How accurate are the computer models?

Question

Computer models were never accurate enough to forecast climate change. At best, scientist could only look at events that occurred, and use scientific mumbo-jumbo to blame the occurrence on "Global Warming".

With this years record cold and record snows, were the climate models just plain wrong? Did scientist use incorrect assumptions to come to their conclusions? Do the modles need to be readjusted to incorporate new data?

"the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age are all wrong.

"It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt."

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=332289

Answer 1

None of the computer models that supposedly "prove" Global Warming are very accurate all for the simple reason that NONE of them factor in the effects of precipitation and it's effect on atmospheric temperatures.

Answer 2

In any other field, a model is only regarded as accurate when it predicts real world behaviour before it happens.  It is absolutely trivial to anyone with knowledge of mathematics to fit a function to historical data.  That is a trivial exercise.  I don't know why people get so excited about fitting a model to historical data.  

I could trace my hand onto a piece of graph paper and come up with a mathematical function that fits so well that it could reproduce the outine of my hand perfectly.  If you extrapolated it you wouldn't find out what the rest of me looked like because function fitting doesn't work that way.  If it's not understood how a system works, a model of that system will never predict anything accurately.

Answer 3

They can't predict short term weather, of course, but they're excellent in predicting long term climate changes.

Of course that's easy now, since man made greenhouse gases are 75-85% of the reason for change.

Of course, you can choose to believe a journalist instead of the vast majority of scientists.  But the world's leaders aren't making that mistake.

Answer 4

hmm..  sense water is much denser than air, and the current extends into the depths of the ocean, I would be less inclined to believe air currents actually cause the ocean current.

Isnt wind circulation due to the coriolis effect?  And doesnt the UV output of the sun effect the coriolis effect?  Hmm... it would sure explain everything pretty well.

Models are only as accurate as the information fed into them.  A lot of the time, the one producing the model will mess with the inputs to get the desired outcome.

Answer 5

If you have six of them,and they all say something different,just use the one that works for ya.

Answer 6

There is a problem with the ice melting cooling the oceans.  I thought we were supposed to suddenly be alarmed at the rate of the ice melting.  It can only cool the ocean as long as there is a significant amount of ice to melt.  If we arrive at a time when there is little ice left, then obviously there will not be much ice to produce the cold water.  Computer models are the only thing alarmists can use because it is most easily manipulated evidence and even calling it evidence is a stretch.  There are far too many unknowns.

Answer 7

Jello gets his science from opinion columns.

Answer 8

The problem with accurate temperature forcasting is that of flawed data.

Until surface temperature monitoring equipment is replaced, we really won't know if the Earth is warming or cooling.

You can't have real science if you're using bad data.

Answer 9

Computer models cannot 100% predict anything. But the steep increase in average temperature over the last decades and their correlation with human activity tells me that we better be safe than sorry and start changing our wasteful behavior.