Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 332 posts

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#111

Post by KevinEldon »

derg wrote: post #19
adrianN wrote: post #3

Well, politicians aren't doing anything anyway, whether the models predict catastrophe or CATASTROPHE. Already according to the 3° sensitivity predictions we would need an effort that rivals WW2 to stay below 1.5°. Yet major countries are led by climate denialists.

Can you even imagine how a Total War economy/society based on transitioning to greener energies, cutting emissions and pollutants, and working on improvements to housing and urban planning would end up looking? Like ignoring the whole climate change thing for a moment (though we absolutely should not do that), just the quality of life improvements to our health and well being this kind of mobilization would bring wou…

Germany had a Total War economy in WW2. North Korea has one today. The Russian Revolution might not be considered 'Total War', but was single-minded in its focus similar to what you're suggesting. None of these economies worked out well for their citizens. Even the US economy/society during WW2 was more than victory gardens and war bonds; personal freedoms were limited, there were interment camps, forced enlistment, war profiteering, and propaganda (along with the hundreds of thousands of deaths).

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#113

Post by k33n »

Accujack wrote: post #66
klodolph wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a third, frustrating possibility—the new cloud model is more accurate, but some other inaccuracy in the model used to be balanced out by the inaccurate cloud model.

Or that there are multiple inaccuracies in the model which interact, so finding and correcting each one makes progress but still doesn't improve the model overall.

Software is fun :)

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#114

Post by WA »

chrisco255 wrote: post #59
0xffff2 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a problem and you can't do anything about it. We are way past the point where individual action is going to cut it. You have to vote. No other action is going to have a meaningful impact and you shouldn't pretend otherwise because it makes you feel better about yourself.

You going to vote out Xi Jinping?

China is actually also doing a lot pro-climate. Also, reading this as a German: I think the U. S. can do a lot first, before pointing their finger to China. Same for Germany btw., because we have similar discussions here as well like "why should we do anything? The US and China are the culprits".

You can follow this logic all the way down to an individual level.

If China doesn't do anyting, the US doesn't have to do anything either. If the US doesn't do anything, Germany doesn't have to do anything either. If not Germany, then not Munich. If not Munich, then not our little town. If not our neighbor, then me neither.

Everybody and every country should do whatever they can. Will it be enough? Probably not. But you gotta start where you actually have some control.

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#115

Post by protanopia »

adrianN wrote: post #3

Well, politicians aren't doing anything anyway, whether the models predict catastrophe or CATASTROPHE. Already according to the 3° sensitivity predictions we would need an effort that rivals WW2 to stay below 1.5°. Yet major countries are led by climate denialists.

Why is a 1.5° maximum a target that should be aimed for? William Nordhaus says a 3.5° maximum is the optimal target. His models show that a 3.5° maximum would result in a net benefit of 30 trillion whereas a 2.5° maximum would be a detriment of 50 trillion[1]. That is to say the reduction in damage would be far less than the cost of implementing such a policy. The cost for a 1.5° maximum target would be even more severe.

[1]W. Nordhaus, “Projections and Uncertainties about Climate Change in an Era of Minimal Climate Policies,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 333–360, Aug. 2018, doi: 10.1257/pol.20170046.

edit: This comment is currently sitting at -2. If you think a 1.5° target is optimal, you should explain why you think so rather than just down voting this post. The paper I linked to is by William Nordhaus who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2018 for his work related to the economics of climate change.

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#116

Post by rriepe »

justadudeama wrote: post #23

I am not a climate change denier by a long shot, but stories like these give a ding to the credibility of climate scientists. > "So we can't throw them out yet." This might be an elementary view of science, but I think there is a danger here that while everyone is making their models, if anyone is an outlier they go and tweak their model to match the patterns of others: 'Klaus Wyser’s group "switched off" some of the…

This idea, along with the null hypothesis, are simply not honored by this part of the scientific community. Climategate proved this ten years ago. It's a doomsday cult and they'll stick you with the "D" word if you don't narrative-fit. Check out Ned Nikolov's work for a better alternate theory.

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#117

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

JackFr wrote: post #85
orev wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tweaking the inputs would help one to identify what factor is causing the difference, which allows you to focus on that. It doesn’t mean you permanently leave it out. And it does not make a credibility issue. This is how science works — it is a process that strives to be as accurate as possible, not come up with a static answer and stick to it (that’s what religion does). The ability for science to change and adapt i…

But it should make the scientists more circumspect about public policy recommendations. They're not making evidence-based policy, if yesterday's models are evidence and today's models are not. > This is how science works — it is a process that strives to be as accurate as possible, not come up with a static answer and stick to it (that’s what religion does). That's fine. Many public policy advocates throw around the…

> That's fine. Many public policy advocates throw around the term 'settled science'. But based on what you said, is there such a thing?

Yes, there is. Just because there is no absolute certainty, doesn't mean it's all just baseless speculation. Just because, as a matter of scientific methodology, atomic theory is not absolutely certain (i.e., we could hypothetically find evidence that contradicts the model), doesn't mean someone just made it up and it has no predictive power.

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#118

Post by cm2187 »

justadudeama wrote: post #23

I am not a climate change denier by a long shot, but stories like these give a ding to the credibility of climate scientists. > "So we can't throw them out yet." This might be an elementary view of science, but I think there is a danger here that while everyone is making their models, if anyone is an outlier they go and tweak their model to match the patterns of others: 'Klaus Wyser’s group "switched off" some of the…

That's the main problem I have with climate science. They don't really have the luxury of proving by experimentation, and I have seen enough perfectly good backtestings in my industry (finance) that go wildely off as soon as they go live, that I have a fundamental mistrust of backtesting as a way to calibrate a predictive model.

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#119

Post by protanopia »

jknoepfler wrote: post #35
lbsnake7 wrote: post #30

I’m a climate change skeptic almost entirely because I don’t trust models. I believe there are too many dynamic things happening in the world for anyone to be able to predict accurately say the next 100 years (solar, earthquakes, volcanoes etc). One way to make me a believer though is an experiment: if I were to give you a 100 year stretch of history and you were able to accurately predict with the models what exactl…

So if I asked you to bet at 50/50 odds that next year would be colder on average than this year, you'd take the bet?

Are you asking about the weather in one specific year? Weather is not climate.

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#120

Post by microtonal »

chrisco255 wrote: post #73

A model isn't reality. A lot of climate research is based entirely on experimenting with these climate models. Of course, the climate is a non-linear dynamic system, so even if you had a perfect model (we don't), if your input parameters were off by the slightest bit, reality would veer off wildly from your prediction within a short time. This is why weather forecasts don't work beyond 10 days.

A lot of climate research is based entirely on experimenting with these climate models.

We have a lot of data measured at many points on Earth spanning many decades. The data clearly shows that our planet is warming up and that there is a strong correlation with greenhouse gasses. One can extrapolate from these data points with certain reliability.

What is hard is to take into account are tipping points (which is why the IPCC excludes them in their projections), such as the effects of methane release from warming tundra soil. As far as I understand, most known possible tipping points only make things worse, not better.

At this point the question is not if climate change is happening (there is near universal agreement on that among climatologists), but whether it will be bad, but manageable, it will be ugly, or life-threatening to mankind. In any of these cases, we have to act now.

Post reply on HN