Comment by aazaa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aazaa | Hacker News Reader

I find it disturbing how popular science articles on climate change seem to find it unimportant to convince the reader that human CO2 emissions are causing most of the temperature increases the earth has experienced in recent years.

Here's a challenge to illustrate my point. Where can I find the best popular science treatment of the specific question:

How do we know with certainty that human-produced CO2 is responsible for most (or all) of the temperature increases the earth has experienced in the last 100 years?

I have looked for such a treatment and found... nothing compelling. This is especially worrisome given that nebulous ideas of what caused previous ice ages and numerous interglacial periods within them.

If the source of previous events that grew an ice sheet 1 mile thick over New York and then melted it completely 12,000 years ago isn't understood, then how can anyone expect smart non-experts to jump onboard the notion that we know what's causing warming in the last 100 years?

This question relates directly to the article in the sense that we as a species are very good at causing unintended consequences. Sulfa and penicillin were seen as wonder drugs and started to be used everywhere prophylactically and misused. We now face the specter of planet-wide extinction events based on antibiotic resistance.

Pulling vast quantities of CO2 out of the atmosphere could lead to unintended consequences on an even larger scale without a solid understanding of the system we're dealing with.

The mind numbing thing to me is you wouldnt even have to believe in climate change to understand how incredibly screwed we are. We are already done for without multiple degrees of temperature increase. Climate change is just the last nail in the coffin. We are wasting non-replaceable resources at an unfathomable rate to sustain growth for growth sake. A lot of people still dont seem to understand what "finite" means. One day stuff is out. And that day is coming closer. And instead of prolonging the time we have left to search for solutions, we waste the remaining resources for growth as if there is no tomorrow. Which to be fair, there wont.

All of our progress since the industrial revolution was made possible by cheap/free energy. Once we run out of everything from energy to fertilizer to metals to sand to our ecosystem and its biodiversity, there will be no slowing down, there will be collapse. Without fossil fuel based fertilizers we can say goodbye to the idea of food safety. Especially since modern fertilizers are the only thing that allows the dirt we use instead of actual soil to grow anything. And despite that we are still burning this stuff for personal transportation and having ingenious ideas like growing biofuel, of course also unsustainable in overexploitation. Because fuck yeah! Better yet, we are actually trying to replace oil in the transport and energy sectors with natural gas. The natural gas we need to not be faced with an incredible productivity decrease in food production. Its like people are straight up mad, we are talking about electric cars replacing fossil fuel to keep our transportation network running, and of course the freedom of getting to drive around in your own car. Completely ignoring how many batteries we could actually build before we run out of lithium without an real option for recycling. We were all born right in time to witness the waste of the last few hopes we have for decelerating and long term survival of human civilization on a few more years of unsustainable growth. And the best part, none of this was inevitable. And none of it is a surprise.

> How do we know with certainty that human-produced CO2 is responsible for most (or all) of the temperature increases the earth has experienced in the last 100 years?

Measurements. See:

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/

If you want to know facts, the science (inc. raw data) is out there in open access journals. If you don't want to believe the science ("nothing compelling"), then nothing I can link will change your mind.

> Measurements. See: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/....

This just documents increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1970 and theories about what effects it might have. It completely leaves out the temperature changes in the 20th century and how there were warming and cooling periods despite steady increase in CO2, which quite obviously means there are stronger mechanisms involved (if there was cooling despite CO2 increase in the 60s/70s).

The section "Why carbon dioxide matters" directly discusses that (the link in your quote is broken fyi).

> It completely leaves out the temperature changes in the 20th century and how there were warming and cooling periods despite steady increase in CO2, which quite obviously means there are stronger mechanisms involved (if there was cooling despite CO2 increase in the 60s/70s).

The second graph shows that the warming/cooling is seasonal and that the overall trend has been up, in-line with CO2 levels. I don't understand what you don't understand about the second graph (your question is confusing, aside from explaining how seasons work on earth).

> The second graph shows that the warming/cooling is seasonal

The second graph shows no temperatures at all, it's CO2 ppm / year.

> the overall trend has been up, in-line with CO2 levels.

That's simply not true. If you have more than a decade of cooling with steady increase of CO2 and recently more than a decade of steady temperatures with sharp increase of CO2, it's obvious that there are other factors involved.

> I don't understand what you don't understand about the second graph

You should take a closer look at it.

There are many subtleties in those discussion that never get mentioned.

For example, the graph of CO2 concentration takes center stage. Fine, have a look at the caption:

> Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in parts per million (ppm) for the past 800,000 years, based on EPICA (ice core) data. The peaks and valleys in carbon dioxide levels track the coming and going of ice ages (low carbon dioxide) and warmer interglacials (higher levels). Throughout these cycles, atmospheric carbon dioxide was never higher than 300 ppm; in 2018, it reached 407.4 ppm (black dot). NOAA Climate.gov, based on EPICA Dome C data (Lüthi, D., et al., 2008) provided by NOAA NCEI Paleoclimatology Program.

So this is all ice core data, apparently. Except that the study was done in 2008. Yet there's a point clearly marked 2018 average in bold. Where did it come from?

I could assume that it came from atmospheric monitoring, but that's not what the site says.

Not good. Probably not ethical. When data from different sources are mixed together, but not identified clearly as having different sources, that's dishonest at best. And I see it all the time in the public presentation of this research.

Let's set aside the issue of whether anthropogenic climate change is real or not. I'm talking about presenting data to try to convince a general audience that something is true.

What I've seen so far is lacking.

This is a reasonable place to start reading, they provide both summaries and detailed explanations of the science: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/

> I find it disturbing how popular science articles on climate change seem to find it unimportant to convince the reader that human CO2 emissions are causing most of the temperature increases the earth has experienced in recent years.

I understand. You don't want to be convinced. Fair enough. Why not talk about the economic aspect instead? When you pay $3.00 for a gallon of gasoline, the best case scenario is that one third of that gallon is used to propel your car while the remaining two thirds ends up in the atmosphere in the form of wasted heat and emissions.

Have you considered the possibility that oil companies are engaged in a disinformation campaign because they don't want people to stop paying $3.00 for $1.00 worth of movement?

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