BBC resolutely 'On Message'

Wild Weasel

^ Because they say so. And you're an anti-science luddite if you don't believe it.

You'd better tell Professor Mojib Latif, one of the high priests of the global warming religion. He lives in Germany where they've had a lot more snow that we have. His kind are already panicking that the current cold weather is undermining their project. They're busy changing the cover story so it 'fits' now:

Big freeze could signal global warming 'pause' - Telegraph

DPinBucks

It’s because weather modelling attempts to be predictive, whereas climate modelling is statistical.

I don’t want to push the analogy too far, but it’s sort of like the difference between predicting the behaviour of a single individual within a mob, and the behaviour of the mob itself. You don’t know if any one particular guy will chuck a brick through a window, but you do know reasonably certainly that some bricks will be thrown through some windows, and experience will tell you roughly how many.

Predictions based on chaotic outcomes are not all equally uncertain. Don’t forget that chaos theory does not imply randomness: on the contrary, it relies on a definite chain of events, one causing the next. The chaos arises from the fact that the possible outcomes are so sensitive to the starting conditions that tiny variations lead to widely varying outcomes. The butterfly really does cause the hurricane.

Modelling chaotic systems relies on breaking it down into the smallest number of units as are capable of being processed, and stepping them through to an outcome. I’m not exactly certain what is used in weather prediction, but it’s something like taking the wind, temperature and pressure at a number of heights at specific locations, applying basic thermodynamic rules to every one over a given period of time, and feeding the results into the next iteration. To be anything like accurate, you’ll need locations no more than a few metres or so apart, readings at heights of at most every hundred feet or so, and time intervals of a second or less.. Calculating that lot over a few million square km to forecast the weather for next Thursday is no trivial task.

Compared with that, climate does not look so difficult. Climate is average weather measured over years and decades, and even taken over the entire Earth it’s nowhere near as chaotic as weather. The main uncertainties in climate prediction are not its chaotic nature, but a proper understanding of the mechanisms involved, and these are improving all the time.

GasDad

I sort of agree with you - however the actual weather on any given day accumulated over a 30, 50 100 year period can have a radical effect on the way the change in climate progresses - eg higher snow fall, or increased clouds can totally alter energy absorption levels.

MikeTV

The behaviour and iteractions of individual molecules in a gas are varied and chaotic, but the heat and pressure of the gas can remain constant, linear and predictable, for example.

GasDad

I think that is a poor analogy.

It would work if we could agree on average weather, that could then be used for the climate models basic states - but we don't seem to have average weather anymore (lots of records recently - presumably we have an excess of butterflies).

simonoaks

Thanks,

I am one of those idiots who is not convinced by the AGW theory, however, I found this post highly interesting and very informative.

deckingman

Climate arises from redistributing the energy received from the Sun from the Earth’s Equator to its poles, through the oceans and atmosphere. It’s a matter of energy transport. Energy transport is a problem of physics. Physics is based on measurement. What you must measure are trends in oceanic and atmospheric temperature and in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Atmospheric temperature hasn’t actually been measured with the precision needed to establish a correlation with CO2 trends. Measurement of ocean temperature, until 3000 Argo buoys were installed in 2003, has been spotty. We have a surface temperature record
that’s unreliable; a satellite temperature record that’s brief; an ice-core record of CO2 that’s flat for unknown reasons; and a spectroscopic CO2 record that’s rising steadily for reasons in, dispute.

Wild Weasel

Here's an interesting article about climate and weather prediction By Dr Vicky Pope, head of the Climate Programme at the recently discredited UK Met Office's Hadley Centre:

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Models 'key to climate forecasts'

Had to laugh at that one. Since they're in bother at the moment for getting their forecasts embarrasingly wrong. Even the BBC says they may ditch them when the contract runs out in April this year.

Since that article was written in 2007, they've opened a new supercomputer at the Met Office HQ in Exeter. They say it's the second most powerful computer in the country, in the world's top 20 and cost £33 million to build. If the Met Office is to be believed, it contributes to climate change in it's own little way. It takes 1.2 Megawatts of power run the thing! That'll only increase as they add extra processing nodes ofer the next couple of years.

There sure is lots of money in this climate change lark. No wonder they're all true believers.

deckingman

What do you expect? The Met office, like the IPCC is a poltical organistion. Quote from their web site "The UK’s National Weather Service. A Trading Fund within the Ministry of Defence........"

Simple facts.

Governments spend money.

This money comes from taxation.

All forms of Taxation are seen as unfair or unpalatable to one group of people or another.

Life will be easier (for politicians) if the masses can be duped into believing that their tax increases are necessary to save the planet.

The Science of AGW may not be settled but the politics most certainly are - raise revenue by taxing energy.

So, AGW "believers" can relax. Energy is set to become more and more expensive, forcing all to reduce consumption. This in turn will reduce revenue so taxes will have to rise further putting more on pressure to reduce consumption - ad inifinitum. At some point, the politics will shift from taxing Carbon to taxing Energy. Of course, we may reach the point where mankind has managed to generate all it's energy from reneweable sources but it will still be expensive due to taxation. Then the taxation may be seen as unfair but of course that doesn't worry this generation of politicians.

Wild Weasel

Yes, always 'follow the money' and ask yourself 'who benefits?'

Then you'll find the truth.