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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

Why do you ask?

In all seriousness, why? Have you not been able to look it up yourself? Will any sort of argument or evidence persuade you?

We know two things at this point about your stance.

1) Your gut is a valid data source.

2) You haven't looked up any of the plentiful information on this topic and prefer to ask people here.

This suggests that you're asking disingenuously. Please comment on how you will use the information we share with you (perhaps to supersede your gut?) before asking us to spend time constructing sourced, cogent responses.

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It's the first time I've heard that CO2 levels previously in history were at the same level as now, so I asked a genuine question. This thread is starting to get as ridiculous as a Trump thread. Any shadow of questions that don't fit exactly with the echo chamber and you instantly get vilified as the devil, or a Trump supporter, even though I didn't espouse any climate-denier comments.

Its a reasonable issue - historic (estimates) of CO2 levels were not out of line with current levels. Yet historicly the world's ice hadn't melted. Is something else going on? Perhaps in concert with rising CO2?

"History" is a misnomer here. That term is usually used to refer to the time since the invention of writing, roughly 5,000 years ago. CO2 levels have never been anywhere close to current levels in that period.

CO2 levels have been this high, and much higher, in the distant past. But the climate has also varied enormously in the distant past as well. Roughly 55 million years ago, the planet had nearly no ice. A bit over two billion years ago, it's believed that the planet was almost entirely covered in ice.

So no, it's not really a reasonable issue. CO2 levels have varied a great deal, as has the climate. Nothing in the Earth's climate past suggests that the current dramatic rise in CO2 levels wouldn't also result in dramatic changes to the climate.

But isn't it the case that CO2 levels could not be seen as a direct indicator of ice levels in say the last 35 Million years? The ice-free times correspond to high CO2; the icebound times to low CO2. But in between there's considerable difference, and no simple correleation. One could be driven to think, something besides CO2 is (also) involved.

I don't know enough about it to know whether it is as you say, but nobody denies that climate feedback loops are extremely complicated and there's rarely a direct relationship between any two numbers.

In recent geologic time CO2 levels seem to mostly be influenced by temperature instead of increasing CO2 levels causing temperature rise like today (there does not seem to be animals in past all of a sudden excavating and burning gigatons of carbon annually). Over million year timescales the biggest cause in the change in Earth's temperature is Milankovitch cycles[1] which is short hand for changes in the shape Earth's orbit and changes in the position of the Earth's spin axis. These changes interact to produce various climate conditions. The biggest factor is that sometimes these cycles cause the northern hemisphere to have very cold winters and other times mild winters. When the winters are very cold, continental glaciers can form on North America and Eurasia. They reflect more sunlight than land and the Earth gets colder. This is an ice age. Eventually the orbital and spin axis parameters change (over tens of thousands of years) and, with warmer winters in the northern hemisphere, the ice sheets begin to melt. With this positive feedback loop, the ice age ends quickly, the Earth gets warmer, and the Earth enters what is called an inter-glacial (we are in one now).

This is, of course, a very simplified explanation. As one goes back hundreds of millions to billions of years, other large scale changes like plate tectonics, atmospheric composition/mass, sun brightness, continental weathering, etc. will cause the average surface temperature to vary considerably.

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

We really need a corollary to Poe's Law known as Trump's Law.

BTW - No one brought up the spectre of Trump, you invoked it. People are, rightly, criticizing your gut feeling that flies in the face of our best understanding of multiple hard scientific fields and the tons of works and dedication by tens of thousands of researchers around the globe.

My point is, if you say something that doesn't completely damn Trump or say something that can be interpreted as even being mildly positive towards him, all of a sudden you're attacked as a Trump supporter. It's ridiculous. Same goes for climate change. I didn't say anything that denied climate change and yet look at the comments above. Sure, the ice levels are outliers this year, but I think they'll probably revert to the mean in a couple of years. Just like the CA drought. And yet all of a sudden I'm a climate science denier? It's stupid and idiotic.

Please don't be confrontational. You don't need to convince this commenter. You need to convince the hundreds of people who will read their comments and decide which stance is more reasonable.

This isn't about reasonable.

Theres tons of data out there, literally an entire field of work in science.

And that entire field of work is regularly debunked and debated with such old adages as - "scientists have an incentive to get grants, so they keep putting out material which the < evil illuminati types > want to hear".

And I've seen such arguments on HN.

I think there isn't any convincing left to be done, at most link people to sources and if they are motivated they'll cover it themselves.

Whats left is collective action.

>This isn't about reasonable.

Well then, in the court of public opinion at least, you've already lost.

Nobody is going to listen to the hobo screaming about how the government is spying on us in our own houses with our TVs. It doesn't matter if he's right if everyone ignores him, in fact the opposite, since people will associate the argument with screaming hobos.

Don't be a scientifically literate screaming hobo. It hurts the cause.

The history of failure of climate science is a study in the use of the court of public opinion.

That's where climate science was taken and rendered impotent, and more lasting damage done to it and to expertise itself, that we haven't recovered.

A long time ago, a particular news network helped climate cranks gain public recognition

The scientists had ignored these cranks, rightly inferring that engaging with crazy people makes them seem more credible.

The media group spun this reticence into a conspiracy by liberal/ivory tower/money stealing/hippies; evil experts crushing the lone voice of reason.

Simultaneously, the political party best served by this audience, developed their language and communication playbook to convert the media attention into a political force.

When scientists realized that they had to engage if they wanted to have any hope, they accepted tv shows or debates. The hope was that if they engaged, if facts and science as presented, people would understand what was at stake and would act in good faith.

And as you can guess, this was naive. The point was never to have an informed debate, it was to have a spectacle. Scientists and science lost.

This system works so well, that within the past few years, it's been expanded to target something as fundamental as evolution.

Frankly I'm in awe of it, and take notes. more than tech, communication and marketing are America's strengths.

In short I'm not a scientific literate screaming hobo. I'm an old fart, who's seen the hope in this fight die out several times. I've even been at the point where I said "human beings won't let this happen. It's just too obvious and important." Twice.

I no longer believe that there is another "side" to reach out to, because the message will never get through.

Instead it's time to just connect with people who are already acting, focus on ideas which move the needle, invest in communication and mobilization.

If you're frustrated, don't take that out on people who are misinformed. They aren't in your news bubble, and for years everything they've seen has said that climate science is bunk.

If you don't want to be a reasonable, level headed and compassionate fellow human who wishes to gently lead in the direction of truth, rather be silent so that someone else can.

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