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Comment by dinoleif | Hacker News Reader

Among the conservatives/libertarians/etc in my life, who I broadly consider among the smartest people I know, there is a broad unwillingness to have a real discussion for fear of being shamed.

The climate debate has become more about moral posturing and smearing people who disagree as "deniers", which has made it impossible to convince anyone who's not already convinced.

It has also deprived climate activists of substantive critiques that could help them move past their own biases (which are substantial).

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Reasonable people can disagree about what our course of action should be and what sort of incentives we should use to bring it about. Reasonable people cannot disagree about the science, which is overwhelmingly on the side of possibly catastrophic climate change that has been brought about by human activities. They are /right/ to be shunned as science deniers, just as we "smear" anti-vaxxers, etc.

>Reasonable people cannot disagree about the science

Reasonable people do disagree about scientific theory quite a bit. There are some parts of climate science that are pretty settled, for instance the earth has warmed and human activity has played a big part in the recent warming. There are other parts that are not such as to what extent positive or negative feedbacks will kick in beyond the basic CO2 forcing. I'm not sure how helpful it is shunning people as deniers.

Also I don't know if shunning people is the best approach, especially if you're talking about things like anti-vaxxers or climate change. There really needs to be intelligent discussion and education on these issues, they only really get solved if people agree. Shunning someone can only bully them into submission it doesn't change minds. Shunning only adds to the tribalism that's dividing the left and the right, it really doesn't help.

I'd like to point out that yes there is evidence of the possibly of catastrophic climate change. But we do not know enough to have any certainty on probability of catastrophe, we also don't know enough to be sure we could properly mitigate the current changes. Or that any mitigation will have a net positive effect on life on earth.

There are very dogmatic people involved in this argument that want to put in place very expensive measures to avoid a catastrophe but we have to be careful. We could drive our global economy into the ground if we go to far. The cost to the environment would be far worse. Industry gets very dirty when people go into survival mode. Clean technologies could alter the balance, but they're only going to get developed if we have the money to invest in them.

That sounds like something that could be tackled further down the line. I see people against any changes.

Even if global warming wasn't a thing reducing pollution is worth investing in for all sorts of reasons.

The problem, as your comment beautifully illustrates, is the scope of what is considered a "scientific" question. You left that ambiguous, and in that ambiguity lies the problem.

For example, the greenhouse effect is a piece of well-established science. Climate change is even less scientific. To what extent humans contribute to the problem is even less scientific. Analyzing the costs/benefits of climate change is an even less scientific question. And what sorts of policy prescriptions might be effective is the least scientific question of all.

Climate activists fail to acknowledge any of that nuance, instead lumping all of those things together and labeling anyone who has a nuanced opinion on one of those points as a "denier".

It's total intellectual corruption.

> For example, the greenhouse effect is a piece of well-established science. Climate change is even less scientific. To what extent humans contribute to the problem is even less scientific.

I've run into conservatives who believe that, and invariably it turns out they have only looked at a small part of the evidence.

For example, they might dismiss the extent of human contribution to rising CO2 levels as mere correlation, claiming that scientists are just noting that the CO2 curve matches some other human activities and are assuming that those activities are responsible for the CO2. Maybe it is just coincidence and the rising atmospheric CO2 comes from natural sources.

If that was all scientists had, that would be a good point. But that isn't all scientists have. CO2 from burning fossil fuels has a different isotopic composition that CO2 from natural sources so scientists can directly distinguish "our" CO2 from "natural" CO2.

Then there is atmospheric oxygen levels. Burning fossil fuels should not only release CO2 into the atmosphere. It should also take oxygen from the atmosphere. Guess what? The atmospheric oxygen levels have been doing just what they should be doing if scientists are right about how much of the atmospheric CO2 comes from us.

The point is that the questions I outlined become increasingly less scientific. There are genuine scientific questions, but there are lots of others that are kind-of scientific, and others that are not scientific at all.

Climate activists won't admit that.

This shuts down the possibility for a reasonable discussion because one party (the activists) is overwhelmingly guilty of acting and arguing in bad faith.

What does it mean to be less scientific?

For instance, I believe that there are fewer experiments that confirm general relativity than there are that confirm quantum mechanics, so does that mean GR is less scientific than QM?

Does this mean GR-skeptics are on firm scientific ground? No, it does not. The evidence for GR is overwhelming. That QM may have even more evidence does not cast doubt on GR. Both GR and QM have overwhelming evidence, and there is no meaningful sense in which one can say that one is less scientific than the other.

> This shuts down the possibility for a reasonable discussion because one party (the activists) is overwhelmingly guilty of acting and arguing in bad faith

No, what shuts down the possibility for reasonable discussion is people discarding 90% of the experiments and measurements, and then claiming that there is no evidence. It's not the activists that are doing this.

When you start to enter the realm of modelling, especially of complex systems with feedback loops, you aren't really conducting science any more.

Unfortunately the brand of science is used to promote these models, which is disingenuous. These models aren't like physics models, they are like economic models.

Unlike economic models, however, the climate systems have boundary conditions and underlying assumptions based on real science -- physics.

> What does it mean to be less scientific?

I'm not a fan of the "less scientific" phrasing, but the point of science is to be convincing to even a skeptic. That's why reproducibility (try it yourself in your own lab!), statistical analysis (there's basically no chance this is a coincidence!), control groups (it's not just an endemic property of the lab), random sampling (it's not selection bias) and other things are so important.

In some kinds of inquiry, it becomes difficult or impossible to apply certain standards. It's flat out unethical and immoral to not treat a man's syphilis just to have better quality evidence. So if you're studying syphilis, you need to find other ways to be convincing. It's impossible to have a statistically significant sample of Earths or a control group of Earths, so the bar for convincing is also higher in climate science.

"Less scientific" probably means "doesn't have access to many standard scientific techniques, so stronger evidence in other ways is essential to be convincing".

Wait, no, it's not "the point of science" to be "convincing to even a skeptic". Scientific reasoning is not a vote, or a talent show.

> Scientific reasoning is not a vote, or a talent show.

Sure it is. It evolved from "natural philosophers" showing off their work to each other. People have always been able to convince themselves of things, but scientific rigor is about convincing other people (i.e., being objective).

The hallmark of scientific objectivity is not convincing other people, but making correct (and testable) statements about reality.

Why is testability important? How do we know if something is correct?

The point is to be convincing to a rational mind. It's not a persuasion contest, no. The evidence should speak for itself. But it needs to speak to an audience.

Otherwise it would be a self indulgent exercise and not a corporate one.

So far I have yet to see a climate change denier who has looked at any of the IPCC reports [0] -- they operate on the same scale of evidence as religious fanatics. It was actually fascinating to see the improvement comparing AR5 with the AR4, and they are only 6 years apart!

>For example, the greenhouse effect is a piece of well-established science. Climate change is even less scientific.

Even looking at this sentence, which is the foundation of your arguments, the way you express yourself is that the greenhouse effect itself is not scientific! The actual science part of climate change is actually pretty great science, and very much scientific. You can check out the physical science IPCC report [1] for the starters. It contains many references to actual scientific articles, but by itself is a great piece of work.

The political part -- policies, denial of facts, media coverage, bribery by the fossil fuel industry representatives and continuous slander of climatic researchers is a problem, I agree.

[0] -- Here's the IPCC Synthesis report, a short summary, for starters: http://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/

[1] -- IPCC Physical science report: http://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/

It's a question of risk mitigation. Would you say that a 5% risk of humans going extinct it worth it, for an oil company to collect an extra $50 billion in profits?

I would say no. An oil CEO might say yes.

Who should have a bigger say in public policy, the civilians facing the 5% possibility of human extinction and no extra paycheck, or the oil CEO weighing their paycheck against possible human extinction?

The current head of the EPA clearly thinks oil industry profits are more important. Trump clearly thinks oil industry profits are more important.

It's _not_ just about an oil CEO. It's about everyone who uses energy. Gas tends to be a high percentage of poor people's cost-of-living, and cheap oil tends to act as a progressive reverse-tax. In cold climates, heating one's house is also closely linked to energy prices.

When you hamper the economy, everyone loses a little. It weakens wealth creation slightly.

We're at a moment in history where we're pulling people out of poverty, through economic growth. So any actions that limit economic growth need to be judged with a high bar. https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-bil...

I'm not saying that we shouldn't do it, and if it is actually a 5% catastrophic risk then I think it would be prudent to take action at the cost of leaving millions of people in extreme poverty. But there is a trade-off, and it needs to be examined.

Your worries about the economy are purely hypothetical, and most likely wrong. Infrastructure spending generally stimulates economies and there is no reason to suspect that building clean energy infrastructure will be any different. Additionally, clean energy prices will most likely be cheaper and more stable in the long term due to decreased maintenance costs and lack of dependency on energy inputs from politically volatile regions.

And even if energy prices rise slightly, the reduction of externalities will more than make up for those increased costs. It is well known that pollution from fossil fuels causes a variety of health issues. I would gladly pay a few more cents per kwh if it reduces my chances of getting cancer or heart disease.

The chance that anthropogenic climate change will lead to human extinction is much less than 5%. There just isn't any plausible mechanism for this. The one exception is extinction due to climate change triggering a war in which extinction-causing biological weapons are used. Unfortunately for risk mitigators, the chances are about equal that such a war would be cause by an economic collapse resulting from attempts to prevent climate change.

I think you have provided a great example of why people don't feel comfortable expressing doubts about climate.

A thought exercise to hopefully make it easier to empathize with these people. Imagine you are transported back several hundred years into a Catholic ruled country. You don't believe in God but you don't discuss that with strangers because you often hear people say things like "Reasonable people cannot disagree about Scripture, which is overwhelmingly on the side of eternal damnation on those who don't believe."

Imagine you hear this stuff in the market, at your job, and from the street corners. No amount of hearing this is going to convince you to believe in God. If anything this reinforces the feelings you have that religious people are hateful and ignorant.

This is a bad metaphor. Religious belief is predicated on faith in the absence of evidence. Climate change science is based on acceptance of the best available body of evidence.

> Religious belief is predicated on faith in the absence of evidence.

At least in the Christian sense, "belief" and "faith" are the same word and are synonyms of "trust". So you just said "Religious trust is predicated on trust in the absense of evidence". That really doesn't make sense. So maybe you'll see why Christian's are making a point of disagreeing with your definitions around religion and "belief".

Belief isn't the opposite of reason or evidence. They're not in conflict at all. Belief is the opposite of self-reliance and distrust.

No, belief and reason are orthogonal. But you're playing an equivocation game, redefining the words I used to suit your purpose.

As I understand it, the "faith" Christians refer to is a deeply held belief in religious principles regardless of the presence or absence of empirical evidence to support that belief.

Contrast that with a "rationalist" it skeptic's practice of rejecting beliefs not supported by evidence, and only tentatively adopting beliefs as true until they are disproven.

I'm am really trying not to moralize religious belief. That is difficult for me to do and perhaps explains gaps in my perception here. My point was a religious person will continue to hold religious beliefs despite observable phenomena that directly contradict scripture and dogma.

> No, belief and reason are orthogonal.

The Greek root word for both "faith" and "belief" in the Bible is "pistis".

"In Greek mythology, Pistis was the personification of good faith, trust and reliability"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistis

There's no reason one couldn't be skeptical, find satisfying answers to questions, then have a lot of faith (trust) in something.

> My point was a religious person will continue to hold religious beliefs despite observable phenomena that directly contradict scripture and dogma.

I'm not sure what scientific evidence would disprove that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God exists. Any real objection to a god's existence would have to be predicated on some metaphysical assumptions (like, God wouldn't design evolution or create fossil records). What looks like misplaced trust might actually be a disagreement or misunderstanding about metaphysical axioms.

This is a great comment, so thank you for that. Obviously one cannot disprove the existence of a God. I suppose I am thinking more of dogma that contradicts with observable phenomena, things such as the age of the universe and the planet, the evolutionary process, and things of that nature. And to their credit, some churches have adjusted their dogma in the face of contradictory scientific discovery.

I suppose I am painting with a broad brush when I assume the motivations behind religious beliefs. Either way I am way off topic here.

http://tech.mit.edu/V121/N35/col35guest.35c.html

This is an interesting essay, but I do not think it contradicts what I said above. I am being careful to avoid ascribing a moral value to faith-based belief.

I understand that reasoned knowledge is inductive, which is why I claimed it is based upon "the best available body of evidence". When a belief is shown to be false we must reject it and reevaluate what we believe to be true. That is why one of the most exciting events in the scientific realm is proving a belief to be false, as that means we have fundamentally altered the corpus of human knowledge.

Not during medieval times. Scripture and philosophy were the standard for best evidence at the time.

That is only nominally true if you ignore the world outside if Europe, and also if you ignore the pursuit of knowledge undertaken by various religious institutions and other curious individuals (see Moses ben Maimon).

Can you remind me of the example you were replying to? Isn't it being transported back into medieval Europe, where scripture and philosophy are considered the standard of good evidence?

"...broad unwillingness to have a real discussion for fear of being shamed..."

That's not exactly what I've observed.

I've observed people driven to be contrarian, who use an assortment of tactics:

- cherry-picking evidence for one side (this one study shows ice melting may be smaller than expected in one place, thus, I dismiss the entire AR5 report without ever even reading the executive summary);

- providing contorted arguments they would never accept in a context involving, say, their own home ("the effect is small by historic standards"; "warming will have benefits that have been overlooked");

- dismissing the expertise of others in favor of their own undergrad-level science judgements ("we can't even predict the weather past 14 days, how can we predict climate") -- again, with a degree of skepticism they would never exhibit in relation to, say, their architect ("you need more shear strength there"), gardener ("it's a root fungus"), or car mechanic ("it's your oil pump"), or even Stack Exchange ("change permissions on the file and reboot").

Broadly, HN avoids the worst of the above problems - for which I'm thankful. But you will still see them here in any climate-related discussion thread. I possess some of the same contrarian tendencies, and seeing how easily skepticism turns into ignorant defense of the status quo has been a useful corrective for me.

It depends what your null hypothesis is. Your contrarian friends only need one piece of evidence to disprove the climate catastrophe narrative.

Whilst you've taken the worst case as your default assumption, which is why their train of thought seems off. You sound like you need a large body of evidence to disprove climate catastrophe.

About large bodies of evidence that I find convincing, please see the AR5 synthesis report (http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/).

I'm not aware of a similarly convincing counterpart on the side that says nothing new is happening.

I suppose denying that CO2 is increasing, or claiming that it doesn't cause climate warming or isn't a problem, is a lot easier than trying to find a solution consistent with conservative or libertarian principles.

a broad unwillingness to have a real discussion for fear of being shamed

Oh for heaven's sake. There are a lot of websites, books, and spokespeople who are claiming to 'debunk' climate science, and this debate has been going on for decades now. Are you seriously arguing that your friends have the right answer but they're sitting on it because they're worried some leftie know-nothings will say mean things to them?

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