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

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

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've solved plenty of problems at scale; think ozone layer depletion being reduced. The problem with climate change is that it is really expensive to fix with highly uncertain costs to do so.

Climate action has a net negative cost; spending $10 will get you more than $10 of benefit for almost any intervention you'd care to name. So it's not expensive in any long-run calculation, only the short-run.

Certainly high ROI ones (say not building new coal power plants), but definitely not the lower ROI interventions.

Nor is cost net negative if you use high discount rates and try lower co2 targets (e.g. 3 degrees warming by 2100 is much more likely to have positive ROI than say holding 2 degrees). Huge controversy around protecting against lower probability, highly destructive scenarios. Point is there's lots of controversy here.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_climate_change_...

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

#252

I'm reminded of Feynman's famous anecdote about the Millikan oil drop experiment: Millikan underestimated the charge of the electron, and over the ensuing years, subsequent measurements slowly but surely converged on the correct value. Why? Because experimenters who got the correct value figured it must be too high, and ran the experiment again until they got a more-erroneous value, one that was nonetheless higher. E…

I'm reminded of Feynman's famous anecdote about the Millikan oil drop experiment: Millikan underestimated the charge of the electron, and over the ensuing years, subsequent measurements slowly but surely converged on the correct value.

Why? Because experimenters who got the correct value figured it must be too high, and ran the experiment again until they got a more-erroneous value, one that was nonetheless higher. Eventually it worked itself out.

But climate modeling isn't measuring something objective and static like the charge of the electron. It's prediction. I'm afraid that the incentives are to credit models that predict less warming just a bit more than those which predict more; the expected effect would be that the predicted warming effect would only slowly approach the more dreadful reality.

Please note that I'm not calling climate science a "Cargo Cult", as Feynman put it; I accept the basic premise of anthropogenic warming on first principles, and see that historic measurements (not to speak of recent ones) show a warming trend. There is cause to be extremely concerned.

Nonetheless, it would be surprising if climate modeling, which is inherently inexact and involves irreducible guesswork, didn't drift toward the less alarming, due to similar social forces to those identified in Feynman's essay.

You're not actually saying anything of merit here. Flipping the sign on your paragraphs requires almost no work to get a meaningful result (which doesnt contradict known facts). You've made an assertion (climate models are likely to overpredict warming rather than underpredict) and handwave at some random shit that makes it sound nice. The actual assertion has zero argument behind it.

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

#253
post #213
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a 5C (9F) warming is not "CATASTROPHE." See: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ucenergy/2018/12/05/will-global... > While it is true that we estimated damages as high as 10% of GDP annually at the end of the century for warming of 15°F above pre-industrial levels, the odds of a temperature change that would drive damages of this magnitude are slim. In fact, they are less than 1-in-100 by our original calculation. Und…

Also from that link: > Our localized approach to studying the relationship between climate and society reveals that the burden is spread unevenly. In many counties, GDP decline could total more than 10% by 2100, and in the worst-hit county, Florida's Union County, losses could near 28% for a likely warming scenario under continued emissions growth (the 7°F median change, not the extreme 15°F change highlighted in pre…

It's only catastrophic if we don't respond appropriately to mitigating the impact in hard-hit areas, and even then only to a relatively small number of people. Retooling our system to perform that mitigation is a much more limited task than the "total war economy" people are talking about to address climate change.

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

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone else pointed out, the New Deal, which gave us massive infrastructure projects that we still rely on and helped set the stage for postwar prosperity.

The impact of the New Deal on post-war prosperity is debatable, but I want to focus on two different points. First, the New Deal mobilization is small in comparison to what has been proposed in the context of the "Green New Deal." From 1930 to 1940, total government spending (at all levels), jumped from 12% to 18%. That's 6% of GDP, or about $1.17 trillion annually. It's unclear what folks who use the phrase "total w…

This demonstrates nothing other to me that the complexity of Capitalist economies and their industries grows over time in such a way that requires further state intervention and support to undergird them. This is true across most of the developed world and in regimes like China and likely will only expand in the future. Especially if Capitalism is to possibly survive the destructive consequences of its externalities.

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what climate is about. Also, it depends on location, in many places it was colder in 2019 than in 2018. If you're talking about some calculated "global" temperature, it doesn't exist in a valid form.

On a crude first pass, I will accept any combination of the following datasets, assuming they are updated in 2020 and 2021: HadCRUT4 (from UK Met Office Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit) GISTEMP from the NASA GISS MLOST from the NOAA JMA from the Japan Meteorological Agency I'm open to other datasets. I'm not choosy.

So, you would have lost the bet in 2016 and 2017. Did climate get colder?

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

#256

There is a big observational campaign happening right now that is trying to get to the heart of this called EUREC4A (main website: http://eurec4a.eu and information sheet: http://eurec4a.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/eurec4a/2019/Press/E... ). The key uncertainty between different climate models is whether shallow clouds in the tropics (which in general cool the Earth through radiation) will disappear or not and make our…

Can you talk about the process of depositing materials into the atmosphere behind airplanes, euphemistically being called "Stratospheric Aerosol Injection" by the United States government? What materials are being used, how often are they being sprayed, where in the world, and what is the proposed environmental impact of blanketing the skies in the stuff? When you go outside and look up and see streaks of stringy clouds being laid, one after another, which then spread and cover the once-blue into a giant tapestry of pulled cotton, are these all deliberate depositions of foreign material into the upper atmosphere?

It seems like sulfuric acid is one such component of the mixtures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio... . I remember learning about the detrimental effects of acid rain in elementary school. Is it true that we've actually been spraying the skies for decades, that all the ridicule levied against those concerned by this practice has been a disinformation campaign to silence legitimate concern, and now we've codified the act in a new package to deliver to the masses so we can convince them that the thing that's been denied for so long is actually being done, and it's good for us? When you are observing cloud formation, how do you know whether it's a "real" cloud or a man-made cloud?

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

#257

I'm reminded of Feynman's famous anecdote about the Millikan oil drop experiment: Millikan underestimated the charge of the electron, and over the ensuing years, subsequent measurements slowly but surely converged on the correct value. Why? Because experimenters who got the correct value figured it must be too high, and ran the experiment again until they got a more-erroneous value, one that was nonetheless higher. E…

this is textbook middlebrow contrarianism. using some quote from some recognizable name to dismiss the incredible work of dozens of top of their field professionals doing their life's work. its a perfect example of the way hacker news "types" do climate change denial. via endless "well-actuallys" until you're lost and stuck in a level of analysis-paralysis that borders on an anxiety disorder. the problem with solving…

Maybe address the points instead of dismissing them with insult? That might work better at getting the middle to get on board.

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

#258

> Those now attempting to figure out the mystery of the hot climate models think one factor might have caused the recent unusual results: clouds. It turns out simulated clouds often cause headaches for climate modelers. The impact of cloud cover in these models has been incorrect, and has such a large impact. Doesn't this strike anyone as a major problem? We're burning about 100 billion gallons of aviation fuel per y…

Cloud cover and insolation (solar heating) is the primary determinant of weather (short-term) temperature. Over the long term, average cloud cover and insolation is determined by ... what? Something not modeled, apparently.

It's in no small part due to "solar weather" (sunspots), and long term levels of high-level water vapor:

> Contrails during day cause cooling because of reflecting of sunlight back into space. During night, they trap infrared heat causing heating. So it is a balance between the two time intervals. We would like to have more CICs (contrail-induced cirrus clouds) during day and none during night.; FAA Scientist: We Want Clouds By Day, None By Night

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

#259

I'm reminded of Feynman's famous anecdote about the Millikan oil drop experiment: Millikan underestimated the charge of the electron, and over the ensuing years, subsequent measurements slowly but surely converged on the correct value. Why? Because experimenters who got the correct value figured it must be too high, and ran the experiment again until they got a more-erroneous value, one that was nonetheless higher. E…

this is textbook middlebrow contrarianism. using some quote from some recognizable name to dismiss the incredible work of dozens of top of their field professionals doing their life's work. its a perfect example of the way hacker news "types" do climate change denial. via endless "well-actuallys" until you're lost and stuck in a level of analysis-paralysis that borders on an anxiety disorder. the problem with solving…

Wow, yeah: the argument is pretty weird on a second reading.

There seems to be an effort to use the the historical example of Milikan, where a respected authority got a slightly low value, and all subsequent measurements all ended up above it, because that's where the truth was. Then it is claimed that likewise for climate change models above the average are preferred.

But this actually doesn't make any sense! First, because in the Milikan example the problem was subsequent experiments were biased conservative, meaning the bias would be expected towards under heating models. In other words, the lesson from Milikan is that there is a risk our models aren't heating fast enough.

So by the quoted example we should be worry that our models under predicts, and yet Milikan is stood up to argue the models are too wild in their warming predictions?

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

#260
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every month I purchase 850 kWh for $22 Is there a typo somewhere? I run multiple computers at home 24/7 and I'm using ~2500 kWh a year. Also, 850 kWh for $22 sounds crazy cheap, I pay ~100€ per 200kWh (including the rented meter, but more importantly, taxes).

Sorry I should have said, "every month I purchase offsets equating to 850kWh for $22". This is in addition to my regular electricity bill (I pay about $0.07/kWh). Bullfrog Power isn't my supplier, they are a company investing in green energy projects.

Ah, that makes sense, thanks. $0.07/kWh still sounds great, we're blasting past 0.30€, subsidizing wind farms is pricy.
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