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Browser-based climate change simulation

en-roads.climateinteractive.org

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Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#111

Post by papreclip »

mar77i wrote: post #77

No sane setting gets us down to 2°C. I don't feel taken seriously. Can I get a slider for the frequency of volcanic eruptions? On a slightly more serious note, can we tame volcanoes by somehow - ideally - producing energy and ... prevent eruptions, somewhat comparable to the way earth wires actively do so with lightning strikes?

I want a slider that lets you shrink the population (not just "low growth"). Climate change is just one of many ways that overpopulation is negatively impacting all life on earth.

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#112

Post by jazzyjackson »

phaemon wrote: post #97
mistermann wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there was one model that happened to come up with the right prediction, I would assume there were multiple. But my questions is whether there was one model with consensus support (which seems to be the claim), which would be necessary to rule out survivorship bias.

> Surely there was one model that happened to come up with the right prediction What does that mean? This "model" is someone sitting down and, using what we know of physics, calculating how something will warm up when you add some extra energy (in this case, the earth). You surely don't think that physics works by people randomly guessing answers and then one of them "happened" to be correct? You don't, do you?!

When a thousand hedge funds hire mathematicians and economists to create models of the global economy so that they can predict whether individual stocks will move up or down over different timescales, their task is similar to predicting the weather. Some will beat the market, many won't. Are they guessing?

Maybe that's a bad analogy, but my point is that climate is a chaotic system, and detailed models might be right and might be wrong. It's not that the scientists are guessing, of course the science is methodical - but the performance of the model might not be better than guessing, hence the speculation of survivorship bias. There were lots of climate models over the last century, was there consensus around a paper that is now proven correct? Or were there a hundred models that were off and one that, yes, happened to be correct. I don't know the answer.

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#113

Post by multiplegeorges »

mistermann wrote: post #82
hanniabu wrote: post #66

This is great and all, but what can we do about the people that don't believe this data? That's where the real issue is. I have a bunch of coworkers that think scientists are making up this data and skewing results because their jobs depend on it and they want to continue to get funding. "Follow the money" is a common thing they say in regards to this, but also conveniently disregarded and deny that big oil/coal have…

Some thoughts for your consideration, delivered with collaborative intent: > I have a bunch of coworkers that think scientists are making up this data and skewing results because their jobs depend on it and they want to continue to get funding. FWIW, I also happen to harbor this suspicion. How might one actually know whether there is an element of truth to it? > "Follow the money" is a common thing they say in regard…

It seems you misunderstand what scientists are saying and forming an incorrect opinion from that.

> I will confess, referring to climate models that are literally estimated projections of future temperatures as "facts", very much rubs me the wrong way.

The projections are statistical models. They have a range of values and probabilities associated with them. Without major change, the probabilities of catastrophic climate change are very, very high.

Are they certain? Not mathematically, no.

Would I take that bet? Any day of the week and you should too.

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#114

Post by surewhynat »

solarwind wrote: post #103
hanniabu wrote: post #66

This is great and all, but what can we do about the people that don't believe this data? That's where the real issue is. I have a bunch of coworkers that think scientists are making up this data and skewing results because their jobs depend on it and they want to continue to get funding. "Follow the money" is a common thing they say in regards to this, but also conveniently disregarded and deny that big oil/coal have…

It's not about climate it's about political control. It's a political boogeyman. Left wing politicians have successfully brainwashed a generation to believe they’re gonna die in 12 years unless socialists and communists control our planet and the lives of everyone on it. I was a huge believer in Climate Change as a youth. I wanted to save the environment. Then I caught one lie. Then two. Then three. Then I read the c…

So your big point is that it's all a big "maybe."

Aren't you missing a rather larger point that we're also currently polluting the planet in the process, smog, water tables, rivers, ocean trash, deforestation, excess meat consumption linked to chronic disease?

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#115

Post by lcam84 »

staltz wrote: post #13

Interesting tool. It basically says you can: - Tax coal, oil, natural gas, bioenergy - Subsidize renewables, nuclear, new technology - Increase efficiency and electrification of transports, buildings, and industry - Reduce population growth - Reduce economic growth - Reduce deforestation - Increase afforestation For an effect that puts us at +2.1C by 2100 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p1=120..…

We should set the economic growth to less than zero but odly it only can be set between 1.7% and 3.7%.

Sadly we can image the end of the world but not the end of capitalism

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#116

Post by allovernow »

solarwind wrote: post #103
hanniabu wrote: post #66

This is great and all, but what can we do about the people that don't believe this data? That's where the real issue is. I have a bunch of coworkers that think scientists are making up this data and skewing results because their jobs depend on it and they want to continue to get funding. "Follow the money" is a common thing they say in regards to this, but also conveniently disregarded and deny that big oil/coal have…

It's not about climate it's about political control. It's a political boogeyman. Left wing politicians have successfully brainwashed a generation to believe they’re gonna die in 12 years unless socialists and communists control our planet and the lives of everyone on it. I was a huge believer in Climate Change as a youth. I wanted to save the environment. Then I caught one lie. Then two. Then three. Then I read the c…

One other interesting point to add to the list. If you look at plots of historic CO2 estimates derived from the Vostok ice core [1], you'll notice that we are presently at the very peak (in time) of a climate cycle that aligns almost perfectly with four other cycles from the last ≈400k years. Now two points here:

1. It is extremely unlikely that anthropogenic emissions would align so conveniently with the tip of a natural climate cycle. There must be some other factor underlying the correlation, and/or the influence of human emissions is overstated.

2. The argument is that there is an alarming discrepancy between current measured CO2 and historic data derived from cores. However, core data is an estimate based on a number of assumptions regarding capture and diffusion of gasses during and post ice formation, and I have not come across any literature which questions whether ice core derived CO2 values may underestimate historic CO2 levels. Indeed, there are hints from plant data that this may be the case, but publishing such a conclusion would probably be career suicide in the current politicized academic climate.

The first point alone indicates that some natural degree of warming is to be expected at this point in natural climate variations, something which is never mentioned by proponents of climate change. The second point, if true, would mean that the effects of human activity on global climate are over stated and the current evolution of the system is normal, beyond our control, and/or has happened in the past almost exactly as it is happening now.

1. http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/ice-co...

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#117

Post by marcosdumay »

rwc wrote: post #21
staltz wrote: post #13

Interesting tool. It basically says you can: - Tax coal, oil, natural gas, bioenergy - Subsidize renewables, nuclear, new technology - Increase efficiency and electrification of transports, buildings, and industry - Reduce population growth - Reduce economic growth - Reduce deforestation - Increase afforestation For an effect that puts us at +2.1C by 2100 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p1=120..…

There comes a point where the model no longer accepts any progress beyond a +1.0C increase. No matter how many additional actions taken, the floor is +1.0C. It seems the immediate extinction of the human race would still result in an increase in temperature. Is there research that backs this up?

It has a ~10x growth on energy usage until 2080 backed in, you can increase it to ~15x or decrease it to ~8x, but nothing else. The only way to reasonably decrease it is growing energy efficiency, the population and GDP growth settings do not change enough to make a difference.

The ramp-up and total of renewables have an unrealistic low ceiling. No matter what, one can not get a clean exponential growth until they dominate the electricity generation, and the only way to make them actually dominate the generation is to destroy every fossil fuel capacity (that last one is highly not realistic).

Fossil fuels are assumed to be available on unlimited amounts. One can simulate their limits, but it takes a lot of care about the integral of the curves. Honestly, I think that the idea that we can double the production of any one that is not coal highly unrealistic.

Technological carbon capture is hilariously underpowered. For a slide that represents "stuff people may invent", it looks like they do not accept anything that wasn't invented yet.

On the other side, they completely ignored all of the huge natural methane reserves around the Earth. If you imagined you could simulate the ocean methane hydrates volatilizing on some rate, well, tough luck.

Overall, it's a restricted simulator around the "business as usual" analysis people do on climate. It is highly unreasonable to expect business to stay as usual for a century, but analysis is tippicaly done that way because there is no better baseline to use. A simulator does not have this restriction, so imposing it by parameter limits is unsettling.

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#118

Post by marcosdumay »

staltz wrote: post #13

Interesting tool. It basically says you can: - Tax coal, oil, natural gas, bioenergy - Subsidize renewables, nuclear, new technology - Increase efficiency and electrification of transports, buildings, and industry - Reduce population growth - Reduce economic growth - Reduce deforestation - Increase afforestation For an effect that puts us at +2.1C by 2100 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p1=120..…

You can do anything, as long as it is not much different from what we do today.

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#119

Post by marcosdumay »

ocschwar wrote: post #73
linuxftw wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm firmly in the camp that CO2 has little to nothing to do with the temperature of the planet. Fact 1: The earth has been warming since the last ice age. Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently Fact 3: Water vapor accounts for almost all of the greenhouse effect. A planet that was already warming is going to continue to warm unless the energy input is changed. Speculative: Some people believe the data has been m…

> Fact 1: The earth has been warming since the last ice age. The Milankovitch cycles have crested since that warming. Without the CO2 we would be cooling. > Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently Citation needed. Furthermore, if you can explain how an increase in the solar output woudl warm the arctic more than the tropics, there's a Nobel waiting for you. > Fact 3: Water vapor accounts for almost all of the gre…

> > Fact 3: Water vapor accounts for almost all of the greenhouse effect.

> Water vapor has a habit of coming down as rain.

The GP is using a non-sequitur, taking a correct fact to support a falsehood. That water vapor comes down as rain does not make it any less important as a greenhouse gas.

What the GP does not say is that the amount of water vapor on the atmosphere is roughly proportional to the temperature, so it's only participation is in increasing the effects of the other gasses we emit directly.

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#120

Post by mistermann »

phaemon wrote: post #97
mistermann wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there was one model that happened to come up with the right prediction, I would assume there were multiple. But my questions is whether there was one model with consensus support (which seems to be the claim), which would be necessary to rule out survivorship bias.

> Surely there was one model that happened to come up with the right prediction What does that mean? This "model" is someone sitting down and, using what we know of physics, calculating how something will warm up when you add some extra energy (in this case, the earth). You surely don't think that physics works by people randomly guessing answers and then one of them "happened" to be correct? You don't, do you?!

> What does that mean?

It means that if you are dealing with a complex multivariate system where the behavior of individual variables is not perfectly understood, let alone the behavior in an interactive system, and you are building multiple systems to model the environment and output a prediction between 1 and 10, undoubtedly some of the models will be correct (since you are predicting within such a small range), but there is no good way of knowing whether the correct prediction is due to proper modeling, to chance, or to some combination of the two.

> You surely don't think that physics works by people randomly guessing answers...

No, I do not think this.

> ...and then one of them "happened" to be correct?

Yes, in that I am suggesting that this is a possibility.

> You don't, do you?!

Rereading my comment, I see no actual content that suggests I believe this.

I wonder, if you were to reread my comment while keeping in mind the theory of System1/System2 thinking [1], do you still reach the same conclusion?

And for clarity, while this may seem (again, see [1]) that I am antagonizing you, I am actually and sincerely trying to make what I consider to be an incredibly important and overlooked point: the manner in which human beings think, on particular (culture war, identity related) topics, is a core problem that is preventing forward progress on not only climate change, but a wide variety of issues.

I am completely open to the idea that this theory is incorrect, but it seems almost no one who is even willing to acknowledge the possibility that it may be correct - an observable phenomenon which I proclaim further supports the theory.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Summar...

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