<story><title>Arctic Ocean started getting warmer decades earlier than we thought</title><url>https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/arcticocean</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>time_to_smile</author><text>As someone who does statistical modeling for a living (though not climate related), one thing I&amp;#x27;ve found fascinating is that many climate skeptics, particularly on HN, will focus on the difficulty scientific models have in making accurate predictions about the near term impact of climate change.&lt;p&gt;While this is true (modeling a complex system such as the Earth&amp;#x27;s climate and all of it&amp;#x27;s positive and negative feed back loops is incredibly challenging), the implied assumption from people that use this critique is that uncertainty will always fall on the side of &amp;quot;better than expected&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;People that have been closely following human ecology for the last decade or so have repeatedly found the opposite to be true. &amp;quot;Faster than expected&amp;quot; is somewhat of a joke in certain communities since it seems that the more we learn the more we realize how large the impact of rapid accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere really is, and how quickly this impact develops.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not to say model uncertainty == doom, but assuming that model uncertainty == &amp;quot;this is fine&amp;quot; is a more dangerous and naive assumption.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dls2016</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve always been worried that estimates and predictions in the IPCC reports, for instance, are much too conservative. The reports are averages, in some sense, of thousands of peer-reviewed publications.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s hard to get your publication accepted into the scientific mainstream if your predictions make you sound like an alarmist crank.</text></comment>
<story><title>Arctic Ocean started getting warmer decades earlier than we thought</title><url>https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/arcticocean</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>time_to_smile</author><text>As someone who does statistical modeling for a living (though not climate related), one thing I&amp;#x27;ve found fascinating is that many climate skeptics, particularly on HN, will focus on the difficulty scientific models have in making accurate predictions about the near term impact of climate change.&lt;p&gt;While this is true (modeling a complex system such as the Earth&amp;#x27;s climate and all of it&amp;#x27;s positive and negative feed back loops is incredibly challenging), the implied assumption from people that use this critique is that uncertainty will always fall on the side of &amp;quot;better than expected&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;People that have been closely following human ecology for the last decade or so have repeatedly found the opposite to be true. &amp;quot;Faster than expected&amp;quot; is somewhat of a joke in certain communities since it seems that the more we learn the more we realize how large the impact of rapid accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere really is, and how quickly this impact develops.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not to say model uncertainty == doom, but assuming that model uncertainty == &amp;quot;this is fine&amp;quot; is a more dangerous and naive assumption.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tdrdt</author><text>The problem is that since the sixties scientists are predicting doom and this is causing people to become skeptical about new insights.&lt;p&gt;For example, after decades of sea level doom scenario&amp;#x27;s people are saying it is &amp;quot;slower than expected&amp;quot;.</text></comment>