As the Ars article makes it clear, the predicted range of temperature change was extremely wide, 0.35 to 0.7 degrees by now even if you allow for the re-scaling to a shorter time period, yet actual change was at the very lowest point of that uncertainty interval.
That by itself doesn't tell us that they understand the climate though. Remember that previously they were extrapolating a cooling trend into an ice age. Anyone can extrapolate a linear trend forward on a graph into a disaster zone territory, but that doesn't imply real understanding.
It’s not news that scientific consensus becomes more precise over time. The point was simply that scientists have a good track record of making accurate predictions decades out, which is quite the contrast of how deniers have flitted from wrong prediction to wrong prediction. Don’t feel bad for them, however — they get paid a lot better than climate scientists do and are probably old enough to miss out on the worst of it.
It got less precise. Look at the range of ECS estimates. They are now wider than they ever were. It's quite the controversy. Even guys like Hausfather and Schmidt are sounding the red alert over it.
Do you have any examples you could point to? Most of their public comments on the topic of this thread look like this, noting the accuracy of predictions:
If so, the key point is that neither the IPCC nor NASA GISS reports are affected because they weight the models based on their accuracy predicting the past. This looks like the normal scientific process at work: ¼ of models are overly sensitive to CO2, careful validation caught it, and the major reports don’t have that problem because that review process worked. We also know that this is an increasing challenge human efforts do have a significant impact and if emissions go down that’ll be used by critics as proof that earlier predictions were wrong.
From a policy perspective, it’s also worth noting that there’s no credible reason to think warming will halt or reverse. At this point we have roughly half a century of models accurately predicting that we will have a big problem unless we stop polluting and we know the costs of the unavoidable warming are already measured in trillions. Trying to reduce error bars is always good but at this point it’s clear that acting seriously now will save many lives and enormous sums of money compared to letting the fossil fuel companies continue to encourage more rounds of “debate” on whether the problem is real.
>> the key point is that neither the IPCC nor NASA GISS reports are affected
You: scientific consensus got more precise over time.
Me: it got less precise over time and there's no consensus on the right answer for a core variable.
You: if you drop models you "know" are wrong then it's got more precise!
That isn't a rebuttal it's a confirmation. The models have been getting less precise about core variables over time and they don't know why. IPCC try to cover this up to some extent by downweighting models they "know" are wrong, but as the article you cite says, most climatologists don't do this and continue to act as if all models are equally correct even though they're diverging and so that can't be true. Result: not only is there no consensus on ECS but there's not even any consensus on what to do about its divergence. No precision, no consensus.
>> there’s no credible reason to think warming will halt or reverse
Temperature trends have halted or reversed even in just the last few decades so that can't be true, although climatologists like to go back and edit the record to try and remove these embarrassing episodes. See: global cooling becoming global warming, and "the pause" e.g.
"Issues related to the pause of global warming in the last decade are reviewed. It is indicated that: (1) The decade of 1999–2008 is still the warmest of the last 30 years, though the global temperature increment is near zero; "
From my perspective, trying multiple things, testing them, and picking the ones which had the best predictive values seems exactly like the scientific process working as intended. ¾ of the models did not have this problem, after all. Remember, science isn’t the process of assuming you’re right but rather testing your ideas harshly and learning from the faults you discover. Given half a century of reliable predictions, I again argue that they have sufficient predictive value even if it makes science deniers uncomfortable to acknowledge their personal contributions have only been towards making the world worst.
Global cooling was never a mainstream position and the people hyping it since the mid-1970s have intentionally been lying to you.
Similarly, there was not a reversal of warming. Weather data and sources are noisy, and changing sensor artifacts introduce sampling biases, but the trend is clear and numerous follow up papers found that claim to be wishful thinking:
After witnessing and taking part in many such debates also around COVID, it's become apparent that a lot of people don't really understand the scientific process. What you've given here is a good example. Recap: study, hypothesize, predict, observe, validate, announce. This is the process meant to be followed by a person or team as part of being a scientist. Ordering matters!
1. You aren't allowed to go around announcing you fully understand the mechanism at play until you have successfully validated your hypothesis via enough correct predictions being generated by it.
2. You aren't allowed to team up with others, make every possible prediction and then when one of them ends up right by chance, claim credit for the entire group. That's the same thing as if a single person made dozens of predictions and then cherry-picked one to claim understanding.
3. You aren't allowed to change the data to fit the theory. You have to derive the theory from the data.
Climatologists and really quite a few other fields don't work this way. Because they make predictions with a 20 year horizon but want fame, glory and funding before then, they make an endless series of predictions that can't be validated until the end of their career, and then immediately skip to the announce stage. They do it over and over. When after a decade or two it becomes clear their predictions were wrong, they point at predictions they made last year - not yet validated - announce them as correct and state that their earlier incorrectness was just science at work. Or they decide it must be evidence of an error with the data and go fishing for reasons to change/ignore it. There's endless examples of this, and Climategate revealed not only them doing it but literally stating to their colleagues they were going to do it because otherwise the skeptics would win, and far from scientists embracing skeptical review they actually turned out to hate it and call it things like "Lord Voldemort".
Re: global cooling. The Ars article wriggles around and omits a lot of relevant evidence, but I find actually the top comment to be the clearest example of how it all goes wrong. It's by a climatologist who worked on modelling during the 70s. He says things like:
- "I found him [Schneider] to be an excellent scientist, but also a political creature, and thus a funding magnet."
i.e. so-called "excellent scientists" were corrupted by a desire for political influence and money, exactly what skeptics argue today
- "various senators wanted to show off these models to prove they were worthy of the huge federal funds to build them."
i.e. the science became a circular process of justifying prior funding grants, exactly what skeptics argue today.
- "the early models were pioneering efforts on overburdened (slow) computers, so oceans were ignored"
i.e. the models were known to be inaccurate but presented to the public anyway, exactly what skeptics argue today.
- "The answer we got was predictable: Meh, can't tell. But the additional funding sure helped."
i.e. politicians weren't told the models were useless and so the money kept flowing, exactly what skeptics argue today.
- "For a while we didn't know for sure. We simply laughed at the simplistic articles that appeared in the press"
And finally, another lie. Why do climatologists lie so fucking much, all the time? This guy claims he worked directly with Stephen Schneider who, apparently, was one of those who "didn't know for sure" and they "simply laughed" at the "simplistic articles". So why did he write a whole book about global cooling?
If they were "simply laughing" at the press, why was he giving interviews to the New York Times to tell them all about the threat of global cooling? Why did he tell them that this was a consensus position and why, when apparently they didn't know and the models didn't really work, did none of these people who were being mischaracterized stop laughing for a second and object?
"they [climatologists] are predicting greater fluctuations, and a cooling trend for the northern hemisphere [...] the news for the future is not all good. The climate is going to get unreliable. It is going to get cold. Harvest failures and regional famines will be more frequent"
But it's a rhetorical question. We know why the press reported these views as the consensus of all climatologists, it's because none of them actually objected to it. They didn't object for the same reason they don't do that today: they love presenting a united front, and threatening that would have endangered their prestige and funding, which they care about much more than truth. Nothing has changed and nor will it until we stop listening to these people.
That by itself doesn't tell us that they understand the climate though. Remember that previously they were extrapolating a cooling trend into an ice age. Anyone can extrapolate a linear trend forward on a graph into a disaster zone territory, but that doesn't imply real understanding.