Jed
I think it is safe to assume in most cases that the climatologists are intelligent, hard working individuals. They are dedicated to doing the best job they can with the tools and knowledge at their disposal and it would be difficult to find a better group. I personally do not want anyone to think that I consider these guys to be low caliber. My problem is with the political-science mixture that is like water and oil. They should remain separate and that is what the collective we should insist upon. They do their best work when their hands are not tied by forces that attempt to use them as pawns. The current environment appears to have exactly that effect upon them where any serious climate change skepticism is met with career termination. This situation does not seem to be confined to climate science alone and we are all too aware of at least one other example. >From what I understand the competing climate models are of different >construct. They are each attempting to model the future climate, but all fall >short. This should be a red flag to anyone who has modeled complicated >systems since it implies that the model is known to be imperfect. There is no >rule that implies that imperfection of model versus real life is necessary and >I can point out one just for example. Suppose that Y is a function of X with >the relationship of Y=k1*X*X + k2*X + K3. If you give me three exact pairs of >points that fit the equation I can determine the values of k's. With this >information I will be able to calculate the exact Y values associated with any >and all X's. This includes the set of values of X that extend far outside of >the original X values used to derive the k's. There is no need for additional >equations since this one is perfectly accurate and in fact any other >combination of k's would generate the wrong Y's. If a climate model were an accurate representation of the Earth's climate, only one would be needed and in fact, only one would work over a very wide range. It is simply a fact that the current models are not capable of performing in this manner. The interactions are too complex and the exterior forces are unknown. I think the butterfly effect does a fairly good job of describing the situation. I do not blame the climatologists for this problem but instead blame the Earth, Sun, Cosmic Rays and a great multitude of strange interactions. Even the best efforts fall far short of achieving the goal these poor guys have been given. You speak of experts as the ones with all the answers. That is pretty naive when you consider that even the most knowledgeable expert was not aware of the recent discoveries that have taken place in their line of knowledge until they were uncovered. How could these supermen know the relationships that exist ahead of time? This is a common issue that mars the concept of expert. If I recall, the first guys that conceived of continental drift were considered ignorant by the expert geologists. Of course, most of the experts were sure that the Wright brothers were lying about powered heavier than air flight. Remember the Japanese guy that figured out how to make cells that behave like stem cells out of skin cells? All of the experts told him it was totally impossible until he did it. It was not long ago when the experts stated that we only used, if I recall, about 5% of our brains. Why was the entire concept of relativity not understood and accepted by the experts of long ago since it is now well established? This list could go on just about forever but I think you should get the point by now. All of the experts of the past are just learning the new concepts of today. None of them have all of the answers and if you want to win many bets, just bet that they are wrong about the accepted theories of the present. I am quite confident that the same is true for the climatologists. Tomorrow they will modify their models just like they will do so indefinitely into the future as they adjust the variables so that the latest measurements match their predictions. This is as it should be. Hopefully we can trust the current model results to be accurate for the next 10 years, but all bets are off if you want to know about how the climate will be in 100 years. It is too bad we will not be around at the end of this century to laugh at the enormous difference between the currently predicted and actual environment. I am not an expert in climatology and do not claim to have the answers. It is the current experts that you admire that are lacking in future knowledge. Ask them about how confident that they are in their predictions and then insist that they use one of their models from 20 years ago to compare against the present conditions. How honest is it to allow them to use one that was corrected this year for proof of their model's accuracy? Dave
