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Comment by Podgajski | Hacker News Reader

It is strange, but it’s not. My friends keep asking me why it seems like the weather predictions are always off lately. I tell them because they have no climate models for the state of the climate that we’re living in right now. They’re all based on past climate.

so this weather forecaster is just doing the same thing, he’s trying to predict future events on past performance.

What they need to do is start looking right in front of their face like you said.

And they need to get some testicles and start screaming that this is a problem at the top of their lungs. And then they need to quit their jobs at these network companies that all advertise for fossil fuel companies.

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> it seems like the weather predictions are always off lately.

Lately? Weather predictions have always been a crap shoot. They are better than they've ever been and still only good for about a 48 hours window.

Try looking at weather forecasts from 30 or 40 years ago. You might as well have been reading tea leaves.

> no climate models for the state of the climate that we’re living in right now

That was the overall impression I got from the article: model after model predicted unremarkable intensification, and they were consistently wrong.

Out models are only as good as the input parameters, all of which are based on data from a past that no longer applies. Is there a way to apply climate change modelling to short-term weather modelling? Change the forecasting from "we expect such-and-such to happen because that's the most common case over the past 50 years" to something like "in the past we'd expect such-and-such to happen but including more recent work we expect a different thing"?

Yes. And they'll be doing just that. They couldn't even be modeling this without modeling chaotic systems: their models are chaotic systems too. With another model, the Otis event MIGHT have appeared, or might have appeared one run in a hundred.

With their current modeling, the Otis event might have appeared in their model one in a thousand runs, or one in ten thousand, depending on if they're accurately capturing the energy state of the system. They might've discarded it if it came up, as a glitch.

When real life glitches you don't get to re-run the model for more optimistic results.

I don’t see how taking advertising dollars from fossil fuel companies affects anything. It’s not like we’ll suddenly stop burning carbon if we stop oil and gas companies from advertising. The demand for oil will still be there. We need to make alternative energy sources cheaper than fossil, then demand will plummet.

We could do a lot by removing the trillions of dollars in subsidies which those companies receive, however. If the price of oil went up, people would scale back usage and alternatives would have an easier time, both outcomes which the fossil fuel industry has spent a considerable amount of money preventing.

I also noticed that but have assumed it's because of a change in reporting methods. It's hard to find a forecast that includes the confidence level of a prediction. The bbc weather forecast used to show the % chance of rain for example. Now most apps and websites just show a grey cloud.

One problem: if you acknowledge climate change on air, you’re risking a lot of flack and even violence from people who are steeped in right-wing science denial:

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/27/1184461263/iowa-meteorologist...

I agree they need to act but also understand someone not wanting to put themselves or their family at risk.

I feel like acknowledging climate change on Hacker News can produce similar reactions :)

I stand by literally everything I said, and would add that I expect another event, let's say half an order of magnitude more horrific, within five years.

Due to the nature of what chaos is, there's no telling where and when: could even come out of seemingly nowhere. But it's latent in what the situation is, and is the expression of what chaos means. And when the global system was that few degrees cooler, the upcoming event (or Otis) could not have happened.

Oh, I’m not arguing the urgency. I just think it’s important to remember that other people aren’t perfect manifestations of our ideals, either: they get scared, they have other problems taking up their attention, etc. It does mean we should all be pushing back against the rise of the right-wing stochastic terrorism which has been disturbingly normalized lately.

> And they need to get some testicles and start screaming that this is a problem at the top of their lungs

Are you serious? People have been screaming about this since the 70s at least. Everyone’s ears are sore so they tune it out.

This guy is apparently an actual meteorologist, not just a TV weather forecaster personality. The vast majority of actual meteorologists are not working in front of a mic or camera.

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