Reply To: Might the predictions of climate change be wrong? Or do you believe on faith!

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SteveInCO wrote:

I suspect that a large part of what’s going on is that the system is not fully understood. You cannot accurately model something if you don’t account for everything that effects it, and you can’t do that if you don’t even know everything that effects it.

Of course, that’s my point. A computer model is only as good as what you put into it: garbage or gold. And then there’s the effect of chaotic behavior on the model, which as I understand it is virtually unpredictable. If some scientist rounded a number somewhere, it turns out that can have a dramatic effect on the output of the model. What about a bad measurement by a defective or uncalibrated device?

As I’ve said, I make no claim that the climate models used to support anthropogenic climate change are wrong. I just think that the general public places more faith in them than is deserved.

While “hindcasting” is used to determine the worth of a model (e.g., could the model have predicted the inception and duration of one of the ice ages) even this can do no more than increase our confidence. It’s not proof that the model can never get things wildly wrong. We forget that a climate model, at its heart, is nothing more than a mind-bogglingly huge mathematical formula. The exact opposite of E=MC2, the very model of a formula which is simple, elegant, easily understood, and testable on a reasonable timescale.