Bishop Hill Mann, straw man and SciAm
Jan 10, 2012 Climate: Mann Climate: Models Michael Mann is in Scientific American today, with a podcast discussing computer models and the hockey stick man has a pop at Freeman Dyson:
I have to wonder if Freeman Dyson will get on an airplane or if he’ll drive a car because a lot of the modern day conveniences of life and a lot of our technological innovations of modern life are based on phenomena so complicated that we need to be able to construct models of them before we deploy that technology.
This is a bit of straw man, and Mann in fact goes on to discuss the fact that
we can’t do experiments with multiple Earths and formulate the science of climate change as if it’s an entirely observationally based, controlled experiment.
However, after a lot of words about how models are used, he returns to his strawman.
And again, does Freeman Dyson, assuming he is willing to get on an airplane even though models have been used to test the performance of the airplane, assuming he does and he knows he’s going somewhere where they’ve predicted, where weather models have predicted rainfall for the next seven days, does he not pack his umbrella because he doesn’t believe the models? It's just in that case the worst that will happen is somebody gets wet when they wouldn’t otherwise have. In this case, the worst that can happen is that we ruin the planet.
It's not desperately edifying, is it?
Reader Comments (125)
On the models' predictive capability, maybe someone can correct me on this, but isn't it the case that the variations in temperature anomalies we're talking about - a few tenths of a degree - are too close to the uncertainties involved, for any model prediction to have any meaning at all?
Michael Mann fails Analogies 101.
Indeed, one must regard him as a peculiar kind of imbecile with a PhD.
Cars and planes are not thrown out to the public based upon "modeling" alone. Far, far from it. The "models" do not provide the full and final testing. Freeman Dyson does not rely upon "models" for survival when he gets in a car or airplane. The fact that Mann displays such utter ignorance of all engineering principles of testing, validation, verification, quality control, etc. shows once again that he is far too ignorant and reckless to be doing what he wants to do with the world's economic and political policies.
He is unfit to prepare one automobile for real-world uses yet he imagines he should be able to re-configure all of the world's economies, a vastly more complex and difficult proposition.
Hengist.
You simply don't get it do you? As Philip Bratby and others have pointed out, in any area of science (apart, apparently, from climate science) a model is absolutely worthless unless it has been fully validated using real data inputs. Mann has implicitly admitted that his and others models are not so ("The models are simply at some level a formulation of our conceptual understanding"). How can you have an alternative to some that doesn't really exist?
timg56
You really walked into that one. The Wright brothers are the founding fathers of modern aerodynamics. The reason why they succeeded is because they build a wind tunnel, instrumented it carefully and then ran many hundred hours of experiments. One of their greatest successes was the design of their propeller which was 80% efficient, which is pretty damn good when you consider modern airplane propellers are usually less than 90%. Until they did this, they depended on theories put forth by "expert" professors who sat at their desks dreaming up theories as to why birds fly.
So they decided to do real experiments.
Is there a message here?
Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel
Hmm, I wonder why all the major aircraft manufacturers have wind tunnels? Surely they don't need 'em when they've got computer models to do all the real work? Oh.
Even James Hansen was cautious when criticising Freeman Dyson and showed him a modicum of respect. Mann's petulant attack on Dyson might well appeal to the choir but will not go down well with middle ground scientists who stumble across it.
I must confess to having very low expectations of the intellectual abilities of CO2 alarmists. They may have proven effective in their mission to provide a technical cover-story for the political work of such as the IPCC, but the CG emails reveal no great intellects at work, and no sense of high purpose or compassion for others.
I still cling to the notion that if one day some dedicated scientists discover a threat to humanity, they will first seek to persuade the best in the most relevant fields (in this case, physics and computing) that their work is sound, and then they will do all they can to share widely all they have done, and how they have done it, and all this time nothing would please them more than to be shown they were wrong. I see little of this in the CO2 escapade. In fact, it is a candidate to be the very opposite of my reverie.
The difference between climate models and aircraft models is that even a 6 year old can build an aircraft model that works, while climate models only appear to be constructed by 6 year olds.
Hengist, you don't have to take our word for it, let Kevin Trenberth tell you:
"In fact there are no predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been. The IPCC instead proffers “what if” projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios. There are a number of assumptions that go into these emissions scenarios. They are intended to cover a range of possible self consistent “story lines” that then provide decision makers with information about which paths might be more desirable. But they do not consider many things like the recovery of the ozone layer, for instance, or observed trends in forcing agents. There is no estimate, even probabilistically, as to the likelihood of any emissions scenario and no best guess.
Even if there were, the projections are based on model results that provide differences of the future climate relative to that today. None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate. In particular, the state of the oceans, sea ice, and soil moisture has no relationship to the observed state at any recent time in any of the IPCC models. There is neither an El Niño sequence nor any Pacific Decadal Oscillation that replicates the recent past; yet these are critical modes of variability that affect Pacific rim countries and beyond. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, that may depend on the thermohaline circulation and thus ocean currents in the Atlantic, is not set up to match today’s state, but it is a critical component of the Atlantic hurricanes and it undoubtedly affects forecasts for the next decade from Brazil to Europe. Moreover, the starting climate state in several of the models may depart significantly from the real climate owing to model errors. I postulate that regional climate change is impossible to deal with properly unless the models are initialized.
The current projection method works to the extent it does because it utilizes differences from one time to another and the main model bias and systematic errors are thereby subtracted out. This assumes linearity. It works for global forced variations, but it can not work for many aspects of climate, especially those related to the water cycle. For instance, if the current state is one of drought then it is unlikely to get drier, but unrealistic model states and model biases can easily violate such constraints and project drier conditions. Of course one can initialize a climate model, but a biased model will immediately drift back to the model climate and the predicted trends will then be wrong. Therefore the problem of overcoming this shortcoming, and facing up to initializing climate models means not only obtaining sufficient reliable observations of all aspects of the climate system, but also overcoming model biases. So this is a major challenge."
That enough for you fella?
Taking publicly on Dyson. I would be very worried if I were his psychoanalyst
Intellectual midges with delusions of Grandeur. Problem is that, as any Scott would know, midges can be extremely annoying.
Paddington Bear was a bear of very little brain. He reminds me of Michael Mann.
Mann seems to have a habit of latching on to the last thing he heard, and then using it for his own devices. I'm sure he's heard the criticism of how warmists use cars and planes, even though they create CO2. So, like a true genius of original thought, he criticises Dyson for using cars and planes. He has to stretch a bit, though. But he comes up with a real doozy.
I may be wrong here, but I think that planes and cars were sometimes used by people before computer modeling came along. And many survived, somehow.
Hengist,
Thank god you're here. I was starting to wonder if there was any point to the CACC warnings at all. If people like you don't show up when a sceptic expresses a point of view, then where will it all end?
"The models are simply at some level a formulation of our conceptual understanding and when someone says they don't like models then I’m wondering what alternative they have in mind."
You don't need a wonderful alternative to shite. A simple absence of shite would be a vast improvement.
Thank you James.
One for the archive!
James Evans
Ah,.now I know what Mann's problems are caused by - too many marmalade sandwiches dropped into his calculations..
We have to be brutally honest about Mann's argument. The models are crap, not because the GCMs are crap, but because they are a vehicle for fake science; a propaganda exercise. It worked in the fast warming 1990s but now that's stopped they're in real trouble. As I investigate further I see how these people are trying to erase past mistakes as well.
I entered the problem when I saw that after all the modelling using as heat source the ludicrous back radiation perpetual motion machine, unique to climate science, they correct 3-5 times overestimate of post industrial warming by using cooling from clouds. Firstly they use double the real optical depth, then to get the finer detail they assume aerosol pollution gives further cooling.
Hansen is presently trying to explain no present heating by imagining that the latter correction has just jumped ~50% and there's been extra ocean cooling. He could of course be correct but the justification of the extra polluted cloud cooling is a modelling exercise from MSU which claims it is 3-6 times higher than experimental data by competent physicists who are generally honest because that discipline is self-checking.
What I and others have realised is that those satellite data are wrong because the physics Hansen uses fails to include a second optical process. In reality, the satellite data are probably reversed in sign. In 2004, NASA published fake physics to keep this scam afloat. It got AR4 but not Copenhagen and it convinced from authority the poorly educated [in physics] climate scientists. It didn't fool me or an increasing number of insiders who are saying this fraud has to stop,
Following Mannian logic, we would never have built a real plane because there was always a chance that it could fail in mid flight.
Most Engineers would also recognise that when their model diverges from reality then it is probably the model that needs to be tweaked ... not reality.
"You don't need a wonderful alternative to shite. A simple absence of shite would be a vast improvement."
Perfect!!!!!
Hengist
Part of my job as an RF Engineer is comparing real measured data against model data. Very rarely do they ever completely match up. Hence what Mr Bratby is telling you is correct.Usually the design engineer will tweak his model to match the actual data. Never the other way round. If I ever changed the real data or got rid of bits of the data because it did not show what I wanted it to show - as in 'Hide the decline" - I would be instantly dismissed.
Don Paublo,
I was being facetious.
http://toryaardvark.com/2012/01/10/huhne-uses-anti-terror-legislation-against-wind-farm-protestors/
'Legal Advisor to the European Platform Against Windfarms (EPAW), George Watson is being investigated by the UK government under special powers which are only to apply to criminal/terrorist activities, claims the Platform. A letter, reproduced below, has been sent to Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, denouncing this improper use of the legislation, and announcing legal proceedings against the UK government. A formal complaint has been made to the Metropolitan Police.
According to EPAW, Mr Watson was also harassed by a police officer who visited his home in a Scottish rural area … on Christmas Eve!'
What is at about academia that people this stupid can become professors?
DaveS: Mann was given accelerated approval of his PhD and jobs way above his experience level. In return he created the algorithm that even made random noise into a hockey stick shape.
In later work he inverted data when it suited him whilst pretending it was the right way up.
Reportedly, in Tanzania in 1999, he leant on Briffa to adjust his data processing to eliminate the MWP. But that made post 1960 data decline. So they hid that.
This is a 30 year Marxist infiltration project to occupy climate science with their own people and to purport they were telling the truth; a new Lysenkoism. Hence anyone who threatens the story is attacked mercilessly to shut them up. They even have plans to put dissenters in jail via a special UN Court, after trial for 'eco-crime'.
The Wright brothers couldn't get off the ground without their CRAY strapped to the back. A very revealling use of metaphors by Mann. The first planes were created through experimentation. You know, have an idea, test it, if it fails come up with a new one. Engineers build planes. Engineers don't need computers to prove that planes can fly. It is simply enough to see and experience that fact.
Climatologists need models to prove their 'cause" as they cannot or have not observed the "reality" of AGW.
Would I get on a plane built by Mann, no chance.
"Can anybody point to a single passenger carrying vehicle (land, sea or air) that has gone from a computer model to production without any intervening physical prototypes to test the model?"
No, but I believe that the Triumph 675 Daytona came close. They did, of course, build prototypes but as far as I am aware, they made hardly any changes before putting it into production. The thing about this is that their previous experience of building motorcycles must have reduced any unknown variables to a minimum. Surely no one in their right mind would try to claim that there are only minimal unknown variables in climate modelling.
As for making predictions, we did have millions of refugees displaced by rising sea levels and the end of snow in England.
Just a slight digression, factoids about record breaking temperatures on the BBC Radio 2 Steve Wright show today included record recent record cold temps as well as record hot ones. For the one sided BBC this is most unusual.
TerryS Jan 10, 2012 at 4:54 PM
The space shuttle?
(Obviously they tested its bits and pieces before the first launch)
Jan 10, 2012 at 7:35 PM | James Evans quotes Mann:
"The models are simply at some level a formulation of our conceptual understanding and when someone says they don't like models then I’m wondering what alternative they have in mind."
Amazing! Mann must not understand what he is saying. If his models are no better than a conceptual understanding of climate then they are not up to the standards of the vast number of models employed in industry on a daily basis.
DaveS,
A well-landed punch, sir.
Andrew
Climate modelers: predict catastrophe sometime in the next many years.
Design engineers: predict that their products will function without catastrophe for many years.
So the engineers could be proved wrong tomorrow, but can't be proved right for many years, and the climate modelers could be proved right tomorrow, but can't be proved wrong for many years (maybe not even in their lifetimes).
I think I'm in the wrong business.
"Can anybody point to a single passenger carrying vehicle (land, sea or air) that has gone from a computer model to production without any intervening physical prototypes to test the model?
The space shuttle?"
Full scale, manned drop tests from a Boeing 747, and thousands of hours of model testing in wind tunnels over most Mach numbers.
Mann reminders once again of the first rule of climate science , 'if the model and reality differ in value its reality which is in error' .
Martin A actual;y that also tested it on the back of a Jumbo too .
Martin A: Space shuttle? Nope, tested in a wind tunnel. And what a wind tunnel it is: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/WindTunnel.html
Video of the A380 certification. This was tested using a model. A scale model that is, in a wind tunnel... video here: http://videos.airbus.com/video/iLyROoafIlbl.html
Re: Martin A
The prototype was called Enterprise. It never got into space and only made test flights.
It was a further 4 years after the final test flight of Enterprise before a space shuttle (Columbia) made it into space.
There is an American saying about giving someone enough rope and he will eventually hang himself.
Mann should feel that metaphorical rope tightening right about now.
Spence_UK
Even after much computer modeling, and scale model testing, the A 380 wing failed its 150% max load test. Glad they tried it. The same model aircraft survived a catastrophic engine failure with the fix. Real world testing works where computer models fail.
Economists (Trygve Haavelmo) have answered this question in the 40s already.
You have to make a model from the data, not based on physical laws, for they describe the small and too complex for the behaviour of the large.
econometrists do not simulate the turbulent blood in our brains with mainframes for determining relationships between price and value or something
My husband is an aeronautical engineer who served in the RAAF and now works for a Defence company.
Dusty did a great summary of what is required with regard to building an aircraft. The "models" are something more concrete than what is found on the computer of someone like Mann.
Mann knows absolutely nothing about the building of an aircraft, a rocketship, or an helicoptor, let alone what goes into the building of a ship for the armed services. It is not a model produced on a computer. Everything is tested....
Come to think of it, engineers in other fields also build real models. Let me give an example here: After cyclone Tracey hit Darwin in the 1970s, the CSIRO Building Engineering Division researched methods for building houses to withstand the cyclones. To do that they used a wind tunnel. That was their model for testing various design ideas and products. How do I know? Because I lived directly across the road from the CSIRO Building Research division in Melbourne. I know that they used wind tunnels for their testing.
The same goes for aeronautical engineering in the design phase. It should be the same when designing a new car. A prototype is built and then tested.
In other words, Mann simply does not know what he is talking about when it comes to aeronautical engineering.
Just a few more ideas here regarding the difference between the tripe spouted by Mann and the real world of engineers:
The other engineers who have responded are absolutely correct. There is a lot of testing that takes place in wind tunnels.
However, on top of that every time there is an aircraft accident there is an investigation. The data from the flight recorder is critical in determining the cause of a crash. A lot of work goes into the investigations, and if you have ever seen the aircrash investigation series a lot can be learned about how they come up with whether or not the crash was caused by pilot error or some other cause. Sometimes it is fatigue of parts, and sometimes it is something like ice on the wings that causes the crash.
Even something like the filming of Star Wars requires some kind of models, that is something concrete that is tested.
This is the real problem with Mann and Jones and their computer models. They rely solely on statistics, yet they do not understand the "nature of the best". They do not seem to test their "theories". They simply produce results. There is a saying "Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics" .... do I need to say more? Statistical data is easily fiddled. When people design a survey they will design the questions in order to get their desired answers. To give an example I answered a survey recently asking if I donated to various "charities". The problem for me was that I was not given the option of stating that OXFAM, WWF and GREENPEACE are not charities, but are political organizations!! So my real answer, which was NO to each of the "charities" is distorted when I cannot express why I said No.
An idea for modeling airplanes: using the data from the takeoff path of a single plane, we would ignore all variations in throttle but fit an equation of altitude over time to the angle of the ailerons which the pilot would gradually tweak upward. The predicted flight path would extend upwards indefinitely until a point where the wings are predicted to break off and the fuselage crack open sending the passengers to a watery grave in the ocean.
there r people surviving falls out of airplanes
if it is water they fall on they are mash tho
you need to fall on sand
I dont know if it is already an extreme sport ? maybe in the sahara
If aerospace engineers used upside down data for their models, would the plane fly upside down?? Or only when over Finnish lakes??
Mann is not stupid -- far from it.
So why does he come out with so many stupid statements?
The evidence (from his own pronouncements) suggests that he is emotionally stunted, full of an infantile narcissism which causes him to lash out in rage against any perceived attack on his science (and thus his ego), because letting somebody puncture that bubble of vanity is akin to a psychological death..
His problem is an emotional one, not an intellectual one.
@ Phillip Bratby could you point me to a piece of peer reviewed science that supports your implication that climate models have zero predictive capability ?
Jan 10, 2012 at 5:47 PM | Hengist McStone
Your density / ignorance amazes me, Hengist. The burden of proof is not upon Phillip but upon the proponents of this putative "global warming" to establish the validity of their hubristic "climate models." Thus far, their feeble efforts to do so are an utter failure, despite circle-jerk peer review and fortuitous coincidence of rising temperatures with rising CO2. Mann's high-flying, aircraft analogy is too obviously a false one. He has flown too close to the sun.
A Michael Mann purporting to lecture a Freeman Dyson?
There's one computer model that certainly won't fly.
As I finished reading the above comments on Master Mann's puerile rant, I thought that most were not brutal enough in putting him in his place so I went to see what Lubos had to say. Now I feel better.
The way good professor Mann writes could lead an observer to think that, although brilliant at propaganda, he is stupid enough to think that all his critics are stupid, when they're not.
Mann in fact goes on to discuss the fact that
"we can’t do experiments with multiple Earths and formulate the science of climate change as if it’s an entirely observationally based, controlled experiment."
You can't even know that you have "multiple Earths" unless you know from practicing real science how this one works to begin with, Mikey, which makes this particular strawman especially irrelevant and which "mainstream" Climate Science has also definitively proven it doesn't know.
Mann in fact goes on to discuss the fact that
"we can’t do experiments with multiple Earths and formulate the science of climate change as if it’s an entirely observationally based, controlled experiment."
You can't even know that you have "multiple Earths" unless you know from practicing real science how this one works to begin with, Mikey, which makes this particular strawman especially irrelevant and which "mainstream" Climate Science has also definitively proven it doesn't know.
I had to send this to a friend who is an aerospace engineer with a major manufacturer (aka Boeing). He has discussed in the past how staggered he is by the slovenly practices of many so-called climate scientists.
Let's just his response was partly unprintable but he does not believe that Michael Mann and friends possess the basic scientific and technical capacities to make any reliable judgments about anything.... certainly not about what it takes to prepare a modern airplane for production.... hint: it is so much more than computer "models" Mr. Mann....
Hengist, show me any engineering software that uses RE.
James E
"Paddington Bear was a bear of very little brain."
I think you're confusing him with Winnie-the-Pooh, although I think that both were pretty smart for bears, and in possession of more far common sense than Michael Mann.
As for criticising Dyson, I can only say that fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.
But it is edifyingly desperate.