[geeks] Global warming, was Mr Bill?

[der Mouse]

> I am really surprised, on a "geeks" list, that people would not take
> the time to actually do even a back-of-envelope rough guess on the
> computing power needed to model even 10,000 time steps of climate
> (say 30 years if each time step were a day), given the vast number of
> variables and the way they interact with each other, even assuming
> perfect knowledge of oceans, the Gulf Stream, the Pacific High, etc.
> [...]
> Therefore all claims of "working climate models that have useful
> predictions" are bunk.

They may indeed be bunk, but that argument doesn't demonstrate it.

It demonstrates not that useful weather/climate models don't exist, but
rather, that if they do exist they aren't done the way you outline.  It
strikes me as entirely possible that useful predictions can still
result after simplifying the models in various ways, or perhaps by
doing something completely other than tick-by-tick simulations.

I do not consider myself competent to comment on whether useful
weather/climate models do exist; I am not a climatologist.

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