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Sure, but what about sea organisms turning into limestone and trapping carbon in the ground? What about cloud cover changing the rate of heat absorbed from the

Sure, but what about sea organisms turning into limestone and trapping carbon in the ground? What about cloud cover changing the rate of heat absorbed from the sun? What about the plants that created the fossil fuels in the first place? How much time does it take for the effect to appear? The fossil record doesn't have a resolution of 100s of years that's important for us because if change is slow enough, we'll probably be able to reactively adapt through technology. My point is that it's too complicated for the layman to be able to calculate the average temperature change 100 year in the future. Not even to the level of whether it'll be positive or negative, let alone what effect that change might have on the ecosystem. Even the IPCC isn't sure if sea levels will rise in that time frame significantly more than they would have without fossil fuel use. It's right on the edge of uncertainty for even the consensus of climate scientists. So laymen who aren't running their own models and keeping up with all the newly discovered effects have no hope whatsoever. Here's another way to look at it. If it's so easy to understand, why didn't anyone notice it 50-100 years ago? Well, they did but they weren't able to make predictions accurate enough to scare anyone into change. How can a non-scientist today do better than the best scientists of the last century? Do we have some easy new theory they can apply? Do we have some new data they can plug into their simple formulas to make those predictions?

kaybe 8y ago
You're right, it's not simple. I still believe most people can understand all thee things you mention if they.put the time and energy in. Most of the things are complex, not complicated.
- lopmotr 8y ago
  They can't make predictions from them. Can you tell me what the temperature in 100 years will be? How do you do the math? Do you need some hand-made closed-source HPC simulation software with no manual that nobody knows how to use except the author?
  - kaybe 8y ago
    I can recommend looking into the IPCC report, chapter 9, Evaluation of Climate Models [0], chapter 11, Near-term Climate Change: Projections and Predictability [1] and chapter 12, Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility [2]. The models run on inputs and include uncertainties (how much emissions will there be? How many clouds will really be produced in a warmer climate? ..), thus you get a range of results. The first step is to reproduce historical data, then you run the model into the future. The best prediction is given by the aggregate of a lot of different models with a realistic range of inputs. For numbers check chapter <11.3.2 Near-term Projected Changes in the Atmosphere and Land Surface> and chapter <12.4.3 - Changes in Temperature and Energy Budget>. Of course we're predicting climate here, not weather, so the exact temperature in exactly 100 years is unknown. The wikipedia article is good for a start on the math: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_models https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_models If you have some basic knowledge of math and programming you can create a zero-dimensional model yourself. There are probably a lot of ressources out there to help with this too. The physical knowledge needed is basic radiative things such as the Stephan-Boltzmann law. [3] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law) (This will inform you about the effects of albedo changes (ice and clouds are bright and the ocean is dark, forest is a lot darker than fields and cities), changes in solar irradation and Earth thermal emissions (changed by e.g. cloud cover, aerosols such as dust and greenhouse gases.) You can run a full model yourself, but that easily turns into a full-time job. Here's one, for example: [3] If you want to check the ones in the IPCC reports, here's an overview: [4]. Not all of them are available, sadly, but there is a general push to make it all open. (Many scientists are ashamed of their horrible coding practices.. but these things are better than most because they need to be high-performing. FORTRAN is quite popular..) Whether you need or want HPC really depends on the resolution you want to model at and what to include. Do you want local and regional resolution? What vertical resolution do you want? How long into the future do you want it to run? How many different parameter inputs do you want to check? (In the IPCC reports you can find a couple of standard emission timelines for the future, for example. The 'business as usual' one usually leads to pretty horrible results. The 'stop all emissions right now' one seems to lead to manageable results, only the coral reefs and glaciers are in danger then.) How many feedback loops do you want to include? Do you want to include the full ocean as well? How about other things such as the carbon cycle? (Naturally CO2 is emitted from volcanoes, changes state during rock weathering and is then eroded into the ocean, sequestrated into the sediment and subducted back into the mantle, then again emitted from volcanoes. This process is really slow though.) Do you want to check for secondary effects such as sea-level change, ocean acidification, changes in precipitation pattern, changes in cloud cover? (which are feedback for your model) It's best to estimate the largest possible effect of each of these and then start with the main one and keep refining, which is the current process. You can follow this if you read the IPCC reports of different years. Chapter 12 tells you more about the recent refinements. If you write emails to the authors of the report and papers with questions you might just get an answer btw, as long as you seem willing to understand and listen. It is exhausting to be called a liar when you and your peers do your very best to get it right and it still looks horrible. [0] https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter09_FINAL.pdf https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter... [1] https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter11_FINAL.pdf https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter... [2] https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter12_FINAL.pdf https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter... The overview is here: https://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/ https://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/ The summary chapters are good as well. [3] https://opensource.gsfc.nasa.gov/projects/GEOS-5/ https://opensource.gsfc.nasa.gov/projects/GEOS-5/ [4] http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/2009/06/getting-the-source-code-for-climate-models/ http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/2009/06/getting-the-source-c...
kaybe 8y ago
To answer your questions here: > Sure, but what about sea organisms turning into limestone and trapping carbon in the ground? Too slow, sadly, and running into problems due to ocean acidification. > What about cloud cover changing the rate of heat absorbed from the sun? This is included in the models and one of the largest sources of error bars in the result. Clouds are complicated. We're working on it. (To deal with it one can put the highest and lowest probable value into the model and see what the difference is.) > What about the plants that created the fossil fuels in the first place? They lived in a different climate. What about them? > How much time does it take for the effect to appear? Which effect exactly are you talking about? Does appear mean measurable or clearly visible to humans? Depending on what you mean it is either very fast, just years, or takes some time, hundreds of years. The ice ages seem to end rather abruptly (hundreds of years, maybe even less! , nothing on geological timescales), but we don't know why yet. The knowledge might not help with the current problem either. This rate, method and numeric range of change is unprecedented in the historic record. (400ppm of CO2 and above like we have now can only be found in the old atmospheres when the climate was very different.) We can easily calculate how much additional energy is entering the Earth system, and that energy has to go somewhere (right now mainly the ocean). System reactions are less certain and can be slow. > we'll probably be able to reactively adapt through technology Maybe, if we hurry. This is like technical debt. Any CO2 we add now we have to either get out again, at high energy costs, or get used to the new situation. If you check the numbers it is a lot cheaper to fix it now than to keep going and then adapt/undo. > Do we have some easy new theory they can apply? Do we have some new data they can plug into their simple formulas to make those predictions? This has become something you need to do as your full-time job or time-consuming hobby to do. There is just so much going on. There is a lot more data (new methods of finding new data (eg satellites!), longer data records), and a lot more people (not just 2), computers! (you do not want to run all these calculations by hand), and we're all building on each other. The computers allow us to run more and more complex models, increase the resolution, include more effects. The input parameters and states are becoming clearer (we have daily measurements all over the globe now, back then they had what, 1 or 2 research sailing boats that came by every 20 years and didn't even measure much?). We have detailed knowledge about how much ice there is now, for example, and about the cloud cover every day, about storms and about ocean currents, wind patterns, natural emissions, atmospheric chemistry reactions (such as Ozone catalysation which led to the ozone hole, which does have a climate effect, just not very important). Any of these and more has specialized people studying it full-time. How can you keep up as a single person? You probably cannot, not in the detail required by the critical people. It is interesting that this science has so many people trying to argue it away. Can they predict a moon eclipse accurately themselves? They still do not doubt the prediction. Can they predict the existence of the Higgs Boson, the effects of general relativity on the signal of GPS satellites, the exact path a solar system probe will take? There are so many things science predicts, but not a lot of people try to argue. It's probably because everyone is asked to change, and fast, or be doomed. Maybe something about the communication went terribly wrong at some point and that is why we will have massive problems. (Interestingly, the ozone hole is a wonderful example of quick and decisive international collaboration in the face of a problem. Did people argue against the science then? The problem was simpler and smaller, but still of a similar nature.)

kaybe 8y ago

You're right, it's not simple. I still believe most people can understand all thee things you mention if they.put the time and energy in. Most of the things are complex, not complicated.

lopmotr 8y ago
They can't make predictions from them. Can you tell me what the temperature in 100 years will be? How do you do the math? Do you need some hand-made closed-source HPC simulation software with no manual that nobody knows how to use except the author?
- kaybe 8y ago
  I can recommend looking into the IPCC report, chapter 9, Evaluation of Climate Models [0], chapter 11, Near-term Climate Change: Projections and Predictability [1] and chapter 12, Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility [2]. The models run on inputs and include uncertainties (how much emissions will there be? How many clouds will really be produced in a warmer climate? ..), thus you get a range of results. The first step is to reproduce historical data, then you run the model into the future. The best prediction is given by the aggregate of a lot of different models with a realistic range of inputs. For numbers check chapter <11.3.2 Near-term Projected Changes in the Atmosphere and Land Surface> and chapter <12.4.3 - Changes in Temperature and Energy Budget>. Of course we're predicting climate here, not weather, so the exact temperature in exactly 100 years is unknown. The wikipedia article is good for a start on the math: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_models https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_models If you have some basic knowledge of math and programming you can create a zero-dimensional model yourself. There are probably a lot of ressources out there to help with this too. The physical knowledge needed is basic radiative things such as the Stephan-Boltzmann law. [3] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law) (This will inform you about the effects of albedo changes (ice and clouds are bright and the ocean is dark, forest is a lot darker than fields and cities), changes in solar irradation and Earth thermal emissions (changed by e.g. cloud cover, aerosols such as dust and greenhouse gases.) You can run a full model yourself, but that easily turns into a full-time job. Here's one, for example: [3] If you want to check the ones in the IPCC reports, here's an overview: [4]. Not all of them are available, sadly, but there is a general push to make it all open. (Many scientists are ashamed of their horrible coding practices.. but these things are better than most because they need to be high-performing. FORTRAN is quite popular..) Whether you need or want HPC really depends on the resolution you want to model at and what to include. Do you want local and regional resolution? What vertical resolution do you want? How long into the future do you want it to run? How many different parameter inputs do you want to check? (In the IPCC reports you can find a couple of standard emission timelines for the future, for example. The 'business as usual' one usually leads to pretty horrible results. The 'stop all emissions right now' one seems to lead to manageable results, only the coral reefs and glaciers are in danger then.) How many feedback loops do you want to include? Do you want to include the full ocean as well? How about other things such as the carbon cycle? (Naturally CO2 is emitted from volcanoes, changes state during rock weathering and is then eroded into the ocean, sequestrated into the sediment and subducted back into the mantle, then again emitted from volcanoes. This process is really slow though.) Do you want to check for secondary effects such as sea-level change, ocean acidification, changes in precipitation pattern, changes in cloud cover? (which are feedback for your model) It's best to estimate the largest possible effect of each of these and then start with the main one and keep refining, which is the current process. You can follow this if you read the IPCC reports of different years. Chapter 12 tells you more about the recent refinements. If you write emails to the authors of the report and papers with questions you might just get an answer btw, as long as you seem willing to understand and listen. It is exhausting to be called a liar when you and your peers do your very best to get it right and it still looks horrible. [0] https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter09_FINAL.pdf https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter... [1] https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter11_FINAL.pdf https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter... [2] https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter12_FINAL.pdf https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter... The overview is here: https://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/ https://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/ The summary chapters are good as well. [3] https://opensource.gsfc.nasa.gov/projects/GEOS-5/ https://opensource.gsfc.nasa.gov/projects/GEOS-5/ [4] http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/2009/06/getting-the-source-code-for-climate-models/ http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/2009/06/getting-the-source-c...

kaybe 8y ago

To answer your questions here: > Sure, but what about sea organisms turning into limestone and trapping carbon in the ground? Too slow, sadly, and running into problems due to ocean acidification. > What about cloud cover changing the rate of heat absorbed from the sun? This is included in the models and one of the largest sources of error bars in the result. Clouds are complicated. We're working on it. (To deal with it one can put the highest and lowest probable value into the model and see what the difference is.) > What about the plants that created the fossil fuels in the first place? They lived in a different climate. What about them? > How much time does it take for the effect to appear? Which effect exactly are you talking about? Does appear mean measurable or clearly visible to humans? Depending on what you mean it is either very fast, just years, or takes some time, hundreds of years. The ice ages seem to end rather abruptly (hundreds of years, maybe even less! , nothing on geological timescales), but we don't know why yet. The knowledge might not help with the current problem either. This rate, method and numeric range of change is unprecedented in the historic record. (400ppm of CO2 and above like we have now can only be found in the old atmospheres when the climate was very different.) We can easily calculate how much additional energy is entering the Earth system, and that energy has to go somewhere (right now mainly the ocean). System reactions are less certain and can be slow. > we'll probably be able to reactively adapt through technology Maybe, if we hurry. This is like technical debt. Any CO2 we add now we have to either get out again, at high energy costs, or get used to the new situation. If you check the numbers it is a lot cheaper to fix it now than to keep going and then adapt/undo. > Do we have some easy new theory they can apply? Do we have some new data they can plug into their simple formulas to make those predictions? This has become something you need to do as your full-time job or time-consuming hobby to do. There is just so much going on. There is a lot more data (new methods of finding new data (eg satellites!), longer data records), and a lot more people (not just 2), computers! (you do not want to run all these calculations by hand), and we're all building on each other. The computers allow us to run more and more complex models, increase the resolution, include more effects. The input parameters and states are becoming clearer (we have daily measurements all over the globe now, back then they had what, 1 or 2 research sailing boats that came by every 20 years and didn't even measure much?). We have detailed knowledge about how much ice there is now, for example, and about the cloud cover every day, about storms and about ocean currents, wind patterns, natural emissions, atmospheric chemistry reactions (such as Ozone catalysation which led to the ozone hole, which does have a climate effect, just not very important). Any of these and more has specialized people studying it full-time. How can you keep up as a single person? You probably cannot, not in the detail required by the critical people. It is interesting that this science has so many people trying to argue it away. Can they predict a moon eclipse accurately themselves? They still do not doubt the prediction. Can they predict the existence of the Higgs Boson, the effects of general relativity on the signal of GPS satellites, the exact path a solar system probe will take? There are so many things science predicts, but not a lot of people try to argue. It's probably because everyone is asked to change, and fast, or be doomed. Maybe something about the communication went terribly wrong at some point and that is why we will have massive problems. (Interestingly, the ozone hole is a wonderful example of quick and decisive international collaboration in the face of a problem. Did people argue against the science then? The problem was simpler and smaller, but still of a similar nature.)