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Do climate models predict extreme weather?

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Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#151

Post by mythrwy »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #124
mbfg wrote: post #92

My understanding from the video is: the climate models stink, and everyone in the science understands this but has difficulty communicating this. The real world is more extreme than the models. But we have no way to extend the models to cover the seen extremes, nor do we know how to cap the possible extremities in any model. Do i have that right?

We’ve terraformed the crap out of the world in ways that are guaranteed to have massive and significant effects, and climate scientists are racing to try to predict where the worst impacts will fall. This is an incredibly difficult thing to do because while in the aggregate the damage we’ve done is visible, weather is chaotic and the problem is near impossible. Instead of seeing modelers as our best, if highly imperf…

There are things we can reasonably do something about in a reasonable time period.

There are things we cannot (as it sits right now) without killing large numbers of people and possibly ending civilization as we know it.

What might happen isn't as important as what will happen. This isn't necessarily evading the problem but it's also inexcusable to not make the changes we can. Wasting non renewable fossil fuels and the amount of litter and pollution we are producing are horrible no matter the ultimate reality of climate change (which I maintain is poorly understood and over-hyped right now).

There are real problems that are well understood we aren't doing anything about while wringing our hands about that which we practically can't at this juncture.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#152

Post by vkou »

generalizations wrote: post #126
dmingod666 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 - Making predictions about the future with certainty is not something that is generally considered in the realm of mortals. 2 - People can distrust models as being inaccurate and bad at predicting the future.

1. Nobody's talking about that. 2. Of course they should be able to.

> 1. Nobody's talking about that.

Yes, they are. Every election winter, or so, some performative artist shows up to Congress with a bag of ice, and announces in front of cameras something along the lines of "Checkmate, scientists, if global warming is real, why is it snowing in my congressional riding?"

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#153

Post by kuhewa »

Breazy wrote: post #97
enkid wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Fauci's infamous quote was: “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is."

I not sure it can be considered a lie though. Wrong, but at the time the precedent was pandemic flus and SARS-1, and there isn't much presymptomatic transmission of either. Quarantining once you have symptoms will do the job. SARS-2 is freakish in just how much it replicates in the nose for a couple days before symptoms. It was another 3 weeks before enough data coming out of China established there was likely an appreciable degree of presymptomatic transmission occuring and the CDC guideline was changed.

That said, he definitely should have expressed the reason he was making a stand either way, i.e. that healthcare workers needed the supplies more than folks in the street.

A better example of a lie was when he said he was titering up the number for what is required for herd immunity based on what he thinks will be publicly palatable, while that's dodgy imo it is kinda small potatoes.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#154

Post by bottled_poe »

sanxiyn wrote: post #73
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…

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

When the message needs to be reduced to a headline in order to get seen, you’ll never pack the whole truth into it.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#155

Post by kuhewa »

vorpalhex wrote: post #145
labster wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not really true. Anyone who has ever taught a freshman physics class is a bald-faced liar. We are absolutely certain Newtonian mechanics does not represent our universe. Yet for some reason we do not assume physicists lack credibility, even though we know for a fact that thousands upon thousands of physicists are teaching an entire semester of lies. The lies are useful for making good decisions, though. I offe…

"Newtonian physics is an accurate model of atomic scale physics, and that is what we will be teaching in this class" is not a lie, well within the understanding of a freshman, and very accurate. It might be worth discussing briefly when you need non-newtonian physics!

Sure, but if you have a semester to talk statistics and climate modelling, you will be able to caveat the information with plenty of 'this has been simplified' warnings.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#156

Post by carschno »

mythrwy wrote: post #150
CWuestefeld wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 some…

And now we know the truth. 100% won't achieve herd immunity.

This is another good example of the issue of misinterpretating true statistics by large portions of the population as outlined above about climate change. Many now understand that even 100% vaccination alone might not end the pandemic, so the conclusion is often "vaccination doesn't work" -- which is much further away from the truth, but fits better into binary thinking and "intuition".

Of course, the problem with people who don't believe in vaccination is not only due to their lack of statistical understanding, but it's massively enforced by politicians and "journalist" who spread those lies.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#157

Post by samstave »

timmg wrote: post #5

One of the things about "extreme weather attribution" that makes me uncomfortable is the asymmetry of it. To be clear: I'm in no way an expert (or even educated) in the area. To give an example. Let's say there's a 1% chance every year that there will be a catastrophic wildfire in some particular area. Now let's say climate change increases a chance of drought in that area. Then we get a wildfire one year and the att…

I've always wondered why we don't exploit gaming.

---

Build a SIMCITY and use the ACTUAL policies and everything from actual cities... including infrastructure and have people game the city...

Have AIs do so as well... billions of times - and implement best options....

Develop the game such that one person could only focus on finance, or infra, or transit...

Wow this game exists!?? and its called .gov

but its running on windows 3.11 in my garage?

How fix?

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#158

Post by Proven »

dpierce9 wrote: post #45
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…

Replace ‘extreme weather’ with ‘lung cancer’ and ‘climate change’ with ‘smoking’ to see the soundness of this reasoning.

No post body was provided.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#159

Post by ddddfdohvsyknn »

To borrow a phrase, one temperature reading is weather, a million is climate. While it seems difficult to attribute any given extreme or uncharacteristic weather event to climate change, the fact that average temperature is increasing means a larger average kinetic energy in the atmosphere, which in the aggregate should lead to more extremes. Of course there is more to it than that, since the Earth's albedo and atmospheric composition is also changing. Even more worrisome the ph of the ocean is changing, which could have profound consequences for oxygen producing phytoplankton, which again affects all of the above and us. Not a mathematician but I wonder can these discrete perturbed and repeated simulations approximate some well defined probability measure over the actual system?

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#160

Post by nlitened »

whatever1 wrote: post #30

We are taking a system that was in equilibrium and we introduce a huge disturbance (+ multiple degrees C). Hell yes it will be unstable until it reaches the new equilibrium (whatever that equilibrium will look like - catastrophic for life or not).

From what I know about climate on Earth, it has literally never been in equilibrium — see periodic ice ages with glaciers up to 3—4 km thick, or periods of warmer climates when plants grew in huge amounts at latitudes where we have now vast oil reserves in Siberia.
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