Say Anything Blog

SCIENCE magazine just published a critical review of climate models by Professors Gerald Roe and Marcia Baker of the University of Washington, Seattle. It is echoed in the New Scientist magazine (October 25). As New Scientist puts it, “Climate is too complex for accurate predictions.”

The Roe and Baker article is a statistical analysis to see if any model of the climate can make useful predictions. It is called, “Why is Climate Sensitivity so Unpredictable?” It begins:

“Uncertainties in projections of future climate change have not lessened substantially in past decades.” (Italics added).

Specifically,

“… it is evident that the climate system is operating in a regime in which small uncertainties in feedbacks are highly amplified in the resulting climate sensitivity. We are constrained by the inevitable: the more likely a large warming is for a given forcing (i.e., the greater the positive feedbacks), the greater the uncertainty will be in the magnitude of that warming.” (italics added)

Just think about that: After hundreds of millions of dollars spent on climate modeling, and decades of screaming headlines, we have no more certainty today about Global Warming prediction than we did decades ago. What’s more, that is a provable inherent limitation of the data and models.

That is a scientific scandal by any measure.

[...]

Now maybe we can pay attention to some real issues in the world?