The Perils of Modeling

Here is an excerpt from a blog entry by Michael R. Smith, the CEO of WeatherData Services, Inc., An AccuWeather Company, and a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society from the Watts Up With That? website:

We currently have climate models that have missed the fact that atmospheric temperatures peaked 11 years ago and that oceanic heat content has, at best, failed to increase. See: http://climatesci.org/2009/03/04/large-uncertainty-in-the-simulation-of-the-global-average-surface-temperature-by-the-ipcc-models-a-study-reported-on-the-weblog-the-blackboard/ , http://climatesci.org/2009/02/09/update-on-a-comparison-of-upper-ocean-heat-content-changes-with-the-giss-model-predictions/ , among many others.

Given the inadequate performance of these models over the last 5 to 10 years, why do we believe we can make accurate, highly specific forecasts 50 to 100 years in the future? Is it because we are so close to the problem we are blinded to the dangers like the economists who did not see the meltdown coming?

Almost no one familiar with meteorology or climate models would disagree that they are more complex than the mortgage valuation or influenza prediction models. The basic processes of the earth-ocean-atmosphere are incompletely understood and we barely understand many of their interactions.

We also know that forecasting the weather beyond five days is dicey at best. Then why are we making 29,000-day weather forecasts? Don’t think we are doing that? Consider the following:

“By the period 2080-2099, devastating heat waves of the kind that killed more than 700 people in Chicago in 1995 will occur three times per year.” (USCCP, p. 119, citation below)

That is a weather forecast – a forecast of specific meteorological conditions at a specific time and place. The document is filled with similar predictions, along with recommendations based on those predictions.

If you read the blog, the author points out that the financial models underlying the securitized mortgages were wrong and blew a big hole in our economy. He points out the the WHO's models of the H1N1 flu have been led to a declaration of "pandemic" despite a very small number of lethal cases. And, he pokes fun at stock market "predictions". The failures of modeling are legendary. But the public is unable to assess the models, so they listen to the experts even when the "experts" are wrong and even when they prescribe the equivalent of medieval "bloodletting" as the cure.

Go read Smith's blog entry.