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by defrost 1060 days ago
> The one thing I actually have firsthand experience with is computational complexity.

If that's the case then I expect you're well across the Dzhanibekov effect and the fact that the long term arc trajectory of (say) a spinning wingnut can be extremely predictable as its CoG follows the usual equations of motion while its short term tumblings are utterly unpredictable and chaotic.

The key point being that the corase climate model is pretty damn simple in terms of basic thermodynamics.

Heat from below (core), light from above (sun), energy absorbtion in the sea and land, energy transform to heat, heat radiation outwards, some heat entrapment by insulation.

Increased insulation ==> greater heat entrapment, etc.

To be sure the fine details of interplay within and between climatic cells are challenging .. but the long term arc of more and more energy being trapped leading to more heat, more storm energy etc is straighfrward enough that it was first done as a back of an envelope calculation more than a century ago.

If you're demanding an exact time table on what and where will reach what tempreture when .. then you'll be sorely disapointed.

Otherwise its a simple case of we're in the direct path of a massive fully laden train that is ever so slowly derailing.

1 comments

This makes sense and gives me some things to learn about, I really appreciate it.

If climate science is correct, the one hole I still see is that it doesn’t take into account future improvement in technology, which I think might have some solutions especially when the problem actually threatens an economic player like a 1trillion dollar company. It is basically a choice to believe something good like this can/will happen, so you could call this out as semi religious.

Thank you for engaging with me in the end.

You're welcome, athough to be honest I hadn't been paying attention to individual names, just watching a newest comment scroll and responding to various comments re: climate science (I've been in exploration geophysics for some time).

Looking at some of your responses to my comments:

> The problem is that you are recommending we turn off capitalism

I made no direct recomendation although I suggested various approaches - I'm not sure where on the globe is practicing fully informed free market capitalism but I'd certainly want to regulate it in the same manner as we regulate engines of power to avoid them becoming unbalanced and walking across the floor just as first generation unregulated steam engines did.

From a complex dynamics PoV Adam Smith was a first order basic bitch (as I believe the young people of the day might say).

> we will doom the world’s poor people to lives of certain poverty with no hope of upward mobility.

Mighty white of you to say so, maybe you might want to ask some of the worlds poor what they want.

The people I know that have nothing (I grew up in very outback Australia) want their land back, they want the "developed advanced nations" to stop dumping waste and shit on the land they've cared for the past 40+ thousand years, and other such novel ideas. eg: [1] [2] [3]

Not one has mentioned wanting yourself or others to speak on their behalf.

Of course there are many people across the planet, I wouldn't assume to speak on their behalf - although I did gain some perspective travelling through roughly 2/3rds of the worlds countries in many of the more undeveloped areas.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UKu3bCbFck

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7h9V4aKlJw

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaoSi6RFqsc

It's a bit of a bone of contention that so many of these massive copper and lithium deposits are on indigenous lands.

Perhaps the question you best dwell on is whether endless growth and increasing consumption is really all that certain groups of people seem to think it is.

> If climate science is correct ...

It's 2023, the time for "if" was 40 years ago - are you questioning "If GPS science is correct", "If Magnetotellurics is correct", "If the James Webb telescope actually works", "If the Finite Element Method is real", etc.

> ... it doesn’t take into account future improvement in technology

Nor should it, but of course climate models can be tweaked with "what if scenarios" - what if the suns input could be reduced (outward reflecting bubbles in space twixt earth and sun), what if X million tonnes per annumn of C02 can be captured and sequested 'somehow', what if we build out thousands of acres of solar PV and mass produce green ammonia to offset the climate effects of the Haber–Bosch process, etc.

'Climate science' contains multitudes after all: https://phys.org/news/2023-07-family-trees-relationships-cli...

Still, it's good that you seem to want to learn more.

Nobody has ever realistically thought that real world problems are easy.