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Comment by codingprograms | Hacker News Reader

Every time I read these reports, six months later they find out the data was faked, emails are leaked with political agendas, etc. I straight don’t trust “science”. Don’t get me started on the replication crises. Or how many times climate predictions have been off by hundreds of percent

I’m not an expert, but I have a dual masters in math and cs. If you listened to these people 30 years ago, you would expect we would all be engulfed in a fire ball by now. It hasn’t happened. Almost none of the past predictions have turned true. Ever. I’m not going to start now and these people need to be held accountable for studies that they did in the past that didn’t work

Also, sorry for offending everyone’s ministry of science

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Did you look at the paper? Is the data wrong? The calculations? Is there anything you can re-run with alternative data sources that you do trust? Or calculations you checked? Or do you "straight up" not trust people when the conclusion is not controversial enough (or some other random justification) without actually checking anything? At the very least, do you have any sort of data or analysis that backs up the claim that it's more likely than not that this will turn out to be faked data in 6 months, e.g. did a majority of climate-change-is-real papers go down that fate?

It's simple: they don't like the conclusions.

Perhaps, but perhaps they also just never stopped to question what their peers are saying about climate change.

> I straight don’t trust “science”.

Think logically. The paper is there to look at, as is the data.

I understand not trusting scientists, I disagree and think it's a bad idea, but understand why someone would not.

Not trusting science is a whole different ballgame.

The the absolute knuckledraggery of extrapolating data over 100 years + without accounting for all the fat tail of all other events.

IF I had told anyone 10 years ago that a large mob is going to attack Congress and Senate will have to evacuated and a guy dressed up as Viking and shirtless would seat in Speaker s chair people would call me stupid. More such surprises exist in history and in future.

Climate change is a non issue if we humans invents a far cheaper and cleaner source of energy. We can use that energy to literally suck and filter out CO2 from air.

Okay. So let's unpack here.

The only cheaper energy source (that include pilotability) would be nuclear. Its not as portable, but it exist. Fission is limited (not really, but minerals will be expensive to mine after a while).

So We have Fusion left. ITER will be up before 2028 hopefully. We just found a better way to make our fusion magnetic fields, so this is not a pipedream. BUT even this advance is not enough for sustainable fusion. We have to find an even better way to create our magnetic fields, sustainable under high temperature (probably with high pressure). We recently found a supraconductor that is interesting because it work at "high" temperature (high for physicien is death for people), high pressure. sadly we don't understand shit about all those new supraconductor, we don't even understand CuO supraconductors yet.

If we have fusion in 2080, it will be because we invested heavily for this (and we're not). And it is a silver bullet, that we're not allowed to miss, or else.

We are signing checks without provision unless we find the right tech, at the right time. My guess is that some will have to pay. Most of us here aren't to concerned (i know i'm not, probably only people living close to the Ohio river should be less concerned than me), but people living in Florida and south of Texas will want to buy a climatised suit if they hope to be able to be out more than 10 day a year by 2080.

> The only cheaper energy source (that include pilotability) would be nuclear.

There is no need to make any such assumptions. As I have pointed out just because you and me can't see it right now does not mean something else wont be there. World is complex.

And our political problems will be a non-issue, too, when we invent new political structures and modes of governance that improve well-being for every human on earth 100x compared to today while allowing a 100x reduction in labor. Best not to worry about today's political problems, then.

The physically possible options for energy production haven't changed too much in the last 80 years. Betting on a magical technology to spontaneously emerge in the next 80 seems dubious.

> Climate change is a non issue if we humans invents a far cheaper and cleaner source of energy. We can use that energy to literally suck and filter out CO2 from air.

The problem is we have to actually do it.

"Tipping points" are so-named because, after you've crossed them, you can magically disappear all of the CO2 in the atmosphere away instantly, and it's still too late to reverse the thermodynamic momentum of the bad stuff happening. If we don't stop racing to those tipping points, we'd better get fusion working pretty fast.

I kinda think like you, I find knowledgeable analysts too keen on forgetting disruption. I don't want to fantasize about potential scifi.. but simply a few discussions about potential research paths and then put some weight behind. There are way more money floating around on useless thing than required to do so for energy/climate solutions.

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