The inimitable Dave Springer broadens his anti-science screeds to include the science of climate change, claiming he's "exposing the lies." He claims a NASA page demonstrates "frank admissions of broken atmospheric models, [and] declining atmospheric temperatures."
Of course, that's the opposite of what you'll find.
What you actually find there is a demonstration of tropospheric temperature (temperature in the lowest 5 miles of the atmosphere) rising steadily over the last decades, exactly as predicted by models. You'll also see a graph of declines in stratospheric temperature (between 9 and 14 miles), which is also exactly what's predicted from climate models.
Despite DS's claim that the page is "updated in real time," the page was "Last Updated: January, 2005." At the time, there was a discrepancy between temperature increase at the surface and that observed at higher levels, using satellite and balloon measurements. A few months lather, in August of 2005, two papers were published in Science which showed that the discrepancy was a result of miscalibrations of satellite readings, and that the temperature in the higher atmosphere was rising as quickly as predicted by models and the observed warming at lower levels.
IDolators remain years behind the time and forced to misunderstand or lie in their persistent attacks on science.
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"tropospheric temperature ... rising steadily over the last decades, exactly as predicted by models. You'll also see a graph of declines in stratospheric temperature ...which is also exactly what's predicted from climate models."
But where oh where is the evidence that the parameters used by these models are valid???
Most of these "climate models" get tweaked until they match the observations. Once they match then the "science" is done! The problem here is that there is paucity of research done to show that the parameters in the models have validity.
Now everyone can see the clear and easy path for getting their PhD's in climatology!!
Just go make some observations then cook up a model that matches! Why waste all that time trying to validate a model's parameters?
One quibble with your conclusion; they don't have to be forced to misunderstand, it's their natural response.
Daprez:
Thats a major reason why so much research on paleoclimates, and even climates of other planets is done. Having some data points outside of the limited range of recent earth climate provides extra testing of assumptions.
I'm Chilean so excuse my "inglich".
I've been reading ScienceBlogs for over a year now and it's just great, I love almost all your posts.
The point is that you frequently are writing "against" ID (wich is a good thing! keep doing it!) but I feel that you (all) keep talking about that and not about solutions-related topics for Global Heating (or Warming).
I don't know if that's true, but at least I feel it that way.
Maybe it's that your country can't move along and join us (the rest of the world, except Turkey if I remember well) and just keep trying to solve those ID-ots thoughts.
anyway, I love all these blogs.
By the way, I'm just a student of psychology in PUC (www.puc.cl, don't you get the irony?)
& VIVA LA CIENCIA!!!
Bigtom,
There is much research to be done regarding in paleoclimates and extraterrestrial climates but you are correct that this research helps to validate and constrain climate model parameters. An interesting point that come up in an earlier discussion here is the view that only the Holocene should be considered when researching paleoclimates. The reasons for that time limit are specious, mostly due to the problems that opening the time scale across the Phanerozoic, especially the Cenozoic introduce to the models cheered here as "exact predictors."
I never said that only the Holocene should ever be considered, only that the Holocene is the only period of time for which the resolution of data is adequate to test hypotheses against the temperature change that we are observing on a decadal scale.
In the model building I do in ecology, it's common to set aside some data for model validation. I don't know if climate modelers do the same, perhaps fitting models over the first half of a time span and then testing them against the later datasets. I'll have to check into that.
nuitei: I agree we need to talk more about solutions. I've written a little about that, but it's a tricky topic that gets tied up in politics.
In my field (hydrogeology) a lot of work is done using models. And yes, they certainly are tweaked to match data--but they are also compared with additional data, and tested for sensitivity to variation in parameters. In some cases the models are used not so much for predicting future conditions, but for understanding how various factors interact.
That's funny, the Global Hydrology and Climate Center is affiliated with my university. It's well known around campus that the data uncommon descent quotes was found to have two rather large errors: one due to satellites drifting around giving false readings (nighttime readings recorded as daytime readings), the other a math error. Once those errors were fixed, the data closely matched other models. I think the interactive graph they link to is an old page with the old data. I wish those people could just stick to evolution (that's annoying enough) and not take up a new anti-science cause.