How Good Are Current Climate Models?

In a revealing commentary on the state of the climate modeling enterprise that was recently published in Nature Reports Climate Change, Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, writes about what he calls the "major efforts" that are underway "to improve climate models." But instead of engendering confidence, what he has to say is enough to make one wonder why anyone, including climate modelers themselves, would ever believe what the most up-to-date models project about earth's climatic future.

We are told, for example, that one of the major objectives of the new modeling efforts will be to attempt to develop "new and better representations of [1] important climate processes and [2] their feedbacks." Such developments would indeed represent significant steps in the right direction; but the implied need to pursue these most basic of objectives makes us wonder just how bad the current representations of these phenomena are.

Some insight into this question is provided by Trenberth's declaration that the new work should increase "our understanding of factors we previously did not account for or even recognize."

Think about that: factors we previously did not account for ... or even recognize! If there was ever a case of "the blind leading the blind," this is it. And our so-called "leaders" -- even years ago -- were asking us to completely restructure the way the industrialized world operates, on the basis of their compounded neglect (represented by factors they now admit they did not account for) and ignorance (represented by factors they now admit they may still not even recognize).

Enlarging upon what these supposedly enlightened individuals want to do next, Trenberth says that "adding complexity to a modeled system when the real system is complex is no doubt essential for model development," and so it is. But he goes on to state that in doing so, climate modelers "run the risk of turning a useful model into a research tool that is not yet skilful at making predictions."

Well isn't that great! By doing what needs to be done, we could well end up with a research tool that is totally lacking in skill. What is more, Trenberth states that "the timescale dictated by the IPCC process brings with it the risk of [1] prematurely exposing problems with climate models as we [2] learn how to develop them."

What kind of people call "learning" and "exposing problems" risks? They are scientists, such as NASA's James Hansen, and political entrepreneurial gurus, such as Al Gore, who have been telling us for years, and even decades, that we need to act now in order to avoid climatic chaos. And why? Giving them a humongous "benefit of the doubt," it is because they have had such great confidence that what the climate models have long suggested was the gospel truth. But it wasn't then ... it isn't now .. and it likely will not be ... for far more years and decades to come.

Is it any wonder, that the flimsy foundation of the climate alarmists' house of cards is currently crumbling beneath their feet? ... and that its walls and roof are crashing down around them? The truth, as represented by unaltered empirical observations, can only be restrained so long, before it lunges forward to sweep away all the deceit and delusion that strove so mightily to impede its progress; for truth -- always and ultimately -- will prevail.