Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> Have climate change models been shown to be making poor predictions?

Yes. Even the IPCC admitted that in the AR5, though you had to look carefully at footnotes to see it.

> it appears they've predicted temperatures should warm

No, they predicted that temperatures should warm at a particular rate based on a particular rate of CO2 increase. More precisely, there are three groups of climate models, each based on a different rate of CO2 increase: basically, a "business as usual" rate of CO2 increase, a "some reduction" rate of CO2 increase, and a "drastic reduction" rate of CO2 increase. The output of each group of models is averaged to come up with a prediction of warming based on the rate of CO2 increase that the model assumes. The "business as usual" models predict the most warming, the "some reduction" models predict somewhat less warming, and the "drastic reduction" models predict less warming still.

Actual CO2 increase has been about the same as the "business as usual" scenario, but actual warming has been less than the amount predicted by the "drastic reduction" set of models. If the models made accurate predictions, actual warming should have been about what was predicted by the "business as usual" set of models. But it wasn't; it was well below the 95% confidence interval for that set of models. (Note that, whenever actual warming is compared to models, it is compared to the average of all the models--all three sets, with different assumptions for CO2 increase. That actually makes no sense, but climate scientists do it anyway to obfuscate how much the models have overpredicted warming.)

> It seems they've predicted stronger hurricanes and those have also been happening more frequently over time.

No, they haven't. Studies of frequency of storms show no change in frequency over time. The amount of damage done by storms has increased, but that's because of the huge increase in the number of people and the value of housing and other property that are in the paths of major storms.




> Studies of frequency of storms show no change in frequency over time.

Right. Which is why I said the models predicted stronger hurricanes. Which is what you're saying. Looks like we'll have to agree to agree here. The models are making accurate predictions and you'd need to know a lot about the domain to suggest there are flaws. No one would argue a lay audience would be making those arguments. Temperatures are getting warmer, storms are getting stronger, droughts are happening more frequently. The models aren't perfect but that's why they're called models and they're generally predicting what's happening.


> Which is why I said the models predicted stronger hurricanes. Which is what you're saying.

No, it's not. I said that the damage due to storms has increased, but I gave the reason why, and it has nothing to do with hurricanes getting stronger, any more than it has to do with hurricanes getting more frequent.

Studies have not shown any increase in the average strength of storms either.


> Studies have not shown any increase in the average strength of storms either.

“On average, there have been more storms, stronger hurricanes and increase in hurricanes that rapidly intensify,” NASA reports. In 2020, the world saw a record-breaking hurricane season. The facts show what the models predicted. You can continue to argue that there's no evidence, but you'll continue to be wrong.

The OP's argument seems not be refuted here. You need to be an expert and know a lot more than a lay audience would to find any criticisms with existing models. The vast majority of climate change deniers are science skeptic and not going so deep they have a valid basis for their skepticism (and in some cases, it's becoming clear it's not just skepticism but willfully ignoring the actual data for whatever reason).




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: