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Trees Could Change the Climate More Than Scientists Thought

151 points by ciconia 8y ago

chiefalchemist 8y ago
Re: “Many of us are surprised at what a powerful role plants actually play,” said Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Columbia University. “The influence of Earth’s surface on large-scale climate is currently a really booming topic... Frankly, I'm stunned. How can you stand behind the integrity of your model(s) knowing that you excluded key components? Mind you, you could argue that they weren't aware. But that makes it an known unknown, not a false assumption. Editorial: This is a perfect reason why "science" is trusted less and less. You cannot pound fist to desk demanding respect for your authority and then be intentionally negligent (just so your paper fits a narrative on the path to being published).
- eximius 8y ago
  Science is hard. Scientists are people. People make mistakes. Not trusting 'Science' because scientists produced a good model that wasn't perfect is a stupid regression. And, frankly, if you're going to produce a model that simulates something that is measuring risk (i.e., global warming), then I'd much prefer you leave out features that would understate the risk. Give me an upper bound on risk so we can see how bad it could get. If the worst isn't worth worrying about, well, then that missing feature didn't really matter. If it is worth worrying about, we can improve the model.
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    " Not trusting 'Science' because scientists produced a good model that wasn't perfect is a stupid regression." Um. Well. I'm glad you said that. It's not any more stupid than ignoring data sources and producing model after model that only aimed to confirmed the prevailing narrative. "See we were right" but failing to list the caveats - as ALL data has - is negligence. With that said, I'm not going to bother with your second paragraph. It's absurd. Science's #1 job is to ask "What did we miss?" Failure to intentionally not do so - so that hard becomes easy, my peers remain esteemed, my career nudges upward - isn't only stupid, it's lazy and actually violates the definition of Science. You just can't act like a hobbyist and demand the respect of a scientist. That's unreasonable, at best. Yes. I think it's perfectly fine not to trust someone who deceived me, is lazy and is unapologetic on both accounts. As good Science already tells us: Trust is earned.
    - petre 8y ago
      Negligence or ill intent. Producing a study that proves the narrative will secure future funding for further climate change studies. Perhaps we could plant Azolla in some big enclosed water bodies like the Black Sea? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event
      - pvaldes 8y ago
        Azolla is a freshwater fern. Wouldn't growth in saltwater. Azolla uses only the upper two cm of the water but takes all the light and 'kills' the 99,9999% of the water volume for other purposes. Would be like painting a building with a glowing paint and then stop people to enter and use the whole building so they do not damage the paint layer. If we block the light we are excluding the effect of 5m of algae for example, killing the fishes that need this algae as larvae and also messing with the oxigen interchange in the water. Is not the perfect solution that we need
  - ibeckermayer 8y ago
    Nobody is demanding science be perfect, scientific knowledge is gained and revised through inductive leaps based on new evidence, hence it by definition can never be considered perfect. What is reasonable to demand, and in fact fundamental to the institution of science itself, is that scientists operate with the humility necessary for a discipline that is fundamentally open to new evidence and revised theories. Instead what we are treated with (from climate science in particular) is “Science”, supposedly ordained as hard truth by an infallible “peer review”, and we are told we may not question the data itself, nor the statistical models, not even the draconian government interference into our lives conveniently suggested by the government sponsored “Science”, lest we be castigated as knuckle dragging “science deniers” with some secretive motivation to defend the fossil fuel industry or some other conspiratorial accusation based on zero evidence.
    - marcus_holmes 8y ago
      To be fair, the IPCC reports were (I haven't read the latest one yet) broken into the Science and Political parts. The Science part was full of error bars and "probably" and "estimated". Generally good science being done by people trying to discover the truth, though there was a noticeable hesitance about publishing any implication that the models might be wrong. The Political part was full of certainty and unambiguous calls to action in the face of overwhelming evidence that the world was going to hell in a decade. The media only ever reported on the Political part. The Science part was worth reading to get some perspective.
    - abdullahkhalids 8y ago
      I don't know what you are talking about. The actual scientific papers are extremely clear on their results and how reliable their results are. Otherwise they get rejected by peer review. Obviously when those results are translated by the media, they are simplified and exaggerated. Which is how the media treats science as much as it treats politics, economics and every other story. Moreover, climate science is in the hard science phase of maturity now. Which means that its unlikely that new data or new theories will results in major changes to what we think will happen. In other words, new data and new theories will only make minor course corrections to what we predict about the future. Earth's climate is still headed towards catastrophic changes due to human activity and anyone sane should be willing to bet their live savings on this.
  - Nomentatus 8y ago
    Scientists are generally people who don't understand what "science" is, or its history; who then freely invoke the word when they aren't talking about anything remotely related to experimental trials or testable matters. They just assume that if they're doing it, and it says scientist on their door, it must be science. That's not an ordinary error, it's a form of rank incompetence the academy has fomented for decades; often resulting in the satanic inverse of empirical science. (See Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead 2005)
  - miscreanity 8y ago
    No. The magnitude of such an omission is absurd. If I were to model the solar system and leave out the sun, it would be laughable and I would quickly find myself out of funding.
- DennisP 8y ago
  The science of climate change doesn't only depend on computer models. The broad strokes just rest on geologic history, along with some basic physics. The models are just to fill in the details.
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    Yes. I agree. Where we disagree is I don't see leaving out data / data source as a viable means to filling in the gaps.
  - nostrebored 8y ago
    The field of climate science is entirely underpinned by models...
    - pdonis 8y ago
      > The field of climate science is entirely underpinned by models... This is not correct. There is plenty of data in climate science. There just isn't a good enough understanding of the underlying mechanisms to make predictions that are accurate enough to drive multi-trillion-dollar public policy decisions.
      - nostrebored 8y ago
        That's the implication that I was going for. As someone who's studied data science and modeling I agree with this wholeheartedly.
    - DennisP 8y ago
      Read Hansen's book sometime. There's plenty of direct geological evidence that puts a pretty good bound on climate sensitivity, without depending on computer models at all. This is because the climate has gone through major changes before, and we can see how much of an initial push it took, and what happened afterwards.
      - nostrebored 8y ago
- archgoon 8y ago
  If you're interested in the current state of Climate Science, I strongly recommend that you read the IPCC reports as a starting point rather than read popular articles. (Starting with FAR 1990, it'll help with seeing how the ideas evolved over time) https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_d... Also note that as the AR reports get published, the models consistently get more complicated and improve. It turns out that you can get a fair amount of headway with a simplistic model (CO2 will generally drive the temperature up), but if you want to explain the variation that is observed, it gets more complicated. Given that the amount of warming has been consistently underestimated by the IPCC reports[1], it's fair to say that, for the most part, scientists are aware of the failings of their models and are being cautious in how dangerous the potential outcomes are. The press, being the press, tends to sensationalize science with "Conflict! Intrigue! Breakthrough! Physicists vs Biologists! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!". I suspect that these misleading characterizations have a bigger impact on people's perception of Science than the actions of scientists themselves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change#Conservative_nature_of_IPCC_reports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Cli...
  - pdonis 8y ago
    > the amount of warming has been consistently underestimated by the IPCC reports I think you mean overestimated. The IPCC reports have consistently predicted more warming than has actually occurred; by now the actual warming is outside the lower end of the IPCC's confidence interval. The IPCC AR5 responded to this by no longer claiming that its predictions of warming were based on climate models; instead it said they were based on, in effect, the personal opinions of the report writers. This does not strike me as a valid scientific method. > The press, being the press, tends to sensationalize science with "Conflict! Intrigue! Breakthrough! Physicists vs Biologists! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!". I suspect that these misleading characterizations have a bigger impact on people's perception of Science than the actions of scientists themselves. While I agree that the press likes to blow everything out of proportion, I think scientists have to bear the blame as well. Scientists do not do a good job of conveying the relative levels of confidence in different claims; to the public, they portray every claim as being made by Science, with the same authority, regardless of how solid it actually is. It is hard to blame lay people for losing trust in science when so many of these claims turn out to be wrong. What scientists should have done is to not have made those claims with the authority of Science in the first place. The recent "replication crisis" is an example of this. The reason all those findings weren't replicated is that they weren't valid in the first place; they were only indications that needed further investigation. The scientists publishing them should have known that and should have said so. The narrative that should have been given to the public is "these are interesting indications but that's all, they might not pan out, more research is needed...well, we did more research and it didn't pan out.". But the narrative that was actually given to the public was "WoW! Great new finding! Everybody change everything you're doing!...oh, wait, turns out it wasn't true after all." After enough iterations of this, naturally nobody trusts what scientists say any more.
- hinkley 8y ago
  Science is good enough that I have a supercomputer in my pocket. They don’t know everything but their approximations are really good for getting a lot of stuff done. That we know more and more over time is why they keep getting smaller. If you want to reject how far we’ve come, that’s fine, but it’s a bit hypocritical to use all the medicines and high speed travel and telecommunications and the pocket supercomputer.
  - oldandtired 8y ago
    I think you are conflating technology with science. Though they are related, they are quite different. Engineering is a practical application of various sorts that can but are not required to depend on any science or associated theories that may be prevalent. It is easy enough to make the assumption that technological advancement comes out of the study of science. However, if one looks back at history, one sees that technological advancement was the driver for science and not the other way around. When it boils down to it, the more we learn about the universe around us, the less we really know. There are more and more areas which we are finding that just don't fit into the existing models. I believe that our current climate modelling efforts leave much to be desired. Planetary climate is an incredibly complex set of interactions and we have only just started to scratch the surface of those interactions. Let alone understanding what all the relationships are and how they affect all the various feedback circuits (both positive and negative feedback).
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - miscreanity 8y ago
    Weakening of integrity in science is the issue, not the fact that research begets advancement.
- tzs 8y ago
  Models (not just in climate science, also in most other fields of science...and engineering and business) generally include tunable parameters. When you have some unaccounted for factor that is not changing much over the time frame you are modeling, so that the unaccounted for factor has a fairly consistent affect, you can tune those parameters to in effect build the unaccounted for thing into the model. If the unaccounted for factor starts changing significantly over the time frame you are modelling, this will not work well and then you have to understand that factor and build it in. From the article, the impression I get is that we are now learning the trees and other plants affect climate more than we might have thought, but I don't see anything suggesting that the amount of the affect is changing much and so it would likely be the kind of thing that gets accounted for in the tunable parameters of the climate models.
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - marcus_holmes 8y ago
    For a fascinating account of how the models have been written, get the "read me harry" text file from the climategate leak. It's the notes left by a programmer as he built one of the models we're talking about. Fascinating reading from a programming point of view, but also to see how it fits together with everything else.
xefer 8y ago
I’m reminded of Freeman Dyson’s essay in Edge some time ago. [1] I was struck by this statement: “The fundamental reason why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is critically important to biology is that there is so little of it. A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all the carbon dioxide within a meter of the ground in about five minutes.” [1] https://www.edge.org/conversation/heretical-thoughts-about-science-and-society https://www.edge.org/conversation/heretical-thoughts-about-s...
- igravious 8y ago
  "" Freeman Dyson: Climate Change Predictions Are "Absurd" "" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmy0tXcNTPs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmy0tXcNTPs
- pjc50 8y ago
  This sounds like the "CO2 is plant food" argument, which carefully overlooks all the other effects of CO2 and even the nutritional implications: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-co2-rice-nutritional.html https://phys.org/news/2018-05-co2-rice-nutritional.html Freeman Dyson in the same article is also talking about "abiotic oil and gas", which is another one of those things that the oil industry would definitely know if it was true because it's worth billions of dollars in exploration results.
wlib 8y ago
This is extremely obvious and it's surprising how long it took for this to be noticed. If you clear a section of a forest, the area becomes as hot as a desert because of the lack of shade. This is a "microclimate". The more area you clear, the larger this hot microclimate becomes. This is the reason why there is desertification all over the globe. Whether you believe it or not, it is just as easy to create a desert from a forest as it is to do the reverse [1], it can even be a passive process [2]. Deserts rain occasionally, and when they do, it becomes a flash flood. If you tame the flash flood [3][5], you can change deserts. There are projects that do this and have proven its effectiveness, while also being able to solve the water crisis in arid lands in Africa [6]. Trees are incredibly important not necessarily for their reduction of carbon dioxide, but because of the microclimate each tree creates. They filter harsh light for the undergrowth, they cool the general area, and they transpire around 99% of the water they get, leading to more clouds and then more precipitation in other areas [4]. The reason why projects like this aren't so popular and aren't subsidized is not because they aren't effective, but because it is hard to make money from actually saving the environment. [1] https://youtu.be/3RqsUD6fyGk https://youtu.be/3RqsUD6fyGk [2]https://youtu.be/ZSPkcpGmflE https://youtu.be/ZSPkcpGmflE [3] https://youtu.be/zqKaRg3GTqg https://youtu.be/zqKaRg3GTqg [4] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/trees-amazon-make-their-own-rain https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/trees-amazon-make-th... [5] https://youtu.be/_4oKKs8FfI0 https://youtu.be/_4oKKs8FfI0 [6] https://thewaterproject.org/sand-dams https://thewaterproject.org/sand-dams
- rapnie 8y ago
  > The reason why projects like this aren't so popular and aren't subsidized is not because they aren't effective, but because it is hard to make money from actually saving the environment. This. I've been hearing for 30 years how important trees are, and that we should plant way more of them. It is just not happening in any significant way. Politician's talk. Makes me feel old and tired, when I keep reading this same conclusion over and over, and "We should take action now", but nothing much happens on the action side.
  - wlib 8y ago
    This dynamic could change if previously arid land can be put to agricultural or residential use. But that requires a lot of initial investment. The first step I think is to convince people that the problem can be fixed - and be profitable at the same time.
vondur 8y ago
Historians have surmised that ancient Germany was as cold as current day Canada due to the massive forests that used to exist. The Romans considered everything north of the Danube/Rhine as a frozen land.
- Theodores 8y ago
  The Romans also had a special 'tree line' of their own, so anywhere further north than where olive trees could grow was the land of the Barbarians. I can't remember what this 'olive tree line' was called or find a link to it, or even remember at what stage of the Roman Empire that the 'olive tree line' was a thing. Back to the article, the thinking that went on prior to the Dustbowl was that 'the rain follows the plough'. Not the same as 'the rain follows the tree'. It was no accident that there were not a lot of trees in the Dustbowl areas. The indigenous people that lived there before the Columbus rocked up had cultivated the land by clearing it with fire. This created tasty pasture for buffalo to graze on. Meanwhile, out of computer models and in real life, there is an interesting bit of progress going on in Ethiopia right now. The aid agencies and their ideas on having people eat imported maize were booted out to be replaced with proper crops and some proper land management. These efforts put to shame 'Band Aid' and, odd as it seems, I really would like to go there for the cuisine. I never thought I would be thinking that Ethiopia - of all places - could be a place of fine, wholesome dining with the most amazing markets. Everything is low-tech in this DIY reboot, there is lots of teamwork and quite a Garden Of Eden is being made. The soil has fertility, rain does not wash away the topsoil, the tree-line has gained altitude and it is all going very well. I do not know if there is a micro-climate with extra clouds, however, this improvement in circumstance has not been dependent on work done 'a continent away' to magically make clouds. Ethiopian people outside of this huge 'trial area' and still farming boring crops resent missing out.
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    Band Aid was emergency aid to keep people from starving to death because of Soviet encouraged collectivisation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983–1985_famine_in_Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983–1985_famine_in_Ethiopia Emergency aid isn’t development aid.
shard972 8y ago
Don't remember reading this in the IPCC report... I thought climate science was settled science?
thrower123 8y ago
So, if you look at the east coast of the US, we've actually done an incredible job of reforesting the landscape over the last 100 years by accident. If you had aerial photos of New England from 1900, everything is pasture and farmland, vs now, its almost all grown back in. If you go poking off through the woods, chances are extremely good that you can blunder on a stone wall that used to mark the edge of a field.
oxymoran 8y ago
Now why would you go and settle the science without even accounting for vegetation? Now we can never go back...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
DoreenMichele 8y ago
That's why I thought it would be good to promote this idea, which sadly did not go viral and make me world famous for saving the environment: https://peeonatree.blogspot.com/2018/09/pee-on-tree.html https://peeonatree.blogspot.com/2018/09/pee-on-tree.html
igravious 8y ago
"" Yet the computer models that scientists rely on to predict the future climate don’t even come close to acknowledging the power of plants to move water on that scale, Swann said. “They’re tiny, but together they are mighty.” "" This statement causes alarm bells to ring inside my head. The calamitous warnings that we hear are based on predictions that are based on climate models that are claimed to be nigh on rock solid. The advice that we are given is based on theories about how the climate works that are meant to be highly accurate. The numbers we have are based on measurements that statistically are highly accurate and methodologically very sound. The impression we are given is that the models and theories and numbers and measurements are mostly a done deal bar a little tweaking here and there. What we are doing now is just refining the models and acquiring more data and plotting ever more accurate graphs. If it is true that at least one major factor has not been taken into account that truth to my mind does a lot to damage the credibility of those making the predictions and peddling advice. And if there is one major factor, why could there not be another major factor? I have long wanted to know why – if climate change be such a serious concern – we don't try to reduce desertification on a global scale, in addition to tackling our over-reliance on hydrocarbons. But no, it's all "coal is bad, diesel is bad, oil is bad, natural gas is bad, you name it is bad", but where are all the state-sponsored projects to green the Sahara and the Arabian peninsula? Immigration from North Africa and the Middle East is causing political unrest in Europe. If the land was better over there they wouldn't need as badly to come over here. It feels to me that even though climate scientists claim to be rational actors they are being motivated by guilt rather than reason. I know it is heresy at this point to question climate science but for me the science has never been anything remotely as clear cut and settled as CFCs and the Ozone layer. For a while there about a decade go we collectively were way more concerned about the rain forests and the rate at which they were being cut down. Can we not at least agree that two things need to happen: (1) we need to reduce our dependency on hydrocarbons (2) we need to plant trees. I think we also need to acknowledge that "green technologies" (there's a loaded term is ever there was one) are anything but – producing solar panels and wind turbines at a massive scale is not all upside and no downside. The processes that make up green tech are not magically immune from having a harmful effect on the planet. Ultimately what I think we should be doing is building nuclear power stations and planting billions, if not trillions, of trees. Everything else is window dressing.
olivermarks 8y ago
I wish tree planting had the same stock market attraction as Tesla creating EV's as a 'green' company.
8bitsrule 8y ago
It shouldn't be a surprise that ... If you mess around in a big way with something that is really complicated, and has evolved over (at least) millions of years, and there are so many factors that you are unable to take them all into account ... the consequences may not be predictable. The greenhouse effect, however, is quite easy to establish. Perhaps it's time to stop experimenting, for a century or ten.
perilunar 8y ago
"For more than a decade, climatologists have seen clouds as the biggest source of uncertainty in models." I remember learning back in the 90s that the climate models of the time did not include cloud cover, and was immediately sceptical of any predictions the models produced. Sounds like the models are still pretty bad. How can we be confident of IPCC warnings if the models still can't accurately factor in couds and vegetation?

151 points by ciconia 8y ago

Re: “Many of us are surprised at what a powerful role plants actually play,” said Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Columbia University. “The influence of Earth’s surface on large-scale climate is currently a really booming topic... Frankly, I'm stunned. How can you stand behind the integrity of your model(s) knowing that you excluded key components? Mind you, you could argue that they weren't aware. But that makes it an known unknown, not a false assumption. Editorial: This is a perfect reason why "science" is trusted less and less. You cannot pound fist to desk demanding respect for your authority and then be intentionally negligent (just so your paper fits a narrative on the path to being published).

eximius 8y ago
Science is hard. Scientists are people. People make mistakes. Not trusting 'Science' because scientists produced a good model that wasn't perfect is a stupid regression. And, frankly, if you're going to produce a model that simulates something that is measuring risk (i.e., global warming), then I'd much prefer you leave out features that would understate the risk. Give me an upper bound on risk so we can see how bad it could get. If the worst isn't worth worrying about, well, then that missing feature didn't really matter. If it is worth worrying about, we can improve the model.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  " Not trusting 'Science' because scientists produced a good model that wasn't perfect is a stupid regression." Um. Well. I'm glad you said that. It's not any more stupid than ignoring data sources and producing model after model that only aimed to confirmed the prevailing narrative. "See we were right" but failing to list the caveats - as ALL data has - is negligence. With that said, I'm not going to bother with your second paragraph. It's absurd. Science's #1 job is to ask "What did we miss?" Failure to intentionally not do so - so that hard becomes easy, my peers remain esteemed, my career nudges upward - isn't only stupid, it's lazy and actually violates the definition of Science. You just can't act like a hobbyist and demand the respect of a scientist. That's unreasonable, at best. Yes. I think it's perfectly fine not to trust someone who deceived me, is lazy and is unapologetic on both accounts. As good Science already tells us: Trust is earned.
  - petre 8y ago
    Negligence or ill intent. Producing a study that proves the narrative will secure future funding for further climate change studies. Perhaps we could plant Azolla in some big enclosed water bodies like the Black Sea? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event
    - pvaldes 8y ago
      Azolla is a freshwater fern. Wouldn't growth in saltwater. Azolla uses only the upper two cm of the water but takes all the light and 'kills' the 99,9999% of the water volume for other purposes. Would be like painting a building with a glowing paint and then stop people to enter and use the whole building so they do not damage the paint layer. If we block the light we are excluding the effect of 5m of algae for example, killing the fishes that need this algae as larvae and also messing with the oxigen interchange in the water. Is not the perfect solution that we need
- ibeckermayer 8y ago
  Nobody is demanding science be perfect, scientific knowledge is gained and revised through inductive leaps based on new evidence, hence it by definition can never be considered perfect. What is reasonable to demand, and in fact fundamental to the institution of science itself, is that scientists operate with the humility necessary for a discipline that is fundamentally open to new evidence and revised theories. Instead what we are treated with (from climate science in particular) is “Science”, supposedly ordained as hard truth by an infallible “peer review”, and we are told we may not question the data itself, nor the statistical models, not even the draconian government interference into our lives conveniently suggested by the government sponsored “Science”, lest we be castigated as knuckle dragging “science deniers” with some secretive motivation to defend the fossil fuel industry or some other conspiratorial accusation based on zero evidence.
  - marcus_holmes 8y ago
    To be fair, the IPCC reports were (I haven't read the latest one yet) broken into the Science and Political parts. The Science part was full of error bars and "probably" and "estimated". Generally good science being done by people trying to discover the truth, though there was a noticeable hesitance about publishing any implication that the models might be wrong. The Political part was full of certainty and unambiguous calls to action in the face of overwhelming evidence that the world was going to hell in a decade. The media only ever reported on the Political part. The Science part was worth reading to get some perspective.
  - abdullahkhalids 8y ago
    I don't know what you are talking about. The actual scientific papers are extremely clear on their results and how reliable their results are. Otherwise they get rejected by peer review. Obviously when those results are translated by the media, they are simplified and exaggerated. Which is how the media treats science as much as it treats politics, economics and every other story. Moreover, climate science is in the hard science phase of maturity now. Which means that its unlikely that new data or new theories will results in major changes to what we think will happen. In other words, new data and new theories will only make minor course corrections to what we predict about the future. Earth's climate is still headed towards catastrophic changes due to human activity and anyone sane should be willing to bet their live savings on this.
- Nomentatus 8y ago
  Scientists are generally people who don't understand what "science" is, or its history; who then freely invoke the word when they aren't talking about anything remotely related to experimental trials or testable matters. They just assume that if they're doing it, and it says scientist on their door, it must be science. That's not an ordinary error, it's a form of rank incompetence the academy has fomented for decades; often resulting in the satanic inverse of empirical science. (See Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead 2005)
- miscreanity 8y ago
  No. The magnitude of such an omission is absurd. If I were to model the solar system and leave out the sun, it would be laughable and I would quickly find myself out of funding.
DennisP 8y ago
The science of climate change doesn't only depend on computer models. The broad strokes just rest on geologic history, along with some basic physics. The models are just to fill in the details.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  Yes. I agree. Where we disagree is I don't see leaving out data / data source as a viable means to filling in the gaps.
- nostrebored 8y ago
  The field of climate science is entirely underpinned by models...
  - pdonis 8y ago
    > The field of climate science is entirely underpinned by models... This is not correct. There is plenty of data in climate science. There just isn't a good enough understanding of the underlying mechanisms to make predictions that are accurate enough to drive multi-trillion-dollar public policy decisions.
    - nostrebored 8y ago
      That's the implication that I was going for. As someone who's studied data science and modeling I agree with this wholeheartedly.
  - DennisP 8y ago
    Read Hansen's book sometime. There's plenty of direct geological evidence that puts a pretty good bound on climate sensitivity, without depending on computer models at all. This is because the climate has gone through major changes before, and we can see how much of an initial push it took, and what happened afterwards.
    - nostrebored 8y ago
archgoon 8y ago
If you're interested in the current state of Climate Science, I strongly recommend that you read the IPCC reports as a starting point rather than read popular articles. (Starting with FAR 1990, it'll help with seeing how the ideas evolved over time) https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_d... Also note that as the AR reports get published, the models consistently get more complicated and improve. It turns out that you can get a fair amount of headway with a simplistic model (CO2 will generally drive the temperature up), but if you want to explain the variation that is observed, it gets more complicated. Given that the amount of warming has been consistently underestimated by the IPCC reports[1], it's fair to say that, for the most part, scientists are aware of the failings of their models and are being cautious in how dangerous the potential outcomes are. The press, being the press, tends to sensationalize science with "Conflict! Intrigue! Breakthrough! Physicists vs Biologists! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!". I suspect that these misleading characterizations have a bigger impact on people's perception of Science than the actions of scientists themselves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change#Conservative_nature_of_IPCC_reports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Cli...
- pdonis 8y ago
  > the amount of warming has been consistently underestimated by the IPCC reports I think you mean overestimated. The IPCC reports have consistently predicted more warming than has actually occurred; by now the actual warming is outside the lower end of the IPCC's confidence interval. The IPCC AR5 responded to this by no longer claiming that its predictions of warming were based on climate models; instead it said they were based on, in effect, the personal opinions of the report writers. This does not strike me as a valid scientific method. > The press, being the press, tends to sensationalize science with "Conflict! Intrigue! Breakthrough! Physicists vs Biologists! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!". I suspect that these misleading characterizations have a bigger impact on people's perception of Science than the actions of scientists themselves. While I agree that the press likes to blow everything out of proportion, I think scientists have to bear the blame as well. Scientists do not do a good job of conveying the relative levels of confidence in different claims; to the public, they portray every claim as being made by Science, with the same authority, regardless of how solid it actually is. It is hard to blame lay people for losing trust in science when so many of these claims turn out to be wrong. What scientists should have done is to not have made those claims with the authority of Science in the first place. The recent "replication crisis" is an example of this. The reason all those findings weren't replicated is that they weren't valid in the first place; they were only indications that needed further investigation. The scientists publishing them should have known that and should have said so. The narrative that should have been given to the public is "these are interesting indications but that's all, they might not pan out, more research is needed...well, we did more research and it didn't pan out.". But the narrative that was actually given to the public was "WoW! Great new finding! Everybody change everything you're doing!...oh, wait, turns out it wasn't true after all." After enough iterations of this, naturally nobody trusts what scientists say any more.
hinkley 8y ago
Science is good enough that I have a supercomputer in my pocket. They don’t know everything but their approximations are really good for getting a lot of stuff done. That we know more and more over time is why they keep getting smaller. If you want to reject how far we’ve come, that’s fine, but it’s a bit hypocritical to use all the medicines and high speed travel and telecommunications and the pocket supercomputer.
- oldandtired 8y ago
  I think you are conflating technology with science. Though they are related, they are quite different. Engineering is a practical application of various sorts that can but are not required to depend on any science or associated theories that may be prevalent. It is easy enough to make the assumption that technological advancement comes out of the study of science. However, if one looks back at history, one sees that technological advancement was the driver for science and not the other way around. When it boils down to it, the more we learn about the universe around us, the less we really know. There are more and more areas which we are finding that just don't fit into the existing models. I believe that our current climate modelling efforts leave much to be desired. Planetary climate is an incredibly complex set of interactions and we have only just started to scratch the surface of those interactions. Let alone understanding what all the relationships are and how they affect all the various feedback circuits (both positive and negative feedback).
- deleted 8y ago
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- miscreanity 8y ago
  Weakening of integrity in science is the issue, not the fact that research begets advancement.
tzs 8y ago
Models (not just in climate science, also in most other fields of science...and engineering and business) generally include tunable parameters. When you have some unaccounted for factor that is not changing much over the time frame you are modeling, so that the unaccounted for factor has a fairly consistent affect, you can tune those parameters to in effect build the unaccounted for thing into the model. If the unaccounted for factor starts changing significantly over the time frame you are modelling, this will not work well and then you have to understand that factor and build it in. From the article, the impression I get is that we are now learning the trees and other plants affect climate more than we might have thought, but I don't see anything suggesting that the amount of the affect is changing much and so it would likely be the kind of thing that gets accounted for in the tunable parameters of the climate models.
- deleted 8y ago
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- marcus_holmes 8y ago
  For a fascinating account of how the models have been written, get the "read me harry" text file from the climategate leak. It's the notes left by a programmer as he built one of the models we're talking about. Fascinating reading from a programming point of view, but also to see how it fits together with everything else.

xefer 8y ago

I’m reminded of Freeman Dyson’s essay in Edge some time ago. [1] I was struck by this statement: “The fundamental reason why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is critically important to biology is that there is so little of it. A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all the carbon dioxide within a meter of the ground in about five minutes.” [1] https://www.edge.org/conversation/heretical-thoughts-about-science-and-society https://www.edge.org/conversation/heretical-thoughts-about-s...

igravious 8y ago
"" Freeman Dyson: Climate Change Predictions Are "Absurd" "" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmy0tXcNTPs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmy0tXcNTPs
pjc50 8y ago
This sounds like the "CO2 is plant food" argument, which carefully overlooks all the other effects of CO2 and even the nutritional implications: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-co2-rice-nutritional.html https://phys.org/news/2018-05-co2-rice-nutritional.html Freeman Dyson in the same article is also talking about "abiotic oil and gas", which is another one of those things that the oil industry would definitely know if it was true because it's worth billions of dollars in exploration results.

wlib 8y ago

This is extremely obvious and it's surprising how long it took for this to be noticed. If you clear a section of a forest, the area becomes as hot as a desert because of the lack of shade. This is a "microclimate". The more area you clear, the larger this hot microclimate becomes. This is the reason why there is desertification all over the globe. Whether you believe it or not, it is just as easy to create a desert from a forest as it is to do the reverse [1], it can even be a passive process [2]. Deserts rain occasionally, and when they do, it becomes a flash flood. If you tame the flash flood [3][5], you can change deserts. There are projects that do this and have proven its effectiveness, while also being able to solve the water crisis in arid lands in Africa [6]. Trees are incredibly important not necessarily for their reduction of carbon dioxide, but because of the microclimate each tree creates. They filter harsh light for the undergrowth, they cool the general area, and they transpire around 99% of the water they get, leading to more clouds and then more precipitation in other areas [4]. The reason why projects like this aren't so popular and aren't subsidized is not because they aren't effective, but because it is hard to make money from actually saving the environment. [1] https://youtu.be/3RqsUD6fyGk https://youtu.be/3RqsUD6fyGk [2]https://youtu.be/ZSPkcpGmflE https://youtu.be/ZSPkcpGmflE [3] https://youtu.be/zqKaRg3GTqg https://youtu.be/zqKaRg3GTqg [4] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/trees-amazon-make-their-own-rain https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/trees-amazon-make-th... [5] https://youtu.be/_4oKKs8FfI0 https://youtu.be/_4oKKs8FfI0 [6] https://thewaterproject.org/sand-dams https://thewaterproject.org/sand-dams

rapnie 8y ago
> The reason why projects like this aren't so popular and aren't subsidized is not because they aren't effective, but because it is hard to make money from actually saving the environment. This. I've been hearing for 30 years how important trees are, and that we should plant way more of them. It is just not happening in any significant way. Politician's talk. Makes me feel old and tired, when I keep reading this same conclusion over and over, and "We should take action now", but nothing much happens on the action side.
- wlib 8y ago
  This dynamic could change if previously arid land can be put to agricultural or residential use. But that requires a lot of initial investment. The first step I think is to convince people that the problem can be fixed - and be profitable at the same time.

vondur 8y ago

Historians have surmised that ancient Germany was as cold as current day Canada due to the massive forests that used to exist. The Romans considered everything north of the Danube/Rhine as a frozen land.

Theodores 8y ago
The Romans also had a special 'tree line' of their own, so anywhere further north than where olive trees could grow was the land of the Barbarians. I can't remember what this 'olive tree line' was called or find a link to it, or even remember at what stage of the Roman Empire that the 'olive tree line' was a thing. Back to the article, the thinking that went on prior to the Dustbowl was that 'the rain follows the plough'. Not the same as 'the rain follows the tree'. It was no accident that there were not a lot of trees in the Dustbowl areas. The indigenous people that lived there before the Columbus rocked up had cultivated the land by clearing it with fire. This created tasty pasture for buffalo to graze on. Meanwhile, out of computer models and in real life, there is an interesting bit of progress going on in Ethiopia right now. The aid agencies and their ideas on having people eat imported maize were booted out to be replaced with proper crops and some proper land management. These efforts put to shame 'Band Aid' and, odd as it seems, I really would like to go there for the cuisine. I never thought I would be thinking that Ethiopia - of all places - could be a place of fine, wholesome dining with the most amazing markets. Everything is low-tech in this DIY reboot, there is lots of teamwork and quite a Garden Of Eden is being made. The soil has fertility, rain does not wash away the topsoil, the tree-line has gained altitude and it is all going very well. I do not know if there is a micro-climate with extra clouds, however, this improvement in circumstance has not been dependent on work done 'a continent away' to magically make clouds. Ethiopian people outside of this huge 'trial area' and still farming boring crops resent missing out.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  Band Aid was emergency aid to keep people from starving to death because of Soviet encouraged collectivisation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983–1985_famine_in_Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983–1985_famine_in_Ethiopia Emergency aid isn’t development aid.

shard972 8y ago

Don't remember reading this in the IPCC report... I thought climate science was settled science?

thrower123 8y ago

So, if you look at the east coast of the US, we've actually done an incredible job of reforesting the landscape over the last 100 years by accident. If you had aerial photos of New England from 1900, everything is pasture and farmland, vs now, its almost all grown back in. If you go poking off through the woods, chances are extremely good that you can blunder on a stone wall that used to mark the edge of a field.

oxymoran 8y ago

Now why would you go and settle the science without even accounting for vegetation? Now we can never go back...

deleted 8y ago

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DoreenMichele 8y ago

That's why I thought it would be good to promote this idea, which sadly did not go viral and make me world famous for saving the environment: https://peeonatree.blogspot.com/2018/09/pee-on-tree.html https://peeonatree.blogspot.com/2018/09/pee-on-tree.html

igravious 8y ago

"" Yet the computer models that scientists rely on to predict the future climate don’t even come close to acknowledging the power of plants to move water on that scale, Swann said. “They’re tiny, but together they are mighty.” "" This statement causes alarm bells to ring inside my head. The calamitous warnings that we hear are based on predictions that are based on climate models that are claimed to be nigh on rock solid. The advice that we are given is based on theories about how the climate works that are meant to be highly accurate. The numbers we have are based on measurements that statistically are highly accurate and methodologically very sound. The impression we are given is that the models and theories and numbers and measurements are mostly a done deal bar a little tweaking here and there. What we are doing now is just refining the models and acquiring more data and plotting ever more accurate graphs. If it is true that at least one major factor has not been taken into account that truth to my mind does a lot to damage the credibility of those making the predictions and peddling advice. And if there is one major factor, why could there not be another major factor? I have long wanted to know why – if climate change be such a serious concern – we don't try to reduce desertification on a global scale, in addition to tackling our over-reliance on hydrocarbons. But no, it's all "coal is bad, diesel is bad, oil is bad, natural gas is bad, you name it is bad", but where are all the state-sponsored projects to green the Sahara and the Arabian peninsula? Immigration from North Africa and the Middle East is causing political unrest in Europe. If the land was better over there they wouldn't need as badly to come over here. It feels to me that even though climate scientists claim to be rational actors they are being motivated by guilt rather than reason. I know it is heresy at this point to question climate science but for me the science has never been anything remotely as clear cut and settled as CFCs and the Ozone layer. For a while there about a decade go we collectively were way more concerned about the rain forests and the rate at which they were being cut down. Can we not at least agree that two things need to happen: (1) we need to reduce our dependency on hydrocarbons (2) we need to plant trees. I think we also need to acknowledge that "green technologies" (there's a loaded term is ever there was one) are anything but – producing solar panels and wind turbines at a massive scale is not all upside and no downside. The processes that make up green tech are not magically immune from having a harmful effect on the planet. Ultimately what I think we should be doing is building nuclear power stations and planting billions, if not trillions, of trees. Everything else is window dressing.

olivermarks 8y ago

I wish tree planting had the same stock market attraction as Tesla creating EV's as a 'green' company.

8bitsrule 8y ago

It shouldn't be a surprise that ... If you mess around in a big way with something that is really complicated, and has evolved over (at least) millions of years, and there are so many factors that you are unable to take them all into account ... the consequences may not be predictable. The greenhouse effect, however, is quite easy to establish. Perhaps it's time to stop experimenting, for a century or ten.

perilunar 8y ago

"For more than a decade, climatologists have seen clouds as the biggest source of uncertainty in models." I remember learning back in the 90s that the climate models of the time did not include cloud cover, and was immediately sceptical of any predictions the models produced. Sounds like the models are still pretty bad. How can we be confident of IPCC warnings if the models still can't accurately factor in couds and vegetation?