Rune Allnor <[email protected]> wrote:
(snip)

> Keep the politics out of this. For me, who wrote a
> PhD thesis based on computational models representing
> some physical system (albeit not related to meteorology),
> the key statement in the article is:

> "the failure of these [computational] models to account for
> this natural internal variability [of the climatic system]."

You don't need the complete climate model to figure out what
some parts of it are doing. The CO2 equilibrium between
the atmosphere and the ocean isn't so easy, either.
Even so, it is known that the equilibbration time between the
atmosphere and the ocean is around 1000 years. Still unknown
is the effect of increased CO2 (and decreased pH) of the ocean.

> In plain English: The climate models aren't good enough.
> They will not be, until they are able to accurately
> represent the variable factors like El Nino, on the scale
> of decades, and the water cycle (evaperation -> percipetation)
> on the day-to-day scale.

For climate models for weather forcasting you need many of
those variables. When planning a weekend trip, I want to know
what to expect over the next few days, but don't care about
the next 1000 years.

If we (the political establishment) decide that we don't need
society to last more than another 50 years or so then we don't need
to worry about climate. There are still people figuring out how
to keep nuclear waste safe for 10,000 years. Unless big changes
are made very soon, there is a 100% probability that there won't
be anyone around in 10,000 years to care about nuclear waste.

> The argument has nothing to do with politics. It has to
> do with scientific craftmanship. Computational models are
> just that - models. There are no guarantees they have
> any relation, whatsoever, with reality.

The will to do something about the results of the model is
entirely political. So is the will to do something about
population growth, which is the real problem.

-- glen