Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Perhaps the climate change models are wrong

So the latest data are in. What do they tell us? See this pithy summary by Lorne Gunter.

Well the oceans are cooling, not by much, but they are still on the cool side of zero. At the same time, the satellite data indicate that air temperatures have increased only slightly.

You would think this would be good news. But both sets of data contradict the presumptive basis of all climate models. All climate models are predicated upon oceans warming and upper atmosphere temperatures increasing as key components of global warming. Except this isn't happening.

Perhaps the models are wrong.

Either we don't have enough knowledge to model correctly (very possible) or the assumptions of the models (e.g.AGW) are invalid (also very possible). Neither is sufficient to re-arrange the global economy.

Postscript: Here is Bob Carter's take on these same data. As he writes:

  • That there is a mismatch between model prediction and 2007 climate reality is again unsurprising.
  • For as IPCC senior scientist Kevin Trenberth noted recently: “. . . there are no (climate) predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been”; instead there are only “what if” projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios.
  • Trenberth continues, “None of the models used by IPCC is initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models corresponds even remotely to the current observed climate”.

One reason for the disconnect between models and reality might be the inappropriate way in which many climate data are collected: see here.

Another, might be that the warming (and cooling) are in fact more directly related to solar activity.