Pedro Domingos

Why not have a @Kaggle competition to predict global temperature? Then we'll see how good those climate models really are.

1) Pedro, I was also skeptical of global temp. forecasts/models so I did some basic causal/statistical analysis of annual temp data as related to various forcings. Turns out yeah, anthropogenic factors had the major causal impact in the last 150 yrs https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/2372/ …

2) It seems true that many recent complex climate models are overfit, and that simpler climate models from the 70s and 80s are often more accurately predictive. However, the basic gist of the IPCC message on climate seems to hold up to statistical scrutiny regardless.

3) I would add I am not a climate-change alarmist. I think human society will survive human-caused global temperature increase just fine. A huge number of other species will likely be extincted though, which troubles me morally and aesthetically.

4) Of course there have been other mass species extinction events in Terran history, but we were not around then and did not have the opportunity to halt or palliate them....

5) We do have the coming outburst of amazing digital and quantum-computer-based Alife that will follow the Singularity, to balance against the coming anthropogenic-climate-change-induced mass species-cide... but still ... it's avoidable atrocity...