And They're Off! The Democratic Candidates for 2020

[drogulus]

I think you read a different article than the one I linked to. Here are the first four paragraphs, just in case. I underlined the relevant points.

One of the scariest scenarios for near-term, disastrous sea-level rise may be off the table for now, according to a new study previewed at a recent scientific conference.

Two years ago, the glaciologists Robert DeConto and David Pollard rocked their field with a paper arguing that several massive glaciers in Antarctica were much more unstable than previously thought. Those key glaciers—which include Thwaites Glacier and Pine Island Glacier, both in the frigid continent's west—could increase global sea levels by more than three feet by 2100, the paper warned. Such a rise could destroy the homes of more than 150 million people worldwide.

They are now revisiting those results. In new work, conducted with three other prominent glaciologists, DeConto and Pollard have lowered some of their worst-case projections for the 21st century. Antarctica may only contribute about a foot of sea-level rise by 2100, they now say. This finding, reached after the team improved their own ice model, is much closer to projections made by other glaciologists.

It is a reassuring constraint placed on one of the most alarming scientific hypotheses advanced this decade. The press had described DeConto and Pollard's original work as an "ice apocalypse" spawned by a "doomsday glacier." Now their worst-case skyrocketing sea-level scenario seems extremely unlikely, at least within our own lifetimes.

The article says in plain English that there is no consensus about "how much and how fast" the sea level rises, in other words that there is no consensus about catastrophical sea level rising --- which is what many of the Left think to be the case. Actually, the whole article is about a catastrophic prediction being discarded by the very scientists who made it in the first place.

     I read it correctly. The proponents of the new prediction now question it. Because of its recency it didn't get into the consensus, so removing it doesn't change the range of estimations of the pace of change the chart shows. However, there are realistic reasons for pessimism the article mentions:

Yet even MICI's skeptics agree: Our understanding of sea-level rise is rapidly growing more ominous. In its last major report, in 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected that oceans could rise two feet by 2100 if greenhouse-gas emissions continue on a worst-case trajectory. That number will almost certainly worsen in the IPCC's next report, which is due in 2021, Pattyn said. "We are facing sea-level rise that is obviously going to be higher in the mean than what the IPCC's 'Fifth Assessment Report' showed," he said.

     In order to understand what the article say you have to differentiate between one prediction and the larger theory. The article does make this clear as the quote shows.

[Florestan]

     I read it correctly. The proponents of the new prediction now question it. Because of its recency it didn't get into the consensus

The proponents of the new, moderate prediction are exactly the same proponents of the old, catastrophic prediction. If the old one got into the consensus based on their old model, thus testifying to their impeccable scientific credentials, there is no reason to doubt that the new one will also get into the consensus, based on their new, improved model and their impeccable scientific credentials.

And besides, we are talking about a local, not a global consensus. The article says it plainly:

This finding, reached after the team improved their own ice model, is much closer to projections made by other glaciologists.

We learn two things from the above: (1) other glaciologists made different projections than the catastrophic one which we are discussing, which means there was no general consensus; (2) the new, moderate projection is much closer to those other projections, which means that a consensus is likely to be reached on the moderate, not on the catastrophic projection.

Once again: nobody is arguing the sea level is not rising or that the phenomenon is not alarming. The debate is about "how much and how fast". Yet many on the Left, and especially the mass media, present the state of the current research as having being definitely and definitively settled on the catastrophic side --- which is far from being the case, as the article clearly shows for anyone who is not ideologically biased.

[drogulus]

The proponents of the new, moderate prediction are exactly the same proponents of the old, catastrophic prediction. If the old one got into the consensus based on their old model, thus testifying to their impeccable scientific credentials, there is no reason to doubt that the new one will also get into the consensus, based on their new, improved model and their impeccable scientific credentials.

     No, the new prediction never got into the consensus, so there's nothing to remove. If you think the consensus that exists is moderate, all I can say is that compared to the next one, it might be so. The article says exactly that. That's what "growing more ominous" means.

[Florestan]

     No, the new prediction never got into the consensus

Source, please.

[drogulus]

Source, please.

     It's new. It wasn't peer reviewed. It came and went without an effect on what the chart shows, the consensus view from 2017, including the effect of Antarctic ice melting. If you're asking which source doesn't have the new hypothesis in it, it would be all of them.

     

     This is the preexisting "moderate" estimate. The next one is expected to be worse.

[Florestan]

     It's new. It wasn't peer reviewed.

So you have no source. I expected that much.

As for the theory that "it's new and not yet peer-reviewed, therefore it has been / will be rejected", I have only two comments.

1. The article is from January 2019, so it's not unreasonable to infer that the conference took place in 2018. In the field of science, one-full-year-old is hardly the equivalent of "new".

2. There was a time when the predictions around which the actual consensus is built were new and not yet peer-reviewed and probably contradicted the older consensus.

If you're asking which source doesn't have the new hypothesis in it, it would be all of them.

Unless you have read all peer-reviewed articles on sea level rise published since January, 2019* and have thus learned  that not a single one of them considered, or accepted, the theoretical model and the predictions advanced by De Conto and Pollard and alluded to in The Atlantic article, the above phrase is a strong contender --- in a very stiff competition, actually --- for the stupidest statement you've ever made.

*an impossible task even for your intellectual superpowers

[drogulus]

So you have no source. I expected that much.

     Why would I need a source for something that never happened? The chart I showed was from 2017. The article discusses a hypothesis that came and went, leaving us in the same place we were, awaiting the latest updates.

     I read the article and understood it.

There was a time when the predictions around which the actual consensus is built were new and not yet peer-reviewed and probably contradicted the older consensus.

     Undoubtedly, that's true. That's how science evolves, by a process of continual reappraisal encompassing new data. Empirical inquiry is a probabilistic enterprise.

     So, sometimes a new hypothesis alters the consensus, sometimes it doesn't. The one in the article didn't.

Other researchers find this possible future somewhat fantastic.

     That doesn't look like "getting into the consensus" to me.

[Florestan]

Arguing with you is exactly like banging my head against the Great China Wall hoping it'll crumble. I give up.

[drogulus]

Arguing with you is exactly like banging my head against the Great China Wall hoping it'll crumble. I give up.

      I could have predicted that. You're determined to avoid understanding what the article actually says, in favor of the notion that a single hypothesis among many such has altered the consensus view one way and then another way. There is no evidence other than it's like a thousand other speculations in papers that get discussed before disappearing into the void.

      It still remains possible that the MICA prediction will be confirmed at some point in the future. It may still "get into the consensus", or so the article says.

MICI remains a young idea, first proposed only six years ago. It need not be rejected simply because scientists haven't arrived at hard conclusions yet, Fricker, the Scripps glaciologist, said. Marine ice-cliff instability remains a worrying possibility: a low-chance, high-danger tail risk of climate change. It's just one of the many gambles that humanity is placing on its own future—and it's not even the only mechanism that could cause West Antarctica to collapse. Researchers are also investigating another mechanism, "marine ice-sheet instability," that could target some of the same fragile glaciers.

[Madiel]

Arguing with you is exactly like banging my head against the Great China Wall hoping it'll crumble. I give up.

Try arguing with me. The problem is I can follow everything that drogulus is saying right now and it makes perfect sense to me.

Because this is the way science actually works and why scientific literacy matters, and why the kind of reactions people have to science reporting, reacting to the fate of a single study as if it's definitive, is so damn problematic.

People who demand definitive proof on something like future climate modelling are simply showing they don't understand how science operates. We've already had a train based cartoon about this.

[Madiel]

I mean, the fact that you dispute that something a year old is "new" boggles my mind. Do you have any understanding of just how many years people spend working on an avenue of research? And how long it can take other scientists to confirm an initial result, assuming it IS confirmed?

[drogulus]

Because this is the way science actually works and why scientific literacy matters, and why the kind of reactions people have to science reporting, reacting to the fate of a single study as if it's definitive, is so damn problematic.

     I slightly disagree with the scientific literacy part. I hardly have any, yet I have no trouble understanding science articles. The article says what the title says it says:

A Terrifying Sea-Level Prediction Now Looks Far Less Likely

But experts warn that our overall picture of sea-level rise looks far scarier today than it did even five years ago.

     Plain literacy should be enough.
     

[JBS]

So can you clarify which part of the idea, exactly, you do not support?

Do you not support that carbon dioxide and some other gases have 'greenhouse', heat-trapping properties?

Do you not support that the level of carbon dioxide is increasing?

Do you support that the level is increasing, but not support that human activity is the cause of this?

Or do you not support that increasing levels of carbon dioxide will have an impact on climates?

The last, more or less.

Essentially, AGW advocates ignore the natural factors that have been driving climate change since Earth had a climate that was capable of changing, and which in and of themselves are capable of causing all the change we see to date and are likely to see in the near and medium term future.  There's a lot we don't know about those factors, but AGW advocates act as if they don't count. It's like treating the brakes as the only important part of a car.

The more honest ones admit the importance of those natural factors, admit the actual uncertainty about how important carbon emissions are, but argue that the potential impacts are so enormous that we have to act to avoid them no matter what.

Added to this is the parade of catastrophic projections which seem designed to grab headlines. Rather as if proponents want to scare people instead of actually persuading them.

[drogulus]

     It doesn't matter what the advocates or headlines say. It matters what the researchers say. They are the "more honest" ones, if that's how you view it.

     I don't think there's an honesty problem about the scientific consensus. It's a collective enterprise with the strongest error correction machinery of any human activity.

     The science will say what the headlines should be, and it won't be wrong because the headline says a catastrophe is coming. If one is coming the headline should say so.

      Enough with the advocates already, you can't impugn the science through them.

[drogulus]

     You can't do a theory about unnatural climate change that isn't soundly based in natural change. The idea is bewildering and not remotely plausible. How could there be a climate theory at all if natural change didn't feature in it?

[JBS]

     You can't do a theory about unnatural climate change that isn't soundly based in natural change. The idea is bewildering and not remotely plausible. How could there be a climate theory at all if natural change didn't feature in it?

You have it half right, at least.

We don't know enough about natural change to allow us to have a theory about unnatural climate change.

[71 dB]

To change the climate in this thread: Example of corporate media (MSNBC) stupidity:

Chuck Todd: Bloomberg Is A Very Serious Contender For President

Hah hah hahhhaaaah hah haaah!!!     

If anything, Bloomberg will take a few votes away from other corporate cadidates and doing so help Bernie and Elizabeth. The left is grateful for Bloomberg for his delusional exercise in futility.  0:)

[Karl Henning]

If shooting fish in a barrel, calling an MSNBC piece stupid, is your idea of a large evening, knock yourself out, dude!

[71 dB]

JFK argued for Medicare for All.

https://www.youtube.com/v/MQQhr9BcaaA

[drogulus]

You have it half right, at least.

We don't know enough about natural change to allow us to have a theory about unnatural climate change.

      That would have to be your conclusion, that the researchers don't have enough knowledge, a value judgment with no fact basis. Science never has enough knowledge, it uses what it has and seeks more. It won't fold up its tent because it doesn't know enough about what it studies.