10 ms·

Anyone else think that all these predictions are going to happen sooner rather than later in terms of the given prediction range? I can't help but think that a

by rcarr 3y ago

Anyone else think that all these predictions are going to happen sooner rather than later in terms of the given prediction range? I can't help but think that a study focussing on a specific area like this one, antarctic sea ice, wildfire predictions etc must only be able to take so many variables into account and that second order effects, third order, fourth order and beyond from other climate subsystems are going to compound and significantly accelerate the timeline.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
There is some P that all those unknown variables act in opposite directions, rather than the same direction. My guess is it's pretty close to 50% - otherwise they probably would've studied those variables. But predicting the future is basically impossible. So who knows. We're all basically guessing.
- callalex 3y ago
  No, the entire field of climate science is not “basically guessing”. That’s not what scientific study is.
post-it 3y ago
Oh absolutely. Environmental scientists are very conservative and anti-alarmist with their predictions, and every successive generation of derived data skews towards the more conservative end.
- Brusco_RF 3y ago
  Satire?
  - empyrrhicist 3y ago
    No, this has been pretty well documented and reported. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-science-predictions-prove-too-conservative/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-science-p...
  - digdugdirk 3y ago
    No, actually the truth. The climate change "hype" comes from journalists and editors. The actual research papers are generally very conservative in their estimations, and we've been exceeding the predicted outcomes for decades without making any real changes to improve our situation.
    - taylodl 3y ago
      Sadly, this fact isn't all that well-known.
    - boondoggle16 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        What specific problems have historically been made better by "hanging all the journalists"?
        boondoggle16 3y ago
        I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader. Imagine how our society would change if these liars and grifters were not constantly brainwashing our friends and family on the topics of: - Economics - Climate - Health - Social wellbeing
    - ajmurmann 3y ago
      Given the conservative estimates by scientists have been exceeded, how far of where the more exaggerated takes by journalists?
      - digdugdirk 3y ago
        Even today we have no way of really answering that question. Climate science is generally aiming for a timeline around 2050-2100. As an analogy - Imagine I told you that if you ate an extra 3000 calories of junk food every day you'd gain a lot of weight. You disagree, for whatever reason, and we carry out the experiment. If a journalist wrote an article on our experiment, and their editor titled it "Ajmurmann about to be 100kg heavier!", when would we be able to tell if they are correct or not? You might be able to make it a week while still being within normal weight fluctuations, but two weeks? Three weeks? A year? And when would we be able to determine the "correctness" of the 100kg number? Comparing that situation to the Earth's climate - We're still in the first month of the experiment, and shoveling junk food into our metaphorical mouths as fast we can.
- SirMaster 3y ago
  You are saying there are no scientists that predicted we would have more sea level rise than we actually do by now?
  - lamontcg 3y ago
    If you're asking if you can disprove the previous statement by finding a single example of a scientist who predicted wild rises in sea level that haven't happened, the answer is 'no'. Most scientists can still have historically been overly conservative even if you can find a few that made over the top predictions. It should be perfectly obvious that the presence of a few outliers doesn't invalidate the median of the sample.
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      The IPCC 1990 report predicted that sea level rise would abruptly accelerate from recent historic averages of 1-2mm/yr to 2-7mm/yr, and that is what happened. Satellite altimetry has tracked the central estimate of the 1990 IPCC predictions quite closely.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - SirMaster 3y ago
      I'm not trying to disprove anything. I am trying to understand if there is some chance that this estimate could perhaps be an outlier. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling#/media/File:PeerReviewedPapersComparingGlobalWarmingAndCoolingIn1970s.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling#/media/File:Pee... How can I know whether this prediction will end up being one of the blue line or one of the red line.
leptons 3y ago
Yes. We're not sleepwalking to an uninhabitable dystopia, we're sprinting towards it. We may all be in for some serious problems in 5 to 10 years. I'm not a climate scientist, this is just an uninformed opinion, but everything I'm reading has me very worried.
- jmclnx 3y ago
  Me, I am thinking it would be kind of similar to this series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series) Majority of people will live in "dystopia lite", and top 1% and people they need ("slaves"?) will live in a better environment.
- andix 3y ago
  What's happening right now could still be a very unlikely anomaly and everything may change back to "normal" soon. Or it isn't. Hard to judge for me, I'm not an expert.
  - sfn42 3y ago
    Yeah, everything that's been predicted for decades is happening but it could just be a total coincidence. And if it isn't I'm sure they'll just magically figure out economically viable fusion or spray some aerosols into the atmosphere or somehow just magically fix everything. I'm sure everything will be fine. That's why I'm not having kids. /s
    - MrOwnPut 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - sfn42 3y ago
        If by "they" you mean thermometers, sure. I don't need to do anything more than look at temperature readings to see how the climate is changing. I also see that it's clearly an exponential graph. We've already reached the 1.5 degree threshold the Paris Agreement was supposed to avoid, we have done fuck all to avoid it. The next 1.5 degrees will come much faster and the next 1.5 after that faster still. At that point we're 4.5 degrees above the baseline and that's widely regarded as apocalyptic. We will see famine, water scarcity, mass migration, probably wars, possibly nuclear war. If you want to bring a child into that world go ahead. I wouldn't want to be born into it so I won't.
pphysch 3y ago
> compound and significantly accelerate the timeline There's a misconception that the biosphere is a delicate machine that will have a catastrophic internal failure if we don't follow the maintenance bibl^H^H^H^Hmanual, which apparently some experts have access to. In reality, it is a highly dynamic, self-repairing living organism, which we are a part of. There are at least as many negative feedback loops as positive ones. And we should act to maintain our survival, but doomsaying is not part of that. Doomsaying and fearmongering is about power.
- jfim 3y ago
  > Doomsaying and fearmongering is about power. Because every warning is about power dynamics, and obviously not about things being dangerous. We should get rid of that "can cause death if ingested" cartel that's putting all of those warnings on household products while at it.
  - pphysch 3y ago
    You can't tell the difference between a practical safety advisory and doomsaying about a future rapture?
- xg15 3y ago
  What would be examples of negative feedback loops of comparable size?
  - pphysch 3y ago
    Photosynthesis (carbon) cycle https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151188/a-massive-seaweed-bloom-in-the-atlantic https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151188/a-massive-se...
    - xg15 3y ago
      From what I get, yeah, there are several projects that try to use use seaweed on the open ocean to sequester CO2. [1] The yield seems to be mediocre though [2, 3]. For all seaweed that washes up on the shore, the effect reverses: It rots and releases CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. [4] So if it's a negative feedback loop, then a very weak one, if at all: CO2 emissions cause increased seaweed growth, but increased seaweed coverage doesn't meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas concentrations and in fact can even increase them. [1] https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/06/09/2459357/0/en/Groundbreaking-project-to-convert-Sargassum-seaweed-into-ethanol-for-use-in-plastics-C-Cause-selected-for-German-Government-s-Disruptive-Innovation-grant.html https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/06/09/245935... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969721018696 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489... [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22837-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22837-2 [4] https://nsuworks.nova.edu/hcas_etd_all/113/ https://nsuworks.nova.edu/hcas_etd_all/113/
tboyd47 3y ago
Of course, things are always worse than the scientists say. That's why more science is needed. If it wasn't for them, we'd never even know about all the disasters.
Projectiboga 3y ago
Yes the timeline for complete shift is before 2030. NYC weather is already temporarily altered each spring snd early summer with all the cold water from the Greenland melt, and that is just a slight shift away from there in the Gulf stream. When these shifts happen it's in about a dozen years. The last 8 years are the hottest in at least 150 years.
- bamfly 3y ago
  Are we expecting colder, or warmer weather in NY and New England from this? It's not clear to me from reading some of these articles. The expected effect for Northern Europe—that I understand.
  - swader999 3y ago
    Haven't you seen "The Day After Tomorrow"?
    - bamfly 3y ago
      Sure, I'm just not assuming it's entirely accurate :-)
whinenot 3y ago
There are so many tipping points and cascading effects at work that I doubt we have any real understanding of everything that is happening at the macroscopic level, nor even if we did could we battle everything everywhere all at once. I suspect whole swaths of humanity are in for perilous times ahead as the speed of the variances will outpace our collective ability to adapt. As the wizened Tool once sang[0], "Learn to swim, see you down in Arizona Bay". [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CehYA3omb5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CehYA3omb5o

by rcarr 3y ago

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

There is some P that all those unknown variables act in opposite directions, rather than the same direction. My guess is it's pretty close to 50% - otherwise they probably would've studied those variables. But predicting the future is basically impossible. So who knows. We're all basically guessing.

callalex 3y ago
No, the entire field of climate science is not “basically guessing”. That’s not what scientific study is.

post-it 3y ago

Oh absolutely. Environmental scientists are very conservative and anti-alarmist with their predictions, and every successive generation of derived data skews towards the more conservative end.

Brusco_RF 3y ago
Satire?
- empyrrhicist 3y ago
  No, this has been pretty well documented and reported. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-science-predictions-prove-too-conservative/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-science-p...
- digdugdirk 3y ago
  No, actually the truth. The climate change "hype" comes from journalists and editors. The actual research papers are generally very conservative in their estimations, and we've been exceeding the predicted outcomes for decades without making any real changes to improve our situation.
  - taylodl 3y ago
    Sadly, this fact isn't all that well-known.
  - boondoggle16 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      What specific problems have historically been made better by "hanging all the journalists"?
      - boondoggle16 3y ago
        I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader. Imagine how our society would change if these liars and grifters were not constantly brainwashing our friends and family on the topics of: - Economics - Climate - Health - Social wellbeing
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    Given the conservative estimates by scientists have been exceeded, how far of where the more exaggerated takes by journalists?
    - digdugdirk 3y ago
      Even today we have no way of really answering that question. Climate science is generally aiming for a timeline around 2050-2100. As an analogy - Imagine I told you that if you ate an extra 3000 calories of junk food every day you'd gain a lot of weight. You disagree, for whatever reason, and we carry out the experiment. If a journalist wrote an article on our experiment, and their editor titled it "Ajmurmann about to be 100kg heavier!", when would we be able to tell if they are correct or not? You might be able to make it a week while still being within normal weight fluctuations, but two weeks? Three weeks? A year? And when would we be able to determine the "correctness" of the 100kg number? Comparing that situation to the Earth's climate - We're still in the first month of the experiment, and shoveling junk food into our metaphorical mouths as fast we can.
SirMaster 3y ago
You are saying there are no scientists that predicted we would have more sea level rise than we actually do by now?
- lamontcg 3y ago
  If you're asking if you can disprove the previous statement by finding a single example of a scientist who predicted wild rises in sea level that haven't happened, the answer is 'no'. Most scientists can still have historically been overly conservative even if you can find a few that made over the top predictions. It should be perfectly obvious that the presence of a few outliers doesn't invalidate the median of the sample.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    The IPCC 1990 report predicted that sea level rise would abruptly accelerate from recent historic averages of 1-2mm/yr to 2-7mm/yr, and that is what happened. Satellite altimetry has tracked the central estimate of the 1990 IPCC predictions quite closely.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - SirMaster 3y ago
    I'm not trying to disprove anything. I am trying to understand if there is some chance that this estimate could perhaps be an outlier. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling#/media/File:PeerReviewedPapersComparingGlobalWarmingAndCoolingIn1970s.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling#/media/File:Pee... How can I know whether this prediction will end up being one of the blue line or one of the red line.

leptons 3y ago

Yes. We're not sleepwalking to an uninhabitable dystopia, we're sprinting towards it. We may all be in for some serious problems in 5 to 10 years. I'm not a climate scientist, this is just an uninformed opinion, but everything I'm reading has me very worried.

jmclnx 3y ago
Me, I am thinking it would be kind of similar to this series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series) Majority of people will live in "dystopia lite", and top 1% and people they need ("slaves"?) will live in a better environment.
andix 3y ago
What's happening right now could still be a very unlikely anomaly and everything may change back to "normal" soon. Or it isn't. Hard to judge for me, I'm not an expert.
- sfn42 3y ago
  Yeah, everything that's been predicted for decades is happening but it could just be a total coincidence. And if it isn't I'm sure they'll just magically figure out economically viable fusion or spray some aerosols into the atmosphere or somehow just magically fix everything. I'm sure everything will be fine. That's why I'm not having kids. /s
  - MrOwnPut 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - sfn42 3y ago
      If by "they" you mean thermometers, sure. I don't need to do anything more than look at temperature readings to see how the climate is changing. I also see that it's clearly an exponential graph. We've already reached the 1.5 degree threshold the Paris Agreement was supposed to avoid, we have done fuck all to avoid it. The next 1.5 degrees will come much faster and the next 1.5 after that faster still. At that point we're 4.5 degrees above the baseline and that's widely regarded as apocalyptic. We will see famine, water scarcity, mass migration, probably wars, possibly nuclear war. If you want to bring a child into that world go ahead. I wouldn't want to be born into it so I won't.

pphysch 3y ago

> compound and significantly accelerate the timeline There's a misconception that the biosphere is a delicate machine that will have a catastrophic internal failure if we don't follow the maintenance bibl^H^H^H^Hmanual, which apparently some experts have access to. In reality, it is a highly dynamic, self-repairing living organism, which we are a part of. There are at least as many negative feedback loops as positive ones. And we should act to maintain our survival, but doomsaying is not part of that. Doomsaying and fearmongering is about power.

jfim 3y ago
> Doomsaying and fearmongering is about power. Because every warning is about power dynamics, and obviously not about things being dangerous. We should get rid of that "can cause death if ingested" cartel that's putting all of those warnings on household products while at it.
- pphysch 3y ago
  You can't tell the difference between a practical safety advisory and doomsaying about a future rapture?
xg15 3y ago
What would be examples of negative feedback loops of comparable size?
- pphysch 3y ago
  Photosynthesis (carbon) cycle https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151188/a-massive-seaweed-bloom-in-the-atlantic https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151188/a-massive-se...
  - xg15 3y ago
    From what I get, yeah, there are several projects that try to use use seaweed on the open ocean to sequester CO2. [1] The yield seems to be mediocre though [2, 3]. For all seaweed that washes up on the shore, the effect reverses: It rots and releases CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. [4] So if it's a negative feedback loop, then a very weak one, if at all: CO2 emissions cause increased seaweed growth, but increased seaweed coverage doesn't meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas concentrations and in fact can even increase them. [1] https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/06/09/2459357/0/en/Groundbreaking-project-to-convert-Sargassum-seaweed-into-ethanol-for-use-in-plastics-C-Cause-selected-for-German-Government-s-Disruptive-Innovation-grant.html https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/06/09/245935... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969721018696 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489... [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22837-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22837-2 [4] https://nsuworks.nova.edu/hcas_etd_all/113/ https://nsuworks.nova.edu/hcas_etd_all/113/

tboyd47 3y ago

Of course, things are always worse than the scientists say. That's why more science is needed. If it wasn't for them, we'd never even know about all the disasters.

Projectiboga 3y ago

Yes the timeline for complete shift is before 2030. NYC weather is already temporarily altered each spring snd early summer with all the cold water from the Greenland melt, and that is just a slight shift away from there in the Gulf stream. When these shifts happen it's in about a dozen years. The last 8 years are the hottest in at least 150 years.

bamfly 3y ago
Are we expecting colder, or warmer weather in NY and New England from this? It's not clear to me from reading some of these articles. The expected effect for Northern Europe—that I understand.
- swader999 3y ago
  Haven't you seen "The Day After Tomorrow"?
  - bamfly 3y ago
    Sure, I'm just not assuming it's entirely accurate :-)

whinenot 3y ago

There are so many tipping points and cascading effects at work that I doubt we have any real understanding of everything that is happening at the macroscopic level, nor even if we did could we battle everything everywhere all at once. I suspect whole swaths of humanity are in for perilous times ahead as the speed of the variances will outpace our collective ability to adapt. As the wizened Tool once sang[0], "Learn to swim, see you down in Arizona Bay". [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CehYA3omb5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CehYA3omb5o