About Hansen's powerful demo that climate models work!

Abstract: This is a telling tale of climate science in action. We are told that a 30-year old document demonstrates that models can accurately predict climate change. A closer look reveals another story.

"We are sad if we do not go on a very different path," Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Science who is sometimes called the godfather of the science of science. Global warming says the Associated Press. … it's the last chance. … We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes … The Arctic is the first tipping point and it is happening exactly as we had said. Hansen, echoing the work of other scientists, says that in five to ten years the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer. "
– In the PA ten years ago, June 23, 2008. The Arctic is still not free of ice in the summer.

March 29, 2017, the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology held a hearing on "Climate Science: Hypotheses, Policy Implications and Scientific Method." The star witness was climatologist Michael Mann. said confidently that climate models were working.

"While we're at it, let me address another point of critical criticism, the assertion that the climate models that we use to future climate change are unreliable.The reality is that the models have been tested vigorously and rigorously in many ways, and have passed a number of impressive tests in the past, such as the famous predictions of James Hansen of the 1980s and 1990s. "

The Mann support quote gave the Congress was a ticket from ten years : "Hansen's projections in 1988" from Gavin Schmidt to RealClimate. He discussed "Global Climate Change as envisioned by the three-dimensional model of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies" by Hansen et al. in Journal of Geophysical Research August 20, 1988. This paper is probably the most frequently cited evidence that climate models can make accurate long-term forecasts of temperature. This was the basis of Hansen's testimony in the Senate that ignored the campaign for public policy action to combat climate change.

On his thirtieth birthday, we have a burst of congratulations in the media

• "Warned 30 years ago, global warming" is in our living room "" by Seth Borenstein and Nicky Forster at AP. Misinterpret Hansen's study as a prediction that the world would heat up, unaware that the world has warmed since the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid-nineteenth century.Hansen provided a quantitative forecast of the 39; effect of increasing CO2 on global temperature. AP does not even attempt to assess accuracy.

• "Listen James Hansen on climate change, he Thirty Years and Now "by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker: It confuses natural weather with the results of anthropogenic climate change (the alarmist mantra: if it's bad weather, its climate change ) It also trots on the myths Linked to the zombie climate To demystify one, the wildfires of the American West are a natural phenomenon exacerbated by a century of fire suppression (see details here and here).

An endless list of other stories, such as "The Legacy of James Hansen: Change in 1988, 2018 and 2048" by Eric Holthaus at Grist – "The warning of Hansen was premonitory and his predictions were overly accurate. "He quotes only the stories of YaleClimate and AP as evidence.

These are the most crude propaganda. Like most modern propaganda, he has a big lie: that the debate on climate policy is the existence of global warming. If CO2 warms the world, massive and costly measures must be taken. But for a century we have been bombarded with the products of modern propaganda and such rude programs no longer work.

The debate is, as most in science and public policy, on "how much" and "when". the scenarios used in AR5, the most recent IPCC report, predict a warming. But the most optimistic (RCP2.6) only justifies a slight action while the worst (RCP8.5) would justify a severe and immediate action. The analysis of these pathways requires science, which ruins the simple narrative preferred by alarmist journalists and hungry for clicks.

A Second Oddity

"{T} Here is another peculiar form of audacity … the audacity of a guess that takes real risk – the risk of being tested and refuted, the risk of coming up against reality, so my proposition was … that it is this second daring, as well as the willingness to seek out tests and refutations, which distinguish the "empirical" science from the non-science, and especially pre-scientific myths and metaphysics. "
– Karl Popper in" Replies to my critics "(1974)

A more sophisticated analysis reveals the great singularity of this interest for Hansen 1988 : "30 years after Hansen's testimony" by Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate (climatologist and director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies) – "The first transient climate projections using GCMs are 30 years old this year, and they stood remarkably well. "(Zeke Hausfat Her from Berkeley Earth provided additional information on [Twitter] ].) Look at this.

Fun fact: none of the cheerleaders for Hansen 1988 that I saw mentioning the Hargreaves paper. When I show them, chaos reigns as they explain why it is not necessary to replicate it. My favorite of a doctoral student in climate science (the next generation drank the Kool-Aid):

"Why do not you do it then? I want but it's not easy. is a big piece of work and will probably take me years to do it right. "

If only we had followed such advice in the past! I think we should build the Hoover Dam. "Why do not you do it, I want, but I do not have the time." I think we should fight the Nazis. "Why do not you do it? I do not have time." Too bad, world. None of us can do it! The other explanations are even more stupid.

That these climate scientists show so little interest in investigating Hansen 1988 is a tell. A successful test of Hansen's multi-year prediction – the validation of its results by an independent, multidisciplinary team of experts – would be the greatest proof that models can accurately predict climate change. This would be more important since the 1988 Hansen model is a toy over current models, which are built with a deeper knowledge of climate dynamics, operating with much higher data, on machines with several orders of magnitude more power Calculation. have been a game changer in the climate policy debate. It might be possible for a team to rebuild Hansen's code. The cost would be an insignificant fraction of the global climate science budget. That no one even proposes to do tells us how serious they are about the wonders of Hansen 1988.

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A sad moment in time

And if Hansen had kept the complete code for his model, so that today's He was able to prove He will be awarded a Nobel Prize for physics in 2018.

How much In the last 30 years Hansen has realized that his model could be a vital proof in the political debate? It was discussed as important in 2006 – 2008 (eight to ten years after publication). Probably then he could have archived the code again and updated it for modern systems. Like the famous James Hansen, he could have easily found the money for this research. His decision not to do so had serious consequences for him and the world. We can only guess why he chose not to do it.

Conclusions

Draw your own. The proof is clear

More information

Ideas! For shopping ideas see my recommended books and movies on Amazon.

The most important: Climate scientists can relaunch the debate on climate policy and win: test models! See the list of articles on model validation in the For more information section at the end. It's pitifully sparse. Backcasts especially boastful, which tell us almost nothing. Climate science can do better, but choose not to do it.

If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter . For more information, see The keys to understanding climate change, all articles on computer models, and more importantly …

1. How climate scientists can revive the public debate on climate change
3. Milton Friedman's advice on climate models and how to win the political debate
4. Save the world from threats, myths and climate fears. – Presentation by Prof. Demetris Koutsoyiannis

Publication
29 June 2018 29 June 2018