4 ms·

I am very interested in this because there appear to be studies with conflicting conclusions (e.g., https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.1510037 https://eh

• mrandish 5y ago
  > there appear to be studies with conflicting conclusions So far, conflicting conclusions are more common throughout much of recent climate science than any of us like. The basic lab bench physics behind CO2 is obviously very well-understood but long-term global climate (as opposed to regional, seasonal weather) is a 'wickedly' hard problem. Modeling future global climate shifts over years and decades is hard because Earth's climate is a highly-complex, dynamically coupled system with thousands of interacting variables and possible feedbacks. Then extrapolating the output of those models to estimate significant changes to health, agriculture and extreme weather event severity and frequency requires making assumptions which are not nearly as well-understood. Then trying to adapt those estimates to further estimate the relative benefits, costs and impacts of myriad regulatory, economic and behavioral policy proposals is the kind of thing which would cause my favorite stats prof to say "It's fine... that's why god made error bars".
  • mcculley 5y ago
    That is a good argument for discontinuing putting more carbon into the atmosphere until we understand it better.