Question to Dyson: "Are climate models getting better? You wrote how they have the most awful fudges, and they only really impress people who don't know about them."
"I would say the opposite. What has happened in the past 10 years is that the discrepancies between what's observed and what's predicted have become much stronger. It's clear now the models are wrong, but it wasn't so clear 10 years ago. I can't say if they'll always be wrong, but the observations are improving and so the models are becoming more verifiable."
"It's now difficult for scientists to have frank and honest input into public debates. Prof Brian Cox, who is the public face of physics in the UK thanks to the BBC, has said he has no obligation to listen to "deniers," or to any other views other than the orthodoxy. That's a problem, but still I find that I have things to say and people do listen to me, and people have no particular complaints."
"France's top weatherman, Philippe Verdier has been suspended from work for publishing a book about climate change which suggests that the IPCC might be just a tad unreliable and more than a little politicised."
Basically, we're fucked. When a problem becomes big enough that it becomes issue of general public, you can't get anything done about it in democracies. It becomes just another tool for political games. With some issues becoming politicized I can live. Women rights are one, with the new wave of feminism you can't really talk about it anymore without risking getting your head cut off in a media shitstorm, but that topic is generally of little consequence. We will eventually figure it out, even if it takes more time than needed, and everyone will be happy.
Climate change is different. We're talking about real danger to the future of human civilization, an issue that will play out in following decades - probably well within lifetimes of most of us here. And many politicians (and businesses) are - I'm sorry for venting out - such big, greedy fucking assholes, that they want to play games with it instead of fucking solving it. They will doom us to misery and death to win a fucking election or make next Q3 sheet look good. Disgusting.
Exactly. If people lived for 10,000 years, thier entire outlook on climate change would change. Another reason companies like Google, Craig Venter and Genentech are working on extending human lifespan via researchers like Cynthia Kenyon and CalicoLabs.
No, exactly not. Right now people don't care about their financial situation forty years in the future. They also fuck up their future health with alcohol, tobacco and unhealthy food. What makes you think that they will care what happens with the ecosystem in a hundred years if they don't care whether they get cancer in thirty?
You can predict what happens to your savings forty years in the future?
Take eg. a person who had savings from twenty years in 1914's Germany. It would have all gone 10 years later. Likewise when you had savings in stocks in 1929. It took almost 30 years to recover.
The only way you will manage this situation is by fixing the rules so that properly taking care of the environment becomes a necessary condition to win the fucking election or make next Q3 sheet look good. It's not that hard, but indeed, will take time to seep in through democracies. For the election part, I can see that this is clearly happening already. For the Q3 sheet, we have a long way to go in some parts of the world, USA and China being on top of the list.
> Women rights are one, with the new wave of feminism you can't really talk about it anymore without risking getting your head cut off in a media shitstorm, but that topic is generally of little consequence. We will eventually figure it out, even if it takes more time than needed, and everyone will be happy.
I think your post illustrated the problem when dealing with feminism: Everyone assumes it is of 'little consequence'.
But I think it is quite the contrary: It is directly and strongly affecting the relations between the genders/sexes. Regardless of whether you think what it proposes/does/wants/... is a good idea or not:
I think it is not a good idea to think it is just a small issue.
He is still not credible. That he "sees" the "discrepancies" doesn't prove that the science and the conclusions of climate scientists are invalid or that the problem isn't very real.
"Researchers do not expect their models to reproduce weather events or El Niño phases exactly when they happened in real life. They do expect the models to capture how the whole system behaves over long periods of time. For example, in 1998 there was a powerful El Niño, when the equatorial Pacific Ocean warms ( we're in another one of that scale now). A simulation wouldn't necessarily reproduce an El Niño in 1998, but it should produce a realistic number of them over the course of many years."
In short, the models aren't supposed to replace the short-term weather forecasts but to model the behavior of the very big and complex system we're living in over more years.
And yes, it's the humanity's use of fossil fuels that is warming the world:
As far as I know, Dyson doesn't say that man-made global warming isn't real - he just questions the validity of the models. It just comes out weirdly anti-global warming in this interview.
Orlowski and Lewis of the Register are strongly, strongly anti-global warning; they've been gradually getting more and more radical over the years. I've pretty much given up reading their articles any more.
Exactly. The problem with the general public is that there is still a sense that science "explains" what's going on, whereas in reality, it applies models to make predictions. Some models are very good, some others less good, and in any case, science moves forward by analyzing those areas where the models don't work so well. So it's understandable that Dyson would look into these models and question them. Actually, it's what we should expect from top scientists like him. Not to be a "yes man".
But Dyson here (if he's properly quoted!) doesn't actually use scientific approach to question anything. He just claims "discrepancies" which don't exist under the assumptions on which the research is based. He approaches it as the "weather" (very short term) whereas the assumption is the "climate" (trends). Otherwise he wouldn't even mention the "discrepancies" as the main argument.
Whether or not the problem is real does not validate the concept that the models are trustworthy. It's possible to get the "right" answer in the wrong way, especially when the "right" answer is a somewhat fuzzy binary answer and not something that is more narrowly falsifiable.
The article I've linked to has enough details that refute these assumptions. The modes are trustworthy for the purpose they are made but not for short term weather forecasts (e.g. the effects of one particular El Nino), they are based on the proper science, the deniers confuse short term weather forecasts with the climate trends and the climate trends match the models.
how short is short term? predictions for twenty to fifty years out are nothing but hedge bets. all the alarmism that many spread in the late 90s and early 2000s about how dire the weather would be by now never panned out.
hence, just what is short term and what is long term? let alone, as pointed out by the Dyson, China and India alone negate anything we can do.
"The globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for 2014 was the highest among all years since record keeping began in 1880."
The science identified the reason for it, it was estimated long ago and it's known. Long term means that we can, as maybe too simplified example, expect on the average only once in decades to get the new whole-world all times high (the fluctuations are the property of the system) but that they will steadily come, the trend is: "hotter" on the average. Not every single year.
> predictions for twenty to fifty years out are nothing but hedge bets.
Wrong. CO2 in atmosphere, the impact of it are the facts, and the speed it increases isn't something that can change much without willful action.
> all the alarmism that many spread in the late 90s and early 2000s about how dire the weather would be by now never panned out.
Please any citation of "alarmism" from the real scientists (that is, an example of something such claimed by scientist, that was since disproved and that was believed by more than a few percent of scientists).
The IPCC reports are the result of the world's climate scientists.
The current report is the Fifth from 2014, you link to the entry about some criticisms of the Fourth report completed in 2007 and I don't understand what these mean to you. I don't see anything really significant that disproves the overall conclusions.
> Please any citation of "alarmism" from the real scientists (that is, an example of something such claimed by scientist, that was since disproved and that was believed by more than a few percent of scientists).
assuming of course that you stand by your closing statement from that post,
> The IPCC reports are the result of the world's climate scientists.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 76.0 ms ] thread"I would say the opposite. What has happened in the past 10 years is that the discrepancies between what's observed and what's predicted have become much stronger. It's clear now the models are wrong, but it wasn't so clear 10 years ago. I can't say if they'll always be wrong, but the observations are improving and so the models are becoming more verifiable."
"It's now difficult for scientists to have frank and honest input into public debates. Prof Brian Cox, who is the public face of physics in the UK thanks to the BBC, has said he has no obligation to listen to "deniers," or to any other views other than the orthodoxy. That's a problem, but still I find that I have things to say and people do listen to me, and people have no particular complaints."
Further illustration: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/10/14/top-french-weathe....
"France's top weatherman, Philippe Verdier has been suspended from work for publishing a book about climate change which suggests that the IPCC might be just a tad unreliable and more than a little politicised."
Climate change is different. We're talking about real danger to the future of human civilization, an issue that will play out in following decades - probably well within lifetimes of most of us here. And many politicians (and businesses) are - I'm sorry for venting out - such big, greedy fucking assholes, that they want to play games with it instead of fucking solving it. They will doom us to misery and death to win a fucking election or make next Q3 sheet look good. Disgusting.
Take eg. a person who had savings from twenty years in 1914's Germany. It would have all gone 10 years later. Likewise when you had savings in stocks in 1929. It took almost 30 years to recover.
Economists are the priests of a science twisted into religion.
I think your post illustrated the problem when dealing with feminism: Everyone assumes it is of 'little consequence'.
But I think it is quite the contrary: It is directly and strongly affecting the relations between the genders/sexes. Regardless of whether you think what it proposes/does/wants/... is a good idea or not:
I think it is not a good idea to think it is just a small issue.
http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wor...
"Researchers do not expect their models to reproduce weather events or El Niño phases exactly when they happened in real life. They do expect the models to capture how the whole system behaves over long periods of time. For example, in 1998 there was a powerful El Niño, when the equatorial Pacific Ocean warms ( we're in another one of that scale now). A simulation wouldn't necessarily reproduce an El Niño in 1998, but it should produce a realistic number of them over the course of many years."
In short, the models aren't supposed to replace the short-term weather forecasts but to model the behavior of the very big and complex system we're living in over more years.
And yes, it's the humanity's use of fossil fuels that is warming the world:
http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Global_warming
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/global/201412
"The globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for 2014 was the highest among all years since record keeping began in 1880."
What do you mean under the "fuzzy binary answer"? The scientists of the whole world produced much more detailed material:
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/index.shtml
hence, just what is short term and what is long term? let alone, as pointed out by the Dyson, China and India alone negate anything we can do.
"The globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for 2014 was the highest among all years since record keeping began in 1880."
The science identified the reason for it, it was estimated long ago and it's known. Long term means that we can, as maybe too simplified example, expect on the average only once in decades to get the new whole-world all times high (the fluctuations are the property of the system) but that they will steadily come, the trend is: "hotter" on the average. Not every single year.
> predictions for twenty to fifty years out are nothing but hedge bets.
Wrong. CO2 in atmosphere, the impact of it are the facts, and the speed it increases isn't something that can change much without willful action.
> all the alarmism that many spread in the late 90s and early 2000s about how dire the weather would be by now never panned out.
Please any citation of "alarmism" from the real scientists (that is, an example of something such claimed by scientist, that was since disproved and that was believed by more than a few percent of scientists).
The IPCC reports are the result of the world's climate scientists.
They answer your request,
> Please any citation of "alarmism" from the real scientists (that is, an example of something such claimed by scientist, that was since disproved and that was believed by more than a few percent of scientists).
assuming of course that you stand by your closing statement from that post,
> The IPCC reports are the result of the world's climate scientists.
"there is nothing remotely identified" "that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change."
(from the "open letter from 255 members of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences including 11 Nobel laureates")
or
"Overall the summary conclusions are considered well founded, none have been found to contain any significant errors."