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Re:Trees Could Change the Climate More Than Scientists Thought by DennisP on Sunday October 14, 2018 @05:29PM (#18215485)
The science of climate change doesn't only depend on computer models. The broad strokes just rest on geologic history, along with some basic physics. The models are just to fill in the details.
Re:Trees Could Change the Climate More Than Scientists Thought by pdonis on Sunday October 14, 2018 @05:57PM (#18215690)
> The science of climate change doesn't only depend on computer models.

The predictions of doom that are driving the public policy changes being demanded by climate change alarmists do. And the models are wrong.

Re:Trees Could Change the Climate More Than Scientists Thought by nostrebored on Sunday October 14, 2018 @05:56PM (#18215679)
The field of climate science is entirely underpinned by models...
Re:Trees Could Change the Climate More Than Scientists Thought by DennisP on Monday October 15, 2018 @08:20AM (#18219078)
Read Hansen's book sometime. There's plenty of direct geological evidence that puts a pretty good bound on climate sensitivity, without depending on computer models at all.

This is because the climate has gone through major changes before, and we can see how much of an initial push it took, and what happened afterwards.

Re:Trees Could Change the Climate More Than Scientists Thought by nostrebored on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @07:11AM (#18237928)
I'll check it out, but the second portion of your comment seems questionable.

Trending to a local minimum or maximum in modeling can be caused by small changes at certain points dependent on time and be completely negligible at other points. Without understanding the model: 1. We can't even pretend to understand causality 2. We can't infer the complex state at an individual time or even the magnitude of a push.

Re:Trees Could Change the Climate More Than Scientists Thought by pdonis on Sunday October 14, 2018 @06:08PM (#18215753)
> The field of climate science is entirely underpinned by models...

This is not correct. There is plenty of data in climate science. There just isn't a good enough understanding of the underlying mechanisms to make predictions that are accurate enough to drive multi-trillion-dollar public policy decisions.

Re:Trees Could Change the Climate More Than Scientists Thought by nostrebored on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @07:05AM (#18237899)
That's the implication that I was going for. As someone who's studied data science and modeling I agree with this wholeheartedly.
Re:Trees Could Change the Climate More Than Scientists Thought by chiefalchemist on Sunday October 14, 2018 @05:46PM (#18215601)
Yes. I agree. Where we disagree is I don't see leaving out data / data source as a viable means to filling in the gaps.