get is hysteria about catastrophe. Not good enough. To be rational, and therefore scientific, you need to show how you know and compare the human values in issue in both scenarios. None of them does, because none of them can.

Their weak and weaker protestations sound more bitter and pathetic as their numbers dwindle.

All policies pretending to fine-tune the weather are fraudulent and should be abolished, along with all coerced funding for climate science. Let those who want to fund it, fund it. We'll then find out how important they really think it is.
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Monday, 16 September 2013 10:26:37 AM
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Who cares if some of the modeling overstates the case, while others understate it?
I mean its like trying to predict our long term weather, without also factoring the Indian ocean dipole?
And no climate model can be accurate given a planet which follows a continuously variable elliptical orbit; and a sun which regularly waxes and wanes!
Yet nonetheless continues to warm as a verifiable trend, ensuring that our planet will one day become entirely uninhabitable.
Long before that day occurs, our species would have found a pathway to the stars, our ultimate destiny?
What can inform us is past events and the actual verifiable facts, or cause and effect outcomes.
That history and those outcomes tell us that simply doing nothing is not an option.
The entirely unprecedented ice and tundra melt informs us we need to act with alacrity.
And there are options which will allow us to improve our economic outcomes and energy independence while effectively acting!
So, when all is said and done, what is the actual problem?
And who give a flying french fish fritter, if some of the modeling under or overstates actual verifiable outcomes.
But particularly if that then becomes an excuse for lack of affirmative remedial action or simply maintaining the current status quo!
That the millions we spend studying models, would be far better spent in ameliorating against climate change.
Emerging economies that have built their current successes on cheap coal are reluctant to change, and green groups are diametrically opposed to the nuclear option, for a whole variety of vacuous, fatuous or farcical reasons!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Monday, 16 September 2013 10:49:01 AM
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Come on Rhrosty, where did you cut & paste that bit of tripe from.

With the total lack of any proof of the theory of AGW, any action taken, if it actually had any effect at all, would be likely to be in entirely the wrong direction.

We know the planet has been hotter on numerous occasions, than it is now, with advantage to flora & fauna. We also know it is more likely to descend into an ice age within a few hundred or thousand years, than it is likely to boil.

Any action taken now is sure to be wrong. It is just a matter of how damagingly wrong.

Judging by the quality of the UN, & academia, it is more likely to be very wrong.
Posted by Hasbeen, Monday, 16 September 2013 12:59:50 PM
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ha ha go on any creationist website you like, same talking points.

Evolution is just a scam.
They know it, but they are on the gravy train.
Poster's who quote Science organisations "need to educate themselves".
It's all about to be revealed as a lie.
More and more scientist are switching over to creation ID.
They neever been able to prove it anyway.

Quote mine all you like guys your just new creationist.
Posted by Cobber the hound, Monday, 16 September 2013 4:31:53 PM
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Wow, sea level rise lapping at the doorsteps of Pacific islanders - from glacial melts, but if not, then from what?
(Heretofore 'hidden' immense deep-layer aquifers 'bursting' to get out of their 'confinement'? Perhaps, but if so, from what cause - and where is the evidence?)
(And don't try to tell me it's from an increase in global rainfall - it's a 'closed' system, after all. Or has some massive, super-hyper inverse-electrolysis been happening that no-one's been told about, sucking H2 and O2 out of the atmosphere in huge gulps, and thereby not only producing additional H2O (water), but also concurrently artificially 'boosting' relative atmospheric CO2 concentration levels?)

Increasing ocean acidification - from increased dissolved CO2, but if not, then from what?
(Since we know that the 'partial pressure' principle applies, whereby, as ocean temperature rises, there should be less dissolved CO2 - unless the atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 rises 'inordinately' to relatively 'extreme' levels.)

The author poo-poos the deep ocean as a 'heat sink' - but without any evidence for this 'postulation' - whereas there appears to be factual scientific evidence of such a rise in deep ocean temperatures. And, given the mass/volume of water involved, a small rise in temperature would amount to a 'lot' of heat absorbed.

We are in a closed system. Glacial melt means energy absorbed - per latent heat of freezing/melting, but also some via latent heat of condensation/evaporation, as some 'melt' becomes additional water vapour in the atmosphere.
This energy absorption (within our 'closed system') necessarily means some corresponding atmospheric 'cooling' - perhaps accounting for part of any 'lower than expected' (per IPCC 'modelling') global temperature rise.

However, whereas I see macro-evaluation as 'indicative', it appears that IPCC advocates may be wanting to go the way of the 'fu-fu bird', whirling in ever-diminishing 'micro' circles, until they 'disappear'?
What next? Dissection of a quark?
Posted by Saltpetre, Monday, 16 September 2013 9:02:36 PM
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This is what science is like now. There isn't any other sort of science any more. You start out with absolute certainty about how things work in general then apply for funds to work out the detail. There is not even a concept of hypothesis testing. Why test when we already know it is true? And the beauty of it is that there is no natural limit to the amount of funds required. If you halve the cell size you increase computer speed and memory requirements by a factor of 16. A numerical model's poor performance can always be sheeted home to "lack of resolution" which is code for "give us more money". Models always expand to fit the computer power available.

As models expand and funding requirements mount, institute status increases because an idea that isn't valid would never be funded to that extent would it? In fact computer size and speed is in itself a badge of status.

As time goes by the people on the ground, agronomers and so on, who realize that the high resolution local predictions are worthless, can be safely ignored because they are low status people within the hierarchy. What would they know?

It is the earnest piety of it all that pisses me off the most.
Posted by John Reid, Tuesday, 17 September 2013 3:28:19 PM
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the pseudo science of gw backed by the deceitful pseudo science that accepts the idiotic evolution theory. what a waste of money, time and resources. To many now on the gravy train from this fraudulent faith despite them all contradicting one another. One does not know whether to laugh or cry when you see the likes of Shorten, Wong etc saying we believe the science. Somehow they think equates to some sort of moral value. We care about our grandchildren (as along as they are not aborted before they arrive).
Posted by runner, Tuesday, 17 September 2013 4:29:45 PM
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