Are you really equating daily weather predictions with meteorological science? That's like saying "they don't know what the next 3 coin flips are going to be but they know half of the next 10,000 will be tails"
That's not exactly true, it seems. Forecasts become less accurate the further out you go, unlike coin flips.
Weather forecasts are generally accurate about 90% of the time for a five-day forecast and around 80% for a seven-day forecast. Forecasts beyond ten days are only correct about half the time.
You can’t predict a coin flip because it is random. However, we have an accurate understanding of the random process producing coin flips and therefore, we can make accurate predictions about large quantities of flips.
Weather may or may not be random. It could be entirely deterministic for all we know. However, we lack the ability to fully model all the factors that contribute to weather and therefore our predictions are inaccurate.
Now let’s consider long term climate predications. Do you think these predictions are more like coin flips, where we have an extremely accurate model of the process, or more like weather, where unknown unknowns have outsized impact on accuracy?
That’s not to say climate change isn’t real, but your analogy doesn’t make sense.
All responses are so focused on exact predictions. We have high certainty that 50% of flips will be tails over long enough timespan. We don't know what any single flip will be. Climate science works the same way. But climate is not a coin, let's say it's a multisided die and it appears the sides are changing sizes as we compare data year over year.
> more like weather, where unknown unknowns have outsized impact on accuracy
"Unknown unknowns" aren't the reason weather forecasts are inaccurate.
Weather is path-dependent. Small changes to starting conditions or minor differences between modeled and actual conditions shortly after the simulation begins lead to large differences by the end of the simulation. Errors propagate and magnify.
blell|5 days ago
baueric|5 days ago
trimethylpurine|5 days ago
Weather forecasts are generally accurate about 90% of the time for a five-day forecast and around 80% for a seven-day forecast. Forecasts beyond ten days are only correct about half the time.
triceratops|5 days ago
baueric|5 days ago
hippo22|5 days ago
Weather may or may not be random. It could be entirely deterministic for all we know. However, we lack the ability to fully model all the factors that contribute to weather and therefore our predictions are inaccurate.
Now let’s consider long term climate predications. Do you think these predictions are more like coin flips, where we have an extremely accurate model of the process, or more like weather, where unknown unknowns have outsized impact on accuracy?
That’s not to say climate change isn’t real, but your analogy doesn’t make sense.
baueric|5 days ago
triceratops|5 days ago
"Unknown unknowns" aren't the reason weather forecasts are inaccurate.
Weather is path-dependent. Small changes to starting conditions or minor differences between modeled and actual conditions shortly after the simulation begins lead to large differences by the end of the simulation. Errors propagate and magnify.
Over large time periods the errors average out.