The BBC's Distributed Climate Prediction

CongoJoe writes "The BBC has teamed up with Oxford University to conduct the world's most ambitious climate modeling experiment." From the article: "Trying to predict climate change is hard. There are lots of factors involved - air temperature, sea temperature and cloud cover all play a part - as do dozens of other variables. Therefore, there are a huge number of calculations involved ... Using a technique known as distributed computing, we're hoping to harness the power of thousands of PCs around the world. If 10,000 people sign up, we'll be faster than the world's biggest computer. And we're hoping to be even better than that."

Comments

Re: Doesn't matter...

[fyngyrz]

...anyway; we can't possibly predict climate without taking technological changes into account, and we can't do that at all.

Technology is the single biggest human factor that we have reason to believe affects climate; it is the primary whipping boy for the "we're killing our planet" hysterics, after all, yet none of these "studies" can even make a start at predicting what is going to be the motive and/or non-motive power technology set du jour in twenty, fifty, two hundred years. Although we do know that it almost certainly won't be oil, because there won't be enough left to use economically for such purposes. Both power transport/storage and method of generation are questions that are totally up in the air. For generation, fusion? Fission? Solar? Tidal? Trans-dimensional down-level leakage? Other? For storage and transport, hydrogen? Ultrabatteries? Other? We have absolutely no idea. What about transport efficiency? Will friction continue to be an energy sink? Maglev? Vacuum containers? Anti-bloody-gravity?

And then there are issues like volcanic activity, solar activity, the Earth's magnetic field is weakening...

Predicting climate without knowing what all these major inputs to the system are going to do is like trying to predict the weather without wind, humidity and temperature information. A random number generator would likely do as well.

The whole thing is an exercise in naval gazing and cynical grant-acquisition.

Of course, it does make a great distraction from the real issues of the day such as multi-national erosion of civil rights, the United States' current attempt to inflict an empire of democracy upon nations that are operating under other systems, starvation in large portions of Africa...

How... convenient.

Re: FLAMEBAIT???

[fyngyrz]

I'm not the least bit concerned with the moderation as the implied comment the moderator made with it; that wasn't flamebait, it was bloody fact is what it was. You cannot, repeat CANNOT, predict climate in any even vaguely accurate manner without those inputs. Clearly, the moderator who marked that post flamebait doesn't understand simulation OR science. Not to mention was too much of a know-nothing to try and contest the actual point I was making.

Anyone who thinks you can create a predictive simulation without critical data that is KNOWN to modify the situation needs their head examined.