Is Climate Change Causing Climate Models to Fail?

A visitor to Anthony Watt’s blog, Watts Up With That, who identifies himself simply as “Craig,” today posted one of the funniest comments I’ve ever seen in a debate where 97% of scientists seem to have no sense of humor. Enjoy!

STUDY: Climate change causing climate models to become less reliable

A groundbreaking new study has shown that climate change is the underlying cause of increasingly frequent and severe climate model failures. Researchers at Pennsylvania State Community College have discovered a critical link between atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration and general circulation model errors.

“Climate change has made it increasingly difficult to predict climate change,” says Dr. Manyard Michael, the lead scientist behind the study. “The current 16 year pause in global warming illustrates just how serious this situation has been; if not for climate change, we now know that we would have been able to accurately predict the current break in warming and clearly show that climate change is actually accelerating faster than forecast – not stopping as climate change is making it appear to those outside of the climate science community.” Dr. Michael also noted that they stumbled on this important finding almost by accident. “We just happened to notice that the higher carbon dioxide concentrations climbed, the more we had to adjust the data to get the results we knew to be right, and the more we adjusted the data, the bigger the error in the models. It’s a very strong positive feedback.”

This research has been quietly in the works for several years, and was almost compromised by the 2009 research theft known as “climategate.” For example, one particular email that has been cited repeatedly said in part, “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” Skeptics have misrepresented this quote to suggest that climate scientists can’t explain why the climate is not behaving as forecast and thus there is no climate change happening when in actuality, the researcher was lamenting exactly the opposite. He knew the fact that climate models did not predict a lack of warming meant climate change had progressed much faster than previously thought, and he was expressing sadness that man has brought the climate to this point.

Climate change deniers and anti-science websites have long grasped at the seemingly endless string of model failures and ever increasing forecast error as a way to argue the theory that humans are causing global warming is somehow falsified. Noted climate modeler Dr. Hans Jameson of the National Model Rocket Association commented, “thanks to this research, we can say with certainty what we in the climate research community [have] known all along, that the bigger the climate model errors, the more confident we can be that manmade climate change is happening.” Because climate change continues to accelerate faster than at any time since before the dinosaurs, the scientific consensus is that that there will be some truly stunning model failures on the horizon.

The researchers also stressed that mainstream climate science has demonstrated a remarkable ability to hindcast. As Dr. Michael points out “we can now predict the lull in warming of the past 16 years with surprising accuracy.” He further remarked that “given how well we can predict the past, the only thing that explains the difficulty of forecasting the future with equal success is the increasing concentration of greenhouse gasses. This research changes everything.” And while they are yet unable to fully explain the exact mechanics behind the correlation, the researchers expressed 99% confidence in their conclusion.

The study which is set to be published in every scientific journal is expected to open up new areas of unprecedented spending in the emerging field of climate research research.*

* Editor’s note: The phrase “climate research research” is not a typo. With Dr. Michael’s study, the greenhouse theory has matured to the point where it can not only explain climate-related phenomena, but also its own apparent inability to explain such phenomena. Craig might also have called Dr. Michael’s study meta-climatology or climatolology. Sort of like the all-seeing eye that can see even itself.

If you find that confusing, then just look at the diagram below: