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Comment by cconcepts | Hacker News Reader

I saw a cartoon of congress where someone is standing up and saying "Wait! What if this is all a hoax and we're building a better world for nothing!?"

Or words to that effect.

Seems to be the only argument that has had any impact on the deniers that I've had discussions with.

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Capping CO2 comes at an energy cost. If it were true that CO2 had no impact on the environment, we would be putting an undue burden on developing countries and low-income people in general. Even if the richer countries subsidize the poorer countries, that's money that could be spent towards other research.

Nearly every person who argues against global warming research is doing it because of this. They think we are making sacrifices for no purpose. If eliminating CO2 emissions came at no cost, there would be almost no debate at all because the majority of the people who didn't believe in the effects of CO2 wouldn't care.

Not sure what you mean by "Capping"; if you mean "reducing" (CO2 emissions) then I'd disagree: my choice to ride a bike to work rather than drive comes at an energy savings not cost. Not that it matter anyways, folks will re-invest that savings on some garbage on Amazon that they'll have shipped same-day on prime.

>Not sure what you mean by "Capping";

Regulatory limits on CO2 emissions - "cap and trade".

>my choice to ride a bike to work rather than drive comes at an energy savings not cost.

Most people in the US cannot ride their bike to work, and it's not because they are overweight. About half the people commute > 10 miles, which is not reasonable for a daily bike commute in <40F weather, and even when it's warmer that's a miserable amount of time to be forced to commute every day. This also ignores people that need to pickup/dropoff kids.

So people will not choose to give up driving because the alternatives suck. It would have to be forced. Otherwise they would be riding their bikes now.

I know most can't do it but this is essentially the argument for higher density communities, enabling walking/riding to go to work and run errands. It is the reason why NYC's carbon footprint is so small (and conversely why the suburbs surrounding NYC have such a large CO2 footprint).

Most of the population can't afford to live in high density cities - at least not at the cost in the US to build high density. Compare the cost of a 2/3 bedroom apartment in NYC (to house the average family size) to the average income in the US.

> my choice to ride a bike to work rather than drive comes at an energy savings not cost

Presumably your time is worth money. There's your cost. Not that a car is costless, of course!

I live in NYC so riding a bike is cheaper wrt time than driving a car. It also doubles as exercise whereas driving doubles as rage propellant.

This is just explaining why someone might choose to reject any evidence, not what would change your mind. Is there no evidence that if observed would convince you climate change was human caused?

Please read the comment I replied to. I was pointing out that the underlying premise of that cartoon is silly and it would have little impact on skeptics because it completely misses the point.

>not what would change your mind.

I didn't say I was denying global warming. I was pointing out the strawman the cartoon builds up and then ridicules.

If you have CO2 your burned something. And I doubt is was pure carbon you burned so your burned more. So now we have pollution. Cutting CO2 also cuts on pollution.

That's fine, but if CO2 didn't cause problems and we wanted to reduce pollution, do it directly, not indirectly because indirect regulation almost always leads to screwed up incentives. (e.g. finding something that produces almost no CO2 as a side effect but tons of other pollutants).

It's like banning Coca-Cola to reduce cavities so everyone just switches to Pepsi.

A hypothesis has been put forward (no, not that CO2 has a warming effect: that's physical fact. It's the extent of that that is in question): no mathematical function has been found to fit the observed data. Fact! Conclusion: the situation is much more complex than we currently understand and does not support the horribly destructive policies which are very much in the interests of a clique of politicians and folk with dependent jobs.

You again use the word 'deny'. Bruno Giordano and Galileo would understand that word entirely. Giordano paid the price for that by being burnt alive and Galileo saw discretion as the better part of valour. We can see that the use of the word reveals this is a religious debate.

>no mathematical function has been found to fit the observed data. Fact! Conclusion: the situation is much more complex than we currently understand and does not support the horribly destructive policies which are very much in the interests of a clique of politicians and folk with dependent jobs.

I don’t understand this thinking. The fact that we don’t have a good predictive model is extremely worrying. We may hit a non-linearity or positive feedback loop that increase the average temperature by 10C in a very short time (this is unlikely, but we can’t rule it out). The whole thing is like jumping off a cliff into the ocean when you have no idea what is under the surface.

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