The Truth Warming Alarmists Don’t Want You To Know About The Climate Models
Commentary
The Truth Warming Alarmists Don’t Want You To Know About The Climate Models
Climate scientists rely heavily on flawed computer models to do their work. Is that science? (iStockphoto)
- 8:25 AM ET
The global warming alarmists tell us to trust the science. But when it comes to climate studies, there’s less science and more accounting going on there.
Computer models have an important place in science. They are useful in helping us understand our world, but models themselves aren’t science. Encyclopaedia Britannica says “scientific models at best are approximations of the objects and systems that they represent,” but “they are not exact replicas.” In the case of climate models, they are not even close to being approximate replicas.
“There can be too much of a good thing,” scholars Patrick J. Michaels and David E. Wojick wrote last week in a Cato At Liberty blog post about climate models. And in climate science, the “good thing” has become the dominant thing.
Michaels and Wojick did a little digging and what they learned was “that modeling completely dominates climate change research.” In other words, climate scientists put greater faith in results produced more by math calculations than solid science.
So much of climate change research is based on modeling, in fact, that it accounts for “fully 55% of the modeling done in all of science. This is a tremendous concentration, because climate change science is just a tiny fraction of the whole of science,” they write. “In the U.S. federal research budget, climate science is just 4% of the whole and not all climate science is about climate change.
“In short it looks like less than 4% of the science, the climate change part, is doing about 55% of the modeling done in the whole of science. Again, this is a tremendous concentration, unlike anything else in science.”
Trusting the models too much is not the only gaping hole in the climate alarmists’ claims. Their bigger problem is that they rely on models that have been consistently wrong . The heat that the models have predicted for decades has simply not arrived.
And, as the Daily Caller pointed out last week, the federal government has spent billions — close to $100 billion , actually, since just fiscal 2012 — on “science” that is undergirded by failed models. About a month earlier, the Daily Caller also noted that the models were unable to “predict CO2 would green the Western U.S.”
Yet the modeling template marches on, even as, Michaels and Wojick note, “the climate science research that is done appears to be largely focused on improving the models.”
Get that? Climate scientists are spending more energy and resources trying to upgrade their flawed models than they are trying to understand the climate itself. And it’s a good bet that what most climate scientists will consider improved modeling will be programs that predict even greater warmth.
As we noted above, modeling has its place in science, but modeling itself isn’t science. In science, questions are asked and a hypothesis is developed, then tested through experimentation. The results either align with the hypothesis or they don’t.
The models, however, simply spit out the outcomes that the researchers who developed them programmed them to. Quite clearly, the science isn’t settled. In fact, to some extent, it isn’t even science.
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This article exactly describes the issues I have had with so-called climatology "discussions" for many years . I expect the last paragraph summarizes it well :
The models, however, simply spit out the outcomes that the researchers who developed them programmed them to. Quite clearly, the science isn’t settled. In fact, to some extent, it isn’t even science.
I've seen this in nuclear contamination deposition and severe accident analysis codes. They have a thin basis in actual theory but their results converge poorly and rely on empirical fudge factors. If you can't validate your model, it's not science.
I must agree. If they don't take into account the reality of the situation, then the models are not right! Example: a river is NOT a boundary, if there is drawdown under it.
Exactly! The modeling codes I use for criticality and radiation transport are HEAVILY validated against actual benchmark experiments. I trust those codes, with the derived biases.
That's what you have to do...
I'm glad that you feel them to be more accurate than I felt mine to be!
I agree that modeling isn't science, but it does use scientific knowledge to build the model. I've completed many groundwater models, and each one of them had many assumptions, built into the model, to arrive at averages. Since geology isn't an exact science, or hydro-geology is not exact, the average outcomes have proven to be quite accurate at predicting pumping levels in wells, and the effects of drought on water levels in surrounding wells.
However, I do feel that not all climatology is based on models, but on real data. Do we have enough data? I doubt it. But something IS happening-- it is becoming warmer here, and in many places.
The rise in sea level article, that you disliked my comment on, never even mentioned climatology, just the measured change in sea level, that had inundated 5 Solomon Islands. Frankly, a strong storm wave would have likely inundated them... Yet, there was no storm wave, just a general rising of the sea level. I don't know why some places are rising faster than in others-- I have a feeling that the Solomon islands are closer to Antarctica, and that may be their problem, when the glaciers melt.
Modeling, at least in hydro-geology, favors mathematicians, who are not scientists. They have a very real use, but they are not the whole picture. So, while I understand what you are saying, I do believe in Climate Change-- as I have witnessed it first hand over my life, at least in KY.
Climatology used to be taught as a science, and is much more exact than you think. Not all of it depends on models. It has to do with temperature, humidity, and rainfall. It is very dependent on all the other earth sciences, including sunlight, (which I think has to do with astronomy), weather patterns, (meteorology), etc. As a geologist, we study past climates, (paleo-climatology), in order to determine how things got to be where they are now. When you're looking for an aquifer in the Teays valley, you're looking for one layer of sand and gravel, formed by outwash from a glacier. Obviously, the glacier is long gone, but it left sand and gravel deposits behind, that are difficult to predict where they are, and where they go. So, perhaps my viewpoint is skewed toward a more long-term geologic view.
Thanks for your note! I'm not disagreeing with you, we are just coming at the same thing from different points of view!
I do feel that not all climatology is based on models, but on real data.
If you have any such examples you'd like to post here feel free to do so . Do any of them have to do with global warming ?
Gee, I wish I could find an on-line version of my text book in college... But I can't. Is that what you mean? Granted, that was 40+ years ago, but we learned it as a science-- it was one of the earth sciences. That was my major.
As I was saying, I agree with you that models aren't science, but they do deal with scientific principals, at least in hydro-geology. Based on test pumping data and the geology of an area. Leakage factors, clay layers, etc. It is a lot like building a brick wall, and each brick has numerically assigned values, based on the observed data, for each side of the brick. Groundwater models drove me to distraction! I don't do them any more...
Did you want me to come so you could belittle me? Or to scream at me? I'm trying to be nice, Petey. Please do the same for me...
I'm guessing that this example would not fill you with enthusiasm :
Yeah, I made one of these, to show how groundwater moves through different media, and bought one, constructed by a groundwater teaching company, so I could explain to my clients how groundwater does not flow in underground rivers... I loved mine and it really helped to explain what I was trying to tell the people.
I had people, water superintendents, whose wells were up and down the Ohio River, who swore that their water came from Michigan. You could stand on their well and toss a rock into the river, but somehow, their water wound its way through Michigan, and all the way through Indiana, to get to their well... It was a nightmare!
Yeah, I'm actually quite enthusiastic about these teaching tools!!!
I'm glad to hear you could make good use of models like these .
My math background makes me understand the theory behind these models . Pressure equi-potential lines set up perpendicular flow lines . There is an entire field of math devoted to such sets of perpendicular lines . Don't get me started !
I bet! I used Jacob's modification of the Theis equation, to get my numbers. It was terribly complicated, but I got so practiced at using them, that I got to where I knew pretty instantly whether or not my numbers were right on the money or way off, and which ones needed to be tweaked, based on observation of field data.
You go from holding a sample in your hand to pumping the hell out of a well, you get a feel for how the well will perform in the long-term, and where the water is coming from. Then, you get to do recharge estimates, and they are just that-- estimates. The calculations just help you determine which wells will likely fail in a drought.
If your city well pumps 750 gpm, then 2000' from the well, a 90 day drought will make this house well fail. A lot of places have what is equal to a 90 drought every 10 years or so. Sounds like a lot, but if you take the rainfall data, you can estimate what a 90 day drought is about equal to, and calculate about how far out the cone of depression will go, until the well is stabilized. Dewatering a house well is a bad thing--- but some wells are so old and on the edge anyway, that it doesn't take much for them to fail.
I seem to recall your multi-series article about your dealing with such a project . You were tasked with finding a flow model for a well or well field . What happens when you did a project like that but your initial estimates turned out to be way off from your later measurements ?
I didn't do that much modeling, because, like you, I didn't believe in them... There are too many assumptions and they don't always "match" reality.
When I did the calculations the old fashioned way, they never were off that much. In one project, that had a 90 day drought, the pumping level was only 6" off in over 200', which is not bad, considering how much you have to do to estimate recharge...
Groundwater models are a lot like-- let's paint this with a broad brush and let it stand... In real life, you can't do that. Despite the fact that most groundwater models consider rivers to be boundaries, there is actually measurable drawdown below a river. So, I quit doing them-- besides, they were driving me bonkers.
So, as I say, I can see where you're coming from, and agree. Look at all the meteorological models that miss the mark on a daily basis. They could predict the weather a lot more accurately without the models.
Compared to meteorology , climatology is a lot less accurate . You'd think by now they would revise the model assumptions to something that works better ?!
I mean no offense to mathematicians, but in my field, they have really screwed up. They do groundwater models on such a level, that I don't know that they can be fixed. That one simple assumption, that a river behaves as a boundary, is so wrong, it's pathetic. So, now you know why I don't like models. They don't take real situations into account. AND they have to.
I can see where you are coming from-- but you know, as well as I do, that numbers don't mean anything, without data to back it up. I don't honestly believe that there is a definitive answer to Climate Change, but I do honestly believe that scientists are trying to figure it out. I believe it is happening, based on my own experience. That doesn't mean that it is, or it isn't. My point of view is very limited, both in time and location. I can only see 60 years of data, and it is all in one spot.
Can we agree to disagree, both agreeing that models suck? The hydro-geology model you showed me was a physical model, not a mathematician's model... Physical models often mock reality, given the physics behind them. They can be wonderful teaching tools! But they can't exactly mimic the precise behavior of a single well field, because there are a lot of variables that a physical, or mathematical, model can't show. We can't make physical models large enough, nor do we have the data to make the physical model exact. And if we did, we'd never see what was inside, happening... In geology, you have to use indirect data. I may know what this well is doing and what that well is doing, but between them is a guess...
I don't honestly believe that there is a definitive answer to Climate Change, but I do honestly believe that scientists are trying to figure it out.
I wish I could simply agree with that but it seems to me that climatology is more about consensus gathering than about science . There are a few real scientists in the field but there are not that many of them . Some day some genius will formulate a much better model . But until then they are just defending their right to continue . The realities of funding frequently get in the way of real science ...
I understand, Petey. Fortunately, the geology studies I undertook were funded by local governments, and not well-funded, by any means. When you have enough money for 4 holes, 300' deep, that's all you get. So what if the bit gets hung up on an erratic 100' down? Do you pull up, move over and start again? You have to, but you're then short 100'. It can be heartbreaking!
You never have enough data...
Nope, you don't. In geology, its pretty expensive to get that data, too. Drilling costs for a small well are about $25 per foot. I'm sure that has gone up!
09/14/17 08:29:30PM @shepboy:
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