Climate Scientist responds to Sabine Hossenfelder on Climate Sensitivity

"Wow Adam what an amazing video, but where's the message from your sponsor??" – – Great question! I'm not interested in selling you things you don't need, so I don't activate ads or have product placements. Videos like this one are made entirely with the support of incredible patrons like Jannick over on patreon. Join the team of CliMates over here: https://www.patreon.com/ClimateAdam

The key point Sabine is making here is not "the hot models are correct", but rather: "there is more reason for doubt the conclusion the hot models are incorrect is… correct". And when we are talking about a topic where the consequences of underestimating the risk are potentially catastrophic, this is not just an academic debate. Even a small probability the hot models are correct is worth paying a lot of attention to. This is a point made very well by Taleb: even small probabilities for catastrophic outcomes need to be taken much more seriously than small probabilities of middling outcomes.

Sabine has a history of sensationalist BS and "hot takes" on subjects outside her personal field of expertise and she's long since lost any credibility with me. She's repeatedly taken public stances on subjects she has not only no expertise on, but also no expertise to tell how crackpot her scriptwriters for the subject are, and as a result she's been blatantly wrong on a number of topics, and utterly ignorant of the nuances of the positions she's advocating for (or seemingly aware that she IS advocating for a controversial stance sometimes). Her response to being called out on these things is inevitably confrontational and ultimately resorts to an appeal to authority of "I'm the science expert here, I know good and bad science when I see it, me smart, you stupid".

Carbon capture doesn't work today, and it will not work tomorrow. Sure, keep working on it lest we have a breakthrough that makes it actually viable, but as it is, there are no signs that carbon capture will be even the tiniest part of the solution. It doesn't scale even in hypothetical ideal conditions. The only way to get rid of CO2 in the atmosphere is to not emit it to begin with.

Despite being publicly a very active climate activist, here is what James Hansen's 2002 paper says about models and sensitivity:
"The bottom line is that, although there has been some narrowing of the range of climate sensitivities that emerge
from realistic models [Del Genio and Wolf, 2000], models still can be made to yield a wide range of sensitivities by altering model parameterizations."
IOW, modellers can produce whatever climate sensitivity they wish by tweaking these poorly constrained "parameters". The idea that this is all based on "basic physics" is a lie. The key processes such as evaporation, advection and cloud formation are NOT based on known laws of physics, they "tumed" to whatever the model team thinks they "should" be. Despite the billions of dollars and all the super computers, it all comes down to guessing reasonable values which give a result which fits you expectations or political agenda.

This guy is vaguely annoying he’s too chirpy and cheerful for a start but when he keeps saying so what Sabina is saying I’m sorry I don’t need to be patronized. I know what she’s saying because I listen to the bloody video myself!!!
A video is very straightforward and easy to understand and does not require the interpretation of someone who says he has a PhD from God knows where.
I do not care about his PhD. I care about my relationship between the video I watched and my capacity as an intellect to understand it without having an interlocutor.
I thought he was going to add something, but he’s actually added nothing. Sadly, YouTube is full of this sort of thing.
Sabin point is a very simple one and it is that the behavior of clouds, which suggest a higher sensitivity at an equilibrium point for a given level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, appears to offer a much greater predictor of weather than the use of the behavior of clouds, which is previously been used to support a lower level of climate sensitivity for the same level of carbon dioxide present in atmosphere.
Obviously, it is not proof tends to support the data and the assertions based on the data that will being widely discussed 15 or so years ago, and which were panned by most climate scientists, who had tenured professor ships for whatever reason they chose to pan them.
Also, the use of ‘scary’ is rather silly as a word here. In days gone by we would’ve used that as a descriptor when speaking to children and not to adults but now anything that is not planned straightforward and in no way threatening you at all is called ‘scary’
Very useful in the therapeutic state, where everyone is treated as a thin skinned infant to be handled with kid gloves.
Please do better next time, but I do doubt that I will be watching you

I believe that climate change is a real issue, but man I despise those kids throwing soup at art or creating a mess on a highway. Most people already have problems in their day to day lives to deal with that sh|t. Its so narcissistic and stupid. "Civil Disobedience" is just making things worse, people will never have empathy with that kind of behavior.

To estimate climate sensitivity, I would use theoretical and computer models, meteorological and ice core measurements, and green nail polish.

I can tell you one thing, civil disobedience like this, that first and foremost inconveniences the normal people will basically only do harm to the cause. I resent people that waste their energy and time, and MY energy and time with useless non constructive actions like that. I haven't met a single person in favor of it that hasn't been completely sold on the extremist premise to begin with. If these people were working on actionable solutions rather than virtue signaling and harming the economy we could shave a few years of our climate goals. But they prefer to hurt the economy, which will reduce free resources that could be allocated to climate change and waste their own time which reduces productivity.

Nah man, I'm not watching another 18 minute long video.

We were exiting the Mini Ice Age about 140-150 years ago. Of course the planet is warming. It is still cooler than 600 BC or the Medieval period. Between the sun, its phases, the carbon dioxide produced by the planet (greener earth is, more CO2 naturally produced), variation in orbit and position of earth, earth will warm and cool without the existence of man. We should be more worried about that big rock that may be kissing earth in the 2060s. Something about life ending, but no one wants to be an alarmist about that, but global warming is an OK subject.  

BTW, wasn’t all that long ago – earth time – that earth had 4000ppm CO2 and yet here we are in an unusually temperate period of earth’s history of 410ppm, and scientists comparing earth to Venus with its 96.5% CO2 atmosphere. Oh joy.

Thanks for some reasonableness. Here in the USA we experience protests and activism to raise awareness on issues where the underlying assumptions are provably false. I go about wearing a helmet to protect me from the sky falling in (according to Sabine "Henny Penny"). I guess I won't live long enough to see the Statue of Liberty half under water, nor to see the seas boil in 300 years according to Sabina's channel.

Some climate-related actions are happening too often and too intensely.

I understand that a professional climatologist needs to understand these models. However, we laypeople have a different role, and I think prudence should be part of it. I see no comment in the video about how prudence should help guide the viewer. Related to prudence are statistics, and the probability of certain outcomes. Both prudence and judgements about probability are subjective and I'd trust the subjective judgement of the majority of climatologists over the subjectivity of the layperson.

Now let's get even more practical and notice that, as far as I can tell, the actual outcomes on temperatures and sea level have been consistently worse than predicted. This fact must then figure in how prudent we want to be, and it might affect what we'd judge the probability of which climatologists have more accurate predictions over others. Finally, when you consider the fact of the tremendous benefits green energy generation and use has over fossil fuels regarding human health and environmental destruction, why would anyone want to make the extremely imprudent claim that since these models aren't exact we have no real need to eliminate fossil fuels?

Bottom line, let's role up our sleeves and make the green energy transition as fast as possible. It will undoubtedly improve human health, the health of ecosystems; it's prudent, and it's probably the best thing to do. To me it's a no-brainer and I don't think we need any models to tell us that.

It's so great to get all the extra context and subtleties added to Sabine's video. What an amazing example of science communication, accessible but not dumbed down at all. Thanks for your service Adam!

So, basically one model is likely to be more predictive than all the others but we don't know which one. That's not very reassuring!

2.9-3.6 degrees Celsius with a K?

Charlatans and gaslighters like Michael Mann have been totally exposed, their deception and lies exposed by their own emails being released.. instead of answering the questions these emails raised they took the absurd position that they would not dignify stolen emails? So Mann goes about his climate alarmist charade, writes copious articles that are published in mainstream magazines and trade journals (I stopped reading Scientific American after the umpteenth time they featured this outright deceiver's articles) he does so as if he has never been unmasked and his motivations exposed.

I find it extremly arrogant to think that we as a species and civilisation that exists for like, what? 5000 years? And in general since like 200,000 years? And our POTENTIAL impact on the climate of the Earth since what? 200 years? How old is the earth? 4.54 billion years? 200 years not even a blink of an eye worth of time compared to the lifetime of Earth. Lets say we have an negative impact on climate since 2000 years, besides the fact that we as a species exist, which cant be changed somehow.

2000 years = 0,00004405% of the Earths lifetime…. let that sink in first, before you people cry about that WE destroy the planet or whatever. Planet Earth will still exist when we will be long gone as a species. Also, to think that Earth wouldnt have these climate changes without us, is extremly arrogant in my eyes.

There's too much fudging in the paleoclimate data. CO2 sensitivity from the past 150 years is pretty low, about 0.8 degrees C, probably because the data is too hard to hide. Also, those models are completely crammed full of fudge factors.

While I respect ClimateAdam's attempt at being reasonable, it's a little like averaging Astrology and Astronomy together to find out what is most likely true. Those sources of information do not have equivalent credibility! Data obtained by direct measurement of physical quantities like temperature deserves the most respect.

Good job dismissing all her major points and editing out their context. Also, compiling all the evidence we have is obviously not the best course of action if some of that evidence has been gathered through erroneous processes, which is the central proposition of Sabine's video.

Hmmm…
Suppose I can't blame you too awfully much for attempting to bump up your subscription base on Sabine Hossenfelder's coattails, so to speak. Pretty sure she wouldn't mind, either. 😊