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That doesn’t seem like a fair criticism. Most climate models are physics models. They can’t know how much CO2 people are going to add to the atmosphere. But if
by leephillips 4y ago
That doesn’t seem like a fair criticism. Most climate models are physics models. They can’t know how much CO2 people are going to add to the atmosphere. But if you tell them how we altered the composition of the atmosphere, they predict the temperature change correctly. That’s what I mean by good performance.
- jeffreyrogers 4y agoPart of the job of the modeler is to make good decisions about the parameters and their uncertainties. If they are systematically overestimating CO2 and getting high predictions as a result then they aren't modeling properly, unless there are exogenous reasons why CO2 is lower than expected. Which might be possible for all I know (Global financial crisis maybe? China growth lower than expected?) but the dynamics of CO2 are part of the model they are using for prediction so they can't just punt on it by saying they didn't know what CO2 would be. Prediction's hard, especially about the future, as the saying goes.