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Comment by atlantas | Hacker News Reader

> The report also references for the first time “historical and ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism”

Unfortunately these are not scientists. This just one example, but they are ideologues and activists first who wear science as a skin and bully scientists into submission. We saw how disastrous this was for Covid response with how science was treated as religion ("Believe Science"). The first thing we must do is eject the ideologues and re-establish the scientific method and rigor if we are to have any chance of actually solving climate change.

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So what about that? I ignored it. The climate is warming at a dangerous rate for human civilization and focusing non-core one liners is a distraction from the real issue.

If we want change we need a few things...

1. Be open to making real personal changes ourselves. Not just going with the flow and waiting on policy makers. We have individual choices we can make.

2. Look at all the things having an impact. Including the uncomfortable ones. The food supply chain is the one I've most recently become aware of. Take personal action on areas and support policy makers in pushing for changes. They need support because some things are hard (as in making the change means they won't be re-elected)

3. Learn the details. There is a lot of hogwash being thrown around. We should know the details and be able to speak well with people about them. In a persuasive way.

4. Understand people. For example, the #1 cause of death in the US is heart disease. An overwhelming majority of that is based on lifestyle. Most people just ignore future consequences compared to immediate feelings. Expect people to be this way and work with it.

> So what about that? I ignored it. The climate is warming at a dangerous rate for human civilization and focusing non-core one liners is a distraction from the real issue.

A lot of people won't ignore that statement; they will latch onto it and it will blind them to the rest of what is being said.

Politicians will point to that statement to make climate change look like a fake left-wing issue that is using the climate as a trojan horse for wokeism. That's already happening to some extent; the last thing scientists should do is give more ammo to the people making those arguments.

Science, like religion, seems to generate martyrs, but religions treat their martyrs better. Everyone cheers Ignaz Semmelweis because his viewpoint about hygiene eventually won, but nobody wants to apply the lesson about trying out the experiments of kooks.

> Unfortunately these are not scientists.

Are we really at the point where we are going to claim that the IPCC aren't scientists? This seems to be little more than reactionary backlash at a sound observation of the social impact of climate change on communities (and the report does a great job of elaborating which communities and what impacts.) Must we "eject" every scientist who observes a social impact that someone disagrees with? Should the IPCC stop the discussion the human impact of climate change to avoid offending certain sensibilities?

Do you want people who are not left-wing to listen to scientists?

When you are trying to convince people to believe in something they don’t want to believe in, it’s a bad move to insult them or inject inflammatory political views into the discussion.

This kind of language about colonialism, inequity, etc. is going to alienate a lot of people — just like the smug self-righteousness of “I believe in science” (which implies that anyone who disagrees with the speaker doesn’t believe in science) alienated millions of people and made the anti-vax movement stronger.

This presupposes that scientists are the reason that "not left-wing" people (in reality a small fraction of US conservatives) aren't listening to scientists. The fact that climate change is human caused is political in the states, should that, too, be left out of the IPCC report to make it more palatable?

> This presupposes that scientists are the reason that "not left-wing" people (in reality a small fraction of US conservatives) aren't listening to scientists

No it doesn't. My argument is that if the scientists start bringing more politics into this, they make the political situation even worse than it is now, and they give people even more reasons to resist listening.

So where's the line? How much scientific evidence must we suppress to avoid offending reactionary sensibilities?

The fact that climate change is human caused is deeply political in the US. Should the IPCC suppress this fact too to cater to a tiny minority of science deniers?

The line is where the expertise of scientists ends. They need to stay in their lane. They are no more qualified to talk about colonialism than anyone else, and attempts to do so are definitely taking a political side and will be perceived as such.

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