Hacker News Reader

Comment by penneyd | Hacker News Reader

I think we all know it's really 100%

Based on what? I think I’ll stick to what the Met Office says rather than what someone on HN “knows”. It’s alarming enough without embellishing it further.

I see this often when climate change is discussed. People seem to casually throw science under the bus when it suits them. For example, people boldly proclaiming that X recent weather event was caused by climate change, as if it was a 100% proven fact. Yes, it may well have been, because climate change causes extreme weather. But it’s impossible to tell that any particular event was caused by climate change; extreme events happened in the past plenty too. It’s unscientific and unhelpful, and is ultimately driven by bias.

>I see this often when climate change is discussed. People seem to casually throw science under the bus when it suits them.

I think it's because people see humanity casually throwing the planet under the bus when it suits them despite what the science says. Eventually you just kind of see the writing on the wall (or _feel_ like you do).

>Eventually you just kind of see the writing on the wall (or _feel_ like you do).

I don't get it. You "see the writing on the wall" and then... throw science under the bus yourself as well?

There is no 'science of future events' only probabilistic outcomes based on models underpinned by chains of inference. The longer those chains of inference the lower the conditional probability the entire chain is correct becomes. Those models don't account for black swans Russia invading Ukraine and that suddenly massively changing a large portion of the worlds calculus on what sources of energy to leverage in the short-term. We have decades of data to draw a pretty good gut feel from looking at Kyoto Protocol and Paris Accord and COP26 and it's always the same story - "hey we're going to hit an iceberg!", "OK, well then we'll steer away from it :)" rinse repeat. I keep up with technological improvements that can help us avert disaster, but I also look around me and see human behavior changing not nearly fast enough. I dunno man... this is less of a 'science' thing for me and more of a human behavior thing.

Science can’t explain everything. It can’t tell you why the Empire State Building looks the way it does. There are other factors involved.

I’m not sure what the scientific model is based on, but it’s borderline impossible to quantify how societal views (one of the biggest factors) will evolve over time, and to account for that in the prediction.

I also “feel” the chance of overshooting is higher than 48%.

Climate science has consistently under estimated potential outcomes for decades, so yeah, if we’re sticking with the trend I imagine the odds are higher

It's not 100%, but that doesn't make it less appalling. That 1.5°C target was something we're worried about for the next century, not the next half-decade.

For us to hit 1.5°C in the next five years would require several things to happen at once. It would be an unusually hot year; the next year would almost certainly be less bad. But we will see it more and more, and the earlier we see it for the first time, the worse it will be over the next hundred years.

Absolutely, Don't Look Up and all will be well.

What is required is COVID level energy savings times two or three.

But as long as we can't see the damage being done, there won't be sufficient support to change things in a meaningful way.

That is human nature unfortunately.

Nah, you see "free speech" today is the right to disable the fire alarm in a burning theater, block the exits, commandeer the sound system to tell people to stay in their seats, ...

We must protect the theater owner's potential popcorn profits at all costs.

I'm not seeing the analogy here. What are the policies that "free speech" advocate want that are equivalent to "disable the fire alarm in a burning theater, block the exits, commandeer the sound system to tell people to stay in their seats"?

Global warming denial.

That doesn't answer the question. I want the specific policies and justification for why they fit those examples.

My take on "Don't Look Up" was that it's actually a documentary, but it had to be made ahead of time because we won't be around to make it or see it after the fact. Don't forget to like and subscribe.

> What is required is COVID level energy savings times two or three.

I wonder if we already saw some effects in Europe in 2021/2022. 2021 was a normal rain year for the first time in many years. The spring in 2022 is the first normal spring in many years: Temperatures rise gradually, as opposed to going from 0 to 25 degrees in a couple of days.

I know that the sample is too small, but the difference is striking.

Counterbalance: India has been hot beyond compare.

It is, partly, we do tend to engage in short term thinking- but it’s also perverse incentives.

Are you offering a bet? I'll take infinity-to-one odds!

We should applaud any individual or organization offering probabilistic predictions, as the future is contingent.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com