As far as "complex" goes, i'm thinking of the old strange attractor. I don't know if it'll rain on sept 19 2016, but i think it's safe to say there will be 3 inches of rain next september. If we refine our understanding and language, there's a nice probability density function for quantity of rain over the month of sept 2016. Not much probability around 0, not much beyond 6, but a big lump right there at 3.
I outright reject the "no model is possible" argument. If nothing else, it's that way because god wills it. Some folks argue weather is related to frequency of gay sex. I'm confident the above paper outperforms that model.
The nice thing about the above model is it is testable. we know historical variation around the prediction. We can make a prediction based on increasing CO2, then increase it, and see how our prediction plays out. (edit and we did, and the model was pretty good, but earth actually got warmer faster than the paper predicted http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/04/evalua...)
So, anyway, weather works "somehow" and we can make forecasts. Although it's never been tested, i'm pretty sure Pat Robertson is wrong and it's not gay sex driven.
So, i still dont' get why it's not settled. The best models we have are refinements of the above paper. Is there some other model that gives better answerers?
I'll agree that your favorite model is lot more likely to work than the "because gay sex" model, because your favorite model presumably has causal relationships based on measurable reality.
And I like the idea that atmospheric composition could be a strange attractor in the climate system.
But then you'd have to throw the simple forcing model for CO2 out the window, and come up with a hypothesis for why there is a strange attractor somehow causing CO2 and temperature to exhibit a linear relationship. Wouldn't your favorite model have to be rewritten at that point?
And then you'd need an explanation for how the water vapor feedback forcing (a critical part of most alarmist models) fits into those dynamics. And why a similar albedo forcing or plant cover forcing or fracking-earthquake forcing or Chinese economic forcing does not. I don't think you will find it simple to describe at anything but the most abstract level. But it is an interesting idea.
I think we hit the max depth, so i'm replying here.
Yes, i enjoy civil rational discussions (well, i try to be rational) on HN. there's a bunch of smart people and it's fun.
Anyway, i think i get your point, allow me to phrase it this way "they may be getting the right answers, but they aren't getting the answers for the right reasons"
My handwavy counter argument is, Aristotle said "continuous motion requires continuous application of force" and he was wrong. But in day to day life, if you need to move the cart, you gotta keep pushing on it. He wasn't dead wrong, he did capture some essence the truth. Newton came along and got more of it. Einstein got even more.
Allow me to put a few more words in your mouth. I think you weakly agree with the climate scientists, not the crazy militants, but the grad students sitting in a tiny office doing math. You don't think they're dead wrong, they just don't have enough of the truth to be useful, newton hasn't come along yet and shown us how it all fits together.
Ok, i gotta go get some stuff done, but it was indeed thoughtful and fun.
Yep, that sounds fairly reasonable. I'm just an amateur philosopher of science so I don't really have my own theories to add here, but I do find a lot of what's out there interesting. I don't like seeing politicians run directly towards their favorite conclusions with whatever half-formed material they can find, because it actively subverts the interesting parts (and sure, I don't agree with the politics in this case).
As far as "complex" goes, i'm thinking of the old strange attractor. I don't know if it'll rain on sept 19 2016, but i think it's safe to say there will be 3 inches of rain next september. If we refine our understanding and language, there's a nice probability density function for quantity of rain over the month of sept 2016. Not much probability around 0, not much beyond 6, but a big lump right there at 3.
I outright reject the "no model is possible" argument. If nothing else, it's that way because god wills it. Some folks argue weather is related to frequency of gay sex. I'm confident the above paper outperforms that model.
The nice thing about the above model is it is testable. we know historical variation around the prediction. We can make a prediction based on increasing CO2, then increase it, and see how our prediction plays out. (edit and we did, and the model was pretty good, but earth actually got warmer faster than the paper predicted http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/04/evalua...)
So, anyway, weather works "somehow" and we can make forecasts. Although it's never been tested, i'm pretty sure Pat Robertson is wrong and it's not gay sex driven.
So, i still dont' get why it's not settled. The best models we have are refinements of the above paper. Is there some other model that gives better answerers?