8 - Occam’s Razor

Summary

The concept of Occam’s Razor, also known as the principle of parsimony, is a motivating force in science. Galileo’s experiment of dropping objects of different weights from atop the Leaning Tower of Pisa to show that they fall at the same rate is an illustration of this principle. But the application of Occam’s Razor to climate modeling is less straightforward. Simple models of the kind used by Manabe provide qualitative insights, but they are not well-suited for quantitative predictions. To understand this, we can make an analogy between the hierarchy of climate models and the hierarchy of biological models, from fruit fly to mouse. Simple models are used to explore “climate tipping points,” where amplifying feedbacks lead to abrupt climate change, but they may not consider all the stabilizing feedbacks. It is therefore important to use a hierarchy of models, with varying degrees of complexity, to study climate phenomena.