Did scientists get climate change wrong?

Interview with Prof Tim Palmer from the University of Oxford.

A recent opinion piece in the New York Times argued that scientists got climate change wrong

But did they really?

In this video we speak about the uncertainty of climate predictions, tipping points, what we know, what we do not know about the trends, and what policy consequences to draw from that.

The mentioned article in the Guardian is here:

[billbrockman]

I’ll say you’re demonstrating your courage once again.

[HumblyQuestioning]

Sabine let's him speak, uninterrupted, no judgement, "simple" questions, no antagonizing. I like that very much.

[hanksnow]

As a physics professor (ret) myself, this video suffers from the inevitable problem that scientists find it difficult to explain things without falling into the trap of getting lost in details that are important to the scientist but are difficult to put in perspective. Sabine is usually good at avoiding this, a rare talent. The scientist will tend to emphasize the inaccuracies and limitations of his methods, whereas the skeptic will cherry-pick the factors that reinforce his pre-conceived notions.

[faustianrevival]

It's sad that searching for the truth and analysing widespread assumptions is seen as courageous rather than just standard practice.

[marcschneider]

I'm not a physics professor, but it seems to me all he is saying is, in effect, yes, climate change from human activity is real, but the specific models measuring it have a certain amount of uncertainty so we need to work on getting more accurate models. I don't see how this undermines the idea that climate change is a problem, but it does suggest that we need to be careful about accepting some of the more "sky is falling immediately" statements. He certainly IS NOT saying that climate change caused by CO2 is a myth.

[markmacdonald]

As far as that globe rotating in the background is concerned, do you know if the manufacturers make a flat one?

[xqta]

Nothing particularly controversial here. The scientists are doing the best they can to model a really hard problem,

[musicalfringe]

If there were more of this kind of honest, nuanced discussion instead of oversimplified propaganda and fearmongering, it would be a lot easier to get traction on problems like this. People can handle nuance, and some people require it in order not to feel manipulated. Great job Sabine.

[secarl]

Paraphrasing the lovely Sabine, “I find it peculiar that we are not presented with the uncertainty from each model.” What is even more peculiar is Tim’s response. We must see the estimate and the bounds on the estimate. It would also be nice to see prior model estimates versus actuals. If we can’t get near perfect decade length extrapolations, how will we be able to estimate much further out, given fan shaped errors? If you are leaning on ensembles, isn’t that just ARIMA?

[RashadSaleh]

This is the first time in my life that i actually heard a scientist talk about climate change rather than politicians and the media... thank you very very much prof Sabine

[webtrekkeruk]

A rise in temperature always PRECEEDS a rise in CO2. It's always been that way.

[kevindoom]

Sabine i admire your clean concise direct speech when you explain things. You are straight to the point it is a really impressive quality to have.

[hooh]

The so-called "average surface temperature" is not a physical quantity: it is just a construct that means nothing from the thermodynamic viewpoint and which cannot be measured directly or indirectly as one deals with a highly complex open nonequilibrium system (Earth + atmosphere). So, making comparisons with what this "surface average" was supposed to be before the "pre-industrial revolution era" (whatever this overused, yet extremely vague term means) to derive conclusions about atmospheric CO2 concentration effects, is absolutely ridiculous: not only the boundary conditions vary greatly over time, but they are systematically ill-defined at best. Models are not accurate.

[jclaer]

Freeman Dyson concluded, "Climate models solve the equations of fluid dynamics. They might do a good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry, and the biology of fields, farms, and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in."

[Axiom]

The questions were very good ones as you might expect, but the answers too. What I feel didn’t come out clearly enough is that there are very few decisions we can afford to make only after achieving the “six-sigma statistical significance required” to accept a finding in particle physics. Events would tend to overwhelm us while we were still studying our confidence intervals. Also the purpose of the IPPC reports was to inform AND communicate; and to a political audience with severe attention deficit disorder. Its really hard to be neutral and informative in this area, and I get it - sometimes a central estimate is the way to communicate even if, for a more rigorous mind, its hard to interpret without knowledge of the variance.

[gibbogle]

Global climate is incredibly complex. We understand the physics and chemistry pretty well (perhaps not quite so well where chemistry is concerned), but the complexity of the system makes simulation extremely difficult. Just think of clouds. I don't think we can simulate clouds very well at all. When he says "We still have some way to go" that is a great understatement, IMO.

[justinwhite]

There are a few paradoxes about the climate change debate. During the Eemian Interglacial, the previous one about 110, 000 to 130, 000 years ago, sea levels were six to nine metres above current levels. Are we to blame this on the CO2 emissions of Neanderthals and Denisovans sitting around their campfires? The climate of the Sahara flips regularly about ever 11, 000 years from desert to savannah, during the North African Humid Period, and then back to desert again. How many of these climate models factor in the role of plants and photosynthesis which need carbon dioxide, water, heat and sunlight to stay alive? It's the plants that created the Earth's habitable climate and still do. Animals evolved as conveniently mobile compost makers for the plants. Should we have the plants reduce O2 emissions instead? Go figure.

[littlerosepalmer]

Very proud to call him my uncle! The intelligence gene skipped my generation unfortunately .... and he is genuinely the nicest man as well as super intelligent... 🤓🙂

[medhurstt]

Its strong cognative dissonance when he starts out describing the GCMs as being based on fundamental physics described by navier-stokes and he even mentioned quantum effects(!) only to later admit the calculated grid cells are computationally too expensive to actually perform and those grid cells have to be much larger than the effects being modelled so that the results in gridcells has to be represented by simplified calculation and even parameterisation for clouds.

[patharvard]

My goodness. There is absolutely no falsifiable methodology for determining precisely, or roughly, the effect of CO2 levels on climate temperature. There is no laboratory model of planet Earth upon which CO2–temperature experiments can be run.

Where are the facts in this video? I hear unproven theories and speculation.

The reference to tipping points has no basis in observed or historical reality. In the paleo climate record, when CO2 has been 5 or 10 or 15 times higher that the current levels, we have not discovered previous tipping points.

It annoys me to hear so-called experts demonstrate such a lack of critical, integrated thinking and such a inexplicable inability to distinguish between observable facts and speculation.

Anyone, who points to climate models as evidence of anything we can count on as being representative of the future, might as well be looking into a crystal ball—for all that climate models are worth.