Debunking the New York Times' faith in climate models

Warmist journalist Justin Gillis of the NYT is answering questions as part of the live coverage of the UN climate summit, his first question below is a good one:

"Why Should We Trust Climate Models? Despite decades of work with climate models, science has failed to produce a single model with any predictive value. Why should we trust them? Clearly they don’t work."

Followed by Gillis' apologist response, and the HS rebuttal submitted [still in "moderation"]

United Nations General Assembly
SEPTEMBER 23, 2014 11:49 AM

JUSTIN GILLIS

Why Should We Trust Climate Models?

Q : Despite decades of work with climate models, science has failed to produce a single model with any predictive value. Why should we trust them? Clearly they don’t work.

Asked by KeMa

A. Thanks for the question, but your statement is dubious. Climate models have proven to have quite a bit of predictive value. In the first paper on global warming, published in 1896, the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius constructed a simple set of equations predicting that the earth would warm from the carbon dioxide humans were pumping into the atmosphere; it took 80 years to be sure he was right, but he was. In the 1960s, the first truly elaborate climate models predicted that the Arctic would warm faster than the earth as a whole; that turned out to be correct. Early climate models predicted that the higher levels of the atmosphere would cool as the lower levels warmed; that turned out to be correct. In the 1980s and 1990s, climate models predicted that we would start to get more intense rains as global warming proceeded; that turned out to be correct. There are many, many examples like this.

What is true, however, is that modern climate models are not very good at predicting short-term climatic variations that are influenced by natural cycles like El Niño and La Niña; they were not designed to do this. For that reason, the models did not foresee the slowdown in global warming that has occurred over the past 15 years or so.

Scientists would certainly like to improve the models to the point that they can make such short-term predictions, and some of them think they are closing in on the goal. All climate scientists acknowledge imperfections in the models, but far from hiding this, they talk about it endlessly in huge scientific conferences that anyone can attend.

Hockey Schtick

 Interglacial, CA Pending Approval

Rebuttal:

1. Arrhenius proven wrong by Robert W. Wood's classic experiment in 1909, not the way the "greenhouse effect" actually works

http://www.biocab.org/Experiment_on_Greenhouses__Effect.pdf

2. Climate models actually predicted Antarctic sea ice would decline more than Arctic sea ice, and more warming in Antarctica. Instead the reverse has occurred with record high Antarctic sea ice.

3. Models predicted mid-upper toposphere would warm more than surface to create a "hot spot." Didn't happen, hasn't been found after 60 years of balloon and 35 years of satellite observations.

4. Models predicted decrease in outgoing LWIR radiation, the opposite occurred over past 62 years

5. Clausius-Clapayron relation, not models based on parameterizations,  predicted 7% increase in precipitation per 1C warming, only 1-2% increase observed. 

6. You are right that models are unable to model ocean oscillations, natural variability, clouds, convection, gravity waves, atmospheric oscillations, solar amplification mechanisms, etc.

7. They are not closing in on the goal," and that's why two paper published last month say the current crop of models need to be abandoned in favor of a whole new approach of stochastic modeling.

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/09/new-paper-explains-why-new-approach-to.html

8. That's why all the models are overheated and have been falsified at confidence levels of 95-98%+

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/search?q=models+falsified+95+98

9. RichWa's comment below on belief in model ensenbles & independence debunked:

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/07/new-paper-finds-key-ipcc-assumption-of.html

RichWa

 is a trusted commenter Banks, OR 19 minutes ago

One should also be aware that we are not talking about trusting a single model but rather the results of numerous models. The fact that booth NASA and NOAA have shown this, 2014, to be the warmest summer on record, with each using a different methology in making this determination increases the scientific proof that 2014 is the warmest summer of record. The fact that different methods of climate modeling all show the same and/or similar results enhances the probablity of the overall conclusions regarding how we are affecting climate.