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Comment by aldoushuxley001 | Hacker News Reader

Yup, the fact that if you dare to study the science objectively and ask, e.g. how much of the warming we’re seeing right now is attributable to humans? You’ll get effectively socially ostracized, meanwhile that’s literally the most important question in the whole climate debate.

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This question has been thoroughly studied: https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/

"The industrial activities that our modern civilization depends upon have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from 280 parts per million to 400 parts per million in the last 150 years. The panel also concluded there's a better than 95 percent probability that human-produced greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have caused much of the observed increase in Earth's temperatures over the past 50 years."

Feel free to read the summary for policy makers: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...

You can ask whatever questions you like. Those of us who aren't dismissive of climate science have been able to get answers like yours without problem.

Meanwhile, those of us who understand that it is very difficult to tease out natural from man-made warming are very skeptical of the increasing politicization of science.

We're coming out of an ice age after all; I see nothing in the current warming that points to an aberration from what could be natural, asides from the much hysteria about greenhouse gases.

Collect some data that shows that the current warming is nothing to be concerned about and publish a paper. You'll be famous.

Show me some evidence that suggests the current warming is something to be concerned about. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And AGW is an extraordinary claim.

The IPCC reports contain sources with the relevant evidence. Please refute those first before asking for more evidence.

so, I'll take that as a no then... Even the IPCC reports suggest that warming isn't as bad as many claim, even though it is overly confident on attributing the warming to humans.

Unfortunately, evidence is all too often what's lacking in any discussion of climate science, and faux scientists tossing away skepticism for politics.

What kind of evidence would convince you if the evidence provided by the IPCC doesn't? What do you expect random commenters on the Internet to do?

Ideally, random commenters on the internet would back up their claims with more digested evidence rather than linking to a multi-hundred page report that often doesn't say what people think it says.

Why do you think this is the most important question?

Because it's entirely plausible that most of the warming is natural and not anthropogenically forced. If that's the case, then we're doing real harm to the poorest people in the world by needlessly raising the price of energy.

Why do you think that is plausible? What natural drivers are there that would be able to do that?

We're coming out of an ice age, so it's to be expected that temperatures should be warming naturally and without any human intervention. In fact, it would be very worrying if that weren't the case.

The question though is how much of the current temperature increase is natural or human-caused (e.g. via greenhouse gas released from human activity). Trying to figure out what percent of the warming we're seeing is natural or man-made is a reallly tough question, of course.

In regards to natural drivers, it's tough to pinpoint specifics, but of course ocean cycles, solar cycles, etc. But the reality is we're really not sure what caused the previous ice age we're coming out, nor are we sure (despite what people will say) what are the primary drivers of current temperature changes.

The fact is that climate science is a very difficult undertaking. It's entirely possible that natural temperature increase has flatlined and all the warming is caused by greenhouse gases released by humans, but I find that to be wholly unrealistic. It's significantly more likely that the warming is part natural and part human-caused. Which brings me back to the question of: How much of the warming is attributable to humans vs. natural factors.

I know that didn't fully answer your question of what natural drivers could be resposible, but that's part of the ongoing (not settled) research.

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