I mean... you really shouldn't be using AI to tell you about things like climate change. That should go without saying. AI models are easily manipulated.
NASA has a detailed report on Milankovitch Cycles, and why they are not related to the earth's current warming:
https://science.nasa.gov/science-re...l-cycles-cant-explain-earths-current-warming/
Other reputable sources also available with the same information.
If you want to understand stuff, go to the source.
That's the point:
The prompt was not specificaly about natural or man-made climate change.
It was about reoccurring glacial melting and pole melting events.
As far as I understand today, it is factually misleading to differentiate between man-made climate change and natural climate change. It's the same feedback loop so logic allows for no differentiation. Milankovic cycles are the sole trigger for glacial and pole melting. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It naturally occurs in reservoirs such as oceans and it affects the feedback loop. CO2 produced by humans increases the pace at which glaciers and poles are melting, but it does not cause it, nor will zero CO2 emissions prevent the melting of poles and glaciers. As a matter of fact, melted glaciers and poles are the common state for planet Earth, since periods of warmth with melted poles are longer than periods of cold with frozen poles.
ChatGPT often doesn't name the Milankovic Cycles as the trigger for climate change on Earth. Which allows for no factually correct answers and makes no sense from a logical perspective, since it names CO2 as the trigger for the greenhouse effect.
The dominant greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere is H2O (water vapor). It is estimated that H2O is responsible for 60-70% of the greenhouse effect, whereas CO2 is responsible for 20-30%. Other gases play a minor role. CO2 is unique in this context, though. An effect of the Claus-Clapeyron relation describes that the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is directly related to temperature, since warmer air can hold more humidity. H2O in its gas form is volatile, while CO2 is long-lived. In this feedback loop, CO2 defines the base level of warming while H2O acts as a booster.
As you can see, it makes no sense to name CO2, but to leave out the Milankovic Cycles. It is misleading.
You can copy paste this reasoning into ChatGPT. I did, and while GPT acknowledged the facts, it immediately started the reframing rhetorics:
"While these cycles initiate changes in Earth's climate, they do so by altering the distribution and intensity of solar radiation. However, they cannot explain the recent, rapid warming we observe today. The feedback loops involving greenhouse gases amplify the initial changes triggered by Milankovitch Cycles."
Yeah, no shit. That's exactly what I wrote. And GPT does that throughout the entire answer. It picks a small part of my input, says it doesn't paint whole picture, and continues to add other parts of my input.
So I told GPT that it's using reframing rhetorics for no reason, since the prompt never dismissed the influence the effect of human CO2 emissions on Earth's climate. It said sorry and wrote a more nuanced answer that is actually helpful.
So after "re-configuring" the sensitive topic trigger, I asked GPT about the causes of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA). Those are fascinating events since MWP (900-1300 AD) had temperatures rising in Europe, Greenland and the North Atlantic regions at a quicker pace than we see today. Also, the temperatures in these regions were higher than today. So GPT explained everything to me in detail, including the fact that MWP was a regional event. So I said that temperatures in equatorial regions are stable throughout the millennia and then I asked why the phenomenon is global today. And that's where it fucked up. GPT admitted that equatorial regions are stable because they receive near-constant solar radiation all the time and have water cycles with minimal variability which creates a stabilizing feedback mechanisms. But it also claimed that today, temperatures are rising globally compared to MWP even in equatorial regions. Which is factually false. So I gave it a second chance and asked if we're talking about a global average temperature that is rising while equatorial temperatures remains stable and he says "Yes, that's correct!".
So as you can see, it's impossible to have an insightful talk about climate change with ChatGPT, since OpenAI created very strict boundaries for this topic. The user has to fight for every inch of progress within the chat in order to gain useful insights. That's frustrating.
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