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Comment by nxc18 | Hacker News Reader

I love this article but in the comments I'm reminded of an issue in the discord around climate change.

It seems to be an issue of 'denial' and 'belief' to many - the same terms we use for religious belief.

We owe it to ourselves to treat doubt about climate change like any other valid doubt (see geology pre plate tectonics for an example of mainstream science being in short supply of doubt) and to stop treating climate change as a matter of belief.

'Believing' in climate change turns it into an opinion - the type of opinion that can never be truly right or wrong; "you have your opinions, I have mine."

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> see geology pre plate tectonics for an example of mainstream science being in short supply of doubt

Did you mean to say not in short supply of doubt? I thought this was something with little certainty. Or are you saying that little certainty translates to little doubt? Honest question.

Not all doubt is valid. Most (nearly all?) climate change doubt is based on incorrect numbers, lack of understanding, or politics.

Informed doubt is healthy, but that's not what's going on here.

We owe it to ourselves to treat doubt about particle physics like any other valid doubt, perhaps?

There is no "valid" doubt about mainstream particle physics, or climate change, etc. because those fields embrace that doubt and then try to eliminate it.

Equating climate science with early stage geology is extremely ignorant of the data and analysis that happens in climate science. Drive-by smearing like that should not be acceptable to you, as a healthily skeptical person, because you cannot back up that claim. Such skepticism must be applied evenly and not merely against one direction of claims.

The models climate science have created have had very little success in forecasting the climate. Healthy skepticism would doubt the analysis.

Note, there is a consensus around the narrative that humans have an impact (which is quite different from the analysis of that human impact). These are totally separate and you seem to have them confused.

> The models climate science have created have had very little success in forecasting the climate

Can you give us some sources for that claim?

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