In a recent article for NPR, Jennifer Ludden profiles several people who have “reconsidered” their procreative plans due to the environmental disaster they believe is rapidly approaching. Chief among her subjects is Berman Institute of Bioethics philosopher Travis Reader, who talked his wife out of her lifelong desire for a big family based on the belief that climate change will reduce the earth to an uninhabitable hellhole as early as 2036.
One wonders how his wife will feel in 2036 if the climate of the planet is not much different than it is today. Certainly there is no evidence to suggest such an apocalypse is approaching. Only the climate models which can’t model reality make such predictions.
The “better” models Boyer doesn’t cite are still tragic failures: they not only fail on global scales, but on regional, local, short term[1] [2], polar[3], and upper tropospheric scales[4] [5]too. They fail on humidity[6], rainfall[7], drought[8] and they fail on clouds[9].
But models than don’t model reality can lead one to make decisions that later turn out to be wrong.
As a philosopher he should have known.
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