Saturday, June 23, 2012

Testing Global Warming Models (the Remake)

Back in 2008 I had a post about a survey of global warming models that tried to map how well they predicted existing temperature trends.

The results? Not good at all.

Well here's another batch of validity testing.

That testing models for their predictive accuracy is considered novel, even heretical, among climate science just shows how far it has descended into grant-grubbing, rent-seaking quackery.

Any model, any theory, any scientific predictions Will. Be. WRONG. The whole point of gathering experimental data is to figure out how wrong your model is and under what conditions (if any) it can yield predicatively useful data.

Climate Science has the scope of its environment working against it. Unlike metallurgy or biology, they can't order up a bunch of billets of steel or a few thousand fruit flies.

No, like geology, Climate Science works on a planetary scale and has to collect data as it happens and scrounge around for proxy data (tree rings, ice cores, rock layers, ect) that they can map into a past history.

So right they Climate Science is working at a disadvantage. But that doesn't stop them from having a total surety in their results that makes Statistical Thermodynamics seem humble.

I suppose its rather like Sociologists. Their data is plagued by the mother of all confirmation and measurement biases, but it often seems they consider surveys of bored college students to be solid gold.

Then again, in both cases there's sweet grant money if you can provide the right cover stories to Social Engineering, Nannying, "Do gooders".


Via Ace of Spades ONT.

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