Intellectual Property Law

climate models -- science, pseudo-science or computer game?

By Obi

    science is the acquisition of knowledge through the use of the "scientific method".  that way of acquiring knowledge is rigorous and reliable, as opposed to other ways of acquiring knowledge, such as consulting an oracle, throwing bones, asking your neighbor, watching tv or playing computer games.

    the scientific method consists of four steps:
1. observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2.formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

    the climate modelers whose work drives the lay, corporate and government frenzies over climate change conduct the first two steps, and arguably the third.    but performing 3/4 of the scientific method is not science; particularly so since that last step, experiments performed by scientists other than the hypothesis-formulator, is the step that provides the rigor and reliability to science.

    of course the quest for scientific knowledge sometimes runs up against the limits of our ability to experiment.    two areas where this is the case are cosmology (the study of the universe) and climate science.  cosmologists cannot conduct experiments on the universe.    climate scientists can't conduct experiments that will predict the weather in the days, years decades or centuries yet to come.

    those subjects can be hypothesized about,  of course, but hypothesis alone is not science.  As Princeton astronomer James Gunn has explained* in the context of cosmology:    "cosmology may look like a science, but it isn't a science.    a basic tenet of science is that you can do repeatable experiments, and you can't do that in cosmology."

   you can't do that in weather prediction, either.    the 1800 ipcc-contributing climatologists plus al gore were not awarded a nobel prize in science.  Their efforts to predict and make people believe that temperature and sea level will rise well into the future were not science.**

  specifically, the ipcc climatologists can't experiment on the climate, any more than astronomers can experiment on the universe.    both the climate and the universe are too complex to be reproduced in  a lab.  instead, the nobel-prize-winning  global-warming experts experiment with much less complex "models" stored in their computers.    basically, they are playing more sophisticated versions of Sim Earth, the 1992 computer game.

    the movement to stem global warming has been built on the back of sophisticated computer games.  it can be argued that the resulting legislation to reduce reliance on fossil fuels is desirable, even if the impetus for the legislation is based entirely on ph.d.-level computer gaming.    but are hysteria, stampede and half-baked imperatives the way to manage a society?    for example, is it desirable from the point of view of poor folks that the price of food and dairy products increase because the price of corn and soybeans spike due to government-induced demand for ethanol and biodiesel?    is it desirable that federal, state or local decisions are being made on the basis not of fact or of science, but on the basis of simulation software?

   an associated danger of relying on modeling software, which is capable of producing seductive images and charts, is that simulation software can contain bugs, and bugs may lead to erroneous conclusions.  for example, in 2006, a well-respected chemist had to retract five papers reporting on the results of his model-driven analysis because of a software bug; results that turned out not to conform to the real world, and the errors in which could have been  discovered by lab experiments.

   unfortunately, in long-term weather prediction, software errors can't be discovered by experiment, but only by living long enough to find out whether the dire forecast proved true.
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** the ipcc very-long-term weather forecasters and gore instead were awarded a nobel peace prize.     nobel's will dictates that the peace prize should go to "the     person who shall have done the most or the best work for     fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of     standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace     congresses."    it's obvious that the award committee reached far beyond Nobel's mandate in awarding the peace prize to 1800 climate modelers and a politician turned pseudo-scientist.

Full post as published by TechLawyer on December 03, 2007 (boomark / email).