08-03-2024, 05:44 PM
I'll start off by admitting that we should be concerned about the climate. Just as we should be concerned about any global dynamics that affect our lives and the lives of our future generations.
But the angry, alarmist-activists who's purpose is to garner attention, should be exposed to reality... namely that "We don't know everything, and what we do know is both incomplete, and only partially understood."
From PhysOrg: Not the day after tomorrow: Why we can't predict the timing of climate tipping points
First some housekeeping stuff you can skip, if you are so inclined...
...First, predictions rely on assumptions regarding the underlying physical mechanisms, as well as regarding future human actions to extrapolate past data into the future. These assumptions can be overly simplistic and lead to significant errors.
Second, long-term, direct observations of the climate system are rare and the Earth system components in question may not be suitably represented by the data. Third, historical climate data is incomplete.
Huge data gaps, especially for the longer past, and the methods used to fill these gaps can introduce errors in the statistics used to predict possible tipping times.
To illustrate their findings, the authors examined the AMOC, a crucial ocean current system. Previous predictions from historical data suggested a collapse could occur between 2025 and 2095. However, the new study revealed that the uncertainties are so large that these predictions are not reliable.
Using different fingerprints and data sets, predicted tipping times for the AMOC ranged from 2050 to 8065 even if the underlying mechanistic assumptions were true. Knowing that the AMOC might tip somewhere within a 6,000-year window isn't practically useful, and this large range highlights the complexity and uncertainty involved in such predictions....
I happen to think that the problem about the discussion isn't that we really needn't "change our ways"... I think we do. The problem is that if you tell climate activists that they are fearmongering, and it is being exploited... they freak out and proclaim that "You must be one of those people." (Assuming they actually care about what they are paid to do.)
Yes, everything humans discard accumulates and has a direct impact on the environment. We discard too much, and live too much for today. As the population growth declines it will become clearer that the future matters differently than today, so let's not encourage suffering over a envisioned crisis which we know so little about. We can do better certainly... but we have to admit that we don't know everything... and neither does the climate "activist," (nor those who employ them.)
But the angry, alarmist-activists who's purpose is to garner attention, should be exposed to reality... namely that "We don't know everything, and what we do know is both incomplete, and only partially understood."
From PhysOrg: Not the day after tomorrow: Why we can't predict the timing of climate tipping points
First some housekeeping stuff you can skip, if you are so inclined...
- The article appears under what PhysOrg labels as "Editor's Notes" - Whether or not this is a left-handed way to disguise an "opinion" article, is unclear to me. But it is important to recognize that it is not being "published" as climatology cannon, meaning the author still maintains a firm "greenhouse gas" orientation.
- The source material for this article is a scientific journal publication from "Technical University Munich."
- The source paper: Uncertainties too large to predict tipping times of major Earth system components from historical data
...First, predictions rely on assumptions regarding the underlying physical mechanisms, as well as regarding future human actions to extrapolate past data into the future. These assumptions can be overly simplistic and lead to significant errors.
Second, long-term, direct observations of the climate system are rare and the Earth system components in question may not be suitably represented by the data. Third, historical climate data is incomplete.
Huge data gaps, especially for the longer past, and the methods used to fill these gaps can introduce errors in the statistics used to predict possible tipping times.
To illustrate their findings, the authors examined the AMOC, a crucial ocean current system. Previous predictions from historical data suggested a collapse could occur between 2025 and 2095. However, the new study revealed that the uncertainties are so large that these predictions are not reliable.
Using different fingerprints and data sets, predicted tipping times for the AMOC ranged from 2050 to 8065 even if the underlying mechanistic assumptions were true. Knowing that the AMOC might tip somewhere within a 6,000-year window isn't practically useful, and this large range highlights the complexity and uncertainty involved in such predictions....
I happen to think that the problem about the discussion isn't that we really needn't "change our ways"... I think we do. The problem is that if you tell climate activists that they are fearmongering, and it is being exploited... they freak out and proclaim that "You must be one of those people." (Assuming they actually care about what they are paid to do.)
Yes, everything humans discard accumulates and has a direct impact on the environment. We discard too much, and live too much for today. As the population growth declines it will become clearer that the future matters differently than today, so let's not encourage suffering over a envisioned crisis which we know so little about. We can do better certainly... but we have to admit that we don't know everything... and neither does the climate "activist," (nor those who employ them.)
