NASA's Gavin Schmidt's Lies, Damned Lies, and Models

From The Washington Post April 6, 2010: Scientists' use of computer models to predict climate change is under attack

This year, critics have harped on that fact, attacking models of climate change that have been used to illustrate what will happen if the United States and other countries do nothing to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Climate scientists have responded that their models are imperfect, but still provide invaluable glimpses of change to come.


They have found themselves trying to persuade the public -- now surrounded by computerized predictions of the future -- to believe in these.

If policymakers don't heed the models, "you're throwing away {GIGO} information. And if you throw away{GIGO} information, then you know less {more} about the future than we actually do {don't}," said Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

"You can say, 'You know what, I don't trust the climate models, so I'm going to walk into the middle of the road with a blindfold on,' " Schmidt said. "But you know what, that's not smart."

Climate scientists admit that some {actually ALL} models overestimated how much the Earth would warm in the past decade. But they say this might just be natural variation in weather, not a disproof of their methods. {first rule of climate science: when the models are wrong call it "weather", when right call it "climate"} Put in the conditions on Earth more than 20,000 years ago: they produce an Ice Age, NASA's Schmidt said. Put in the conditions from 1991, when a volcanic eruption filled the earth's atmosphere with a sun-shade of dust. The models produce cooling temperatures and shifts in wind patterns, Schmidt said, just like the real world did.


If the models are as flawed as critics say, Schmidt said, "You have to ask yourself, 'How come they work?' "  emphasis and {comments} added

Actually, the real question we should be asking is how come the models don't work:


1. The models DO NOT WORK when tested against observational satellite data as shown by 5 peer reviewed studies, with no peer reviewed satellite data studies to suggest that they do. ALL 22 IPCC and GISS models greatly overestimate warming due to increased CO2 during the satellite era. None of the models predicted the global cooling since 1998 shown at the header to The Hockey Schtick, and that's why the models are "a travesty". Even the IPCC admits they have not tested their models against observations and furthermore said tests have yet to be developed, so the IPCC can't say with any degree of confidence that their models work.


2. James Hansen's NASA/GISS flawed 1988 paper which was the genesis of the computer models and the basis for all the IPCC models is based upon the "adjusted" highly-massaged & corrupted thermometer record, which shows a 0.6 °C change in the 20th century. Hansen merely assumed that this rise was not an artifact of natural recovery from the Little Ice Age, which according to ice core data had the lowest temperature of the last 10,000 years, and arbitrarily decided to attribute ~97% of the 0.6 °C rise in temperature to CO2. And given the logarithmically declining greenhouse effect known from spectroscopy data, the only way Hansen could make his model match up with the temperature data was to create a huge imaginary positive feedback forcing fudge factor for CO2 in his simplistic climate model (which ignores ocean oscillations, clouds, water vapor behavior, etc.). His "sophisticated" computer model basically boils down to this equation:  °C = 5.3 ln(ending CO2/starting CO2), with 5.3 being the amazing magical mystery positive feedback number (IPCC uses ~4.7 for it's magical number). That number, according to spectroscopy data and physical derivation should really be ~1.2. The flawed circular logic of climate models was noted on a prior post:

The sole support for AGW is the climate models, and the sole support for the climate models with respect to CO2 is the forcing parameter. There is no actual physical rational for the forcing parameter, because it was simply contrived from the assumption that observed warming of 0.6°C was due entirely to a 100ppmv increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. There was never any verification of this parameter either by theory or observation. There is no justification for this parameter based on the physical properties of CO2, because the molecular configuration of the CO2 molecule (zero dipole moment) precludes any significant effect from CO2 beyond a concentration of 300ppmv...

Despite all of this, "scientist" Hansen was 99% confident his model was correct all the way back in 1988 when he published his paper.


3. Based on satellite data, Dr. Roy Spencer has direct evidence that most of the warming since 1973 (which was the basis of Hansen's model derivation above) may be spurious.


4. Gavin must be referring to his wonderful GISS model results, based upon which he wrote a paper to debunk Dr. Lindzen's satellite observational data paper (one of the 5 mentioned above), but which was unanimously rejected twice outright by all three reviewers for the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Association. Gavin still hasn't gotten anyone to publish his paper about his wonderful model that works, but I'm sure he can post it at his blog realclimate.org.

5. Gavin also claims the models work for the past, but that isn't true either. Applying the IPCC models to the temperature 20,000 years ago when ice core data states CO2 was 180 ppm, model predicts ~1.6°C change to the preindustrial CO2 level of ~280 ppm; actual change ~10-11°C. The model predicts from preindustrial CO2 of 280 ppm to today's 390 ppm a temperature change of ~1.6°C; actual ~0.8°C. The model predicts from Paleozoic time with CO2 levels ~10-20 times higher than today that the temperature anomaly should be ~14°C; actual is from minus ~2 to +10°C [that's right- CO2 was ~18 times higher than today throughout an entire ice age during this period].


6. Correlation of CO2 with temperature during the 20th century is actually rather poor with R^2 = .44. A very simple alternative climate model incorporating natural ocean oscillations and "sunspot integral" (not CO2) correlates with temperature R^2 = .96.

 7. A "no change" climate "model" predicts temperature change 7 times better than the IPCC models. So Gavin, the question the skeptics really should be asking is "how come a no change climate model works 7 times better than yours?"