There have been many blog posts about the new release, version 3.0, of the NCAR climate model CCSM3 (Community Climate System Model version 3). It has a few tweaks and gets different results than previous versions. Version 4 will too as will every new version or alternative model since a great deal of such models is based on immature science, fudge factors and assumptions.

It is simultaneously a marvelous thing that organizes much current knowledge about atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial processes, and an ultimately useless laboratory curiosity that may in some future develop into a tool. Its only current use is in politics.

This post at worldchanging is a good example. It is unremarkable, neither as rabidly pro or con as many others, but neatly demonstrates a sort of naive boosterism and obdurate refusal to think clearly that defines one segment of the chattering class. wordlchanging is a group blog that includes several fellow travelers in this band of boosters, and reliably communicates that perspective in posts.

One of the standard global warming denial attempts is the claim that the problems are artifacts of poor models. As the above shows, the opposite is true. The better we understand the systems at work, the more we see the trouble we're in.

Thus demonstrating a lack of understanding about modelling and a bias immune to information. Even the most cursory examination of the model will reveal many missing variables, things that are currently not well enough understood to include. No honest scientists will claim that we have sufficient understanding to accurately model the whole system. Even the most important GHG, water vapor, doesn't yet have a theoretical model of the spectrum of water and absorption of radiation by water vapour though it determines many characteristics of our atmosphere.

Physicists are diligently working on this and many other problems. Each new discovery and implementation advances our knowledge. But only politicians and journalists have full comprehension of the climatic effects of GHGs at this time, though physicists may catch up soon by constructing an accurate and comprehensive theoretical model and doing some super-computational fiddling with the effects of special relativity, quantum electrodynamics and the coupled motions of electrons and nuclei.

True believers require very little by way of evidence, especially when it is merely a pretense for doing what they want to do anyway; take control of everything they can whether they have any ability to improve the lot of humanity or not. Control is the only real objective, as we have seen as issue after issue has been touted as sufficient reason to seize power, only to fade and be replaced by the new threat ™.

It's worth being clear why we should both point and laugh at these excitable children who lose their mud over each newly recognized threat no matter how remote or ultimately unremarkable; they make things worse. By jumping to conclusions and marshalling forces to march against dimly perceived enemies they fail to notice other threats, cease learning about broad issues, and inhibit progress even against their chosen enemy.

Climate change is potentially a serious threat though we have little grasp of issues yet. We have no credible responses available to us yet, we require better technologies and have no idea whatsoever how to engage the whole world in a global endeavor. Current political proposals such as Kyoto are bad jokes that would do nothing but provide work for bureaucrats. Panicked deployment of existing alternative energy sources would be far too little and far too late to make a difference. Worse, there is every reason to believe that such systems would be obsolete before deployed since we are making technological progress.

The proper thing to do is just what we are doing; diligently study the problem and encourage everyone, everywhere to apply their creative genius to improving their own local environment and share their experiences with others.