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That seems like a bold claim to make on a forum populated by a bunch of statistics nerds, among other folks that use models every day at their jobs. So, what's

That seems like a bold claim to make on a forum populated by a bunch of statistics nerds, among other folks that use models every day at their jobs. So, what's your claim? Statistics don't work? "Models" (what do you mean by that) are all bunk?

sattemp1979 3y ago
I should really specify climate models in that bold claim. There's too little data (globally, from satellites, only since 1979) and global climate is not a closed system that can be experimented on. Nobody has any idea what the sun will do next; we can't even predict the purely terrestrial El Niño/La Niña trend past the notorious spring prediction barrier. Compare semiconductor models (which work very well) for example. Climate models are a joke. A bad one, at that.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  1. Not enough data? Petabytes of data. There is so much data that it is a specialization to handle the data. 2. We can't study open systems? Really. There are a lot of engineers might be wondering why they bothered studying doing it, if it can't be done. 3. Nothing matters that can't be an experiment? So all of Biology and Astronomy, anything with observations but no experiments, all worthless? In life, some models have a few well defined variables, and some models have millions and are pretty fuzzy. To say one branch of science is a joke, because in your world, things are nice and pretty, is what is wrong.
  - slily 3y ago
    So because climate is hard to model, it's unfair to expect models to be reliable, so we shouldn't criticize environmental doomsayers spreading bullshit projections that guide government policies before getting inevitably retracted when they are proven wrong again and again? Am I reading that right?
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      No you are not. You can't call it a joke, if models are continually improving and making steadily more accurate predictions and the accuracy is quantifiable. You are just making the same error in opposite direction. Lets ignore any results because it is just so complicated it can't possibly be correct.
- defrost 3y ago
  Study Confirms Climate Models are Getting Future Warming Projections Right The team compared 17 increasingly sophisticated model projections of global average temperature developed between 1970 and 2007, including some originally developed by NASA, with actual changes in global temperature observed through the end of 2017. https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/study-confirms-climate-models-are-getting-future-warming-projections-right/ https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/study-confirms...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - sattemp1979 3y ago
    From the article: "The results: 10 of the model projections closely matched observations." Not before 1979, they didn't. Because there isn't global temperature data before that. Nothing even close. There isn't ocean temperature data before this millennium. Not even remotely persuaded, I'm afraid.
    - defrost 3y ago
      There's high quality global temp. data from naval ports about the commercial trading world going back to ~ 1880 - this data can be accurately infilled to within a known margin of error using sparse points agianst modern high resolution grid data. There's pretty decent global temp. data going back thousands of years via proxy measures with good error margins. I'm not attempting to persuade you, just stating STEM facts.
      - sattemp1979 3y ago
        Naval ports. Again, a miniscule fraction of the earth's surface. Coverage so sparse that it wouldn't register on a percentage scale with four places after the decimal point. You can't "accurately infill" data that hasn't been measured. What prevailed over far more than 99% of the earth's land and sea surface was unknown to any degree of accuracy before 1979; what prevailed in the depths of the massive heat sink called the ocean was not even partially addressed before ca. 2005. I'm not judging what you know about "S". My profession is both "T" and "E". I do suspect that you don't know much about "M".
- komali2 3y ago
  Are you denying human caused climate change because you don't think there's enough data to support it? You believe the data supporting climate change theories only dates from 1979? Well, great news, I have lots of reading that will quickly get you up to date and help you understand that climate change isn't demonstrated only through satellite models! In the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report introduction, you can see the various methodologies used to demonstrate the effects of human-caused climate change: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-1/#1.3 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-1/#1.3 For example, we've been taking thermometer and barometer observations at Earth's surface since the 1600s. By the 1800s this was widely distributed through naval weather logs. For atmospheric readings, we've been getting those since the 40's, not 70s, because that's when we invented weather balloons :) but we have even further back information, through the field of Paleoclimate, where we do things like measuring C02 concentration of bubbles in polar ice sheets, dating back as much as 800,000 years ago. We can also use tree rings (hundreds of years, or thousands if fossilized), "corals, stalactites and stalagmites, dust sediments, fossil pollen, peat, lake sediment, and marine sediment" to measure climate change over millenia, no need for satellites! Want to play with all the data on your own? https://github.com/KKulma/climate-change-data https://github.com/KKulma/climate-change-data Her's a curated list of all sorts of data you can play with. https://openclimatedata.net/ https://openclimatedata.net/ Here's some jupyter notebooks! What data is missing that you think it's "not enough?"
  - sattemp1979 3y ago
    Do you have any idea how much of the earth's land surface (to say nothing of its enormous oceanic heat sink) was covered by temperature observation before 1979? We're talking about a few times a day at a few hundred locations, over a few hundred years. Most of the temperature data before 1800 is from SE England; from 1900 onwards, the only better data are from the continental US. All amounting to a miniscule fraction of the data needed for a model...if the system were closed. It's not. No one has any idea what the sun (chief driver of earth's climate) will do next.
    - komali2 3y ago
      > Do you have any idea how much of the earth's land surface (to say nothing of its enormous oceanic heat sink) was covered by temperature observation before 1979? Let's apply your rigorous scientific standard and see if we can figure out how much of earth's surface was covered by ocean in 1979... hmm... well we have no satellite observations. We have a decent amount of maps, but, those are just from scattered naval mapmaking activities, really only engaged in by a handful of countries across the entire globe. I'm not convinced the ocean was all that vast before 1979. Do you have better evidence? How do you even know how deep it may have been? What, from a couple depth readings here and there over a few centuries? Sorry, it's going to take more than that to convince me.

sattemp1979 3y ago

I should really specify climate models in that bold claim. There's too little data (globally, from satellites, only since 1979) and global climate is not a closed system that can be experimented on. Nobody has any idea what the sun will do next; we can't even predict the purely terrestrial El Niño/La Niña trend past the notorious spring prediction barrier. Compare semiconductor models (which work very well) for example. Climate models are a joke. A bad one, at that.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
1. Not enough data? Petabytes of data. There is so much data that it is a specialization to handle the data. 2. We can't study open systems? Really. There are a lot of engineers might be wondering why they bothered studying doing it, if it can't be done. 3. Nothing matters that can't be an experiment? So all of Biology and Astronomy, anything with observations but no experiments, all worthless? In life, some models have a few well defined variables, and some models have millions and are pretty fuzzy. To say one branch of science is a joke, because in your world, things are nice and pretty, is what is wrong.
- slily 3y ago
  So because climate is hard to model, it's unfair to expect models to be reliable, so we shouldn't criticize environmental doomsayers spreading bullshit projections that guide government policies before getting inevitably retracted when they are proven wrong again and again? Am I reading that right?
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    No you are not. You can't call it a joke, if models are continually improving and making steadily more accurate predictions and the accuracy is quantifiable. You are just making the same error in opposite direction. Lets ignore any results because it is just so complicated it can't possibly be correct.
defrost 3y ago
Study Confirms Climate Models are Getting Future Warming Projections Right The team compared 17 increasingly sophisticated model projections of global average temperature developed between 1970 and 2007, including some originally developed by NASA, with actual changes in global temperature observed through the end of 2017. https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/study-confirms-climate-models-are-getting-future-warming-projections-right/ https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/study-confirms...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sattemp1979 3y ago
  From the article: "The results: 10 of the model projections closely matched observations." Not before 1979, they didn't. Because there isn't global temperature data before that. Nothing even close. There isn't ocean temperature data before this millennium. Not even remotely persuaded, I'm afraid.
  - defrost 3y ago
    There's high quality global temp. data from naval ports about the commercial trading world going back to ~ 1880 - this data can be accurately infilled to within a known margin of error using sparse points agianst modern high resolution grid data. There's pretty decent global temp. data going back thousands of years via proxy measures with good error margins. I'm not attempting to persuade you, just stating STEM facts.
    - sattemp1979 3y ago
      Naval ports. Again, a miniscule fraction of the earth's surface. Coverage so sparse that it wouldn't register on a percentage scale with four places after the decimal point. You can't "accurately infill" data that hasn't been measured. What prevailed over far more than 99% of the earth's land and sea surface was unknown to any degree of accuracy before 1979; what prevailed in the depths of the massive heat sink called the ocean was not even partially addressed before ca. 2005. I'm not judging what you know about "S". My profession is both "T" and "E". I do suspect that you don't know much about "M".
komali2 3y ago
Are you denying human caused climate change because you don't think there's enough data to support it? You believe the data supporting climate change theories only dates from 1979? Well, great news, I have lots of reading that will quickly get you up to date and help you understand that climate change isn't demonstrated only through satellite models! In the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report introduction, you can see the various methodologies used to demonstrate the effects of human-caused climate change: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-1/#1.3 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-1/#1.3 For example, we've been taking thermometer and barometer observations at Earth's surface since the 1600s. By the 1800s this was widely distributed through naval weather logs. For atmospheric readings, we've been getting those since the 40's, not 70s, because that's when we invented weather balloons :) but we have even further back information, through the field of Paleoclimate, where we do things like measuring C02 concentration of bubbles in polar ice sheets, dating back as much as 800,000 years ago. We can also use tree rings (hundreds of years, or thousands if fossilized), "corals, stalactites and stalagmites, dust sediments, fossil pollen, peat, lake sediment, and marine sediment" to measure climate change over millenia, no need for satellites! Want to play with all the data on your own? https://github.com/KKulma/climate-change-data https://github.com/KKulma/climate-change-data Her's a curated list of all sorts of data you can play with. https://openclimatedata.net/ https://openclimatedata.net/ Here's some jupyter notebooks! What data is missing that you think it's "not enough?"
- sattemp1979 3y ago
  Do you have any idea how much of the earth's land surface (to say nothing of its enormous oceanic heat sink) was covered by temperature observation before 1979? We're talking about a few times a day at a few hundred locations, over a few hundred years. Most of the temperature data before 1800 is from SE England; from 1900 onwards, the only better data are from the continental US. All amounting to a miniscule fraction of the data needed for a model...if the system were closed. It's not. No one has any idea what the sun (chief driver of earth's climate) will do next.
  - komali2 3y ago
    > Do you have any idea how much of the earth's land surface (to say nothing of its enormous oceanic heat sink) was covered by temperature observation before 1979? Let's apply your rigorous scientific standard and see if we can figure out how much of earth's surface was covered by ocean in 1979... hmm... well we have no satellite observations. We have a decent amount of maps, but, those are just from scattered naval mapmaking activities, really only engaged in by a handful of countries across the entire globe. I'm not convinced the ocean was all that vast before 1979. Do you have better evidence? How do you even know how deep it may have been? What, from a couple depth readings here and there over a few centuries? Sorry, it's going to take more than that to convince me.