Because that happens more often than not, skepticism is further excited when you get politicians who claim to be in favor of climate change policy, only to then go and fly private jets, buy ocean front property, etc. This gets conveniently ignored by folks who have turned climate change into a religion.
Every time you even begin to say "hey, we should consider this..." people sperg out and start calling you a "climate change denier" or some other disparaging term. Literally turning their brains off to counter argument because they can't handle the idea that they're living in an incomplete reality.
There is absolutely nothing controversial about saying "let's look at all sides and evaluate carefully" (the scientific process as we've agreed upon it for millennia). People have been radicalized and frightened to the point where they no longer think rationally about the problem (and solutions) and instead get hyper-tribalistic, shouting down any reasonable discussion that doesn't automatically agree with their point of view.
That's why people are skeptical.
You mean articles like this Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'? [0]
Because that specific quote, "code red" is not BBC editorialization. It is a direct quote from UN Secretary-General António Guterres [1]
> Today’s IPCC Working Group 1 report is a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse‑gas emissions from fossil-fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.
People accuse you ave being a skeptic not because you are saying "hey, we should consider this...", it's because, as exemplified by this exact comment, you are deliberately misrepresenting your position to make it seem more legitimate. "Code red" is not based on the "least realistic" models, they are based on our current pathway, that was what made the most recent IPCC report so alarming.
Climate change poses an extremely serious, near term threat to our very way of life. I know that this can be hard to accept, but it is important to, at the very least, not silence those who are pointing this out.
I'm literally not. It's in the report [1]. Your condescension here is exactly what I'm getting at. You assume I'm an idiot because we disagree.
[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6... (Page 304, lines 15-27).
Edit: not my own math but this is important, too, and further cements my point: https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1424718032279011339.
The page you linked to says that RCP 8.5 is very unlikely, but none of the "code red" reports claim otherwise.
All of the "code red" reports claim that we are virtually certain to be unable to stay below 1.5 preindustrial. This is RCP 4.5 and above. Something that if we had this conversation 20 years ago was also viewed as very unlikely.
I think either you don't know or are wildly underestimating the severe impact that these alternative pathways will have on human populations. RCP 8.5 is as horrific as it is unlikely, but all the other pathways we are rushing towards are still absolutely "code red".
In the early 2000s most people earnestly thought we wouldn't get past 1C, now that is impossible.
It's not even worth getting into all the ways that many people agree the IPCC reports tend to be a bit conservative. I'm fine throwing out all of these concerns, and sticking with just the report, but even with just the report, even on RCP 4.5, we're in very real trouble. It is absolutely a 'code red'.
None of the above. I'm reading the report and forming my own opinion while factoring out the hyperbole and panic of the media, politicians, etc. My motivation is thinking for myself and considering whether all of the theatrics align with the reality in front of me (they don't).
To further elaborate on my skepticism, perfectly valid technologies that could have been implemented decades ago (while there was plenty of awareness of this problem, as well as "global cooling") like nuclear have been foolishly ignored, discredited, etc. The primary argument I hear is "too expensive" and "too long to build," yet somehow congress manages to find money for inanities to the tune of billions every year. You'd think if this was seriously catastrophic, we'd be going in to debt to finance better energy solutions.
All of what I said above combined with that tells me the motivation of the people trying to scare everyone is disingenuous. When someone's actions don't align with their speech, it's often indicative of dishonesty. Considering how much money is at stake, the probability of that is increased.
I don't understand. The people in the US Congress are hamstringing themselves and can barely pass their own legislation, yet somehow that inaction and political gridlock, which existed and will exist regardless of climate change, is somehow proof that...climate change isn't as bad?
You know who else also has a ton of money and a willingness to be dishonest? Every company that produces or relies directly on coal, oil, and gas. They ensure Congress is useless and unable to act by funding a party that ensures nothing happens.
I don't understand this take. Those of us that want to solve climate change want nuclear, we want solar, we want it all. We want to give Hydrogen to Aluminum plants to supplant CO2 they release, we want to electricy cars, we want to feed seaweed to cows to stop their farts.
You might be arguing against a loud majority that is repeating dumb stuff, but surely HN attracts people that can ignore the bad policies and arguments and elevate the best?
This is a deliberate mischaracterization of my point. No. Read my initial comment. My goal isn't to say climate change isn't bad. You're doing exactly what I called out above.
If you solve that problem, then we can actually focus on what matters: making sure there isn't a real catastrophe (implementing policies that don't destroy the economy, building alternative energy solutions, etc). If everyone is terrified and panicked, you're more likely to get the whims of a totalitarian authority accepted by the population (go figure).
Instead of having "climate anxiety," kids should instead be excited and curious about what they can learn to help reduce the effects (or mitigate them away entirely).
The goal of a lot of the people here seems to be hysteria.
Hadn't you just accused others of mischaracterizing your views? Why are you doing the same to everyone arguing back?
I don't see anyone in this comment chain whose goal is to be hysterical or cause hysteria. We all simply view human caused climate change as obvious and want to solve it. I am quite curious as to how to solve climate change economically, quickly, without giving up too much way of life, liberties, or causing panic.
The public is not being hysterical. Rather the opposite, which is something you already admitted further up: people simply aren't acting at all.
You were the only person I accused. Because you did.
I suppose I could see this as saying "if it really were catastrophic, why aren't we acting like it" as opposed to "it can't be catastrophic if we aren't acting like it".
A subtle difference, but to say it is a "deliberate mischaracterization" is just not true. I read the whole comment chain and I think my initial view was an easy one to arrive at. I would avoid conflating too many things at once.
Congress is full of corrupt people who can afford to move on a whim, are in the pockets of Big Oil, and plan on retiring and dying before the worst of it hits.
It's very serious, it's just not their problem.
And even less human critical things are also dramatic just not for everyone. When you tell me all coral reefs are dying I really think this is very bad.
Africa never really built out an extensive land line telephone system, but most Africans have cell phones now. They do not need to move through an obsolete technology in order to adopt a new one.
Now do the reliability part.
Edit: Worth reading this [1] and this [2].
Anywhere pricing of electricity fluctuates with the intermittence of renewables there is opportunity to use storage to profit. The faster we drive the adoption of renewables in the 1st world the faster prices on storage tech will drop which will benefit the developing world. Especially the parts which will never have transmission lines built out from some centralized power plant 300 kilometers away.
A LOT of scientists believe that we're on track for a cataclysmic amount of warming. 3C of warming is nothing to fuck around with.
The point being, don't just take what you're fed. If you dig around, you might find that a lot of the claims on scientific consensus are misrepresented (as dismissed by the quoted scientists) [2].
Source: https://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf
I learned of this from Vertasium's video on global warming myths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWXoRSIxyIU
1. They focused narrowly on studying the natural drivers of climate change without accounting for the affect of human beings on greenhouse gas concentrations.
2. They focused narrowly on the effects of human emissions of aerosol pollution without accounting for the effects of humans on greenhouse gas levels.
3. Bad science maybe.
Regardless the majority of scientists who accurately predicted warming did not just wind up on the right side of a 50/50 bet. They didn't just predict that there would be warming. They predicted the amount of warming that could be expected depending on the emission scenario that played out.
The planet is now hotter than it has been in over 100,000 years and it's also precisely how warm scientists said it would be at this time with this co2 level. It's one of the greatest predictions in the history of earth sciences and you disregard this because a different smaller group of scientists made a wrong prediction that got too much press. Makes sense.
Peer reviewed scientific studies examining the level of consensus among climate scientists that Earth is warming and the primary cause is human activity:
Verheggen 2014 - 91% consensus Powell, 2013 - 97% consensus John Cook et al., 2013 - 97% consensus Farnsworth and Lichter, 2011 - 84% consensus Anderegg et al, 2010 - 97% consensus Doran, 2009 - 97% consensus Bray and von Storch, 2008 - 93.8% consensus STATS, 2007 - 95% consensus Oreskes, 2004 - 100% consensus
The Cook 2016 meta analysis of consensus studies finds the rate of consensus between 90 - 100% and that agreement with the consensus approaches 100% as expertise in climatology increases.
This list is probably outdated. I put it together 5 or 6 years ago.
Then theres that survey by Science where 60% of respondents said they expect us to hit 3C of warming because of intransigence by policy makers.
I'm sure you would find results that are diametrically opposed to climate change if you looked at studies funded by say, oil companies, and there is no doubt in mind as to the bias implied in that direction.
The harsh reality is that things are more nuanced than either side would have you believe, and throwing numbers like "90% consensus" is a fallacious way to bully an argument, and isn't at all scientific on its own.
Eventually Exxon shut down the division and spent the next 35 years paying public relations agencies to spread misinformation and doubt about the science. Including the false narrative that scientists are being paid to manufacture global warming.
There have always been mercenary scientists like Willie Soon who solicite industry to produce shoddy science that protects their interests. The same thing happened with the lead, asbestos, and tobacco industries. The majority of scientists are not in it for the money. They became scientists to advance human knowledge. That's the entire point of being a scientist. Your conception of the field is cynical and not rooted in reality.
Funny how their funding stopped hmmm?
Doubly so for anything vaguely related to social sciences and other fields where theorising from first principles isn't the norm. "Historical" sciences such as astrophysics and epidemiology often get short shrift here as well. Engineers in general seem to be prone to opining outside of their area of expertise, the Salem Hypothesis that a creationist with an advanced degree was more likely to be an engineer than any other field was noted back in the early days of Usenet:
All (most of?) the stuff done on P vs NP is good science that will stand up.
Studies on which language features make it better for developers are social science, because they involve those pesky humans. That stuff is likely to suffer from a reproducibility crisis.
another reason could be that the level of reproducibility of results and openness and availability of sources (data, code, papers) in modern "science" branches is appallingly low for the software folks to take them (the scientists and their results) seriously by default.
This is more armchair Freudish, but I also think that a feeling of intellectual superiority makes up for other areas that are lacking in similar feelings of value and power. Life as a computer science student is not cool or fun or sexy, so you fall back on what gives you power in wider society. Sort of like the idea that poor whites fall back onto their whiteness. People jockey for position using whatever they have.
This extends to the techno-elite as well. What drives the CEO of an electric car company to declare that the way to improve urban mobility is to build roads in tunnels underground? Well, clearly he must be doing something right, he's the richest man on earth!
People are drawn to tech in a large part because of their belief in the power of technology and the limitless possibility of the future. The very real potential impacts of climate change in our lifetime pose as serious threat to this.
Rather than struggle with this most people here (or maybe a few loud, happy to flag comments they disagree with people) find it much easier to simply dismiss everything as excessive hyperbole.
Climate change unquestionably posses a real threat to our way of life, and at this point mitigating it does as well. People in tech are used to only thinking in terms of optimism and finding a way to solve problems and really can't deal with serious problems that might not have a solution, but rather only different forms of compromise.
Unfortunately the skeptics here are very aggressive. I have had several comments this week flagged for no other reason than disagreement (I know this because they have all been unflagged upon review).
It's somewhat ironic because this bizarre extreme reaction from this community really makes it all the more clear that something is really wrong.
Absolutely.
> ... because none of us know the final truth about the immensely complex system that is the Earth's climate.
Even if we did know, don't block people going to the hospital to try to prove your point. First, it's insanely un-empathetic, to the point of sociopathy. And, theoretically, you probably claim to care about the climate because climate change is going to hurt people. Second, it's not going to win friends for your movement or viewpoint. It's counter-productive, no matter how urgent you think climate change is.
Thus appeals to authority have no meaning if people don't trust that authority. The end result is anyone saying stuff they like is correct and anyone that isn't is wrong.
The US also has a problem with people active trying to cripple and downsize government because it steals their money and tells them what to do.
Replace Global Warming with almost any other scientific concept and you would also be right. The fact we have politicized everything in this country is not a strength and is going to have negative long term knock on effects. I see the politicization of the covid vaccine giving general anti vaxxers validation now and would not be surprised to see a resurgence of measles in the near term (couple of years). I am completely comfortable with everyone making their own choice on the covid vaccine (I am vaccinated), I get the concern and there is enough noise that I understand their viewpoint. Politicizing it though has been the wrong approach, we cant let people have their own opinions anymore, everyone that disagrees is the enemy. This is the same with climate change, immigration and presidential elections. Issue is that the political parties know that doing this makes their base rally tighter and establishes a motivational us vs them narrative. Its not going to end well.
Maybe that understanding of complex systems could be more of an unconscious understanding that talented people can act out intuitively, or compartmentalize for a specific domain.
Plastic pollution (particularly in the oceans) is really disturbing, but other than burning it, I don't see what it has to do with warming.
Plus maybe just a general distaste for propaganda.
For my own part I believe humans are affecting the climate to some extent. I don't see how anything else would be possible.
But I'm early 50's and have been watching this closely for 30 years and don't believe the hype and doomsday predictions anymore. I don't think the models are good enough to say what will happen in sum. Should we get off fossil fuels and stop polluting? Yes as fast as practically possible. Is OMG the world ending oceans collapsing 12 years from now? Probably not and they don't actually know that.
Likewise. And what I’ve noted is that the IPCC’s optimistic predictions keep proving far too optimistic, and their worse-outcome predictions keep coming true, sooner than predicted.
I also see corporations that are loathe to change suddenly make commitments to change, and to make those changes pretty quickly. To my eyes, that is a big indication that things have started going well off the rails.
I’m not looking forward to having to handle the wheels falling off of society in my senior years as crop failures, infrastructure collapse, and social unrest kick into high gear.
The polar ice caps were predicted to be gone. Still there. Coral reef collapse. They are flourishing. Massive rapid sea level rise. Very small, unnoticeable without measuring equipment. Increase in extreme weather events. Hasn't happened.
In short, things aren't a whole lot different then they were 30 years ago. I realize 30 years isn't that long but still, there were some really extreme predictions (and I was worried) but they don't look to be coming to pass and I don't think they will for the next 30 either.
The coral reefs are collapsing. To claim otherwise is simply ludicrous. https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(21)00474-...
Sea levels are rising an eighth of an inch a year, and over 2 ½ inches this past forty years. This is noticeable. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html
Extreme weather events have doubled in the past two decades. https://e360.yale.edu/digest/extreme-weather-events-have-inc...
You are deeply uninformed.
Neither are the coral reefs collapsing.
https://www.royalgazette.com/environment/news/article/202108...
(btw this claims sea level rise is less then 1/10 of an inch year, not 1/8).
Great Barrier reef has record levels of coral this year.
I've personally observed many sections of the second largest reef in Mexico/Belize within the past few years and the corral are healthy with many young corral and look pretty much as they did when I first saw them 30 years ago.
The reefs are not collapsing. This is reality, not propaganda, not the output of theoretical models. How do you square this with some of the more extreme predictions? It is very interesting how we both have watched over the same time period and see different things apparently.
I don't believe I'm uninformed at all. I just don't believe the hype anymore.
There is a lot hype and propaganda but hey, you have me neatly categorized as a denier, now you can safely ignore facts that don't square with your chosen ideology and go on about your week.
If you are really 50+ and have been paying attention the whole time I have no clue how you could not have some cognitive dissonance. The models weren't accurate. The extreme predictions didn't come to pass.
Catastrophe is not imminent and both of us will die with the earth pretty much as it is now to the naked eye climatewise.
* NASA: [Study Confirms Climate Models are Getting Future Warming Projections Right](https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-mo...)
* Scientific American: [Climate Science Predictions Prove Too Conservative Checking 20 years worth of projections shows that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has consistently underestimated the pace and impacts of global warming](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-science-p...)
* Yale University: [Can We Trust Climate Models? Increasingly, the Answer is ‘Yes’](https://e360.yale.edu/features/can_we_trust_climate_models_i...)
* Geophysical Research Letters: [Evaluating the Performance of Past Climate Model Projections](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019...) — "We find that climate models published over the past five decades were skillful in predicting subsequent GMST changes, with most models examined showing warming consistent with observations"
* MIT: [Historical Climate Models Accurately Projected Global Warming](https://eapsweb.mit.edu/news/2019/historical-climate-models-...)
But those of use paying attention to press releases and what actually happened know better.
If you are actually any older than millennial (as you claim) I'd be very surprised but it doesn't matter.
You believe whatever you like. Swallow propaganda or not, google around for links that support what you believe, doesn't matter.
The experiment with fossil fuels is going to play out for now and we will see the results. Probably a warmer wetter world in some hundreds or thousands of years. And we as a species will be fine. But in your life, and mine, we are unlikely to see catastrophic climate change.
Oh, and the reefs will still be there as well. You can go see them when you are old which is probably a ways off for you.
By when? Lots of climate hyperbole is focused on the year 2100 for some reason so perhaps that's what you had in mind. Anyway, not completely gone yet, but I can point out the following since I have it handy here:
July 2020: The last intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic fell into the sea
"We have already lost the frozen Arctic"
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/583115-climat...
> Increase in extreme weather events. Hasn't happened.
Are you just making shit up? According to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, extreme events are up 74% for 2000 to 2019 vs 1980 - 1999. And "Much of the difference is explained by a rise in climate-related disasters including extreme weather events: from 3,656 climate-related events (1980-1999) to 6,681 climate-related disasters in the period 2000-2019. And "The last twenty years have seen the number of major floods more than double, from 1,389 to 3,254, while the incidence of storms grew from 1,457 to 2,034. Floods and storms were the most prevalent events."
https://www.undrr.org/publication/human-cost-disasters-overv...
Also, shipping lanes opening up in the arctic for longer duration now. And of course Russia and US are considering more drilling now that it's feasible, in case anyone was confused about any real change in policy / mindset.
I don't see a clear trend in number of hurricanes. Sorry. I'd have to look at how "extreme events" were ascertained (hopefully not cherry picked) in the 2 20 year periods by the UN article you link.
I just don't see, from casual observation, an increase in floods and storms over when I was a child. Maybe it exists and I just am not picking it up but it's not "double" and the storms are certainly not worse.
I do understand the sea ice in the Arctic has been shrinking for some time. Paradoxically it's not in the Antarctic. This could be partially due to warming (which I agree exists, no argument). It could also be due to dark soot accumulation on the snow/ice to some extent causing more rapid melting.
This is what I'm talking about. This kind of thing.
I see. I suspect there would have been a lot of similar articles around that time. Maslowski made that projection in 2007, a year when there was a huge drop in extent minimum over the previous year, and following successive years of lower minima before a recovery in 2008. He made the same mistake during the 2012 record minimum year (which is still the record minimum year), predicting ice free summers by 2016 if I recall correctly. He has since continued his research, but no longer makes these kinds of predictions.
So yes, sometimes there are overly aggressive projections and or outright mistakes, and on top of that there is hyperbole with the media going for the most extreme headline possible. But the fact that some predictions are overly aggressive doesn't mean the situation isn't serious. All trends based on measurement (not projection) are showing the cryosphere is in serious trouble. Glaciers are melting, permafrost is turning out to be not so "perma".
Those are roughly in order of difficulty, and if they fail at an earlier one, you shouldn't trust the later ones. The first one isn't even chaotic, and I wouldn't trust a model built from first principles alone to be in phase past a dozen cycles or so.
You can curve fit things after the fact (interpolation), but extrapolation is always on shaky ground.
If nothing interacted with each other, I think you could make reasonable energy-in / energy-out models. However even looking at big low-pass averages, plants/algae use CO2, and heat creates clouds, and clouds block sunlight, and so on. Unlike a double pendulum that bleeds a small amount of energy to friction, the climate bleeds a lot of energy into space, and the amount of energy it loses is a function of clouds, plant life, etc.
I politely disagree, but my non-expert arguments shouldn't carry much weight. Here's a quote from a 2018 IPCC document instead:
"The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system,
and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states
is not possible. Rather the focus must be upon the prediction
of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible
states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions." [0]
[0] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/TAR-14.pdf