Hacker News Reader

Comment by Daishiman | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com