Caution in Utilizing Climate Models To Predict Future Conditions
Another topic I would like to discuss here is the use of climate models that attempt to predict future climates. Climate modelling has become the focus of many climatologists over the past two to three decades. There is little doubt that man’s activities on planet Earth have been largely responsible for much of the climate changes we are now seeing, and will continue to see in the future (that is barring any unforeseen cataclysmic features that the Earth could experience). Attempts to understand the response of the most complex of systems (the Earth’s climate machine) has involved the use of very sophisticated climate models. The majority (at last count there were at least eighteen of these models in use), fail, at least according to some scientists to accurately simulate climate changes that have occurred, or those that are likely to take place in the future. As an example of the shortcomings of climate models one very vital parameter, clouds: their form, height, thickness and location on the planet, remain not well accounted for in most climate models (Richard Kerr, Science, July, 2009).
Controversy remains on whether many of these clouds cool, warm or have little to do with conditions in the atmosphere or at the Earth’s surface. Within the same Science journal, Dr. Amy Clement of the Univesity of Miami has found, that contrary to what was believed before that low lying clouds produce warming, rather that the assumption made by most climate models that there is distinctive cooling. Only two of the presently used eighteen climate models being used to predict future climates have correctly taken this factor into account. This I think is but one indication of how far removed we are in understanding the climate system as a whole. The ramifications of this of course are dire according to well-known scientist and author James Lovelock. Dr. Lovelock in his latest book “The Vanishing Face of Gaia, A Final Warning.” suggests that our lack of understanding of the complete climate system prevents being able to accurately forecast future climates. The shortcomings stressed by Dr. Lovelock, includes the view that the Earth is not considered as an active physiological (dare I say it, organism). It is these intricacies and others such as the cloud conundrum that greatly limit the use of climate models, no matter how sophisticated. Dr. Lovelock goes on to suggest that most scientists have become far too specialised (“compartmentalised”) in their way of looking at the world. A part of this he says is reflected in our too great a reliance upon computer models at the expense of what he thinks is a more valuable approach based upon observations and experimentation.
