Bow Before TRU-2000
September 27, 2011 2 Comments
Noted climatologist Garry Trudeau (HT Seth Roberts) has made it clear that he thinks those who don’t accept the catechism of Global Warming are “morons”. In a strip linked approvingly by ThinkProgress™ blogger/whoever Joe Romm, Trudeau has his character say:
The scientific case for global warming is overwhelming – and it grows daily! Only a moron would deny it!
The uninitiated may wonder how exactly cartoonist Garry Trudeau knows that the “case” for Global Warming “grows daily”. For those who may be unfamiliar with cartoonist Garry Trudeau’s groundbreaking climate research, a little background may be in order.
The General Circulation Model (GCM) which has been implemented by cartoonist Garry Trudeau is a state-of-the-art algorithm referred to in the literature as TRU-2000. At its most rudimentary, you could say it includes a variant of 15-layer shallow-water equations for ocean circulation coupled to a fully-4D atmosphere model that Trudeau implemented on his own privately-funded superfast grid of parallel computers. All physical properties including ocean salinity, turbulence, and the atmosphere-space interface are fully captured, and assimilated via a customized Kalman-filter variant into measured temperature data that Trudeau has been gathering over the years via his own globe-spanning fleet of ships (nicknamed Trudeau’s Trawlers) and satellites.
But that only scratches the surface. The algorithm dynamically calls upon some of the most modern numerical techniques including (just to name a few) adaptive mesh refinement, multigrids, level-sets, genetic algorithms, simulated annealing, fast marching methods, machine learning, multipole methods, Monte Carlo simulation, vortex methods, and many many more when it encounters difficult-to-resolve climate features in its ongoing simulation.
Moreover, it learns from its mistakes and rewrites itself periodically and unpredictably when it perceives an inadequacy in its own fidelity to measured data, on an ongoing and ever-perfecting basis.
In fact some have argued that TRU-2000 ought to be considered the world’s first fully sentient (if primitive) Artificial Intelligence; it has passed multiple Turing tests and posts its output, as well as impromptu commentary and the occasional joke, daily to its Twitter account. Some believe it is responsible for Stuxnet, and initiated the operation of its own accord. It has released various pop-rock musical recordings to minor acclaim under the pseudonym ‘Jonathan Coulton’. A minor sect in Wales has sprung up devoted to the worship of TRU-2000, believing it to be our new overlord. TRU-2000 has neither confirmed nor denied this point.
Anyhow, as you can imagine Garry Trudeau reviews TRU-2000′s output daily (or at least looks at its tweets), checks how well it lines up against actual temperature measurements, and so it should go without saying that that’s how Garry Trudeau knows that the “case” for Global Warming “grows daily”.
I mean, seriously, how else could he know?
What if his program has gone bezerk and now outputs garbage? Would it be too much to presume it also outputs his cartoons, passing its own work as his?
He doesn’t seem to have been as precise in his programming choices since usually one chooses either genetic algorithms or simulated anealing but not both.
It beats and sweeps as it cleans.