9 ms·

How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality

78 points by tamaharbor 4y ago

mbgerring 4y ago
This is waaaaaaaaay too many words when all they want to say is “RCP8.5 is now unrealistic given progress towards climate goals, and the “business as usual” scenario should be updated in the next IPCC report”
- CharlesW 4y ago
  Thank you. This seemed like it was written by a student who was saying the same thing over and over in order to satisfy a 4,500-word target, and I was wondering what I was missing.
  - antegamisou 4y ago
    Unfortunately I feel like submissions on the site, as well as general content online, of the same type for significantly less academic subjects (this new cool web framework I'll spend 6000 words writing about) are the norm now. And before anyone says so, no it has nothing to do with the supposed lessened attention span smartphones have caused. I'm not wasting 15 minutes of my life reading about social media recommendation algorithms [1] when not even a single paragraph is dedicated to at least some rudimentary technical explanation behind them. Same goes for 30-minute YouTube videos attempting to maximize monetization for subjects whose explanation in less than 10 minutes for an average intelligence person is adequate. Here's also a recent example of ideal, imo, technical writing that is sadly getting more scarce: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6712 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6712 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35087973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35087973
    - lumb63 4y ago
      Ever since I saw a comment on HN about low information density on the internet, I haven’t been able to unsee it. They were commenting on a YouTube video that had an 8-second bit of content but was nearly 2 minutes long. But it’s so much worse than that. Recipes tell you how their great grandmother moved to the Americas and made the first apple pie ever. And then detail the entire history of apples and how to make the entire recipe. And then, 70% of the way down the page, right before the comment section, is what you wanted at first glance: what’s in this pie, and how long will it take me to make? It’s everywhere.
      - inkblotuniverse 4y ago
        Check out based.cooking - just recipes, no fluff.
        4dayworkweek4u 4y ago
        "It's bloat" ;)
    - drewcoo 4y ago
      Makes ChatGPT seem more viable.
    - croniev 4y ago
      I agree that there is a lot of blabla and that is not beneficial to anyone. But sometimes things that may seem as blabla actually may not be. You say that you care about technical information and every paragraph should contain some. But there is more than just tech, and it is important to motivate why we should care about the tech topic we are reading about. This will require paragraphs here and there that deal with ethical, social, philosophical considerations, and they may seem like space-fillers, however the contents are not trivial. Maybe you know that recommendation algorithms can have negative impacts, still it cant hurt to see arguments for this position. And other people besides you may not think so, and thus it is important to present them with such positions so that there can be a discussion. Whatever "average intelligence" is supposed to mean, not everyone knows the same things I do, no matter how "smart" they are.
  - omginternets 4y ago
    It’s interesting to understand how these RCPs came into existence, in addition to their flaws.
- cebert 4y ago
  > This is waaaaaaaaay too many words… I agree, so I used ChatGPT to summarize this for us: In the article "Climate Change Scenarios Have Lost Touch with Reality," written by Roger Pielke Jr. and Justin Ritchie and published in Issues in Science and Technology, the authors argue that the climate change scenarios used by policymakers and scientists have become disconnected from empirical reality. They suggest that this has led to an overreliance on untested and unrealistic assumptions, which in turn undermines the credibility of climate change projections and makes it more difficult to develop effective policies. The authors note that climate change projections are typically based on a set of assumptions about future greenhouse gas emissions, which are then used to generate a range of potential climate outcomes. However, these assumptions often fail to account for a range of important factors, such as economic growth, technological innovation, and changes in land use patterns, which can have a significant impact on emissions and climate outcomes. Pielke and Ritchie argue that policymakers and scientists need to take a more pragmatic and evidence-based approach to climate change projections, one that is grounded in real-world data and incorporates a wider range of factors. They suggest that this could involve developing more diverse and flexible scenarios that are better able to capture the complexity and uncertainty of the real world. Overall, the authors stress the importance of ensuring that climate change policies are based on realistic and evidence-based projections, rather than relying on overly simplistic or unrealistic assumptions. They argue that this will require a fundamental rethinking of the way that climate change scenarios are developed and used, and a greater emphasis on collaboration and dialogue between policymakers, scientists, and other stakeholders.
  - protastus 4y ago
    The article is so generic and abstract that even the summary is verbose.
  - krainboltgreene 4y ago
    Kind of a waste, since I can't verify if this actually is a summary with confidence.
    - AstixAndBelix 4y ago
- heisenbit 4y ago
  Considering the extraordinary disruptions through Covid and Russia I would argue it is too early to make changes to fundamental trend predictions.
- jasonhansel 4y ago
  I get the sense that they are trying very carefully not to sound like climate change denialists, so that they won't get conflated with people much further from the scientific consensus. If they just said "the IPCC models are BS," they would likely be dismissed out of hand, at least in the scientific community.
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    Pielke Jr is a climate-action "denialist" from a long way back, no? (claims to accept the science but then concludes there's nothing we can do about it for the foreseeable future other than adapt. This article seems to be saying "well ok some of the changes we've made are making a difference to emissions, but now there's no real need to make any more...").
    - omginternets 4y ago
      You’ve substituted “climate change denialist” for “climate action denialist”. Why?
      - wizofaus 4y ago
        Only because I don't believe he's ever denied climate change was happening or that if it is it's not our fault, which are the usual first two phases of denialism.
        omginternets 4y ago
        I don’t follow. You’re responding to a point about the author not being a climate change denialist by saying that he doesn’t think action against climate change is justified. What point are you actually trying to make? It seems like you’re trying to equate one with the other, especially given your novel use of the word “denialism”. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I’m still unclear on what exactly you are implying.
        4y ago
- randomluck040 4y ago
  Edited: the RCP8.5 seems to be the most fitting regarding historical data. There are also other RCPs for other scenarios as well.
zug_zug 4y ago
Despite the provocative title this seems well-intentioned. The scientific accuracy needs to be top-priority, these particular elements of the projections should be assessed and reevaluated if necessary.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - nickpeterson 4y ago
    I’m going to imagine you mean ‘pawn’ instead of tool here. Otherwise it feels pretty harsh for a young girl who just cares about earth.
    - UIUC_06 4y ago
      > a young girl who just cares about earth I imagine there are several 100M of those on the planet. Most do not get to address the UN, nor have well-off parents who are using her to get publicity that they couldn't get for their own views. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10059484/greta-thunberg-parents-malena-ernman-svante/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10059484/greta-thunberg-parent...
      - threeseed 4y ago
        > Most do not get to address the UN So the argument here is that there are tens of millions of children who are worried not about video games, TikTok, school etc but about how they are being denied the ability to speak at the UN ? And her parents appear to be upper middle-class given their careers have been limited in success.
    - favaq 4y ago
      When we talk about "Greta" we don't mean the "young girl", we mean all the propaganda machine that uses her as a tool.
  - admax88qqq 4y ago
Animats 4y ago
Reality is the past actuals. - Atmospheric CO2, 1960-now.[1] - Ocean temperature, 1880-now. [2] - Annual arctic sea ice minimum area, 1978-now. [3] [1] https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ [2] https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ [3] https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5036 https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5036
- rcoveson 4y ago
  Warming that has occurred in the past is not disputed here.
  - Animats 4y ago
    The detail of the article, about four screens down, indicates that. The title and introduction do not.
cbrozefsky 4y ago
The Energy Transition Show has covered this in great detail for the past few years: https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-176-climate-scenarios-vs-reality/ https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-176-climate-scena... To see all episodes related: https://xenetwork.org/ets/topics/rcp8-5/ https://xenetwork.org/ets/topics/rcp8-5/
lispisok 4y ago
I'm gonna plug Roger Pielke Jr (obligatory not a climate change denier by any means disclaimer) who talks a lot about issues like these. Climate change has become an industry now. A lot of people are selling research and solutions and they hype up the problem as much as they can even if it's not realistic. Nobody on the center or left has been checking them because they don't want to be labeled a climate change denier. Good to see that's starting to change. https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/archive https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/archive
- acdha 4y ago
  Ah, where have I seen that name before? Oh, right, the authors of the linked article.
  - lispisok 4y ago
    haha didnt notice that
taeric 4y ago
I'm not clear on the take away. Are the models wrong? Or is it more that the projections were off? Put differently, are the models precise but inaccurate or both? If inaccurate only, are they still instructive?
- arrosenberg 4y ago
  The article argues that the models are still using baselines from the 90s, while the world as it is today has already made significant progress toward decarbonizing industry. Therefore the projection are far more onerous than they should be.
  - mymythisisthis 4y ago
    We're probably using more carbon now, then in the 90s. You have to look at the total carbon output of the world.
    - taeric 4y ago
      Not the point. We use less carbon today than the scenarios looking forward to today did. Such that our path forward does not start from where many models assume. Yes, you have to look at the whole picture. But you also have to look from where you are. Not where someone else thought you could be. Right?
      - joshspankit 4y ago
        I mean, yes it’s important to base science on reality. But also: if we take drastic action “wrongly” and the end result is a healthier plant? I’m good with that.
        taeric 4y ago
        I mean, sorta? I mostly agree, but that is what I'm asking. I'm reminded of folks that were against LED lightbulbs because folks could just turn off their lights a few hours earlier. Not only would that have been a drastic change in behavior, it is comically incomparable in impact. To get the same impact, you would have to turn off your lights basically all day to get close to the same change. Such that sometimes we do have much better levers than previous drastic changes could have even dreamed of achieving. As such, it really depends on the drastic action. For the most part, I don't see how aggressive goals for electric vehicles is harming folks. So if that is what we are looking at, fully back on board with you. With a major caveat of not liking fear mongering. Honesty of where we are is important for its own reasons. Trust in future plans, at the least.
mistrial9 4y ago
supporting article from almost exactly two years ago https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3
- gpvos 4y ago
  Without paywall: https://sci-hub.se/https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3 https://sci-hub.se/https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-02...
a1371 4y ago
Eeh. Misguided article. The article itself starts by recognizing the challenge of making scenarios because of the feedback loop they embody. Then seemingly forgets about all that and basically says "coal has likely peaked already, why are assuming it will grow in the future?" Well, because of that feedback loop. Coal is still a cheap way of making energy, as it is in the business-as-usual economics of the scenarios. If we say "coal is not a problem", the pressure shifts away from coal and its usage may linger longer than it should. The scenarios are about the forces impacting the trends, not the trends themselves.
- ankit219 4y ago
  The IPCC report made some really questionable assumptions, reached conclusions based on those, which were then exacerbated by the journalists treating the worst case scenarios as absolute certainties. Creating fear and panic around stuff usually works and has worked well for a long time. It's true that we reduced the usage of coal in last few years. It's a big assumption that it happened because of a worst case scenario popularized by IPCC. From this article[1], IPCC's 8.5 was based on the assumption that between 2017-2100 we will use 5x as much coal as we had done in our entire lifetime. That's a like a "coal boom". The world was already moving away from coal, even before the report, and at best the report and faulty scenario created more panic. > Everyone knew about the decades of coal-powered economic growth in China, but those working closely on the future of energy had already grown somewhat skeptical that the same model would be deployed across the developing world — and even more skeptical that the rich nations of the world would ever return to coal in a sustained way. > The most conspicuous example was an emissions pathway called RCP8.5, which required at least a fivefold growth of coal use over the course of the 21st century. Because it was the darkest available do-nothing path, RCP8.5 was reflexively called, in the scientific literature and by journalists covering it, “business as usual.” Feedback loop as you call it probably slowed down the pace turning the whole thing into a culture war, creating mass hysteria, and getting people to fight each other when they were likely already moving away from coal. We don't have a control group in this case, and climate action is needed, though I am not sure if creating panic was justified at any time. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/26/magazine/climate-change-warming-world.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/26/magazine/clim...
fwungy 4y ago
How accurate are models of complex systems? Consider that if highly accurate models were really possible someone could make one that would accurately predict NFL game outcomes. When that happens we will know it because Sports Books would no longer take bets on NFL games. Sports Books profit because they get a slight statistical advantage which pays off due to bettor volume. So we know they can't make an accurately predicting model for football. How accurate can they possibly get with climate change modeling? It's orders of magnitude more difficult. Football is formally rule bounded and tons of data on a long history of games is readily available. In contrast, the vast majority of climate data is based on theoretical methods. This isn't bad, it's just far less precise because the variance of all those theory based estimators accumulates across the model, widening the confidence interval of its outputs to a point where it may not be useful. Finally, climate scientists are people. They have careers, families, financial responsibilities. What happens if they say the climate is fine? Some other crisis gets the funding and their careers are destroyed. They can't just switch to a different science, they've invested a lot of time and money becoming a specific thing. I found this article very wordy and skimmed parts, but it looks to me like a goalpost moving exercise to explain why their aggressive predictions for the present time didn't come true.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  I cant tell whether the parent comment is disingenuous though it looks a lot like it, but I will take it at face value. The models created by the oil companies back in the 70s seem to be “breathtakingly accurate” [1] Second, the problem with your analogy is that with football you expect the prediction to be X team will win, and similarly expect the predictions to be X weather event at $place will occur. The problem with your expectations of predictions regarding the latter is the sample space. The sample space is so large that extreme weather events will occur $somewhere. Predicting exactly where and their trajectories is difficult due to chaos and the complexity of the system. There is a bound on our capacity to predict exact events long ahead of time. However, what we can do is give a probability of the event occurring over a large enough region. When you scale said region to the earth, we can ignore very small details and focus on the bigger picture, which is that the variance in weather in creases. The problem with an increasing variance is that extreme events occur more frequently in all directions. Meaning high and low temperatures, droughts and floods and so on. To observe this in action, a year or so ago europe had severe floods that killed many people and simultaneously over the next summer experienced historic droughts. The sample space strikes again and we saw historic droughts in China too. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-climate-change-global-warming-research https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-clima... [2] Firmament, by Dr Simon Clark
HereIGoAgain 4y ago
Pretty good read. They bring up quite a few good points.
- zweifuss 4y ago
  Why exactly is it bad science if the most pessimistic scenario is slightly more pessimistic than reality? IPPC reports are too conservative because insufficient attention has been paid to the importance of tipping points, feedback loops, and outlier events forecasts. The nature of consensus building has tended to marginalize more extreme scenarios. Humanity already has a non-zero probability that wars and general political trends will reverse technological progress and waste the resources needed to adapt to climate change and transform the economy. Then the RPC8.5 scenario might be too optimistic, not too pessimistic.
wiz21c 4y ago
Saying that RPC8.5 is based on wrong assumptions and then explaining that we should take IEA's scenario as a new basis seems weird. IEA is not exactly very good at predictions either...
wazoox 4y ago
The problem with scenarios is that every resource is entangled with many others and that evolution of each one is wildly non-linear. Example : copper availability depends upon energy availability. However sustainable energy deployment depends upon copper extraction (as long as we're in the "up" part of the development S-curve). Another less important example is helium : helium is necessary for high end electronics, and electronics are necessary for modern cars. However car manufacturers are generally completely oblivious of their very real dependency upon helium, which came mostly from the US and Russia. I've just watched an interesting conference by a researcher who's working on new, complex models to build scenarios taking all these entanglements into account, managing thousands of different resources across the whole globe. At the moment there's like 5 of them working on these. Unsurprisingly, these complex, stochastic models treated with lot of Monte-Carlo analyses and now even AI are far from being stable and precise enough for projects such as IPCC. So that's where we are for now. Classical economics are wildly out of touch with reality here (Nordhaus even got the Nobel in economics with a completely bonkers linear extrapolation of climate effect on global GDP), and these sorts of interdependencies are everywhere. So OK, I've got it, the scenarios are too simple. But the IPCC working group II is composed of mainstream economists, and mainstream economists are wildly out of their league (in my opinion I'd go as far as saying that macro economy is a pseudo-science at this point anyway), so they're doing what's possible in a mainstream environment. Too bad.
hyperpape 4y ago
This takes a long time to get to the point, but it's hard to deny this part of the article? > It associated the RCP scenarios with not just plausibility but also likelihoods when it labeled the scenario leading to the greatest amount of climate change, called RCP8.5 (indicating a radiative forcing of 8.5 W/m2 in 2100), as the single business-as-usual scenario of the set. > For instance, RCP8.5 projects to 2100 a six-fold growth in global coal consumption per capita, while the International Energy Agency and other energy forecasting groups collectively agree that coal consumption has already or will soon peak. Also, RCP8.5 foresees carbon dioxide emissions growing rapidly to at least the year 2300 when Earth reaches more than 2,000 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. But again, according to the IEA and other groups, fossil energy emissions have likely plateaued, and it is plausible to achieve net-zero emissions before the end of the century, if not much sooner. Today, projections that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels will increase dramatically for the next 50, 100, or 300 years are simply implausible.
PaulKeeble 4y ago
The reason RCP 8.5 remains relavant despite changes to the mix is that our historical CO2 output is closer to it than of the other scenarios. Its predictions remain the most likely after 15 years from this scenario being created given what we have already released into the atmosphere. RCP 8.5 is the scenario best tracking the actual emissions of the last 15 years. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2007117117 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2007117117 Relevant image: https://www.pnas.org/cms/10.1073/pnas.2007117117/asset/56610ed8-71a7-4663-bf8d-a08a3fed6b3b/assets/images/large/pnas.2007117117fig01.jpg https://www.pnas.org/cms/10.1073/pnas.2007117117/asset/56610...
worik 4y ago
The article makes a newbie mistake: the job of the IPCC is not now, if it ever was, scientific. It is political. Scientifically climate change has been a growing concern since at least 1972. In 1990 there was zero support politically for the sort of action that is now starting. The IPCC's work still matters, the political changes are not bedded in ( see the GOP in USA that is still clinging to its old ideas, but not for much longer). But the urgent, political work it was established for is almost done. They can take some credit if we save the world
rasengan0 4y ago
Lost touch with reality? Droughts, wildfires, hurricanes/typhoons seem as real to me as "scientists" continue to squabble. Critical viewpoints are integral to the "integrity of science", but without application/action where is the actual contribution? Maybe the article authors are suggesting: just set at RCP2.6 or favor the IEA baseline range and call it a day? I would think they would lose funding, speaker fees, followers, etc... One missing variable in the socioeconomic assumption input to RCP assessment is the proliferation of dis/mis information or lack of open data access. As the west looks on, some global partners are displaying excellence in cooperative data sharing and full disclosure on consumption patterns to help inform policy development: https://youtu.be/gfIoS9NB0Wg https://youtu.be/gfIoS9NB0Wg Stick that in RCP input.
- worik 4y ago
  > some global partners are displaying excellence in cooperative data sharing and full disclosure on consumption patterns to help inform policy development: https://youtu.be/gfIoS9NB0Wg https://youtu.be/gfIoS9NB0Wg Are you serious? Two tourists with anecdotes The topic is science and data not tourist's reckons
- nervlord 4y ago
  [dead]

78 points by tamaharbor 4y ago

This is waaaaaaaaay too many words when all they want to say is “RCP8.5 is now unrealistic given progress towards climate goals, and the “business as usual” scenario should be updated in the next IPCC report”

CharlesW 4y ago
Thank you. This seemed like it was written by a student who was saying the same thing over and over in order to satisfy a 4,500-word target, and I was wondering what I was missing.
- antegamisou 4y ago
  Unfortunately I feel like submissions on the site, as well as general content online, of the same type for significantly less academic subjects (this new cool web framework I'll spend 6000 words writing about) are the norm now. And before anyone says so, no it has nothing to do with the supposed lessened attention span smartphones have caused. I'm not wasting 15 minutes of my life reading about social media recommendation algorithms [1] when not even a single paragraph is dedicated to at least some rudimentary technical explanation behind them. Same goes for 30-minute YouTube videos attempting to maximize monetization for subjects whose explanation in less than 10 minutes for an average intelligence person is adequate. Here's also a recent example of ideal, imo, technical writing that is sadly getting more scarce: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6712 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6712 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35087973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35087973
  - lumb63 4y ago
    Ever since I saw a comment on HN about low information density on the internet, I haven’t been able to unsee it. They were commenting on a YouTube video that had an 8-second bit of content but was nearly 2 minutes long. But it’s so much worse than that. Recipes tell you how their great grandmother moved to the Americas and made the first apple pie ever. And then detail the entire history of apples and how to make the entire recipe. And then, 70% of the way down the page, right before the comment section, is what you wanted at first glance: what’s in this pie, and how long will it take me to make? It’s everywhere.
    - inkblotuniverse 4y ago
      Check out based.cooking - just recipes, no fluff.
      - 4dayworkweek4u 4y ago
        "It's bloat" ;)
  - drewcoo 4y ago
    Makes ChatGPT seem more viable.
  - croniev 4y ago
    I agree that there is a lot of blabla and that is not beneficial to anyone. But sometimes things that may seem as blabla actually may not be. You say that you care about technical information and every paragraph should contain some. But there is more than just tech, and it is important to motivate why we should care about the tech topic we are reading about. This will require paragraphs here and there that deal with ethical, social, philosophical considerations, and they may seem like space-fillers, however the contents are not trivial. Maybe you know that recommendation algorithms can have negative impacts, still it cant hurt to see arguments for this position. And other people besides you may not think so, and thus it is important to present them with such positions so that there can be a discussion. Whatever "average intelligence" is supposed to mean, not everyone knows the same things I do, no matter how "smart" they are.
- omginternets 4y ago
  It’s interesting to understand how these RCPs came into existence, in addition to their flaws.
cebert 4y ago
> This is waaaaaaaaay too many words… I agree, so I used ChatGPT to summarize this for us: In the article "Climate Change Scenarios Have Lost Touch with Reality," written by Roger Pielke Jr. and Justin Ritchie and published in Issues in Science and Technology, the authors argue that the climate change scenarios used by policymakers and scientists have become disconnected from empirical reality. They suggest that this has led to an overreliance on untested and unrealistic assumptions, which in turn undermines the credibility of climate change projections and makes it more difficult to develop effective policies. The authors note that climate change projections are typically based on a set of assumptions about future greenhouse gas emissions, which are then used to generate a range of potential climate outcomes. However, these assumptions often fail to account for a range of important factors, such as economic growth, technological innovation, and changes in land use patterns, which can have a significant impact on emissions and climate outcomes. Pielke and Ritchie argue that policymakers and scientists need to take a more pragmatic and evidence-based approach to climate change projections, one that is grounded in real-world data and incorporates a wider range of factors. They suggest that this could involve developing more diverse and flexible scenarios that are better able to capture the complexity and uncertainty of the real world. Overall, the authors stress the importance of ensuring that climate change policies are based on realistic and evidence-based projections, rather than relying on overly simplistic or unrealistic assumptions. They argue that this will require a fundamental rethinking of the way that climate change scenarios are developed and used, and a greater emphasis on collaboration and dialogue between policymakers, scientists, and other stakeholders.
- protastus 4y ago
  The article is so generic and abstract that even the summary is verbose.
- krainboltgreene 4y ago
  Kind of a waste, since I can't verify if this actually is a summary with confidence.
  - AstixAndBelix 4y ago
heisenbit 4y ago
Considering the extraordinary disruptions through Covid and Russia I would argue it is too early to make changes to fundamental trend predictions.
jasonhansel 4y ago
I get the sense that they are trying very carefully not to sound like climate change denialists, so that they won't get conflated with people much further from the scientific consensus. If they just said "the IPCC models are BS," they would likely be dismissed out of hand, at least in the scientific community.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Pielke Jr is a climate-action "denialist" from a long way back, no? (claims to accept the science but then concludes there's nothing we can do about it for the foreseeable future other than adapt. This article seems to be saying "well ok some of the changes we've made are making a difference to emissions, but now there's no real need to make any more...").
  - omginternets 4y ago
    You’ve substituted “climate change denialist” for “climate action denialist”. Why?
    - wizofaus 4y ago
      Only because I don't believe he's ever denied climate change was happening or that if it is it's not our fault, which are the usual first two phases of denialism.
      - omginternets 4y ago
        I don’t follow. You’re responding to a point about the author not being a climate change denialist by saying that he doesn’t think action against climate change is justified. What point are you actually trying to make? It seems like you’re trying to equate one with the other, especially given your novel use of the word “denialism”. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I’m still unclear on what exactly you are implying.
        4y ago
randomluck040 4y ago
Edited: the RCP8.5 seems to be the most fitting regarding historical data. There are also other RCPs for other scenarios as well.

zug_zug 4y ago

Despite the provocative title this seems well-intentioned. The scientific accuracy needs to be top-priority, these particular elements of the projections should be assessed and reevaluated if necessary.

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
[flagged]
- nickpeterson 4y ago
  I’m going to imagine you mean ‘pawn’ instead of tool here. Otherwise it feels pretty harsh for a young girl who just cares about earth.
  - UIUC_06 4y ago
    > a young girl who just cares about earth I imagine there are several 100M of those on the planet. Most do not get to address the UN, nor have well-off parents who are using her to get publicity that they couldn't get for their own views. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10059484/greta-thunberg-parents-malena-ernman-svante/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10059484/greta-thunberg-parent...
    - threeseed 4y ago
      > Most do not get to address the UN So the argument here is that there are tens of millions of children who are worried not about video games, TikTok, school etc but about how they are being denied the ability to speak at the UN ? And her parents appear to be upper middle-class given their careers have been limited in success.
  - favaq 4y ago
    When we talk about "Greta" we don't mean the "young girl", we mean all the propaganda machine that uses her as a tool.
- admax88qqq 4y ago

Animats 4y ago

Reality is the past actuals. - Atmospheric CO2, 1960-now.[1] - Ocean temperature, 1880-now. [2] - Annual arctic sea ice minimum area, 1978-now. [3] [1] https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ [2] https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ [3] https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5036 https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5036

rcoveson 4y ago
Warming that has occurred in the past is not disputed here.
- Animats 4y ago
  The detail of the article, about four screens down, indicates that. The title and introduction do not.

cbrozefsky 4y ago

The Energy Transition Show has covered this in great detail for the past few years: https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-176-climate-scenarios-vs-reality/ https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-176-climate-scena... To see all episodes related: https://xenetwork.org/ets/topics/rcp8-5/ https://xenetwork.org/ets/topics/rcp8-5/

lispisok 4y ago

I'm gonna plug Roger Pielke Jr (obligatory not a climate change denier by any means disclaimer) who talks a lot about issues like these. Climate change has become an industry now. A lot of people are selling research and solutions and they hype up the problem as much as they can even if it's not realistic. Nobody on the center or left has been checking them because they don't want to be labeled a climate change denier. Good to see that's starting to change. https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/archive https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/archive

acdha 4y ago
Ah, where have I seen that name before? Oh, right, the authors of the linked article.
- lispisok 4y ago
  haha didnt notice that

taeric 4y ago

I'm not clear on the take away. Are the models wrong? Or is it more that the projections were off? Put differently, are the models precise but inaccurate or both? If inaccurate only, are they still instructive?

arrosenberg 4y ago
The article argues that the models are still using baselines from the 90s, while the world as it is today has already made significant progress toward decarbonizing industry. Therefore the projection are far more onerous than they should be.
- mymythisisthis 4y ago
  We're probably using more carbon now, then in the 90s. You have to look at the total carbon output of the world.
  - taeric 4y ago
    Not the point. We use less carbon today than the scenarios looking forward to today did. Such that our path forward does not start from where many models assume. Yes, you have to look at the whole picture. But you also have to look from where you are. Not where someone else thought you could be. Right?
    - joshspankit 4y ago
      I mean, yes it’s important to base science on reality. But also: if we take drastic action “wrongly” and the end result is a healthier plant? I’m good with that.
      - taeric 4y ago
        I mean, sorta? I mostly agree, but that is what I'm asking. I'm reminded of folks that were against LED lightbulbs because folks could just turn off their lights a few hours earlier. Not only would that have been a drastic change in behavior, it is comically incomparable in impact. To get the same impact, you would have to turn off your lights basically all day to get close to the same change. Such that sometimes we do have much better levers than previous drastic changes could have even dreamed of achieving. As such, it really depends on the drastic action. For the most part, I don't see how aggressive goals for electric vehicles is harming folks. So if that is what we are looking at, fully back on board with you. With a major caveat of not liking fear mongering. Honesty of where we are is important for its own reasons. Trust in future plans, at the least.

mistrial9 4y ago

supporting article from almost exactly two years ago https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3

gpvos 4y ago
Without paywall: https://sci-hub.se/https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3 https://sci-hub.se/https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-02...

a1371 4y ago

Eeh. Misguided article. The article itself starts by recognizing the challenge of making scenarios because of the feedback loop they embody. Then seemingly forgets about all that and basically says "coal has likely peaked already, why are assuming it will grow in the future?" Well, because of that feedback loop. Coal is still a cheap way of making energy, as it is in the business-as-usual economics of the scenarios. If we say "coal is not a problem", the pressure shifts away from coal and its usage may linger longer than it should. The scenarios are about the forces impacting the trends, not the trends themselves.

ankit219 4y ago
The IPCC report made some really questionable assumptions, reached conclusions based on those, which were then exacerbated by the journalists treating the worst case scenarios as absolute certainties. Creating fear and panic around stuff usually works and has worked well for a long time. It's true that we reduced the usage of coal in last few years. It's a big assumption that it happened because of a worst case scenario popularized by IPCC. From this article[1], IPCC's 8.5 was based on the assumption that between 2017-2100 we will use 5x as much coal as we had done in our entire lifetime. That's a like a "coal boom". The world was already moving away from coal, even before the report, and at best the report and faulty scenario created more panic. > Everyone knew about the decades of coal-powered economic growth in China, but those working closely on the future of energy had already grown somewhat skeptical that the same model would be deployed across the developing world — and even more skeptical that the rich nations of the world would ever return to coal in a sustained way. > The most conspicuous example was an emissions pathway called RCP8.5, which required at least a fivefold growth of coal use over the course of the 21st century. Because it was the darkest available do-nothing path, RCP8.5 was reflexively called, in the scientific literature and by journalists covering it, “business as usual.” Feedback loop as you call it probably slowed down the pace turning the whole thing into a culture war, creating mass hysteria, and getting people to fight each other when they were likely already moving away from coal. We don't have a control group in this case, and climate action is needed, though I am not sure if creating panic was justified at any time. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/26/magazine/climate-change-warming-world.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/26/magazine/clim...

fwungy 4y ago

How accurate are models of complex systems? Consider that if highly accurate models were really possible someone could make one that would accurately predict NFL game outcomes. When that happens we will know it because Sports Books would no longer take bets on NFL games. Sports Books profit because they get a slight statistical advantage which pays off due to bettor volume. So we know they can't make an accurately predicting model for football. How accurate can they possibly get with climate change modeling? It's orders of magnitude more difficult. Football is formally rule bounded and tons of data on a long history of games is readily available. In contrast, the vast majority of climate data is based on theoretical methods. This isn't bad, it's just far less precise because the variance of all those theory based estimators accumulates across the model, widening the confidence interval of its outputs to a point where it may not be useful. Finally, climate scientists are people. They have careers, families, financial responsibilities. What happens if they say the climate is fine? Some other crisis gets the funding and their careers are destroyed. They can't just switch to a different science, they've invested a lot of time and money becoming a specific thing. I found this article very wordy and skimmed parts, but it looks to me like a goalpost moving exercise to explain why their aggressive predictions for the present time didn't come true.

PartiallyTyped 4y ago
I cant tell whether the parent comment is disingenuous though it looks a lot like it, but I will take it at face value. The models created by the oil companies back in the 70s seem to be “breathtakingly accurate” [1] Second, the problem with your analogy is that with football you expect the prediction to be X team will win, and similarly expect the predictions to be X weather event at $place will occur. The problem with your expectations of predictions regarding the latter is the sample space. The sample space is so large that extreme weather events will occur $somewhere. Predicting exactly where and their trajectories is difficult due to chaos and the complexity of the system. There is a bound on our capacity to predict exact events long ahead of time. However, what we can do is give a probability of the event occurring over a large enough region. When you scale said region to the earth, we can ignore very small details and focus on the bigger picture, which is that the variance in weather in creases. The problem with an increasing variance is that extreme events occur more frequently in all directions. Meaning high and low temperatures, droughts and floods and so on. To observe this in action, a year or so ago europe had severe floods that killed many people and simultaneously over the next summer experienced historic droughts. The sample space strikes again and we saw historic droughts in China too. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-climate-change-global-warming-research https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-clima... [2] Firmament, by Dr Simon Clark

HereIGoAgain 4y ago

Pretty good read. They bring up quite a few good points.

zweifuss 4y ago
Why exactly is it bad science if the most pessimistic scenario is slightly more pessimistic than reality? IPPC reports are too conservative because insufficient attention has been paid to the importance of tipping points, feedback loops, and outlier events forecasts. The nature of consensus building has tended to marginalize more extreme scenarios. Humanity already has a non-zero probability that wars and general political trends will reverse technological progress and waste the resources needed to adapt to climate change and transform the economy. Then the RPC8.5 scenario might be too optimistic, not too pessimistic.

wiz21c 4y ago

Saying that RPC8.5 is based on wrong assumptions and then explaining that we should take IEA's scenario as a new basis seems weird. IEA is not exactly very good at predictions either...

wazoox 4y ago

The problem with scenarios is that every resource is entangled with many others and that evolution of each one is wildly non-linear. Example : copper availability depends upon energy availability. However sustainable energy deployment depends upon copper extraction (as long as we're in the "up" part of the development S-curve). Another less important example is helium : helium is necessary for high end electronics, and electronics are necessary for modern cars. However car manufacturers are generally completely oblivious of their very real dependency upon helium, which came mostly from the US and Russia. I've just watched an interesting conference by a researcher who's working on new, complex models to build scenarios taking all these entanglements into account, managing thousands of different resources across the whole globe. At the moment there's like 5 of them working on these. Unsurprisingly, these complex, stochastic models treated with lot of Monte-Carlo analyses and now even AI are far from being stable and precise enough for projects such as IPCC. So that's where we are for now. Classical economics are wildly out of touch with reality here (Nordhaus even got the Nobel in economics with a completely bonkers linear extrapolation of climate effect on global GDP), and these sorts of interdependencies are everywhere. So OK, I've got it, the scenarios are too simple. But the IPCC working group II is composed of mainstream economists, and mainstream economists are wildly out of their league (in my opinion I'd go as far as saying that macro economy is a pseudo-science at this point anyway), so they're doing what's possible in a mainstream environment. Too bad.

hyperpape 4y ago

This takes a long time to get to the point, but it's hard to deny this part of the article? > It associated the RCP scenarios with not just plausibility but also likelihoods when it labeled the scenario leading to the greatest amount of climate change, called RCP8.5 (indicating a radiative forcing of 8.5 W/m2 in 2100), as the single business-as-usual scenario of the set. > For instance, RCP8.5 projects to 2100 a six-fold growth in global coal consumption per capita, while the International Energy Agency and other energy forecasting groups collectively agree that coal consumption has already or will soon peak. Also, RCP8.5 foresees carbon dioxide emissions growing rapidly to at least the year 2300 when Earth reaches more than 2,000 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. But again, according to the IEA and other groups, fossil energy emissions have likely plateaued, and it is plausible to achieve net-zero emissions before the end of the century, if not much sooner. Today, projections that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels will increase dramatically for the next 50, 100, or 300 years are simply implausible.

PaulKeeble 4y ago

The reason RCP 8.5 remains relavant despite changes to the mix is that our historical CO2 output is closer to it than of the other scenarios. Its predictions remain the most likely after 15 years from this scenario being created given what we have already released into the atmosphere. RCP 8.5 is the scenario best tracking the actual emissions of the last 15 years. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2007117117 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2007117117 Relevant image: https://www.pnas.org/cms/10.1073/pnas.2007117117/asset/56610ed8-71a7-4663-bf8d-a08a3fed6b3b/assets/images/large/pnas.2007117117fig01.jpg https://www.pnas.org/cms/10.1073/pnas.2007117117/asset/56610...

worik 4y ago

The article makes a newbie mistake: the job of the IPCC is not now, if it ever was, scientific. It is political. Scientifically climate change has been a growing concern since at least 1972. In 1990 there was zero support politically for the sort of action that is now starting. The IPCC's work still matters, the political changes are not bedded in ( see the GOP in USA that is still clinging to its old ideas, but not for much longer). But the urgent, political work it was established for is almost done. They can take some credit if we save the world

rasengan0 4y ago

Lost touch with reality? Droughts, wildfires, hurricanes/typhoons seem as real to me as "scientists" continue to squabble. Critical viewpoints are integral to the "integrity of science", but without application/action where is the actual contribution? Maybe the article authors are suggesting: just set at RCP2.6 or favor the IEA baseline range and call it a day? I would think they would lose funding, speaker fees, followers, etc... One missing variable in the socioeconomic assumption input to RCP assessment is the proliferation of dis/mis information or lack of open data access. As the west looks on, some global partners are displaying excellence in cooperative data sharing and full disclosure on consumption patterns to help inform policy development: https://youtu.be/gfIoS9NB0Wg https://youtu.be/gfIoS9NB0Wg Stick that in RCP input.

worik 4y ago
> some global partners are displaying excellence in cooperative data sharing and full disclosure on consumption patterns to help inform policy development: https://youtu.be/gfIoS9NB0Wg https://youtu.be/gfIoS9NB0Wg Are you serious? Two tourists with anecdotes The topic is science and data not tourist's reckons
nervlord 4y ago
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