Quite aside from the evidence all around us—rising sea levels, melting glaciers and ice caps, extreme weather events, unprecedented wildfires, etc.—scientists have been predicting our future based on computer models. What a relief if it turned out the models were unreliable or too pessimistic. No such luck, unfortunately. A paper recently published by scientists from the University of California, MIT and NASA reports, "We find that climate models published over the past five decades were skillful in predicting subsequent global mean surface temperature changes."
The scientists evaluated the performance of models published between the early 1970s and the late 2000s by comparing their predictions to observed temperature changes. They were particularly impressed by the skill of the 1970s' models given the limited evidence available at that time. Models have of course become increasingly more complex but the skill shown by the early models "suggests that climate models are effectively capturing the processes driving the multi-decadal evolution of global mean surface temperatures."
So there you have it. Climatologists have got it right. Their understanding of the planet's climate system is solid. Their models have accurately predicted global heating for the past 50 years and can, therefore, be counted on to predict it accurately for the next 50 years.
Scientists checking other scientists is of course part of the process. And in this case it firms up what they have been telling us about our misbehaviour. We are cooking the planet and we are heading precipitously toward apocalypse. Venus, anyone?
1 comment:
Hi Bill. A few times a year I reach out to some of these climate scientists via email. The pleasant surprise is how willing they are to engage with lay people. It's apparent that they're more familiar with simply being ignored - by the public and those we elect to govern.
While in Victoria for a few days last year I managed to meet with a climate science type working for the provincial government. We met for a beer after her work day ended. Eventually the conversation turned to how they're expected to present the issue to journalists and the public. The official line is "we can still do this." The off-the-record line, however, is "we're so fucked."
That very line sparked great controversy a few years ago. The American, Jason Box, was chief glaciologist for the Danish government. His focus was on the Greenland ice sheet. A colleague had sent him updated melt figures. His email response - "we're fucked." Unfortunately Box sent that, not to the colleague directly, but to his public site. Then the media got it. You can imagine how that went.
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