3 ms·

We'll see. I remember when Al Gore said we had 10 years in 2006.

xpe 7y ago
First, your phrasing is vague; please be more specific. If your comment is intended as a general dismissal of climate predictions, my replies would be: * What would you recommend instead? * Would you recommend that no one make model-based predictions at all? * Would you recommend that model-based predictions be dismissed entirely? All models are wrong, but some are useful. [1] In other words, models are all simplifications in different kinds of ways, but a critical, skeptical mind can find value in them. Science is largely based on models. Some may think current scientific theories are the complete truth, but history has shown this is not a reliable prediction. Still, you work with the best models you have, since the alternative is worse. Still, the only way forward we know is starting from where we are. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong
Joof 7y ago
Was he referring to '10 years to enact things to prevent X'. Because we've passed a few thresholds that we probably can't take back at this point. Exponential growth on a long timescale is something people are bad at.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  People are bad at exponential growth on a short timescale too. That's been one of the most interesting things about the early days of covid, when the divide seemed to be between quantitative and non-quantitative people, like VC firms discouraging handshakes and Vox mocking them for it.
  - Kerrick 7y ago
    Wow, Vox actually did that. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/13/21128209/coronavirus-fears-contagion-how-infection-spreads https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/13/21128209/coronavirus-fe... > reducing handshakes is recommended generally to prevent the spread of colds and flu, but not specifically for coronavirus. > Ulevitch also announced that he won’t be taking in-person meetings with anyone who’s recently traveled to China. It’s unclear if Ulevitch was kidding. > so far, the flu has impacted far more people. [...] Yet unlike the flu, the coronavirus is new and not well understood, which makes it especially scary to the public, including Silicon Valley’s elite. ...Wow.
adrianN 7y ago
Climate denialists love to cite the various "We have X years left" claims that are more than X years old, but rarely note that the goal posts have shifted from "almost no warming" to "catastrophic but survivable" warming in the meantime. If we had started in earnest to reduce emissions in the early nineties when the science was crystal clear, we could be mostly done by now. The current climate is measurably different from thirty years ago, but obviously not so bad. Unfortunately we barely did anything in the last thirty years, so we can only hope to finish decarbonization in another thirty years. By then we'll have locked in another two degrees of warming and, if we're unlucky, hit some trigger points that cause runaway warming (e.g. Greenland losing most of its ice, large parts of the permafrost thawing...) which we're powerless to stop.
- mistermann 7y ago
  I continue to believe the main problem here is of a psychological nature, not of climate science. Unless something changes, 10 years from now we're all going to be having this same discussion.
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  How is 0.1-0.2 degrees warmer "measurably different"? (I'm curious - I haven't been reading much of the literature lately, and this is new to me).
  - adrianN 7y ago
    First, technically we've measured that the average increased, so it's by definition measurable. But more to your point: Regional warming can be larger, and the tails of the temperature distribution move more than the small increase in average temperature suggest. Precipitation patterns are also affected.
  - cranekam 7y ago
    Firstly, where did you get 0.1-0.2 degrees (did you mean C or F?) from? We are currently 0.98C above 1951-1980 averages [0], and presumably a bit more above pre-industrial times. Secondly, as for measurably different: there are a million articles on the internet detailing how weather patterns have changed across the world in the last few decades. For some personal perspective: I live in Zurich, where winter temperatures once hovered around freezing and there were 20 days of snow per year [1]. Winter gets milder and milder and this year it almost didn't happen. Autumn just became spring at some point. It snowed for 10 minutes. I look around at all the buildings here with snow protection fences on their roofs and wonder when people will remove them through lack of use. Nearby ski resorts were brown and grassy, not white. And as winters have gotten warmer, so have summers. There was a huge number of days over 30 last year -- something that used to be quite extreme. Also, although global temperatures have "only" risen ~1C this increase is not uniformly distributed. In particular the Arctic is heating much faster, accelerating melting ice caps and sea level rise [2]. [0] https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich#Climate [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/climate/climate-change-arctic-warming.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/climate/climate-change-ar... I encourage you to read up on what's going on, get scared, and vow to do something (vote, lobby, educate, etc). (Edit: added NASA source)
unsignedchar 7y ago
He was pretty accurate, wasn’t he?

xpe 7y ago

First, your phrasing is vague; please be more specific. If your comment is intended as a general dismissal of climate predictions, my replies would be: * What would you recommend instead? * Would you recommend that no one make model-based predictions at all? * Would you recommend that model-based predictions be dismissed entirely? All models are wrong, but some are useful. [1] In other words, models are all simplifications in different kinds of ways, but a critical, skeptical mind can find value in them. Science is largely based on models. Some may think current scientific theories are the complete truth, but history has shown this is not a reliable prediction. Still, you work with the best models you have, since the alternative is worse. Still, the only way forward we know is starting from where we are. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong

Joof 7y ago

Was he referring to '10 years to enact things to prevent X'. Because we've passed a few thresholds that we probably can't take back at this point. Exponential growth on a long timescale is something people are bad at.

wutbrodo 7y ago
People are bad at exponential growth on a short timescale too. That's been one of the most interesting things about the early days of covid, when the divide seemed to be between quantitative and non-quantitative people, like VC firms discouraging handshakes and Vox mocking them for it.
- Kerrick 7y ago
  Wow, Vox actually did that. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/13/21128209/coronavirus-fears-contagion-how-infection-spreads https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/13/21128209/coronavirus-fe... > reducing handshakes is recommended generally to prevent the spread of colds and flu, but not specifically for coronavirus. > Ulevitch also announced that he won’t be taking in-person meetings with anyone who’s recently traveled to China. It’s unclear if Ulevitch was kidding. > so far, the flu has impacted far more people. [...] Yet unlike the flu, the coronavirus is new and not well understood, which makes it especially scary to the public, including Silicon Valley’s elite. ...Wow.

adrianN 7y ago

Climate denialists love to cite the various "We have X years left" claims that are more than X years old, but rarely note that the goal posts have shifted from "almost no warming" to "catastrophic but survivable" warming in the meantime. If we had started in earnest to reduce emissions in the early nineties when the science was crystal clear, we could be mostly done by now. The current climate is measurably different from thirty years ago, but obviously not so bad. Unfortunately we barely did anything in the last thirty years, so we can only hope to finish decarbonization in another thirty years. By then we'll have locked in another two degrees of warming and, if we're unlucky, hit some trigger points that cause runaway warming (e.g. Greenland losing most of its ice, large parts of the permafrost thawing...) which we're powerless to stop.

mistermann 7y ago
I continue to believe the main problem here is of a psychological nature, not of climate science. Unless something changes, 10 years from now we're all going to be having this same discussion.
marcus_holmes 7y ago
How is 0.1-0.2 degrees warmer "measurably different"? (I'm curious - I haven't been reading much of the literature lately, and this is new to me).
- adrianN 7y ago
  First, technically we've measured that the average increased, so it's by definition measurable. But more to your point: Regional warming can be larger, and the tails of the temperature distribution move more than the small increase in average temperature suggest. Precipitation patterns are also affected.
- cranekam 7y ago
  Firstly, where did you get 0.1-0.2 degrees (did you mean C or F?) from? We are currently 0.98C above 1951-1980 averages [0], and presumably a bit more above pre-industrial times. Secondly, as for measurably different: there are a million articles on the internet detailing how weather patterns have changed across the world in the last few decades. For some personal perspective: I live in Zurich, where winter temperatures once hovered around freezing and there were 20 days of snow per year [1]. Winter gets milder and milder and this year it almost didn't happen. Autumn just became spring at some point. It snowed for 10 minutes. I look around at all the buildings here with snow protection fences on their roofs and wonder when people will remove them through lack of use. Nearby ski resorts were brown and grassy, not white. And as winters have gotten warmer, so have summers. There was a huge number of days over 30 last year -- something that used to be quite extreme. Also, although global temperatures have "only" risen ~1C this increase is not uniformly distributed. In particular the Arctic is heating much faster, accelerating melting ice caps and sea level rise [2]. [0] https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich#Climate [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/climate/climate-change-arctic-warming.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/climate/climate-change-ar... I encourage you to read up on what's going on, get scared, and vow to do something (vote, lobby, educate, etc). (Edit: added NASA source)

unsignedchar 7y ago

He was pretty accurate, wasn’t he?