The not-so-drastic truth behind climate change | Hacker News Reader

The not-so-drastic truth behind climate change

asiatimes.com

17 pointstomohawk24 comments

From the claims in the article, it is a garbage book. Here's an early critique from actual climate scientists: https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/wall-street-journal-a...

"The results published by the IPCC and the official US National Climate Assessment suggest even that global warming will only have only minor effects on the world economy."

As the financial crisis has shown, I would be very careful before letting the future of the planet depend on the predictions of neoclassical economists. Professor Steve Keen, for example, has written[1] about the absurdity of some assumptions in which these predictions are based.

[1] https://profstevekeen.medium.com/economic-failures-of-the-ip...

The future of the planet cannot depend on anyone's predictions -- that's a category error.

What you are referring to is "consensus", e.g. gatekeeping. This is similar to the deplatforming crisis. For some reason a lot of people are convinced that things like opinions or predictions are going to destroy their lives, or the planet, etc, who knows, perhaps even justice and gravity are at risk. It would help everyone to gain some more perspective and lay off the world-ending rhetoric, which has taken on a life of its own in a small, yet highly unstable proportion of the population.

> I would argue, however, that you do need some level of certainty if you’re going to start making trillion-dollar decisions, And right now the models are all over the place and they are getting more so with each new generation of models.

The hard truth that indecision is a decision.

Sometimes you just have to go on what you've got and use your gut for the rest. For me, it's pretty obvious that we'll gain something by cleaning up our act.

"For me, it's pretty obvious that we'll gain something by cleaning up our act."

The question is whether the gains are larger than the costs, and that is not obvious.

It's not binary, though. We can clean up parts of our act and not clean up other parts. Each part of cleaning has its own costs and benefits. For some parts, the benefits are clearly higher than the costs. Let's at least do those.

Because this argues against what I see as the consensus position, I had a quick look for a review from the “other side.” Here’s one: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04052021/dissecting-unset...

I haven’t looked closely at the claims made by either yet, but in my quick search I did note that this book is mostly being discussed by political pundits.

It’s important to reflect on the way that presentations of scientific expertise and (lack of) consensus can be manipulated in the public conversation... but in this case I would argue that the bulk of the misrepresentation of the science for political ends has been by “climate skeptics,” and the title of this book seems to continue that tradition. I found Naomi Oreskes’ and Erik M. Conway’s book “Merchants of Doubt” to be a good, approachable but scholarly history of this type of FUD. There is also a documentary based on the book, with the same title.

A couple things:

- There would be no reason for the book if he was going to reiterate conventional wisdom. Selling books requires something that stands out from the noise. That's the context, and it should not be dismissed.

- Few catastrophes are predicted. We can put off deciding. But if we wait too long to decide, or decide wronh the risk is significant.

- Pollution is pollution. Reducing it hardly seems like a bad thing.

So there's also the the (naive?) assumption that when you see an important perspective missing and you are a scientist you feel the motivation to address it and perhaps write a book.

>> ...or decide wronh the risk is significant.

This sounds exactly the same as what he is saying, i.e. getting trillion dollar decisions wrong.

>> - Pollution is pollution.

This just isn't true. We have limited resources and need to prioritize them to tackle the issues with the biggest return. This is in the best interest of the people who want change and the people who pay for it, even if they're not the same groups.

Pollution is pollution.

There is a significant amount of human health issues that result from (air) pollution. Resources or not, we're not currently factoring in the true cost of fossil fuels. Remove the subsidies. Add the health cost. Those resources are significantly more expensive.

Dirt is dirt, but you don't spend every hour at home cleaning. There is a point at which reducing pollution is not worth the cost.

Yes. But dirt is not pollution. In the USA, there are plenty of super funds sites that don't agree with you.

What's happening elsewhere? God only knows. The dirty little secret is the USA outsources manufacturing not only because of labour costs, but because other countries have much less repect for Mother Nature. The USA brags it cleaned up, but it simply exposed it. That unhealthy smog in China? The USA and others own much of it.

exported*

So he agrees on the macro level but is trying to spin up some controversy about how we actually can’t accurately forecast every small detail of a complex system to sell a book

He doesn't agree on the macro point, as reported by the media and politicians:

> SK: The point is the science, as expressed sometimes obscurely in the consensus reports and in the underlying data and scientific literature. In no way is this a contrarian book in that respect. It is contrarian to the stance that you get from the media and the politicians and business people who have not taken the time to actually look at what’s in the reports. But of course, we will see what the pushback is over the next week as reviews start to come out. I think it’s very hard to contradict what I’ve written.

> we actually can’t accurately forecast every small detail of a complex system to sell a book

He's not talking about "small details." He's talking about large amounts of uncertainty present in the models as to big picture issues such as how much temperature will increase by the end of the century.

He's not the only one. There's been others dialing back the severity. Like Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg.

The truth is that it's hard to gauge the severity with any accuracy. It's refreshing to hear scientists with the humility to admit it.

> both the research literature and government reports that summarize and assess the state of climate science say clearly that: heatwaves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900, and that the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past fifty years.” A few paragraphs down you add three more: “Humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century; Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was eighty years ago, and the net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century.

I'm not sure about these claims, especially the Greenland one.

The latter might be true depending on how you define minimal - but the worst effects of climate change will be felt several centuries into the future. It's really not a rapidly impending doom, and more of slow motion train wreck.

Ocean levels won't even peak 1000 years from now. Temperatures won't peak this century.

These also are quite one-sided as you can also cherry-pick problematic examples of climate change. Like arctic ice cover, melting permafrost, melting glaciers, etc.

This is an silly argument. The temperatures could peak in 5,000 years and we could still all be living in crisis 50 years from now. I'm not saying that will happen, just that the concept of a peak isn't really all that important to the point you are making. The "rapidly impending doom" could come from social reactions to a point being passed which itself snowballs out of control.

That's true. I still think we won't see too much change by the end of the century. The next few centuries will be tumultuous though - and we would have already stopped emitting greenhouse gases for the most part - so those people will have plenty of reasons to curse us.

You lost me at "Koonin’s controversial views"

Science is not about consensus. It's about skepticism and review and dialogue. There should be no reason to shun controversial views just because they are controversial. If you think they are wrong, then say why they are wrong.

> If you think they are wrong, then say why they are wrong.

Climate scientists have already responded to the claims in question in writing. The ideas aren't being shunned because they are controversial. They are being shunned because they are bogus.

I agree with you. I'm not shunning the controversial views, but rather the publication classifying them as such. Before even presenting those views, no less.

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