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Comment by johnnymorgan | Hacker News Reader

The point he is making is the disconnect between models and reality.

Also when are people held accountable for their models being wrong and the output that comes from that.

Climate models has a terrible track record and have failed to materialize over and over again.

We have environmental crises all over the place which we should be focused on. The two are not the same thing and climate activism seems to not care about that at all, ie the issue of EVs and their super non green batteries or the near slave labor in terrible conditions resource extraction.

There is a good reason to be skeptical of the regulations derived from these models when they are wrong all the time.

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But the models aren’t wrong. They’re surprisingly accurate. Some media reporting has been alarmist, choosing absolute worst cases and stating them as fact.

But in general, the changes we’ve seen so far are in line with predictions and there’s no reason to be more skeptical than normal of this science.

(As a side note, the resource extraction required to run a petrol engine is also not very green and often connected to human rights abuses. Not to downplay the issues in lithium sourcing, there are horrible conditions that need to be fixed, but the solution is not “oil”.)

No they are not "surprisingly accurate". I have actually made more money in direct bets AGAINST climate models. From 1970 to present. Indeed, the challenge I make to climate doomsayers is simple: make one prediction in the 5 year out timeframe and stick to it. I'll simply take the opposite. So far, I have won... every time. Let me have a look at my trading accounts: cenovus up, pembina up, taiwan semi up, everything else down. And that is the current recession. Now, I am worried about china, so I may trade the tsm. The only "surprise" for me is that alcoa is down. I'll ride that one.

The "no oil" people may be right; that would make me a horrible person. But, make the prediction -- I'll "convert" if it comes true. Science for the win.

Yes, they are in fact, "surprisingly accurate."

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-mo...

> direct bets AGAINST climate models...

None of the things you mention after this sentence have anything to do with climate models.

> cenovus up, pembina up, taiwan semi up

At best, this is equivalent to saying health nuts have been disproven because you made money buying Coca Cola stock.

On a year by year level they've been pretty bad but on a decade by decade basis they've been pretty much spot on. Why wasn't there any increase in the average temperature between 2004 and 2014? Nobody know, but in 2015 global temperature spiked all the way up to where predicted and stayed there. There's been this weird stepwise pattern to the warming but the general trend is in line with predictions.

The general relationship between increased CO2 and warming has been known since the 19th century, though they were off by a factor of two on the slope back then. Modern climate models have a lot of moving and it's not clear they're actually better than the "Assume a spherical^H^H^H^H homogeneous atmosphere" models but the basic physics and general trend line are hard to ignore.

Please back up the claim "climate models has a terrible track record" and qualify the word 'terrible'.

Casting blame is a common denier tactic [1] used despite the models being useful and accurate [2].

The "whataboutisms" you mention are another common tactic. [3] Blaming EV batteries is a red herring; they have much lower lifecycle emissions than gas-based engines. [4]

[1] https://skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm [2] https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-mo... [3] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainabilit... [4] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/07/electric-cars-have-much...

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