{"id":517843,"date":"2010-04-06T12:42:23","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T16:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/climateprogress.org\/?p=22564"},"modified":"2010-04-06T12:42:23","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T16:42:23","slug":"scientific-models-predict-continued-decline-in-washington-post-circulation-if-they-keep-publishing-dreadful-climate-articles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/517843","title":{"rendered":"Scientific models predict continued decline in Washington Post circulation if they keep publishing dreadful climate articles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Washington<\/a><\/p>\n

Okay, the Washington Post<\/em>’s circulation will probably keep declining even in the unlikely event their coverage of global warming improves.\u00a0 But my headline is at least as scientific as the WP<\/em>’s latest climate piece “Scientists’ use of computer models to predict climate change is under attack<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Memo to WashPost<\/em>:\u00a0 Scientists use of computer models to predict climate change has been under attack for a long, long time by the anti-scientific disinformers.\u00a0 That ain’t news.\u00a0 The real news, which you almost completely ignore, are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The models have made accurate predictions (see NASA:\u00a0 “We conclude that global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade” and “that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20\u00b0C\/decade that began in the late 1970s<\/a>“).<\/li>\n
  2. When the models have gone awry, it is primarily in underestimating<\/strong> how fast the climate would change.<\/li>\n
  3. Staying anywhere near our current emissions path — i.e. listening to the disinformers and doing nothing significant to restrict emissions — removes most uncertainty about the future climate impacts.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    But what do you expect from an article that begins this way:<\/p>\n

    <\/span><\/p>\n

    \n

    The Washington Nationals will win 74 games this year. The Democrats will lose five Senate seats in November. The high Tuesday will be 86 degrees, but it will feel like 84.<\/p>\n

    And, depending on how much greenhouse gas emissions increase, the world’s average temperature will rise between 2 and 11.5 degrees by 2100.<\/p>\n

    The computer models used to predict climate change are far more sophisticated than the ones that forecast the weather, elections or sporting results.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Uhh, it’s not really that the models are more sophisticated.\u00a0 It’s that the long-time climate has always been easier to predict than the near-term weather:\u00a0 We know with incredibly high certainty that July of this year (or any year) will be hotter than January of this year (or any year) <\/strong>, but it is basically a coin toss as to whether July 15, 2010 will be hotter than July 15, 2009.\u00a0 As NASA notes<\/a>, “When we talk about climate change, we talk about changes in long-term averages of daily weather.”\u00a0 Long-term averages simply don’t change as rapidly as the weather and are inherently easier to predict.<\/p>\n

    The analogies to sporting events and elections are simply inane.\u00a0 They involve human behavior and thus aren’t model-able with the same basic laws of physics.\u00a0 They are apparently included simply to amuse and confuse.<\/p>\n

    The article is a long litany of mostly irrelevant information and disinformer talking points:<\/p>\n

    \n

    Climate scientists admit that some 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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Uhh, “some models”?\u00a0 So some unnamed models may not have gotten it right.\u00a0 Or maybe it was just that some of the groups doing the measuring lowballed actually warming.\u00a0 The UK’s Met Office — which many scientists have said has underestimated recent warming — posted an analysis in December which concluded, \u201cThe global temperature rise calculated by the Met Office\u2019s HadCRUT record is at the lower end of likely warming.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

    In fact, NASA’s analysis<\/a> makes clear that warming continues just as the models had projected.\u00a0 Indeed, the WashPost<\/em> buries at the end this central point, which by itself renders the entire article mostly moot:<\/p>\n

    \n

    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.<\/p>\n

    If the models are as flawed as critics say, Schmidt said, “You have to ask yourself, ‘How come they work?’ “<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Indeed, the models were actually used to accurately predict of the cooling from the Pinatubo eruption.<\/p>\n

    The Washington Post<\/em> entirely misses the even more important point that the models used for the 2007 IPCC report consistently underestimated current climate change and emissions:<\/p>\n