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Comment by uncle_d | Hacker News Reader

There are a number of questions here.

Is CO2 rising? Fairly unequivocally, yes.

Has the planet warmed? Again, faily clearly yes, since pre-industrial times.

Is it still warming? Ok, here we get more contentious.

How much of the warming is down to CO2? Contentious, again - e.g. see this book for an argument of how we could explain much if not all of the warming down to various natural cycles: https://www.amazon.com/Neglected-Sun-Precludes-Catastrophe-I...

Is a warming planet a problem? Again, debatable. Rising sea level and ocean acidification scares aside, history suggests that we tend to do better with a warmer climate.

This is actually one of the scarier articles I read recently about why rising CO2 is bad - and it's nothing to do with climate: https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrie...

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> Is it still warming? Ok, here we get more contentious.

No, no we don't.

> How much of the warming is down to CO2? Contentious, again

Sadly, not contentious at all. The influence of changing solar output has been looked at again and again. It is not neglected.

> s a warming planet a problem? Again, debatable. Rising sea level and ocean acidification scares aside

So, rising sea levels and ocean acidification are not scares, they are occurring. The Great Barrier Reef is struggling, the Artic ice is retreating.

I can't believe that there are people so determined to stick their heads in the sand.

>> How much of the warming is down to CO2? Contentious, >> again

>Sadly, not contentious at all.

Excellent, then you can give me the percentage of warming which is CO2 driven, with error bounds, and references to 3 authoritative sources for it. Inquiring minds want to know!

You'll find estimates of this in the latest IPCC report, surely an inquiring mind as already read this.

Not interested in an IPCC estimate by itself, although you are welcome to cite it as one of the papers if you give me a reference to where I can find this in the IPCC report. I want a few papers, peer-reviewed, which go through the facts and reasoning leading to the conclusion that the majority of warming is anthropogenic. And error bars, I want to know the confidence level in the conclusion.

What makes you reject the IPCC estimates?

I'm not rejecting the IPCC estimate. But I want to see this conclusion--obviously a very important one--in actual scientific papers. Is that too much to ask?

Not at all- if you want to find them, they're there to be found. You're rejecting them before you've read them apparently. Oh and the IPPC report has plenty of error bars if you want them.

So basically: I know better than all the scientists that have studied the issue deeply and who keep sounding the alarm more and more urgently.

There is a huge difference between science (research) and panic (person belief systems). The parent comment avoided bias by avoiding both, but you jumped right into stereotypes and accusations.

This comment could be used to support everything from the geocentric model to the four humors.

Pretty much nailed it.

The linked book is a classic of the genre. It's by an honorary PhD (Vahrenholt) with ties to the oil industry and, this is key, seemingly zero peer-reviewed publications to do with climate (but a couple of English-language op-ed pieces -- https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=frit...).

What's the point (I ask myself) of even engaging with junk comments like that?

What, exactly, do you want to do about it?

What, exactly, do you want to do about it, that's politically viable?

Should we tell a billion people in China, and another billion in India to shut down their coal-fired plants? Back to the farms and rural poverty?

Do you want to convince rich westerners to stop eating meat in such large quantities? Tell them to stop driving so much?

Both sets of suggestions are politically unpopular positions and forcing them on their respective populations would lead to strife and lives lost far beyond what we'll see with climate change.

We push for incremental changes in the US, but even their proponents admit they won't make much of a difference in a global context.

The Earth is warming. Almost everyone is on board with that now. Absent a global totalitarian government that can constrain carbon emissions by fiat, what can we do that will make a difference?

It seems like the answer is "not much," so the revealed preference of most of the world's citizens seems to be rolling the dice that the change won't be catastrophic, hope for a tech breakthrough that obviates the problem, and assume that we'll deal with the disruptions as they come. It's not an inspiring message, but it's where we're at.

There is plenty that can be done. First off, stop denying there is no climate change and start educating people on what they can do to help stop it. You would be amazed at what social conscience can do. While doing that, start making industries pay for the CO2 they emit. Incentivize companies to do a better job at lower their C02 foot print and companies that are better at this will do better in the market place.

Me personally? I'm no economic policy expert but they do exist. Some kind of carbon tax/credit, and cap and trade, seem to be popular recommendations among economists. The first step is to have the political will to make it happen. Admittedly, going by the last 30 years of denial and propaganda, it doesn't like we're ever going to achieve it. The denialists have won, I believe humanity is doomed. Our grandkids will curse our names.

Throwing your hands in the air because it's 'too hard' is not an acceptable reaction. What is popular is rarely what is good. I'd venture to suggest that what is popular is often vapid, self-serving and short-sighted.

The longest journey starts with a single step. The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. Many hands make light work. There is precedent for accomplishing great things by 'just starting and keeping at it until you get there'. Start local. Start small.

Waiting for a 'tech breakthrough' is akin to waiting for 'the rapture'.

It may not be acceptable to you, but it's a decent description of what's happening today.

Do you believe that the opinion of older citizens who, if climate change is happening and they wont have to live with its effects, should be somewhat disregarded?

That's a subcategory of one of the major arguments about CO2 being bad for as long as I can remember. Namely: the earth will do absolutely fine with rising CO2, but the ecosystem as we know it in the form we rely on will go through a period of unpredictable adaptation which could be catastrophic for us in various ways.

>Is a warming planet a problem? Again, debatable. Rising sea level and ocean acidification scares aside, history suggests that we tend to do better with a warmer climate.

The IPCC reports that "There is medium confidence that approximately 20-30% of species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average warming exceed 1.5-2.5 °C (relative to 1980-1999). As global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5 °C, model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe."

As a bioengineer, it saddens me that we do not value species diversity, dooming us to ignorance of the survival strategies and adaptations of unknown or little studied organisms and the accompanying nanotechnology

If you're interested, warmer climate in the past hasn't been a clear boon. Its a more nuanced relationship Here is a writeup of it: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-climate-ch...

>How much of the warming is down to CO2? Contentious, again - e.g. see this book for an argument of how we could explain much if not all of the warming down to various natural cycles: [...]

Unfortunately, you have your conclusion in this sentence wrong: the natural cycles barely affect the global temperature increase, found in [0]. You should stick to scientific literature for scientific facts instead of some quack.

[0] -- http://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/

Archeologists regularly are going off shore to see settlements a few thousand years old, in 30 feet of ocean water. What does this say about the warming trend going back a few thousand years pre industrialization?

That depends on the settlements. There are many Greek settlements far under water, but this has nothing to do with climate. It has everything to do with earthquakes. There is more that changes the world than climate.

Archaeologists also regularly go to mountains to see fishing villages that are thousands of feet above sea-level. What does that say about ocean level decreases back over a few thousand years pre-industrialisation?

In relation to areas that were once occupied and were just above sea-level, which are now below sea-level or well above it, what are the various known methods to achieve this?

Islands have risen out of the sea and other islands have sunk back into the sea even in the 20th century. Investigations at the time established that tectonic or volcanic activity was the likely source of this up-down movement.

Don't be so quick to jump to the conclusion that the sea level is rising to any significant degree..

One question that is completely ignored is where has the energy been coming from to melt the land-based ice to cause significant ocean level rises in the short periods envisaged. The quantity required is so huge that there would be other effects on the environment before any large scale ice melt would occur. These effects would have long wiped out all life on the planet first.

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