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The thing is there are hundreds of negative and positive feedbacks, and they’re all modeled by people whose job is to think of these things. You are not going t

The thing is there are hundreds of negative and positive feedbacks, and they’re all modeled by people whose job is to think of these things. You are not going to think of something novel unless you are an expert in a related field. Your curiosity is not a bad thing. As a climatologist I’ve heard so many versions of “climate models don’t account for X” where X has been modeled since the 1980s that it just kind of triggers me. The error bars of the IPCC report are our best guess on what we think we know about uncertainty. Sure, we could end up outside of it, on some heretofore unknown feedback, but it’s like betting our collective future on a longshot horse. The same applies to the assuming it will be much worse.

parksy 5y ago
I think I get what you're saying, and I think I agree - generally I defer to the advice of people who are experts in a field for that reason - it's your profession and what you do for a living. I'm a computer programmer / software architect with a side interest in chaos theory. While I understand models and algorithms so I get complex dynamical systems, my domain knowledge is decidedly NOT climate science - I spend more time pushing pixels at the end of the day. Similar to the recent / ongoing pandemic, there's tons of variables and I've made a similar argument to people who decry in a mocking tone the "scientists" with their "agendas" etc... like dude these are people individually who devoted ten years of education and research MINIMUM learning about one specific thing.. BEFORE they were taken seriously enough to even get a job. Pushing pixels and shovelling dirt are both important and necessary, but when it comes to complex matters, listen to the person who made a lifetime commitment to studying that thing. I get it, and apologies if I somehow sounded like I was brushing that away. As you say, I'm just curious. So anyway I'll take this all with a grain of salt. Seems interesting but as you imply it's a bit overhyped. It's just another small wheel within an intricate mechanism of gears and the overall swing of the machine is to hotter temperatures, more carbon dioxide, nothing changes, the overall trend is still clear. As I say, I was probably too drunk to hit reply, but I'm glad I did. Thanks for the reply, it gave me a chance to pause and reflect.
- labster 5y ago
  Well, I used to do it for a living when I was a graduate student. Now I haul bits from the bit mines, like you. As I said before, it’s okay to be curious. It’s okay to be hopeful too. You have a pretty good attitude, which is why I bothered to reply. You learn to spot the closed minds. But it is not okay to pin our hopes on the unknown — not in this case, when so much is already known. The hype is problematic; cherry-picking research that helps one’s argument is the political problem of climate science. There are plenty of negative feedbacks, and I knew professors who made their grant money by picking topics that made the climate crisis sound less crisisish. The research was good and so was the money, but their reputations suffered from being one-sided. And that’s not to say scientific consensus can’t be profoundly wrong. The amyloid plaque hypothesis, for one. Geology accepted continental drift, essentially its central dogma, less than a hundred years ago, after much wringing of hands. But climate models have verified predictions. And climate is such a vast problem that “a related field” I mentioned earlier is essentially all of the Earth sciences, physical sciences, and biological sciences to some degree, because the Earth-atmosphere-hydrosphere system is vast. But that means we also have millions of eyes looking for bugs and corner cases.

parksy 5y ago

I think I get what you're saying, and I think I agree - generally I defer to the advice of people who are experts in a field for that reason - it's your profession and what you do for a living. I'm a computer programmer / software architect with a side interest in chaos theory. While I understand models and algorithms so I get complex dynamical systems, my domain knowledge is decidedly NOT climate science - I spend more time pushing pixels at the end of the day. Similar to the recent / ongoing pandemic, there's tons of variables and I've made a similar argument to people who decry in a mocking tone the "scientists" with their "agendas" etc... like dude these are people individually who devoted ten years of education and research MINIMUM learning about one specific thing.. BEFORE they were taken seriously enough to even get a job. Pushing pixels and shovelling dirt are both important and necessary, but when it comes to complex matters, listen to the person who made a lifetime commitment to studying that thing. I get it, and apologies if I somehow sounded like I was brushing that away. As you say, I'm just curious. So anyway I'll take this all with a grain of salt. Seems interesting but as you imply it's a bit overhyped. It's just another small wheel within an intricate mechanism of gears and the overall swing of the machine is to hotter temperatures, more carbon dioxide, nothing changes, the overall trend is still clear. As I say, I was probably too drunk to hit reply, but I'm glad I did. Thanks for the reply, it gave me a chance to pause and reflect.

labster 5y ago
Well, I used to do it for a living when I was a graduate student. Now I haul bits from the bit mines, like you. As I said before, it’s okay to be curious. It’s okay to be hopeful too. You have a pretty good attitude, which is why I bothered to reply. You learn to spot the closed minds. But it is not okay to pin our hopes on the unknown — not in this case, when so much is already known. The hype is problematic; cherry-picking research that helps one’s argument is the political problem of climate science. There are plenty of negative feedbacks, and I knew professors who made their grant money by picking topics that made the climate crisis sound less crisisish. The research was good and so was the money, but their reputations suffered from being one-sided. And that’s not to say scientific consensus can’t be profoundly wrong. The amyloid plaque hypothesis, for one. Geology accepted continental drift, essentially its central dogma, less than a hundred years ago, after much wringing of hands. But climate models have verified predictions. And climate is such a vast problem that “a related field” I mentioned earlier is essentially all of the Earth sciences, physical sciences, and biological sciences to some degree, because the Earth-atmosphere-hydrosphere system is vast. But that means we also have millions of eyes looking for bugs and corner cases.