Saturday, June 23, 2012

Garbage In, Policy Out

So how much more damage will be done to the world's economies based on the junk science that passes for climate research?  The Obama EPA is shutting down coal power plants based on their declaration that carbon dioxide (that gas which we exhale and plants require for life and photosynthesis) is a pollutant.  The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is being used to force first world economies to subsidize third world dictators because models show that our evil modern societies are driving the planet into a frenzied increase in global temperature.

So just how accurate are those models being used by leftists and eco-nazis (but I repeat myself) to bludgeon the rest of us into returning to the pastoral squalor of the 1600s while subsidizing their global conferences in hardship spots like Rio?  According to Ross McKitrick of the Financial Post:

Just how good are climate models at predicting regional patterns of climate change? I had occasion to survey this literature as part of a recently completed research project on the subject. The simple summary is that, with few exceptions, climate models not only fail to do better than random numbers, in some cases they are actually worse.
 Actually worse than random numbers.  Let me repeat that: Actually worse than random numbers.  Our idiot global policy makers are basing changing our societies and economies on models that perform worse than just flipping a fricking coin to guess about the climate.  Of course, this has been known for some time.

Then in 2008 and 2010, a team of hydrologists at the National Technical University of Athens published a pair of studies comparing long-term (100-year) temperature and precipitation trends in a total of 55 locations around the world to model projections. The models performed quite poorly at the annual level, which was not surprising. What was more surprising was that they also did poorly even when averaged up to the 30-year scale, which is typically assumed to be the level they work best at. They also did no better over larger and larger regional scales. The authors concluded that there is no basis for the claim that climate models are well-suited for long-term predictions over large regions.
 Yes, by golly, the science has been settled, mind you, settled!  All of us troglodyte disbelievers need to be beaten with hammers for asking embarrassing questions.

Read the whole article here.  And then tell the global warming alarmists to keep their damned hands off your wallet and freedom.

Hat tip: Ace of Spades