Climate models for all occasions

We've often said that the IPCC's climate models were terribly unreliable and should not be relied upon. Well, there's a new study out that uses climate models and it predicts a period of no warming or even cooling for the next decade.

Here's some interesting commentary from Canadian newspapers today. First up is Lorrie Goldstein in the Toronto Sun: Global warming on hiatus

Let's call it Apocalypse Postponed. At least temporarily.

German climate scientists have just published a study in the respected science journal Nature suggesting global warming has stopped and will not resume until at least 2015.

In other words (my words, not theirs) contrary to the received wisdom of Al Gore's simplistic and propagandistic An Inconvenient Truth, global temperatures aren't moving in lockstep with rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the science isn't settled and we don't know everything we need to know.

David Warren offers more in this post from the Ottawa Citizen:

The news, for what it's worth, comes from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, in Kiel, Germany, prominently played in the international science journal Nature. The authors of the study applied existing knowledge of oscillations in ocean temperatures, especially in the North Atlantic, to computer models of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that show consistent upward trends. This had not been done before, and when it was, the IPCC's predicted 0.3°C rise in global atmospheric temperatures over the next decade was cancelled out.

Now to be fair, it must be said that these new predictions are based on the same IPCC computer models used to predict global warming. The same models which we know have been terribly unreliable.

Besides, the authors say that this newfound effect is probably only temporary and that global warming will likely resume again in 15 or 20 years. Talk about maintaining the party line while covering your ass at the same time! Actually, Roger Pielke Jr. sums it up pretty nicely this quote that I found at FuturePundit:

I am sure that this is an excellent paper by world class scientists. But when I look at the broader significance of the paper what I see is that there is in fact nothing that can be observed in the climate system that would be inconsistent with climate model predictions. If global cooling over the next few decades is consistent with model predictions, then so too is pretty much anything and everything under the sun.

This means that from a practical standpoint climate models are of no practical use beyond providing some intellectual authority in the promotional battle over global climate policy. I am sure that some model somewhere has foretold how the next 20 years will evolve (and please ask me in 20 years which one!). And if none get it right, it won't mean that any were actually wrong. If there is no future over the next few decades that models rule out, then anything is possible. And of course, no one needed a model to know that.

So if temperatures go up with GHG emissions, they have a model for that. If temperatures go down while GHG emissions go up, they have a model for that too!

Update: Steven Milloy - Can global warming’s vested interests close the deal on greenhouse gas regulation before the public wises up to their scam?