Thug Lessons posted:

Yes, I've provided multiple links to statements by climate scientists that insist they are not systematically underestimating climate change. But I have to assume that doesn't count, or else you wouldn't be posting this.

Anyway, your demands are ridiculous and obviously only apply to me. No one else here, including the person who makes the original claim, is required to provide any data at all, (and they have, dutifully, not done so). You're contriving a reason to ban me, not for breaking any rules, but simply for expressing views (backed up ample citations) that "cause drama", and, well, I guess I can't stop you.

Marenghi posted:

Why are you showing predictions on warming when the conversation was about sea level rise?

Is this what they call moving the goal posts.

Potato Salad posted:

I honestly kind of wish I was audacious enough to link a table with enormous, swinging errors and then try to say that somehow it's not an example of enormous swinging errors.

^^^ Here I thought I was engaging with the motherfucker about RCPs, so I guess that's the part where I answered the field and where the goal posts were at the time. That makes sense as RCPs would be a component of any sea level projection derived from any particular RCP...

Jesus Christ the scope exploded.

Epic High Five posted:

Please refrain from posting about posters, it gives an otherwise direct and effective post a very messy sort of quality that does nothing at all to foster good...well...the best discussions we can expect on this nightmare hell topic

Epic High Five posted:

If you feel like I'm a trying to set you up for some pretext you are free to PM Koos or an admin. Personally I feel that if I were inclined to be a tyrant it would've been a lot easier for me to have done so by now than not, but that's beside the point. You've posted some data, though something more to tie it in to sea level rise as was the original point of contention would be nice, as I requested. I promise you I'm not mad, don't tell the papers I got mad.

Potato Salad posted:

I see it, and yes.

Thug Lessons posted:

The relevant data is... the NOAA report itself. That's the data. It is completely rear end-backwards to say that anyone can freely dismiss their 2050 figure and instead posit a 2035-40 figure instead with zero data backing this claim, and anyone who wants to disagree with them must provide additional data proving this is impossible. The burden of proof should be on those who disagree with scientific reports, not those who agree with them. All I can provide is what I've already provided: statements from climate scientists who disagree with their premise that climate scientists are systematically underestimating their field of study.

e: Keep in mind, I would love to have a discussion on the nuts and bolts of how we make these estimates, and argue about ice sublimation rather than what we're arguing about now. That's not the discussion people are willing to give me.

Thug Lessons posted:

Yes, I've provided multiple links to statements by climate scientists that insist they are not systematically underestimating climate change. But I have to assume that doesn't count, or else you wouldn't be posting this.

Slow News Day posted:

This is an idiotic strawman — I didn't say scientists are consistently wrong, I said they consistently under-predict.

Potato Salad posted:

More, they openly acknowledge as much, too. Thug would know this if they *read* a loving model writeup every once in a while or asked for a microphone at the end of any one of regularly held symposia. Model researchers are open about discussing their misgivings about the limits beyond direct forcing factors and first order effects.

Thug Lessons posted:

Would you care to share some of these open acknowledgments? Because this has not been my experience with climate science at all. Scientists of course will acknowledge all sorts of limitations to their studies but I don't know anyone who thinks that the work they are doing is fundamentally flawed and hopelessly biased in a pollyannish direction. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion you are not getting these views from asking questions at climate symposia or reading model writeups, but rather from editorials like this one from the NYT.

Thug Lessons posted:

e: Keep in mind, I would love to have a discussion on the nuts and bolts of how we make these estimates, and argue about ice sublimation rather than what we're arguing about now. That's not the discussion people are willing to give me.

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

You could dig into the report and trying to come with reasons as to why you think that the "One foot sea level rise by 2050" is probably an accurate prediction, and very unlikely to be an underestimate. I'm sure the thread could benefit from your obvious wealth of knowledge and insight!

Thug Lessons posted:

I've got a better idea. Before you dismiss scientific reports, why don't you dig into them and come up with reasons why it's wrong? Why is it other people's responsibility to come up with in-depth debunks of flippant statements you make against the credibility of specific reports and climate science generally?

Thug Lessons posted:

That's your opinion. Now let's look at the actual IPCC reports. Here's a comparison of IPCC (and earlier) model projections compared to observed warming, provided by Carbon Brief.



Do we see a consistent track record underestimation of warming across each report as time progresses? Not as far as I can tell. The second and third report underestimated warming while the first, fourth and fifth report overestimated warming, and none of their deviations were particularly massive, almost entirely within a 95% confidence interval, and on average their combined estimations slightly is almost exactly on par. So you say there's this trackable, consistent underestimation, but when we actually go back to look at the data, it's just not there.

Slow News Day posted:

It seems you are under the impression that people here are making GBS threads on climate science specifically, or are anti-science more generally, but I think that's a flawed impression, one that you only have yourself to blame for having gotten.

Koos Group posted:

Doesn't the percent change being positive mean they're underestimating, not the other way around?

Thug Lessons posted:

On a totally unrelated note, here's an actual climate scientist's POV from the set of Joe Rogan.

https://twitter.com/AndrewDessler/status/1493707084625555466

Thug Lessons posted:

Okay. Maybe you think that's a flawed impression. But try taking another perspective for a moment: imagine you work at NOAA and you've spent the past several years compiling a report to estimate sea-level rise. After an absolute grind of research, calculations and simulations, not to mention bureaucratic meetings, revisions, arguments, you've finally reached the point where you can publish your findings. You might even get a chance to sit down and explain it to someone from the Washington Post. And then you log on to social media to see what people are saying about it, and what you find is someone basically saying, "Ah, well, you know those climate scientists are always underestimating things, it must be a whole lot worse than this lets on!". How would you feel about that? Probably about as good as a covid researcher reading anti-vax groups.

The way you presented the report was disrespectful and dismissive. You might not feel like it's insulting, or be intended as an insult, but it is. If you're going to say that a massive report that dozens of climate scientists have spent years on is wrong, it deserves more than a flippant dismissal. And I think any serious analysis will find that stuff that NOAA does on climate is infinitely more interesting and useful than the meta-commentary about "systematic underestimation".

Crosby B. Alfred posted:

People are in this thread are misinterpreting the scientific evidence that is coming out of the IPCC and getting wrapped over cataclysmic climate disaster pornography. They are treating the least-likely-worst-case-scenarios as if they are something that is guaranteed to occur.

And it's not. Remember, these are projections not forecasts. And the data has changed enormously overtime. RCP 8.5 is now physically impossible scenario.

quote:

A decade ago, the “father of global warming”—the first scientist to sound the alarm on climate change in the 1980s to the US Congress—announced that we were too late: the planet had already hit the danger zone.

In a landmark paper, James Hansen, then head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, along with seven other leading climate scientists, described how a global average temperature above 1°Celsius (C)—involving a level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere of around 450 parts per million (ppm)—would lead to “practically irreversible ice sheet and species loss.” But, they added, new data showed that even 1°C was too hot.

At the time the paper was issued in 2008, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 were around 385 ppm. This is “already in the dangerous zone,” explained Hansen and his colleagues, noting that most climate models excluded self-reinforcing amplifying feedbacks which would be triggered at this level—things like “ice sheet disintegration, vegetation migration, and GHG [greenhouse gas] release from soils, tundra, or ocean sediments.”

Such feedbacks constitute tipping points which, once triggered, can lead to irreversible or even runaway climate change processes.

According to Hansen and his co-authors, these feedbacks “may begin to come into play on time scales as short as centuries or less.” The only viable solution to guarantee a safe climate, they wrote, is to reduce the level of greenhouse gases to around 350 ppm, if not lower.

Today, we are well in breach of the 1°C upper limit. And we have breached this limit at a much lower level of atmospheric CO2 than Hansen thought would be necessary to warm this much—as of May 2018, the monthly average atmospheric CO2 had reached 410ppm (the August measurement puts it at 409ppm.) This is the highest level of CO2 the earth has seen in 800,000 years.

Ten years on from Hansen’s warning, the UN’s new climate report—presenting the consensus of the world’s leading climate scientists—informs us that if we continue at this rate, the planet will warm to around 1.5°C in just 12 years, triggering a sequence of increasingly catastrophic impacts.

According to a Met Office briefing evaluating the implications of the UN report, once we go past 1.5°C, we dramatically increase the risks of floods, droughts, and extreme weather that would impact hundreds of millions of people.

The IPCC says that this would just be the beginning: we are currently on track to hit 3-4°C by end of century, which would lead to a largely unlivable planet.

Crosby B. Alfred posted:

Crosby B. Alfred posted:

People are in this thread are misinterpreting the scientific evidence that is coming out of the IPCC and getting wrapped over cataclysmic climate disaster pornography. They are treating the least-likely-worst-case-scenarios as if they are something that is guaranteed to occur.

And it's not. Remember, these are projections not forecasts. And the data has changed enormously overtime. RCP 8.5 is now a physically impossible scenario.

Crosby B. Alfred posted:

And it's not. Remember, these are projections not forecasts. And the data has changed enormously overtime. RCP 8.5 is now a physically impossible scenario.

Potato Salad posted:

Sincerely, go read the entirety of that blog post, it does a fantastic job of describing exactly what I have been trying to describe to you in terms and how huge variabilities and under reporting happen as modelers openly and transparently discuss their misgivings with novel methodology and metrics, which is precisely what a good science community should foster and discuss. The guy lays out the cause and effects of those misgivings in mathematical terms, you can see a straight line from the researchers uncertainties through to various conclusions drawn in various reports.

Potato Salad posted:

Honestly, would somebody do me the favor of reporting my post here, I am a recent firsthand subject matter expert on high performance computing in climate modeling, and I think this post ought to provide some background clarification on why this horse is well and truly is dead.

Failed Imagineer posted:

Even a high-performance computing SME is bamboozled by the lovely radium search function

Slow News Day posted:

quote:

Today, we are well in breach of the 1°C upper limit. And we have breached this limit at a much lower level of atmospheric CO2 than Hansen thought would be necessary to warm this much

Emphasis mine. The guy who is widely viewed as the "father of global warming" said that even a 1 degree celsius would be too much warming, as it would result in an irreversible cascade of feedback effects. And even he ended up overestimating the PPM level needed to breach that threshold.

quote:

Comparisons between climate models and observations over model projection periods are shown in Figure 2 for both temperature versus time and implied TCR metrics (differences between models and observations are shown in Figure S2). Overall the majority of model projections considered were consistent with observations under both metrics. Using the temperature versus time metric, 10 of the 17 model projections show results consistent with observations. Of the remaining seven model projections, four project more warming than observed—N77, ST81, and H88 Scenarios A and B—while three project less warming than observed—RS71, H81 Scenario 2a, and H88 Scenario C.

When mismatches between projected and observed forcings are taken into account, a better performance is seen. Using the implied TCR metric, 14 of the 17 model projections were consistent with observations; of the three that were not, Mi70 and H88 Scenario C showed higher implied TCR than observations, while RS71 showed lower implied TCR (Schneider, 1975; see supporting information Text S2 for a discussion of the anomalously low-equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) model used in RS71).

quote:

The IPCC says that this would just be the beginning: we are currently on track to hit 3-4°C by end of century

Potato Salad posted:

You actually really screwed the pooch on that one, Thug. Since you were kind enough to bring in the blog joined by the "czar" you cited -- by the way, no sane person in public policy uses that word -- let's see what they say about the IPCC and sea level change.

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/08/the-ipcc-sixth-assessment-report/



Let's look at the sea level summary. Second link.

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/author/stefan/



Interesting.



And....in context, that makes sense!

Crosby B. Alfred posted:

Show me the in IPCC Report where it states "The IPCC says that this would just be the beginning: we are currently on track to hit 3-4°C by end of century, which would lead to a largely unlivable planet.".

Bar Ran Dun posted:

Like 30 seconds to get IPCC saying it’s unlikely we will limit below 2C

https://www.ipcc.ch/2021/08/09/ar6-wg1-20210809-pr/

“The report provides new estimates of the chances of crossing the global warming level of 1.5°C in the next decades, and finds that unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5°C or even 2°C will be beyond reach.”

And lol that, that is really bad.

“The report projects that in the coming decades climate changes will increase in all regions. For 1.5°C of global warming, there will be increasing heat waves, longer warm seasons and shorter cold seasons. At 2°C of global warming, heat extremes would more often reach critical tolerance thresholds for agriculture and health, the report shows.”

Thug Lessons posted:

the 2100 sea-level rise projections have been revised slightly upward, but the subject here is 2050 sea-level rise projections.

Potato Salad posted:

with respect to scope/goalposts, just lol, lmao, define them however you want forever without consequence I guess, and let's pretend none of your recent stances existed

hmmm weird how this keeps happening

Potato Salad posted:

Wait, but.....I thought that we clarified that models largely don't, and that climate scientists largely understand this?

If that wasn't clear, well, here we are.

Thug Lessons posted:

Okay. The problem with statements like "models repeatedly fail to capture the extrema we see" is that we don't see model projections diverging from observed temperatures.

Science can predict things, speculation cannot. Climate modeling is geophysics and is one of the few tools we have that can make projections that hold up years, even decades, later. This thread seems to hold the opposite view and thinks that climate science is actually useless "because it doesn't have feedbacks" and the best way to understand the future is to speculate about it.

Thug Lessons posted:

I regret to inform you

Thug Lessons posted:

I've defined them exactly the same as when this discussion began: how much sea-level rise we can expect by 2050. That's what the original post, linking a WaPo story, referencing the NOAA report on SLR, was about. You're the one moving the goalposts to instead talk about 2100 SLR.

Thug Lessons posted:

Care to give me some pointers on how I should properly give weight to my arguments against positions like "we should disregard this scientific report on sea level rise and make up whatever arbitrary figure we want instead"?