this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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The memes of the climate
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The climate of the memes of the climate!
Planet is on fire!
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Not entirely true,
Many of the outcomes have been worse than predicted. We're hitting milestones like 1.5°C decades ahead of when we were estimated to. The AMOC is on the verge of collapse, ice is melting faster, etc. So I wouldn't say "exactly" what they predicted came true, it's actually worse than predicted on average.
That's very true. But I think that stems in part from the fact that some of the most prominent climate science (such as the IPCC report) features the consensus of many scientists. All climate scientists will agree on low estimates that we are very sure of. But there have been some models predicting faster increases of global temperatures than we have seen. If we would look at the average of scientific claims instead of the consensus, we might be more close to the truth.
Nevertheless, science has been pretty right overall. Of course, not exactly right, but that wouldn't fit in a meme.
I think another large part of it is that we can't take into account the actual emissions before they happen. In some cases emissions have increased rather than decreased.
We can estimate how much methane will be released by thawing permafrost but we can't know for sure until it happens, we can estimate how much CO2 will be absorbed and released by seawater every year, but that can change based on environmental factors and saturation.
I also wonder how much pressure is put on climate scientists by governments to under report or misrepresent findings.