This is truly a glass half empty / glass half full study on global warming. On the surface it’s a big win for the global warming crowd, but then we all know about the devil and the details.
Read the whole thing but I’ll quote the important paragraphs. (Pay attention to the bolded part, it will be important later.)
PRESS RELEASE: Models Underestimate Loss of Arctic Sea Ice
Arctic sea ice is melting at a significantly faster rate than projected by the most advanced computer models, a new study concludes
Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) found that satellite and other observations show the Arctic ice cover is retreating more rapidly than estimated by any of the eighteen computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in preparing its 2007 assessments.
Gloom and doom right? Keep reading.
The study compared model simulations of late twentieth-century climate with observations. “This technique gives some indication of the realism of the simulated sea ice sensitivity to climate changes,” said NCAR scientist Marika Holland, a co-author of the study.
When the authors analyzed the IPCC computer model runs, they found that, on average, the models simulated a loss in September ice cover of 2.5 percent per decade from 1953 to 2006. The fastest rate of September retreat in any individual model simulation was 5.4 percent per decade. September marks the yearly minimum of sea ice in the Arctic. But newly available data sets, blending early aircraft and ship reports with more recent satellite measurements, show that the September ice actually declined at a rate of about 7.8 percent per decade during the 1953 to 2006 period. …
There are a number of factors that may lead to the low rates of simulated sea ice loss. Several models overestimate the thickness of the present day sea ice and the models may also fail to capture changes in atmosphere and ocean circulation that transport heat to polar regions.
The joke in engineering school is that optimists see the glass half full, pessimists see the glass half empty but engineers realize you need a smaller glass. I’m going to look at this study for what it really tells us, not what we want the results to tell us.
Forget for second what this does or doesn’t say about global warming. If this study is true, it eviscerates all 18 computer models. Let me remind you the computer models failed miserably to accuracy predict THE PAST! The study compared the way all 18 models predicted the ice loss from 1953 to 2006 to what really happened.
These models are off by a factor of 3X predicting THE PAST but the global warming crowd says we can count on them to predict 100 years in the future with precision accuracy.
It’s time to admit that not only is the science not settled but the people who keep saying it is are the scientific equivalent of the emperor with no clothes. We really don’t know much about what the climate is doing or is planning on doing but thanks to this new study we do know that all the models that the supposed “consensus” is built upon are meaningless.
