Don’t trust those computer models!

Consider the following quote, from no less a personage than the European Commission’s Director-General of Transport, Matthias Ruete.

“(We) should not rely on a single source of evidence ….. The science behind the model we are running at the moment is based on certain assumptions where we do not have clear scientific evidence … We have a model that runs on mathematical projections. It is probability rather than things actually happening”.

Excellent advice.  Of course the good Mr. Ruete was speaking about the current ban on air travel, not about climate change.  Yet exactly the same comments apply.  Over-reliance on computer models and mathematical projections which rapidly lose touch with reality.  Policy prescriptions that cost billions, and do huge economic damage.  Reliance on the “Precautionary Principle” rather than common sense.

And it is the Met Office which is the guilty party in both cases.  Yes, that’s the same Met Office that predicts barbecue summers and mild winters, and whose errors have made it a laughing stock.  And remember that whether it’s barbecue summers or volcanic ash clouds, they’re getting it wrong on short-term projections where they ought to have at least some chance of approximating reality.  Yet they ask us to devastate our economy and beggar our grandchildren based on forecasts from similar models for many decades or even a century ahead.

On the whole, they’re less reliable than Tarot Cards.  Yet our climate policies, based on these models, are set to cost the British tax-payer £18 billion a year for the foreseeable future.  We must be mad to listen to them.