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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

It was very eye opening to see how many groups and individuals who "just want to have a debate" on the reality of climate change are funded by fossil fuel companies[1][2][3][4]. We are being lied to, and it's working. Just see the first few comments in reply to this article.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/mar/30/us-oil-d...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climate-skeptic-idUST...

[3] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/climate-skeptic-pat-micha_b_6...

[4] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/global-warming-skeptic-orga...

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I'd really like a debate to be possible, but it doesn't seem so.

On one side, you have the idiots who don't "believe in science", as if facts were something to believe in rather than acknowledge.

On the other side, you have too many people confusing science with politics.

Yes, the temperature is going up. Yes, we are guilty. Yes, fossil fuels play a fundamental role. No, the only answer is not "let's reduce fossil fuel consumption".

Sure, reducing fossil fuel consumption is a valid proposal, but like any other proposal it has to be carefully evaluated in terms of (monetary and non-monetary) costs and benefits. Do you know why we are consuming so many fossil fuels? Because, as soon as the stem engine was invented, people found out that life got instantly better! If we found a way to reduce emissions without impacting our comfort, that would be perfect. Unfortunately, we are far from there.

In the end, as this is a planetary issue, and as we know very well the tragedy of the common, it's fundamental that we move all together in the same direction.

But those people who spit nonsense like "It's too late, stop C02", without ever wondering why C02 is emitted in the first place, and without realizing how illogic it is to claim a solution exists to a problem for which "it's too late", do not make very charismatic leaders that the world is ready to follow.

It is definitely time that feelings are taken off the table and rationality is applied to the most serious concern for the future of humanity.

> I'd really like a debate to be possible

No, the "debate" they want to have is not on what to do but rather if science is to be trusted or not.

> No, the only answer is not "let's reduce fossil fuel consumption".

There's really no other option though, there are pretty solid reasons rooted in basic physics why CO2 capture/scrubbing are not feasible at a large enough scale to really matter, geoengineering proposals are unproven, expensive and high risk, and the cost of attempting to adapt to the sorts of temperature and sea level changes expected to take place over the next few 100 years if we don't reduce emissions would be measured in innumerable human and non- human lives. Actually we'll likely need all 4 strategies, but replacing fossil-fuel energy sources with largely carbon neutral ones is almost certainly the simplest and cheapest, and if we'd started doing so 30 or 40 years ago there'd probably be little to worry about by now.

Your answer reflects the dogmatic view that too often is attached to otherwise serious reports and articles.

You are technically correct that reducing emissions is the only way to impact the temperature raising, but why do people think that stopping global warming is the only option? Why do you think that embracing it is not possible?

Whatever we do, we know that global warming is not going to disappear in a matter of years, and global cooling is at least several decades in the future. We must learn anyway to live with the current climate, so we can choose how much we want to give up of the modern way of living for how many fewer degrees.

How much of the IPCC report have you read? If temperatures are allowed to increase 5 or 6 degrees the changes would be catastrophic, even without considering the very real possibility of tipping points triggering run away climate change that would make the planet entirely uninhabitable. There's nothing dogmatic about it, this is our absolute best scientific understanding at this point in time. There are various hypotheses around that allow for the possibility of negative feedbacks that will reduce the likelihood of catastrophe, but so far none have stood up to testing well enough to gain any more than fringe acceptance. I desperately hope somehow one of them turns out to be right, but that's no basis for sensible policy.

Even the special report on 1.5 degrees is super scary. I stopped taking the plane and became vegetarian just after reading it in 2019.

Which is very nice and kind of you, but do you realize that word climate will not notice your effort unless they are shared by a few billion people?

> Why do you think that embracing it is not possible?

We need to learn to stop worrying and to love climate change?

Because it will destruct significant portions of inhabited land? Because we now can have a marina where once were densely inhabited cities? Because those surviving the famines and wars will have a low BMI?

Your comment is the most stupid shilling I read in a while. How about embracing a truck on the highway?

I'm not saying it will be nice. I'm just reminding that current science states that global warming is here to stay.

> Because we now can have a marina where once were densely inhabited cities?

I don't agree with your "can". We will have a marina where today are densely inhabited cities. No shouting "stop fossil fuels", no actual stopping fossil fuels will prevent huge cities to disappear.

We can (and must) avoid the uber-super catastrophe, but part of the problem is that the situation is much worse than most people appreciate.

There is no alternative to learning to cope with global warming.

> We can (and must) avoid the uber-super catastrophe,

Alright, so let's hear your proposal for doing so that doesn't involve stopping the use of fossil fuels?

And yes, huge amounts of adaptation will be necessary no matter what else we do, nobody's arguing otherwise.

Your first link claims Koch Industries is "a little-known, privately owned US oil company". That's the sort of lie you've got to expect from the Guardian. Quoting Wikipedia:

"Koch Industries, Inc. (/ˈkoʊk/) is an American privately held multinational conglomerate corporation based in Wichita, Kansas and is the second-largest privately held company in the United States, after Cargill.[2] Its subsidiaries are involved in the manufacturing, refining, and distribution of petroleum, chemicals, energy, fiber, intermediates and polymers, minerals, fertilizer, pulp and paper, chemical technology equipment, cloud computing, finance, commodity market trading, and investments. Koch owns Flint Hills Resources, Georgia-Pacific, Guardian Industries, Infor, Invista, KBX, Koch Ag & Energy Solutions, Koch Engineered Solutions, Koch Investments Group, Koch Minerals & Trading, and Molex. The firm employs 122,000 people in 60 countries, with about half of its business in the United States"

The Guardian states that the Koch brothers aren't directly funding climate related stuff, but they do fund libertarian and conservative groups. This is, in their eyes, immoral.

Is it terrible for wealthy billionaires to fund people with particular perspectives on what to do about the climate? If you believe so then your biggest criticism must be in the other direction, because the money flows to support pro-doom climate journalism are vast. The Gates Foundation literally directly gives money to news companies that can only be used to hire people to write about climate and vaccines (in his preferred direction). Amongst the recipients of Gates' largesse is, of course, the Guardian.

https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-fu...

"I recently examined nearly twenty thousand charitable grants the Gates Foundation had made through the end of June and found more than $250 million going toward journalism. Recipients included news operations like the BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, The Guardian, Univision, Medium, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, the Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde, and the Center for Investigative Reporting; charitable organizations affiliated with news outlets, like BBC Media Action and the New York Times’ Neediest Cases Fund; media companies such as Participant, whose documentary Waiting for “Superman” supports Gates’s agenda on charter schools; journalistic organizations such as the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the National Press Foundation, and the International Center for Journalists; and a variety of other groups creating news content or working on journalism, such as the Leo Burnett Company, an ad agency that Gates commissioned to create a “news site” to promote the success of aid groups."

I think you're missing the forest for the trees. When you look at the people who actually study this stuff for a living there is very little disagreement about the nature of the problem and the direction things are headed. Most of the controversy and the oft-regurgitated talking points about "solar cycles", "ice age", "but everyone thought it was global cooling in the 70s", etc seem to originate from the same few sources.

I agree that journalists suck and are easily manipulated. But the overwhelming scientific evidence seems to point in one direction and it's not good.

It's ok to disagree on policy, but the global warming "skeptic" game plan has been to disagree on reality.

People keep forgetting how science works when it's convenient for them to do so. In the 70s Time reported scientists concerned with global cooling. Yes, some scientists were concerned about global cooling, but there was no scientific consensus. It was a scientific discussion. Now of course people say "scientists said" something back then and "scientists are saying something different" today - you just can't trust those darned scientists! Which of course simply isn't true but even if it were - so what? The evidence is the evidence.

It should in principle be okay to disagree with whatever posture you like, just it should be okay for billionaires to fund the viewpoints of their choice if other billionaires can fund more dominant viewpoints of their choice without problems. I'd say it's you who misses the forest for the trees, and the other poster's main point, which to my reading was that if the Gates Foundation (and many others) can funnel billions to a certain climate science/policy stance, it's nothing short of hypocritical for hysteria to be devoted on people like the Koch brothers for doing the same in a different direction.

On a final note, while the basic scientific consensus that human caused climate change is a real thing seems quite firmly settled, there are many details and disagreements that no self-respecting scientist can claim don't exist. There are enough of these for plenty of healthy debate, even on major points, to be a good thing, as it almost always is on most topics. There's also no shortage of self-interested politics being mixed into narratives pushing for aggressive climate change responses. This is rarely conducive to completely honest discourse from either side of the table.

What are you talking about the most controversy is that scientist are refusing to answer questions sceptics have. Your talking points are just well poison used to make critiques look stupid. Like what is the margin of error of the climate data. They don't give any and just say they don't need too, they are perfect. Which can easily be disproven. Even Bill Gates criticized that scientist don't have an answer to "cloud formations" in his TED Talk about climate change. Clouds just don't exist in climate models, because apparently it's just to complicated.

If you want metaphysical certitude, ask your preferred religious leader and then ignore all the other religious leaders who provide metaphysical certitude that contradicts your preferred religious leader.

A good scientist will not provide you with guarantees, because they know that they are limited, imperfect humans who are doing the best with the information and models they have. Many people will interpret this as refusing to answer questions.

The fact that we don't have a perfect understanding of climate does not suggest to me that we're free to alter the gas composition of our atmosphere any way we choose - I'd think the opposite - we should be careful when making changes to the Earth when we do not fully understand the consequences.

> Is it terrible for wealthy billionaires to fund people with particular perspectives on what to do about the climate?

The vagueness here is problematic. Not all "particular perspectives" are the same. It matters if the "particular perspectives" were rational and respectful of the science.

If that's important to you, then you should also be aware that many of the greens and various anti-nuke groups from the 1980s and onwards were funded by the Soviets.

Some of these details can be found in books like "The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War".

Come on.. lol.

References please.

The post you're responding to literally refers to a book.

it is a good book actually!

None of the reviews of that book mention any original source revelations about funding the western political movements.

Reviews of that book don't seem to mention any original source revelations about funding the western political movements. As it's not openly accessible this would need a citation from the book for credibility I think.

I think nuclear power is great and would go a long way to solving our energy needs, so I'm not sure how that's relevant. Moreover, the soviets stopped existing in 1992, so their influence 30 years later is limited.

And the US funded countless parties and organisations that could effect a more favorable situation to the US in other countries. None of this is surprising. The important issue is holding parties accountable for the damage done. Fossil fuel companies should owe massive reparations.

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