Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Using Computer Models To Launder Certainty

For a while, I have criticized the practice both in climate and economics of using computer models to increase our apparent certainty about natural phenomenon.   We take shaky assumptions and guesstimates of certain constants and natural variables and plug them into computer models that produce projections with triple-decimal precision.   We then treat the output with a reverence that does not match the quality of the inputs.
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This is the clearest, simplest example of certainty laundering I have ever seen. If there is not sufficient data to draw conclusions about how a system operates, then how can there be enough data to validate a computer model which, in code, just embodies a series of hypotheses about how a system operates?

A model is no different than a hypothesis embodied in code.

Fallout from Our Paper: The Empire Strikes Back « Roy Spencer, Ph. D.

Kevin Trenberth’s response to our paper, rather predictably, was:

“I cannot believe it got published”

Which when translated from IPCC-speak actually means, “Why didn’t I get the chance to deep-six Spencer’s paper, just like I’ve done with his other papers?”

Finally Gavin Schmidt claims that it’s the paleoclimate record that tells us how sensitive the climate system is, not the current satellite data. Oh, really? Then why have so many papers been published over the years trying to figure out how sensitive today’s climate system is? When scientists appeal to unfalsifiable theories of ancient events which we have virtually do data on, and ignore many years of detailed global satellite observations of today’s climate system, *I* think they are giving science a bad name.

THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: Deep ocean 'missing heat' causing sea levels to rise 1/5 of 1 inch per century

A paper published online today examines temperature measurements of the deep oceans that have been performed 2 or more times at 28 sites between 1980 and 2010. The paper concludes that warming of the global deep ocean abyss is contributing 0.053 mm/yr or 1/5 of 1 inch per century to global sea level rise.

Alarmists such as Kevin Trenberth et al claim the "missing heat" generated by greenhouse gases has somehow gone to the deep ocean, bypassing detection by satellites in the atmosphere or by thousands of ARGO floats monitoring the upper 1000 meters of the oceans. If the "missing heat" has teleported to the deep oceans, this paper suggests it is causing a trivial influence on global sea levels.