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At one point I really took it upon myself to have some idea of what climate change would be. What I found was: 1. The greenhouse effect is very real 2. What

At one point I really took it upon myself to have some idea of what climate change would be. What I found was: 1. The greenhouse effect is very real 2. What that's going to do to ecosystems is largely unknown Having been made to believe that it was going to cause the next mass extinction event, I found #2 fairly underwhelming. Never-the-less, this isn't a gamble worth messing with.

zpeti 5y ago
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. We simply don’t know. Experts couldn’t even predict COVID waves correctly (UK) but we think we can predict the entire planets ecosystem changes? I also think we need to seperate out how humans are driving species extinct, and climate change. These two can be very different things, yet are always conflated in the media for hype. Most species are going extinct because their habitats are actively destroyed by humans, or are fished to extinction, not because the planet is warming.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Predicting aggregate impacts of a warm climate decade into the future is far easier than predicting the short-term process of an unstable system hypersensitive to initial conditions.
  - darkerside 5y ago
    Only in that you don't know you're wrong for a much longer period of time.
  - throwaways885 5y ago
    As a layman, can you explain to me why a very accurate (i.e. small error) model wouldn't still lead to catastrophically incorrect results when projected across a long timespan?
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      There's a difference between a fairly simple linear model of the climate and trying to guess whether the initial conditions of an unstable disease propagation model are < 1.0 or > 1.0. Think of climate modeling as saying that for a given species of trees, half of them will be dead at a given latitude in 50-100 years, not pointing at a specific tree and predicting that it will die on July 7th, 2047.
    - jbay808 5y ago
      What do you consider to be catastrophically incorrect? If the model predicts that a glacier disappears in 2050 and it disappears in 2070 instead? Or if the lack-of-model makes a lack-of-prediction about glacier disappearance, and then it disappears in 2070 by surprise? Error accumulation makes sense to worry about if you're planning a voyage and worried that dead-reckoning navigation will leave you kilometres off course. But if you're on the voyage already, out on the open ocean, you can argue with the navigator's math but you still need to navigate -- you won't do better by just blindly insisting the boat never left the harbour.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  ever since I read this article titled "Clouds May Be the Key to a Climate Modeling Mystery"[0], I've come to understand that all climate models are basically useless for predicting anything. anyone who claims such-and-such will happen as a result of climate change, because a model said so, is speaking nonsense. the planet is massive and its climate is an infinitely fractally complex system. if we can't even model clouds with anything remotely resembling accuracy, then why do we put any stock in predictive climate models at all? basically everyone agrees that the climate is changing, has always changed, and will always change. there is debate over how much of climate change is anthropogenic, but this is irrelevant to the point that predictive climate models are functionally useless, due to the complexity of the thing it's modeling. [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clouds-may-be-the-key-to-a-climate-modeling-mystery/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clouds-may-be-the... downvoters: I would appreciate an explanation as to how my understanding of this situation is inaccurate. my views are never set in stone, I'm always open to learn new things. I just don't see how, short of a complete holistic Matrix-style simulation of the planet, one can obtain meaningful predictions from a data-driven climate model. I'm wrong about a lot of stuff all the time and I'd like to know where my understanding of this situation is incomplete or inaccurate.
  - vegetablepotpie 5y ago
    > climate models are basically useless for predicting anything That is false. Although you’re correct that climate is very complex and it is impossible to model every detail. The notion that you cannot make valid conclusions from modeling because a set of observations do not match models is fallacious because it discounts the correct conclusions that climate models have achieved. For example, the first climate models from the 1960s predicted that the mesosphere will contract and cool as a result of increasing co2 concentrations, and this conclusion has been backed by empirical observations. Furthermore, modeling from the 1970s by scientists at Exxon Mobile found that by 2020, net warming would reach an average of 1 degree centigrade, which we’ve since exceeded.
    - adamrezich 5y ago
      how is this different than a broken clock being correct twice a day? by this I mean to say, just because some predictions made using some models turned out to be correct, why does this validate those or all climate models as accurate predictors of the future? the system is so complex, poorly-understood, infinitely fractal, with endless variables depending upon each other in ways that we mostly don't understand... the models are so varied, based on different data sources, some omitting entire classes of data entirely... I would be more surprised if some predictions some models made didn't end up being true after several years. but that doesn't mean they're useful at predicting things going forward, by any means.
mustafa_pasi 5y ago
Unknown is bad in itself, both for farming and for wildlife, both of which depend on predictable seasonal weather patterns.
ves 5y ago
We’re already in the middle of a mass extinction event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction And regarding your second point, we know it won’t do anything good, but we don’t know exactly what (nor could we ever!).
- slibhb 5y ago
  How could climate change possibly not cause anything good? There will be some positive outcomes associated with climate change.
  - dependsontheq 5y ago
    No - since even warming areas will experience weather and climate instability which is very hard to manage. We as humans like plants are good at adapting to certain conditions, if these conditions are volatile we can't adapt. Plants and animals can't adapt. So no, there is no possibility of anything positive in this.
    - seibelj 5y ago
      Plants love carbon dioxide. That’s why it’s called “greenhouse effect” - greenhouses artificially increase the amount of carbon dioxide in order to increase plant growth. Trees and plants will grow faster and larger as CO2 ppm increases, and we have already observed this.
      - adrienthebo 5y ago
        The greenhouse effect is due to radiation being trapped by the environment, atmospheric or otherwise - not the increased CO2. And while greenhouses may have artificially increased CO2 to improve plant growth it's accompanied with nitrogen fertilizer. The global increase in CO2 will only see a minor increase in plant growth but will be capped by limited nitrogen, and the hotter environment and associated increase in water evaporation will lead to reduced plant growth.
jbay808 5y ago
Something to keep in mind about making unknown changes to a landscape: it's not by coincidence that most changes would be for the worse. It's not because the status quo is globally optimal, but because humans have invested a lot in the way things are. We happen to have built cities on coastlines, put farms where food grows, put bridges where the rivers are, and so on. We can shake things up and get unknown results, but most random changes will be for the worse because we've molded our civilization to the planet we already have. And this goes not only for humans, but even moreso for other species, who are much slower to adapt to changes.
- ericd 5y ago
  Right, we've invested a lot in the idea that specific people and specific countries own specific pieces of land, we're really not well set up for fluid changing circumstances, as a civilization. The mass migration and the strains that will cause seem like they're going to be rough.
matthewdgreen 5y ago
Climate change includes a range of outcomes ranging from “terrible for agriculture and many species but possibly survivable” to “mass extinction”. We’re already seeing some of the “mild” effects in the form of crop underperformance in the Middle East and wildfires all over the world. Many of the worst outcomes have to do with tipping points that we don’t fully understand, some of which seem to be breaking against us. TL;DR climate change isn’t necessarily an extinction-level event. It is just possibly an extinction level event. I would argue that if you’re looking at it and saying “meh” then you’re not assessing risks properly.
- goatlover 5y ago
  It's hard to imagine humans going extinct. An extinction level event for organisms which can't adapt fast enough, sure. But humans have existed in all sorts of climates from the stone age, while colonizing most of the planet. Our ancestors survived ice ages.
  - blooalien 5y ago
    It's actually pretty easy to imagine humans going extinct, and taking a huge portion of the other life on this planet out with us. As the level of human "crazy" in the world grows (seemingly exponentially), I find myself worrying more and more about the fact that some of the craziest people on the planet (political "leaders" and their militaries) have access to nuclear weapons, and that's only one potential concern among far too many.
    - goatlover 5y ago
      To wipe humans out, you would have to make the entire planet unlivable, which includes high altitudes, polar regions, remote locations, islands, etc. I don't see that happening short of a gray goo scenario.
      - blooalien 5y ago
        I wouldn't totally rule out any doomsday scenario really, as long as humanity continues to put the greediest and power-hungriest humans in charge.
SinParadise 5y ago
> 2. What that's going to do to ecosystems is largely unknown This is true, but is also a bit of a red herring. All hierarchical organizations from the individual to the country is optimized to the environmental condition they are situated in, and any level of uncertainty at that scope should alarming in of itself. Just two examples of our optimization and as a consequence, our lack of resiliency to disturbance: Suez Canal and the Ever Given, chip shortage, cargo container mis-allocation in shipping that is happening at the moment. If the poster boy of efficiency, the market is so easily impacted, what do you think will happen to lumbering and lethargic political institutions that we like to rail about so much?
yongjik 5y ago
Apparently, when scientists say "we don't really know what is going to happen," a lot of us subconsciously interpret it as "even the scientists can't say it will be bad, we will probably be fine." Turns out, when scientists say that, they literally mean it. Cue 49°C heat wave at Canada. "We don't really know" should be considered an absolutely terrifying phrase out of the mouth of a climate scientist - and we'll be hearing it for years to come.

zpeti 5y ago

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. We simply don’t know. Experts couldn’t even predict COVID waves correctly (UK) but we think we can predict the entire planets ecosystem changes? I also think we need to seperate out how humans are driving species extinct, and climate change. These two can be very different things, yet are always conflated in the media for hype. Most species are going extinct because their habitats are actively destroyed by humans, or are fished to extinction, not because the planet is warming.

jeffbee 5y ago
Predicting aggregate impacts of a warm climate decade into the future is far easier than predicting the short-term process of an unstable system hypersensitive to initial conditions.
- darkerside 5y ago
  Only in that you don't know you're wrong for a much longer period of time.
- throwaways885 5y ago
  As a layman, can you explain to me why a very accurate (i.e. small error) model wouldn't still lead to catastrophically incorrect results when projected across a long timespan?
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    There's a difference between a fairly simple linear model of the climate and trying to guess whether the initial conditions of an unstable disease propagation model are < 1.0 or > 1.0. Think of climate modeling as saying that for a given species of trees, half of them will be dead at a given latitude in 50-100 years, not pointing at a specific tree and predicting that it will die on July 7th, 2047.
  - jbay808 5y ago
    What do you consider to be catastrophically incorrect? If the model predicts that a glacier disappears in 2050 and it disappears in 2070 instead? Or if the lack-of-model makes a lack-of-prediction about glacier disappearance, and then it disappears in 2070 by surprise? Error accumulation makes sense to worry about if you're planning a voyage and worried that dead-reckoning navigation will leave you kilometres off course. But if you're on the voyage already, out on the open ocean, you can argue with the navigator's math but you still need to navigate -- you won't do better by just blindly insisting the boat never left the harbour.
adamrezich 5y ago
ever since I read this article titled "Clouds May Be the Key to a Climate Modeling Mystery"[0], I've come to understand that all climate models are basically useless for predicting anything. anyone who claims such-and-such will happen as a result of climate change, because a model said so, is speaking nonsense. the planet is massive and its climate is an infinitely fractally complex system. if we can't even model clouds with anything remotely resembling accuracy, then why do we put any stock in predictive climate models at all? basically everyone agrees that the climate is changing, has always changed, and will always change. there is debate over how much of climate change is anthropogenic, but this is irrelevant to the point that predictive climate models are functionally useless, due to the complexity of the thing it's modeling. [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clouds-may-be-the-key-to-a-climate-modeling-mystery/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clouds-may-be-the... downvoters: I would appreciate an explanation as to how my understanding of this situation is inaccurate. my views are never set in stone, I'm always open to learn new things. I just don't see how, short of a complete holistic Matrix-style simulation of the planet, one can obtain meaningful predictions from a data-driven climate model. I'm wrong about a lot of stuff all the time and I'd like to know where my understanding of this situation is incomplete or inaccurate.
- vegetablepotpie 5y ago
  > climate models are basically useless for predicting anything That is false. Although you’re correct that climate is very complex and it is impossible to model every detail. The notion that you cannot make valid conclusions from modeling because a set of observations do not match models is fallacious because it discounts the correct conclusions that climate models have achieved. For example, the first climate models from the 1960s predicted that the mesosphere will contract and cool as a result of increasing co2 concentrations, and this conclusion has been backed by empirical observations. Furthermore, modeling from the 1970s by scientists at Exxon Mobile found that by 2020, net warming would reach an average of 1 degree centigrade, which we’ve since exceeded.
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    how is this different than a broken clock being correct twice a day? by this I mean to say, just because some predictions made using some models turned out to be correct, why does this validate those or all climate models as accurate predictors of the future? the system is so complex, poorly-understood, infinitely fractal, with endless variables depending upon each other in ways that we mostly don't understand... the models are so varied, based on different data sources, some omitting entire classes of data entirely... I would be more surprised if some predictions some models made didn't end up being true after several years. but that doesn't mean they're useful at predicting things going forward, by any means.

mustafa_pasi 5y ago

Unknown is bad in itself, both for farming and for wildlife, both of which depend on predictable seasonal weather patterns.

ves 5y ago

We’re already in the middle of a mass extinction event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction And regarding your second point, we know it won’t do anything good, but we don’t know exactly what (nor could we ever!).

slibhb 5y ago
How could climate change possibly not cause anything good? There will be some positive outcomes associated with climate change.
- dependsontheq 5y ago
  No - since even warming areas will experience weather and climate instability which is very hard to manage. We as humans like plants are good at adapting to certain conditions, if these conditions are volatile we can't adapt. Plants and animals can't adapt. So no, there is no possibility of anything positive in this.
  - seibelj 5y ago
    Plants love carbon dioxide. That’s why it’s called “greenhouse effect” - greenhouses artificially increase the amount of carbon dioxide in order to increase plant growth. Trees and plants will grow faster and larger as CO2 ppm increases, and we have already observed this.
    - adrienthebo 5y ago
      The greenhouse effect is due to radiation being trapped by the environment, atmospheric or otherwise - not the increased CO2. And while greenhouses may have artificially increased CO2 to improve plant growth it's accompanied with nitrogen fertilizer. The global increase in CO2 will only see a minor increase in plant growth but will be capped by limited nitrogen, and the hotter environment and associated increase in water evaporation will lead to reduced plant growth.

jbay808 5y ago

Something to keep in mind about making unknown changes to a landscape: it's not by coincidence that most changes would be for the worse. It's not because the status quo is globally optimal, but because humans have invested a lot in the way things are. We happen to have built cities on coastlines, put farms where food grows, put bridges where the rivers are, and so on. We can shake things up and get unknown results, but most random changes will be for the worse because we've molded our civilization to the planet we already have. And this goes not only for humans, but even moreso for other species, who are much slower to adapt to changes.

ericd 5y ago
Right, we've invested a lot in the idea that specific people and specific countries own specific pieces of land, we're really not well set up for fluid changing circumstances, as a civilization. The mass migration and the strains that will cause seem like they're going to be rough.

matthewdgreen 5y ago

Climate change includes a range of outcomes ranging from “terrible for agriculture and many species but possibly survivable” to “mass extinction”. We’re already seeing some of the “mild” effects in the form of crop underperformance in the Middle East and wildfires all over the world. Many of the worst outcomes have to do with tipping points that we don’t fully understand, some of which seem to be breaking against us. TL;DR climate change isn’t necessarily an extinction-level event. It is just possibly an extinction level event. I would argue that if you’re looking at it and saying “meh” then you’re not assessing risks properly.

goatlover 5y ago
It's hard to imagine humans going extinct. An extinction level event for organisms which can't adapt fast enough, sure. But humans have existed in all sorts of climates from the stone age, while colonizing most of the planet. Our ancestors survived ice ages.
- blooalien 5y ago
  It's actually pretty easy to imagine humans going extinct, and taking a huge portion of the other life on this planet out with us. As the level of human "crazy" in the world grows (seemingly exponentially), I find myself worrying more and more about the fact that some of the craziest people on the planet (political "leaders" and their militaries) have access to nuclear weapons, and that's only one potential concern among far too many.
  - goatlover 5y ago
    To wipe humans out, you would have to make the entire planet unlivable, which includes high altitudes, polar regions, remote locations, islands, etc. I don't see that happening short of a gray goo scenario.
    - blooalien 5y ago
      I wouldn't totally rule out any doomsday scenario really, as long as humanity continues to put the greediest and power-hungriest humans in charge.

SinParadise 5y ago

> 2. What that's going to do to ecosystems is largely unknown This is true, but is also a bit of a red herring. All hierarchical organizations from the individual to the country is optimized to the environmental condition they are situated in, and any level of uncertainty at that scope should alarming in of itself. Just two examples of our optimization and as a consequence, our lack of resiliency to disturbance: Suez Canal and the Ever Given, chip shortage, cargo container mis-allocation in shipping that is happening at the moment. If the poster boy of efficiency, the market is so easily impacted, what do you think will happen to lumbering and lethargic political institutions that we like to rail about so much?

yongjik 5y ago

Apparently, when scientists say "we don't really know what is going to happen," a lot of us subconsciously interpret it as "even the scientists can't say it will be bad, we will probably be fine." Turns out, when scientists say that, they literally mean it. Cue 49°C heat wave at Canada. "We don't really know" should be considered an absolutely terrifying phrase out of the mouth of a climate scientist - and we'll be hearing it for years to come.