Browser-based climate change simulation • Hacker News Board

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#131

Post by atotic » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:48 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #64

breakyerself wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. They aren't "only looking at feedback mechanisms that reinforce cataclysm." Modelers include every feedback that they can quantify well enough to include and the ones they don't understand well enough are studied carefully to be able to work out what the uncertainties are. Scientists 50 years ago predicted that we would be at around 1C (1.8F) of warming by 2020 with a 40% over preindustrial co2 level. That's exac…

This sounds like you're saying that 50 years ago there was a single climate model, upon which significant consensus among scientists had been reached, that predicted a 1C temperature rise. I've read quite a few articles and discussions on this topic but have never heard this before. Am I misunderstanding you? If not, do you have a link that discusses this?

"Evaluating the performance of past climate model projections"

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019...

"We found that climate models – even those published back in the 1970s – did remarkably well, with 14 out of the 17 projections statistically indistinguishable from what actually occurred."

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#132

Post by breakyerself » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

efa wrote: post #127

ocschwar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fact 1: The earth has been warming since the last ice age. The Milankovitch cycles have crested since that warming. Without the CO2 we would be cooling. > Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently Citation needed. Furthermore, if you can explain how an increase in the solar output woudl warm the arctic more than the tropics, there's a Nobel waiting for you. > Fact 3: Water vapor accounts for almost all of the gre…

> Water vapor has a habit of coming down as rain. Not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying water vapor is not a significant greenhouse gas? https://climate.nasa.gov/causes lists it as the most abundant greenhouse gas.

It has a residence time in the atmosphere of 72 hours. Water vapor only works as a feedback. It isn't a prime mover of climate change.

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#133

Post by breakyerself » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #128

marcosdumay wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Fact 3: Water vapor accounts for almost all of the greenhouse effect. > Water vapor has a habit of coming down as rain. The GP is using a non-sequitur, taking a correct fact to support a falsehood. That water vapor comes down as rain does not make it any less important as a greenhouse gas. What the GP does not say is that the amount of water vapor on the atmosphere is roughly proportional to the temperature, so i…

> so it's only participation is in increasing the effects of the other gasses we emit directly This is the falsehood perpetuated by the CO2-based warming position. The earth was already warming. The earth has continue to warm since the end of the last ice age. This created increased water vapor, the most impactful greenhouse gas. If there is a positive feedback cycle due to greenhouse gases, it's assuredly due to wat…

The earth has both warmed and cooled since the end of the ice age 10,000 years. You don't give a mechanism for this warming you seem to just chalk it up to the natural cycles that drive ice age related warming and cooling. It's just we know what causes those and we've ruled it out. Milankovitch cycles. The periodic variability in earth's orbit should have us cooling ever so slightly. Instead we are warming rapidly. Your claim that this is the same warming as what brought us out of the ice age is false and has been known to be false for a long time

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#134

Post by zamfi » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

bogwog wrote: post #110

Retric wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting how you described that as exactly 0.1F. I have a very different way of looking at data. When I see a single significant digit I assume minimal precision. So, 0.1 is something like 95% chance of 0.1 +\- 0.05 would be optimistic, and 0.01 to 1 is pessimistic. I suspect this is a common issue with both scientific and technological reporting for a general audience.

Increasing precision here doesn't increase confidence in these estimates. The phrase "highly subsidized" says basically nothing, yet it's enough to estimate global temperatures 80 years from now with a margin of error of 0.05?

Click the three vertical dots to see what "highly subsidized" means -- it's a specific level of subsidy, which you can actually modify in greater detail in the "detail" view.

I absolutely agree that this thing needs a margin of error on the visual output!

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#135

Post by 11235813213455 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

rwc wrote: post #21

staltz wrote: post #13

Interesting tool. It basically says you can: - Tax coal, oil, natural gas, bioenergy - Subsidize renewables, nuclear, new technology - Increase efficiency and electrification of transports, buildings, and industry - Reduce population growth - Reduce economic growth - Reduce deforestation - Increase afforestation For an effect that puts us at +2.1C by 2100 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p1=120..…

There comes a point where the model no longer accepts any progress beyond a +1.0C increase. No matter how many additional actions taken, the floor is +1.0C. It seems the immediate extinction of the human race would still result in an increase in temperature. Is there research that backs this up?

There is research that found the massive local population extinction after America conquest was linked to the planet cooling in that period, so I'm quite sure reducing human population either literally (by limiting growth) or virtually (by reducing consumerism/consumption, which is the key for limiting pollution) or both! will help a lot

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47063973

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#136

Post by saagarjha » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #106

ocschwar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fact 1: The earth has been warming since the last ice age. The Milankovitch cycles have crested since that warming. Without the CO2 we would be cooling. > Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently Citation needed. Furthermore, if you can explain how an increase in the solar output woudl warm the arctic more than the tropics, there's a Nobel waiting for you. > Fact 3: Water vapor accounts for almost all of the gre…

> The Milankovitch cycles have crested since that warming. Without the CO2 we would be cooling. This is not a fact, this is a theory. This is common in 'science' that scientists believing something 'should be happening' and then attempt to pencil in details after-the-fact to explain something that doesn't fit their preconceived model. > Citation needed. From [1]: > Since 1750, the average amount of energy coming from…

> This is not a fact, this is a theory. This is common in 'science' that scientists believing something 'should be happening' and then attempt to pencil in details after-the-fact to explain something that doesn't fit their preconceived model.

This is exactly how science works: if something doesn't fit your theory, you adapt it so that it does or replace it with a new one. Everything in science is a "theory".

> If you heat something, it's going to get gradually hotter. If you increase the amount of energy you use to heat it, it's going to get hotter still.

> The cooler parts of the room are going to accept the heat faster than the warmer parts of the room. Why should the planet be any different?

Unlike your room, the planet can radiate heat away. Actually, that's precisely what the greenhouse gas effect prevents.

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#137

Post by breakyerself » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

EdSharkey wrote: post #93

ocschwar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fact 1: The earth has been warming since the last ice age. The Milankovitch cycles have crested since that warming. Without the CO2 we would be cooling. > Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently Citation needed. Furthermore, if you can explain how an increase in the solar output woudl warm the arctic more than the tropics, there's a Nobel waiting for you. > Fact 3: Water vapor accounts for almost all of the gre…

> > Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently > Citation needed. Maybe they meant 'recently' as in geologic time and not "since 2000"? I think it's interesting that solar energy and magnetic fields and cosmic energy fluctuates from year to year. I think these primary inputs to the system not staying constant would make it impossible to model climate such that the model could be an accurate predictive tool. This par…

The sun varys from year to year, but its variability is a lot smaller than you imply and solar irradience has been directly measured to be decreasing for the last 40 or so years while global average temps have climbed to levels not seen in 130,000 years.

Along with direct observation of decreasing solar output solar has been ruled out because the stratosphere is cooling while the troposphere is warming. This is consistent with greenhouse gasses not allowing heat to escape to the upper reaches of our atmosphere. Solar forcing would warm all levels of the atmosphere not just the bottom.

Also night time temps are increasing faster than day time temps. This is the opposite of what you would get with solar forcing.

Basically bringing up solar as an alternative hypothesis betrays that you do not have the requisite understanding to attempt overturning an entire field of science. Don't feel bad most of us don't.

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#138

Post by zamfi » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:59 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #106

ocschwar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fact 1: The earth has been warming since the last ice age. The Milankovitch cycles have crested since that warming. Without the CO2 we would be cooling. > Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently Citation needed. Furthermore, if you can explain how an increase in the solar output woudl warm the arctic more than the tropics, there's a Nobel waiting for you. > Fact 3: Water vapor accounts for almost all of the gre…

> The Milankovitch cycles have crested since that warming. Without the CO2 we would be cooling. This is not a fact, this is a theory. This is common in 'science' that scientists believing something 'should be happening' and then attempt to pencil in details after-the-fact to explain something that doesn't fit their preconceived model. > Citation needed. From [1]: > Since 1750, the average amount of energy coming from…

> Now, you probably won't like the source of that information, and I'm sure it's all been 'debunked,' but the other side can say the exact same thing.

I don't like that source of information because it redirected to an ad that tried to make me download malware and filled my history with junk. Couldn't even read it, literally, because they were too eager to exploit me.

Follow the money, indeed.

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#139

Post by EthanHeilman » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

programminggeek wrote: post #78

This model is sort of absurd. It doesn't take into account the most important factor... people. If you made a model of the world today back in 1920, it would be comical. Imagine you went back to say 1920 and told people that in 2020 they would be surrounded by talking televisions, phones, that we'd be sending people and ships to the moon, mars, etc. and that they could instantly talk to any person on the planet (incl…

You can't model things like innovation on a hundred year time scale. The reason the predictions from the 1920s "would be comical" is not because people in the 1920s where all fools but because modeling future innovation over a 100 year time scale is extremely challenging. Even if you could include innovation it would reduce the benefit of such a model. Imagine you have a model that has access to a global temperature oracle and it says: "global temperature decreased 0.1 C in 2120 because of innovation". You don't know why that happened and so such a model would be mostly useless to achieving any result.

What you are proposing is like a software performance analytics tool that already includes the fact that you will improve the software performance in the current metrics. However the purpose of such a tool is to figure out where the performance problems are so that you can fix them. Adding such a feature makes the tool useless. What you want to see the baseline and then you want to model the impact of solutions after you discover them.

>What if in 100 years we make fusion work (probably for space travel/war?) and then we replace the existing infrastructure with that.

I think fusion will happen faster than that. However the model we are discussing only goes out 81 years so it doesn't cover the impact of events 100 years hence.

Re: Browser-based climate change simulation

#140

Post by zamfi » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

hwillis wrote: post #75

jokoon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't solutions already exist? There is a lot to do with engine size and vehicle size and weight, especially in the US. Nuclear energy and trains are possible, even if they require electrifying the railroads. Drastically reduce beef consumption is also a thing to do. Not sure about those "carbon removal" techs. A lot of the CO2 tends to go in the atmosphere. The biggest problem is a political one: You can't fight une…

> Nuclear energy and trains are possible, even if they require electrifying the railroads. Note: this is not a great idea; trains release less than a third as much co2 as a truck and electrifying cross country rail would be very expensive. You need extremely high voltage for long distance transmission, which is incompatible with pantographs (the metal things that power trains/buses from overhead). You'd essentially n…

> IMO that is a profoundly unhelpful way of looking at it.

Agreed.

> The money spent on the Iraq war [& Afghanistan, etc.] would be enough to buy enough batteries to store ALL US ELECTRICITY for full two days.

Or, a base-version Tesla Model 3 for every driving-age resident of the US. Given that they're manufactured in the US, you'd be reducing emissions and hiring however many tens? (hundreds?) of thousands of people in the manufacturing sector.

We don't even need to be that creative to feed two birds with one scone.