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Do climate models predict extreme weather?

backreaction.blogspot.com

201–210 of 223 posts

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My experience and that of two of my three adult children is that it was like a slight bruise at the injection site for about 24 hours. The other child felt slightly under the weather for a couple of days, similar severity to having a cold. We all had Pfizer. so, an inflammatory response.

How is that bad? A vaccine is designed to cause a response by the immune system; this is certainly not pleasant, but exactly the trade against the potentially much worse effects of an actual infection.

Feeling “slightly under the weather for a couple of days, similar severity to having a cold” is what Covid looks like in most children.

Covid infection is “potentially” much worse, that’s true, but so is a drive to a vaccination site — the child might die or get seriously injured in a traffic accident. What matters is not the “potential” but rather the actual likelihood, the expected value. Has Covid been dangerous to children? The answer is, rather overwhelmingly, no.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#202

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.

You are talking about changes over millions of years, not changes that happened within 100 years.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you find a source for an actual authority (ideally a health authority) saying that? There’s a similar meme going around the US, but I’ve yet to find any (except one, noted below) health expert who actually said “masks don’t work” rather than “we don’t know that masks work.” The one exception I’ve been able to find was the US Surgeon General Jerome Adams. This seems like a clear example of health authorities shari…

https://torontosun.com/news/national/do-masks-work-dr-tam-st... From the chief public health officer of Canada who is also a WHO advisor. She's also said other very questionable things (which are all Googleable and which pretty much every Canadian can tell you as it's been a bit of an ongoing scandal, among others...). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresa_Tam

I actually can’t watch that video, potentially not available outside of Canada? Was able to find this one which, yes, contains some concerns and ideas that ended up being invalid (like transmission through eyes or fomites/touching), but which were not completely crazy at the time.

https://youtu.be/_edxN5kkBtc

Not sure if that’s the same interview you linked though^

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#204
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

> I not sure it can be considered a lie though Fauci later said that the reason they advised against masks was because of fears of a PPE shortage. So either Fauci admitted that his earlier position was a deception, or his later claim was itself deceptive.

That's why he made a statement — That doesn't mean it was intended to deceive, just why it was necessary to take a stand publicly.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#205
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I not sure it can be considered a lie though Fauci later said that the reason they advised against masks was because of fears of a PPE shortage. So either Fauci admitted that his earlier position was a deception, or his later claim was itself deceptive.

That's why he made a statement — That doesn't mean it was intended to deceive, just why it was necessary to take a stand publicly.

He very clearly said that people should not be wearing masks, and the reason was very clearly implied to be that they wouldn't be effective; in fact, in that 60 mins interview, he outright said that wearing a mask could be worse than not wearing one.

That has always been obvious horseshit to anyone who knows anything about biology. His later statement was that the "real reason" they advised people not to wear masks was not actually the stated reason, but a completely different reason. That's literally a deception, and it from Fauci's own words, it appears to have been an intentional deception.

Now you might be ok with public health officials deceiving the public about public health, but I am not. I think it's doubly important that such an official be above reproach in the midst of a pandemic.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#206
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why he made a statement — That doesn't mean it was intended to deceive, just why it was necessary to take a stand publicly.

He very clearly said that people should not be wearing masks, and the reason was very clearly implied to be that they wouldn't be effective; in fact, in that 60 mins interview, he outright said that wearing a mask could be worse than not wearing one. That has always been obvious horseshit to anyone who knows anything about biology. His later statement was that the "real reason" they advised people not to wear masks w…

> His later statement was that the "real reason" they advised people not to wear masks was not actually the stated reason, but a completely different reason.

Again, he didn't comment on the factual basis of the original mask guidance, only the reason why he made a proclamation one way or another. You are reading between the lines a bit too hard here I reckon.

> That has always been obvious horseshit to anyone who knows anything about biology.

With SARS-2 and hindsight, sure. But had it been like all previous pandemic respiratory viruses including the one most closely related to this virus, where the vast majority of transmission occurs only after a carrier is symptomatic, no, masks wouldn't do much for people in the street as long as anyone with symptoms stayed home.

I think the guidance was muddled and he could have explained the rationale re: healthcare workers. But Fauci didn't later admit deception and what he said at the time wasn't out of line with a reasonable interpretation of available evidence.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ice core measurements give you a value for each year. You’re looking for changes in the ice that are driven by yearly seasonal changes, notably the periods of summer where the ice received 24hour of sun for weeks. It’s perfectly reasonable to take daily measurements, average them into yearly measurements. Then compare them to yearly averages taken from ice cores. The only reason we can even use ice cores for temperat…

That makes sense and forgive me if I'm ignorant on the subject, willing to learn. What I am talking about is charts like this from the NOAA: http://www.climate.gov/media/5147 Thes resolution is yearly going back only about 2000 years. Everything beyond that, the resolution is much lower. Where is that data from and don't you see how much "smoother" it is?

Your link has a citation leading to the source article. I would recommend you read it if you’re interested (use Scihub if you need to).

The thrust of the underlying article is looking at the exact question you’re asking, can ancient ice records that have a more limited resolution of 20-500 years be compared to centennial or millennial scale data, and can you draw useful conclusions about time periods of that range.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#208
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

That seems fine. I don't see any problem here. You can also put those caveats with public talks.

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense and forgive me if I'm ignorant on the subject, willing to learn. What I am talking about is charts like this from the NOAA: http://www.climate.gov/media/5147 Thes resolution is yearly going back only about 2000 years. Everything beyond that, the resolution is much lower. Where is that data from and don't you see how much "smoother" it is?

Your link has a citation leading to the source article. I would recommend you read it if you’re interested (use Scihub if you need to). The thrust of the underlying article is looking at the exact question you’re asking, can ancient ice records that have a more limited resolution of 20-500 years be compared to centennial or millennial scale data, and can you draw useful conclusions about time periods of that range.

Thank you for pointing that out, it was a fascinating read. I did observe that they said "essen-tially no variability preserved at periods shorter than 300 years" which seems to imply that drawing a conclusion between their older data and the recent data could be perilous when looking at periods shorter than that (e.g. last 100 years)

Re: Do climate models predict extreme weather?

#210
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…

> Most of the world does not give a shit about climate change unless they will personally suffer in some way. That's uncharitable and untrue. > So I lie. So that even if this storm or that hurricane didn’t hurt them, they will have empathy for those who did suffer from a climate-enhanced storm. People distrust science after decades of bad science journalism and bad science communication, and you think the solution is…

> That's uncharitable and untrue.

This is a strange misconception about climate change, even among many of what should be the better educated and informed section of the population, at least on the issues of the science. The misconception is that more people need to be convinced about climate change and the need to take action.

Many climate change topics that come up even on here get well received comments about problem of the greedy selfish uneducated rednecks who are preventing climate change action, and the subsequent hand wringing about how to educate or scare or convince them into changing their minds.

The facts just don't support this outlandish idea though. Even in the country with the most climate deniers in the world, Indonesia, they number just about 21% of the population. In the USA, deniers are under 20% and a staggering two thirds of people and more than half of Republicans think the government should take more action on climate change. This is an overwhelming political mandate, it's not even a question.

The ruling class enacts far less popular policies and legislation all the time and doesn't bat an eye. You're telling me they'll go on expeditionary wars on flimsy pretexts that last decades and cost trillions of dollars and kill thousands of Americans, but they won't implement overhwelmingly popular policy that has bipartisan support of voters to address what they keep telling us they believe is the biggest and most important problem facing humanity? This is clearly utter bullshit.

And that's the way they like it. Their divisive propaganda (which includes seeding distrust in science) has worked extremely well. The facts show that they never had any intention to more about climate change, that they routinely lie about the political reasons for not doing more, and they're happy that the commoners are blaming one another for it instead of the robber barons who own them.

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