mil-observer, your quotes are neither here nor there, twice-over.

first, your quotes do not indicate anything about the nature or strength of scientific consensus. you know as well as i the media game of taking "both sides", to quote "both sides" in equal measure, irrespective of the quality of the arguments or the numbers in support. this can, and does, give hugely undue weight to vastly minority positions.

secondly, your quotes are no backing for young's vacuous, know-it-all nonsense, where he happily slurs a whole profession of fundamentally good and honest people. ironically, young is coming across exactly like a postmodern clown, the type who derides the power and integrity of science exactly because in their heart they know the explanatory power of science.

i have no intention of debating the science. i am technically trained, which means i know enough to know exactly how little i know. i do not know the science of climate modeling.

but i do know personally a number of the scientists. and i know they are by and large people of industry and integrity, working as hard as they can to figure out what's going on. i don't know if they are right, but i know that they are honest. young's slur on them is disgusting.

i am happy to have scientists battle it out. and, by and large i trust the scientific community to do this with honesty and respect, on the basis of the arguments. i believe the majority of denial scientists (for want of a better term) are sincere in their beliefs. i respect them. what i cannot stomach are arrogant amateurs such as young. he is a bug.

finally, your quote about the IPCC process being political. the climate scientists i have talked to agree entirely, and have similarly expressed great frustration. *however*, notable for them was that the role of government in the process meant that the predicted effects of warming have been *watered down*. Why? exactly because these governments were scared to face up to the economic and social and (thus) political consequences of the predictions.

Good article, totally agree that the models are rubbish, at best a curiosity, at worst they are deluding a huge number of the population who don't think any further than the "daily news cycle" spin of the government of the day.

I have worked with models, flight motion and weapons engagement, the number of variables is huge, we always dreamed of having the kind of computing power the weather bureaus' have. Even with all that computing power, they cannot predict a month ahead, it really is extraordinary to believe anything that is predicted beyond that.

I've also worked extensively with the scientific community, and I found they are like every other part of the community. Good and bad, clever and not so clever, some better at administration than technical work. They all tend to have mortgages, and a desire to improve themselves and their lot. To see some vicious backbiting and politics, outside of universities, it's hard to match to the scientific community.

I'm not happy to just leave scientists to "battle it out" without constant oversight and auditing of motives. If you have ever seen a scientist when they think they have a big grant or project in sight, you'll know what I mean - the amount of funding now being poured into studying the effects of AGW, is certainly turning heads and a lot of self justification is going on.

Certainly they would be idiots to ignore the spray of cash in their direction. Ethics are great, but difficult to pay the mortgage with. They are ordinary people and are not stupid when it comes to making a buck .. they are not saints as some folks like to imagine.

What they say and do, should certainly be questioned, just as scientists paid by Big Oil are suspect, so are scientists paid by green organizations and governments. The skeptics will starve since there is no funding for finding things are not "Code RED!"

Graham is dead right these two things are closely related and its not just through the inappropriate and uncontrolled use of computer based models.

Krudd and his mates got into Govt partly on the claim that they are global warming converts, and were prepared to sign up to Kyoto.

Rann as the incoming President and a State Labor Premier was pressing all the buttons he could, and with other Premiers played every game in the book. Large Grants to research institutes, (Brooks at Univ Adelaide) and paying the CSIRO to do Climate change reviews in each each State that emphasised the dire nature of it all etc( heavily qualified of course, so that no one could be sued).

After they got in, the Garnaut (being a good mate of the "in" clan) Report comes out saying we have to spend up big, over the next yonks or else we are all doomed.

It might be another economic barnacle on the back side of progress, but who cares, we are in.

So the gullible masses were set up for having to pay out big time so that Kruddites can meet their election promises, and commit to spending on an ETS, that will have no effective outcome. In fact it is probably the worst cost benefit of all time.

Well it wasnt going to be a problem with the huge surplus that the previous Govt had prudently squirriled away.

But then along comes the GFC.

Whoaaa---- we are in deep do do.

Cant have two economic barnacles running at the same time and go into deficit inside 12 months of winning govt. Not a good look at all is it.

Climate science and Govt funded scientists all over the world and particularly the USA ( funny about that isnt it, eg NASA GISS) are as self serving as the Wall Street financiers, the only difference is the scale.

At the end of the day the only people who pay for all this are you and me -- the mug tax payers.

Graham,

Your article is not a fair assessment of the AWG models and the links with their cousins the Market predictions, the Lehman Bros collapse or Col Rouge’s accounting modelling.

Actually there isn’t three model models any more than there are three types of motor vehicles. In fact even in each of the three areas mentioned there are many different types of models. For simplicity sake one can equate the models in the three areas as trying to compare different versions of vehicles. (like comparing a Ferrari with a bus and 200 ton ore truck).
Apart from the factor that all three are models their structure/complexity and what they’re trying to achieve is very different.

It is also misleading to say that Climate Models because of some lack of precision in some outputs (due in part to lack available data or aggregation/informed estimates, complexity etc) that the results are an example of what you refer to as GIGO (BTW this is an industry Acronym not a technical term). Neither is it accurate to therefore summarily dismiss MOST of their outputs. MUCH of this data is comparatively accurate at least for some predictions to be meaningful.

If you read the latest posting to realclimate.org.com You would see discussions that clearly indicate that in terms of the complexity all models have flaws but when taken in aggregate on the most contentious area they do approximate the observable data. i.e. are scientifically pria facie. Most accepted scientific papers have a statistical reliability factor.

Absolute figures when working with highly complex (aggregations) are only possible from a statistically significance basis rather than absolutes. There are always new factors that come to light. This I presume why there is always disagreement amongst scientists and a reluctance to make absolute predictions or give absolutes.

My experience at code cutting in Accountancy tells me that accuracy is far more achievable given that the most significant variables are known. Market trends analysis modelling failures are often in the ‘wetware’ (the brains) of those who over estimate the current modelling nature/capabilities in 'chaotic' environments.

Exmaninator

You are talking complete nonsense.

GCM's have no skill of any practical value at all.

Read this:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3086

Bigmal, re your link.

It's worth repeating:

With all serious respect to the Koutsoyiannis et al paper: the authors do not appear to know very much about either the TAR or the AR4.

Looking at the statistics of local temperature and precipitation is useful but picking just a few long records and comparing to the nearest individual grid cell/s is not sensible.

The differences in topography an local micro-climates are probably large and will make a big difference.

A better approach would have been to look at aggregated statistics over larger areas. This has been done by Blender/Fraedrich and others.

The most curious aspect of this paper’s reception in the blogosphere is that the authors use the surface station records which in all other circumstances the 'denialists' would be condemning as being horribly contaminated.

You can't have it both ways. Ergo, you guys just cherry pick data, start/end times, and mine-quote to deliberately distort and misrepresent what is really happening.

I suggest you study the science instead of reading only that suits your preferred stance on the issues - but that ain't going to happen, is it?

Suggestion: Just do a search on the GRL for TAR and AR4 models (my guess is you wouldn't even know how).