On wrong models and global warming

“It turns out none of our models were correct.� So says a spokesman for NASA and the Goddard Space Flight Center on the subject of predicting sun spots, solar minimums, maximums and the like. Hard to believe that human beings, scientists no less, could go over historical records, observe the sun, load their computers with the relevant data, and be so wrong.

It seems the sun is inactive and has been for a while. It has the nerve not to jive with what we say it should do. And this is NASA, where one hopes science trumps, or at least counterbalances, bureaucracy, politics and conventional wisdom. Saying, “We were wrong,� is a good sign. Perhaps the sun is a power greater than ourselves.

I want a job in journalism because I’m lazy. I want to be a blurb writer or editor for AP or Reuters where I can sit around waiting for press releases to come over the transom, dash off a quick synopsis and send it off on the wire. Hopefully, I can pick the stories that support my world view and ignore the rest. Then, my like-minded (dimwitted?) brethren (think “Today Show�) can spread the propaganda to the sheeple.

As a blurber, I wouldn’t know science if it fell on me. Nor would I care to ponder things like whether NASA can account for all the variables of the sun in their “modeling.� Perhaps NASA knows now that they can’t. I could have told them that and saved them all that work. By the way, is a computer model more of an experiment or a case study?

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The folks sitting around at Reuters recently fielded a pronouncement from the Global Humanitarian Forum (GBF) in Geneva. I’m confident the Reuters folks saw “Global Humanitarian Forum,� said, “Who can argue with that?� and passed it on to us.

It seems that global warming currently kills 315,000 humans per year. The GBF, as you all well know, is noted for having the finest scientists and statisticians in the world. Or did someone go out and count them all?

The piece went on to say that this year, global warming cost us all $125 billion per year. (What are the odds both numbers would be so nicely rounded?) Obviously, GBF’s numbers people and computer models are vastly superior to their NASA counterparts, who were predicting numbers of sunspots totaling fewer than than 100.

Adding to the staggering credibility of the GBF get-together was former United Nations boss and “food-for-oil� presider, Kofi Annan. Annan says global warming is “the greatest humanitarian challenge of our time.� The blurb doesn’t mention if he did so with a straight face.

He went on to say that the upcoming UN climate shindig in Copenhagen slated for December must buckle down times 10 and tackle that pesky climate change thing once and for all. Then he got to the point. Rather than the current paltry $400 million in international funding for planet-saving, he recommends $32 billion. More numbers pulled out of the “hat.� More wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Remember Barack Obama’s “This is the moment� exercise in grandiosity during the campaign? Specifically, the reference to the planet starting to “heal�? Note to the president: It’s been cooling since 1998. I guess Bill Clinton gets the credit...or could it be that 11-year sun cycle thing that peaked in ’98 and has yet to emerge, as predicted, from the doldrums? Or, maybe the hiding sunspots are getting a good chuckle out of this just like I do every time it snows when Al Gore comes to D.C. to pitch his global warming baloney.

Peter Chiesa is a Northwest Corner resident who is a semi-retired substance abuse professional.