Hacker News Reader

Comment by smitty1e | Hacker News Reader

I find data presented in such a manner, without comment, quite a bit more compelling than much of what passes for debate these days.

View on HN

A significant part of the debate is simply scientists going, "please, for the love of god, look at the data."

There are a few real scientists who realize there is too little actual data on a geologic scale to do anything more than paint pretty but meaningless graphs.

The majority consensus among climate scientists is that's is getting warmer due to human emissions and the error bars on "how much warmer" are not big enough to justify continuing business as usual. But even if you believe that we don't have the data for accurate predictions, that is not an excuse not to be concerned. Quite on the contrary, it could be much worse than what the IPCC reports.

>A significant part of the debate is simply scientists going, "please, for the love of god, look at the data."

Nobody! wants to look at the data. Climate change isn't about science or data anymore. It's about politics.

The first group of climate change I find are the doomers. They got bored with Mayan calendars and Y2k dates. They jumped into climate change and we are literally on the verge of extinction always. When deadlines come and go, they just give us another 10 years. Right now, we have 10 years left until we are all dead. Climate change is the equivalent of 4 nuclear bombs a second... This is also the group who sees political violence as necessary because by not solving climate change you are literally killing them. So they will be politically violent to get their way. Self-defence right?

The next group is the politicos whose 'solution' to climate change is a planned economy. Nothing really to do with fixing climate change. Unanimously voted against in the USA multiple times now. Hilariously even named after Roosevelt's new deal which never survived. Realize government expands constantly and virtually never cancels stuff. Yet the new deal by roosevelt was so destructive that it has been entirely dismantled.

The next group are the investors or financial incentives. They have significant financial benefit to see at least temporarily a big boost to climate change related stocks. Great long term investments and I have invested this way, but this group isn't about climate change, they are in it for the $.

Climate scientist? You're never going to speak against your own team. Your job security depends upon you also pushing that the climate is blowing up. Otherwise what are you being paid for?

Then you have the worst group. The 'you're a science denier' group. They have no intention to look at or even consider the data. If you don't accept the unscientific 'consensus' from financially biased climate scientists. Then you're a science denier. How about the very real problem that climate science is REALLY BAD. Nothing is ever reproduced. Nothing is ever peer reviewed. Correlation factors are less than 10%. Huge history of failed predictions and flawed systems. Climate science is worse in terms of replication crisis than psychology. Even better... this is the group who produces the illegitimate content.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...

So what are those black/red dots for predicted 2050 and 2100 ranges? IPCC AR5 RCP8.5 is very official sounding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_P...

Seriously... the picked the most blown out of proportion prediction that is certainly not going to happen as the best option for this graph? They had to do that though didn't they.

So, the question moves to: "How to rescue the debate from the politics?"

>So, the question moves to: "How to rescue the debate from the politics?"

I'm not familiar with any issue that was rescued from politics. I very much doubt this is possible in any reasonable scenario when excluding violence.

What I was illustrating is that none of the groups in climate change care at all about climate change. If you extricate this issue from politics, it just goes away.

That’s part of the problem. There’s a large overlap between the circle of people who deny climate change and the circle of people who haven’t got the slightest clue where to get useful data or how to interpret it.

Agree visualizations are more powerful. But it would be nice to see a discussion about the data itself.

The data is accessible directly from the visualization page. But humans are very bad at looking at sheets of numbers and interpreting them quickly. Visualizations help us understand much more rapidly.

All debate will soon be settled by reality.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com