6 ms·

All models are wrong. Some are useful approximations for understanding and others for forecasting. In Econ for example, DSGE models are useful for asking counte

All models are wrong. Some are useful approximations for understanding and others for forecasting. In Econ for example, DSGE models are useful for asking counterfactuals but not great for forecasting. Lots of models are particularly susceptible to assumptions that can be tuned in an Upton Sinclair like way. Climate modeling appears to be one of these areas where the black box can be filled with all sorts of debatable assumptions, yet questioning what’s in the black box carries great reputational risk.

TLightful 7y ago
Would you rather proceed on blind faith? Proceed by testing and accepting or disproving hypothesis. Nothing more, nothing less.
ximeng 7y ago
What is the evidence that people who question the black box have great reputational risk? Dyson raises this point, but I don't really see that this would be different from any other area. There is more money at stake with climate change than most areas of science, which means it becomes a political issue. There would seem to be a very strong incentive to show existing models are not accurate, or to come up with scientifically plausible models with very different outcomes. However no arguments against climate change do this, presumably because it's not very easy to do so. Dyson here points out some areas that he thinks are not possible to model accurately or are not currently modelled accurately, such as the benefits and threats of various changes to the climate, the impact of climate change on sea level change, cloud modelling uncertainties, and the chaotic effects of different carbon reservoirs on each other. His points on the exact impact of climate change and what the ideal climate is are important, but they are also studied and discussed. The supposed political reasons for supporting or being against climate change theories do not change the facts. If there are real problems with the models these can be flagged up - sensitivity testing can be done for all of these issues. One major problem here is that the communication of the climate mainstream is very poor. The IPCC produces massive reports that are designed to be printed as PDF, and are targeted at policy experts. They're not really readable, the web versions don't really use hyperlinks and have minimal pictures and poor structure. They're slowly getting better, but still a long way from ideal. Example for reference: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/
- dntbnmpls 7y ago
  > There is more money at stake with climate change than most areas of science, which means it becomes a political issue. Yes. But even beyond that, power is at stake. Climate change isn't about science, it's about geopolitics/globalism. It's about instilling fear to create a global political system. At least that's my take. If the climate change alarmism was valid, we'd simply end global trade today because global trade is the driver of pollution. But you never hear that from the elites. They demand more globalism, but with a global tax. Maybe a global system is the next step of human societal evolution, but instead of being open and honest and having a global discussion, these people are being sneaky and using fear to sneak a global system on humanity. > There would seem to be a very strong incentive to show existing models are not accurate or to come up with scientifically plausible models with very different outcomes. Not if enough of those with money and power are aligned on one side. Then there is very strong incentive to show one side. > The supposed political reasons for supporting or being against climate change theories do not change the facts. Sure. And the facts are that climate science is a very young science and have been reliably wrong that we shouldn't take it as gospel. Especially when so much of climate science is politically driven. I love climate change alarmism. When their predictions are wrong, they claim that the climate is so complex that it's hard to model and predict accurately. At the same time, they claim their predictions are facts and we must believe everything they say. Even when these alarmists all say and have different predictions. How about this, how out of dozens/hundreds of climate alarmist models, which is the right one? I personally believe that climate change is natural and the forces of nature ( mostly the sun ) drive climate on earth. Also, I don't think there is anything we can do about climate change, just like we can't do anything about earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. And I reject the false notion that climate change is bad. Climate change can be bad for some, but good for others. If climate alarmists want to be taken seriously, then let them protest globalist bankers and global trade instead of advocating for a global carbon tax and enriching the wealthy bankers and industrialists. But of course they won't because these climate alarmists are funded by the globalist bankers and industrialists.
  - DagAgren 7y ago
    > At least that's my take No, that is a take that you have been fed by those who have gigantic vested interests in stopping any attempts to challenge THEIR power and profits. You are being used as a useful idiot to spread uncertainty about absolute facts about absolutely real and highly pressing threats to our entire planet. Stop repeating them. Stop repeating them NOW. Stop helping those who put their own profits before the needs of all of humanity. Stop helping bring about destruction. Just stop.
DagAgren 7y ago
"Appears"? How does it "appear" that way? Do you have even a single piece of evidence for this claim?
Florin_Andrei 7y ago
Translation: Squeezing my vocabulary for all its worth, trying to spread uncertainty that helps support my nonsense belief. The word salad looked good, though.
nabla9 7y ago
Climate modeling is one of those areas where debatable assumptions are relatively small. Existing climate models are really good. They are used with little modification to correctly model climate of Mars, Venus, tidal locked exoplanet and previous historical eras on Earth. You just set the parameters and they pretty much produce the climate that exists on those planets or time periods. Yet constant shade thrown at them.
- briantakita 7y ago
  > They are used with little modification to correctly model climate of Mars, Venus, tidal locked exoplanet and previous historical eras on Earth. Never heard that claim. Could you back it up? Side note. I did a calculation of PV=nRT on Venus which has a 96.5% (965000PPM) CO2 atmospheric concentration. Assuming RT is close to equal on Venus & Earth, P~T. Venus has a surface temp/pressure of 7.96 K/bar vs 287.15 K/bar on Earth. If Venus had a runaway greenhouse effect, the K/bar on Venus should be significantly higher than on Earth. Would love more feedback & critique on this calculation, particularly a relevant PVT diagram for CO2. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mn4yuh2TUKWeMtMpZkDN1rI8WY1PEgYPvqAlVeDXeWA/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mn4yuh2TUKWeMtMpZkDN... ---- Heres a PVT phase diagram for CO2 but hopefully theres better ones wrt Venus. Note that theres a bend in the liquid/gas border. 1 to 10 bar has a lower increase of K/bar than for the 10 to 90 bar region. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-phase-diagram-for-CO2_fig1_267328310 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-phase-diagram-for-CO2_...
- audessuscest 7y ago
  > They are used with little modification to correctly model climate of Mars, Venus, tidal locked exoplanet and previous historical eras on Earth. You just set the parameters and they pretty much produce the climate that exists o why are they wrong all the time then ?
  - DagAgren 7y ago
    They are not. They are very accurately tracking the current changes in climate.

TLightful 7y ago

Would you rather proceed on blind faith? Proceed by testing and accepting or disproving hypothesis. Nothing more, nothing less.

ximeng 7y ago

What is the evidence that people who question the black box have great reputational risk? Dyson raises this point, but I don't really see that this would be different from any other area. There is more money at stake with climate change than most areas of science, which means it becomes a political issue. There would seem to be a very strong incentive to show existing models are not accurate, or to come up with scientifically plausible models with very different outcomes. However no arguments against climate change do this, presumably because it's not very easy to do so. Dyson here points out some areas that he thinks are not possible to model accurately or are not currently modelled accurately, such as the benefits and threats of various changes to the climate, the impact of climate change on sea level change, cloud modelling uncertainties, and the chaotic effects of different carbon reservoirs on each other. His points on the exact impact of climate change and what the ideal climate is are important, but they are also studied and discussed. The supposed political reasons for supporting or being against climate change theories do not change the facts. If there are real problems with the models these can be flagged up - sensitivity testing can be done for all of these issues. One major problem here is that the communication of the climate mainstream is very poor. The IPCC produces massive reports that are designed to be printed as PDF, and are targeted at policy experts. They're not really readable, the web versions don't really use hyperlinks and have minimal pictures and poor structure. They're slowly getting better, but still a long way from ideal. Example for reference: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/

dntbnmpls 7y ago
> There is more money at stake with climate change than most areas of science, which means it becomes a political issue. Yes. But even beyond that, power is at stake. Climate change isn't about science, it's about geopolitics/globalism. It's about instilling fear to create a global political system. At least that's my take. If the climate change alarmism was valid, we'd simply end global trade today because global trade is the driver of pollution. But you never hear that from the elites. They demand more globalism, but with a global tax. Maybe a global system is the next step of human societal evolution, but instead of being open and honest and having a global discussion, these people are being sneaky and using fear to sneak a global system on humanity. > There would seem to be a very strong incentive to show existing models are not accurate or to come up with scientifically plausible models with very different outcomes. Not if enough of those with money and power are aligned on one side. Then there is very strong incentive to show one side. > The supposed political reasons for supporting or being against climate change theories do not change the facts. Sure. And the facts are that climate science is a very young science and have been reliably wrong that we shouldn't take it as gospel. Especially when so much of climate science is politically driven. I love climate change alarmism. When their predictions are wrong, they claim that the climate is so complex that it's hard to model and predict accurately. At the same time, they claim their predictions are facts and we must believe everything they say. Even when these alarmists all say and have different predictions. How about this, how out of dozens/hundreds of climate alarmist models, which is the right one? I personally believe that climate change is natural and the forces of nature ( mostly the sun ) drive climate on earth. Also, I don't think there is anything we can do about climate change, just like we can't do anything about earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. And I reject the false notion that climate change is bad. Climate change can be bad for some, but good for others. If climate alarmists want to be taken seriously, then let them protest globalist bankers and global trade instead of advocating for a global carbon tax and enriching the wealthy bankers and industrialists. But of course they won't because these climate alarmists are funded by the globalist bankers and industrialists.
- DagAgren 7y ago
  > At least that's my take No, that is a take that you have been fed by those who have gigantic vested interests in stopping any attempts to challenge THEIR power and profits. You are being used as a useful idiot to spread uncertainty about absolute facts about absolutely real and highly pressing threats to our entire planet. Stop repeating them. Stop repeating them NOW. Stop helping those who put their own profits before the needs of all of humanity. Stop helping bring about destruction. Just stop.

DagAgren 7y ago

"Appears"? How does it "appear" that way? Do you have even a single piece of evidence for this claim?

Florin_Andrei 7y ago

Translation: Squeezing my vocabulary for all its worth, trying to spread uncertainty that helps support my nonsense belief. The word salad looked good, though.

nabla9 7y ago

Climate modeling is one of those areas where debatable assumptions are relatively small. Existing climate models are really good. They are used with little modification to correctly model climate of Mars, Venus, tidal locked exoplanet and previous historical eras on Earth. You just set the parameters and they pretty much produce the climate that exists on those planets or time periods. Yet constant shade thrown at them.

briantakita 7y ago
> They are used with little modification to correctly model climate of Mars, Venus, tidal locked exoplanet and previous historical eras on Earth. Never heard that claim. Could you back it up? Side note. I did a calculation of PV=nRT on Venus which has a 96.5% (965000PPM) CO2 atmospheric concentration. Assuming RT is close to equal on Venus & Earth, P~T. Venus has a surface temp/pressure of 7.96 K/bar vs 287.15 K/bar on Earth. If Venus had a runaway greenhouse effect, the K/bar on Venus should be significantly higher than on Earth. Would love more feedback & critique on this calculation, particularly a relevant PVT diagram for CO2. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mn4yuh2TUKWeMtMpZkDN1rI8WY1PEgYPvqAlVeDXeWA/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mn4yuh2TUKWeMtMpZkDN... ---- Heres a PVT phase diagram for CO2 but hopefully theres better ones wrt Venus. Note that theres a bend in the liquid/gas border. 1 to 10 bar has a lower increase of K/bar than for the 10 to 90 bar region. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-phase-diagram-for-CO2_fig1_267328310 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-phase-diagram-for-CO2_...
audessuscest 7y ago
> They are used with little modification to correctly model climate of Mars, Venus, tidal locked exoplanet and previous historical eras on Earth. You just set the parameters and they pretty much produce the climate that exists o why are they wrong all the time then ?
- DagAgren 7y ago
  They are not. They are very accurately tracking the current changes in climate.