This is a nice video of Michael Mann (the guy who developed the horrifying “hockeystick” graph) discussing climate change.
I wanted to point out two things in this post. First, the major climate models in use today are open source; i.e., the code for the mathematical models are freely available to the public. Check out, for example, the mathematical model developed for NCAR called the CESM (community earth system model), which is freely available along with the relevant dataset. Interestingly, that seems to put climate change antagonists in an “uncomfortable” position since, for one, all of the relevant material for making an informed assessment of the science is right there for the perusing.
The second thing I wanted to point out is that most of the climate models that are in use today (which are ridiculously mathematically complex) generate robust results. What this means is that the models are producing exact or very similar predictions for numerous iterations of the model. Now what makes that “reallllly” interesting is that the parameters and values for the multitude of variables that appear in the models are different!
Let that sink in for a second….
Why would different and mathematically distinct models of some phenomenon ever be expected to generate the same predictions when they have different parameter values etc? These models share “a common causal core” which is, I’m sure you’ve guessed it, the Greenhouse Gas hypothesis. So you dump this hypothesis (that greenhouse gases possess such-and-such chemical and physical properties) into a ton of very different models and you get the same result; e.g., that global warming is a reality and that we are most likely the cause of it.
Coincidence? Hardly. Discuss.
Tom
Trin Turner
Scott Pellegrino
joshuaupson
