Hacker News Reader

Comment by mfatica | Hacker News Reader

What are you on about? That's exactly how honest science works. You said it yourself here:

> They attack the cause of Antarctic sea ice collapse by claming that temperature flux changes in the Antarctic bed are caused by geothermal activity. Scientists investigate, adjust for this variable, and it's still the fact that the brutal increases in atmospheric and ocean temperature are the cause for the collapse. Crickets.

1. Scientists publish findings on climate science

2. Someone says hey this might be incorrect if you haven't considered X

3. Scientists conduct further research while accounting for X

Final result is now more accurate than before the "attacks".

It seems to me the position of climate change proponents is that nothing should be questioned. This is not honest science.

View on HN

No, the blog post was just an example of yet another attempt to halt the crucial work towards managing the current climate crisis, not an honest attempt at advancing science.

So far similar efforts has managed to prevent meaningful mitigation actions against climate change for 30 years, so please don't add to the troubles with your disinformation.

> No, the blog post was just an example of yet another attempt to halt the crucial work towards managing the current climate crisis, not an honest attempt at advancing science.

A really unfortunate reality of climate science is that it’s inextricably tied to the work of combatting climate change (if it exists). The normal scientific prices can’t work when any criticism of one set of results can be reframed in political terms.

First, many branches of science have always been inextricably tied to society. That's part of the point of doing (and publicly funding) science.

Second, I honestly can't tell if you wrote "climate change (if it exists)" as a low-effort troll, or if you're actually on the fence about whether the climate is actually changing. Even the most willfully ignorant, contrarian AGW denier must admit that something is changing the climate, right?

> First, many branches of science have always been inextricably tied to society. That's part of the point of doing (and publicly funding) science

Almost none of the branches of “science” tied to society and public policy are actually science. Almost in every are of policy, we are like Noah wandering lost through the desert.

As to the parenthetical, I’m not questioning AGW. I’m questioning whether we have real efforts to avert climate change.

Shutting down discussion is the opposite of the scientific method, but global warming alarmists know their arguments can't stand up to scrutiny so it's their default position to just de-platform anyone who is skeptical.

The asymmetric harm that is possible makes skeptics irrational. The downside if we over correct for climate change is wound down or restructured oil companies, restricted products and production, but in exchange there is a cleaner more technologically advanced global society that has the ability to coordinate to address global scale problems and is on a good path to having the social cooperation necessary to colonize space.

Worst case if skepticism is wrong; civilization collapses as mass extinction creates scarcity and thus violence.

Part of the problem is that many people who are on the right side of climate change support efforts to combat climate change because they’re also in favor of a “global society” and “social cooperation.” If world government isn’t your cup of tea, then the harm isn’t asymmetric. If we’re wrong about climate change, we will have constructed these global, top-down structures that will stamp out what little autonomy and freedom people have left.

> If we’re wrong about climate change, we will have constructed these global, top-down structures that will stamp out what little autonomy and freedom people have left.

We are right about climate change. Full stop. People who consider that not to be the case are lacking in information, because there are literally dozens of independent lines of evidence that back the conclusion and that have been used to model the current state of the climate.

There is no skepticism in denying the current state of climate science.

The top-down structures are in place anyway because there's a ton of other political forces at play. Climate change policies introduce the same degree of cooperation as most international agreements on a myriad of things do already.

It is an intellectually dishonest point, focusing on this extremely narrow aspect of policy while disregarding the last 30 years of global cooperation frameworks.

I think we are probably right about climate change (as to many things), but there is no "full stop" in science. It's worthwhile to read about the state of physics in the late 19th and very early 20th century. People thought physics was "done"--until relativity and quantum mechanics completely upended everything.

The "international agreements" we have in place are not strong enough to address climate change. Not even close. To hit 1.5C we have to have zero net CO2 emissions by the middle of the century: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-the-ipcc-1-5c-repor.... But under current projections, CO2 emissions will keep going up until the middle of the century: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=26252. (China has added more than an entire US worth of CO2 output in the last decade. If India gets up to Chinese levels, much less Western levels, that will add another US or more. The population of africa is expected to double by 2050.)

I am doubtful there is any way to hit any of the IPCC targets, period, but certainly not within any of the international frameworks we have today. Any supra-national political structure capable of actually addressing climate change would be massively more invasive than anything we have today.

> We are right about climate change. Full stop. People who consider that not to be the case are lacking in information, because there are literally dozens of independent lines of evidence that back the conclusion and that have been used to model the current state of the climate.

I think the largest divide is man-made climate change vs not. I agree the climate is changing. I'm not yet convinced we're causing it or we can do anything about it.

Which of these two items are you not convinced of?

1) It's getting warmer because of higher concentrations of greenhouse gasses (primarily CO2) in the atmosphere.

2) Humans are releasing large amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels and other industrial processes.

It's a pretty straightforward line of reasoning.

Again, the risk is so great and asymmetric that what reason do you have to resist addressing it. Your delay could lead to a literal mass extinction, why are you willing to risk that because your not convinced. I carry health insurance for unlikely risks for exactly the same reason.

You might enjoy this video on climate change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLqXkYrdmjY

Turned it off after the first 15 seconds. Why does a video about climate start with a man putting peanut butter on a statue of a dog? How am I meant to take that seriously

How is it that such a stupid non-political visual gag elicited such a strong emotional reaction that you couldn't even watch the video? Were you actually intending to watch it to begin with?

If it's meant to be a serious discussion of a topic, why does the video need to start with a visual gag? Moreso why such an asinine gag? I cannot take seriously someone who does not take themselves seriously, it tells me maybe they are not thinking through things as critically as they should.

False. Global solutions can come from decentralized market forces if you don’t have corruption hijacking the effort. All countries, except the US are on board and would arguably be moving faster and more aggressively if the US were leading rather than sabotaging efforts. Governments rightful role, whether its local, regional, national, or global is to set the rules of markets so that their natural forces move for an efficient and utility creating end. The market may demand child labor but government on any scale rightly intercedes to short circuit the market drive because it destroys utility (happiness or wellbeing) of the children and, in the long term, society as a whole as the population is less educated, healthy, and equal.

Further, I’d actually argue that most individual autonomy is stripped at the local level. You’re homeowners association can do more to rob you of individual liberty as the UN. In fact, I’d argue the global institutions, in some meaningful ways, have been the biggest drivers of restoring individual liberty. You might not feel it if you live in a market driven democracy; but the facts of development over the last 80 years, the increase liberty globally speak for themselves.

> False. Global solutions can come from decentralized market forces if you don’t have corruption hijacking the effort.

Wrong for two reasons.

1) Market forces will not address things like climate change without government intervention to force externalities to be internalized. For many reasons that have nothing to do with "corruption," governments are disincentivized to force perfect internalization of externalities. In places like China, the government is massively subsidizing infrastructure development (and creating a large resulting carbon impact). In places like the U.S., keeping energy artificially cheap is a key way to keep voters happy.

2) Even if policies were imposed to force externalities to be internalized, there is no reason to believe that market forces will reach an equilibrium on the very short time scales (one or two decades) that we're talking about.

> You might not feel it if you live in a market driven democracy;

To the contrary, I do. But folks talking about a "Green New Deal" that make me nervous about whether I'll continue to live in a market driven democracy.

Actually the vast majority of humanity wants aggressive action on climate solutions but US government subsidizes overwhelmingly go to oil production not clean energy. If market forces were actually able to play out, there would be faster movement than there has been. I say this as someone very much in favor of governmental solutions to problems like health care, climate change, basic infrastructure, education and recognize that markets often fail to address certain types of problems. I am not a small or anti government libertarian by any measure.

I just think we have reached a critical mass of support with most people wanting solutions that if the cynical manipulation of the argument and disingenuous “debate” that is only trying to cast doubt to keep the oil money flowing were to stop the market would act fast.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com