Testing … testing … is this model powered up? | Watts Up With That?

Some, indeed most of these models are clearly not ready for prime time — their output looks nothing like the real world. To make billion dollar decisions on an untested, unranked suite of un-lifelike models seems to me to be the height of foolishness.

Express.co.uk - Home of the Daily and Sunday Express | UK News :: The coldest winter for 100 years - so where are the gritters

ound to an icy halt yesterday as the nation’s gritters again failed to keep roads clear – costing the economy billions.

The big freeze saw more than half of Britons arrive late for work, and millions more stayed at home as road, rail and air networks were paralysed.

With more than 10 inches of snow in some parts and a further eight inches set to fall overnight, forecasters are predicting the worst winter for 100 years. Motoring organisations criticised the inability to get the nation moving and experts estimated the chaos could cost £1.2billion a day.

The Reference Frame: Climate: are models better than theory?

A computer model cannot describe the reality if no person was able to do so before the model was constructed. The very idea that the climate models inevitably increase our understanding of the climate system is deeply flawed. Computer models have this potential to correctly describe many phenomena and to help us but whether or not they succeed depends on lots of conceptual theoretical work, verification, and validation. And if you don't do these things correctly, your computer model is guaranteed to remain useless regardless of the billions of dollars that the taxpayers may pay for the required computers and for the sub-par scientists' work.

- Bishop Hill blog - Why four degrees?

...my point was that 4 degrees by 2060 (perhaps 5 or 6 degrees per century) is high in the light of recent temperature trends. As readers of Lucia's blog know, even a trend of 2 degrees per century is on the cusp of falsification, so 5 or 6 is surely falsified at a very level of confidence.

If the trend is already falsified what is the point of looking at it, other than as part of a PR campaign?