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Environment should obviously be protected. But anyone who says he can predict the evolution of a complex system as large as the Earth is an idiot. No study ca

Environment should obviously be protected. But anyone who says he can predict the evolution of a complex system as large as the Earth is an idiot. No study can do this, not possible. Studies fail when trying to predict such a thing that evolves year after year after year with an insane amount of non-predictable variables. You get one wrong and your prediction will completely diverge after 5 days. After 1 month you will be predicting apocalypse while the people in Greece are sunbathing. After a year your model will take on the atmosphere of Jupiter while in reality I'll be drinking beer and playing video games at that time. People truly fail to comprehend that there are things which you simple cannot "perform a study on".

farias0 6y ago
Or you predict you'll be drinking beer and playing video games when in reality the apocalypse is happening. It goes both ways. We either give up on trying to predict stuff or we do our best and refine our models over time. If you (and by "you" I mean anyone) have any criticism to any specific prediction please say so, science depends on it. But these dismissals of "it's too complex" don't really help with anything. Also keep in mind the article in question only mentions the predictions that did not came true, for instance https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/even-50-year-old-climate-models-correctly-predicted-global-warming https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/even-50-year-old-cli...
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  I think part of the problem is treating models as evidence rather than as hypotheses. Increasingly we see articles (and this is across a lot of disciplines, not just climate science) that are basically "we hypothesised X, and then we created a model that confirmed X". That's not how the Scientific Method works, folks. The models need to be built on a hypothesis, and then they need to make predictions, and then those predictions need to be proven by measurement of the actual phenomenon. That then gives some evidence (it's not complete proof) that the hypothesis isn't false. Instead, the current thinking seems to be that the models reflect reality and can be used to prove the hypothesis. The problem with this, of course, is that a model can be made to prove any hypothesis.
qsort 6y ago
This so much. Apocalyptic positions, while usually coming from a good place, are actively counterproductive.

farias0 6y ago

Or you predict you'll be drinking beer and playing video games when in reality the apocalypse is happening. It goes both ways. We either give up on trying to predict stuff or we do our best and refine our models over time. If you (and by "you" I mean anyone) have any criticism to any specific prediction please say so, science depends on it. But these dismissals of "it's too complex" don't really help with anything. Also keep in mind the article in question only mentions the predictions that did not came true, for instance https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/even-50-year-old-climate-models-correctly-predicted-global-warming https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/even-50-year-old-cli...

marcus_holmes 6y ago
I think part of the problem is treating models as evidence rather than as hypotheses. Increasingly we see articles (and this is across a lot of disciplines, not just climate science) that are basically "we hypothesised X, and then we created a model that confirmed X". That's not how the Scientific Method works, folks. The models need to be built on a hypothesis, and then they need to make predictions, and then those predictions need to be proven by measurement of the actual phenomenon. That then gives some evidence (it's not complete proof) that the hypothesis isn't false. Instead, the current thinking seems to be that the models reflect reality and can be used to prove the hypothesis. The problem with this, of course, is that a model can be made to prove any hypothesis.

qsort 6y ago

This so much. Apocalyptic positions, while usually coming from a good place, are actively counterproductive.