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Thank you - that was infinitely more helpful than the original article. And I am now suitably terrified.

besoafraid 4y ago
well the conclusion is always the same and the authors work backwards from it so that they can receive funding, and it benefits them and the politicians who give them funding if you remain terrified, so that seems like it's working as intended the GP makes a bunch of assumptions about systems that science barely has any understanding of maybe in order to survive life will have to return to a pre-industrial state, but if that's the case and you think "humanity needs to act now" the only thing you could be possibly advocating for is genocide.
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  > well the conclusion is always the same From the link I posted: > Meanwhile the long-standing concern about a shutdown of the ocean circulation in the North Atlantic sometime in the 21st century appears to be subsiding. A Swiss study[1] published this month found that, contrary to past belief, the circulation did not fail at the end of the last ice age, suggesting, the researchers say, that it was more stable than previously supposed, and less likely to collapse. [1] - https://www.unibe.ch/news/media_news/media_relations_e/media_releases/2023/media_releases_2023/atlantic_meridional_overturning_circulation_was_more_stable_than_thought/index_eng.html https://www.unibe.ch/news/media_news/media_relations_e/media... We're figuring this out all the time. We know change is happening because of human action. We know this will alter the status quo. For greenhouse gases we know this will involve general global temperature increases. Figuring out the precise results takes some work.
  - brutusborn 4y ago
    I’m confused, if the “concern is subsiding” then how do you conclude in your previous comment that “once in train could not be prevented”? Those ideas seem to be at odds and support the suggestion that the conclusions of climate science are always the same: doom. I can’t understand why these sort of studies don’t take a probabilistic or temporal approach to their conclusions. In this way they could be better used to inform policy, in their current state they just instill fear. Something like “we calculate P=0.9 for circulation collapse to begin by 2050. To reduce this P to <0.02 would require emission reduction to accelerate by an additional 10% per year” would actually be actionable, and allow further debate to solidify findings. If you told me P=.99 for collapse of ocean ecosystems I would be much more likely to listen than if you tell me “ocean current destabilisation is ‘worse’/‘better’ than we thought.
    - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
      Concern about the North Atlantic circulation is decreasing. Concern has just been sparked about the Antarctic circulation. Different parts of the globe. Also, those are quotes, not my own conclusions. If I read these articles right, I believe the North Atlantic circulation may slow, but it's not going to stop. And what is predicted to happen in the Antarctic is predicted to be worse than whatever happens in the North Atlantic. How does one find a P-value for the accuracy of a model, when all of the parameters are not known?
      - brutusborn 4y ago
        I'd be happy to be corrected but I think you would generate P-values the same way you check the accuracy of all climate models, you use the model to make predictions about the past and compare them to measured values. If model parameters are unknown, you should be doing a sensitivity analysis on these parameters anyway (you must have already estimated values for these to run your model in the first place). Once you have a measure of the uncertainty of your model and sensitivity to unknown parameters, you can combine this with probabilities of different warming scenarios (maybe from IPCC data), and determine the likelihood of the circulation stopping given current emissions/warming trends.
        anonymouskimmer 4y ago
        Thanks. You know more than I do about statistics.

well the conclusion is always the same and the authors work backwards from it so that they can receive funding, and it benefits them and the politicians who give them funding if you remain terrified, so that seems like it's working as intended the GP makes a bunch of assumptions about systems that science barely has any understanding of maybe in order to survive life will have to return to a pre-industrial state, but if that's the case and you think "humanity needs to act now" the only thing you could be possibly advocating for is genocide.

anonymouskimmer 4y ago
> well the conclusion is always the same From the link I posted: > Meanwhile the long-standing concern about a shutdown of the ocean circulation in the North Atlantic sometime in the 21st century appears to be subsiding. A Swiss study[1] published this month found that, contrary to past belief, the circulation did not fail at the end of the last ice age, suggesting, the researchers say, that it was more stable than previously supposed, and less likely to collapse. [1] - https://www.unibe.ch/news/media_news/media_relations_e/media_releases/2023/media_releases_2023/atlantic_meridional_overturning_circulation_was_more_stable_than_thought/index_eng.html https://www.unibe.ch/news/media_news/media_relations_e/media... We're figuring this out all the time. We know change is happening because of human action. We know this will alter the status quo. For greenhouse gases we know this will involve general global temperature increases. Figuring out the precise results takes some work.
- brutusborn 4y ago
  I’m confused, if the “concern is subsiding” then how do you conclude in your previous comment that “once in train could not be prevented”? Those ideas seem to be at odds and support the suggestion that the conclusions of climate science are always the same: doom. I can’t understand why these sort of studies don’t take a probabilistic or temporal approach to their conclusions. In this way they could be better used to inform policy, in their current state they just instill fear. Something like “we calculate P=0.9 for circulation collapse to begin by 2050. To reduce this P to <0.02 would require emission reduction to accelerate by an additional 10% per year” would actually be actionable, and allow further debate to solidify findings. If you told me P=.99 for collapse of ocean ecosystems I would be much more likely to listen than if you tell me “ocean current destabilisation is ‘worse’/‘better’ than we thought.
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    Concern about the North Atlantic circulation is decreasing. Concern has just been sparked about the Antarctic circulation. Different parts of the globe. Also, those are quotes, not my own conclusions. If I read these articles right, I believe the North Atlantic circulation may slow, but it's not going to stop. And what is predicted to happen in the Antarctic is predicted to be worse than whatever happens in the North Atlantic. How does one find a P-value for the accuracy of a model, when all of the parameters are not known?
    - brutusborn 4y ago
      I'd be happy to be corrected but I think you would generate P-values the same way you check the accuracy of all climate models, you use the model to make predictions about the past and compare them to measured values. If model parameters are unknown, you should be doing a sensitivity analysis on these parameters anyway (you must have already estimated values for these to run your model in the first place). Once you have a measure of the uncertainty of your model and sensitivity to unknown parameters, you can combine this with probabilities of different warming scenarios (maybe from IPCC data), and determine the likelihood of the circulation stopping given current emissions/warming trends.
      - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
        Thanks. You know more than I do about statistics.