I’ve long known that climate modellers were charlatan “scientists” who only got called that term by gullible media, politicians and politically motivated academics and other campaign groups. However, I’ve never seen such a coherent condemnation of them as on WUWT.
So, I’m shameless pinching the best bit:
I’ll start with the conclusion, and follow on with the supporting evidence: never, in all my experience with peer-reviewed publishing, have I ever encountered such incompetence in a reviewer. Much less incompetence evidently common to a class of reviewers.
The shocking lack of competence I encountered made public exposure a civic corrective good.
Physical error analysis is critical to all of science, especially experimental physical science. It is not too much to call it central.
Result ± error tells what one knows. If the error is larger than the result, one doesn’t know anything. Geoff Sherrington has been eloquent about the hazards and trickiness of experimental error.
All of the physical sciences hew to these standards. Physical scientists are bound by them.
Climate modelers do not and by their lights are not.
I will give examples of all of the following concerning climate modelers:
- They neither respect nor understand the distinction between accuracy and precision.
- They understand nothing of the meaning or method of propagated error.
- They think physical error bars mean the model itself is oscillating between the uncertainty extremes. (I kid you not.)
- They don’t understand the meaning of physical error.
- They don’t understand the importance of a unique result.
Bottom line? Climate modelers are not scientists. Climate modeling is not a branch of physical science. Climate modelers are unequipped to evaluate the physical reliability of their own models.
Discussion
To put it simply, Pat Frank‘s beef is that climate models do not include clouds … and given that clouds have an order of magnitude more effect on the climate than anything like CO2, there is NO WAY TO DISCOUNT THE EFFECT OF CLOUDS .. SO NO SANE, HONEST & KNOWLEDGABLE PERSON COULD LOOK AT A CHANGE IN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE AND SAY “that must be CO2”.
And it is clear from Pat Frank’s experience with the people that run the climate journals that they are entirely unworthy to hold any such position.
What this means (together with my own work) is that it is pointless speculating as to what CO2 will or won’t do, because it’s very likely a pretty minor player in the climate game that only got any prominence because it was politically useful for a group of politically active academics who took over climate late last century.
And the result of these charlatans taking over the subject is that it has been obsessed with the none issue of CO2 and that any other serious avenue of exploration has been largely ignored. So, for example, it is very clear that the reduction in pollution and con trails (as well as other things like solar activity) play a huge part in the climate and I suspect all of these are more important than CO2.
Most people already instinctively know that CO2 is a red herring. The result is that interest in CO2 & “global warming” has steadily declined since its peak around 2007 and there is no prospect in the near future of any substantial recovery. And most serious young academics wanting to do science (and not political agitation) will already know that climate is not the area for them because there is something really dodgy about the way people behave in that subject.
Because if these charlatans behave with such disdain toward sceptics, they almost certainly have a very similar attitude even to those who have not (yet) disagreed with them, but in some minor area of the subject have found an area that needs “improving”. And if you’re young and wanting a career – do you want an exciting progressive subject where you get on by merit, or one which kills news ideas and you only get on by arse licking?
Thus a climate of “agro” will exist in the subject climate. Now climate has stopped bringing much kudos and now a load of agro and often embarrassment, it will only be the politically motivated universities that continue wanting to host these political agitators. Likewise, when the science spenders look at the PR “payback” from climate compared to other prestigious subjects – the continual way climate produces such utter obvious crap that brings the name of “science” into disrepute is in sharp contrast to the good PR and high standards in other subjects. To put it simply, climate is now an embarrassment which is making all science look bad. And if you’re on a funding committee – reliant on the science looking good for public money – would you want in your stable an old moth eaten mule that shouts out that you’re wasting public money?
Climate no longer gives the most prestige for the least money as it might once have done – so why fund it?
Time
Of course it all takes time. Time for each new decade of data to further push in the stake of the falsely construed climate models. The time for young blood to consider climate and the best to reject it. The time for funders to get the message that climate is no longer the “goose that laid the golden egg” (in terms of getting more funding). The time for previous funding to run out without being replaced due to “more pressing priorities”.
But … talking of clouds … it’s stopped raining, so I’ve got to go.
