Climate Scientist responds to Sabine Hossenfelder on Climate Sensitivity
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- Опубліковано 1 лют 2024
- How hot will our planet actually get? Climate scientists try to answer this question by evaluating the "climate sensitivity". And if you've watched the recent Sabine Hossenfelder, you may be left with the impression that climate change wasn't much to worry about... but now it is. So I'm here to explain what the evidence is actually showing us, and why the situation is a little more nuanced than Sabine's commentary may have suggested. And crucially I break down how climate scientists arrive at a number for the crucial "climate sensitivity", to give us a sense for how much global warming we're in for.
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==MORE INFO==
Sabine video: • I wasn't worried about...
My video on landmark climate sensitivity paper: • Climate Sensitivity: H...
Nature Comment on hot models: www.nature.com/articles/d4158...
Hot models too hot historically: esd.copernicus.org/articles/1...
… and for the last “ice age”
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c...
Explanation of climate sensitivity: www.carbonbrief.org/explainer...
The epic study on climate sensitivity: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c...
Weather forecast to validate model: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c...
Associated comment piece: www.nature.com/articles/d4158...
Why such forecasts tests should be carried out: rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
The James Hansen paper: academic.oup.com/oocc/article...
Critiques of it:
/ 1720098321161957761 (check the replies too)
michaelmann.net/content/comme...
www.eenews.net/articles/james...
www.washingtonpost.com/climat...
Do climate protests work: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1...
IEA net zero roadmap: iea.blob.core.windows.net/ass...
==CREDITS==
Sabine photo from Sabine Hossenfelder
Ice core clip from The Conversation
Ocean visual and temperature projection from Nasa
Greek floods by Weather events - Наука та технологія
some of you may have spotted Sabine's latest vid, which responds to criticism of her previous. here's my response to her response to my response!
thank you for continuing the conversation, but again you avoided mentioning the actual reason that climate scientists don't trust these models' predictions of future climate change. It's because they're bad at simulating past climate change! i.e. they can't accurately recreate the changes we've observed since the last industrial revolution or the temperature of the last ice age.
they weren't rejected because scientists don't like them, or because scientists are protecting some narrative. they were weighted less than other models because they're bad at the job in hand. now maybe you think this isn't a good test of the models, or think we should take every model equally seriously, regardless of how well they can simulate past climate change, but that's a very different conversation.
Does what she say in her video at around 3:35 true at all then? (something like: that the models were good enough to be included in the IPCC, until they noticed to the high sensitivity value)
According to this comment of yours the models were in fact either not good enough to ever be included or were removed for the reason of not being good at predicting past climate change. This sounds rather different to what she said obviously. Was there other models that were removed after being previously approved to be put in the IPCC that did not have a high sensitivity value?
Adam given that none of the models successfully account for enough of the actual processes to successfully simulate the changes to glaciers that we know for sure actually have happened you're making a nonsensical argument. If you want people to believe that Climate Science is actual science then you have to stop acting in a way that to a properly educated outside observer looks indistinguishable from favoritism. That's her key point. You are not managing to refute that.
None of the climate models successfully model glacial change, period. We know that. We know that none of them successfully model the apparent change in albedo over time. Again, this is uncontroversial. Given that the major difference between the "favored" and "disfavored" models is in large part how they calculate and simulate the effects of albedo on climate (and the granularity, or voxel scale to be technical about it, at which they calculate this) and that albedo appears to be deeply related to the melting of sea ice and glaciers, it stands to reason that saying a model which allows directly tweaking those parameters has incredible value no matter how well it simulates a particular favorite benchmark. In particular it likely allows people to think critically about what else we may be missing in the models we need to successfully defend our posterity from extremely rapid sea level rise.
Ignore the fact that it spits up politically inconvenient numbers-until we get a better handle on the actual processes of glacial and albedo change we don't actually have any idea what is a "too bad to be real" CO2 concentration sensitivity result for our current atmosphere with the current solar output.
Thank you for deleting my reply. I really appreciate it. You lost your argument. You just proved it to me.
Sorry, I can´t follow your logic, why is it "a different conversation", and why do you argue with the last ice age, like s.c. "climate change deniers" do? But I appreciate that this answer is factual at least, and not as disrespectful as in your vid, to someone, who doesn´t diserve that.
@@DrewNorthupEntirely correct! I mean your deleted comment.
I watched Sabine's video, and my take away was not the many (mis)interpretations you are trying to warn against or contextualize. What I heard Sabine saying was **not** "the IPCC estimate for climate sensitivity is probably wrong, this scarier number is probably right". I heard her say "the IPCC has been trying to put error bars around the risk of climate change, and we would expect those risk bars to get narrower over time as models get better; but there are reasons to think that there are uncertainties that are systematically causing bias in those risk estimates; instead of the risk bars getting narrower, we might have to consider their getting significantly wider."
One reason the "hot models" might produce bad "predictions" (retrodictions?) in simulating the paleoclimate is they don't have trustworthy data to input about clouds. If you put in some numbers it produces outcomes too warm, with other numbers you get outcomes too cold. But if clouds are an important driver of physical change in the past and present, then there is greater uncertainty than previously considered, and the error bars for the future should be drawn wider as we try to take that into account.
I didn't pick up on Sabine jumping on a bandwagon with Jim Hansen, I know his recent work has received considerable criticism. What I noticed is that she was responding to an opinion piece by Tim Palmer, who has co-written papers with Sabine on foundational matters in physics, but who also works on climate models. I haven't read Palmer's comments on this issue, but I would be interested in hearing your analysis of it.
I agree with most of the points you make, and agree that they are worth making to counter possible misunderstandings of Sabine's video if taken without adequate context. But I think her main message still stands. There are reasons to think that error bars may need to be drawn wider than the IPCC has been presenting.
what i interpreted out of Sabine's video is we are screwed. I agree with her always 100 percent
if her actual position previously was "I'm not worried about climate change", then her opinion can be disregarded anyway.
@@yeetyeet7070why? (Genuine question)
@@norbertnagy5514People aren't allowed to change their minds, you see.
@@norbertnagy5514 The holy scientific inquisition is displeased with her.
I googled "hot models" and was pleasantly surprised to not find many links to climate sciences.
However, warm up a little i did.
I'll go with the hot models, no doubt about that
Funny what you did just there, was.
Some really nice looking "lap-tops" though.
Finally you've been given the excuse you've always been waiting for ? 😄
It was all Sabine's fault, officer.
I watched your video right after Sabine's and I thank you for posting a climate scientist's point of view. I think that Sabine actually did a good job of pointing out that the hot models were still outlier models, and she explicitly stated that she didn't know "who was right." I think that her main point was practical, as in "wake up, people!"
If there's any feasible chance, even something on the order of 1 in 1000 perhaps, that the current ECS consensus is a little low, our timeline to get serious about the problem could shift a lot. Climate science has to figure out what's most likely, but policy needs to react to what's possible, at least for something that has such potentially devastating possibilities.
Imagine if the NEO projects said that there was a 1 in 1000 chance that a Manhattan-sized asteroid would slam into search in twenty years. Those are slim odds, and depending on the orbit with respect to the earth and sun, we might not be able to improve our estimate until it was too late. We'd have to choose to build policy around one of two ideas. Either "yes, it's possible, but the science says it's very unlikely" or "the science says it's unlikely, but the risk is too high." I think we'd try to figure out how to launch a rocket that could give it a push, don't you?
My sense after watching Sabine's video was that she was communicating a) what if this goes bad sooner that we think? b) we can't really know that won't happen, even though climate science says that's very unlikely, and c) what's at stake is something most people haven't thought through very well - let me paint a picture for you.
Of course, she has a way with words, and with her standing in physics, I'm not saying she was trying to mislead people. I'm just saying that I never heard her say the hot models were correct. I heard her ask people to consider what would happen if they were.
By the way, kudos for pointing out that weather patterns are not climate patterns. This needs to be written across the sky (which could reflect some heat back into space). I get so tired of hearing, "oh man, it's ten below zero - where's global warming now?" /eyeroll
Its not about how hot its going to get. Its all about the atmosphere and oceans accumulating extra energy (measured as a change in temperature), and how this extra energy will affect weather patterns, ocean currents, and hence our climates. Some places may actually get colder.
If Scotland became warmer, this would be a good thing. It is bloody freezing, and as a result, we are all spending a fortune heating our homes.
@@Kiltoonie Sorry but I think your part of the world will on average get colder, if the predictions are within the ball park. I understand that the climate on much of the west coast of the British Isles is moderated by the warming influence of the Atlantic Ocean currents, which are predicted to be disrupted. I say "on average", because its all about the extremes they talk about. Yeah you might get warmer periods in summer, but these may be outweighed by colder periods in winter. I'm not familiar with farming in Scotland, but I know quite well farms in Ireland experience quite mild conditions entirely due to the influence of the Atlantic Ocean.
@@Kiltoonie Don't you guys only hover around 0C during winter? Maybe dip around -5C or -10C from time to time?
@@paavoilves5416 It varies, but it is actually a lot milder than you might think. Usually wet, dark, and miserable, but rarely that cold.
@@Kiltoonie To be fair the wet cold you have feels colder than dry cold. We are usually below 0C for almost half the year, and the dry -15C doesn't get through the clothing like 0C does. Scotland is one of the places I'll gotta visit some year, love from Finland!
I fell away from watching Sabine after her video on transitioning. It's like she is reading all the popular headlines of media articles and just copying their sensationalism but under the guise of analytical thought.
Same! That was a big disillusionment moment for me. Even more so when she didn't post a follow-up saying "sorry, got that wrong" (there was one with "I was wrong, here's what I learned" on the title card, which seemed like a sort of a middle finger to anyone who was hoping for that).
I'm glad there are people on here like @ClimateAdam who haven't fallen into the sensationalism trap! Smart move to avoid ads and paid sponsors, it seems like those could lead to sensationalizing everything.
What stuns me (as it should your other viewers here!) is that you spend this video ~going against?~ Sabine, while IGNORING the science in the paper she’s concerned about.
I’d say that’s a rather telling oversight Adam
entirely correct!
naa he's worried that sabine is not an extreme climate alarmist (as him)
As a data modeler in health science, I can't express enough my appreciation for this video. If you are not trained in statistics (and even if you might be), statistical assumptions and random error are often ignored even in a professional setting much less on social media about science. Sabine is my favorite you-tuber. She is amazing. But it is essential to get other perspectives to gauge for yourself. Thanks to both Sabine and Adam for their great insights.
It's clear that Sabine shouldn't engage in topics like climate change. She covers other topics well and there's no problem with them, but when it comes to climate, she's... not really objective.
It's funny that she titled her video "I wasn't worried about climate change, now I am" when it's specifically her repeating doomsday climate prophecies a year or two ago that made me stop watching her.
@@LecherousLizard It must be tough being unable to emotionally handle disagreement.
@@coonhound_pharoah Quite funny you say that, because about 8 days ago I made a video which starts by putting "anti-vaxxers" and "climate change deniers" in to the same bag as flat-earthers and then call them all brain damaged, because they don't agree with my idols.
Oh, wait. That wasn't me, that was Sabine Hossenfelder.
@LecherousLizard That never happened. Your emotional problems make you blow things out of proportion.
@@LecherousLizard 😂😂😂
Always remember, these models run on programs written by people. People make mistakes and have agendas, either their own or someone else's who has the abillity to influence them.The predicted outcomes from these models will always reflect what is programmed into them.
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omg you are denying sabine i don' t like you at all
Not sure what type of climate you folks are wanting? Me, myself and I would like to see a warning climate. I'd like to see how long that it takes to melt the polar ice caps. It won't happen in your lifetime!
The discrepancy between models needs to be resolved with a universal model that matches Paleo climate and short and long term weather. Until then we have a serious concern that Hansen and Sabine could be correct. You really missed that point Adam and I hope you follow up to address efforts to fix the model discrepancies. The ensemble approach certainly is less wrong but also maybe too wrong and risky to rely on.
Love this adam!! Just found your channel yesterday and this fact makes me even more stoked to have stumbled upon your content! My undergrad was in Env Sci and lately I've been watching videos and doing research on climate science masters programs because I think thats the next step for me :)
@@peacepoet1947 Thousands of species who will go extinct due to rapidly changing temp and amounts of rainfall, too rapid for them to adapt, don't agree.
James Hansen & Co are asking us to consider clouds. Now. After 2023 broke all 'ranges' Hansen expects a response like "yes, let's track, analyse and consider it". But what they get is "the models are bad enough as they are". This makes me nervous.
James Hansen is a fraud. This is known since the 80s. Now he is active for the nuclear lobby with the Greta-Movement. Btw. Did you know the 2°-Goal originates from the nuclear lobby as well? THIS should make you "nervous".
The climate models are according to J. Clauser (Physics nobel price 2022) not bad but pseudoscientific nonsense.
The climate is much too complex for a serious modelling....
- The clouds have a major impact but are understood in the best case qualitative not at all quantitative.
- The water evaporation is not understood at all..There is no linear correlation with temperatures...On the other hand about 1/2 of the heat transfer from earth surface to the higher atmosphere takes place by water evaporation.
- The albedo is a guess only. The albedo varies due to the weather, daytime and season. It would be very challenging to model it.
All in all models that does not reflect the complexity of our planet earth provide random results or perhaps the results expected by the green NGO behind the IPCC.
I think the question is not whether "we should trust" a particular kind or class of model, the question is if we can safely dismiss the results of these models.
To my knowledge, we cannot predict the consequences of climate change, we can only estimate the possible magnitude of consequences and maybe assign a likelihood to the scales. We are doing risk management here. It's a bad idea to restrict such management to the most likely outcome, because then you only have answers for that particular case.
If I understand Sabine's video right, the predictions of hot models have previously been dismissed, because they have been considered weak (not matching historic data). That apparently changed.
So until now, we trusted that hot models are inaccurate. We now don't need to trust that they are accurate, we need to consider the possibility and then likelihood that they might be.
But since we are not actually doing risk management in regard to climate change but rather optimize short term benefits in various scopes, that should actually not change anything, unless the predictions of hot models realize themselves. And once that happens, we can just smile and switch from optimizations to the blame game and ask scientists how they could ignore the only models that actually worked. That's because business operates with the benefit of hindsight, something that constructive science cannot.
Very nice nut-shell summarization.
I am an old man, and not able to evaluate science as complicated as climate models,with all the variations in ocean currents, cloud cover, heating releasing more water vapor and methane in the atmosphere and so on. But what I can see, is that the general development seems to follow worst-case scenarios of the past. I am aware of not confusing the day to day weather with the long term climate changes, but I still cannot help worrying about all the heat records we have experienced lately. It is like every month sets a new never-seen temperature record.
maybe if your only title is "old man" you should not clutter comments on a subject you don't understand: it's not climate change it's about statistic.
Well, old man. You have, because of yr age nothing to worry about. And the alarmists are not a little wrong, especially about Co2, but grossly wrong. If you dig a little deeper into the actual science you will find out that most physics scientist think the climate sensitivity/temperature is between 0.2 and 0.5 for a doubling of Co2. And climate can only be assessed after roughly 60 years. In 10 years time the alarmists will have a hard time looking back at their position.
And remember, the end of the world is always 5 years from now! Just watch 70 years of wrong predictions and then add some. So, rest assured. Dont fall into the panic trap. The uncertainties about the climate have wide error bars. You cannot properly equate an interactive, dynamic, largely chaotic system w no zero point or steady state..
Okay so you mention the three ways to derive Climate Sensitivity, using Paleoclimate Data, Historical Data, and physical Measurements, and how the hot models give poor results about previous Ice age. You also mention that it is more or less accurate to say the difference between hot models and the rest are the cloud physics. If this is the main difference, it makes sense to me, to measure the accuracy of the new model's cloud physics in a way we have empirical evidence about clouds, a weather model. In the paper discussing the weather model they state that the previous version of the climate model made a baseline weather prediction, and the new "hot model" was used, the hot model gave the better weather forecast. This to me looks like excellent science, isolating a variable, testing it against a control (the previous model) and observing an improved result. I wish this would have been discussed more in your video.
I also want to point out something you said years ago in your first video about climate sensitivity, scientists have been working on this issue for a long time, hundreds of papers published and they "often disagree" with each other. They have been working to narrow the range, and it hasn't worked. So I have a big question that I haven't seen discussed and I've been looking all week since Sabine's video was published,
What is the possibility (or range) that the climate sensitivity changes with time?
Perhaps the hot models do not agree with paleo climate data, but the earth looked VERY different in the Cambrian than it does today. It also makes anecdotal sense to me that the earth is more sensitive to shocks today due to human destruction of natural ecosystems. Fisheries around the globe are on the brink of collapse, what role to they play in stabilizing the climate? How about rainforests, like the Boreal rainforests of Canada that had unprecedented conflagration last year, or the Amazon rainforests under near constant attack for decades.
Either way, I think this video was well done, but precisely the problem Dr. Hossenfelder was trying to raise, as new information is published, if it challenges the status quo, we as humans will try to discount and under-weigh it. As described by Malcom Gladwell, it takes "overwhelming evidence to the contrary" to really change a person's opinion, and climate scientists are wonderfully human.
Another response to this video, from Climate Brink put it like this: the discussion of Climate Sensitivity is like whether there are 6 or 10 rifles in the firing squad, either way it's bad. I think this is a valubale point to make, the situaiton is dire either way, and we are not doing enough to stop it. That's the throughline of all climate science, and everyone agrees on that point.
Great response, commenting to help it show higher in the list.
The destruction of the physical environment around us by countries that don’t follow international regulations is a far greater threat to life on earth than temperatures warming by 0.1 C in 50 years.
I wish people could see through this distraction. Immediate and irreversible damage to the environment is way more important than what today’s models project for temperatures in 50 years.
Wonderful pointsp❤
Historical data and physical measurements would be the same thing since we are in the realm of panel data.
I know about 1 model and this 1 model is not on your list. I don't know the others. I know about the energy balance model. That energy/heat is simultaneously absorbed and released by the atmosphere. At some point there is an equilibrium temperature. While the temperature moves towards the new equilibrium we experience global warming.
I know this model because I know some economists who have looked at this particular one.
Thank you, alexis
I think that because she is a physicist, Sabine is particularly struck by the uncertainty about how supercooled water droplets interact with electromagnetic radiation. Her premise may be that a climate model that does a better job with short range forecasting may have a better handle on this question, hence such a model’s climate predictions should be taken seriously.
And what we really need is to know 5, 10 and 20 years from now mostly. If we listen to farmers, it’s already happening. So if a prediction using a climate sensitivity of 5 is more accurate for this range of time, they shouldn’t use 2.5 for short term predictions. Also, without saying it, he seems to let us interpret that averaging the different proposed models will gives a more accurate ECS, which would be a logical mistake.
"Her premise may be that a climate model that does a better job with short range forecasting may have a better handle on this question, hence such a model’s climate predictions should be taken seriously." And every science climatologist that has spoken about this (including here) has stated that is wrong and is not what such models were even built for. They are for long term effects. Not to make short term climate predictions for local areas. Every science expert on this area has already been saying forever that this will impact different areas completely differently, but yes *overall* Earth will see warming beyond what is natural. You can not take a coincidence and say see it matches in this case so it should be used all the time to do such. There are and will continue to be fluctuations in the short term. So how in the world could you surmise that it can predict short term forecasting?
That would be like claiming, oh my area in 2022 had the highest summer on record for over 100 years, so see this is all true. That would be a bogus statement, as this year so far it is rather mild summer. It is NOT a certain local area or short term instance, but an overall mean around the entire Earth.
@@Campanola "If we listen to farmers, it’s already happening." Farmers where? You realize this varies depending upon where you are at right? Some areas have been seeing more wet weather vs others more drought, and some are warmer vs others are colder.
And NO you should not be using 5, 2.5, 3.1 or any other for short term predictions. Did you not listen to this video where he tells you that is not how it should be used for?
And he did not say averaging different models will give a more accurate ECS, because that is NOT what they are doing. ALL the models they are taking with a grain of salt is what he said. It is only one tool that is used and is not even the main tool is what he said. You mis-interpreted what he said and are trying to apply to the models. Which is not the case. He said what the IPCC is doing is combining all the research papers and trying to come to some middle ground or averaging those ... not the models. And FYI, currently 3.1 is the one that currently appears to be most accurate, but that can change in a short period. Because it will continue to change with the more current 'today' data that is input over time and because Earth's weather patterns are constantly fluctuating and will continue to do so.
@@kevinfisher1345 farmers where? Everywhere. The effect of global warming is changing the climate. It’s also the rate at which it’s changing. It’s changing faster than the capacity to adapt to it. It’s not about warming, it’s about disturbances at a fast rate. Agriculture needs some climate stability. So the speed of change is very important. A high sensitivity to CO2 meens a stronger force to destabilize. By the way, you can’t say « that’s not what he said » when I say myself « without saying it ». You can’t say did you watch the video like it was the truth when my point is I disagree with it. But anyway, the fact is they pretend that they have a big process to integrate all of the models, but coincidentally they come with a result that it’s the average. So if it’s not working, it’s not working so something is wrong and something have to be reevaluated. That’s the whole point of Sabine’s video. By the way, I’m sure they know what coincidence is. If they say it’s predicating better short term, that’s because they have excluded coincidences already.
@@Campanola "Everywhere." WRONG!!! Reason to follow...
"The effect of global warming is changing the climate." Correct!!! However, in this context it is greatly misleading. It is impacting the climate of Earth overall yes. But some areas it is not seeing a rise in temp overall or none at all. Climatologists has said from the very beginning, that this will be the case. And so far that has been shown to be true. For instance some areas has seen a series of La Niña events. So guess those are not a part of your everywhere? Some places will get hotter, some colder. Some will be more arid vs others more wet. In those areas that are more wet they are NOT seeing this at all. So your everywhere is wrong. Yes overall and most areas will be, just not everywhere.
What follows I have no problems with (with one minor exception see below) ... until your failed attempt to explain away what he said vs what you appear to think he implied without actually saying it.
The fact is these are just simulation models, and they knew and still know they are not accurate. It is as explained in the video just one tool and not the main tool used.
I am no expert but I doubt the models can be fixed. We do not know everything, we know a ton, but not everything. Without knowing everything they can not be fixed. And if that was Sabine main point, then shame on her because she should know better being a physicist and knowing we do not know it all. There are many things with our atmosphere that we still do not know about, just as we dont for all of physics either. You think Sabine might now, but she was wrong with so many things here, I am not so sure she knows.
What you left out is this is the *long term trend* and change over the course of a century or more which is what defines “global warming,” not the change from year to year or even decade to decade. For example 1998-2012 did not see as much a change. And yet you keep trying to insist that we can apply such climate change models to a short period forecast. Smh! It does not even make common sense. Did Sabine even bother to look at what that hot model did for forecasting during that decade? I bet not because it would have been wrong ... but oh just because currently it seems to be ok coincidentally we should be applying it all the time. *sighs*
Thanks for explaining the complexity of Climate modelling, as a Climate researcher. Sabine, a theoretical physicist, turned science communicator, does often present issues appealing to the broader public without being personally grounded in the topic at hand.
Nonetheless, the ongoing & repeated flooding of Eastern Australia this summer wasn't taken up by climate models forecasting fierce El Nino bushfires. The effects of the 2022 Hunga Tonga underwater volcano injecting 146 Mio tons of water vapour 82 kms into the stratosphere, that's 10% more than normal, were disregarded by models. The latter forecasted a slight cooling due to increased volcanic aerosol particles in the Southern Hemisphere.
Well, 'water droplets', eg Climate sensitivity was not factored in & it's been flooding instead of burning!
You got the point. in order for a model to produce reliable info, it would take entering all major effects into it. Like for instance, the present volcano erruptions in Iceland, even though not so relevant on a global scale, still DO matter for a model to be asccurate and reliable. All this reminded me of the film Sully, where after the REAL LIFE situation where the pilot had just seconds to decide where to land, the simulations later done showed that he could have made it to an airport instead of Hudson river, and funniest of all, they were ran countless times, while he had just one shot.
Regardless of the model you choose to trust do you really want to play with Pascal's wager. If the hot model is wrong and we still act as if it's right the outcome is still better than the other way around.
absolutely right
You act as if there were no costs to overreacting to climate change. Don't forget that the harder you hit people in the wallet the more likely they are to oppose ALL green initiatives. Plus, a decrease in economic output also causes more deaths.
@@hugoguerreiro1078You´re wrong, the danger we have to face is much to large for your such an utility calculation.
Bollocks. Pascal's wager at least had the merit of not affecting anyone besides himself. But forcing poor countries to forgo inexpensive coal and natural gas as energy sources (by not funding them through foreign aid) makes them suffer, and suffer unneedlessly if the wager of rich countries is wrong.
@@jelink22 I appreciate your talk for the interests of the poor countries. But again, it's the people in the rich countries that don't pay fair prices for the goods, they get from there. Countries like India produce the most, that's consumed in the west, so it's our behavior that forces them to use coal and other ff.
I used to be a huge fan of Sabine, but lately, I've been feeling that UA-cam is turning her into an "expert on everything."
Did you listen? She never claimed that, she does research and she has a team. She does the same thing, that every good journalist or science communicator should do.
A lot of criticism I see on her appears to be on topics that are popular, recent and outside of her personal area of expertise. This probably makes it difficult to quickly find experts on such complex topics that are up-to-date with the latest research. So there is just a higher risk of errors or personal opinion of one of their team members to creep in.
@@devluz I figure it's funny, that we even discuss Sabine's qualities and channel on a small channel that is specified on climate topics where it IS about a special climate topic (climate sensitivity). This guy doesn't say much, that basically differs from her video. Perhaps he just needs some more clicks?
She does much better job than many communicators online. I will take her method of a l look at science papers over bill nye the science guy waving hands saying “dude the sun sends more energy in one minute than humanity….” Always
when you make it your job to inform people thats kinda what you become ? even then she has a team etc as mentioend above
I watched Sabina's video when it came out, I was concerned and intended to go and watch it again as I didn't understand all of it. I also subscribe to your channel so was very pleased when you responded. I thought your response was measured, respectful and very informative. Thanks for your video, I can't say I'll sleep better but I am at least better informed 🙂
A theroretical scientist is fine, but I prefer common sense. And that quality is getting extemely scarce these days. THere is ahrdly any CO2 in air and that is because plants immediately absorb the CO2 and break it down to C and O2. When we burn more fuel there will be more CO2 and hence there will be increase plant growth. Nothing to worry. There is no climate problem. There is a problem with a sick elite who want to build a world government and they try to scare people.
It's a misrepresentation to say that the climate models "simulate the laws of physics" (3:42). A significant portion of these models aren't simulations, but rather parameterizations. A parameterization is not a direct simulation of physical laws, but rather heuristic formulas designed to estimate the effect of some natural phenomenon that is numerically impossible to simulate. The numbers in the heuristic formulas are adjusted to get models to match reality, but this adjustment is somewhat arbitrary. A wide range of choices of numbers can produce the same "answer".
The best example of this is cloud feedback. There's no way to simulate clouds in these models, their resolution and computational capability is woefully inadequate. So instead they parameterize the clouds. CMIP6 models have a range of roughly -0.2 to 1.1 W/m in cloud feedback. The models that predict low cloud feedback also predict lower Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS), while those with high cloud feedback predict higher ECS. A recent paper showed that both types of models produce similar global historical results, but the lower ECS models better simulate hemispheric variation in the climate than high ECS, and perhaps the higher models should not be trusted, and Sabine was wrong to panic (or at least to panic "more" based on that one detail).
The fact is that even models using a very simple relationship between atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures from the 1960s and 1970s have been pretty much spot on. More CO2 equals more warming. Skeptics used to argue that there wouldn't be warming not they argue that the observed warming isn't exactly the exact 0.001th of degree that the models said it would be. The goal posts shift and narrow to inhibit action and keep those oil dollars rolling in.
Models need to be based on physics and not statistical curve fits of probabilistic outcomes based on prior perceived independent variables. It is all heat transfer, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, etc…. Boundary conditions are the problem.
@@user-sh4nn2bv6j LOL, those simple, elegant, and accurate projections *were* based on physics (the relationship between Co2 and global temperatures) as well as the knowledge that atmospheric CO2 was likely to increase at the same rate. Skeptics said it wouldn't warm, that warming had stopped etc. The skeptics were wrong, the scientific projections were correct. The newer models are even better.
@@user-sh4nn2bv6j To predict when and how a pot of water boils your calculation doesn't need to involve fluid dynamics of every bubble. The general relationship is enough.
Not so. All data shows that temperature precedes increases in CO2, not the other way around.@@QT5656
not gonna lie, your description of the video felt very disingenuous, you basically glossed over her point, the reliability of any model considering the lack of data to actually create the model in the first place, yes we use all the data that we can get, but that data may not be enough to say that a certain model is or isn't accurate, all models are some bias in them, you disregarding some is like disregarding general relativity because we empirically know that quantum mechanics better describes how particles work, they are still both useful, and you should use both to some degree, likewise, even if these hot models seem to work better with small timeframes it means the other models are missing something
Congratulations! ALL the people you asked about this question agree on the premise. Why didn't you ask somebody like William Happer? Oh, because he doesn't agree at all with the premise. If the premise is wrong, all subsequent arguing is just silly - they'll all be wrong. Unlike broken clocks, they won't even be right accidentally.
Presumably you mention William Happer because he denies climate change is anthropogenic .
You might want to watch Sabine's video on why climate scientists think it is.
Very surprized somebody mentions Happer in this kind of video, you are totaly right, we have long left the realm of science to venture into the realm of belief, which is incredibly dangerous.
@@GhtPTR I try to bring up actual scientists in unexpected places to speak to people who would otherwise never hear of them.
@@Jollyprezbecause he's not a climate scientist
@@SimonTheScienceGuy You're correct - he's a REAL scientist. Oh, by the way, that includes ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS.
I sub to Sabine too, and my favorite thing about this video is my reaction to when she mentioned carbon removal was "I wonder what Adam would say about that" and my wish was granted 😂
Ahah - here to make dreams come true!
It’s rare to see the level of… idiosyncrasies that one can witness in an academic seminar, but this is close.
True love, unrelenting arguments, and the ever-present feeling that people are perfectly capable of using words are violent weapons, but it’s unclear if they did.
It's the best.
I would sub to her but when she has got things wrong in the past she has often ignored critiques from experts and even seems to delete comments about them. Another Huberman?
Sabine is correct more often than any science communicator I know. @@therabbithat
I agree that we need to start working on carbon removal. That does not mean removal of some of the CO2 being created in fossil fuels burning (à la smokestack scrubbers). That isn't removing CO2, just reducing the amount being added.
Even if we stopped emitting all CO2 today, the extreme weather we are experiencing will continue. We need to be faster about getting to net-zero, but we need to start developing removal technologies that are many orders of magnitude cheaper and more efficient than anything we've come up with so far. This may take decades.
I agree that this will give an excuse for some to say that it gives us more time, so we can take longer to get to net-zero. Well, then respond to those arguments rather than saying it is fine to delay the development needed to undo the already-high levels we already have.
Sabine's video just sheds light on a small part of a bigger issue. If I'm not mistaken climate scientists have spoken out before about how conservative the IPCC's climate predictions are and why it is problematic to base policy on these predictions. I don't believe the hot models are getting ignored by the climate scientists. However, they are being ignored by the politicians making policy based on IPCC predictions, because those models have been excluded from the results. And I have to say I agree with Sabine when she says that models based on a higher climate sensitivity shouldn't be so easily dismissed. Sure, they don't match with paleoclimate data, but we really don't know if the climate that long ago was anything like the climate today. It seems that some of the hot models more accurately describe the current climate in the short term in some scenarios and that shows they are still relevant.
A 18 minute video about Adam criticizing hot models. Great way to end my birthday
Subscribed. These types of debates are always tough when you aren’t in the field. I appreciate you bringing the knowledge to us
Thank you and welcome!
Ice Core evidence convinced me decades ago.
14:19 Yes, but renewables would have to "skyrocket" to match the amount of energy produced by nuclear in the first place.
I watched a video from Sabine from September 2020. In the video she featured a discussion with a brilliant astrophysicist that she knew. This guy had looked at data about covid infections and reached the convincing conclusion that we were already very close to achieving herd immunity. On that basis he reached the conclusion that no mitigation measures were actually justified.
In retrospect i think we can see that in Sept. 2020 we were no where near herd immunity. So, this guys premise was actually not a good basis for deciding pandemic public health policy. My point is that “experts” who venture outside their expertise may not be as reliable as we might assume.
Sabine did not profess to expertise, to the contrary, she said that she might have erroneously discounted the risk of rapid climate deterioration.
@@mishaangelo926
It is true that she did not profess expertise. But you and i both know that people who know her are aware of her brilliance…. And she knows this also, she knows that what ever she says about any subject will be taken much more seriously than if, for instance, Jimmy Kimmel said the same thing. She understands the public credibility that she has EARNED. She knows that listeners will transfer her credibility to virtually any video she posts. She knows this. You know this. And we all know that this would happen regardless of any caveats that she inserts into the video
I assess that she has more humility than you suggest. In any case, she had a view at one time and expressed it and now has revised her position based on updates to her understanding. So what is wrong with her amending her stance given she feels she might have influenced viewers to be overly complacent?@@MrArdytube
@@mishaangelo926
Point taken
I personally think that anyone who says they weren't worried about climate change until 2023 in a video title should be treated with extreme skepticism. Her video on capitalism was remarkably shallow and had many good critiques out there. I do not think that she responded to the criticism well at all.
I think you're overlooking the main point: these clouds seem to be modeled correctly, which might mean that we had different clouds in the past, which we don't have a record of, and thusly our paleoclimate data are woefully incomplete, and we might be overrelying on them
And that was understood two decades ago
" these clouds seem to be modeled correctly"? Based on what? Climate models do NOT model cloud cover from "basic physics" as is so often claimed. They are simulated by guestimated "parameters": so-called expert opinion. Which is still basically opinion not maths or physics and is open to personal bias wherever that may lie.
@@tuberroot1112 A model is considered correct if it correctly predicts the way things will happen, and their model's long-term prediction was consistent with the consensus only when not using their cloud model, while their short term prediction was consistent with reality when using their cloud model. This suggests something is fundamentally wrong with their model, or the difference stems from different cloud models. Hence why the clouds *seem* to be modeled correctly.
On the measurement of actual data compared to anticipation via modeling you veggie@@tuberroot1112
Hey Einstein... It is actually the clouds that they get so terribly wrong.....
I think there's missing context/an assumption inherent in discussing equilibrium climate sensitivity in this way. How do we know that climate equilibrium has a linear relationship with the square root of CO2 concentration? Or putting it the other way and concretely: why do we think going from 200ppm to 400ppm CO2 will have the same effect on climate equilibrium as going from 400ppm to 800ppm?
The system has an immense number of variables, so variation in one, is far from simply linear.
Similarly, the feedback mechanisms from a given level of warming, are difficult to simulate , because we don't easily model " bound methane " release from permafrost releases, for example.
Yes, this is why I think that those models can only predict trends, not specific values. They are in their nature similar to economics models.
That is more true than anyone wants to examine. @@LaTabladeFlandes
Or the many other feed backs (positive and negative) that exist.
pretty sure the models and dependencies are frequently improved. The fastest supercomputers there are are running this. And new experiments sharpen the parameters continuosly. In the end the might just be some surprises to ease the effort of countermeasures a little. Nevertheless, governments should not rely on the numbers until ist is safe that we have gotten the curve.
I remember seeing a program on how the warming ocean current, at several metres depth, compared to surface, is underbiting the floating shoreline ice that ultimately anchors glacier ice upslope.
That causes fracture and berging off, in a much different way to front edge melting with a uniform sea temperature, even if that's modelled right for mean warming.
That's the kind of model detail for rate of albedo change that we can't hope to anticipate, and there will be others of that kind. It isn't so much lack of computing power, we have what we need in that. It's a lack of familiarity with the actual mechanisms that will unfold, are unfolding.
One big point Sabine makes in her video is that any climate models run on the Earth of the past uses today's clouds (because there is no other choice, that's all the satellite data we've got). It is a big assumption to make that the clouds in the dinosaurs sky, when Earth was a tropical world, would have the same reflectivity as today's clouds.. Could you address that point and explain why that's not a concern?
"It is a big assumption to make that the clouds ... would have the same reflectivity as today's clouds"
Here's my take on it. I'm not a specialist. Clouds were still a suspension of water droplets and the atmospheric pressure pretty much the same, so the assumption seems correct.
@physnoct The atmospheric pressure, maybe, but not the temperature. The equation that describes the behavior of gases in the Earth's atmosphere depends on both pressure and temperature. Furthermore, the problematic effect cited in Sabine's video was that of the behavior of super-cooled water (water that remains liquid even if it's slightly below freezing). I was hoping to see it addressed in this video, as it is a central point in Sabine's video. Are climatologists worried about that? Why or why not?
@@physnoctI am not an expert, so I assume that unless there is proof that this is the case we can not make the assumption.
@@thorH. It's the other way around. First the assumption is made, then verified. If you have the proof beforehand, it's not an assumption but a fact.
@@physnoct yes, but when the entire prediction depends on a strong assumption like this you can not present it as fact until this/all assumptions are proven to a credible extend. And in this case this assumption is not. Which really undermines the argument.
Hi Adam, do you know that the warming effect of each atom of CO2 decreases with increased concentration in the atmosphere? The response is logarithmic with the largest effect occurring at low concentrations of below 200ppm. For each doubling of the concentration of CO2 above this (400, 800, 1600, 3200…) the corresponding accumulative warm effect increase becomes ever increasingly smaller. Effectively at 400ppm we are at near saturation of the warming effect impact of CO2. As such these hot models must be changing more than CO2 concentrations to account for significant temperature increases or they are not adhering to the physical impact of increased CO2 concentrations.
Excellent point! 👍
Absorption and emission is something almost every has forgotten since school and almost no so called experts are talking about.
Actually, Adam knows that you're mistaken.
You've been listening to the wrong people.
This logarithmic effect seems to be undisputed. The counter argument I keep hearing to justify runaway warming is that although the warming contributions are ever smaller, the total warming does steadily increase but the great majority is trapped at lower levels and is only able to escape to space at the outer limits of the atmosphere. So by this theory, the net warming increases ever more slowly, but without limit. If anyone knows more about experiments done to test this theory please weigh in.
My concern is that we are reduced to arguing this out in the court of public opinion rather than doing controlled experiments which should be the gold standard. It's like two chess players engaging in an endless debate about who is the better player when a series of games would provide an objective and far quicker measure of who actually is better!
the idea that civil disobedience makes people care more about the environment is really good comedy, knowledge and understanding works much better
Sabine clearly started that the 'hot models' are lower weighted because comparisons between earth epochs with strong climate change wouldn't give reasons for such high climate sensitivity.
Excellent video! But why on earth would someone use green nail polish? ;-)
Green fingers is appropriate for the topic lol.
Getting in touch with his feminine side? Maybe it's special magic nail polish that helps dissolve SuperGlue which he uses to glue his hand to art work with....after the media have got bored and left, of course.
The green finger nail fungal infection is distracting.
Can you please look at the IPCC AR1and just below the section "How do we know the natural greenhouse effect is real?" there is an image/graph "Figure 2: Analysis of air trapped in Antarctic ice cores"...... Am I reading that wrong or is the methane level insanely high and a correction of PPMV to PPBV still does not fix things? If it is wrong how does that immediately jump out to me first read yet not get corrected in the last version of print after review by so many??
Carbon dioxide removal is so weird to me. Here in Canada we have people against the carbon tax while being pro-carbon capture. Even though the pass through cost of carbon capture is ~70$/t which is more than industry is currently taxed.
I also would not mind of every emitted ton of CO₂ would have to be captured somewhere else. In that unrealistic scenario a carbon tax would be not warranted.
Are you being intentionally obtuse? A carbon tax doesn't translate into any action. Tax credits get passed around and deferred etc, and tax revenue has administration overhead and zero transparency. And then there is government spending. No accountability and miles removed from the dollars collected and mangled by bills and other political footballs.
Paying for something that actually does something is worth something.
Trying to use taxes as incentives is a ruling class shell game.
The horrible reality is that the CO2 levels are actually approaching levels too low for plant life to survive. Reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by 64% will kill the planet, not save it. When the amount of CO2 triples plants will grow at their optimum level. If we do nothing CO2 levels will triple in over 1,000 years. Currently the Earth's CO2 atmospheric concentration is 0.04%. Carbon dioxide removal is a scam. Check my facts!
She should've hired you as a consultant again
What was this? You stop the video to make it look like Sabine didn't explain ECS and you explain ECS to make you look good and her look bad, when 5 sec after you stopped the video Sabine explains ECS. You make climate scientists and scientists in generall really look bad, because it seems you doctor with the data (== the video) to make your point work.
classic mansplaining vibes.. why do you need to smirk while talking science? maybe act like an adult or sth might be a good start
I wa a bit taken aback when Sabine mentioned carbon removal at all (this video was my introduction to her channel) because it is ridiculously hard and expensive to the point of impracticality at any scale from what I've read. It sounds a lot like technological determinism which I've seen in the USA as a way to kick the can down the road and avoid dealing with the problem. The problem with figuring it out later turns out that the later people talked about earlier is inconveniently right now. It may be scalable at some point, but building against the possibility that some magic wand will be invented to fix your boat when you've got a boat repair manual and a bucket to bail water is frustrating
Thanks for your discussion on Sabines post. Worthy and respectful.
In response to Sabine's call for more nuclear, you merely quote projections of future nuclear capacity. Since the primary factor that will determine the future nuclear capacity is not technical but political, this response is inadequate. I believe that the downside of renewables (large areas of solar farms displacing other land use, ugly arrays of windmills marring the landscape and killing endangered birds), while much smaller than the downside of adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, greatly exceeds the downside of nuclear power. Sabine is correct; a change in the political climate that would permit much faster development of nuclear power would greatly improve the future environment.
Today nuclear power only provides 4% of the energy produced and uranium is estimated to last about 100 years. Obviously increasing the number of nuclar plants will even shorten the time range.
We need both. Renewables are quicker and cheaper. The safety of both beats fossil carbon hands down!
Windmills killing birds is utterly irrelevant. Housecats and full-glassed house facades kill multiple orders of magnitude more.
We can reuse spent fuel for thousands of years. And the bottom line is the bottom line. We need more energy, not less, and fusion is not available (should have put ITER in Japan, not France :p). We will not go carbon-neutral without nuclear power. It's not about windmills marring the landscape or kiling birds, or solar farms taking up too much space, or nobody wanting to live near nuclear waste storage. All of that may be true, but it's irrelevant. We are currently burning coal and gas. If we want to stop, we've got to do what we've got to do, and what we've got to do is a nuclear-renewable mix. We need a lot of nuclear power for a stable baseline and to increase energy generation, and of course we want to continue tapping renewables to reduce our need for nuclear. Anyone opposing this doesn't actually take climate change seriously and just enjoys collecting likes for eco-posing, because right now this is the only show in town for carbon-neutrality. The more this is delayed, the more carbon dioxide we dump into the atmosphere.
@@mikicerise6250 I would agree with you about nuclear if we were having this discussion a few decades ago, but the political climate has been against the technical and industrial development of nuclear power for long enough that solar, wind, and storage have had literal decades to make extraordinary advances in cost and capability, to the point where even in a country like South Korea or china that's actually pretty good at building nuclear power plants and has a nuclear construction industry solar and wind with storage still has a lower LCOE than nuclear. With equal investment, nuclear power is a much better system, but politics has tipped the investment so far in favor of renewables and storage that I just don't think nuclear has a large place in the near term any more and it's going to take changing minds and then waiting a few decades for nuclear to catch up, at which point it may be what powers our civilization into the future (the uranium in the ocean could last 10,000 years with breeder reactors), but it's just not going to catch up fast enough to be more than a footnote in solving the climate crisis in the middle of this century.
My take away from Sabines video was that, while unlikely, the possibility of a climate sensitivity of 5c is high enough above zero that we can't afford NOT to take action. If you had a 5% chance of dying crossing the street without looking both ways, would you cross it with your eyes shut?
Entirely correct, and this "clarification" is totally unnecessary.
It is easy to remember to look both ways when you cross the street. Will be much more difficult, and will cause a lot of deaths, particularly in third world countries, if we actually reach Net Zero and eliminate synthetic fertilizer. Your analogy is silly.
I studied the uncertainties in climate change modelling around 2007 as part of a masters (read about 1m high stack of papers). At the time one of the largest uncertainties in modelling was where the extra water vapor ended up the atmosphere (more heat more evaporation) high level clouds == heating, low level clouds == cooling. At the time none of the models could do no more than use a a range of estimated parameters to include the cloud effects.
The issue at the time was models were finite element based which were capable of resolving the extra water vapor which can be modelled locally in each element however cloud formation is not a local.
It's been a long time since I have had open access to scientific papers but I have often wondered whether the cloud problem had been resolved
No, the models' inability to do clouds has never been resolved. Much more complicated than just high and low level also. Much depends on latitude - clouds in tropics and mid latiudes cause cooling by increasing albedo, and loweing insolence on oceans. But more clouds in polar and high high latitudes help retain warmth. But lost warming in tropics is much greater than retained warmth at poles where Sun has low angle of incidence, and albedo is already high from snow/ice) so net effect of more clouds is cooling. Afaik most models assume more clouds more warming. Iirc, a small decrease (1 or 2 %) in average tropical mid latitude cloud cover can lead to 12 times more warming than from anthropogenic CO2. The whole climate change industry is predicated on bollocks. But too many university departments, research funds and peoples' rent and mortgages depend on keeping it going so the scam will continue for decades.
The big change in atmospheric retention of heat is due to the enormous increase in water vapour over the planet as a result of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption in January 2022. This was one of the biggest volcanic eruptions in recorded history. Detonating underwater with the force of 100 Hiroshima bombs, the blast sent millions of tons of water vapor high into the atmosphere. Have you noticed the unprecedented flooding around the earth, and the red sunrises and sunsets?
@@lapoguslapogus7161 Thanks for useful explanation.
@@rodneyplewright7685 any reference to scientific papers or is this just a personal theory um err guess?
Not just a guess, but my own conclusions putting together some facts and figures about what effects weather and climate that I've learnt over time, plus just observing the news reports about unprecedented flooding around the planet..@@user-dt9uq1kr7m
I like Sabina...she, unlike many people, is capable of changing her mind.
Way to many live by the axiom, "Don't cofuse me with facts...I've already made up my mind".
A few more summers getting warmer by tenths of a degree will convince many that things are getting worse. Some will NEVER be convinced. At some point, it won't matter.
Glad to be an older person.
... Got any kids ? ... Grand kids, maybe ? ... I'm an older guy too, but MY concern is for the future, even though I wont be around to see it ...
@@bobbart4198 I have kids, and grandkids. I've been very honest sbout what just might happen in the next few decades.
I used to feel guilty about what might happen, I don't anymore...I didn't cause it, no one person did.
But, the bill is coming for the rape of planet, and I'll be dead.
Our desendants will pay dearly
for the greed we thought was was basic growth - it wasn't.
Sorry, but it was Sabine who wasn't "confused" by all the facts. Adams gives a ton of links explaining why most climate scientists disagree with the new Hansen paper.
Thanks for clarifying some of the data and analysis.
The IPCC clearly stated back in 2005 that climate was too chaotic to ever be predicted, and their position hasn't changed since then.
That is cherry-picking.
Here is the truth,
“The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive and requires the application of new methods of model diagnosis, but such statistical information is essential.”
Deniers have sought to misuse that statement is by wilful misinterpretation of what it says, turning its actual meaning that we cannot EXACTLY predict such things, into their lie that it is impossible to predict AT ALL.
I did not...get the impression...that Sabina
suggested that Climate Science threw out the new Hot Model. All I got is that Climate Science was concerned.
What is the timescale for a paleoclimate estimation? What precision can we get to with that?
Given the long term behavior observed along millions of years, it's probably fair to say that we are in a cycle which point to heating (instead of cooling), basically meaning that the climate is going to heat anyway, regardless our vain efforts trying to reduce emissions or even intending to capture CO2. So, my question is:
Shouldn't we spend money planning and building infrastructure adapted to warmer temperatures instead of spending money into actions which are doomed to be completely ineffective both on short run and long run?
The points isn't just that it's gonna get a few degrees warmer, the point is that it's gonna happen in your lifetime as opposed to 1000+ years and there are people alive today for which a 2 degrees difference where they live might be a difference between barely getting by and total crop failure.
I find him arrogant and some of his facts are wrong. When someone tells me what I need to know is not being honest. Really, what he means is he wants you to know what he thinks is important. I think him laughing at what she says is arrogant, dismissive, and annoying. Also, calling Jim Hansen a celebrity climate scientist makes it sound like he isn't a leading expert or not to take him seriously. Models are a simplification of reality and the hot models factor in more of reality or what we know about today. Also, the climate observations over the last 14 years clearly are higher than IPPC models predicted. IPPC thinks we won't reach or go over 1.5 C (2.7 F) until 2050. Just last year earth averaged 1.5 C (or very close to it) above preindustrial average. This is 27 years ahead of their models. Really, colder. More like a few models predict less warming than the ones that predict faster warming than IPCC models. You should probably go into why the less warming models could be wrong, not just the why the faster warming models could be wrong. My guess is it would contradict why IPCC models are right and missed hitting 1.5 C in 2023 and not by 2050. IPCC thinks we have a shot of not going over 1.5 C by 2050 when latest observations already are. Clearly, it is very likely we will blow by 1.5 C by 2050.
entirely correct
I’m not scared about climate change, I’m sacred of what humans will/wont do because of/about it
Sabina did not say they disregarded the "hot" models. You said that. Dishonest. She was absolutely correct. There was a lot of talk around those hot models and a LOT of talk, meaning the consensus, about them being outliers. This is history. You're trying to make the climate scientists, en toto, seem more fair-minded than they actually were around that controversy. You have a rather extreme tendency to scientific reticence. I'd put it on par with the best example of this, Gavin Schmidt.
Regarding which models to trust? What an absurd thing to even consider! You don't "trust" any of them! All of them either have skill or do not have skill. Those with greater skill are more likely to be more accurate. Trust? And you laugh at Sabine's language choices! My fuller answer is see my comment below on risk. Short answer: Skill is actually not the primary consideration in the **policy** realm, risk is. So the models with the highest risk are the ones most salient in planning. Again DON'T LISTEN TO CLIMATE SCIENTIST ON POLICY AND RISK; THEY DON'T "GET IT."
Adam goes on to claim the hot models do not have skill (actually irrelevant for policy-making), but the most robust support for higher sensitivity DOES NOT COME FROM THOSE MODELS.
Furthermore, the IPCC wants us to still consider seriously that the 1.5 C target for temperature rise is still achievable. They already lost credibility in my eyes for that. I think the consensus now is that we are already past 1.5 C and heading to 2 C. So if the IPCC is wrong on that due to political influence, it is likely also wrong on climate sensitivity. mention of the IPCC does not reassure me at all.
@russmarkham2197 it seems to me that the ipcc as well as most governments are just waiting because they expect a technological breakthrough of giant solar floating vacuum cleaners sucking ghgs out of our atmosphere, or some such Hollywood "save the day just in time" solution.
I was at an astronomy conference probably 15 years ago and we had a session with a panel of climate scientists. Astronomers worry about clear skies and that ties to climate and mitigation measures. Plus, we're scientists and we like to talk. The majority of the climate scientists on the panel were of the opinion that we were past the "zero emission will fix things" phase and said that we had to start using carbon removal and aerosols (more dangerous - and not cool with astronomers) as mitigation measures. If we did not do that, we would blow past the 1.5 C target. We did not work on those mitigation measures and so here we are. And we continue to argue about whether we should call the firefighters while the kitchen stove is quietly consuming itself.
@@Off_the_clock_astrophysicist Fully agree with you. From what I read, we have already blown past the 1.5 C target and will get to 2 C in about 5 years or so. I think we need to research climate repair options. One method might be to seed the oceans to encourage phytoplankton growth. There seems to be some debate on whether aerosols are effective in the long run. Might be dangerous also.
You're misunderstanding the role and limitations of the IPCC. They are not a political body and only give scenarios which may result from certain policy settings.
@@carlbennett2417 I think you greatly underestimate the political pressure that can be put on any scientific body, however well they try to stick to an unbiased position. Why does the IPCC stick to the fiction that 1.5 C is still attainable?? That alone shows that they are in fantasy land. Still, at least the IPCC are correctly warning the world that climate change is real and poses great risks to the world economy. I guess we can be thankful for that.
I read Dr. James Hansen’s paper. I watched a video with Leon Simons (Hansen co-author) on Nate Hagens UA-cam channel. I tend to believe Hansen at this point as we should be conservative in our approach to the planet and everything makes sense in Hansen’s paper thus far. I take issue with the title of the video that Dr. Sabine made as she in the past has put out Climate Change videos and sounded concerned/worried. I heard Dr. Simon Clark on his 2023 recap video flippantly blow off James Hansen’s paper which isn’t cool nor respectful. I don’t think our climate models got aerosol cooling of sulfur shipping emissions correct. Thanks for weighing in on this in a more balanced way Dr. Adam Levy.
I think the science is still unsettled, and I don’t think Adam was saying much more than that. No climate scientist could lack respect for Hansen; they have hundreds of papers to consider, and those aren't leading to a neat conclusion.
I strongly agree with you that if the risk is “hundreds of millions of people dead,” we want to be *incredibly* conservative, and I was surprised neither Sabine nor Adam insisted on that more-no one, at least no one rational, plays Russian roulette dismissing it as “it’s just 16%…”. But it’s hard to make that point without numbers like “10% likely” or "20% likely," and we can’t really have a reliable estimate for how plausible that model is either, at least not at the moment.
@@bertilhatt The basic science has been "settled" for many decades*. In fact, the basics have been settled since before I was born (and I'm retired).
*) Depending on what particular development you want to use as a landmark, since the late 1800s, or the 1930s, or the 1950s -- but each "landmark" development was essentially an elaboration or refinement of the previous understanding, as our modeling became more sophisticated.
Hansen is the same charlatan that got a congressional aide to turn off the A/C in the congressional committee room on a hot Washington day when he gave his original pitch on climate change.
I disagree with your assessment that Sabine is wrong about "we are doomed if the sensetivity is high". The higher the sensetivity the less time we have to make important changes. Since we have not even started to move into the right direction (the production of fossil fuels is still rising and no amount of nuclear or renewables has any effect on that), a high sensitivity dramatically narrows the window we have. I totally agree with Sabine: if sensetivity is high we are truely f**ked.
A) Because "we" suddenly includes even elder generations that might somehow think: "not my problem, by 2100 I am dead anyways".
B) If the climate changes fast the economical and ecological consequences hit so much harder.
C) We might reach critical tipping points even before we realize they are there.
D) We have not enough time to develop any technology we might need (fusion, AI, novel renewable fuels, electrical airplanes and ships) and infrastructure (EVs and stations to reload, more trains, green housing, green food and stuff production etc),
E) We need urgent social, political and economical changes. Stop wars, distribute resources fairly, focus on happiness rather on wealth and power, reduce competition - improve co-operation etc) and we are really far, far away from achieving that.
The less time we have, the worse it is. Plants and crops, animals, individual humans, communities, societies and companies can not addapt in time.
The IPCC has continually underestimated how fast the climate changes. That does not serve us well. We are litterally running out of time.
"We need urgent social, political and economical changes. Stop wars, distribute resources fairly, focus on happiness rather on wealth and power, reduce competition - improve co-operation etc) and we are really far, far away from achieving that." What? That'd just lead to massive more amount of pollution.
To paraphrase: It is not important, whether the piece of cake has 300 or 600 kcals. It is a big difference, whether I ate 1 or 10 of them ;)
Good video, Adam. Question: Is there a mechanism in all models, which tries to factor in that we're changing a earth climate MUCH faster then ever before? Is the factor time burned into the models?
we're even, most likely, changing the model itself.
Thermodynamic processes do not happen as functions of time. It’s hard to wrap your brain around, but “Heat” as a dimension is time invariant.
So time need not be considered, so the model makers have never taken it into account. At least not directly in a thermodynamic sense.
Often times, we parametrize system parameters (think PV nRT) with respect to time, but time doesn’t actually contribute to the underlying processes that describe a thermodynamic system.
My three guesses on how to measure the sensitivity:
1. Calculate the physics. Given what we know about the state of the Earth today, compute what the laws of physics and chemistry says if you add some co2 and see what stable state you end up in
2. Look at geological data and see what happened in the past. If you see a change in c02 levels, what then happened to temperatures
3. Look at more recent direct measurements of temperature and co2 levels, create a model and run it and see what you end up with. I'm not sure if this statistically sound, and I also soubt that we have measurements of co2 levels for more than a couple of decades back, and temperature measurements for uninhabited key regions probably also only go back for a couple of decades.
If I were a science communicator I'd also briefly consider a fourth option: set up a few thousand of planets in simmilar states to the earth's, change their co2 levels and see how the temperature changes. This is of course beoynd our current tech to do, and would be of no predictive value as you'd already know what happened on earth before you've done setting up the planets and letting their climate evolve.
Now I'll continue the video and see if I win the self esteem prize or not
It's so great to get all the extra context and subtleties added to Sabine's video. What an amazing example of science communication, accessible but not dumbed down at all. Thanks for your service Adam!
thank you Rosie - means a lot coming from you!
Adam, have you heard of Beatriz Chachamovitz? She’s a marine researcher and artist who invites children to her ”coral lab” to sculpt coral reef in clay. I understand it as her mission is to make people fall in love with the ocean and thereby wanting to protect it. As an art teacher student Im doing similar things. Sculpting, painting, drawing and researching endangered species (and not endangered too) meanwhile interactively researching what we can do to restore species and habitats. So, basically Im saying that maybe we can foster a love for nature through art with art as a form of activism or maybe through some other venue, and through actively taking part in activities like beach cleaning as a social gathering, plogging ”jogging +picking up trash ” (in my language), making a part of our gardens or a balcony a haven for wildlife, guerilla gardening, eating more plants like legumes and root vegetables… and I so wish that some entire streets would be for cycling and walking only. To make cycling safer. So, making art instead of destroying art in museums, basically, and engaging people socially. Put clay in their hands.
However I know everyone does what they feel is right and makes them happy but your nail polish, oh my.
I have a query regarding ocean salinity (not related to the vid but I was just curious). It's commonly said that global warming will lead to an increase in ocean salinity. But if pure water is melting from ice, shouldn't the ocean's salinity be deacreasing?
That's balanced out by evaporation-in general, not in that specific instance. I can’t imagine that there’s an intuitive way to decide if it will get more or less salty.
Maybe you confuse salinity with acidity.
@@bertilhatt I don't see evaporation consuming all of Hansen's projected several meters of sea level rise from melting ice caps and glaciers. Salinity will likely be reduced. Increased storm water runoff might bring more salts to the ocean, but my guess is not enough to compensate. I'm not sure how salts in that scenario would behave in vertical water columns and with dramatically altered ocean currents. All of this begs the interesting question, can we look at the fossil record, deep sea bed cores, etc, to find out what happened to ocean salinity the last time we had a melting like the one we may be headed toward?
@@bertilhatt Intuitively, I thought that an increase in sea level would just dilute the ocean and salinity would decrease. I don't understand how evaporation would balance it as most of the water would just end up back in the ocean.
@@32brooksemy fav conversation…. what are you doing. We were irresponsible and left the coolers in the car and the ice was melting and getting the seats wet. So my wife was driving around with the ac on high trying to make car cool enough to stop the melting. 🤭😂😂
Yes She was mad I didn’t want to go along but I I thought it had to be a joke… she ran out of gas I had to go get her and tow car . It was very expensive .. anyway I’m closing the plugs and I’m gonna put the water on a dry spot on the lawn where we need it.
Thanks for clarifying Hossenfelder's video for me, she left me confused. However, I take umbrage to your (and her) comments regarding empirical evidence for the accuracy of Climate Models; fifty years ago Carl Sagan expressed concern over the green house effect and how it would cause droughts here, sever hurricanes there and drive overall temperature rises on land and sea. We can get lost in the minutia of the current model, but I’d conclude Sagan’s point has been proven. Fifty years after the warning, we’re still whistle past the graveyard.
Anyone know what his Phd was in?
Hello Adam, You say that despite scorching temperatures in 2023, it was still within the expected range. Correct me if I am wrong, but when it comes to ocean temperatures, it was really off the charts, and given that the ocean absorbs over 90% of the heat... What is your take on that? Many thanks :-)
I want to see that answer as well, but I believe scientists that reviewed the 2023 data and said that it was still "within margins, albeit on the very top" did include the record ocean temperatures.
The scary thing is, it seems the "general, aggregate" data (that distributes the damages) points to "everything still ok-ish", but localized sources point to despair. Could be an effect of the internet and we getting the troubled data from the worst places. Could also be a problem in the statistical analysis.
You bring up a good point, and here is a good solution. Everyone is looking at "surface temperature anomalies". Real climate scientists look at the integrated "temperature" of the ocean across 0-600 meters depth or 0-2000 meters. El Nino and La Nina were, after all, defined as surface anomaly patterns almost a century ago. The entire planet (even the ocean) is convective which brings up "semi-stable" patterns because..... The ENSO, NAO, etc., bring up these "oscillating" (the O part in the abbreviations) systems that happily cause anomalies.
90+ per cent of the global energy imbalance is soaked up by water. The mean depth of the ocean is 3.5 km (or 12000 ft).
We can not deduct the global energy balance by measuring the ocean-atmosphere boundary layer temperature alone - but they sure are linked. If you want to want to check it out for yourself - find a graph showing the trend of "cold La Nina years" in the Pacific Ocean. Cold La Nina years are now hotter than "extreme" hot El Nino years just 30 years ago.
Wasn't that the surface temperature, which doesn't correspond to the 90% of absorbed heat?
Wake up. This is not real.
Oh, UA-cam is a very real place; my doubts lie with you being real...@@AsheAve
Irrespective of which model one prefers, they all have positive slopes.
100%
As I said on her pod cast. The idea the modelers, how many, all of them left super cooled water out of clouds is startling. I remarked could they have left fish out too?
I looked at the paper she cites and it seemed to say that clouds are reflecting more radiation than had been thought, and i may have got this wrong but that they extrapolate a greater C02 forcing because of this? but it would seem to me this could also indicate that higher C02 forcing could also be offset by this depending on wether more clouds were formed? it's probably way more complex and the forecast prediction she was talking about was only for a period of 6 hours (according to another video) ?
Many thanks for your video!
Thank you, this really helped understanding everything.
This is 20 minutes of my life I'll never get back.
Regarding the "nuclear, nuclear, nuclear" part, I think, Sabine is pointing towards the German position on that matter.
Do any of the currently-used climate models take (non-anthropogenic) biosphere activity into account aside from the influence on nutrient cycling, or do they largely assume (mathematically) that biological activity has no significant impact on global climate and local weather patterns?
The effects are big but generally incredibly stable over time. Most process I think you're considering, like phytoplankton yearly CO² absorbtion, the differences in how trees' foiliage, snow cover, even things like insect brooding/hatchling can have influences. Most of these tend to be cyclical or they recur but without a stable pattern. When we ask what the effect of removing one piece might be, I don't know how to get to an answer without such significant speculation it might as well be dystopian sci-fi. We could say pretty certainly that any collapse of a major system is going to have very large repercussions.
@@warpdrivebywetlands methane feedback is a pretty big one that dropped this year
I don’t think any of the current models really model non linear effects or tipping points. Really not sure but going to find out.
The frustrating thing about climate change is, that it is like we are all in a boat and water is getting in because we have been drilling holes into it and people on the boat cant even decide now to SLOW DOWN drilling more holes... let alone fix the holes and get the water out of the boat. Even better, we promote a lifestyle that applauds those, who are best at drilling more and larger holes into the boat... got a private jet? wow! Your economy grew more than expected? Great! Wow, you got 10 kids, you get a medal from the chancellor! It is just insane.
Imagine the boat is made something edible, and we're eating the boat....but its a big boat and most dont believe they''l be alive to experience the most dire part of slowly eating the boat.
And now we find out that there are people lighting fires in two sections of the ship: they got wet from the flooded lower decks and now they're cold; the fires have unexpectedly spread and those sections are completely ablaze. So people start drilling more (and bigger) holes to let in more water, to put out the fires. People start killing those who are desperately trying to plug the holes, because they are putting out the fires which keep people warm; similarly they turn against those who are throwing buckets of water on the fires. Two camps have formed: those who want the fires, and those who want the water...
I would trust models that show accurate predictive capabilities, by predicting data bot past and present without tuning parameters to fit each batch of data .
"I would trust models that show accurate predictive capabilities"
You don't trust any existing models then
mate, you're talking about the capacity to read the future, no models don't adjust overtime and plays with their parameters, even the sound statistically theory behind are limited by the reality of limited data (of good quality) and capacity to gather data, or plain calculation power to handle these
The climate goes too slowly, that's the problem. If only a few hundred thousand years could happen in a year!...
Then, by the end of that year, we would have all the data necessary to make a robust and accurate climate model. 😊
Personally, I would like to time travel to the past, and collect as many "models" of future predictions and then see how many actually were in any way accurate. I seem to remember a few decades ago, people saying we would already all be dead by now.
What about Paul Beckwith?
I'm not even halfway through the video yet, I'll comment again at the end, yay YT algorithm! But I couldn't hold it in anymore, I'm so grateful you made this video Adam! I wanted to reach out and request a response video because I have been a regular watcher for some time now and I trust your judgement. I also laughed out loud like A LOT! When you said "hot models" means something else to climate scientists because I have been researching this all week and never once put that connection together. You're amazing!
ah that really means a lot! hope you enjoy the second half too! 💚
I got here from a retweet that Sabine herself did, so yay for that, too.
I fully agree: you are amazing. In both, your knowledge and your communication skills. Keep on!
Hii my name Gurudath, i want your help sir,i was participating in climate science Olympiad competition but i have not any idea how to crack this like which topic i want to constant rate please help me sir
Thank you
How well is albedo modeled in any climate model
Albedo from the top of clouds has been seriously underestimated.
@shanecollie5177 Absolutely agree, Shane, in fact all climate modelist will tell you that their models poorly estimate albedo if at all.
Thank you for the video.
Can you please clarify these points?
1-There are several gases in atmosphere, since CO2 is food for plants, how bad it really is?
2- in a interview (Saturday Night Live) some "scientist", confirmed that sulphuric acid is being sprayed in atmosphere (stratosphere?, not sure which one), that alone will cause a lot of damage, doesn't it?
There are 3 types of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere. Carbon 12, carbon 13, and carbon 14.
C14 is the unstable isotope, and is created by cosmic rays changing N14 into C14. C14 is the isotope used in radiocarbon dating.
C12 and C13 are stable isotopes and do not decay.
Plants don't like C13, and use instead the C12 isotopes as "food". Plants are the only known source of Carbon 12. So when deforestation happens, and the burning of fossil fuels, that trapped C12 is released into the atmos.
The testing of ice cores show that atmospheric C12 has increased since the industrial revolution started.
Also, C12 only helps plants grow. They intake very little CO2 once they are fully grown.
SO2 is more damaging than CO2, however, SO2 causes short term, regional pollution, whereas CO2 is there for the long term.
Do the models you are using as reference take in to account variable methane emissions from the Arctic and other areas?
Climate sensitivity is a theoretical metric regarding co2 concentrations specifically.
@@ClimateAdam “Climate Sensitivity” is an incomplete metric then, and that very fact reinforces Sabine’s concerns. I should add that the New Zealand scientist, Sir Ian Axford, a scientist with considerable computational skills, became quite distressed about the acceleration impact of CH4 to Global Warming and subsequent Climate Change from the thawing Russian Steppes, towards the end of his life.
@@williambunting803 Wow! I had no idea that Climate Sensitivity does not include the CO₂ equivalent warming capacity of methane (20 year calculation please) and other climate forcing gasses like NOx! Tell Sabine it's even worse than she thought!
@@ClimateAdam I find almost irresponsible to concentrate only on co2 concentrations where there are so mnay other parameters that drive our climate. It is like we have a fixation on this. I agree with @williambunting803. Climate sensitivity needs way more to mean something.
@@ClimateAdam Wait, I thought they all used top of atmosphere radiative forcing? That this is given in doubling of CO2 is besides the point as that is just the units used to describe it? Like we could methane up by 20% if we wanted. It's all the same physics.
Thus is just like if we used feet instead of meters.
Have you watched any of the podcasts by Tom Nelson on climate change? I'd love to hear what you think about his guests talking about C02 emissions and climate
Is the destruction of nature - forests, grasslands, oceans, the things that used to mitigate odd peaks - also taken into account in these models?
Some models do, some models don't. The important fact is that more CO2 means more global warming. Land use change mainly releases further Carbon and exacerbates the problem.
I'm pointing at the "machine" we used to have that regulated the carbon cycle: healthy forest, swamp and ocean. Having killed those alone will increase carbon. Then putting loads of fossil carbon on top of that gets us where we are now. Putting the change in the "regulating machine" in or not in the model does make a lot of difference. I just wondered if the paper truth does take that into account.
@@QT5656
Good video overall! I don't get the dismissal of the nuclear potential. How do you seem to be optimistic about renowables and pesimistic about nuclear (potential), or more important effectiveness in decarbonisation. France achieved decarbonization of electricity sector in 10-15years and did it about 40years ago (That is lots of carbon not emitted cumulatively!). In comparison Germany achieved very little IMHO in past 20years, even though build rate of wind&solar is tremendous. Germany makes electricity with 405gCO2/kWh, France 53gCO2/kWh(12months average). That is failure IMHO and not good example to follow. Nuclear build times and budgets must improve off course- meaning go back to what was possible for example in Japan in early 2000ths still.
Believe me, building and commissioning a nuclear reactor and keeping it supplied with fuel, maintaining and operating it and then disposing of the waste, and cleaning up accidental spills is not a carbon neutral process, and in the end, decommisioning the plant is also conventionally costly, too.
"I don't get the dismissal of the nuclear potential."
It's not being dismissed. It is being placed in the energy mix where it is required. Like all the energy option towards emissions mitigation, it also has application along with pros and cons to be considered. It is not the the be all and end all solution.
@@tikaanipippin I could now write the same about solar and wind farms- which actually take more materials/MWh and still not produce the most important thing- reliable power. Exaggerating spent fuel issue as "problem", when it is very manageable is not very productive(many solutions, smarter or acceptable, and most important- no urgency to decide now). Climate models are complex, and hard to understand, but judging the results of ongoing experiment in the form of results from France and Germany should be much easier for people with doctorates and those without degree. No complex math is needed to compare 50gCO2/kWh and 400gCO2/kWh and that it has been achieved long time ago, mainly for national security and economy reasons (oil crisis of 1970s).
@@BrentonSmythesfieldsaye If we accept that dealing with decarbonisation is urgent matter, then building new nuclear power and doing it fast/efficient (like in 1970s, still in 2000ts in Japan with modern plants) should be the key. And prematurely closing NPPs that could run another 20+ years should be considered crime against the climate- which germany committed for the benefit of mostly putin. Is there other way to judge Energiewende? Should for example Poland (not to windy, not to sunny) follow France or Finish example or example of Germany?
@@msxcytb Why do you appear to be so invested in the topic of nuclear energy, which you have no influence over. There are vocational energy industry speicalists and experts that will sort what needs to happen, when and where.
Read through the content of global energy industry assessment and reporting organisations and you will find they are not in synch with your line of thinking. They see things differently, that nuclear energy will mainly serve a supplemental or partnering role in most situations (edit) where it is required, with a few outlier scenarios where it will provide at least in share, primary supply.
If you don't like that for whatever reason, big deal, think what ever you like, it doesn't matter because you, just like any average every day citizen, have no say in it.
For me, I'm reminded that it was not until 1995 that Rogue Waves were finally accepted as existing by science, and even though mariners have tried speak about them for over 2000 years, they were belittled and silenced by those who thought they knew more than those who actually encountered them. How'd that work out for them?
Unfortunately, science works based off of recorded observations. Lots of people record seeing ghosts, but that's not really something they objectively measure or test for.
I hope you get my point. Rogue waves are testable, not everything is
This is a very good analogy.
So, the scientists were wrong and the actual deniers. They learned to call today’s observers the deniers. The record for life on earth indicates it is resilient to co2 levels. Sabine’s dramatics and righteous condescension is too hard of a sell for anything truly scientific.
I spent decades at sea and have seen some pretty big waves, but what surprised me most was collecting samples of a species of fish, sending them to Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, BC, Canada, and having the people working there make claims that I didn't collect them where I said, "they don't live here, they're from a completely different ocean!"
They can have evidence in their hand, and deny it. And that's when they have nothing to gain from it, imagine how stupid a scientist can be when their job or reputation is on the line.
People have been seeing bigfoot too, does he exist? Sabine is dead wrong and her drama doesnt suit a scientist.
Thanks for the clarification. It seems to me the critical question is "What effects can we see from anticipated climate change?" This is not strictly in the scope of climate models, but it's the only thing that will really matter to the future of humanity.
Sabine's answer is: complete destruction of our economy, widespread famine, and social collapse. I'm not aware of any scientific basis for these claims.
Your answer is: we're already facing severe consequences. Again, I'm not aware of any scientific basis for this claim - what exactly are the consequences, and how are they "severe"? The predictions of consequences reflected in the IPCC reports seem rather mild to me: possibly more severe weather incidents, some sea level rise, some risk to vulnerable ecosystems.
These questions are certainly interesting to scientists, and would fuel a generation or two's worth of debate. The debate wouldn't have much salience if it weren't tied to political movements that demand fundamental restructuring of all nations' economies. It would be nice if science communicators were focused more on what is known, what is generally forecast, and how big the uncertainties are.
Very interesting thank you. What do you think of Steve Koonins video on climate models accuracy ?
Based on watching the progress of climate models and their predictions over the past 30+ years, I must say that - if anything - I have realized that the models have consistently underestimated the rate and size of the negative effects of most everything: ocean warming, ocean acidification, melting of the ice shelves, etc. I believe that this is because the climatologists have been afraid of being labeled alarmists. The reality of the matter is that the people who profit from cheap fossil fuel / CO2 generation have been attacking climatologists (the messenger) regardless. Consider that overestimating the negative effects would not have had as bad an economic and environmental effect as the on-going underestimations that have resulted in the current "too little, too late" global response, I believe that the climatologists erred on the wrong side (underestimating instead of overestimating).
There is obviously not a single engineer among you or you'd have had a 1.2x safety factor in there somewhere (on the side of warmer projections being more conservative and safer) to try and account for all the model simplifications and "unknowns" that your models have (and always shall) incorporated (so that they can produce results in a reasonable amount of time).
Further, I am concerned about the fact that not once during your video do you note that you had reached out privately to SH to discuss your concerns before recording and posting this video. I don't know if you realize, but you have created yet another video that the climate deniers are going to try and use to confuse the subject and deny the facts so that they can make more money while setting the world on fire.
fyi: At least prof Kevin Anderson has been talking about the conservatism of climate scientists for many years. There's eg an interview from 2017 where he talks about it, 'The Climate Action Tapes, 2017: Part 1'
Description: "Terry Macalister interviewed Prof Kevin Anderson in order to gain a better understanding of his views about the required urgency of tackling climate change. In Part 1 of this interview, Anderson outlines the societal and institutional pressures under which many climate academics are working. In his view this has lead to many academics, policy makers and NGOs peddling a "soft line" about the effort required to tackle climate change. This in turn means that many citizens remain ill-informed about one of the most pressing global issues of our time."
Denial takes many forms.
@samedwards6683 "not a single engineer" EXACTLY! For over 30 years climate scientists have failed to partner with engineers, city planners, or even -- elementary school teachers who could have helped them get their message out to the public!
I am not an engineer, but I have noted the same and feel very much the same way. I think those of us who are older and have been following the data for several decades have a different perspective on things. The lack of action is dystopian.
@@MikaMelaThis does seem to be a very important point.
This is all moot since Elon will save us.
Thank you very much! That was really clarifying how we should read that kind of info.
Carbon capture = grow bamboo and similar, pyrolize, then restore carbon levels in soils (green revolution farming = dirt + soil carbon going into atmosphere)
Agreed. Afforrestation aside, biochar and carbon farming seem like the most immediately realizable ways to remove CO2. Ocean alkalinity enhancement is promising too and has the added benefit of, well, enhancing the alkalinity of the ocean and counteracting the acidification that has been happening.
Whatever your models say, it's prudent to be cautious rather than risky if virtually everything is at stake.
From what I can see; the methane tipping point has been reached and we could be seeing 5-10C rises, within a few decades, regardless of what we do. I'd love to know your thoughts on this, AMOC collapse and other tipping points?
Pole shift
@@terrific804 why would the poles in any way be related to climate when the mechanism creating the magnetosphere is based on internal movements of the Earth's core and mantle?
@@sertakiit’s just convective action of molten iron. Not the crust, not enough charge movement to generate a field worth considering. The magnetosphere IS related to our climate though. The climate doesn’t affect our magnetosphere, but our magnetosphere does affect our climate. If you don’t believe me, look up the paper “A Global Environmental Crisis 42,000 years ago” published by science magazine authored by Alan Cooper et. al.
Of course it’s not the only driver, but the notion that the magnetosphere doesn’t affect the climate because air isn’t ferrous is EXACTLY like saying we only use 1/3 of their brain. It’s a pop science interpretation of a nuanced statement that ends up being completely untrue, not just kind of wrong.
Methane tipping point?? Methane rapidly oxidizes in the atmosphere. It makes up 1.7 parts per million of the atmosphere. This is not enough mass to affect the climate at all.
Also - nitrous oxide makes up 300 parts per BILLION and does not have enough mass to affect the climate at all.
According to Hansen et al. ECS of 2xCO2 is 8 degrees centigrade. Furthermore we are at 2XCO2 totaling other GHGs and albedo change.
Wait, albedo change is a consequence of warming and it is pretty unconventional to factor that into 2xCO₂.
@@bernhardschmalhofer855 The warming effect of 2xCO2 depends on the context! On a reflective ice ball it will be very different than a dark blue ocean. This is an important critique to many paleoclimate studies that ignore other parameters such as the earth total albedo when considering the net contributions of GHG's!
If some of the hot models are predicting todays climate ok but not with past climate then doesn't this mean that something is being unaccounted for? I saw an article whether cosmic radiation affected cloud formation. I know the idea is still being disputed but if it turns out that elements of our cloud formation is being affected by the orbit of a gas giant blocking particles in some far away nebula, while we are fussing about CO2, a lot of people ae going to be very mad.
Consider if the cloud formation is moderate, plants are ok. But if too heavy, their photosynthesizing ability could be hampered, and CO2 goes up. So cloud formation or it's absence could be preceding a climatic event. How will we know?
Any idea how events such as the Mt. Saint Helens eruption affect the prediction models?