Trump Administration Might “Re-Examine” Climate Modeling | Hacker News Reader

Trump Administration Might “Re-Examine” Climate Modeling

scientificamerican.com

41 pointsokket21 comments

Good. Climate models have huge uncertainties in their "subgrid physics", particularly cloud formation.

Subgrids physics deal with microphysics the fluid models cannot capture. The typical kilometer scale grids cannot capture physics and turbulence which operates on tiny scales, "butterfly effect" and all that.

The standard way they deal with this uncertainty is by adding "hand tuned" parameters which are back fit to earlier imperfect climate data. Then they extrapolate to the future. But the physical basis of these terms is hand wavy at best.

This sounds an awful lot like the problem of modelling the turbulent reacting flow inside a rocket engine. SpaceX did some neat work on this and presented it at a GPU conference. They did some unconventional things with the GPU, allowing variable-resolution modeling. Previously, it had not been possible to accurately model an engine because the scale required to cover the whole engine could not express the detail of the microphysics.

I remember that. Fluid dynamics is a very tricky thing to model and the work they did was really cool. There's a good video presentation on it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYA0f6R5KAI

Good? I don't think they mean "re-examine" in the same way you mean "re-examine".

The biggest uncertainty with future predictions of the climate models isn't any inaccurate modeling of the climate system, but the modelling of the human component. Because , what warming we see in the future is really up to humanity and what we do about it. What the models CAN do is say 'look, if we do nothing this might happen , or if we do this thing, this might happen'. Helping us understand the impact of human action is their most important function imo. But really their accuracy when looking back will depend on what we do.

EDIT: Are there really that many people here who don't believe humans are the ones driving global warming ?

Here is my prediction. The new models will either agree with the old models or show things are worse than IPCC reports. They will then bury and "Try Again". Just like the koch funded study done by skeptic (now turned believer) Richard Muller which confirmed the science. Woops

It might be likely the results will be worse than the last IPCC report. The CMIP 6 models in general are running much 'hotter' than the CMIP 5 ones, revealing that the climate might be much more sensitive than anticipated: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-results-from-the-...

I doubt it. I bet he finds a way to “fix” the science so it “confirms” that clime chant is a hoax. Otherwise he’d only be helping the democrats, with their green new deal stuff.

He has a lot to lose by creating more evidence of climate change

Unpopular question, what if we are keeping the next ice age at bay with increased green house gasses? Are there any viewpoints where this is considered beneficial?

This is somewhat nonsensical, though. We don't have evidence that we are preventing a decline in temperatures. We have evidence that we are seeing a rise in temperatures. Those are two very different things.

So, it is not that the question is unpopular. It just doesn't make sense. You are begging the question that things could be worse under alternatives. The plight is to improve the one we are in.

>We have evidence that we are seeing a rise in temperatures

For the majority of the earths history, the poles have had no ice on them. Their current existence is a holdover from our last ice-age.

Wouldn't it be rational to conclude that earth's temperatures are meandering back to its natural state?

> Wouldn't it be rational to conclude that earth's temperatures are meandering back to its natural state?

Perhaps, but it is a strange coïncidence then that they've been going up since the Industrial Revolution, which also happens to be when humans started releasing a whole bunch of carbon (a greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere.

It took a while for us to develop the science of climatology and then start noticing natural climatic cycles as well as then noticing anthropomorphic climate change (ACC):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Terminology

Natural cyclic oscillations are known and have been taken into account:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_decadal_oscillation * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_multidecadal_oscillat...

The possibility of being wrong is there, but here's the thing: if we're wrong about ACC being real, then the worse that will happen is that we move towards more efficient and renewal infrastructure (which isn't a bad thing in itself). If we're right about ACC being real, and do something about it, then we (may) save human civilization.

There's not much long-term downside to assuming ACC is real and doing something about it.

>then the worse that will happen

But that's not the "worse that will happen". Go tell a starving 3rd world family that their $300 per month salary will now only buy $200 because you decided its a "risk worth taking".

The carbon use of a family making $300/month is minimal and I would hazard to guess any carbon pricing/capping scheme would effect them minimally.

* https://www.mcc-berlin.net/en/news/information/information-d...

* http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2018/07/how-a-carbon-tax...

Canada just passed a carbon tax where they take the proceeds and then distribute them to everyone. The lowest income earners are actually getting MORE back from the rebates than what they spend on the tax. So yes, it's possible to not only tax carbon, but do it in such a way that it will help lower-income people.

For the majority of the universe's existence, the Earth didn't. Not exactly a helpful data analysis.

So, no. It isn't rational. It is, at best, distractions. And, honestly, folks that peddle these sorts of arguments don't exactly have a history of good faith debates.

There are some positive aspects to climate change. But for what matters most to us, the global consequences are expected to be negative.

One of the key reasons is that it is change. We are well adapted to that climate, we built settlements at the best places, etc... Climate is changing rather quickly, and adapting to the new conditions will be painful.

Then the 'fix' appears to be far, far worse than the problem as temperatures are steadily, and rapidly rising.

It's not an unpopular question so much as an irrelevant one: An ice age a few hundred years out is not much of a concern if within decades the seas are going to devour big chunks of our habitable land via melting sea ice, and the rising temperatures make agriculture much harder on the remaining land while also making large sections of the remaining land uninhabitable due to high temps. After a while of that, people will be begging for an ice age. If we want to fight off an ice age we should just keep the temperature roughly where it is (or perhaps where it was a couple decades ago, because the current increased temps are already causing big problems)

"What if atmospheric carbon is good" and similar questions stopped being reasonable once we started observing direct negative impact of global warming right in front of our faces. Like, sure, there are probably advantages to it, but there are advantages to all sorts of negative things - sickle cell anemia grants partial resistance to some nasty diseases, but It's Also Sickle Cell Anemia.

From what I’ve read, the next (normal) ice age has definitely already been prevented. The benefits include making it easier to ship across and drill for oil etc. in and around the north pole.

This doesn’t appear to make up for the downsides, as we’re looking at changes on the scale of the difference between ice ages and warm periods, but starting from a warm period and going up, and the effects will last for long enough to mess with the next 1500 years.

So, just to share my thoughts, part of the reason why a question like this seems unpopular is that it kinda is raising completely unjustified doubt on very well established science.

A good place to start might be: https://xkcd.com/1732/ And then I recommend you at least read 3-4 wikipedia pages on warming, climate, ice-ages before pushing these questions... They will more than answer them for you.

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