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Comment by tdons | Hacker News Reader

Could it not be the case that there are surprising mechanisms or feedback loops that we do not currently know about; mechanisms that could put a damper on these predictions?

More generally: aren't these multi-decade predictions simply hubris? The climate is a very complex non-linear system with tons of inputs and interactions. There's many examples of these types of systems for which our predictions fall short or are extremely inaccurate: weather over multi-week timescales, the economy, even the recent Covid-19 models.

Am I the only one that thinks we should be a little more careful and conservative when putting out these sorts of dire predictions?

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Isn't this Russell's Teapot? It's impossible to prove that there aren't mechanisms or feedback loops that could dampen climate change. It's an unfalsifiable claim. You have to prove the existence of mechanisms that could reverse climate change without human interaction.

Otherwise, what we're operating on is known mechanisms that are currently causing climate change. One of the facts is that there are already places in the world which are reaching unlivable wet bulb temperatures.

I was merely claiming that we have an incomplete understanding of the climate system, and because of that we shouldn't make these types of claims and state them with absolute certainty like the article is doing.

Surely we can agree there?

I was specifically countering your argument because it is impossible to disprove. No matter how accurate our climate simulations or understanding can get, there's always the possibility for something we've missed. That's why we create these models, refine them and adjust our behavior accordingly.

I'm afraid I can't agree with you here because if your claim is that 'we don't know fully how climate works, then things might not be as bad as we think', the opposite claim is also true. That is, 'we don't know fully how climate works, therefore things might be worse than we think'.

It's entirely possible that there are other mechanisms or feedback loops we don't know about which when triggered could cause a massive cascading effect making the global temperature rise rapidly.

You are right when you say: it could also be worse.

I concede that it's impossible to disprove my assertion, but it might still be true: we just don't know. I'm arguing that we should embrace the uncertainty and accept that we can't know certain things.

These sorts of articles can cause immense stress in people and are therefore doing harm.

The uncertainties involved are fundamentally unquantifiable. We think we can know, but we make only educated guesses. We should keep doing that, but communication about the results should be honest. A title that states "one billion people will suffer" isn't that.

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