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Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by mbgerring on Saturday March 11, 2023 @02:52PM (#35111975)
This is waaaaaaaaay too many words when all they want to say is “RCP8.5 is now unrealistic given progress towards climate goals, and the “business as usual” scenario should be updated in the next IPCC report”
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by jasonhansel on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:26PM (#35112323)
I get the sense that they are trying very carefully not to sound like climate change denialists, so that they won't get conflated with people much further from the scientific consensus. If they just said "the IPCC models are BS," they would likely be dismissed out of hand, at least in the scientific community.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by wizofaus on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:37PM (#35112438)
Pielke Jr is a climate-action "denialist" from a long way back, no? (claims to accept the science but then concludes there's nothing we can do about it for the foreseeable future other than adapt. This article seems to be saying "well ok some of changes we've made are making a difference to emissions, but now there's no real need to make any more...").
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by omginternets on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:54PM (#35112608)
You’ve substituted “climate change denialist” for “climate action denialist”.

Why?

Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by wizofaus on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:59PM (#35112643)
Only because I don't believe he's ever denied climate change was happening or that if it is it's not our fault, which are the usual first two phases of denialism.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by omginternets on Saturday March 11, 2023 @04:05PM (#35112694)
I don’t follow. You’re responding to a point about the author not being a climate change denialist by saying that he doesn’t think action against climate change is justified.

What point are you actually trying to make? It seems like you’re trying to equate one with the other, especially given your novel use of the word “denialism”. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I’m still unclear on what exactly you are implying.

Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by wizofaus on Sunday March 12, 2023 @03:34PM (#35125078)
I just got the impression the OP wasn't aware of Pielke Jr's background. Actually he's probably better described as a contrarian than a denialist, though he's been called out by no less than Michael Mann as belonging to the latter camp.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by omginternets on Sunday March 12, 2023 @05:00PM (#35126215)
Fair. Thanks for clarifying.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by defrost on Saturday March 11, 2023 @09:41PM (#35115868)
C'mon now, credit where credit is due:

    Roger A. Pielke Jr. is an American political scientist and professor, and was the director of the Sports Governance Center within the Department of Athletics at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder.
But yes, a long time denialist amd one frequently steadfastly wrong in the face of evidence independantly confirmed by multiple third parties of standing.

He got that from his father who was also an AGW denialist (a climate change believer, but a denier that humans play any meaningful role), albeit one with more relevant credentuals:

    Roger A. Pielke Sr. is an American meteorologist with interests in climate variability and climate change, environmental vulnerability, numerical modeling, atmospheric dynamics, land/ocean – atmosphere interactions, and large eddy/turbulent boundary layer modeling. 
FWiW it is universally acknowledged that Jnr. does have considerable expertise and knowledge in the field of water polo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_A._Pielke_Jr.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_A._Pielke

Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by CharlesW on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:04PM (#35112115)
Thank you. This seemed like it was written by a student who was saying the same thing over and over in order to satisfy a 4,500-word target, and I was wondering what I was missing.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by antegamisou on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:22PM (#35112272)
Unfortunately I feel like submissions on the site, as well as general content online, of the same type for significantly less academic subjects (this new cool web framework I'll spend 6000 words writing about) are the norm now.

And before anyone says so, no it has nothing to do with the supposed lessened attention span smartphones have caused. I'm not wasting 15 minutes of my life reading about social media recommendation algorithms [1] when not even a paragraph is dedicated to at least some technical explanation behind them.

Same goes for 30-minute YouTube videos attempting to maximize monetization for subjects whose explanation in less than 10 minutes for an average intelligence person is adequate.

Here's also an example of ideal technical writing that is sadly getting more scarce:

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6712

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35087973

Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by lumb63 on Saturday March 11, 2023 @04:02PM (#35112673)
Ever since I saw a comment on HN about low information density on the internet, I haven’t been able to unsee it. They were commenting on a YouTube video that had an 8-second bit of content but was nearly 2 minutes long. But it’s so much worse than that.

Recipes tell you how their great grandmother moved to the Americas and made the first apple pie ever. And then detail the entire history of apples and how to make the entire recipe. And then, 70% of the way down the page, right before the comment section, is what you wanted at first glance: what’s in this pie, and how long will it take me to make?

It’s everywhere.

Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by inkblotuniverse on Sunday March 12, 2023 @06:14AM (#35118447)
Check out based.cooking - just recipes, no fluff.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by 4dayworkweek4u on Monday March 13, 2023 @06:24AM (#35133654)
"It's bloat" ;)
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by drewcoo on Saturday March 11, 2023 @09:55PM (#35115960)
Makes ChatGPT seem more viable.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by croniev on Sunday March 12, 2023 @04:39AM (#35118058)
I agree that there is a lot of blabla and that is not beneficial to anyone. But sometimes things that may seem as blabla actually may not be. You say that you care about technical information and every paragraph should contain some. But there is more than just tech, and it is important to motivate why we should care about the tech topic we are reading about. This will require paragraphs here and there that deal with ethical, social, philosophical considerations, and they may seem like space-fillers, however the contents are not trivial. Maybe you know that recommendation algorithms can have negative impacts, still it cant hurt to see arguments for this position. And other people besides you may not think so, and thus it is important to present them with such positions so that there can be a discussion. Whatever "average intelligence" is supposed to mean, not everyone knows the same things I do, no matter how "smart" they are.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by omginternets on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:53PM (#35112596)
It’s interesting to understand how these RCPs came into existence, in addition to their flaws.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by heisenbit on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:10PM (#35112157)
Considering the extraordinary disruptions through Covid and Russia I would argue it is too early to make changes to fundamental trend predictions.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by cebert on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:10PM (#35112156)
> This is waaaaaaaaay too many words…

I agree, so I used ChatGPT to summarize this for us:

In the article "Climate Change Scenarios Have Lost Touch with Reality," written by Roger Pielke Jr. and Justin Ritchie and published in Issues in Science and Technology, the authors argue that the climate change scenarios used by policymakers and scientists have become disconnected from empirical reality. They suggest that this has led to an overreliance on untested and unrealistic assumptions, which in turn undermines the credibility of climate change projections and makes it more difficult to develop effective policies.

The authors note that climate change projections are typically based on a set of assumptions about future greenhouse gas emissions, which are then used to generate a range of potential climate outcomes. However, these assumptions often fail to account for a range of important factors, such as economic growth, technological innovation, and changes in land use patterns, which can have a significant impact on emissions and climate outcomes.

Pielke and Ritchie argue that policymakers and scientists need to take a more pragmatic and evidence-based approach to climate change projections, one that is grounded in real-world data and incorporates a wider range of factors. They suggest that this could involve developing more diverse and flexible scenarios that are better able to capture the complexity and uncertainty of the real world.

Overall, the authors stress the importance of ensuring that climate change policies are based on realistic and evidence-based projections, rather than relying on overly simplistic or unrealistic assumptions. They argue that this will require a fundamental rethinking of the way that climate change scenarios are developed and used, and a greater emphasis on collaboration and dialogue between policymakers, scientists, and other stakeholders.

Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by anigbrowl on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:19PM (#35112252)
Please don't. Anyone on HN who wants a ChatGPT summary can make one themselves; when I read a person's post I want to know what that person has to say about a topic, not what they can produce with a machine. It's the same reason we don't need comments along the lines of 'I used a spell checker to identify the typos in your comment' or consisting of tables generated in MS Excel.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by numinary1 on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:33PM (#35112408)
Still upset about Wikipedia too?
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by wizzwizz4 on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:43PM (#35112497)
Wikipedia is authored and curated by people who, by and large, know what they're talking about. When they make things up, it's verified and corrected by other people, usually within the decade.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by krainboltgreene on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:12PM (#35112173)
Kind of a waste, since I can't verify if this actually is a summary with confidence.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by cebert on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:17PM (#35112225)
Summarization is one the areas ChatGPT is most reliable. I’ve been using it frequently for research and work and antidotally found it to be quite reliable and helpful.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by arrosenberg on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:29PM (#35112366)
I'm glad you are no longer feeling poisoned!
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by AstixAndBelix on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:14PM (#35112195)
And you can with GP? GPT is incredibly good at summarizing, it doesn't make stuff up in those cases
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by Retric on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:22PM (#35112275)
Any idea how that works with its token limit?
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by tunesmith on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:22PM (#35112281)
That summary doesn't cover whether the writers think the baseline scenarios are too rosy or too dire.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by protastus on Saturday March 11, 2023 @03:17PM (#35112229)
The article is so generic and abstract that even the summary is verbose.
Re:How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch with Reality by randomluck040 on Saturday March 11, 2023 @04:12PM (#35112755)
Edited: the RCP8.5 seems to be the most fitting regarding historical data. There are also other RCPs for other scenarios as well.