How Can Climate Models Help Us Respond to Climate Change? - with Vicky Pope

Vicky Pope describes what goes into a cutting-edge climate model, how it is used to provide information on how and why the climate is changing and how it might change in the future.

Prof Vicky Pope is a climate scientist specialising in climate modelling and providing science to help both governments and the general public to understand the implications of climate change.

Her work has helped to provide the information that the government and others need to reduce the worst impacts of climate change. She has also helped to encourage evidence-based decisions on diverse issues including drought and the interaction between air quality and climate change.

Her current interests are very diverse, encouraging wider appreciation and protection of the environment and improved access to science and mathematics education. She is the Chair and trustee for a number of charities and an honorary professor at University College London.

This talk was livestreamed by the Ri on 14 January 2021.

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[rapauli]

Thank you, and wonderful to see the foundational science clearly explained. Clear discussion and recommendations.

[thegoodthebadandtheugly]

This talk doesn’t do a good enough job to persuade a skeptic in the methodology. Not many people disagree with the graphs - they are just sceptical about the methodology and the findings.. whilst I am not a science denier and I am not generally a climate change denier, I personally myself have not actually seen enough real true hard evidence (I am speaking mainly about a thorough in-depth description of methodology like how many drills have been made, where, when, how the data was processed, what were the on-the-ground findings in terms of actually what one saw in their microscope etc. that made them conclude on those graphs that are constantly being shown to us in these types of presentations). Don’t get me wrong, I love graphs and I can actually make some really nice, interesting graphs myself to serve whatever narrative I need to tell - and I do it on a daily / monthly basis.. I also have had plenty of situations where my boss come in and asks me to create a graph so he can tell whatever story he wants to sell his services or products ;) and I assume in the world of science, unfortunately, that is no different. When you have to get funding - you have to get funding. So, until the day when a scientist shows me the whole story, not just some graphs, I will be on the border of believing and being a non-believer. I call that “critical thinking”. Nice presentation, but not quite science.

[caseyhawthorne]

There was something on BBC Earth last night, Wednesday, February 24th, that if there is less solar flares (solar wind?) the earth receives more cosmic rays which lead to more cloud formation and less of the sun's Ray's hitting the ground and that this leads to some global cooling
And that the sun has sun spot cycles, which will reach a peak again in 2055
The scientist presented a very periodic graph of magnetic fields below the sun's surface
I find this all amazing
I hadn't realized there were trade offs between sun spot activity and cosmic ray bombardment 🙃😮

[Jimmyvideo]

Almost as many dislikes as like lol, why do people with closed minds watch clips intended to educate. Give up your ideological denial of science if you are going to watch videos about science. The models aren't wrong just because you don't like the results and what they will lead to.

[Rene-uzeb]

The current climate models are useless to help predict any tipping points, because they cannot maintain existing dynamics on their own without continual boundary conditions to keep eg the ACC and AMOC going.

If you want a model that could be useful you first need to build one that can self sustain the acc and amoc, for starters.

[bdot]

Great! This is what I was waiting for. Simply educating people about climate change facts. The best way of acting.

[rnunezc.]

V good talk, hopefully is true...are forestation and reforestation in this equation at all...?

[iseriver]

* Sees video title, looks at comment section *
Yeah, I think climate change deniers need a slap before you try to give them a science lesson.

[benjaminkramer]

Change seems to be a constant state..
Only a human attached to the past is not willing from within to change ( to the better)
The biggest climate-problem is growing on the soil of human hostility, with all the slendering of resources for military „solutions „, which has destroyed and poisoned large areas on this planet.
Conclusion: I must change myself to the better. ( And probably stop blaming other people/nations?)
The whole is bigger than the sum of its parts, Aristoteles
But unfortunately the whole is smaller than the sum of its incomplete parts fighting fighting against each other...

[channelwarhorse]

Newton's 2064. Galileo the data frequency below the planet to reformation spike. Ice cores teach us lower sea level., my God we might live!!

[patrickconnor]

Don’t worry climate scientists, the COVID modelers are rooting for you.

[snekmeseht]

I remember the good ol days when folks knew they couldn't control the weather.

[FoxDren]

They clearly can't as for my 30 years of life they ha e been claiming the world would be basically uninhabitable in a decade. Well 3 decades later I'm here inhabiting it.

[flacjacket]

Climate models can only be validated in two ways:
1. In retro after their predictive time frame has passed, this means it can't actually be used for predicting anything
2. By proding the system to stimulate a change and checking whether the model accurately predicted the change. We aren't capable of doing this short of perhaps a nuclear holocaust, and even if we were capable of it it would literally never get past an ethics committee.

This means that definitionally climate models are unfalsifiable and thus pseudoscience.

Why is this channel peddling pseusoscience?

[cfs]

Your model is incomplete if you cannot predict.

[cfs]

I see there has not been much improvement in a decade of calculations.

[christheswiss]

17:18 she points out the massive "rise" in the C02 concentration in the atmosphere. What she conveniently "forgets" to mention, is that human activity is only a 4% contributor to the C02 emissions on earth. So while we measure a doubling of the C02 concentration, and humans only contribute 4% of this, where did the rest come from? What do we get on this missing analysis of the actual root cause of the problem? Roaring silence.

Also, notice how the graph starts at 150 (not at zero), to make the increase at the far right appear visually larger than it is numerically. This is manipulation at its best and lets us see how carefully these graphs have been crafted to support the narrative that the authors want to propogate.

[Chrissthepiss]

The model has to account for the sun and the charged particles.