DocMartyn quoted me in an unfair way – giving only part in the statements:
while leaving off the full quote: “Second, it is a mistake in modeling is to expect computer models to reveal new knowledge. They may, but it is likely they will reveal only our scientific expectations.”
Because of the errors (other than the quote), I’d like to elaborate the point I made. One great question of mathematical physics is whether the point mass model of the solar system, a Newtonian N-body problem, is stable. If that could be established, it would represent new knowledge about the N-body problem and open new areas of research on the motion of the physical solar system. That new knowledge could never be accomplished by any computer model. Nor could a computer model disprove stability.
Any computer model of this problem isn’t even the math model of the problem because it involves approximations of non-linear differential equations whose errors will grow by reason of the non-linearity and eventually computational solutions will diverge from the mathematical one.
Even though we can build SW that can guide us around the moon and planets, that SW creates no new knowledge about the math N-body problem. But SW orbital models have helped us to understand our lumpy earth by the deviations that earth produced on satellites which we demonstrated we understood by modeling the lumps and matching prediction to experience with nature.
GCMs can’t predict the climate next year — nature is telling us that we don’t understand it well even if the SW has zero defects. There are a lot of reasons for that failure — failure to understand the science is the concern now, not SW quality.