Most of the deniers I know have shifted from it doesn't exist to either its not man made and just a natural cycle or it may actually be a good thing because plants like CO2 and warmth...
It's easy to make fun of, but the most direct experience that people have of a God who controls the universe would be the weather. These people need to be approached theologically; secular explanations are not going to hack it. The fact that polluters have an easy job getting their support doesn't mean that the ideas that they have about the weather originate from polluters.
To preempt a certain type of response, telling them that "climate" is different than "weather" is not going to work unless you can cite a biblical verse that explains that distinction.
We (middle-class PMCs) vastly underestimate the number of honest fundamentalists the same way we vastly underestimate the number of English-speaking illiterates. I'm always amused on HN when people in a thread realize that the reference to demonic possession or witchcraft by another commenter was completely in earnest.
I have been in a serious relationship with a wonderful, intelligent, university-educated, well-read, eloquent person who absolutely believed that Magic:The Gathering led to sorcery, which was in turn also an absolutely real thing (to her).
Similarly, the father of another relationship of mine was one of the most well-educated people I met, well-regarded principal of premier private school in Toronto, host of book clubs to which mayor participated in, but definitely prevaricated between "climate change doesn't exist", "it's not man-made", and "it's god's will/plan". His book club included a published physics researcher and university professor who similarly was the head of local skeptics society until his absolute inability & blind spot to apply skepticism/rationality to his strong religious views, including those impacting cosmology let alone earth weather, became too much of a conflict/contradiction.
My best friend is a Microbiology / Pharmacology PhD from prestigious Canadian university, who then went through medical school later in life; roughly half of her student colleagues in either program were similarly highly religious - with religiously-guided views on cosmology, climate, and of course what they can and cannot do as doctors :-/
The bubble is real, and for all its diversity Hacker News is a bubble of its own.
As I've aged I think I've drifted more and more toward the french view of religious freedom - rather than freedom of religion, freedom from religion.
You know you're not going to get a good result from a yelling contest with your kid about who's more right, so I don't understand the reasoning that dismissing religion altogether is somehow going to "make the sheeple see the error of their ways".
Semi-ironically, I'm reminded of an episode of a kids-oriented podcast I listened to recently that talked about a different approach to conflict resolution: negotiations. The gist being to strive to meet the other party at their level and work together rather than against each other. You'd be surprised at how fundamentally you can shake some people by pointing at some relevant Bible passage that supports your position (for example, showering them w/ direct quotes from Matthew 25:35, Leviticus 19:34 and a dozen other similar passages in response to xenophobia)
For climate change specifically, there's a bunch of passages written where the gist is that God made Earth good, but humans defiled it[0]. One could probably start a dialogue by pointing at those.
Your kids brain is still developing and they are still actively learning. Taking different approaches helps.
That is almost always not the case with a fundamentalist.
Also, fundamentalists are people, not pre-programmed robots. Many ISIS fighters, for example, are young adults whose very active learning capabilities are being exploited by a subversive group.
Also, I think the track record of arguing and butting heads kinda speaks for itself. Everyone's doing it and yet the world is literally on fire and on a path towards destruction.
The question is whether you want to get stuff accomplished or want to be right. A dead pedestrian who had the right-of-way was right, but it doesn't matter to them anymore.
There are also millions of ultra-fundamentalists who believe that we are presently living in the "end times" and in some cases doing things to attempt to bring about the end of civilization and final parts of the book of Revelations as quickly as possible. Or they simply don't care about environmental matters because they actually believe civilization and human life on earth will cease to exist in the next 50 years.
If you have a time machine and want to have a big impact on history, stop Darby from arriving in America in the 1860s.
I have a slightly different view. Not the end of the world, but the end of it as we (have) know(n) it! In the literal meaning of the word, as in lifting the veil which occludes reality.
The reality of our existence as species on a world with limits exploding right back into our faces, shattering our illusions.
No demons, holy spirits, or such.
Those emerge out of our own weaknesses.
Because of bad signal to noise ratio due to SPAM of bullshitters since ancient times.
Can we make choices that effect the outcome of things or is it all part of Gods plan? It can't be both right?
Did God create everything including free will or does it exist outside of his control?
I don't blame my program when it does something wrong, I mean I wrote the code that tells it how to behave.
To a person in that position there is no apparent contradiction, to an atheist there may be but they are not in that position themselves so lack a frame of reference that would allow them to appreciate this and to see that it actually isn't a problem.
--
So in the end it boils down to something like this:
"God has a plan, that plan is for you to have free will. You may question your ability to choose, you may believe that you have or do not have free will and yet even if you act against Gods plan that too is part of the plan".
This may sound like nonsense but to a religious person it assuredly isn't. Source of this very much abbreviated conversation, my grandmother, long since deceased with whom I had some interesting conversations on the subject (me: atheist, she: devout catholic).
It is also hard for religious people to wrap their heads around facts and certainty. Before I was atheist I would debate Christians on the merits of theistic evolution vs. intelligent design. Intelligent design proponents will literally accuse Christians who believe differently of blasphemy.
My mom even lost a science teaching job over something more minor. She was unwilling to say with 100% certainty if the story of creation happened in 7 contiguous days, or may have happened over 7 non-contiguous days. While she believed it was most likely 7 contiguous days she didn’t have enough evidence to be sure.
I know some very good hard science scientists who have absolutely no problem with this and I suspect that goes for the bulk of them. Religious people come from all walks of life and have all kinds of professions, some of them dealing with facts, others less so.
I also know plenty of atheists that have a problem with accepting facts and dealing with probability (which is another way of saying certainty).
So I don't think that by itself says much. It's when the two are in conflict that things get interesting: what if your facts say 'a' and your belief says 'b'. In some cases this leads to people renouncing their belief, in others it causes psychological issues, and in the majority it is just absorbed without any apparent conflict or discomfort.
Fractal.
Try:
What you've found with your question is one of the many places the narratives don't join up, and the fraying sticky tape shows through.
There's no point trying to make sense of this, because there is no sense to be made. Ultimately it's about people using story telling to make themselves feel better and more reassured that their tribe is safe and stable.
Not coincidentally, this also allows some opportunists to make themselves richer, more powerful, and more important. Surprisingly frequently this also provides opportunities for extra sexual activity.
The stories don't need to make sense beyond that. They just need to look like an acceptable narrative salad made of tasty story bits. In fact it's better that they don't make sense, because then they can reduce believers to a pre-rational state where "You just have to believe!" makes them more credulous.
You can see the effects clearly with climate change and Covid. Some people try to understand the facts to make reliable predictions and offer realistic solutions.
Others can't fit these challenges into a religious world view. So they fall back into outright denial and/or use them as yet another excuse to welcome the apocalypse and their own imaginary personal salvation.
None of this is a function of raw IQ. You can be smart and still be infected by these distorting ideological viruses.
You'd think that forcing god to take some action would not be a concept, but it goes at least as far back as the ten commandments. The "take the lord's name in vain" thing was this idea that words had magical power in a snow crash kind of way and that you could literally go so far as to command god with the right incantation. Obviously that's a big no no which is why "saying curse words" was considered higher priority than "don't rape". You see pieces of that still in Orthodox Jewish numerology of Hebrew like was a plot point in Pi.
And, again, none of this is a position I actually hold, just where I've ended up trying to understand the cognitive framework of people vastly different from my own who simply have different axioms they start with.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that all of my actions are “blessed” by God, or that I don’t sin, but it means that I can be a conduit for his plan if he needs me.
It’s not a perfect explanation. Religion is built on faith. If something can be proven then you don’t need faith. That’s kinda a squirmy imperfect answer, but that’s all I got :)
Given the appropriate doctrine, sure it can.
First, in some religions (and some denominations of Christianity) God exists outside of the framework of logical necessity. God being tied to logical necessity himself is a later western theological concern (say, starting with Augustine and co). Not really a tenet of earlier Christian doctrine, or accepted by e.g. the orthodox church.
That is, what looks "impossible" or a "a logical contradiction" to us, isn't necessarily so to God (which is also part of the case with miracles - they're not just cool feats like a Marvel character with superpower would do, they are the bending of physical rules and reality itself).
In that context:
> Did God create everything including free will or does it exist outside of his control?
Both. He created everything AND he gave it free will to chose for itself.
"I don't blame my program when it does something wrong, I mean I wrote the code that tells it how to behave".
That's because you're not God to your program, but merely a human that developed it. So you can't both make it and give it free will (among lots of other limitations, like not being able to make water wine at will).
This is simply an escape hatch, if it can't be explained, it's because it's magic. Gods follow no logic do what you're told even if it makes no logical sense because there is no logic to be found. There is no room for debate here, you can't use reason, there is nothing further to discuss.
>That's because you're not God to your program, but merely a human that developed it. So you can't both make it and give it free will (among lots of other limitations, like not being able to make water wine at will).
Even more so the blame goes to God not his creations since he created everything including free will and the choices. Blaming your creations playing in the sandbox you created with the sand you created is a nonsensical blame game with yourself.
It is an escape hatch, but is it simply an escape hatch? Is a whale simply a mammal?
> if it can't be explained, it's because it's magic.
More or less, as I understand it.
> do what you're told even if it makes no logical sense because there is no logic to be found. There is no room for debate here, you can't use reason, there is nothing further to discuss.
These are your words, not his.
> Even more so the blame goes to God not his creations since he created everything including free will and the choices.
Could be.
> Blaming your creations playing in the sandbox you created with the sand you created is a nonsensical blame game with yourself.
Is God himself doing this, or are you imagining God is doing this? You don't seem to even believe in Him.
I think this can actually be explained in a fairly straightforward way via science: the laws of physics dictate precisely how reality ought to behave, and yet we have thoughts and we make decisions and we believe to be largely free to do whatever we want even though our conscience and our entire being are essentially just a big clump of chemical reactions governed by the laws of physics.
According to some pantheist flavors, the laws of physics are the omnipotent property of God - aka "His plan" in christian lingo - as well as the omnipresent property.
The interesting thing about this interpretation is that it's immune to the determinism paradox: it doesn't matter if the laws of physics dictate a "plan" or whether "we" can randomly affect it (the definition of "we" is itself a big philosophical rabbit hole btw), because by their very definition, the laws of physics are what they are, and they always hold true no matter what.
What about randomness and indeterminism? Is there a RNG driving our decisions at some level? If so where does the entropy come from?
In some flavors, the view is that there is no omni-benevolence (think in the tradition of Roman gods, for example), other views include the position that God is not an entity per se and that the notion of conflicts and the pursuit of what is "good" are inherent to our human condition (think Buddhism). If you're inclined to hear abrahamic leaning interpretations, the most closely aligned I've seen is the idea of "God draws straight lines w/ crooked sticks" (i.e. things we perceive as injustices are actually not, but we cannot comprehend the greater good because we are imperfect, biased things). See also karma and beliefs of reincarnation.
As for the origin of entropy, there's a lot of different takes, some rooted in philosophical thought (e.g. Spinoza-like takes that everything is deterministic and RNG is an illusion), some more spiritualistic (e.g. the panentheist idea that the universe is contained in God and that there may or may not be a non-deterministic force underlying it all)
Personally, I don't try to obtain explanations for every claim of every denomination (trying to nitpick apart the exact definition of God as per christianity, for example), since at some level one needs to acknowledge the metaphorical/allegorical aspects of various religious texts. I find it more interesting to take note of what concepts/interpretations appear in multiple denominations, there's a surprising amount of overlap when looking at individual concepts separately from lore.
Aside from all the stuff about deities, there's also quite a bit of literature on the morals side. I find those topics to be have a lot more overlap among religions, with self improvement usually being a central theme.
Anyways, if these kinds of debates interest you, I would recommend looking into pantheism and derivations. A lot of common questions have already been contemplated by various schools of thought. The wikipedia article might be a good place to start.
I find it interesting from a study of human behavior but overall all religions seem to lack rigor, they leave me unsatisfied due to their lack of even internal consistency, unlike mathematics and science.
Questions of determinism or free will are at the root of the mechanics of the universe and how a god might construct it or not. If you believe some god to have created all things then how can there be free will, that would denote something from the outside, some source of entropy not under the control of the creator. If it is under control of the creator the it is not true entropy and everything is determined ultimately by the creator.
Yeah, that's one way to look at it. There's also philosophies of what exactly is "self" and where its boundaries lie. One take is that if "God lives within us" then even if the universe is entirely deterministic, our decisions are governed by our own internal mechanisms (hence it's "free will" in the sense that we exclusively "own" those mechanisms, as opposed to them being influenced by outside factors). Another related view is the notion of relativity (i.e. "my reality is not your reality and definitions are inherently tied to each person's relative consciousness because without consciousness there are no definitions". This second notion cuts pretty close to the heart of why arguments between christians and atheists often break down: if they are talking about two completely distinct, mutually-exclusive realities (as it is perceived by each individual), there's really no way to reach a compromise.
There's a variety of interpretations of free will in that context, some simple and fatalist (e.g. immutable, inescapable fate), some quite a bit more creative ("God gave us free will because He loves us and He weeps when we use it to do bad things, yet everything is part of His grand plan"). I don't always see these interpretations as necessarily internally inconsistent. Some definitely are literally nonsensical or highly metaphorical, but some just take a bit more effort to appreciate. At times, it's an exercise in realizing whether I'm being overly pedantic over some philosophical minutia and extrapolating aversion to the entire belief system.
Rather than rejecting entire ideologies at face value, I enjoy looking for common ground between different ideologies or ways to reconcile ideas because religions come packaged w/ moral frameworks and I think the moral aspect is an ignored but key thing if one hopes to talk to religious people about controversial topics in a productive manner.
The general Christian jist, often twisted by evangelicals and fundamentalists (in my opinion), but still preserved and well-recorded in the annals of Catholic thought is that God is both personal but also perfect.
Let's go back in time. Aristotle, from whom a lot of (Western) Christian ideas come, believed that the universe obeyed certain laws and that behind these laws there was an 'unmoved mover', i.e., an entity whose power permeated the universe and who followed the laws of the universe. To paraphrase, God is that which has no cause. Now to be clear, a lot of human language is predicated on things having causes; we are not used to dealing with that which has no cause, which is why these linguistic paradoxes often pop up and cause confusion.
Broadly speaking, God is Aristotle's unmoved mover. While he could override free will, he won't, because he promised us he wouldn't and as a perfect God, he follows his own law. It actually doesn't make sense to identify 'God's law' as separate from God himself, because God is subject only to himself. God cannot 'cause' himself to do something because God has no cause.
In the same way that God created the universe, but the universe follows certain laws that cannot be broken (save, of course, in Christian thought for exceptional circumstances, although even then it's unclear -- happy to discuss this in more detail). People ask silly questions like 'can God create a square circle', but fail to understand the nonsensicalness of the question. The universe we inhabit was created by God and does not permit square circles. 'Could' God create a universe in which some laws could be broken... sure, but (1) to presume that we have the linguistic ability to speak of such universes is human hubris, and (2) moreover, to 'could' do something requires that one have a cause to do such a thing, but God has no cause and nothing can 'cause' him to do something, since God is his own cause, and the quality of having no cause is one that is necessary for God to be God. If some thing had the quality of needing a cause (like the potential we're talking about to create a new universe with this new set of laws), it could not possible be the same thing as God. If God had willed such a universe to exist, it would already, and maybe it does, but we wouldn't know.
> Can we make choices that effect the outcome of things or is it all part of Gods plan?
Yes, we can make choices that affect the outcome of things. In fact, large portions of the universe is the result of human choices. But we cannot deviate from God's plan, simply because God will manage to fix it, no matter what we do. This is like how humanity can do whatever we want, but the universe will end in heat death basically no matter what choices we make today. The trajectory of the universe towards the apocalypse and the final judgement is inevitable (just like the absolute increase in entropy), even if the choices we make today are not.
> Did God create everything including free will or does it exist outside of his control?
God cannot change his mind (what cause would he have to do so). His will is perfect. Thus, since he's given us free will and guaranteed it, he cannot 'take it back'. In our human conception of 'free will', we grant ourselves -- as imperfect being -- the action of being able to change our mind. God doesn't change his decisions, because his will is perfect. God is not the only creature with this particular nature. The angels also have perfect will, which is why lucifer will not change his mind and reconcile with God.
This conception of God differs drastically from yours which envisions God as simply a very powerful super-hero-like entity. It even differs from the Old Testament view of God, which often has him changing his mind. The Christian conception of God (at least that present in the Western church) is very different from Judaism and extremely different from evangelical, Protestant Christianity.
I'm engaging in good faith (and I am giving my best understanding; many much smarter than myself have thought about this and I am trying to summarize), please no trolling or flaming here.
Sources:
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1083.htm https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1019.htm http://www.catholictheology.info/summa-theologica/summa-part...
God created everything including free will and what it means to have it.
God blames and punishes his own creations for excising free will in a way he's deems incorrectly. He's wants us to learn from him and accept him, yet he created us and designed us down to the quark.
Basically for me the buck stops with God, yet he seems to blame us if we stray, why? Is there something outside of God where evil comes from? Who created that?
Again I as programmer cannot blame the program and punish it for its emergent behavior based on the code I wrote that responds to input and makes decisions. The fault is mine especially if I also created the computer and the universe in which it runs, I either change the program or accept its behavior, punishment and blame would just be playing a silly game with myself.
Most responses here seem to revolve around God not following logic, fine there is nothing more to say then, and is truly nonsense, 2 + 2 does not have to equal 4.
That is the exact opposite of what I am saying. God does follow his logic, including his logic that people remain free of his own coercion.
> God blames and punishes his own creations for excising free will in a way he's deems incorrectly. He's wants us to learn from him and accept him, yet he created us and designed us down to the quark.
No one is 'blaming' you. You have internalized your own notion of the Christian God and are arguing against it.
God does not blame you. Never has anyone entitled God a 'blamer'. God does not even punish. Satan is the accuser (In fact that's another name for him), not God.
Rather one is punished by his own sin. Here's an example. I am raising my children in an upper-middle class lifestyle. They will be educated well and raised to understand how to live well. If my child decides to abandon this teaching and instead decides to become a drug addict, they cannot blame me for punishing them. They have punished themselves by turning away from my teachings.
The same is true of God. When we reject God, by rejecting his instructions on how to live life, we punish ourselves. Should you refuse God and rebuke him, he is not going to force you into his plan for eternal life. Isn't that what this whole thing was about? Free will? Well here's the ultimate example. If you don't follow God and corrupt your own soul, you will torment yourself when you see the perfection of God. Have you read the Christmas Carol? Scrooge is not tormented by the spirits. Rather seeing his own behavior in comparison to the good behavior of those around them is enough to indict him in his own mind. So too is it on earth. There is no coercion. No spirit is going to come down and force you to behave.
You can choose joy, or you can choose death. As a Christian, I evangelize because I see what it has done in my own life. When I see others who have gone through similar sufferings as myself (not going to get into this) deal with what life has dealt them and they seem upset, I want to share with them the good news of the gospel and the joy that is to be found in conforming with God's will. No one is going to force you and no one is going to smite you down with lightning. Christianity utterly rejects the notion of karma or that an individual sin leads to individual destitution (book of Job puts this one to rest). The only person who will punish you is yourself when you don't follow the will of God, just as those who refuse to follow the rule of physics and decide they can fly off tall buildings have no one 'punishing' them but themselves. To a Christian, the rule of life prescribed by Christianity is similar to living our life in accord with the rules of physics. There is no difference, since both have the same source, and the laws regarding sin are manifest and obvious to those undertaking the study of the natural world.
Again this makes no sense, he created everything, the rules of the universe, how our minds operate, there is nothing free from his coercion unless you are saying there is something he didn't create?
>God does not blame you. Never has anyone entitled God a 'blamer'. God does not even punish. Satan is the accuser (In fact that's another name for him), not God.
Genesis 3:13
>To the woman he said,
>“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children.
>Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
>To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
>“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.
That sure sounds like blame and punishment to me and thats just the very beginning.
>If my child decides to abandon this teaching and instead decides to become a drug addict, they cannot blame me for punishing them. They have punished themselves by turning away from my teachings.
You did not design your children or the universe in which they live, God however supposedly did, there is no other place for blame to go. He's is the alpha and the omega, you as a parent are not, there are many outside influences that can be blamed including your children's choices since you did not design their brain, you are only an influence on them among many.
Now, I don’t know what you hold dear, but I guarantee you, somewhere you hold a fundamental belief that is inconsistent with something else you believe at a fundamental level. That’s what makes belief systems tick - you run into something you can’t reason your way out of and must commit to taking something on faith.
Paradoxes are not flaws in belief systems, they are essential.
God and Satan are sitting together in Heaven. God says "Look at my servant Job, he loves me so much, he does his sacrifices, he worships me constantly." Satan says "Of course he does, you spoiled him rotten with children and riches and stuff. I bet if you kick him in the teeth a few times he'll turn on you, because that's how humans are."
They have a bet. No stakes, mind you, just a gentleman's wager. Satan destroys Job's life. Plagues, famine, all of his children dead. He's a caricature of misery, wallowing in sorrow, rags soaked in pus and bitter tears. He can't figure it out. He's lived his entire life as a righteous man, blessed by God, then one day God just kicked him in the teeth.
Eventually God shows up. Verse 38 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2038&versio...) God spends the entire chapter answering, in essence, "I'm God. Who are you to question me?" An interesting part of this chapter is that, if one takes it seriously, it strongly implies that God is in direct control over everything - no free will, no randomness.
Romans 9:19-24 is also interesting, spelling out in no uncertain terms that, yes, God does predetermine everything, including moral choice. And he punishes the sinful, despite making them sinful.
"One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” 20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”[a] 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?"
"22 What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— 24 even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?"
The problem is the Abrahamic canon is so old that parts of it predate Judaic monotheism (see parts of Genesis referring to God or the council of Gods in the plural, or the commandment "thou shalt not have any gods before me.") The image of God and his nature evolves with religion and society, and eventually God's nature contradicts itself. Modern Christians have to reconcile their morality with the parts of the Bible that openly condone slavery and genocide, and Paul's sexist BS. Why would an all loving, all benevolent Father talk about dashing infants against rocks and sending rape gangs against his enemies?
Because 4000 or so years ago, back when people collected the foreskins of their enemies in jars as wedding gifts, that's exactly what one would expect of a just God.
Don't bother trying to square the circle. The Bible isn't a singular coherent narrative planned out from beginning to end, it's thousands of years of poetry, prose, legal documents, mythology and insane fever dream, and it contradicts itself in many, many places. If you approach it not as a divinely inspired book spelling out the absolute, immutable truth about who GOD is, but as an account of generations of people trying to reconcile their belief in the divine with reality, and coming to radically different conclusions, then the paradox resolves itself.
I’m one of them. I don’t think that is a silver bullet to getting them to shift. Part of their resistance is because they think it’s not possible for them to live in a ecological conscious economy. Too much disturbance.
I have used a theological approach to getting them to adjust. I call it karma. If you Waste more resource, god will punish you. And the warming of the earth now is a result of that waste. We waste far too much like it means nothing. Their is a whole lot of truth in that even for the agnostic. But the agnostic needs a different argument to change. Something along the lines of saving the fragile planet.
Also, "PMCs"? A search suggests "Professional-managerial class" for the acronym, but I wasn't familiar with that. Is an engineer or a programmer considered to be in the PMC?
[1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-...
[2]: https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christ...
[3]: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its-not-just-young-whit...
https://twitter.com/co2coalition/status/1397912884756107269
The cynical dishonesty of an organization creating a billboard like that boggles my mind.
https://twitter.com/StephLSchmid/status/1417153947031199749
It's like they're trying to be a parody of themselves!
They tried to tell me no-one knows how the last Ice Age happened. So I explained, but because they didn’t understand any of the concepts involved they thought I was just making it up.
It’s a good reminder never to assume malice when plain old stupidity is on the table.
Other friends have CS degrees and don't believe it either.
It's particularly hard because there's a lot of little battles that they might win in an argument.
In the end it all comes down to secondary source critique, since nobody is ever sitting there with actual data. It's often "I don't believe in this guy, he's made a career out of scaremongering".
I have three CS degrees. Our field has a real problem with hubris and reinterpreting everything through a CS lens, particularly assuming everything is discrete, falls into neat categories, and is not subject to noise.
I had a decade long debate with a friend from Chemical Engineering about whether the Universe was continuous or discrete, and also about whether it was deterministic. I recall confidently stating tons of crap about quantum mechanics, and it turns out I was completely full of shit because I did not understand probability theory or wave functions.
> Our field has a real problem with hubris and reinterpreting everything through a CS lens
Man, I agree if only because I, too, am guilty of at least having a phase like this. But I think I also observe it in the dev and academic CS community in general. I just don't know if this is a generic intellectual hubris or a type of superiority complex specific to "hackers". Of course my opinion is very biased and maybe even cynical but I'm tending towards the latter. I wonder how that came to be; I can only speak for myself, unfortunately.
It's both and neither at the same time.
You've just described the "bullshit asymmetry principle," AKA Brandolini's Law: "The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude greater than to produce it."
This is the worst kind of bullshit, because it starts with something that's technically true. Nobody is ever going to say the Earth's climate hasn't changed. Obviously, we've had ice ages and warmer periods. And, we've had CO2 concentrations much, much higher than today.
What we haven't had until is human civilization, and the capability to affect the climate ourselves. But, that's never going to impress someone who starts out their argument with "but the Earth has always had climate change."
We are only in this mess because of this attitude. Don't let evil people get away with evil things just because you think they are stupid. The current groups that believe climate change isn't real all believe that because of decades of misinformation specifically targeted at them, by Exxon and others.
Malice is 100% present and 100% at fault for this. Greedy companies wanted more short term money and knew that it would kill millions of people and cause untold chaos and they didn't care.
The fossil fuel lobby is malicious. Their audience is gullible.
That’s all I’m saying. I’m not even saying being a gullible fool on this issue is acceptable. It’s clearly not.
I feel the same about this lot as about the anti-vaxxers, which is “read a book before you get anyone else killed”.
If your livelihood depends on a certain industry, or you simply don't feel like making sacrifices, it's extremely easy and comforting to believe the side of the 'debate' that says the problem doesn't exist, even if their evidence is patently flimsy.
This is neither outright stupidity or outright malice, but a pernicious mentality that includes a bit of both. That is why the 'ignorance or malice' question is not a productive framing - the two are not mutually exclusive.
I have to say, that on some days I almost feel like I share that mindset, as the promise of democracy that I was raised up on does not seem to bear fruits. It feels like people have learned to game the system too well.
This is not typically my public stance; I would very much like for us to do something about it. I'm just afraid that even that amounts to wishful thinking these days.
Hardly anybody is making a genuine effort to look at what's going on and concluding it's not a problem at all. People are against it, often, because of tribalism. They don't like the people who complain the loudest about climate change and the political party they're aligned with says not to worry about it (for a variety of reasons). The climate crisis is also genuinely scary and it is much more comforting to believe that it can't be as bad as they say it is.
The number of voters who say climate change is important is growing every year (currently about half say it's a "critical threat") but that increase has come almost entirely from Democrats and Independent in the US.
Or it would if the audience wasn't resistant to proofs altogether...
I guess we can only acknowledge the problem after it gets hotter than at some arbitrary point in the past.
Aging is a natural process. Now imagine there was a virus that would make everyone age 100 times as fast. It would then be a huge problem for humanity. That's the best way I have of describing climate change.
I'm also not sure what your point even is. "Climate change comes in both man-made and natural varieties?" Ok, and this time happens to be manmade, so maybe we should do something about it.
You think it's expensive and annoying to have software dependencies pushed to you when you aren't ready, try being forced to take SeaLevel 2.0 and HurricaneFrequency 10 before you are ready.
This is what we have today when it comes to climate stuff. It's not a conversation. It's often not polite. This has the sad effect of pushing many people we disagree with further into their position. Which is exactly what we don't want.
Let's accept "it's not man made" and "it' s a natural cycle and here we are still". The Black Plague was natural and surely we wouldn't want it today. We routinely take precautions against so many natural things so why not this?
I appreciate the distinction between an argument and a conversation. In a conversation, one is hopefully just as open to being persuaded as one is to persuading.
If, by arguing, we engender negative emotions in our interlocutor, we will have employed the most potent orator against ourselves.
And in this case, I don't think buying a Tesla or some vegan burgers is going to make a substantial difference. As long as there's economic incentive to negatively contribute climate change, it will happen.
How do we even get emission data anyway? Especially for other countries like China. For example this source is telling me our per capita emissions are higher than China, which I very much doubt: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...
Basically all countries have to cut emissions to zero or nearly zero. I think this is actually looking hopeful. Even China and India are on board. The US must do it's part too and demonstrate leadership in this area.
There's a massive phase change in the global economy away from fossil fuels. The counties that embrace it last will find the market already captured. It pays in this case to lead the way.
Well, I don't talk about this much so wouldn't know. From what I understand, atmospheric physics is extremely complicated, and it sounds like a _very_ hard problem to develop accurate models for, and we're limited to a relatively small sample size. I just have a hard time seeing it, as a field, arriving at clean conclusions.. I'll have to read into it more later, though.
You are very right about that.
If you have any quality sources (books, videos, etc) I'd be interested in reading up more, it's an interesting topic that unfortunately developed a polarizing and polemic dialogue.
Yeah, we go through ice age cycles. We've disrupted that now, and that might actually be a good thing on a long enough timescale.
I think your hang up is that you think it's all based on climate simulations. There's lots of evidence apart from simulations, which I'm also skeptical of.
Some reading material to get an overview of what we know and don't know and how we know it:
https://www.nytimes.com/article/climate-change-global-warmin...
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
This one specifically addresses your question about how much is attributable to humans vs natural factors:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-scientists-think-10...
Yeah, models are known to fail and I was under the impression this contributes to consensus heavily. Thanks for the links, I'll read these tonight!
It's true that over thousand year timescales the earth has seen excursions larger than this. We have no evidence anywhere for anything happening this fast in the climate other than large impact events.
Maybe instead of talking about climate change, which is a symptom and not the problem, we should talk about “destabilising the atmosphere”.
I feel like people will find it harder to use nonsense arguments if they’re confronted with the problem rather than the explanation.
> Yet the most interesting findings come from looking at data from the Heartland Institute. In fact, the thinktank used the two terms with roughly the same frequency until 2013, when we finally see a decoupling as the use of global warming dropped while the use of climate change remained constant.
> This shows that “global warming” was widely used by climate change deniers over this 30-year period. Perhaps this is because the phrase is relatively specific, which allowed them to contrast it with simple arguments like saying that the planet cannot be warming as it’s cold outside.
https://theconversation.com/there-is-no-evidence-that-global...
Or, more bluntly, "planetary fuckups."
Habitat loss, chemical pollution, overfishing, and microplastics are others, all leading to very bad things on their own.
Climate change is the big one though.
Sorry, but that is even more opaque.
"It looks fine to me!"
Try to explain what happens with an unstable atmosphere and why we need it... and you are better off going with global warning.
The problem is that we don't know what is going to happen. We aren't great at figuring the weather in two weeks. Then look an credit cards where we know and understand the consequences and penalties... and people STILL act irresponsibly.
You have to provide very specific and likely negative outcomes to specific regions.
Sometimes I feel like nothing short of a collapse of the agricultural system and a subsequent famine-triggered civil war killing people's immediate family members is going to wake them up.
I hear key aquifers like the Colorado river are drying up, so it's probably even a fairly likely scenario within the next decade too...
Nobody wants to do anything about something that's only going to affect people decades in the future.
Yeah, it's fun to blame Republicans for not believing in climate change (and they deserve a lot of blame), but I have a much harder time with people who profess a belief in climate change but behave like climate policy is a nice-to-have.
Downvoters: How are the Democratic reconciliation bill's climate provisions up to the challenge of tackling climate change? Why is climate change a middling priority on the agenda? Or is it all just okay because the Republicans are worse (i.e., we shouldn't let Democratic failure to address climate change distract from the more important work of blaming-Republicans-as-sport)?
The reason what we're getting out of Washington doesn't include enough to fight climate change may not be absolutely 100% the fault of the Republican Party, but it's enough that blaming the Democrats for it to any meaningful extent just smacks of disingenuous both-sides-ism.
The progressives don't get to make laws all on their own.
Even a single lost Democratic vote on a bill means it doesn't make it past the Senate, and Senators Manchin and Sinema have both made it abundantly clear that they have no interest in fighting back against the Republican obstructionism to advance a positive agenda for the country. I'm frankly surprised that anything got passed at all, given their resistance in the past few months.
While progressives are aligned on the Green New Deal, that's little more than a slogan (no draft legislation or anything). To the extent that it's fleshed out (e.g., AOC's Green New Deal resolution), it seems to mean "decarbonize energy sector by 2030 + fix racial injustice + implement European social democracy + universal healthcare + affordable housing + stronger union protections + etc". Basically the "Green New Deal" isn't a plan to fix the climate, it's a progressive trojan horse. This doesn't seem like real concern about climate change to me.
To be clear, the point isn't "progressives are the worst", it's that no faction or party is doing a great job here, but we're too preoccupied with figuring out who is the worst to actually move forward.
EDIT: Added the last two paragraphs, apologies for any confusion caused.
Or, to put it another way: If the Republicans weren't being obstructionist, the Democrats wouldn't need a strategy to overcome them. They'd be able to put their energy toward coming up with actual policy solutions.
Finally, it is my understanding (though I don't have the link handy right now) that the Biden campaign put out a fairly clear set of legislative goals to push for in order to combat climate change. So while it's certainly true that "Democrats", broadly, don't all agree on what to do, a) that's essentially a tautology (not just of Democrats, though they tend to be less likely to fall in line with a centralized message and agenda than Republicans), and b) that's not at all the same thing as saying "Congressional Democrats and the White House have advanced no clear legislative goals toward combating climate change."
I would rather have the 50% who believe climate change is an existential threat behave accordingly rather than have 80% pay empty lip service and rally around token legislation or trojan horses (reconciliation bill, green new deal, etc).
> Or, to put it another way: If the Republicans weren't being obstructionist, the Democrats wouldn't need a strategy to overcome them. They'd be able to put their energy toward coming up with actual policy solutions.
Republican obstructionism is a real thing, but the idea that Republicans are obstructing Democrats from crafting a reasonable agenda is patently absurd, especially when carbon pricing has been the obvious solution for more than a decade, and it even enjoys some Republican support. But Democrats can't be bothered to make it part of their own agenda because of Republican obstructionism? Come on.
> Biden put out a fairly clear set of legislative goals to push for in order to combat climate change
What are these goals? Are they serious? Or are they some variation on the budget reconciliation bill (i.e., largely symbolic gestures that are bundled haphazardly into a bunch of other spending)?
See https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-has-climate-economics-... for instance (skip the political commentary at the top and go straight to the next section).
Perhaps most ridiculous in rejecting emissions reduction is Senator Rubio who "said it made no sense for the United States to cut its emissions while other countries like China continue to pollute. But at the same time, he also rejected trade policies that would apply pressure on China and others to curb their emissions".
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/climate/republicans-clima...
I remember when covid started out and there was all those expectations on emissions going down. I got the feeling that some people thought that if we stopped "doing things" emissions would go down to almost zero and if emissions would go down to zero then the problem would be gone almost instantaneously.
I do not think it was intended as satire, but the idea that we should cook ourselves to death to prevent freezing to death has a very Swiftian vibe to me.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-ipcc-global-warmin...
So now, if you doubt any of (1) it's man made (2) it's terrible (3) it's fixable, you're a "climate change denier."