Anthony Watts makes Erroneous Assumptions

See update below.

Times are tough for deniers. There is not much denier material to work with these days.  Morano is recycling long debunked lies and Anthony is manufacturing new ones.  After so many years and so many fibs they no longer know what it's like to tell the truth.  Take this WUWT headline and opening lines for example:

A frank admission about the state of climate modeling by Dr. Gavin Schmidt

This is something I never expected to see in print. Climate modeler Dr. Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS comments on the failure of models to match real world observations.

Mathematical Models in Social Sciences and Erroneous Assumptions

What was this 'frank admission' about climate modelling? None. There was no discussion of climate modelling, at least not till later - and Anthony missed that bit (see below).  It all started with a tweet by Nassim Taleb, who was tweeting about two of his online books about which he stated:

"Started a textbook-style document explaining ideas in technical style but linear form (updated progressively), mainly what people do not seem to get about The Black Swan and Antifragile. Letter in Nature explaining what Antifragile is NOT about and the central point that book reviewing fakes are missing"..  

This is the tweet from Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, in which he promoted his on-line books. (click the date to go to the tweet):

The failure of mathematicall models in the social"sciences" shd be and can be debunked mathematically. Math = no BS. fooledbyrandomness.com/FatTails.html
— Nassim N. Taleb (@nntaleb) May 29, 2013

 Gavin Schmidt responded that

@nntaleb While errors in maths undoubtedly exist, the failure of models to match real world far more likely due to erroneous assumptions
— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) June 1, 2013

Patience is not just a virtue...

If he hadn't jumped the gun, then Anthony could have chosen a tweet that was about climate models instead of one about mathematical models in the social sciences:

@ustafford @nntaleb We should always challenge the validity of assumptions in any model. Model credibility built on successful predictions
— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) June 1, 2013

More on erroneous assumptions

I'm thinking that Anthony got it wrong because he started with an erroneous assumption.  Namely, that Gavin Schmidt never tweets about anything except climate science.

He also made another erroneous assumption (implicitly), that Dr Schmidt would "never" discuss the strengths and weaknesses of climate models.  Based on these observations, if I were to construct a model of Anthony Watts' behaviour, do you think the following assumptions would be valid or erroneous?

• Anthony Watts doesn't read RealClimate.org
• Anthony Watts does read RealClimate.org but doesn't understand it.
• The limit of Anthony Watts ability to comprehend is less than 140 characters at a time.
• Anthony Watts wouldn't know a climate model from a bar of soap.

Update

Anthony has changed his headline, removing the word "climate".  Which goes to prove what I wrote about his 'erroneous assumptions'.  The old post title is still in the URL:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/01/a-frank-admission-about-the-state-of-climate-modeling-by-dr-gavin-schmidt/

Anthony's added bits and pieces at the bottom of his original article, trying to weasel his way out.  Instead of just admitting he 'jumped the gun', he rants on along the lines of "I don't want to pay tax therefore I don't 'believe in' climate science".

My comment: climate models have made huge advances.  They do have limitations.  For example, the arctic sea ice is melting faster than earlier models projected.  However, observed surface temperatures are within the range of the model projections.  Anthony Watts denies and is a disinformation propagandist because of his greed and ideology.  I base that assumption on the words that drip from his keyboard and his mouth - see 54 seconds in:

Interviewer: "What bothers you the most about the arguments that there is serious global warming?"

Watts: "They want to change policy, they want to apply taxes"!

Thin Ice

As discussed on RealClimate.org - see some scientists you know from various sources and meet some you've not come across before.

Geologist Simon Lamb followed scientists at work in the Arctic, Antarctic, Southern Ocean, New Zealand, Europe and the USA. They talk about their work, and their hopes and fears, with a rare candour and directness. This creates an intimate portrait of the global community of researchers racing to understand our planet's changing climate.

From RealClimate.org:

The film will be available during Earth Week for free streaming. Or even better, you can arrange a free screening for your group (details for obtaining a free Earth Week download for screening are available here). Read below the fold for more information,

Click here to go to the Thin Ice website.

Here's a taste - full film available from Earth Day Monday April 22 (not sure which time zone):


Thin Ice Trailer from Thin Ice Climate on Vimeo.

One Big Scary Hot Whopper to Come - More from Marcott et al 2013

I wanted to put this figure into my previous post on Marcott et al (2013), but the article was already too long.  I think it's the best of the lot.  It was probably a bit too complex for mainstream media so hasn't been given much attention.

Take your time to digest it.  The authors have tried to fit a lot into the one diagram and there are lots of stories in it.  See how the distribution has now shifted to the right, for example.  Look how far it's shifted between 1900 to 2000 - in just 100 years!

It's not the "once upon a time long, long ago" part that is a concern.  That's fascinating in its own right.  It's the future story that is truly worrisome.

Look at the scenarios to see what could happen if we don't begin to sharply cut CO2 emissions this decade. Heck, its bad enough even if we could get CO2 back to the 2000 level. (Click on the diagram for larger version.)

The emissions scenarios (B1...A1F1) are taken from the IPCC AR4 Working Group 1 report (same scenarios as for TAR), and are described in this IPCC Special Report.

We've been promised a discussion of Markott et al on RealClimate.org.  Worth watching out for.

Bacci's "Delusional Dribble"

Talking "dribble" on climate models and tea leaves

This is (probably not) for people who listen to fake skeptics science mockers like bacci, who writes:

Source: HotCopper.com

Bacci starts off talking about modelling complex systems. He says the idea that 'we' can model the climate in 100 years is 'delusional'.  (I'd have to agree that any attempt by Bacci and mates to model complex systems would indicate delusion on their part, going by his posts.  Using his own imagery, bacci tends to dribble his drivel like a drip.)

He then shifts to weather forecasting, saying that in order to 'prove' a model of centennial trends in climate, one needs to model monthly weather.

Predicting monthly trends in weather

Actually, most people (Bacci excepted) don't need a model to broadly predict weather on the monthly scale.  Next month is the start of autumn down here and we know from experience that autumn brings milder temperatures (but it can still get a bit hot).  We can even predict with reasonable accuracy that in five months time (July) the average monthly temperature in southern Australia will be cooler than the average for this month (February) and there will likely be snow on the ranges, while in the northern hemisphere the ice in the Arctic will be melting.

Feel free to check back in July and tell me how wrong my prediction is!

One source for an indication of likely rainfall patterns in eastern and south-eastern Australia on a short term scale (weeks to months) is the Bureau of Meteorology's seasonal outlooks and also their ENSO wrap up.

Fake skeptic predictions

Fake skeptics have not done very well in their predictions. Some have even been so far off target with short term predictions that the 'delusional' descriptor may be appropriate.

John McLean's Delusional Drop

For example, bacci could have been talking about computer technician John McLean.  Back in March 2011, he 'predicted' that "2011 would be the coolest year since 1956, or even earlier".  He was forecasting a drop of 0.8 degrees Celsius in the average global surface temperature in a single year, from the record high of 2010. (The global average surface temperature has risen by about 0.8 degrees Celsius in the past century.  In 2010 it was 0.62 degrees above the twentieth century average.)

As it turned out, 2011 was the 11th warmest year on record and the warmest La Nina year on record.  So much for that fake skeptic's delusion.  2011 was 0.51 degrees Celsius above the twentieth century average, whereas the average temperature in 1956 was about 0.18 below the twentieth century average.  He was out by a whopping 0.69 degrees Celsius!

Click here to go to the NOAA source.

Other fake skeptics' tea leaves

Bacci says he might as well read tea leaves.  Maybe that's what fake skeptics do.  SkepticalScience.com has an animated gif comparing the predictions of 'skeptics' with IPCC temperature projections and actual observations.  Fake skeptics 'tea leaf' predictions don't stack up at all well, while the different years' IPCC projections have so far all been much closer to what was actually recorded.

The skepticalscience.com article goes into more detail and is worth a read.   It discusses some of the weaknesses of IPCC projections, such as the fact that sea levels may be rising faster and the fact that Arctic ice is definitely disappearing much faster than expected.

Realclimate.org does an annual comparison of models too, looking at global surface temperature, ocean heat content and summer Arctic sea ice cover as well as early projections from James Hansen.

To sum up, complex models based on physics and constructed by experts in climate science have been very good predictors of global trends and even of regional trends.  They are not perfect but as computing power increases along with knowledge of climate the models also improve.

Important factors that climate scientists have more difficulty in predicting in the medium to longer term are the amount of greenhouse gases and aerosols we choose to pour into the atmosphere.  (Also significant volcanic eruptions that might occur in the future.) That's why they use scenarios to model climate under different permutations of future pollution.

Isaac Held's blog is a really good place to peep under the hood of climate modelling.