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Do climate models predict extreme weather?

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Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#111

Post by generalizations »

Retric wrote: post #101
sanxiyn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are the problem. Don't lie. Ever.

Lies of omission are unavoidable when talking to a general audience about any deep scientific or technical issue. A physicist actually explaining Magnetism takes years. If a PHD gives you a short answer their simply lying to you. For example, no ferromagnetic materials aren’t simply all atoms arranged in a specific fashion that’s a monumental simplification.

There's a pretty stark difference. The PhD would retain their credibility if someone explained the difference between the short answer and the complete answer.

But that weather dude will lose his credibility, because his audience will feel deceived, not educated.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#112

Post by Breazy »

leetcrew wrote: post #108
Breazy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Stop wearing masks, they don't work."

Quoted post unavailable.

Maybe editorialized a bit, though I didn't attribute the quote to Fauci particularly because the fib wasn't coming from only him. A lot of people were saying similar things. And the context, of course, is fear of mask shortages for people who needed them most.

But what really gets my goat, much more than that white lie, is when grown adults feign ignorance and pretend they never heard the lie, that the lie was never told. Two years ago isn't that long ago, we all remember it. I think the feigned ignorance is perhaps another white lie motivated by good intentions; maybe some think they can fight covid by defending the reputations of public health officials who were only telling a well intentioned lie in the first place. But despite those good intentions, I think this denial of history is tantamount to gaslighting.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#113

Post by Retric »

generalizations wrote: post #111
Retric wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lies of omission are unavoidable when talking to a general audience about any deep scientific or technical issue. A physicist actually explaining Magnetism takes years. If a PHD gives you a short answer their simply lying to you. For example, no ferromagnetic materials aren’t simply all atoms arranged in a specific fashion that’s a monumental simplification.

There's a pretty stark difference. The PhD would retain their credibility if someone explained the difference between the short answer and the complete answer. But that weather dude will lose his credibility, because his audience will feel deceived, not educated.

I have gotten the short answer and a significantly longer answer from a climatologist. The short answer while wrong still seemed like a reasonable summery and quite understated. I can’t say if the full answer would change my opinion, but it seems unlikely.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#114

Post by generalizations »

labster wrote: post #61
contravariant wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why in these discussions it's usually better to talk about specific statistics like 'the chance of a wildfire has gone up by 20%', or perhaps more clearly 'the average time between extreme floods has gone down from once every 100 years to once every 60' (which I find communicates the point a bit more clearly). That said personally I think that should be as far as the discussion goes, talking about a specific e…

As a climatologist by education and a dabbler in politics, I think you are radically misjudging the ability of most people to have rational discussions about unwelcome statistics. If you say severe weather will increase by 20% due to climate change, people will hear that there’s an 80% chance weather will stay the same. And they say I’m just being alarmist. When I say that this storm may have been enhanced by climate…

One of the big arguments against climate change is the suspicion they "the scientists are lying". You're taking away the credibility of the entire field.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#115

Post by mikeyouse »

Breazy wrote: post #88
labster wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a climatologist by education and a dabbler in politics, I think you are radically misjudging the ability of most people to have rational discussions about unwelcome statistics. If you say severe weather will increase by 20% due to climate change, people will hear that there’s an 80% chance weather will stay the same. And they say I’m just being alarmist. When I say that this storm may have been enhanced by climate…

People are better at sniffing out lies than they are at sniffing out whatever good intentions might have motivated those lies.

I really don’t think that’s true. Tens (hundreds?) of thousands of additional Americans are dead from Covid because they believed easily disprovable lies about the safety and efficacy of vaccines by people who have reputations for lying. Most people believe anyone they consider to be an authority. It’s too exhausting otherwise.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#116

Post by twofornone »

klyrs wrote: post #33
twofornone wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Here's the problem with climate change modeling, you are modeling a complex chaotic system, you just cannot do it accurately Its more than that. Large models have hundreds of adjustable parameters, which each may be tweaked within reasonable ranges to simultaneously backfit historic data and potentially get any kind of future result. It's very easy to get biased outputs which look totally reasonable, which is especi…

The orthodoxy's stance has been to make the most mild predictions possible for decades. And now, we're seeing worse-than-predicted extreme weather events. Go figure.

Mild perhaps, but still leaning in one direction. I don't know that there's been any evidence of more severe weather on average, other than record breaking heat which typically has some x% attribution to climate change (i.e. it would have happened regardless, e.g. recent warm weather in Texas).

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#117

Post by fubarr »

viraptor wrote: post #71
fubarr wrote: post #49

Climate is a ~30yr moving average of weather. Climate models cannot attempt to model weather events. Such events can rarely be predicted more than a week or two out. The above should tell you that using a climate model to predict anything about weather events is a pointless exercise. Particularly trying to derive the statistics of weather events. The stats are built in to the models!

This can be easily shown to be false. I can't tell you if it's going to rain next week in most cases, but I can easily tell you about how many days in a year it's going to rain over a large area. Same applies to how many floods we're going to have and bushfires. We've been doing that for a very long time now.

Telling me about averages deduced from past behavior? Great, you've read the statistic that's built into a model. Telling me what way that statistic will behave in future? Especially at extremes? Not a chance.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#118

Post by labster »

Retric wrote: post #101
sanxiyn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are the problem. Don't lie. Ever.

Lies of omission are unavoidable when talking to a general audience about any deep scientific or technical issue. A physicist actually explaining Magnetism takes years. If a PHD gives you a short answer their simply lying to you. For example, no ferromagnetic materials aren’t simply all atoms arranged in a specific fashion that’s a monumental simplification.

This exactly. After a year of high school physics and a year of mechanics and electrodynamics, they finally get around to telling you: that was kind of all lies, here’s relativity. And then a month later they do it again for quantum, and finally admit they don’t know what is really going on. But Newtonian mechanics is useful!

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#119

Post by diamondlovesyou »

labster wrote: post #61
contravariant wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why in these discussions it's usually better to talk about specific statistics like 'the chance of a wildfire has gone up by 20%', or perhaps more clearly 'the average time between extreme floods has gone down from once every 100 years to once every 60' (which I find communicates the point a bit more clearly). That said personally I think that should be as far as the discussion goes, talking about a specific e…

As a climatologist by education and a dabbler in politics, I think you are radically misjudging the ability of most people to have rational discussions about unwelcome statistics. If you say severe weather will increase by 20% due to climate change, people will hear that there’s an 80% chance weather will stay the same. And they say I’m just being alarmist. When I say that this storm may have been enhanced by climate…

I address this mostly to this comment's siblings: the fact that you're upset about the lying bit only reinforces labster's point. I say this based on the comments thinking that the lie is actually meant to deceive, getting distracted with the word "lie" and its connotations, and missing the broader issue. The issue is that the general population can't be reasonably expected to understand how climate change works, and how statistics play out in climate change modeling. Unless the message is dead simple, the message will be lost.

What the "lie" "really" says is subtextural/etc: to those that need to hear it, it says what it needs to say to get them to understand what needs to be done (and, importantly, isn't wrong, just isn't the whole picture either); to those that already know the answer, you didn't need to hear the lie in the first place. There is no deceit.

Climate change needs participation from everyone, and, for better or worse, everyone includes a majority of, eh-hem, less-than brilliant people. We need them to understand regardless of our own righteousness.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#120

Post by CWuestefeld »

enkid wrote: post #89
whiddershins wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my view, the problem with the noble lie, which you are engaging in, is that it has been an unmitigated disaster with regards to Covid messaging. As it became obvious some officials were willing to lie, this opened the door to many people having no idea who to trust. I believe public trust in leaders and institutions is at an incredible low, and I’m not sure how it can be repaired. Regardless of whether you think p…

Can you give a specific example of what you are talking about? What noble lies were being told about COVID? I heard a lot of "we don't knows, but here is the best bet" which were not lies, but all of the lies I heard absolutely were not noble in that they were not for the public's best interest, but rather for the best interest of the individual saying them.

Fauci has admitted it:

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

“We need to have some humility here,” he added. “We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”

-- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/health/herd-immunity-covi...

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