New and better computer models

Written by News Roundup on May 8, 2025. Posted in Current News

Someone with a “B.Sc. Weather Policy” (no, really) tells us: “AI-powered climate models leverage sophisticated algorithms and machine learning to process extensive climate-related datasets.

By simulating various climate scenarios, these models help scientists understand potential future conditions. The incorporation of AI enhances prediction accuracy by up to 30% compared to traditional methods.” Now this is a load of codswallop, for starters because it’s saying one set of predictions we cannot test because they’re about things that haven’t happened yet is 30% more accurate than another set of predictions we cannot test yet either. Making the 30% a classic piece of mathiness.

And according to the same source “these models provide a clearer picture of the urgent need for effective climate policies.” Meaning they regurgitate the alarmist assumptions of the people who programmed them. We didn’t need computers for that.

Apparently,

“This technological advancement is vital for forecasting potential outcomes based on different levels of greenhouse gas emissions and policy changes. For instance, AI allows researchers to anticipate how small increases in carbon dioxide can lead to significant temperature rises. As a result, these models provide a clearer picture of the urgent need for effective climate policies.”

So AI lets alarmists say a bit of CO2 will send temperatures soaring, which they’ve been saying since computers had no internal hard drive. And that we face an urgent need for effective climate policies which is again (a) stale and (b) pointless because if they knew how to craft “effective climate policies” as alarmists understand that term then we wouldn’t be burying the Paris target while chanting “The target is dead, long live the target.”

Which would be 2.0°C not 2.5°C surely if again any of this hyperaccurate scientific wizardry were any good. Except at generating clichés, we mean:

“The Earth’s average temperature has already increased by about 1.2°C since the late 19th century, largely due to human activities. The burning of fossil fuels and deforestation are primary contributors to this warming trend.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cautions that without substantial policy interventions, a 2.5°C rise is possible by 2040. Such a temperature increase poses severe risks to ecosystems, human health, and global economies. Already, many regions are experiencing the effects of climate change, including more frequent floods, droughts, and intense heatwaves. These changes underline the importance of immediate and decisive action.”

You get the idea? Because we don’t. It seems disaster struck at 1.2 which is the old 1.5 or something. And maybe 2.5 is the new 2.0 since:

“A global temperature increase of 2.5°C could have devastating consequences. Such a rise would likely result in more frequent and severe weather events, elevated sea levels, and disruptions to food and water supplies.”

What, again? And again. The piece then laments that “current global commitments fall short of the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit warming to 1.5°C.” And of course, as usual:

“The time to act is now; the future of our planet depends on the choices we make today.”

As it was a decade ago and we made the wrong ones. Thus Zeke Hausfather triumphantly proclaimed disaster online last November:

“The goal of preventing temperatures from exceeding 1.5C is ‘deader than a doornail’ as I told the Guardian (quoting James Hansen). We’ve simply waited too long to reduce global emissions, and now will firmly pass 1.5C in the next decade”.

A nice precise prediction from the fabled models, which also know exactly what it will be like in 2100 though they have no idea what conditions were in 1200. Fortunately it suddenly didn’t matter; as he also Xed out:

“Passing 1.5C will make impacts of climate change worse, but ultimately is more of a target than a climate threshold. Every tenth of a degree matters, and the lower we can keep peak warming the more we will minimize harms to human and natural systems.”

Talk about having your apocalypse and sleeping in too. And about babbling. Does anyone, including him, seriously think every tenth of a degree matters? If we grant the implausible claim that they know the temperature in 1850 to a tenth of a degree worldwide, can they tell us at what point it had risen by a tenth of a degree and what measurable changes resulted? Even positive ones?

Go on. We’ll wait. Was it 1873? 1888? What changes affected human well-being, extinctions, weather patterns or the price of tea in China? Oh, and why did this warming happen, given the minimal human production of CO2 at that point? Put that in your computer and calculate it.

We also want to know what else is as dead as a doornail now that we’ve passed 1.5°C, blown through it or whatever metaphor seems most excitable. And sure enough, the Maldives are in deep if not yet in Davy Jones’ locker. A recent Guardian story says:

“Climate scientists broadly expect it will become apparent the 1.5C target, agreed upon by governments after pleas from vulnerable island states that they risk being wiped out if temperatures rise further than this, has been exceeded within the coming decade.”

And we’re not just all going to die, we’re doing it now. Or at any rate:

“‘Only you can beat the clock on 1.5C,’ António Guterres, secretary general of the UN, urged world leaders on Tuesday [from the underwhelming COP29], while also acknowledging the planet was undergoing a ‘masterclass in climate destruction’.”

Yeah? What got destroyed? Other than your credibility? Indeed, the Guardian conceded:

“the 1.5C target now appears to be simply a rhetorical, rather than scientifically achievable, one, bar massive amounts of future carbon removal from as-yet unproven technologies.”

Maybe you should have told us sooner. After all, the piece continued:

“I never thought 1.5C was a conceivable goal. I thought it was a pointless thing,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at Nasa. “I’m totally unsurprised, like almost all climate scientists, that we are shooting past it at a rapid clip. But it was extremely galvanizing, so I was wrong about that. Maybe it is useful; maybe people do need impossible targets. You shouldn’t ask scientists how to galvanize the world because clearly we don’t have a [very rude word to indicate sincerity deleted] clue. People haven’t got a magic set of words to keep us to 1.5C, but we have got to keep trying.”

Trying what? To make sense? Good luck, mate.

And another thing. Hausfather prated on that:

“It is possible for us to bring global temperatures back down to 1.5C after overshoot, but the only lasting way to do that is through removing all the extra CO2 we’re going to add after passing 1.5C.”

What a dingaling. And we say it advisedly. Because even if humans could somehow remove “all the extra CO2 we’re going to add after passing 1.5°C” it wouldn’t get temperatures back down to cool, balmy, safe 2024 given that alarmists typically say there’s a built-in momentum due to the CO2 we already released. Nor do they typically praise 2024, instead saying stuff like that humanity has opened the gates of hell. Surely we should close them again.

Except if we do, where are we going back to? Was 1850 ideal? How do you know? What was wrong with 1625? (Climatologically we mean; the history’s another story.) Why not 903 AD, or 757 BC? If you’re going to play God, think big.

P.S. In case you’re nostalgic for the days when 1.5°C was the end, if only in the hope that therefore the alarmists would admit defeat and shut up, another piece in Climate Cosmos, by the same author who’s thrilled by AI weather forecasting, brings back the good old bad days under the tired headline “Are We Too Late? Scientists Debate the Point of No Return for Global Warming”:

“The notion of a ‘point of no return’ in global warming is a chilling concept. It suggests a threshold beyond which climate change effects might become irreversible. Scientists warn that if global temperatures rise more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, we could enter a phase of runaway climate change.

This could result in extreme weather, rising sea levels, and devastating loss of biodiversity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stresses the importance of keeping warming below this level to prevent catastrophic outcomes. A 2021 report indicates that, if current trends persist, we might see a 2.7 degrees Celsius increase by the century’s end. Such predictions underscore the urgency for immediate action. With some ecosystems already showing signs of irreversible damage, experts caution that we may be closer to this threshold than we think.”

See more here Climate Discussion

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