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Since when did science become about predicting what will happen in the future? That concept is completely antithetical to what science is at the core (i.e. maki

Since when did science become about predicting what will happen in the future? That concept is completely antithetical to what science is at the core (i.e. making repeatable observations to establish fact). It is impossible to measure and observe something that has yet to happen. A computer climate model cannot predict the future. Believing so is magical thinking and clearly unscientific by definition. I understand that observed trends tend to indicate future direction but this push, rooted in FUD, to make consensus of the scientific community equivalent to absolute fact is a reminder that all humans can have fragility in their logic and thinking in the face of fear. If those in power who say they believe the consensus were really concerned with climate change to the existential degree they claim they would propose forcing India and China to curb emissions up to and including war if necessary. The truth is they see it as a means to their political ends. They see it as a blank check to expand the government's control over everyone's lives. If you don't believe me read the green new deal legislation proposed earlier this year. It reworks the whole of society around a certain political ideology using future predictions about climate change as justification. I would place just as much blame for climate problems on those in the democratic party using climate change to further their ideology as I do the outright climate deniers. Everyday people commenting on reddit and HN may be pure in their intentions but the average politician on either side just uses the topic as a leverage for their own political and monetary interest.

KnightOfWords 7y ago
> Since when did science become about predicting what will happen in the future? The very definition of science is making testable predictions.
- macinjosh 7y ago
  I 100% agree. But you're missing the point entirely. The hypothesis of the mechanics climate change have been tested and are provably true. What has not been born out and is definitely not a testable prediction is whether certain measure are enough, that particular weather events are due to climate change, that humanity is likely doomed, etc. These are emotional responses not testable predictions.
  - KnightOfWords 7y ago
    Modelling has its limitations but those are well understood by the people building the models, which is why they predict a range of outcomes and uncertainty rises with time. Most of the uncertainty in current models has to do with the complexities of cloud formation. We've had usefully predictive models for over 50 years now. The first real paper model from 1967 successfully predicted warming up to the current day.
johnmorrison 7y ago
This is an inaccurate representation of science. > what science is at the core (i.e. making repeatable observations to establish fact) These "facts" are predictions about what will happen in the future. Physics tells us what will happen to physical systems, e.g. our understanding of gravity tells us what will happen to a system of masses in the future. Chemistry tells us what will happen to chemical systems, e.g. our understanding of reactions tells us what will happen to interacting chemicals. Medical research tells us what will happen to your body and disease when some agent is introduced to the system. Climate science tells us what will happen to the climate, and it is based on the same concepts as the most fundamental and rigorous science: thermodynamics. If more heat enters than leaves a system, the temperature will increase. There is nothing unscientific here.
- macinjosh 7y ago
  > Climate science tells us what will happen to the climate, and it is based on the same concepts as the most fundamental and rigorous science: thermodynamics. If more heat enters than leaves a system, the temperature will increase. There is nothing unscientific here. The climate isn't that simple. It's unfathomably complex. There are an infinite number of inputs and outputs. What repeatable experiment can accurately and repeatedly recreate this? So your simplistic argument is just handwaving.
  - johnmorrison 7y ago
    > There are an infinite number of inputs and outputs. No, there are a finite number of particles in a finite space making up the Earth's climate. > The climate isn't that simple. It's unfathomably complex. Nothing is simple unless you simplify it. A baseball is an unfathomably complex collection of billions of billions of particles interacting with the entire universe until you abstract it to a simple Newtonian point mass, but you'll still make all the relevant predictions to >99% accuracy. Global warming can be accurately modeled by a very simple system: There is the atmosphere, the ocean, the Earth itself, and the rest of the universe. Over any finite time period there is a simple real number change in the temperature of these 4 subsystems modeled by thermodynamics, and there can be no net change in temperature due to conservation laws. Can we predict these changes as accurately as we can predict simple Newtonian systems? No. But we can still predict them to a good degree of accuracy in the short term.
madhadron 7y ago
> Since when did science become about predicting what will happen in the future? Since evidence based policy making became a thing. We use it for deciding when to plant crops, deciding what medical treatments should be broadly implemented, deciding what water treatment methods are acceptable...it's fairly popular. > That concept is completely antithetical to what science is at the core (i.e. making repeatable observations to establish fact). Either what you have established holds repeatably and you are predicting the future, or it doesn't hold repeatably and it's not, by your definition, science. You may be confusing repeatable experiments with repeatable observations, though. > I understand that observed trends tend to indicate future direction but this push, rooted in FUD, to make consensus of the scientific community equivalent to absolute fact At this point the observations are enough where it's an absolute fact. The only question is how much, how fast. That's what the computer modeling is trying to get a handle on. Plus, your argument is equivalent to playing Russian roulette and claiming that the presence of a bullet somewhere in the gun is not an established fact. That's true. You don't know if it might be loaded. But do you really want to find out?
- johnmorrison 7y ago
  > You don't know if it might be loaded. But do you really want to find out? This is a really great analogy. Pumping more and more GHG into the atmosphere is the stupidest experiment ever. Like poking a sleeping lion harder and harder.
  - macinjosh 7y ago
    The analogy is actually very poor. You can check and be 100% sure if a gun is loaded. You can't check what will happen to the climate in 50 years because it hasn't happened and we don't currently have the knowledge or capability to truly know what will happen with the climate. And please don't tell me that doing something just in case we're right is better than doing nothing. There is a great cost to enacting the climate policies that have been proposed, both human and financial.
- macinjosh 7y ago
  > Since evidence based policy making became a thing. We use it for deciding when to plant crops, deciding what medical treatments should be broadly implemented, deciding what water treatment methods are acceptable...it's fairly popular. Thanks for the smug talking down to. :) However your comparison here is ridiculous. We can easily measure crop out comes, water treatment outcomes, and medical outcomes because in the past actual experiments were done that showed what worked and didn't in that situation. The climate on the other hand is completely different. We don't have a second one to use as a control. The scale is too large to fully factor in all inputs and outputs. It is just not the same at all as the things you mention. > Plus, your argument is equivalent to playing Russian roulette and claiming that the presence of a bullet somewhere in the gun is not an established fact. I am not the type to choose security over giving up the personal freedoms and rights of myself and my fellow humans just in case someone's computer model turns out to be accurate. In any case, your analogy is actually very poor. You can check and be 100% sure if a gun is loaded. You can't check what will happen to the climate in 50 years because it hasn't happened and we don't currently have the knowledge or capability to truly required to truly know what will happen with the climate.
WhompingWindows 7y ago
Science is all about making testable predictions, you're way overconfident in your incorrect definition. Have you forgotten Einstein's theory relied on the total solar eclipse and the resulting gravitational lensing of our star? He made a prediction and it was found correct, validating his theory. Unless you think Einstein is not a scientist?
- macinjosh 7y ago
  Please don't be reductive. Sure what you're calling a prediction is really just a hypothesis. What I am saying is that we are treating the hypothesis of climate change as fact before there is clear evidence that the predicted bad outcomes will actually occur. In Einstein's case we were able to make observations and conduct experiments that bore out the hypothesis. In the case of climate change this isn't possible. We don't have a second climate to use as a control. We don't have the capability to do experiments that accurately consider the infinite input and outputs that make up the climate as a whole. Science has its limits and they are mainly human. Tell me what experiment we can do today that accurately includes every aspect of our climate that proves doom is certain. If the best you can give is likelihoods or possibilities that is not a scientific fact so quit acting like it is and lets have a reasonable discussion. There are many, many things we can do to take better care of our climate but being alarmist and using fear to get the public on board with your politics is a categorically a bad thing.
  - KnightOfWords 7y ago
    All informed decision making is made on the basis of probabilities. You're setting an impossibly and arbitrarily high threshold for action on climate change. The burden of proof is on you to explain how CO2 levels not seen for 3 million years won't have a major impact on the biosphere.

KnightOfWords 7y ago

> Since when did science become about predicting what will happen in the future? The very definition of science is making testable predictions.

macinjosh 7y ago
I 100% agree. But you're missing the point entirely. The hypothesis of the mechanics climate change have been tested and are provably true. What has not been born out and is definitely not a testable prediction is whether certain measure are enough, that particular weather events are due to climate change, that humanity is likely doomed, etc. These are emotional responses not testable predictions.
- KnightOfWords 7y ago
  Modelling has its limitations but those are well understood by the people building the models, which is why they predict a range of outcomes and uncertainty rises with time. Most of the uncertainty in current models has to do with the complexities of cloud formation. We've had usefully predictive models for over 50 years now. The first real paper model from 1967 successfully predicted warming up to the current day.

johnmorrison 7y ago

This is an inaccurate representation of science. > what science is at the core (i.e. making repeatable observations to establish fact) These "facts" are predictions about what will happen in the future. Physics tells us what will happen to physical systems, e.g. our understanding of gravity tells us what will happen to a system of masses in the future. Chemistry tells us what will happen to chemical systems, e.g. our understanding of reactions tells us what will happen to interacting chemicals. Medical research tells us what will happen to your body and disease when some agent is introduced to the system. Climate science tells us what will happen to the climate, and it is based on the same concepts as the most fundamental and rigorous science: thermodynamics. If more heat enters than leaves a system, the temperature will increase. There is nothing unscientific here.

macinjosh 7y ago
> Climate science tells us what will happen to the climate, and it is based on the same concepts as the most fundamental and rigorous science: thermodynamics. If more heat enters than leaves a system, the temperature will increase. There is nothing unscientific here. The climate isn't that simple. It's unfathomably complex. There are an infinite number of inputs and outputs. What repeatable experiment can accurately and repeatedly recreate this? So your simplistic argument is just handwaving.
- johnmorrison 7y ago
  > There are an infinite number of inputs and outputs. No, there are a finite number of particles in a finite space making up the Earth's climate. > The climate isn't that simple. It's unfathomably complex. Nothing is simple unless you simplify it. A baseball is an unfathomably complex collection of billions of billions of particles interacting with the entire universe until you abstract it to a simple Newtonian point mass, but you'll still make all the relevant predictions to >99% accuracy. Global warming can be accurately modeled by a very simple system: There is the atmosphere, the ocean, the Earth itself, and the rest of the universe. Over any finite time period there is a simple real number change in the temperature of these 4 subsystems modeled by thermodynamics, and there can be no net change in temperature due to conservation laws. Can we predict these changes as accurately as we can predict simple Newtonian systems? No. But we can still predict them to a good degree of accuracy in the short term.

madhadron 7y ago

> Since when did science become about predicting what will happen in the future? Since evidence based policy making became a thing. We use it for deciding when to plant crops, deciding what medical treatments should be broadly implemented, deciding what water treatment methods are acceptable...it's fairly popular. > That concept is completely antithetical to what science is at the core (i.e. making repeatable observations to establish fact). Either what you have established holds repeatably and you are predicting the future, or it doesn't hold repeatably and it's not, by your definition, science. You may be confusing repeatable experiments with repeatable observations, though. > I understand that observed trends tend to indicate future direction but this push, rooted in FUD, to make consensus of the scientific community equivalent to absolute fact At this point the observations are enough where it's an absolute fact. The only question is how much, how fast. That's what the computer modeling is trying to get a handle on. Plus, your argument is equivalent to playing Russian roulette and claiming that the presence of a bullet somewhere in the gun is not an established fact. That's true. You don't know if it might be loaded. But do you really want to find out?

johnmorrison 7y ago
> You don't know if it might be loaded. But do you really want to find out? This is a really great analogy. Pumping more and more GHG into the atmosphere is the stupidest experiment ever. Like poking a sleeping lion harder and harder.
- macinjosh 7y ago
  The analogy is actually very poor. You can check and be 100% sure if a gun is loaded. You can't check what will happen to the climate in 50 years because it hasn't happened and we don't currently have the knowledge or capability to truly know what will happen with the climate. And please don't tell me that doing something just in case we're right is better than doing nothing. There is a great cost to enacting the climate policies that have been proposed, both human and financial.
macinjosh 7y ago
> Since evidence based policy making became a thing. We use it for deciding when to plant crops, deciding what medical treatments should be broadly implemented, deciding what water treatment methods are acceptable...it's fairly popular. Thanks for the smug talking down to. :) However your comparison here is ridiculous. We can easily measure crop out comes, water treatment outcomes, and medical outcomes because in the past actual experiments were done that showed what worked and didn't in that situation. The climate on the other hand is completely different. We don't have a second one to use as a control. The scale is too large to fully factor in all inputs and outputs. It is just not the same at all as the things you mention. > Plus, your argument is equivalent to playing Russian roulette and claiming that the presence of a bullet somewhere in the gun is not an established fact. I am not the type to choose security over giving up the personal freedoms and rights of myself and my fellow humans just in case someone's computer model turns out to be accurate. In any case, your analogy is actually very poor. You can check and be 100% sure if a gun is loaded. You can't check what will happen to the climate in 50 years because it hasn't happened and we don't currently have the knowledge or capability to truly required to truly know what will happen with the climate.

WhompingWindows 7y ago

Science is all about making testable predictions, you're way overconfident in your incorrect definition. Have you forgotten Einstein's theory relied on the total solar eclipse and the resulting gravitational lensing of our star? He made a prediction and it was found correct, validating his theory. Unless you think Einstein is not a scientist?

macinjosh 7y ago
Please don't be reductive. Sure what you're calling a prediction is really just a hypothesis. What I am saying is that we are treating the hypothesis of climate change as fact before there is clear evidence that the predicted bad outcomes will actually occur. In Einstein's case we were able to make observations and conduct experiments that bore out the hypothesis. In the case of climate change this isn't possible. We don't have a second climate to use as a control. We don't have the capability to do experiments that accurately consider the infinite input and outputs that make up the climate as a whole. Science has its limits and they are mainly human. Tell me what experiment we can do today that accurately includes every aspect of our climate that proves doom is certain. If the best you can give is likelihoods or possibilities that is not a scientific fact so quit acting like it is and lets have a reasonable discussion. There are many, many things we can do to take better care of our climate but being alarmist and using fear to get the public on board with your politics is a categorically a bad thing.
- KnightOfWords 7y ago
  All informed decision making is made on the basis of probabilities. You're setting an impossibly and arbitrarily high threshold for action on climate change. The burden of proof is on you to explain how CO2 levels not seen for 3 million years won't have a major impact on the biosphere.