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Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

bloomberg.com

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Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#51

Post by justadudeama »

orev wrote: post #37
justadudeama wrote: post #23

I am not a climate change denier by a long shot, but stories like these give a ding to the credibility of climate scientists. > "So we can't throw them out yet." This might be an elementary view of science, but I think there is a danger here that while everyone is making their models, if anyone is an outlier they go and tweak their model to match the patterns of others: 'Klaus Wyser’s group "switched off" some of the…

Tweaking the inputs would help one to identify what factor is causing the difference, which allows you to focus on that. It doesn’t mean you permanently leave it out. And it does not make a credibility issue. This is how science works — it is a process that strives to be as accurate as possible, not come up with a static answer and stick to it (that’s what religion does). The ability for science to change and adapt i…

These are valid points, and it is important to figure out what changes in the model is causing such a dramatic change and scrutinize it more.

> The ability for science to change and adapt is what makes it so strong

To me this article is them _resisting_ change, looking for a reason NOT to accept it, because it goes against what they previously said. Maybe this is all to early, and in a year or so we will be seeing 4 or 4.5 degree predictions, but this article describes them trying to change their inputs to match previous answers, not getting new answers.

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#52

Post by 0xffff2 »

giarc wrote: post #29

If you are like me, you hate reading articles like this. You know there is a problem but you feel like you can't do anything about it. You recycle, you turn off lights, you have a programmable thermostat but you know it's a drop in the ocean. I finally decided to do something about it last fall. I researched and have committed to purchasing green power. Every month I purchase 850 kWh for $22 from Bullfrog Power (a Ca…

There is a problem and you can't do anything about it. We are way past the point where individual action is going to cut it. You have to vote. No other action is going to have a meaningful impact and you shouldn't pretend otherwise because it makes you feel better about yourself.

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#53

Post by Frost1x »

adrianN wrote: post #3

Well, politicians aren't doing anything anyway, whether the models predict catastrophe or CATASTROPHE. Already according to the 3° sensitivity predictions we would need an effort that rivals WW2 to stay below 1.5°. Yet major countries are led by climate denialists.

We humans have developed one fairly good approach to problem solving by focusing on localized concerns and self-interest. For many problems, this seems to work fairly well with a few negative yet manageable side-effects.

In my opinion, these approaches completely fail at solving large issues that require large orchestrated efforts that require things at state, nation, and even world scale and longer timescales than an individual or their kids.

We haven't really developed a 'hammer' for those sort of problems and that hammer keeps competing with our 'saw' we use on the other problems whose proponents want to only use their 'saw' for every problem they see, ignoring its shortcomings.

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#55

Post by GrayTextIsTruth »

ddalex wrote: post #31
GrayTextIsTruth wrote: post #8

So, holistically, it would seem like warming (a fever) or Coronavirus (anti-bodies) is part of the planets immune system, but humans are too advanced.

Let's not anthropomorphize things, they don't like it.

Animals have immune systems too. It’s not a phenomenon unique to humans, as Anthropomorphism would suggest.

> they don’t like it

Who? HNers? I don’t care. I think it more that people don’t like seeing themselves as the virus or cancer, when we could easily change our behavior and we wouldn’t be.

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#56

Post by makomk »

bentona wrote: post #36

Is it not possible to backtest these sorts of things? If it were, I would assume results would be the first bullet point on articles like this, but I also don't understand why it wouldn't be possible.

The article does sort of address this for one of the models: "The model run by NCAR, one of American’s main climate-science institutions, started producing unusual data last year while trying to reproduce the recent past. “We got some really strange results,” Gettelman said. The scientists went on to try 300 configurations of rain, pollution, and heat flows—something they can do as gods of their own digital earth—before matching the model to history. But by solving that puzzle, Gettelman’s team sent future projections upward at an unheard-of rate."

Basically, the backtesting failed to match reality for the recent past, they tweaked parameters to get it to fit, and that produced surprisingly high predictions for the future. I don't think that would leave them anything to backtest on, since they'd used effectively all their historical data to fit the model to.

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#57

Post by epistasis »

justadudeama wrote: post #23

I am not a climate change denier by a long shot, but stories like these give a ding to the credibility of climate scientists. > "So we can't throw them out yet." This might be an elementary view of science, but I think there is a danger here that while everyone is making their models, if anyone is an outlier they go and tweak their model to match the patterns of others: 'Klaus Wyser’s group "switched off" some of the…

I don't know how you could have reached that malicious interpretation of why that part was switched off. To go and impugn all of climate science in the basis of a misinterpretation of motivations would indicate that you have internalized the denialists claims and look to seek to justify them.

To point out just how wrong your misinterpretation is, the very next sentence has the "why":

> A new research paper co-authored by Zelinka from the Lawrence Livermore National Lab likewise pointed to the role of virtual clouds in determining the results.

The key phrase being "role of virtual clouds." The motivation wasn't to slavishly reproduce results from the literature, and to even suspect that it completely outside the bounds of reasoned discourse. It comes across as if you are trying your hardest to find something to nitpick, some small phrase that you can misinterpret in order to raise doubts in those who aren't paying close attention.

This is exactly how denialists and propagandists behave.

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#58

Post by gbrown »

justadudeama wrote: post #23

I am not a climate change denier by a long shot, but stories like these give a ding to the credibility of climate scientists. > "So we can't throw them out yet." This might be an elementary view of science, but I think there is a danger here that while everyone is making their models, if anyone is an outlier they go and tweak their model to match the patterns of others: 'Klaus Wyser’s group "switched off" some of the…

I'd propose that has more to do with the headlines than any of the actual science. Model tweaking is exactly how a lot of this works - models are supposed to reflect reality, so part of how we explore them is to find out what models fit past (and predict current/future) reality. This is both intuitive, and based on theoretically sound inference (see Approximate Bayesian Computing for an exploration of the connection between simulation and formal inference).

Re: Climate models are running red hot, and scientists don’t know why

#59

Post by chrisco255 »

0xffff2 wrote: post #52
giarc wrote: post #29

If you are like me, you hate reading articles like this. You know there is a problem but you feel like you can't do anything about it. You recycle, you turn off lights, you have a programmable thermostat but you know it's a drop in the ocean. I finally decided to do something about it last fall. I researched and have committed to purchasing green power. Every month I purchase 850 kWh for $22 from Bullfrog Power (a Ca…

There is a problem and you can't do anything about it. We are way past the point where individual action is going to cut it. You have to vote. No other action is going to have a meaningful impact and you shouldn't pretend otherwise because it makes you feel better about yourself.

You going to vote out Xi Jinping?
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