I am not at all qualified to offer an opinion about the “science”
of global warming. Much of it is based on computer models. Which may or may not
be accurate. And much of it has been debunked by important scientists in the
field, from emeritus MIT meteorology professor Richard Lindzen to Nobel prize
winning physicist Iver Giaever. They are not alone, but they are among the few
who have not been shut up and shut down.
Now, we add Princeton University physicist William Happer to
the list of those who believe that computer modeling cannot predict the future. We
are happy to recall, yet again, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s statement, to the effect
that there is no such thing as a scientific fact about tomorrow. The assertion
that the sun will rise tomorrow morning is a hypothesis, not a fact.
Anyway, The Daily Caller explains Happer’s views:
Princeton
University physicist William Happer is not a fan of models used to predict
future manmade global warming, and stars in a new educational video laying out
the reasons he believes climate models are faulty.
“And I
know they don’t work. They haven’t worked in the past. They don’t work now. And
it’s hard to imagine when, if ever, they’ll work in the foreseeable future,”
Happer said in a video produced
by PragerU.
In the
video, Happer argues that even supercomputers used to predict the weather and
forecast future global warming aren’t strong enough to capture the complexity
of Earth’s atmosphere, including cloud cover and natural ocean cycles.
“That’s
why, over the last 30 years, one climate prediction after another — based on
computer models — has been wrong,” Happer said in the video. “They’re wrong
because even the most powerful computers can’t solve all the equations needed
to accurately describe climate.”
The point appears to be salient. Considering the multitude of
factors that produce climate change, it seems absurd to believe that we can
factor in all of them. How much do we know about what is happening on the sun?
Surely the sun exerts an influence. Just as surely it is not influenced by
carbon emissions.
Apparently, the global warming alarmists rejigger their
equations in order to produce the results that they want to produce. No one should
call it science:
Satellite
temperature readings of the bulk atmosphere also show a mismatch between model
predictions and observations. Climate scientist John Christy’s research
has shown that
models show 2.5 times more warming than has been observed.
“Instead
of admitting this, some climate scientists replace the highly complex equations
that describe the real-world climate with highly simplified ones—their computer
models,” Happer said.
“Discarding
the unmanageable details, modelers ‘tune’ their simplified equations with lots
of adjustable inputs—numbers that can be changed to produce whatever result the
modelers want,” Happer said. “So, if they want to show that the earth’s
temperature at the end of the century will be two degrees centigrade higher
than it is now, they put in the numbers that produce that result … That’s not
science. That’s science fiction.”
Although there are myriad technical problems with climate simulations, Happer notes a key problem: "tuning", or the adjustment of free parameters. As von Neumann, great mathematician and one of the "inventors" of simulation, noted, "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." Climate simulations have many more than five free parameters to "tune".
ReplyDeleteI'm waiting for the Comin' Ice Age, predicted by Science back in the '70s.
ReplyDelete"Now, we add Princeton University physicist William Happer to the list of those who believe that computer modeling can predict the future."
DeleteTypo Stuart??: = "...cannot predict the future"?
-shoe
It's actually Climate Guessing, and a lot of that is Climate Lying. Incidentally, how are The Old Farmers' Almanac predictions holding up?
ReplyDeleteThank you.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite envirocatastrophe prediction...
ReplyDelete"In 1894, the Times of London estimated that every street in the city [London] would be buried 9 feet deep in horse manure by 1950. A New York editorial estimated that horse manure would rival the height of Manhattan's 30-story buildings by 1930."
There's also the Peak Oil Catastrophe, which like the Rapture, pops up every few years since the 1880s.
The imagination of climate change is real. That’s about it...
ReplyDeleteWilliam Clapper is certainly a real scientist, he's clearly not neutral here. As a retired physicist he is welcome challenge the models, but his challenges should be to the climate scientists who can improve them, not public messages intended to dismiss climate science as imperfect.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast to neutrality, his position looks very unsound, on the lines of "CO2 is life" and encouraging another 100 million years of stored CO2 to be released into the atmosphere, just in case the models are overestimating the dangers. That's not science either. I'll call him a patriot for "Fossil fuel man", and infinite economic growth, because that's what we need to do to avoid economic collapse. If he admitted that, at least we'd know why he's so afraid of transitioning away from a one-time fuel to run our indefinite future success.
https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2015/12/08/exposed-academics-for-hire
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Professor Happer, who is a physicist rather than a climatologist, told Greenpeace reporters that he would be willing to produce research promoting the benefits of carbon dioxide for $250 per hour. He asked that the money be paid to climate sceptic campaign group, the CO2 Coalition, of which he is a board member.
Happer described his work on carbon dioxide as a “labor of love” and said that while other pollutants produced by burning fossil fuels are a problem, in his opinion “More CO2 will benefit the world”, adding “The only way to limit CO2 would be to stop using fossil fuels, which I think would be a profoundly immoral and irrational policy.”
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My goodness, Ares, you are so persuasive.
Delete"[Happer's] challenges should be to the climate scientists who can improve them, not public messages intended to dismiss climate science as imperfect."
ReplyDeleteI suspect Happer cares not a fig (beyond obvious comedic value) for the opinions of any scientific gullitard claiming that investments should be made to develop long-distance superconducting electrical transmission facilities between AZ and ME.
:-D