Electricity is very expensive in Colorado because of green energy regulations, so NCAR is building their latest climate supercomputer in Wyoming.
New Wyoming supercomputer expected to boost atmospheric science The National Center for Atmospheric Research’s machine is one of the fastest computers ever built, its sheer speed designed to burst through the limits of chaos theory.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research’s supercomputer has been dubbed Yellowstone, after the nearby national park, but it could have been named Nerdvana. The machine will have 100 racks of servers and 72,000 core processors, so many parts that they must be delivered in the back of a 747. Yellowstone will be capable of performing 1.5 quadrillion calculations — a quadrillion is a 1 followed by 15 zeros — every second.
That’s nearly a quarter of a million calculations, each second, for every person on Earth. In a little more than an hour, Yellowstone can do as many calculations as there are grains of sand on every beach in the world.
“These are chaotic systems, but it’s just math,” said Richard Loft, director of technology development at NCAR’s Computational and Information Systems Laboratory. “We play statistics in the climate game. We feed in the basic laws of science, and out comes something that looks like the Earth’s climate. It’s an instrument. This is a mathematical telescope.”
New Wyoming supercomputer expected to boost atmospheric science – latimes.com
I know Richard, and he is a very bright computer scientist. The problem is that many of “the basic laws of science” are not understood and not modeled. For example, clouds can’t be modeled with any degree of accuracy more than a few minutes in advance. Scientists also have little predictive skill for ocean patterns like ENSO more than a few weeks in advance.
NCAR can throw a ton of hardware at climate modeling, but all it will do is generate GIGO faster than before.
Translation: I gradumigated top of my class in j-school! Hook ’em, Ducks! Class of 1993, yeah!
“We play statistics in the climate game. We feed in the basic laws of science, and out comes something that looks like the Earth’s climate.”
“I know Richard, and he is a very bright computer scientist. ”
But he sounds like a bad liar.
Probably just repeating what the climate modelers tell him.
Feeding trash into it, the super duper computer will produce the same old predetermined garbage a few seconds faster.
How far do you think they’ll go before they realize that size doesn’t matter, it’s the way you use it?
“Electricity is very expensive in Colorado because of green energy regulations, so NCAR is building their latest climate supercomputer in Wyoming.”
You don’t suppose the fact that the Wyoming legislature shovelled oodles of money at this thing in a vain effort to a) look green, and b) look high tech, had anything to do with it?
REP. ISSA: If I asked you a question. You know the answer. Would you please answer it. If you sweep the floor in a solar panel facility, is that a green job?
MR. GALVIN: Yes.
REP. ISSA: Thank you. If you drive a hybrid bus — public transportation — is that a green job?
MR. GALVIN: According to our definition, yes.
REP. ISSA: Thank you. What if you’re a college professor teaching classes about environmental studies?
MR. GALVIN: Yes.
REP. ISSA: What about just any school bus driver?
MR. GALVIN: Yes.
REP. ISSA: What about the guy who puts gas in the school bus?
MR. GALVIN: Yes.
REP. ISSA: How about employees at a bicycle shop?
MR. GALVIN: I guess I’m not sure about that.
REP. ISSA: The answer is yes, according to your definition. And you’ve got a lot of them. What about a clerk at the bicycle repair shop?
MR. GALVIN: Yes.
REP. ISSA: What about someone who works in an antique dealer?
MR. GALVIN: I’m not sure about that either.
REP. ISSA: The answer is yes. Those are — those are recycled goods. They’re antiques; they’re used. What about someone who works at the Salvation Army in their clothing recycling and furniture?
MR. GALVIN: Right. Because they’re selling recycled goods….
REP. ISSA: Does the teenage kid who works full time at a used record shop count?
MR. GALVIN: Yes.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/exploding_the_green_jobs_myth/
It’s essentially as Steve has described it. What is also ironic here is that having a super computer running the numbers essentially adds nothing to the accuracy of a climate model forecast.
Sceptics have reproduced the same forecasts running an Excel spreadsheet. See:
http://climateaudit.org/2011/05/15/willis-on-giss-model-e/