On Sunday’s BBC Politics, Luke Johnson asked for evidence that the recent Dubai flooding was due to climate change. Chris Packham glibly responded: “It comes from something called science.”
This simply highlighted his poor scientific understanding. The issue is his and others’ confusion over what scientific modelling is and what it can do. This applies to any area of science dealing with systems above a single atom – everything, in practice.
My own doctoral research was on the infrared absorption and fragmentation of gaseous molecules using lasers. The aim was to quantify how the processes depended on the laser’s physical properties.
I then modelled my results. This was to see if theory correctly predicted how my measurements changed as one varied the laser pulse. Computed values were compared under different conditions with those observed.
The point is that the underlying theory is being tested against the variations it predicts. This applies – on steroids – to climate modelling, where the atmospheric systems are vastly more complex. All the climate models assume agreement at some initial point and then let the model show future projections. Most importantly, for the projected temperature variations, the track record of the models in predicting actual temperature observations is very dubious, as Professor Nicola Scafetta’s chart below shows.
Hellbound and Down 