If Climate Models Are Wrong For 2020, How Can They Get 2100 Right?

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How we think and talk about climate policy is profoundly shaped by 31 different computer models that produce a wide range of scenarios of the future, starting from the base year of 2005.

With 2020 right around the corner, we now have enough experience to ask how well these models are doing. Based on my preliminary analysis reported below, the answer appears to be not so well.

Before proceeding, it is important to remember that climate change poses significant risks to our collective futures, and aggressive policy action makes sense on both the mitigation of emissions and adaptation to variability and change.

It’s also important to note that taking a clear-eyed view of climate policy and its foundations can be a fraught territory.

As Alistair Sutton, communications director for Future Earth, recently wrote: “For scientists, how to be skeptical about campaigns and policies without being labeled a “climate skeptic” may be one of the next challenges.”

The importance of climate change does not provide the topic a free pass from scrutiny and critique – quite the opposite, it’s importance demands that we carefully and critically examine climate policy proposals and their bases so that we get things right.

Climate policy discussions are framed by the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

There are of course discussions that occur outside the boundaries of the IPCC, but the IPCC analyses carry enormous influence.

At the center of the IPCC approach to climate policy analyses are scenarios of the future. The IPCC reports that its database contains 1,184 scenarios from 31 models.

Some of these scenarios are the basis for projecting future changes in climate (typically using what are called Global Climate Models or GCMs).

Scenarios are also the basis for projecting future impacts of climate change, as well as the consequences of climate policy for the economy and environment (often using what are called Integrated Assessment Models or IAMs).

Here I focus on two key metrics directly relevant to climate policy that come from the scenarios of the fifth assessment report (AR5) of the IPCC: economic growth and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.

The scenarios of the AR5 begin in 2005 and most project futures to 2100, with some looking only to 2050. We now have almost 15 years of data to compare against projections, allowing us to assess how they are doing.

Read rest at Forbes


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Comments (4)

  • Avatar

    geran

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    Where has Roger Pielke Jr been for the last 10 years?

    Wallowing in the lukewarmist spa, not understanding how Earth’s climate works?

    We’ve seem his fluff before.

    Reply

  • Avatar

    tom0mason

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    Of course they cannot get it correct using climate models!
    By design the climate models are to show that human CO2 emissions causes of Anthropological Global Warming (AGW) or as many would have it Catastrophic Anthropological Global Warming (CAGW aka Climate change). This conjecture is the entire reasons for the models! To prove man is bad and ruining the planet.
    Also see ‘Pronounced differences between observed and CMIP5‐simulated multidecadal climate variability in the twentieth century’ by Sergey Kravtsov (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL074016 ) and ‘Predictability of Weather and Climate’ by V. Krishnamurthy
    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019EA000586
    Basically these 2 papers outline that the best state-of-the-art methods means that basically the model are just wrong. And currently science can only get at best 3-10 days high probability weather forecasting predictability, and a maximum of 5-10 years for climate predictability.

    *However the models are not the only corruption of science, the temperature data is corrupted. Michael Mann has a starring role here as he attempts to corrupt long term temperature records with his infamous ‘Hockey Stick’ papers.
    As Tony Heller in many of his videos show (e.g. https://principia-scientific.com/a-very-ugly-rewrite-of-climate-history/ ) temperature data from many ground based weather stations are ‘adjusted’, usually NOT for any readily apparent reason.
    Note that there is less than a dozen ‘official’ stations for temperature data across the entire African continent(!) , none with continuous (unbroken) long term records. (Africa the world’s second-largest continent by area.)
    Also see ‘Measuring global temperatures: Satellites or thermometers?’ (https://www.cfact.org/2016/01/26/measuring-global-temperatures-satellites-or-thermometers/ ) where Dr. Roy Spencer make a valid case for satellite (and weather balloon) for temperature measurements of the whole globe.

    For at least 100 hundred years before this recent corruption of science with the arrival of the UN-IPCC, most people understood that the sun controls this planet’s temperature, (see http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/imgheat/temsol2.gif ). The recent non-tracking of temperature with solar activity is feature of the temperature adjustment that have been done recently and not a reflection of reality (see * and Tony Hell reference above).

    THE SUN CONTROLS THIS PLANET’S TEMPERATURE, NOT A RARE ATMOSPHERIC GAS!

    The UN, in the form of the political outlet of the UN-IPCC, controls the interpretation of the climate models for governments. The UN-IPCC is using the climate models as a tool (and device) to bring about the installation of the UN as the unelected Global (Socialist) Government, aka The New World Order.

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Zoe Phin

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      The sun and geothermal emission control the temperature.

      Reply

    • Avatar

      JaKo

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      It is clear that questioning the “GHG Doctrine” will abruptly end one’s academic/research carrier; therefore, the subject is never publicly discussed by even the most ardent “Climate Skeptics.”
      Further, the corruption of science has reached a point, that when e.g. the future climate has proven to be the opposite of IPPC (… Policy Change) and others’ predictions, a more severe and wide-sweeping measures would be required to prevent any such malfeasance in the future. (Follow Dr. Tim Ball’s: Penn State vs. State Penn)

      Reply

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