Most Climate Models Simulate Amazon Poorly

Now how are we supposed to rely on such models that have known defects? I believe the answer is that we have to trust Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore. New Scientist has the details.

Sulphates, largely produced from coal-burning power plants, are known to reflect sunlight back into space, cooling the land and ocean below, and counteracting some of heating from greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

Levels of sulphates over North America rose until the 1970s, and then fell as increases in respiratory disease and acid rain led to tougher pollution controls.

What this also meant, Cox realised, is that some of the effects of climate change might have been underestimated in models, which have not traditionally included sulphates.

Cox and his colleagues looked again at the triggers of Amazonian rainfall, using a global climate model developed by the Hadley Centre in Devon, UK – one of the few that simulates the Amazon and the surrounding ocean fairly well. The researchers ran the model with and without emissions of the sulphate particles, or aerosols.

Only with realistic sulphate emissions included, both from human activity and from volcanic eruptions, did the model correctly predict the Amazon's rainfall over the 20th century.

I believe IPCC uses 22 or 23 models and averages the results to make climate predictions. However, that makes no sense if we know that all but a very few of them are wrong. Even that is stretching it. We know from this article that even the good models leave things out. I suppose the bad modelers need a paycheck too. But calling all that science is stretching things. It seems more like an exercise in wallet extraction.

H/T LarryD in a comment at Prediction.