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The fossil fuel industry has also grossly underestimated the amount of methane leaking from wells and fracking sites. Researchers got some things right, other

The fossil fuel industry has also grossly underestimated the amount of methane leaking from wells and fracking sites. Researchers got some things right, other things wrong. What we have seen historically is that the pessimistic estimates of scientists have matched reality better than the optimistic estimates. Scientists have actually under estimated the effects of climate change.

revelio 4y ago
Scientists overestimated climate change and frequently still do by their own telling. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01192-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01192-2 Climate simulations: recognize the ‘hot model’ problem Users beware: a subset of the newest generation of models are ‘too hot’ and project climate warming in response to carbon dioxide emissions that might be larger than that supported by other evidence. In recent studies, the “hot models” have even been shown to be ineffective at reproducing past temperatures, a common method used to test their reliability and accuracy. This has cast further doubt on the model democracy approach, whereby all models are given equal weighting when establishing future warming parameters. (unpaywalled copy here https://www.masterresource.org/uncategorized/climate-models-soft-criticism-from-the-mainstream/ https://www.masterresource.org/uncategorized/climate-models-...)
- Aachen 4y ago
  The second link is not an unpaywalled copy, it's "climate change isn't real" content that you're portraying as having been posted to Nature. This is not a constructive way to talk about the topic at hand (methane being the equivalent of 20x CO2 instead of 28x, at least if the submission isn't in error).
  - revelio 4y ago
    Here's a public versions of their nature comment written by the same authors. I should have linked to that instead of the original paywalled version but all these versions are making the same argument, presumably with sightly different wording for copyright reasons: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-climate-scientists-should-handle-hot-models/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-climate-scientist... If you're claiming this material is "climate change isn't real" then look into who the authors are. The topic at hand is climatologists changing their minds about basic variables despite decades of making predictions with 100% confidence. The fact that their latest models are totally unrealistic, by their own assessment, is further evidence that the science here is seriously flawed and subject to major revision, still.
    - dmbche 4y ago
      Alright so the ipcc makes multiple projections, with some being "hot", in the sense that they are worse than their other predictions. I think they made like 6 predictions last report. This papers is just arguing that the "hot" predictions should be less intense, because they are not very good at reproducing some specific past dataset. That has nothing to do with a problem with hot models - it's a slight modification to them. You seem to be arguing in bad faith. Your article even seems to imply that the hot models are fine with predicting present data, just jot the data of the last ice age. Who cares? What has that got to do with anything? No one is only looking at the hot model!
      - revelio 4y ago
        The article says this: many of the models are getting hotter with time in ways that are clearly wrong, but climatologists routinely use them anyway out of some misguided belief in "model democracy" i.e. that all models are equally valuable and correct even when they disagree strongly with each other so should just be averaged together. It's pointed out that this undermines vast amounts of the supposedly settled science.
Aachen 4y ago
> What we have seen historically is that the pessimistic estimates of scientists have matched reality better than the optimistic estimates. I wasn't aware of this, but it also sounds hard to prove so I'd be very interested in such a study having been done. Or do you mean for climate change specifically? (That seems much more manageable to meta-analyse)

revelio 4y ago

Scientists overestimated climate change and frequently still do by their own telling. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01192-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01192-2 Climate simulations: recognize the ‘hot model’ problem Users beware: a subset of the newest generation of models are ‘too hot’ and project climate warming in response to carbon dioxide emissions that might be larger than that supported by other evidence. In recent studies, the “hot models” have even been shown to be ineffective at reproducing past temperatures, a common method used to test their reliability and accuracy. This has cast further doubt on the model democracy approach, whereby all models are given equal weighting when establishing future warming parameters. (unpaywalled copy here https://www.masterresource.org/uncategorized/climate-models-soft-criticism-from-the-mainstream/ https://www.masterresource.org/uncategorized/climate-models-...)

Aachen 4y ago
The second link is not an unpaywalled copy, it's "climate change isn't real" content that you're portraying as having been posted to Nature. This is not a constructive way to talk about the topic at hand (methane being the equivalent of 20x CO2 instead of 28x, at least if the submission isn't in error).
- revelio 4y ago
  Here's a public versions of their nature comment written by the same authors. I should have linked to that instead of the original paywalled version but all these versions are making the same argument, presumably with sightly different wording for copyright reasons: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-climate-scientists-should-handle-hot-models/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-climate-scientist... If you're claiming this material is "climate change isn't real" then look into who the authors are. The topic at hand is climatologists changing their minds about basic variables despite decades of making predictions with 100% confidence. The fact that their latest models are totally unrealistic, by their own assessment, is further evidence that the science here is seriously flawed and subject to major revision, still.
  - dmbche 4y ago
    Alright so the ipcc makes multiple projections, with some being "hot", in the sense that they are worse than their other predictions. I think they made like 6 predictions last report. This papers is just arguing that the "hot" predictions should be less intense, because they are not very good at reproducing some specific past dataset. That has nothing to do with a problem with hot models - it's a slight modification to them. You seem to be arguing in bad faith. Your article even seems to imply that the hot models are fine with predicting present data, just jot the data of the last ice age. Who cares? What has that got to do with anything? No one is only looking at the hot model!
    - revelio 4y ago
      The article says this: many of the models are getting hotter with time in ways that are clearly wrong, but climatologists routinely use them anyway out of some misguided belief in "model democracy" i.e. that all models are equally valuable and correct even when they disagree strongly with each other so should just be averaged together. It's pointed out that this undermines vast amounts of the supposedly settled science.

Aachen 4y ago

> What we have seen historically is that the pessimistic estimates of scientists have matched reality better than the optimistic estimates. I wasn't aware of this, but it also sounds hard to prove so I'd be very interested in such a study having been done. Or do you mean for climate change specifically? (That seems much more manageable to meta-analyse)