  >Despite decades of research and sophisticated computational climate modeling, the magnitude and pace of these events have surprised scientists, raising questions about how well current climate projections capture risk.

"Yet again, worse than we predicted."

When this always-revise-in-one-direction phenomenon happened with the electron charge, it was considered a priori "proof" that scientists were fudging their data to match expectations. The Millikan Oil Drop Experiment is still studied in fundamentals of science class.[0]

If climate scientists are constantly revising their predictions upward, then this is equally "proof" that climate scientists are under pressure to revise their estimates downward. Far from being "alarmist," such terms are actually cudgels used to discourage climate scientists from making their data look too bad.

The result is the predictable fudging of climate data to look better than it really is.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment#Millikan's...

▲ SV_BubbleTime 2 hours ago | parent [-]

What about the possibility that the models so far have always been wrong and if they wrong in the wrong direction you would never hear about them?

	▲	schiffern an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Precisely, it's just a selection effect. There's always uncertainty, and scientists are heavily incentivized to "prune" models that show large effect sizes. The result is the observed systematic underestimations, punctuated by (suspiciously monotonic) upward revisions any time the new data comes out.