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Old 12-01-2007, 08:19 PM
Arp220 Arp220 is offline
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Join Date: May 2007
Location: NY
Posts: 392
Default Re: Of Climate Models and Hurricane Predictions

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What is negligible vs. significant? My arguments are:


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Lets say... 'less than 5%'

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In their current state, the predictive value of climate models is unproven.


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I suggest looking at the IPCC report a little more closely. In particular the section where GCMs are used to construct historical temperature records. They don't do too badly.

I suppose by definition a model is 'unproven' until the events it is predicting either do or do not happen, but that is not the sole arbiter of a models predictive power. Otherwise, no-one would ever use them [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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The second argument I'm making is that climate models will improve significantly over time and will evolve. In expect that we can't imagine the improvement that will take place over the next 50 years.


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This is true, however it's no reason to ignore the models that exist now. You'd never do anything if you just said 'oh wait 50 years, things will be better'

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Third argument is that people are putting way too much stock in what climate models in their current state are predicting.

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The scientists certainly are not. What the media do is their business.

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Fourth argment is that politicians are exploiting the situation to promote their own agendas.

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They do this with EVERY situation. What's different about this one?

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Fifth argument is that the conditions for 3 and 4 are a disaster for funding research.


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If you're referring to the Bush administrations reprehensible desecration of funding research, and indeed science generally, then I agree with you.

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Also does this qualify me as a skeptic, a non skeptic, or something in between?

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Difficult to say at the moment.
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