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Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming

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Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming

#91

Post by IanCal »

starpilot wrote: post #59
ekianjo wrote: post #48

Where 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…

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.

Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming

#92

Post by KirinDave »

huffmsa wrote: post #72
gowld wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are interested in a particular subset of life thriving.

You don't think we will? Perhaps not as many of us. But that's part of the problem isn't it? Too many humans, chopping down forests, over fishing, sucking melted dinosaurs out of the earth.

[flagged]

Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming

#93

Post by moultano »

bitlax wrote: post #53
woodandsteel wrote: post #36

Standard 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…

How do we convince China and India to lessen their CO2 production in any meaningful way?

You invest heavily in deploying technologies so that they become cheaper, and either win on cost alone or at least become an easy political choice to switch to. Ramez Naam talks about this in much more detail here: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/15/how-to-decarbonize-america...

Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming

#94

Post by mturmon »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #34
whatshisface wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really true that the scientific concensus was in favor of ice age in the 70s? I have heard people say this before but I have never seen the historical evidence.

Nah. In 1974 and 1975, Time and Newsweek respectively ran articles proposing a global cooling trend. These articles were (loosely) based on a couple of papers that found that if fine-particulate atmospheric aerosols continued to increase the way they were, they could reflect away enough sunlight to cause surface cooling. (And in fact, exactly that was happening during the 70s.) However, the Clean Air Act and other si…

Also for reference on the history of climate science:

Here is a paper [1] from James Hansen in Science magazine, in 1981, that warns of crisis-level warming. From the abstract --

> In the 21st century, we will see "creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage."

For whatever it's worth, this also appeared on the NYTimes front page in 1981. That's just one publication. Throughout the 1980s there were broad-based studies, mandated by Congress, that indicated the scope of the warming problem. See [2], from 1983.

By contrast, I don't think the possible cooling effect ever received broad support, it was more of a hypothesis.

[1] https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha04600x.html

[2] https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18714/changing-climate-report-of....

Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming

#95

Post by masterj »

onhn wrote: post #41
minikites wrote: post #2

People who don't believe in anthropogenic climate change at this point are no better than people who believe the Earth is flat.

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.

Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming

#96

Post by imesh »

nickysielicki wrote: post #10
minikites wrote: post #2

People who don't believe in anthropogenic climate change at this point are no better than people who believe the Earth is flat.

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...

Realistic. Everything else sounds like hopium. Sure, let's try and clean up our mess and change our energy sources but looking at how things have been and are going it wouldn't be realistic to think we will solve this or even mitigate it. What else are we going to do though?

Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming

#97

Post by droithomme »

merpnderp wrote: post #38
modmans2nd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the case. Newsweek has a cover story. None of the consensus of climate science said anything about an ice age. The anti-warming FUD spreaders use this debunked claim to press their lies.

It wasn't just a Newsweek cover story. There were still major news cycles on the coming ice age in the early 80's.

The ice age hysteria was big in the 70s as well. I don't know what year it started but 70s through 80s climate scientists were saying a global ice age was all but certain, based on sound science and those who disagreed were science haters and all around bad people.

Interesting the guy noting this historical fact above has been flagged and censored and this subthread removed. The truth isn't allowed to be known on HN.

Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming

#98

Post by BLKNSLVR »

woodandsteel wrote: post #36

Standard 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.

Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming

#99

Post by JustSomeNobody »

huffmsa wrote: post #51
aidenn0 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Henri was suggesting to use specific models for specific predictions, he added this note: > Note to reader: I was going to use Arctic sea ice in 2100 as an example, but there probably won’t be any lol

There has been sea ice in the Arctic for well under 50% of the planets history. Life thrived The Sahara desert was a grassland 5000-10000 years Life thrived.

You say that, but some countries have big weapons.

Re: Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming

#100

Post by swebs »

triceratops wrote: post #58
woodandsteel wrote: post #36

Standard 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…

[deleted]

>It's pointless because China and India

Just China really. They've seen explosive growth in carbon emissions since 2000 and plan to keep growing into 2030.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fo...

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