Public faith in computer models ‘unjustified’

­CLIMATE CHANGE

Public concern about man-made climate change has been fuelled by people’s unwarranted confidence in the outputs of climate computer models, according to a modelling expert.

“I’m constantly meeting people who think that computers are oracles or gods,” Christopher Essex, professor and associate chair in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, told an audience in the House of Lords last week. 

Essex said many people didn’t realise that “inside a computer is a completely artificial world”.

Essex, who began his career in climate modelling in the 1970s,   defended the practice of modelling but said the outputs of climate models had been “oversold” by people who “don’t know what’s in them” and “bought” by people who “don’t know what’s in them”.

Public discussion about climate change was divorced from the scientific discussion of the subject, said Essex, whose talk focused on six problems of mathematics and physics that prevent accurate climate forecasting.

He expressed scepticism about the large temperature rises that models predict as a result of rising concentrations of CO2. 

People needed to understand that, in the history of science, the ‘consensus’ position on topics had often proved wrong. “This is very typical in science: you have individuals who are bucking the trend. These ‘lone star’ characters have to be respected. But in this case they’ve become political targets. 

“Climate science has been set back a generation by that.”

Essex was last year appointed a member of the academic advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which is sceptical of the alarmist predictions of man-made climate change.