<story><title>Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought</title><url>https://www.sciencenews.org/article/methane-warm-earth-atmosphere-radiation</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>shrubble</author><text>This is exactly what the &amp;quot;deniers&amp;quot; have been saying - that the mathematical model is not fleshed out enough, and the data is not present in sufficiently accurate quantity, for the climate models to be accurate.&lt;p&gt;This research shows that the mechanism of action was misunderstood all this time. What else hasn&amp;#x27;t been researched enough and has simplistic assumptions baked into the climate models?&lt;p&gt;That shockingly simplistic models and the barest of data don&amp;#x27;t actually have predictive power wouldn&amp;#x27;t surprise people in any other scientific discipline, but it will certainly be cause enough for this subject, to have this comment voted into oblivion....</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>altacc</author><text>This sounds like a prelude to a simplistic &amp;quot;the models aren&amp;#x27;t accurate, so climate change probably isn&amp;#x27;t really a problem&amp;quot;. However the problem with that is that the overwhelming majority of observations and models, many of which are far from simple and use large amounts of data, point to climate change being real, unusually rapid and anthropogenic. Using the argument that these models aren&amp;#x27;t accurate ignores the fact that even with a large margin of error, the lower bounds of climate change still result in significant negative effects for large numbers of people and ecosystems. Models have for a long time shown that the overall global temperature will rise and observations over the years have proved the models reflect reality. Are all models 100% correct with predictions? No, but the trend the models show is proven, even if there is a margin of error which is typically always acknowledged during modelling.&lt;p&gt;Questioning the accuracy as a form of dismissal raise the question of what level of accuracy you&amp;#x27;d want before accepting the results, and what level of accuracy any countering research should have. Research like this paper also has margins of error, are often single studies or analysis and therefore aren&amp;#x27;t proven to be accurate themselves. Science evolves all the time, a large amount of the science we experience or rely on day to day cannot be fully modelled with high accuracy but we don&amp;#x27;t discount reality because the models don&amp;#x27;t match it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought</title><url>https://www.sciencenews.org/article/methane-warm-earth-atmosphere-radiation</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>shrubble</author><text>This is exactly what the &amp;quot;deniers&amp;quot; have been saying - that the mathematical model is not fleshed out enough, and the data is not present in sufficiently accurate quantity, for the climate models to be accurate.&lt;p&gt;This research shows that the mechanism of action was misunderstood all this time. What else hasn&amp;#x27;t been researched enough and has simplistic assumptions baked into the climate models?&lt;p&gt;That shockingly simplistic models and the barest of data don&amp;#x27;t actually have predictive power wouldn&amp;#x27;t surprise people in any other scientific discipline, but it will certainly be cause enough for this subject, to have this comment voted into oblivion....</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tzs</author><text>From models, basic physics, and observed effects scientist make forecasts about climate change, and they adjust models based on observations.&lt;p&gt;If scientist make 100 forecasts based on current models they won&amp;#x27;t all be spot on. It might turn out that say 85 of them turn out to be pretty close, 5 of them turn out to be wrong in that things actually turned out worse than the models forecast, 5 of them turned out better than the models forecast, and 5 of them didn&amp;#x27;t happen at all.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;deniers&amp;quot; look at those last 5 or 10 and dismiss the models and all conclusions from them as worthless, ignoring that the models got it mostly right and that the things they got wrong are nowhere near important enough to change the overall result. They at most just change the timeline a little.</text></comment>