Climate Hysteria Is Not Science

Climate Hysteria Is Not Science

by John Hinderaker in Climate

This is one of the simplest proofs of that proposition I have come across:

Roger Pielke, in a post titled Amazing Disconnect from the Scientific Process, notes this astonishing statement in an alarmist paper on global warming:

A global climate model that does not simulate current climate accurately does not necessarily imply that it cannot produce accurate projections.

Think about that one for a while. One of the many problems with global warming “science” is that the models on which the entire enterprise is based cannot accurately describe or simulate the Earth’s current climate, nor can they, when cast backward, accurately describe the Earth’s climate history. It seems obvious that a model that can’t get the past and the present right is an unreliable guide to the future–predicting the future is the hard part–but alarmists are in the position of claiming reliability for such deeply flawed models.

So Pielke responded as follows:

I invite anyone to defend this perspective, and we will present as a guest weblog post. From my perspective, if a global climate model cannot simulate current climate, as well as changes in the climate system, accurately it cannot produce accurate projections of climate in the coming decades.

Papers that fail this test, or do not even make it, which then are still published, is a subversion of the scientific process.

That strikes me as inarguable. It will be interesting to see whether any of the alarmists take Pielke up on his challenge. This is one more reminder that global warming alarmism isn’t science, it is a toxic mixture of faith and politics.

In another post, Pielke sets out these minimal standards for models’ predictions to have any credibility:

In terms of testing the models, necessary conditions (but still not a sufficient condition) for the models to have any credibility to predict the future climate on decadal time scales are:

1. They must accurately simulate (hindcast) the statistics of major atmospheric and ocean circulation features over the last few decades (since real world data is available)
and

2. They must accurately simulate (hindcast) the statistics of the changes in the statistics of these major atmospheric and ocean circulation features over the last few decades.

If they cannot do both #1 and #2, they must be rejected as robust predictive (projection) tools for the coming decades.

… If they cannot skillfully predict #1 and #2, model predictions of the coming decades, published in journal articles, news reports, and climate assessments, are misinforming and misleading stakeholders and policymakers.

Pielke offers this graphic that sums up the range of B.S. that one encounters in wading through the alarmists’ papers:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/04/climate-hysteria-is-not-science.php