this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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'Humbling, and a bit worrying': Researcher claims that models fail to fully explain record global heat (phys.org)
submitted 5 months ago by floofloof@lemmy.ca to c/climate
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[–] QuandaleDingle@lemmy.world 26 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

I'm no scientist, but the cynic in me thinks that conventional models are made so moderate and safe as to support our current paradigm. Now that the climate has changed so far beyond our predictions, we're, oh, so surprised.

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 22 points 5 months ago

Nah. It's just extremely difficult to accurately model systems of such complexity and uncertainty. That's why weather reports can only do up to 2 weeks max. There definitely is fuckery from politicians and the status quo oligarchy in terms of what is passed and reported on, especially by orgs like the IPCC, but this type of acceleration falls within the wide variability of existing models; just not around the mean.

That's one of the main reasons why I think we're fucked. Scientists and their models don't know what they don't know, so some significant variables could be missed (e.g. feedback loops) — variables that ultimately make our modelling unrealistically, naively, optimistic.

[–] metaStatic@kbin.social -5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

We don't have perfect knowledge of the system we're modelling, of course the model falls short of reality.

I see it as the manifestation of Terence McKenna's idea of model theism. We create a model of the world and then worship it as a god.

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

I see it as the manifestation of Terence McKenna's idea of model theism. We create a model of the world and then worship it as a god

Sounds like the climate change denial equivalent of the "atheism is a religion" nonsense that the stupidest Christian apologists keep spewing..