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Comment by openlyincognito | Hacker News Reader

The arrogance to say only Americans are skeptics is laughable, like the rest of the world has it all figured out...Yes, most Americans have been brainwashed to believe climate change is real. But, the planet simply has periods of warmer temperatures and periods of cooler ones. It's amazing how well they craft these lies to get people to jump on to one side and vehemently swear they know the truth, when all they're basing it off of is someone else's research presented to you through a media outlet who has an agenda.

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We, the ones doing the science, are here to discuss this with you. We have the data and do the research. I can find the right colleague and ask them any question for you. However, this has been done over and over again on many websites.

Our agenda is knowledge, especially on the lower levels where the work is done. We want to know how the world works, and there are enough open questions even without this issue. We don't need to invent stuff to find problems to work on.

Seriously, if anyone could show that what we are finding is wrong, everyone would have a big celebration. It can be really depressing to be stared into the face by such a huge problem and be powerless to do anything against it, as a human. The only thing available is to write, and tell everyone about it, because only everyone can fix it. Really, we'd be overjoyed.

Really, we are people here. You're accusing us of lying. That hurts, not just on a personal level but on an existential one, because without all of you, we cannot fix this and only observe it get worse and worse. Is this a life you would want?

This is one of the best responses to the GP sentiment I have ever read.

> the planet simply has periods of warmer temperatures and periods of cooler ones

Here's the problem with people like you: In the face of assured doom for yourself if you're young enough, or most likely your children or siblings' children, you choose to either:

1. Make highly ignorant statements without doing even the slightest bit of research, in a manner that is consistent with people suffering from a clear lack of skill in critical thinking.

2. Troll people.

And it is completely impossible to tell on which side you fall. As such it is entirely impossible to approach you in any kind of sane or rational manner.

> assured doom

This part of your statement is actually a little bit of the problem here, too. Can you define more clearly what you mean by this?

I'm very interested in exploring the issue better, but having to constantly sift through piles of hyperbole from both sides, it makes it very hard to remain interested.

My trivial understanding of everything goes: greenhouse gasses cause warming and we're the primary source of their increase in the past century so, therefore, we're causing the planet to warm. That's easy enough to understand. But after that, I find that I'm either an idiot because, duh, its all a hoax or that our species will be extinct tomorrow if I don't do something yesterday.

It's incredibly tedious to try and gain a better understanding of everything.

I'd like to answer, but you didn't ask an actual question, so i'll take a blind stab.

Short version: CO2 causes general warming. Ice caps on the pole are necessary to keep the planet cool by reflecting a lot of the incoming light. General warming will cause ice caps to melt, which causes more energy from the sun to be absorbed, which causes even faster warming. Permafrost areas will also thaw, releasing CO2 and methane, resulting in even more warming. Strong heat increases can damage rain forests, reducing the CO2 absorption, also speeding up warming. Result: Best case scenario: Loss of coastal regions to sea rise. Worst case scenario: Earth becomes a second Venus.

Edit: To downvoters: If i got facts wrong, please do correct me. The above is my understanding of the sitation and i may have gotten some wrong.

> > assured doom

> This part of your statement is actually a little bit of the problem here, too. Can you define more clearly what you mean by this?

That was my question. I appreciate your summary of the situation and I think your worst case assessment answers my question. Unfortunately, there's an incredibly huge gap between "loss of coastal regions" and "Earth becomes a second Venus". One situation sounds highly surmountable while the other sounds like the certain extinction of our species. When you use phrases like "assured doom", I tend to think of outcomes more like the latter and I find that type of rhetoric almost as unhelpful as denying the whole situation. It just doesn't help anyone.

I apologize for picking on you specifically, you're just the first one to express this kind of sentiment I came across.

Unfortunately, there's an incredibly huge gap between "loss of coastal regions" and "Earth becomes a second Venus"

And you are basing this on what, exactly? Because the answer right now to that question is "we don't know how huge that gap is". And we do not have a second Earth to test your theories on. Are you really willing to take the risk of assured doom based on your belief that "the gap between now and assured doom is incredibly huge"?

Here's the thing with dynamic equilibrium: it is only locally stable. We do not know how exactly how resilient our ecosystem or our planet is to rapid changes. Some of us are not willing to find out, because we only have a single destructive test at our disposal.

> And you are basing this on what, exactly?

I made that statement based on my limited ability to extrapolate how our species might deal with the two scenarios. It sounds much, much easier to me, while still being incredibly challenging, to deal with large population displacement versus dealing with our planet becoming entirely uninhabitable.

Now, if I understand what you're saying, it sounds like our understanding of the probabilities of the two scenarios occurring isn't exactly known. While the two scenarios, at face value, sound incredibly different (to me at least), the likelihood of one happening over the other could be very similar. I agree that we should absolutely take that position seriously and that we should absolutely do things to guard against the possible outcome where our planet becomes uninhabitable.

All that I'm asking is that we say it like that. Lets say that instead of speaking in absolutes (e.g. "its a hoax", "we're doomed"). That's all I'm taking issue with. It doesn't help the discussion no matter what side of the argument those kinds of statements come from.

> And we do not have a second Earth to test your theories on. Are you really willing to take the risk of assured doom based on your belief that "the gap between now and assured doom is incredibly huge"?

To be clear, I don't have any theories I'd like to test nor do I know what I might be willing to risk. As I said in my original comment, my understanding of everything is incredibly rudimentary and I'm trying to do a better job seeking information to help me answer questions like that.

> if I understand what you're saying, it sounds like our understanding of the probabilities of the two scenarios occurring isn't exactly known

Incorrect.

A complete planet-devastating runaway scenario is much more likely, as it requires merely that humans continue to operate as they are doing right this very moment.

The best case scenario only comes about if we get our shit together.

That's the gap that separates worst and best case: Humans change nothing <---> Humans make a supreme effort. Probabilities follow directly from the probabilities of these two things.

Sorry for not having stated that clearly.

Now, if I understand what you're saying, it sounds like our understanding of the probabilities of the two scenarios occurring isn't exactly known

No, what I'm saying is that we don't even know whether these really are two separate scenarios. We can't afford to plan for a large population displacement because by the time we get to that point, there may be nothing we can do to prevent our planet from becoming uninhabitable.

'Unfortunately, there's an incredibly huge gap between "loss of coastal regions" and "Earth becomes a second Venus"' … maybe there's not. And that's part of the problem. Psychologically people perceive differences as "linear". It's part of how our brains are wired: to go from A to B draw a mental line and try to walk it at a constant speed. The greater the difference, the longer the line, thus the longer it takes to get from A to B. Hence the "huge gap" sentiment. But climate is not a linear system. Going from A to B could be a tiny step. Or oscillating, or dampening, or all sorts of funny things. Modelling of, for example, oceanic plankton (which gives more than 50% of the atmospheric oxygen) showed that the difference between "happy ~20% oxygen in the atmosphere" to "no oxygen ever again" is a small temperature change [1,2]. Non-linear systems are very hard. But they are fact, not fiction. That one last metric ton of CO2 could really be the difference between "life as usual" and "goodbye complex life on Earth". Communicating that fact is unfortunately even harder. Because people cannot perceive these changes, they're stuck in the linear mindset. And this worries me, because when we realize we need to really do something it's probably already far too late. If it isn't already (but in that case, science won't matter…I'd rather turn the page to "existential philosophy in the face of extinction").

To me it seems like simple risk management, even with a small probability the loss would be near infinite, whereas the loss of "doing something" is probably negligible. (carbon tax, energy transition, discouraging procreation, anti-consumerist lifestyle … probably all beneficial for humanity from a birds-eye view)

[1] http://www.wolfandwildlifestudies.com/downloads/oxygendeplet...

[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11538-015-0126-0

In a way i can understand you, in another way: Consider what "the entirety of Florida, New York and California is forced to move inland" will mean in practice. Then consider what the same would mean for less affluent countries.

The classic "The art of being right" [1] describes 38 different options to win an argument war. Fantastically cynical book. Highly recommended!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Being_Right

Please HN give us a filter for newly created accounts in heated threads so we don't have to read those trash troll comments like this one.

Filtering out new accounts would set a tremendously dangerous precedent. There are many rather prolific, insightful, and level-headed users here that prefer creating new accounts for each thread they engage with in order to reset karma and enforce privacy. Rather than fuel animosity behind the veil of anonymity, these users are trying to preserve the instinctive behavior of out-group participants and even under-represented experts to engage with intellectually honest criticism when the signals of authority such as identity and karma are missing.

The problem you're seeing here isn't due to anonymity, but rather self-selecting hostile interactions by participating with front page news as soon as posted. This is typical of HN and really any technically-bent social media, where the first to interact are typically the most outspoken and inflammatory regardless of identity visibility, with the rational high-quality debate trickling in once the topic starts significantly eroding in popularity.

I'd also be happy with banning climate change denial here, similar to how I assume Holocaust denial would be treated. Climate change is an existential threat to our planet and everything on it. There is no debate to be had. The science is in. Denialism of climate change is just as legitimate as Holocaust denial, which is to say, not at all legitimate.

What is the agenda of taking better care of our environment?

Let's suppose for a moment that climate change is a fabrication, what's the harm in taking better care of the place we live?

No-one would be opposed to "taking better care of the place we live". This is a strong indication that this is not an honest way to frame the dispute.

Cuts in emissions (e.g., the 80% cuts the EU is pushing for) will require major cuts in energy usage. We know what a low-energy economy looks like - it looks like a pre-industrial economy. We might not need to go back to the middle ages, but we'd need to reverse many advances of the industrial revolution.

In contrast, we're facing a maximum of 59cm of sea level rise by 2100. (IPCC estimate). That's not desirable but it is manageable - at least if we maintain our technological, industrial civilisation.

If climate change is not happening/harmful, resources spent on addressing it are wasted (to the extent they affect CC), and cannot be used to address other issues such as biodiversity, disease, and human suffering.

This is to imply that the resources spent on it have no effect other than to the extent that they affect climate change. which is WRONG.

The actions taken to mitigate or counter-act climate change could have 'collateral benefits', but be less effective than other environmental remediation or human charity. The 'loss' would be (the benefits of the best alternative program) - (the benefits of the ACC mitigation/counter-action).

If your priority is to save a few endangered species, the best way to do it is to go out and save those species, not to 'try to reduce or offset anthropogenic climate change'; there are many species which are extremely endangered, and for a great intro to the topic, I suggest Douglas Adam's brilliant book.[1]

We are faced with tough choices, and should acknowledge them to be difficult; I don't know that I could bear telling parents that their children will die because I see climate change as a higher priority than disease.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See

> I don't know that I could bear telling parents that their children will die because I see climate change as a higher priority than disease.

Could you bear to tell parents that their children or grand children will die because our climate will be irrevocably damaged?

I'd have trouble with that too, and don't particularly want to live on neo-Venus either.

I was trying to make the point that even if you favor a given course of action, the costs and benefits should be assessed, and neither should be dismissed.

I agree here. I think people who deny climate change just need to nut up and say that their priority is the economy. the economic cost in reversing climate change means they lose big time.

Is this a good reason to not favor that course of action? or is it laden with self-interest? is "I'll lose my whole business" a cost that anyone would be willing to pay for the benefit of the climate? how do we convince this kind of person? in the face of this opinion, should we not dismiss it?

The vast majority of people who take either side of a political debate do so on genuine belief that it is the best policy for everyone.[1] Very few take positions out of self-interest, unless the voting group is <100 people.[2] The problem is that most people make up their minds very quickly based on intuitive and emotional factors, and only bring in reason later on.[3]

As a result of all this, saying that they are dishonest or lying is wrong, but appeals to complex intellectual arguments won't work; you should give opponents their due though, as the complex intellectual arguments wouldn't convince you either (even if you are wrong).

[1] http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8756.html

[2] http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10843.html

[3] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/

So you're saying that oil companies are against climate change policy not because it directly harms their industry, but because they genuinely believe the climate is not being harmed by their industry?

even if that (their belief that it isn't being harmed being genuine) were true, there is literally direct evidence to show this (climate is being harmed by industry) is not true. carbon emissions and the greenhouse effect - it's a fact that industry contributes heavily to carbon emissions. and it's a fact that carbon emissions create increasing temperature by allowing heat to bounce around inside the atmosphere.

What you're saying is, I don't believe in climate change because of these scientific facts (which, are relatively non-complex. we put stuff in air. stuff in air makes air warmer), I believe in it because I'm a bleeding heart liberal? come on.

How many people really need to have their minds changed for congress to create legislation around climate change? Around a hundred eh.. hmm. Self-interest is definitely not a part of this though. they just don't want to change anything because its what they genuinely believe is best!

christ, even arguing that they have this genuine belief is a crock of shit. there's not test for sincerity of belief.

The majority of the people you are facing off against do not represent oil companies, or even work for them.

I am saying that you probably arrived at your view by your intuition, after looking at who was on either side of the debate, and how you felt about the 'issue', then you found evidence to support your view. The idea that any of us arrives at their view solely through a careful analysis of the facts is quite optimistic, and I think Hume was on the money 250 years ago. If you believe you are capable of a careful examination of the views on the other side, I implore you to read Alex Epstein's book all the way through, and give him a fair hearing; I would bet you $20 at even odds that you cannot read his book and give an accurate summary of his arguments, because you will find it too frustrating.[1] Changing your view because the facts contradict your intuition and peers is an extremely painful and slow process, which most of us resist at all costs.[2]

There are many tests for the sincerity of beliefs.[3]

[1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20821049-the-moral-case-f...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_that_Failed

[3] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2703011

so you mean lobbying groups for big oil aren't involved in the legislative process? hm. coulda fooled me.

I literally formed my opinion this in grade 12 earth science class, where I was first shown inconvenient truth followed by a direct rebuttal. I found gore to be unconvincing, but I found the rebuttal even worse.

I'll see if I can find the book for cheap. From reading reviews it's fairly clear that the author isn't exactly unbiased or entirely fact-based.

you've got to be fucking kidding me if you think "intuition" is unrelated the self-interest. instead of side-stepping, might you answer my questions?

are you truly saying that politicians and public figures who are involved with oil companies and against climate change are doing so out of anything but self-interest?

ultimately your argument is fallacious. you're dismissing my more salient points by attacking my reasoning process rather than my argument itself. I'm just as self-interested as they are, right? I only believe what I want to believe, I'm just intuiting and agreeing with my peers.

Are you truly telling me that someone looks at industry, like actually looking at factories and the way they operate, and their intuition is that this is good for the environment.

furthermore general economics disagrees with you when it comes to the decisions of people who run the oil industry. how are they acting in anything but self-interest when they fund climate-change denial? it provides a direct economic benefit to them.

Opportunity costs. For example, we're currently devoting a lot of money and attention to climate change that could instead be devoted to things like malaria and malnutrition.

(It should be obvious, but this is not an argument that climate change isn't real. Just that if it weren't real, we'd want to know, and act upon that.)

could instead be devoted to things like malaria and malnutrition.

You know what is the biggest cause of global malnutrition? Climate change, because it is causing more erratic weather patterns that destroy harvests worldwide.

You know what the biggest cause is for the spreading of the malaria mosquitoes beyond the tropics? Climate change again, because it makes some (highly-populated) regions a more favourable habitat.

Climate change isn't some hypothetical problem anymore, like it was in 1850. It is here now, and is already causing problems like you mentioned, that we are spending so much money on countering. But we're treating symptoms, not the cause. I fully expect our spend on treating the symptoms of climate change will rise to unmanageable levels in mere decades.

I want to be clear that this is not a reply to what I said. I argued that if climate change weren't real, we'd want to know about it, and I made it perfectly clear that I was not saying climate change is not real. You replied that climate change is real and causing problems today.

But I'll respond anyway. From http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/:

> climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050; 38 000 due to heat exposure in elderly people, 48 000 due to diarrhoea, 60 000 due to malaria, and 95 000 due to childhood undernutrition

Meanwhile, today malaria is killing around 600 000 people a year (ten times that number), and malnutrition around 3 million (thirty times). So, while I'm open to convincing, color me skeptical that today, climate change is the "biggest cause" of those things, for any reasonable definition of "biggest cause".

(Granted, you said "spreading of the malaria mosquitos beyond the tropics". To the extent that this problem is different from the problem of malaria in general, it's moving the goalposts.)

(I also note that even if climate change were the biggest cause of those problems, the best solution to those specific problems might not be to fight climate change. Perhaps instead we should work on growing more resistant wheat, or eradicating mosquitos.)

I'm not arguing that climate change isn't real or that we shouldn't try to solve it. But I categorically reject the idea that if it weren't real, we should nevertheless act as though it were.

I want to be clear that this is not a reply to what I said.

I understood what you said, but in my view you were painting a false dichotomy: it's not a matter of "either climate change or all-these-other-useful-things", it's a matter of "all-these-other-useful-things because of our inability to address climate change directly".

in which case how do we prove this to be real beyond doubt?

what do we do when people treat their opposition as faith, i.e. belief despite lack of evidence.

for some people it will never be real. what do we do about that? is that a legitimate thing to take into account? does that faith mean we cannot act as though climate change is largely human-driven?

Again, this is not a reply to me.

You don't wait until you've proven it beyond doubt. But you say "this is our best model, we're pretty confident it's right in the essentials, and we're going to act on it but remain open to being wrong; here are our policy proposals". You don't say "this is our best model, and here are our policy proposals based on it, but even if our model is wrong we would make the same proposals anyway".

I have no particular insights into the other questions.

""this is our best model, we're pretty confident it's right in the essentials"

'what do you mean you don't know, you're not sure? you could be wrong?!'

that's how people see that. that's why climate science needs to give concrete beyond doubt proof. anything less and people ignore it.

Another thing people say is: "the science is fraudulent, any competing evidence gets buried for disagreeing with the establishment".

You are not helping with that.

Ironically, solving malnutrition and malaria will lead to an increase in population, which makes solving the problem of Global Warming even harder (and if you don't think overpopulation is one of the key issues when it comes to climate change, then I'm not sure you're able to have a rational discourse on the matter)

In interconnected systems, there's an opportunity cost to opportunity cost.

Depends on the timeframe you're looking at. Within a single generation you're correct.

Once you step into more generations though, fertility rates drop as child survivability rises, as it becomes much more viable to rely on a few children as insurance for old age. Source: Hans Rosling, Gapminder

You're not wrong, but I hope we can all agree that "let millions of people die to slightly reduce global warming" is very far down on our list of things to try.

Even if humans cannot affect change in the climate, we are still going to need to prepare for that change. investing in renewables etc affects much more than climate. Good investments for the future tend to overlap with solutions to human-driven climate change.

When preparing for a change, it's good to know whether or not you're leaning on a button that makes the change happen faster. If you are, you can try to lean less hard on that button, and buy more time to prepare. If you're not, then attempting to lean less hard is wasted effort. (It might accidentally have some benefits, but you could have gotten those benefits anyway, if you thought they were worth it.)

It would be really surprising if our best-value course of action, relating to climate change, was exactly the same regardless of whether climate change were human-influenced or not.

I don't see anything anywhere to show that the way carbon emissions increase global temperature to be false. greenhouse effect is a commonly observed phenomenon, and it's a plain fact that we emit carbon at extreme rates compared to pre-industry civilizations.

we know that pushing this button has coincided with a change in climate trends over the last 200 years. what we have to prove is then that a. this is not a natural change, and b. this change can be slowed down or reversed.

would you say that if science proved we are past the tipping point that nothing should be done to reverse the effect we've already had?

You seem to be arguing that climate change is real and human-caused. I do not understand why you're arguing this, when I have repeatedly said that I am not arguing against it. I'm merely arguing that we want to know, contra the user who suggested it didn't matter if it was true or not because we should act the same in either case.

Yeah I understand you. I'm just trying to get across the point that we do know, as far as we can, but it's not enough for most people who are in denial. saying we should act the same way in either case is just an auxiliary way to shut those people up.

I think it's clear that if we could know, and if we could all agree on that, that it would be important to accomplish. but I don't think we can ever all agree on it. so it's not important to accomplish (in fact you could say it's already been accomplished, we already know, and it's not enough, we don't all agree despite the fact. that's what I'm trying to get across by arguing the point of human-caused real climate change)

> saying we should act the same way in either case is just an auxiliary way to shut those people up.

I am not convinced that "making obviously terrible arguments" is an effective way to shut up one's political opponents.

"But, the planet simply has periods of warmer temperatures and periods of cooler ones."

https://xkcd.com/1732/

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/010/193/5d6...

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