Blockbuster honesty: Expert modeler admits they can’t predict extreme events, El Nino, tipping points, rain or river flows

By Jo Nova

The science is settled, except when they need more money

Australia’s leading climate modeler wants a big new Climate Agency, and to make the case he admits the current models really can’t predict if rivers will rise or fall, if Antarctica will get bigger or smaller, if sea levels will rise much, or if El Ninos or La Nina will be more common or if the floods of Lismore will occur more often.

To give us some idea of how bad the current models are, he’s recommending we shift from models with 100 kilometer blocks to high resolution models with 1 km cells. These new models will be at least 10,000 times bigger than current ones, and if they increase the vertical slices, they could easily be one hundred thousand or even a million times bigger.

And if they get this super model, they’ll need 10,000 to one million times the energy. But now that we’ve wrecked the grid, good luck running those monster data centers off sunlight and breezes.

Full credit to Tony Thomas for digging through pages of turgid text and webinars to uncover the truth.

Andy Pitman, November 2024

Oh Boy […]

Great Debate Part III & IV – Glikson accidentally vindicates the skeptics!

UPDATED Part IV: Andrew Glikson replies below.

I am impressed that Glikson replied politely, rose above any ad hominem or authority based arguments, and focused on the science and the evidence. This kind of exchange is exceedingly rare, and it made it well worth continuing. Links to Part I and II are at the end. Round 4 was copied from comments up to the post.

Depending on flawed models

by Joanne Nova

May 11, 2010

For a sentence, I almost think Dr Glikson gets it. Yes, it’s a quantitative question: Will we warm by half a measly degree or 3.5 degrees? It’s not about the direct CO2 effect (all of one paltry degree by itself), it’s the feedbacks—the humidity, clouds, lapse rates and other factors that amplify (or not) the initial minor effect of carbon.

Decades ago, the catastrophe-crowd made guesses about the feedbacks—but they were wrong. Instead of amplifying carbon’s effect two-fold (or more!) the feedbacks dampen it.

Dr Glikson has no reply. He makes no comment at all about Lindzen [1], Spencer[2] or Douglass[3] and their three peer reviewed, independent, empirical papers showing that the climate models are exaggerating the warming by […]

The debate continues: Dr Glikson v Joanne Nova

Dr Andrew Glikson (an Earth and paleoclimate scientist, at the Australian National University) contacted Quadrant offering to write about the evidence for man-made global warming. Quadrant approached me asking for my response. Dr Glikson replied to my reply, and I replied again to him (copied below). No money exchanged hands, but Dr Glikson is, I presume, writing in an employed capacity, while I write pro bono. Why is it that the unpaid self taught commentator needs to point out the evidence he doesn’t seem to be aware of? Why does a PhD need to be reminded of basic scientific principles (like, don’t argue from authority). Such is the vacuum of funding for other theories that a debate that ought to happen inside the university obviously hasn’t occurred. Such is the decrepit, anaemic state of university science that even a doctorate doesn’t guarantee a scientist can reason. Where is the rigor in the training, and the discipline in the analysis?

Credibility lies on evidence

by Joanne Nova

April 29, 2010

Reply to Andrew Glikson

Dr Andrew Glikson still misses the point, and backs his arguments with weak evidence and logical errors. Instead of empirical evidence, often […]