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brenthutch

A Model Failure

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52 minutes ago, billvon said:

This topic made me want to look up past predictions and see how well they did.

1973, John Sawyer of the UK Met office.  He predicted that between 1973 and 2000 the climate would warm by approximately .6C.  Actual value - .56C

1975, Wally Broeker of Columbia.  He claimed that "a strong case can be made that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide."  He was, of course, ridiculed.

1981, James Hansen, NASA.  In his fast-growth scenario (i.e. rapid economic growth, minimal attempts to reduce CO2) he predicted .75C between 1981 and 2020.  He was almost dead on - his (smooth) curve goes right down the center of the peaks and valleys of the actual climate in the past 40 years.

1988, James Hansen, NASA. This was the first detailed climate model that took into account individual areas of the globe and what would happen with them.  His midrange scenario B was within 20% of the warming we are seeing today.

1990, first IPCC assessment.  Their business-as-usual model mean was accurate to within 15%.

So even going back 49 years, predictions (and then later models) have been remarkably accurate.
 

Yeah but none of those guys predicted last Tuesday's rain, so fuck them and their so-called 'models'

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18 minutes ago, lippy said:

Yeah but none of those guys predicted last Tuesday's rain, so fuck them and their so-called 'models'

"And this guy from liberalssuck.com said it would get colder this winter - and he was RIGHT!  So much for climate change!"

One of my favorite graphs is below.  Solid lines are IPCC climate predictions; dashed lines are from climate change deniers.

And yet people just continue to believe the deniers.

Contrarians.JPG

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(edited)
3 hours ago, lippy said:

Yeah but none of those guys predicted last Tuesday's rain, so fuck them and their so-called 'models'

I'm starting to see the problem here. Some of you guy's don't grasp what Brent is talking about when he's discussing climate models. He's thinking bikini models. Salubrious? I wouldn't go that far but in fairness I can sort of see how certain tiers of our current AGW intelligentsia might be in favor of global warming. 

Edited by JoeWeber
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7 hours ago, billvon said:

This topic made me want to look up past predictions and see how well they did.

1973, John Sawyer of the UK Met office.  He predicted that between 1973 and 2000 the climate would warm by approximately .6C.  Actual value - .56C

1975, Wally Broeker of Columbia.  He claimed that "a strong case can be made that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide."  He was, of course, ridiculed.

1981, James Hansen, NASA.  In his fast-growth scenario (i.e. rapid economic growth, minimal attempts to reduce CO2) he predicted .75C between 1981 and 2020.  He was almost dead on - his (smooth) curve goes right down the center of the peaks and valleys of the actual climate in the past 40 years.

1988, James Hansen, NASA. This was the first detailed climate model that took into account individual areas of the globe and what would happen with them.  His midrange scenario B was within 20% of the warming we are seeing today.

1990, first IPCC assessment.  Their business-as-usual model mean was accurate to within 15%.

So even going back 49 years, predictions (and then later models) have been remarkably accurate.
 

It is the newer and more complex models that are having difficulty. (per my OP)

Oh BTW with regard to James Hanson…

“Several more of Mr. Hansen’s predictions can now be judged by history. Have hurricanes gotten stronger, as Mr. Hansen predicted in a 2016 study? No. Satellite data from 1970 onward shows no evidence of this in relation to global surface temperature. Have storms caused increasing amounts of damage in the U.S.? Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show no such increase in damage, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product. How about stronger tornadoes? The opposite may be true, as NOAA data offers some evidence of a decline. The list of what didn’t happen is long and tedious.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/thirty-years-on-how-well-do-global-warming-predictions-stand-up-1529623442

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14 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

It is the newer and more complex models that are having difficulty. (per my OP)

Oh BTW with regard to James Hanson…

“Several more of Mr. Hansen’s predictions can now be judged by history. Have hurricanes gotten stronger, as Mr. Hansen predicted in a 2016 study? No. Satellite data from 1970 onward shows no evidence of this in relation to global surface temperature. Have storms caused increasing amounts of damage in the U.S.? Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show no such increase in damage, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product. How about stronger tornadoes? The opposite may be true, as NOAA data offers some evidence of a decline. The list of what didn’t happen is long and tedious.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/thirty-years-on-how-well-do-global-warming-predictions-stand-up-1529623442

2018? Didn't you have a DZ and a job that year? 

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15 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

Cascading failures to achieve. Maybe online poker, just a thought.

You can still lose at online poker.  Maybe he should try one of those vanity journals, where you write whatever you want, you pay them, they publish it and then they tell you how great your ideas were.

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3 minutes ago, billvon said:

You can still lose at online poker.  Maybe he should try one of those vanity journals, where you write whatever you want, you pay them, they publish it and then they tell you how great your ideas were.

Same as Speakers Corner except it's sort of free here. Great idea, no learning curve required.

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15 hours ago, billvon said:

This topic made me want to look up past predictions and see how well they did.

1973, John Sawyer of the UK Met office.  He predicted that between 1973 and 2000 the climate would warm by approximately .6C.  Actual value - .56C

1975, Wally Broeker of Columbia.  He claimed that "a strong case can be made that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide."  He was, of course, ridiculed.

1981, James Hansen, NASA.  In his fast-growth scenario (i.e. rapid economic growth, minimal attempts to reduce CO2) he predicted .75C between 1981 and 2020.  He was almost dead on - his (smooth) curve goes right down the center of the peaks and valleys of the actual climate in the past 40 years.

1988, James Hansen, NASA. This was the first detailed climate model that took into account individual areas of the globe and what would happen with them.  His midrange scenario B was within 20% of the warming we are seeing today.

1990, first IPCC assessment.  Their business-as-usual model mean was accurate to within 15%.

So even going back 49 years, predictions (and then later models) have been remarkably accurate.
 

Thanks for finding these and due credit to these forecasters. It would be great if we could have reliably similar forecasting today in the mainstream media instead of the kind of forecasts that bring impressionable children and nutters to tears of despair over their own imminent doom in their lifetime.  From the scattergun of forecasts out there some pellets have hit the target. That NASA guy got it right twice, if not yet retired he'd be good enough to work for SpaceX now.¬¬

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56 minutes ago, metalslug said:

It would be great if we could have reliably similar forecasting today in the mainstream media

You're blaming mainstream media, brent's blaming the models and people who make them.

You do realise they're two separate things, right? Even if the mainstream media hypes it up, it has nothing to do with the scientists who actually do the research.

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9 hours ago, brenthutch said:

It is the newer and more complex models that are having difficulty

Oh now I remember. You've actually posted this before. Your conclusion was "the more complex the models are, the more wrong they are".

I'm sure I pointed out how stupid that conclusion was back then, but here you are again.

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19 hours ago, SkyDekker said:

That there will be a continued escalation in the negative effects we see from climate change.

In all seriousness, what negative effects?  Just what is happening today that hasn’t happened before climate hysteria?  We have always had floods, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes etc.  According to NOAA and the IPCC these are no more frequent or more powerful than in the past.  Don’t give me predictions give me quantifiable examples. 

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(edited)
40 minutes ago, jakee said:

Climate and natural disasters are not the same thing.

I could only find one example of climate change deaths that weren’t from a natural disaster.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/04/26/wynn-bruce-fire-supreme-court-climate-activist/

 

Edited by brenthutch

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Yeah, but that's happened before, so climate didn't cause that, either 

And Metalslug, as far as the impacts of climate change and its reporting on impressionable people? I'd have to compare the negative social and political impact of that to, say, Q, and think about kidnapping plots and attacks on the US Capitol for media impact. 

Wendy P. 

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The earth is very complicated, weather, climate, earthquakes, volcanos, ice ages, meteors, sun spots, solar flares, ??.  Scientists have and will continue to make predictions, computer models have and will be made.  We need to keep track of the ones past and future to determine their accuracy and not just report the ones that came true.  The earth will be here for a long time in the future.  Many species have gone extinct.  Many will go extinct in the future, humans probably will also.

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On 4/26/2022 at 11:19 AM, brenthutch said:

I just need to show that climate change is NOT leading to more climate related deaths and reduced food production, and I have done that quite nicely. 

Actual study:

===============================
World's largest study of global climate related mortality links 5 million deaths a year to abnormal temperatures

08 July 2021

YG_Infographic-for-global-climate-change

More than five million extra deaths a year can be attributed to abnormal hot and cold temperatures, according to a world first international study led by Monash University.

The study found deaths related to hot temperatures increased in all regions from 2000 to 2019, indicating that global warming due to climate change will make this mortality figure worse in the future.

=========================================================================================

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5 hours ago, metalslug said:

Thanks for finding these and due credit to these forecasters. It would be great if we could have reliably similar forecasting today in the mainstream media instead of the kind of forecasts that bring impressionable children and nutters to tears of despair over their own imminent doom in their lifetime.  From the scattergun of forecasts out there some pellets have hit the target. That NASA guy got it right twice, if not yet retired he'd be good enough to work for SpaceX now.¬¬

I think you are imagining the reporting on "imminent doom."  I am sure you can find such reporting out there, but it's not the norm for any of the major outlets.

For example, above I linked to a story about a study on the increase in deaths due to warming.  That appeared in Bloomberg, which is a fairly good centrist news organization.  While that may make some people THINK they are about to die, that's their problem (a problem caused by not understanding statistics and ratios) not the problem of the people reporting on the study.  I mean, I am sure that if CNN announced that Biden was going to require vaccines for all people who visit the White House, some people on the right will hear that and think "Biden is going to kill my kids."  But provided that CNN reported Biden's comments accurately, that's the fault of the listener, not the reporter.

Quote

From the scattergun of forecasts out there . . . .

That seems like you are saying "well, if a million monkeys type at a million typewriters, some of them will get it right."  

But I'm not quoting random sources.  I am quoting the IPCC, which is the central climate scientific consortium working on climate change.  I am quoting James Hansen, the foremost NASA scientist working on climate change.  And I stopped at 1990 just because the objective was to show that even 32 years ago people were getting it right.  Every IPCC forecast since then has gotten more accurate as the models have gotten more sophisticated.

Quote

That NASA guy got it right twice

Keep in mind that this is James Hansen, one of the most common targets of the right.  He publicized the "hockey stick" graph showing the rapid warming we are seeing now compared to historical rates of warming.  I agree that his predictions have been accurate - but that very accuracy makes him reviled among (for example) the people at FOX News.  So that's a problem if you are looking for better reporting; there's a point at which if someone is too accurate, they are attacked.

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4 hours ago, olofscience said:

You do realise they're two separate things, right? Even if the mainstream media hypes it up, it has nothing to do with the scientists who actually do the research.

Brent and I are different forum members responding to different posts. In other news; Water... wet ! 

6 minutes ago, billvon said:

Actual study:

More than five million extra deaths a year can be attributed to abnormal hot and cold temperatures, according to a world first international study led by Monash University.

The study found deaths related to hot temperatures increased in all regions from 2000 to 2019, indicating that global warming due to climate change will make this mortality figure worse in the future.

How does that value compare to global population growth over the same period? ...and what was their 'cause of death' determination based on? How about this;  

Quote

NOAA’s take: heat is the bigger killer
NOAA’s official source of weather-related deaths, a monthly publication called Storm Data, is heavily skewed toward heat-related deaths.... Storm Data is often based on media reports, and tends to be biased towards media/public awareness of an event.

Quote

CDC’s take: cold is the bigger killer
In contrast, the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics Compressed Mortality Database, which is based on death certificates, indicates the reverse—about twice as many people die of “excessive cold” conditions in a given year than of “excessive heat.”

 

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I'll also point out that extra deaths is the most extreme and least sensitive measure of climate change impact.  Having your house destroyed by flooding from 100-year storms every 5 years is also an impact that will mess up your life, but only a relatively small number of people will die.  Same for having your house burn down in drought-fueled fires.  Many areas are now subject to extended and more severe fire seasons that rarely burned in the past.  I don't expect that a lot of people will drown due to rising sea level, because people will move, but certainly millions will be displaced and a lot of economic/social/political upheaval will result from that.

Also anyone who is familiar with the Canadian Shield will know that there is a limit to how far north agriculture will be able to shift with a warming climate.  You can't grow a crop on bare rock and lakes.

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1 minute ago, GeorgiaDon said:

Also anyone who is familiar with the Canadian Shield will know that there is a limit to how far north agriculture will be able to shift with a warming climate.  You can't grow a crop on bare rock and lakes.

'shift' or 'extend' ?  Is there a reason they cannot continue agriculture in the present southern locations?

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6 minutes ago, GeorgiaDon said:

I'll also point out that extra deaths is the most extreme and least sensitive measure of climate change impact.  Having your house destroyed by flooding from 100-year storms every 5 years is also an impact that will mess up your life, but only a relatively small number of people will die.  Same for having your house burn down in drought-fueled fires.  Many areas are now subject to extended and more severe fire seasons that rarely burned in the past.  I don't expect that a lot of people will drown due to rising sea level, because people will move, but certainly millions will be displaced and a lot of economic/social/political upheaval will result from that.

Also anyone who is familiar with the Canadian Shield will know that there is a limit to how far north agriculture will be able to shift with a warming climate.  You can't grow a crop on bare rock and lakes.

Lichens and algae aren't crops? I'm guessing you don't have many friends who are Reindeer. Try to get out more.

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Crops are limited by temperature (both high and low), soil moisture, day length, duration of the growing season, etc.  For example, the upper limit for wheat is about 35 degrees C.  Climate change will impact rainfall patterns as well as temperature, so some areas that are currently suitable for a particular crop will become unsuitable as new areas become suitable.  It's not a given that the tradeoff will be balanced.  Also even if northern areas warm their day length will not change.  No matter how warm it gets, above the arctic circle you'll still have months where the sun doesn't get above the horizon and lots of very short days in the spring/fall resulting in a too-short growing season. 

I don't really understand the perspective that says that changing our energy economy is too much bother, and we will probably be OK for my lifetime, so we'll just carry on and hope people 100 years from now can work it out.  If not, it's not my problem.

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