Oh my God, it’s almost like the scientists knew what they were talking about all along!
RichZombieParty
Hello, I’m a coauthor on this paper and happy to answer any questions!
aClimateScientist
It sounds to me like one of the dozens of models that was in existence 50 years ago accurately predicted what is happening now. Unfortunately, no one could select the winning model out of the others back in the day. Some of the other models said things would be much worse. Some of the other models said things will not be so bad. It is easy with 20/20 hindsight to choose the good model that was written 50 years ago. Not so easy to choose at that time. It’s not just the model itself that has uncertainty, it is also the uncertainty in the inputs to the models. When you combine those two together you get a large number of potential outcomes. Now we can say that one of those was accurate. But what do we say about the other dozens that were being evaluated at the time? They were equally plausible at that time. I have done mathematical modeling of complex physical systems for almost 40 years. It is easy when you’re in the middle of the study to choose what you think is the most likely outcome, but that does not necessarily mean that this is the outcome that you will see. It is easy when looking back to find one that matched what actually happened.
tjcanno
Interesting. When I was at school in the 1970’s, it wasn’t global warming that was predicted. We were taught that we were moving into a period of cooling, a mini-ice age
sheepishlysheepish
Waterworld was released in 1995… so yea, it’s nothing new
Telemere125