Scientists developed the first climate models in the late 1960s (for which the Nobel Prize in physics was recently awarded!). How have these models held up against what happened in the real world after they were published? Surprisingly well, it turns out: - ThreadSky

hausfath.bsky.social • 105 days ago

Scientists developed the first climate models in the late 1960s (for which the Nobel Prize in physics was recently awarded!).

How have these models held up against what happened in the real world after they were published? Surprisingly well, it turns out:

Comments

98percent.bsky.social•105 days ago

Which tells us that, if they had it so close way back then, we sure as hell should be believing them now, given how much better the information, knowledge and toolkits they have now are.

98percent.bsky.social•105 days ago

A grammatical question. Should I have said “now are” or “are now”?
I’m being serious. If you don’t ask, you don’t learn.

sazdosanjh.bsky.social•105 days ago

If they had it so close way back then, we sure as hell should be believing them now. Especially given how much better the information, knowledge and toolkits are now.

I did a grammar and editing course on line with EdX, Day 1 - "writing is not talking written down."

awb58.bsky.social•105 days ago

Second option.
First option falsely highlights ‘now’.

billstewart.bsky.social•100 days ago

I prefer "now are", because it's the knowledge/etc. they have now that the "given how much better they are" are about,
plus there's the parallelism with "we .. believing them now"

loneskum123.bsky.social•104 days ago

Interesting that even Rasool predicted warming. So where are the New Ice Age predictions?

alisonspeaks.bsky.social•105 days ago

Thanks! Not enough people know this. A frequent grumble among climate naysayers is how all the predictions are always wrong.

loneskum123.bsky.social•104 days ago

Meanwhile, the climate science deniers' predictions (when they make them) are ALWAYS wrong because they always predict cooling.

carric320.bsky.social•105 days ago

So many ppl think scientists arbitrarily "tune" models to get the results someone paid for

barbaragirouard.bsky.social•101 days ago

That’s the old Tobacco Industry model of denial of liability, claiming that the research is skewed for “reasons”. Unfortunately some people still use tobacco because they don’t believe it will harm them.

alisonspeaks.bsky.social•101 days ago

Climate litigation is also following the tobacco model. If they can’t get ‘em for the harm, pivot to the disinformation.

barbaragirouard.bsky.social•100 days ago

💯

billstewart.bsky.social•100 days ago

I find this surprising, since I remember reading popular-press stories in the 60s about how there might be a coming ice age and how geoengineering tricks like spreading carbon-dust on glaciers to melt them might be needed, but I WAS too young to be reading news from a critical perspective yet.

hausfath.bsky.social•105 days ago

A few models ran too cool (Rasool and Schneider 1971) and a bit too hot (Nordhaus 1977), but most were pretty spot on with what actually occurred. We explored these in a paper a few years back in Geophysical Research Letters: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL085378

hausfath.bsky.social•105 days ago

In our paper we looked both at a comparison of temperatures vs observations over time, but also the relationship between temperature and forcing in models and observations. The latter tries to account for misspecified future emissions in a climate model.

hausfath.bsky.social•105 days ago

You could have a perfectly accurate climate model in 1970 (not that we did!) and still produce an incorrect forecast if you assumed we'd be at 520 ppm CO2 in 2020 instead of 420 ppm! This applies well to Hansen 1988 scenarios A and B, which overestimate future forcing compared to what occurred:

earthsciinfo.bsky.social•105 days ago

Yes. The larger source of future uncertainty is future behavior with respect to emissions and energy policy, not the specifics of the model physics.

hausfath.bsky.social•105 days ago

In this case, for example, Hansen 1988 got CO2 just about right, but overestimated future methane and halocarbon emissions (which were subsequently cut by the successful Montreal protocol to protect the ozone layer):

hausfath.bsky.social•105 days ago

Predicting the future is hard, but climate models have a remarkably good record doing so (at least so far!), as we noted in the recent IPCC 6th Assessment report (WG1, chapter 1): https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Chapter01.pdf

smurph.bsky.social•105 days ago

I had many excellent chats with the late Steve Schneider. He was a great example of a real scientist - he soon realized some of his work 'ran cool' because of underestimating impacts of pollution dimming & then success of pollution policies and loudly told people why he'd been wrong on that.

captainfossil.bsky.social•105 days ago

📌

stilldanlehrer.bsky.social•105 days ago

Does that data only go through 2020?

hausfath.bsky.social•105 days ago

Here is a quick updated version of the figure through 2024 (and using a preindustrial 1850-1900 rather than a 1961-1990 one):

stilldanlehrer.bsky.social•104 days ago

Thanks! More depressing to use the preindustrial benchmark, but that’s really what I wanted to know.

whytetara.bsky.social•105 days ago

And yet some still falling for this plot line
Boggles the mind
(way past 97% at this point btw ;)

mindfulish.bsky.social•35 days ago

This is so clever 👏

schimelsal.bsky.social•105 days ago

Thank you so much for posting this graphic affirmation of the utility of theoretical science research & the proofs of these models forecasting credibility. I will save this graphic in my photos for use as appropriate end to discussions w deniers. Thank you for your work.

utopiaisnow.bsky.social•105 days ago

Hey @hausfath.bsky.social ,

Love this post. Would you be interested to come on my podcast to discuss this paper and discuss climate models more broadly?

gsnyder.bsky.social•104 days ago

Can't say that scientists didn't warn us many decades ago. 2024 was the hottest in history and finished at 1.6C above pre-industrial baseline. And the warming is accelerating, not abating, as we continue to pump GHG into the atmosphere at a climbing rate.

moreshimmer.bsky.social•105 days ago

See Stockholm Resilience Center for planetary boundaries research on measurable Earth attributes to sustain life.

argulator.bsky.social•105 days ago

📌

michellec66.bsky.social•105 days ago

But what can we do? What are you doing? What should we be doing? Ordinary people?

velyvan.bsky.social•104 days ago

Individual level: stop driving (or if you really can't take transit or bike, go EV). Stop eating meat. Stop flying. Insulate your home. Install a HP. Change your bank.
Collective level: vote for people who care about the climate. Demonstrate. Talk about it. Donate.

jasonwidegren.bsky.social•104 days ago

I’ve been wondering about that (how the early models did). Other than the one low model, they were surprisingly accurate!

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