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Comment by verroq | Hacker News Reader

Can’t see it happening when a large portion of the population insists that climate change isn’t real.

Maybe if the media managed to actually present the issue in a balanced way we wouldn't be here. Maybe if every dire prediction wasn't presented as fact and every criticism labeled as conspiracy theory and vica versa for a-lot of other outlets.

Maybe if solutions like geo-engineering were at least discussed instead of the chorus of the media/politicians telling people that taxes and fees are THE ONLY SOLUTION to the crisis.

Just my 2cents, but we would be so much further ahead if the conversation has some actual balance instead of these-days where people are complaining that having a 5/95 skew in favour of the armageddon scenario if we don't have a global tax on carbon, move to 100% renewables and electric cars as being too generous to the critics of this plan.

It seems that people really prefer to vote extreme people who take hard instance against situations instead of level-headed ones.

We now have hundreds of years of experience regarding politicians. Maybe we have to teach politics in schools:

On the methods the politicians have used to manipulate people and how to call them out.

On the way we should measure politicians and what makes a good decision makes vs. a poor one.

Not really, it's just that the nature of democracy leads power to concentrate within two power centres. Just look at Australia over the last decade and you can see how even politicians who are in favour of carbon taxes will campaign against them one year and fight for them another based on the current political solution.

Hell for another issue, gay marriage. It was quite the sight to see the Deputy leader of the labor party who is openly gay vote against gay marriage legislation because the party had decided that wasn't the way they wanted to do it.

In any case, that doesn't account for the media which we don't vote for in any way.

Also just because we have centuries of experience with politics, it's about as developed as many of the other social sciences, which is to say very underdeveloped and at times heading backwards in it's understanding of the subject's truth.

Those responses seem like something from the people who don't believe there's an actual problem. Scientists are pretty much universally convinced, the only ones who aren't are paid by big oil and the Koch brothers - that means they are lying for money. We don't debate whether the earth is the center of the universe or is the earth flat, because debating that would be a false equivalence of equal chance, but one side of those debates is absurd. We are basically at that point on the question of does human activities increase global warming (yes), will this be really really bad (yes), can we do something about it (yes, but its hard to decide). Let's not waste time arguing about whether the earth is flat, let's move on to figuring what to do about it.

> Scientists are pretty much universally convinced, the only ones who aren't are paid by big oil and the Koch brothers - that means they are lying for money.

Thats actually just wrong and shows how closed minded people are to how science works. Even if they were paid by big oil, shouldn't their evidence stand on it's own merits? Just like the claims made by scientists?

And no, I don't buy your false equivalence because the earth being round or gravity existing is empirically proved. Climate science has not and probably will not be ever proved on that level. If we could, then weather forecasts would also be perfect because we would be able to perfectly model exactly how the climate works but we don't, we strive every day to try and model the future better.

Just to give you a recent example: https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/30277-c...

Can you show me how much hes being paid by big oil to do this? Or how all of the issues he found are just BS? Or maybe it's not exactly true that all researchers are all on the exact same page the media is typically on?

It's actually not wrong.

https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

It just links to J. Cook, et al which i've read and it doesn't say that 97% agree that the earth is warming and man is responsible for it. Maybe you should read it.

Considering that we aren't sure that the mathematical equations that govern fluid dynamics can be fully solved in 3 dimensions, I don't buy your statement that weather forecasts would be solved easily if we could just figure out if global warming is happening.

I do think that pretty much all reputable scientists do believe it. But another thing that serious scientists do is publish in accepted journals. I hadn't heard of the new american, but a quick search on the site found an article saying that Martin Luther King wasn't really a pacifist- he actually wanted to encourage violence, and also something lauding the John Birch Society. So reading the article you linked about some who thinks everyone else is wrong about global warming leads me to doubt his veracity, based in part on the other ridiculous views therein.

Yes - education, lobbying and advocating would all have to be part of the plan.

Edit: look at https://transitionnetwork.org - grassroots network in the UK that seems to be doing well at getting people to engage.

In terms of education, why not start at the top by educating Richard Lindzen, ex-MIT professor of atmospheric physics, author of 200 papers, who reminds us of the popular narrative that " the climate, a complex multi-factorial system, can be summarized in just one variable - the globally average temperature change and primarily controlled by a 1-2% energy budget due to a single variable - carbon dioxide - among many variable so comparable importance". Lindzen's view is that this claim is based on reasoning that borders on magical thinking.". Should Al Gore and John Kerry put him straight on his basic physics?

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/09/richard-lindzen-lectu...

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