Re: OT: interesting global warming quote found elsewhwere

John Larkin wrote:

Thare are serious claims that the models have been fudges to work
backwards. That's not unreasonable, but the parameters are
extraordinarily sensitive, so making a model back-track well doesn't
mean it's predictive; it just means it's tweaked.


It's like the stock market and the many, many "models" developed
to profit from it. They all go bust.

"Past performance is not an indication of future results."
--Wall Street disclaimer


And this is for a closed, mildly chaotic system with a
well-established long-term upward trend, with a limited
set of variables, all available with great precision,
in real-time. The entire system is "instrumented,"
documented, and logged on-line.

Tweak and tweak and tweak, and they can replicate history
with greater and greater precision--after the fact. But
predict the future? Not a one.


"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."
--Yogi Berra

Climate models, however, are much more complicated, harder.
And with zero reason--empirical or theoretical--to think we
can predict by ours, or that it could ever be done. Too
little info, too many variables, sensitive dependence on
initial conditions, etc.

At bottom, the climate and the atmosphere are controlled by
life itself; the carbon we burn is carbon dredged from the
air and buried by ancient plants. Plants draw carbon from
the air until it becomes too sparse and too cool for them
to thrive.

There's your long-term negative feedback.

Cheers,
James Arthur
.

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