Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Climate Models Have No Clothes


The climate models have no clothes. They have no predictive ability. The proof that they don’t is in the observations of what has happened compared to model predictions. Warming is at a standstill. So is sea level rise. Glaciers in Glacier Bay retreated ten times more from 1780 to 1912 as 1912 to present. Warming still precedes CO2 increases. The “hot spot” ain’t there. Severe weather is not as severe as it used to be. A review of cycles of glaciation and warming during the past 500,000 years show Earth is now in what is established as long periods of glaciation and short inter-glacials.
Ocean pH was 0.8 units lower and atmospheric CO2 was five times higher one hundred million years ago (when marine invertebrates had already been established and successful for over four hundred million years). Recent studies show that some marine invertebrates do better in higher acidity, and that models using strong acids have led to incorrect conclusions about increased ocean acidity. Since very little CO2 absorbed in water becomes carbonic acid, it has very little effect on pH anyway Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.25 to 8.14 – since we have many studies that show the warming ending the Little Ice Age began about three hundred years ago, the relationship between current warming, CO2, and ocean acidification seems specious. Since CO2 is released to the atmosphere as oceans warm, there is a disconnect between oceans warming and atmospheric CO2 being absorbed by the oceans. It would appear more likely that oceans would have absorbed CO2 and created more carbonic acid during the Little Ice Age than during the warming that followed. Since atmospheric warming following the Little Ice Age would have preceded ocean warming, a timeline of decreasing pH over three hundred years ago makes more sense.
But back to models. If the models were right, US temperature would have increased at least three times the 1 degree F since 1900 (with most of the increase in the 1930s). Sea levels would be up more than 6 inches since 1999, instead of less than one inch. Major hurricanes would be hitting the US annually, instead of none in over 3 years. Texas temperatures would be up more than the observed 0.04 degree F since 1884. Or to put it simply, the models would not be so crappy at predicting the future, or in explaining the past.

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