Posts Tagged ‘colleagues’

Do you think they’re generally accurate? Worthless? On what do you base this conclusion?

Here is one scientist’s take:

Many of the comments to previous blogs have stated that models are “just” a set of assumptions, and that the processes in the Earth’s climate are so complex that they defy our attempts to model them with any rigor. There are assumptions that are made when models are built, but those assumptions are not simply pulled out of a bag of magic tricks. In fact, arbitrary, unjustified assumptions are generally repelled from the modeling community because, first and foremost, the models need to describe some set of observations and the evolution of those observations, i.e. prediction. Most components of models are, just like my original modeling efforts, a representation of mathematical equations that rigorously describe the motion of the atmosphere. The idea that I and my colleagues would work from some potpourri of unjustified assumptions is, in fact, a bit offensive.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/RickyRood/comment.html?entrynum=57&tstamp=200801

Jello, welcome to our side.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png