GOP Assholes Already "Attacking" Climate Models Now Turn Their Squirt Guns On Disease Modeling

[hatrack]

A vocal set of conservative critics in the United States have upped their attacks recently on the data modeling behind the novel coronavirus response, and they claim—despite scientific evidence to the contrary—that the flaws also prove the limits of climate change forecasts. The group, which includes federal lawmakers, climate science deniers and conservative pundits with close White House connections, has even called for congressional hearings into the coronavirus modeling.

That's in spite of assurances from public health officials that better-than-expected U.S. death estimates for COVID-19 are because millions of Americans responded to pleas for social distancing. The most-used model now forecasts 60,000 U.S. deaths rather than 100,000 or more. "After #COVID-19 crisis passes, could we have a good faith discussion about the uses and abuses of 'modeling' to predict the future?" Senator John Cornyn (R–TX) tweeted. "Everything from public health, to economic to climate predictions. It isn't the scientific method, folks."

Last week, Republicans on the House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee requested hearings into the models used by the government to craft the coronavirus response. The lead signatory on a letter demanding those hearings was Representative Chip Roy (R–TX), who previously has called for a "vigorous assessment" of climate science. The group, which includes a number of conservative climate critics, said it wants to probe the "assumptions behind these models."

EDIT

Those seeking to compare COVID-19 to climate modeling are actually using a high bar, observers say. A peer-reviewed analysis of 50 years of climate models published last year in Geophysical Research Letters found they "were generally quite accurate in predicting global warming in the years after publication" and a useful way of forecasting climate conditions. "Models are absolutely fundamental to doing any kind of science, and so people that rag on models without being specific about what it is they are even talking about are just really betraying that they don't understand how science works," said climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, an author of that paper and the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

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https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/us-conservatives-who-detest-climate-models-add-new-target-coronavirus-models

[LastDemocratInSC]

1. The outbreak of severe weather in the Southeast last weekend

Was predicted many days in advance using atmospheric modeling. It's stupid that we're even talking about this. What the wing nuts actually don't like is that reality doesn't conform to their notions.

[modrepub]

3. Climate Models

We’re used in the 1980s and 1990s to direct oil exploration. There were certain shoreline wind patters that became very useful for predicting areas where carbon bearing rock units could be found. Oil companies supported lots of researchers doing this work when I was in college. Most of the climate research that originally spawned the concern regarding global warming was an outgrowth of oil company sponsored climate modeling

[LastDemocratInSC]

4. Thank you for that. Very interesting.

[SheltieLover]

2. "Inconvenient"

So they ignore, displace blame etc. They are repulsive & need to be out of ALL positions of authority, esp in govt.