It asks “some scientists for an explanation, in simple terms, as to why ice in Antarctica might be growing”.

Glikson, in particular, should pay more attention to understanding the target audience.

Little wonder the effectiveness of the communication of the science case is under stress.

Find a comms specialist, please …

This is an invitation to one and all. ABC Pool is the Australian national broadcaster’s public website. You are invited to join the Climate Change Debating Group, where so far I debate with myself in splendid isolation, which many of you will of course applaud.

Anyway, there are now lots of satellite maps there, maybe over a dozen. I have about 2,000 on this claptrap old laptop, as they come in large batches. AIRS, GRACE, etc., etc. AGW, those say, is required to distort the gravity field now, as well as the magnetic field, and also to appear in large amounts where there are no humans, just warming and de-pressurizing oceans and sedimentary basins, all covering for Holdens and steam turbines.

There have been a lot of words in this splendid debate, as to who is and is not entitled to have an opinion.

I have managed to boil my case down to one sentence. Geology is controlling climate change, not monkeys. There, it is as diplomatic as I can make it.

I managed, if anyone is interested, to freeze the AIRS CO2 animation cartoon, and so to get the 500-odd maps there as individuals. Not one, as far as I can see, though I admit to poor eyesight and previous bias, locates any industrial effort convincingly. As long as you exclude the coal seam fires in China and Russia. In contrast, the NO2 data gets every city, and is a bit of an eye-opener. So, satellites can see human emissions. The main CO2 outputs are nowhere near human cities, and again, are nowhere near where this planet, at least, is warming. As said again and again, where the warming is is where the geomagnetic field is shifting most, and also, minor point, where the geoid has altered most. Amazing gas, CO2, it alters gravity waves, if they exit. Also, the ozone holes are where the mag, gravity and temperature field are shifting most, namely north of Lake Baikal, where the new magnetic north pole is forming rapidly, and on and adjacent to the Antarctic Peninsula.

I do not say that if you are not a geologist you cannot participate in this debate, Just that if you want to talk sense, you perhaps owe it to yourself to look at the satellite maps with the brain in gear. Don’t take the ones I’ve picked, check the lot. There are only a few tens of thousands. Time series contour map illiteracy (or aversion) is not a very good idea, in this debate.

Hooroo,

Peter.

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/embarrassing-questions/

http://conservationbytes.com/2009/05/17/climate-changes-ugly-cousin-biodiversity-loss/

I like this quote: ““opinions are like arseholes – everyone’s got one”

Do you agree with Robyn Williams on the ABC’s science show (and there is a transcript of his saying it)in a debate on climate change that it is possible that sea levels will rise 100 metres in the next century? Of course it is trivially true, in the sense that it is possible that the moon has green cheese mines, but do you think it is anywhere near a statement of what the climate science says? If it isn’t (and there are plenty of ot similar examples), then it is climate alarmism and I suggest you evacuate the moral high ground forthwith.

Yes, the deniers tell porkies. But so do some of the true believers. I merely think that pointing the finger at the deniers and screaming “liar”, without acknowledging that they are not alone in that sin, has a whiff of the hypocritical, and more to the point doesn’t actually advance your case with the “laity” whose predilection for swallowing simple, dramatic headlines you would like to wish away, because the laity have seen plenty of climate alarmism too and are well aware of that hypocrisy.

0) Sayeth George Box: “All models are wrong. Some are useful.”

1) In #6 above, I mentioned that Capital Climate had created a nice animation.

It illustrates the behavior of a trended noisy time series, which anyone whose studied stochastic processes, fairly basic statistics, risk management for retirement etc, etc should understand. In particular, anyone who has done econometrics must surely understand this.

In the simple Excel that I used, the trend is builtin; in the climate models, it emerges from the physics, unless one simply disbelieves the existence of the greenhouse effect, in which case it is magic. Of course, some of it is derived from approximations. I suppose, if we had a complete model of the Earth & rest of the Solar System, down to every atom, we could do complete ab initio simulations of climate. Maybe not, maybe we need to get down to quarks and Heisenberg would raise his head sometime.

The noise (just ENSOs alone) is large enough to make it impossible to forecast the exact track, but the ensemble is still useful. I can’t predict the next coin flip of an honest coin with anything better than 50/50, and with a 1000 flips, I have little chance of predicting the H/T sequence … but (with a handy binomial calculator, can confidently predict that 500 +/-30 Heads is pretty likely.

2) In the RC post I referenced, I suggested ways in which people familiar with some simulation domain overgeneralize and incorrectly think that climate models are useless as a result.

This is the first time I’ve run into someone from econometrics thinking this, and I don’t know if that’s typical or just random, although it can overlap with the Financial engineering, I guess.

I certainly have run into lots of software people who simply have zero experience even with FEA or CFD codes, and certainly none with climate models … but are somehow convinced that the latter are useless.

The few climate scientists who are prepared to communicate their observations to the public, often despite organizational pressures, are usually not paid or supported, as contrasted with the media platforms and in some cases massive funding available to those who attempt to argue against the science.

A relevant article by Clive Hamilton is at: http://newmatilda.com/2008/05/19/death-rattles-climate-change-skeptics

The link that Geoff Russel posted is this:

“In response to a proposed activity of the World Climate Research Programme’s (WCRP’s) Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM), PCMDI volunteered to collect model output contributed by leading modeling centers around the world. Climate model output from simulations of the past, present and future climate was collected by PCMDI mostly during the years 2005 and 2006, and this archived data constitutes phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3).”

I am sure that you will find what you are looking for here.

This post at Real Climate has a composite graph of model runs:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/what-the-ipcc-models-really-say/#more-564

“The problem is that trillions of Dollars are being bet on the forecasts from the climate models.”

Nothing is being bet on climate models. If climate models did not exist we would still have the science of the Enhanced Greenhouse Effect and all the results of observations of the natural world. We would still be using models however these would be pen and paper calculations the same way they did it before computers. To return to the aircraft analogy aircraft were designed successfully before computers. Computers only allow us to make billions of calculations per second rather than spending a lifetime doing one run manually.

Computer models are tools and nothing else. We are no more betting trillions of dollars on them that we are on weather balloons or meteorology stations.

Finally I understand your suspicion about modelling if you have a background in economics. However economics is not a science. It is at best a loose collection of half truths and hearsay concerning the behaviour of people passing around small pieces of green paper.

Climate models are based on physical laws proven by conformance to observations of nature. They are not flexible as they are what we think at this time nature works like. Scientists who work with natural science respect these laws and theories and the models conform to them. Perhaps you should spend some time with scientists rather than economists.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/

The first paper (lead author Gavin Schmidt) should persuade you that these people care intensely about matching their model to the physical processes.

You can also find an FAQ on realclimate.org about models.

You will find an archive of IPCC climate model output at:

http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/ipcc/about_ipcc.php

You say:

in the main GCM are tools for research not oracles of the future.

The problem is that trillions of Dollars are being bet on the forecasts from the climate models. If the modellers themselves don’t think their models are oracles of the future they should say so loud and clear.