And yet other 50-year-old climate models in-correctly predicted global cooling.
Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming
121–130 of 242 posts
Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming
#122Standard conservative responses: --The globe is not getting warmer --We don't know if the globe is getting warmer or not --We do know the globe is getting warmer, but we don't know why --We do know the globe is getting warmer, but it has a different cause than human activities --We do know the globe is getting warmer, and it is in part due to human activities, but any action to counter this would be more harmful than…
You missed the umbrella: "It's all part of God's plan, and therefore it is both futile and in aid of the devil to work against it." I think there are some people out there that may want to bring on 'the great flood' so they can actually live through a biblical story, as if they themselves desire to be chosen to build the boat of salvation.
Out of curiosity, I just have to ask for clarification: do you consider this a standard (normal, average) conservative response? If so, upon what is this belief based?
Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this could be survivorship bias: https://motls.blogspot.com/2017/03/selection-of-climate-mode... As someone who's written basic fluid dynamics codes, I'm blown away by the complexity of climate models. The errors I ran into in debugging my relatively straightforward codes were incredibly subtle. Like pressures, velocities still "looking right" but still being wrong, due to numerical viscosity and other artifact…
Doesn't this partly fall into the weather Vs climate difference? I can't run fluid dynamics in my head but no matter how much you shake up the box once it's on the table I can say "I think the water/oil/honey will end up at the bottom". But also yes, it's complex, that's why independent groups dedicate huge amounts of time researching and building them and then models are compared against each other.
> Doesn't this partly fall into the weather Vs climate difference? I can't run fluid dynamics in my head but no matter how much you shake up the box once it's on the table I can say "I think the water/oil/honey will end up at the bottom".
Not in the slightest. For example, the output of a numerically unstable [1] algorithm, run on 64-bit floats, can diverge arbitrarily from the output of the same algorithm run on real numbers with infinite precision (which computers can't do). Often this will lead to obviously wrong outputs, but not always. There are numerically-stable versions of most of the workhorse linear algebra algorithms, but (1) sometimes it's possible to use a faster, numerically unstable algorithm, and this is a matter of judgment that can be mistaken and (2) it's easy to introduce numerical instability via subtle bugs, or even via the exact arithmetic steps you use to calculate a result (in particular, trying to add or subtract two numbers of very different orders of magnitude is a big no-no).
Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure about ordering people like this, but to your underlying point: I would say that the evidence for Earth not being flat is directly and immediately observable in everyday life. Climate change evidence on the other hand, one has to either put in some effort in the form of research/reading, or, place trust in an authority or peers.
There are lots of people who can observe climate change in everyday life. Anyone who regularly spends time in mountains around glaciers can see this change with their eyes. Or people in Houston who see 500 year floods yearly. Or Californians breathing wildfire smoke. Or Hondurans suffering from drought. Or people in Miami wading through floods on sunny days.
California is having fires because they have too many people living in areas which were miss"managed" by the government to prevent fires.
In reality the government pushed no burn policies have let the underbrush build up to catastrophic levels.
Same way they nearly tanked the Yellowstone ecology when they removed the wolves.
But this time they _know_ how to stop the planet from getting too warm
Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming
#125People who don't believe in anthropogenic climate change at this point are no better than people who believe the Earth is flat.
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> I'm going to guess you're on the capitalism is the cause, true believer, scientism crowd..
> Of course, don't let skepticism stand in the way of your belief system, but i highly suspect that'll be a problem for you.
Interesting article, thanks. Unfortunately your first and last lines are unkind, snarky name-calling, to choose a few of the ways they seem to break the HN guidelines. And "I'm going to guess you're on the X, Y, Z crowd.." seems close to Schopenhauer's Stratagem 32:
If you are confronted with an assertion, there is a short way of getting rid of it, or, at any rate, of throwing suspicion on it, by putting it into some odious category; even though the connection is only apparent, or else of a loose character. You can say, for instance, "That is Manichaeism" or "It is Arianism," or "Pelagianism," or "Idealism," or "Spinozism," or "Pantheism," or "Brownianism," or "Naturalism," or "Atheism," or "Rationalism," "Spiritualism," "Mysticism," and so on. In making an objection of this kind, you take it for granted (1) that the assertion in question is identical with, or is at least contained in, the category cited - that is to say, you cry out, "Oh, I have heard that before"; and (2) that the system referred to has been entirely refuted, and does not contain a word of truth.
Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your comment contains hypotheticals ("run random models and wait long enough you will always be able to find at least one model that predicted the current observations") that are NOT what the present study did. As noted in TFA, they looked at 17 forecasts from 14 models and found that the temperature predictions of 10 of them were consistent with what has happened in the meantime. And if you adjust for forcing (CO2,…
> As noted in TFA, they looked at 17 forecasts from 14 models Pardon a little pedantry: >> The researchers compared annual average surface temperatures across the globe to the surface temperatures predicted in 17 forecasts. Those predictions were drawn from 14 separate computer models released between 1970 and 2001. In some cases, the studies and their computer codes were so old that the team had to extract data publ…
TFA article does say. They looked at 17 forecasts drawn from 14 models. You are the one who implicitly believes they are lying about that and only reporting 17 out of some huge unknown number. The reality is that the vast majority (>99%) of climate change research does not produce the type of forecast, or really any forecast at all, that one could do this analysis on. Therefore, the 17 forecast number is actually very easy to believe.
Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming
#127Where is the story hère though? So they looked retroactively and found some models in the past that fitted with current observations even though they had no clue that China would become such a powerful force in terms of CO2 emissions? If you run random models and wait long enough you will always be able to find at least one model that predicted the current observations. That does NOT mean the models were right, it me…
while I generally agree with your comment, I don't think it is necessary you'd actually have to know about China, you just need to know the general growth trends and if emissions seem to correlate with it, whether that meant cocentrated manufacturing in China or distributed around the world, or even concentrated somewhere else seems like a "detail"
It's not even a detail. It's totally irrelevant.
Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
The motive could be “think twice before dismissing climate scientists because they have a pretty good track record.” Your interpretation seems to display the exact bias you are attributing to others.
The bias I'm suggesting is an appeal to authority, and you'll have to be more clear on how I'm displaying that, since I am neither suggesting I am an expert, nor am I showing off my long history of "being right" about other things.
It's not an appeal to authority when they back it up with data and numerical analysis.
Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about the person who believes in anthropogenic climate change but doesn’t believe that humans will ever be able (or have ever been able) to cooperate to the extent that is necessary to prevent it, and questions whether required technological advances will ever be made? Asking for a friend...
The goal is really no longer preventing it; that’s not realistic. The goal is keeping it at ‘merely very bad’ rather than extinction level.
Has the updated goal made cooperation easier?
Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this could be survivorship bias: https://motls.blogspot.com/2017/03/selection-of-climate-mode... As someone who's written basic fluid dynamics codes, I'm blown away by the complexity of climate models. The errors I ran into in debugging my relatively straightforward codes were incredibly subtle. Like pressures, velocities still "looking right" but still being wrong, due to numerical viscosity and other artifact…
Correctness of numerical codes is a huge and under-appreciated concern in climate models. There have been some attempts to apply software correctness techniques to climate models. For example, https://people.engr.ncsu.edu/jwb/papers/altuntas-correctness... Much more work in this direction is needed.
... but if you think, "hey, so the models could be wrong, how reassuring", think again. It's just as likely that reality is worse than predicted.