A recent article by the Daily Mail, titled “Global warming is spiralling out of control: Earth could warm by a whopping 7°C by 2200, scientists predict – leading to flooding, famine, and catastrophic heatwaves,” presents this alarming claim based on a computer model. The scientists who developed the model as well as the Daily Mail are guilty of overstating the model’s predictions, its use, and burying the lede that this alarming outcome is very unlikely even in the modelled universe.
The study was conducted by scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) – which due to the track record of the organization having a propensity for predicting dire but improbable climate scenarios, already indicates that the outcome of the model study is hardly unbiased. The Daily Mail reports the study says the planet “could warm by a whopping 7°C (12.6°F) by 2200 even if CO2 emissions are moderate[.]”
The scientists “used their own newly developed computer model, called CLIMBER-X, to simulate future global warming scenarios,” which involves “key” earth processes, and incorporates “carbon cycle feedback loops’ – where one change to the climate amplifies another,” which Daily Mail says are “being overlooked.”
It is nonsense that so-called feedback loops are being overlooked. They aren’t even being overlooked in climate modelling; Climate Realism has responded to plenty of mainstream media articles commenting on the same types of claims from climate scientists, here, here, and here, for instance.
In the first link above, meteorologist Anthony Watts discusses the exact feedbacks the Daily Mail article highlights in 2023, and he notes that even then, these were not new claims. Watts explained:
The list of claimed climate feedback loops include many which have been shown to be non-problems, such ocean circulation, which science can’t even decide whether it is increasing or decreasing in any given decade. Another is sea level rise, which despite wild claims of acceleration, is actually unchanged and steady since 1850. Acceleration is disproved by actual data, and nothing more than an artifact of measurements from different satellite data being combined. The authors also ignore existing data on wildfires to claim that climate change is causing them to be more frequent or severe. The available data clearly refutes this claim.
Most of the article presents the model’s outputs as though they are likely, but buried further down is the admission that their less alarming scenarios show “there’s a 10 per cent chance that Earth will still warm by 3°C (5.4°F) by 2200 even if emissions begin to decline now.” Ten percent is not likely, yet it is framed by Daily Mail as though it is alarming and deserving of immediate civilization-level changes.
Climate modelling itself has continued to run into major problems as the models increase in complexity. As the Wall Street Journal reported in 2022, covered by H. Sterling Burnett at Climate Realism, as models have become more complex, and as the PIK scientists hail as an achievement in their own model, they have actually become less accurate at predicting global temperature change. This may sound counterintuitive, but when one considers the fact that more elements in the model means more assumptions that could be incorrect or incomplete, it begins to make sense. Scientists simply do not have a good enough understanding of how different systems interact in the atmospheric environment to be able to accurately model how they will behave – especially at a global scale over long timelines– in the future.
One should always be suspicious when an extreme climate claim is presented using computer modelling, especially when it is presented as if it were empirical evidence of a problem, and importantly, when the supposed dire results are set to occur long after the period of time where the scientists making these irresponsible claims can be held to account for fearmongering. The Daily Mail is sensationalizing the PIK scientists’ study, but apparently so are the scientists, who should know better. Both are attempting to mislead and frighten the public into accepting their preferred government action on climate.
