Gee I wonder why?

LOL

Jeff could simply point you at http://www.climateaudit.org/ — that’s pretty much what they do there, audit (eponymously enough) for issues with coding and data sets used to make predictions. Evenhandedly, too; it’s just that virtually all the egregious errors, oddly enough, track to one side of the debate.

But that’s focusing on the trees and missing the forest. Even if modeling code was absolutely perfect and Jeff indeed could not come up with a dozen instances in about a minute by keyword search over at ClimateAudit, which anyone can, the models are still nonsense. Let me quote from the IPCC AR4 report — nothing like going straight to The Authoritative Source, I trust you’ll agree?

“The strong emphasis placed on the realism of the simulated base state provided a rationale for introducing ‘flux adjustments’ or ‘flux corrections’ (Manabe and Stouffer, 1988; Sausen et al., 1988) in early simulations. These were essentially empirical corrections that could not be justified on physical principles, and that consisted of arbitrary additions of surface fluxes of heat and salinity in order to prevent the drift of the simulated climate away from a realistic state … Both the FAR and the SAR pointed out the apparent need for flux adjustments as a problematic feature of climate modelling (Cubasch et al., 1990; Gates et al., 1996).”

Okay. Now, for those of you who are not computer scientists, when you see in a description of a model or simulation anything even close to “empirical corrections that could not be justified on physical principles” — at that very instant, you can discount its usefulness to zero. That translates to “We poke stuff in with absolutely no rational basis whatsoever until we get the result we want”. Yeah, that’s a “problematic feature” alright. One could think of other words one could use to describe a process straightforwardly admitted as ‘we make shit up.’ However, they certainly would not include any implication of future predictive value.

But those are the early simulations, right? Things are certainly much better now, right? Well, after the above they go on to claim that things are getting better, somewhat:

“By the time of the TAR, however, the situation had evolved, and about half the coupled GCMs assessed in the TAR did not employ flux adjustments. That report noted that some non-flux adjusted models are now able to maintain stable climatologies of comparable quality to flux-adjusted models (McAvaney et al., 2001). Since that time, evolution away from flux correction (or flux adjustment) has continued at some modelling centres, although a number of state-of-the-art models continue to rely on it.”

Wow! About *half* the models don’t require sticking in random unjustifiable adjustments to get the results you want? My god, you guys are *amazing*! Of course, that leads to the really obvious question that what, exactly, “state-of-the-art models continue to rely on it” ? Be nice to keep a lookout on those, yes it would. And you know what? Not one single place in the entire IPCC WG1 reports do they admit that. Odd thing to forget no? Almost as if, oh I don’t know, people with actual reasoning skills might use the admitted fact that these “state-of-the-art models”‘s conclusions were based on admittedly unjustifiable hand tweaking to get the results they want to question those conclusions? Certainly can’t allow that, now can we? Nooooo, much safer to keep the ignorant proles completely unaware that our “scientific models” amount to works of complete fiction.

But wait! It gets BETTER!

They go on to make this really quite astounding admission that even what they claim to be scientific — at least, discussable in the same breath as real science without gales of laughter coming — may really be nothing of the sort:

“(1.5.3) The design of the coupled model simulations is also strongly linked with the methods chosen for model initialisation. In flux adjusted models, the initial ocean state is necessarily the result of preliminary and typically thousand-year-long simulations to bring the ocean model into equilibrium. Non-flux-adjusted models often employ a simpler procedure based on ocean observations, such as those compiled by Levitus et al. (1994), although some spin-up phase is even then necessary. One argument brought forward is that non-adjusted models made use of ad hoc tuning of radiative parameters (i.e., an implicit flux adjustment).”

So … your “non-flux-adjusted” just means that you’ve improved to the point where instead of adjusting the outputs with no scientific basis, all you have to do is adjust the inputs with no scientific basis??!?!?!?!?

Really, you can’t even parody this. The best you can say about people like “Scientist” is that they’re too lazy to actually read any of the stuff they base their opinions on. Because, quite seriously, you cannot be sane and actually believe that the process the IPCC describes above can conceivably produce anything of predictive value.

Go and make love elsewhere, charlatan.

No, old bean… I’ve called yours… And you’ve come up wanting. I’ve always thought that you’re nothing but a blowhard, and you’ve proved it – if you knew your “stuff” you’d have identified the problems I’ve noticed and put me in my place by itemising them. Invective just doesn’t cut it. Now, get back in your playpen and leave us grownups in peace, there’s a good boy.

Night night… I hope the bedbugs don’t bite.

But then, despite demanding that climate models give you accurate predictions of annual weather, you then say Who’s talking about a single year? Show me one that has predicted the present temperature starting from *any* point in the past., yet again without specifying what you mean by ‘the present temperature’. You need to develop an understanding of the timescales inherent in the climate system, and you need to learn a lot more about how to meaningfully compare climate model output with observations.

I didn’t bother quoting actual sections of code as I felt sure that you wouldn’t understand it. – ho ho. No, you didn’t quote actual sections because you have no clue at all about how the model codes work and cannot point out any error within any one of them that would materially change the output and make it less accurate. I’ve called your bluff and it seems your hand is empty. Demanding that I show you what I asked you to show me is desperately lame.

Scott: if you haven’t seen one, it’s because you haven’t looked. Hansen et al (1988) predicted that temperatures would rise by 0.24±0.06°C/decade in their scenario B. Real world forcings due to greenhouse gases have been reasonably close to those assumed in scenario B. Since 1984 (the year the model runs started), the trend from GISS annual mean anomalies has been 0.20±0.03°C/decade. From RSS, the trend is 0.24±0.04°C/decade. From HadCRUT it’s 0.20±0.03°C/decade. And from UAH it’s 0.20±0.04°C/decade.

The length of your post is only a problem in that there is nothing of value in it at all. Post something of similar length that’s not just ignorant bluster and I’m sure we’ll all be grateful.

OK.. My pleasure.

Not one, I repeat, not one has predicted the present state of the climate – apart from being obviously wrong (models in the 1980s predicted that temperatures would rise by ~0.2°C/decade if CO2 concentrations continued to rise at 1-2 ppm/year, and this is exactly what has been observed)

Ah! I see… So of the 100-or-so models, *one* of them, in one of the “scenarios” reckoned it’d be 0.2 degrees warmer per decade… As against the others which didn’t… And this is some form of scientific triumph? In actual fact the much vaunted “Hansen A and Hansen B” scenarios predicted temperatures >1.0C warmer than today, which works out to ~0.4C per decade, twice what you are claiming. “Hansen C” is a lot closer, but that, as far as I can see, is predicated on a drastic reduction in atmospheric CO2 – which of course hasn’t happened.

…What exactly are you expecting? Annual global temperatures to within ±0.1°C and rainfall to within ±50mm?

As a professional modeller who was planning on actually using the output of the model for something in the real world… Why not?

For someone who claims to have knowledge of physical process modelling, it’s surprising that you are completely unaware of how to sensibly compare model predictions with reality.

That’s my job, sweetie. And I have a far better grasp of how they’re used in the real world than a blowhard wanabee climate scientist with delusions of adequacy.

cite one that last year predicted this year’s temperatures, you demand. Like many climate idiots, it seems that you don’t know the difference between weather and climate. Climate is not something which is measurable from a single year’s data.

Who’s talking about a single year? Show me one that has predicted the present temperature starting from *any* point in the past.

I asked you to give an example of a problem with a modelling code. All you can offer is a problem with how it’s commented, and with ‘some of the code’. Please do elaborate on exactly what physical process is being poorly modelled or approximated, and how this affects the results.

I didn’t bother quoting actual sections of code as I felt sure that you wouldn’t understand it. However, for example, there appear to be several instances where data values are swapped, apparently indiscriminately, between real and integer numbers with an almost certain loss of precision. Having given you this pointer, if you’re actually as knowledgeable as you imply, you’ll be able to find them for yourself and post them up in order to let us know that you’re the “real deal”. If you don’t then you’ll be exposed as the charlatan that I suspect you really are.

Get looking.