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Comment by cube2222 | Hacker News Reader

Even though it looks like a cool bag of facts, this really is just a bunch of correlations without good citations indicating any causal effect.

Which is actually confirmed at the end:

> We can't conclude that these isolated incidents are caused by climate changes. On the other hand, we can conclude that such incidents have already become more common. And that it will likely cost us several hundred billion NOK to arm ourselves against all this water.

I'm worried that this kind of reporting only helps climate-change deniers.

EDIT: Leaving the original comment in place, but it seems like there actually are citations behind the "Source" button which is present on many slides but doesn't work correctly for me on any browser that I've tried. Thanks to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34161145 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34161168 for pointing this out.

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I don't understand your complaint. Consider this fact:

> There is less snow in the lowlands. In parts of the Oslo wildlands, the skiing season has become nearly 40 days shorter.

So we have an observable, measurable, falsifiable fact. It correlates or trends with global mean temperature changes. We have a mechanism of action. We have an arrow of causality, based on established scientific observations and experiments going back decades. I'm not sure what else you want.

You mention lack of citations, but they do have citations. For example, the browning water section clearly links to this paper [1]. That paper looks at data going back three decades and emphasizes (in the title, no less) the very arrow of causality you want.

"Correlation is not causation" is a weird, toothless complaint here. They're not plotting fedoras on the x-axis and global mean temperature on the y-axis.

I'm worried that this kind of Hacker News comment only helps climate-change deniers.

[1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.estlett.6b00396

Thanks, going through the slides, I haven't noticed the linked paper. It's worth noting though that the part I quoted is still a part of TFA, and does still embody the issue I mentioned.

EDIT: I see now. The "source" button they've used for citations doesn't work correctly for me in Safari and Chrome (it scrolls way up, and only if you scroll back down will it start showing the footnotes). It's also only in Norwegian.

The complaint is that it is a little too "on point" to be a serious discussion that weighs multiple angles. These are journalists determined to convey a particular point. It does not mean they are wrong. It just means it is not credible journalism.

Why is it not credible? They display only facts and link to sources for “conclusions”. What other angle is there to weigh?

Did they display only facts that correlate to the desired conclusion or did they examine the I consistencies and counter points as well?

I don't disagree with their conclusion but the other commenter's point is reasonable. We live in a world where facts are fungible based on how they're presented and interpreted.

Few things are cut and dry despite how they are often presented.

> this really is just a bunch of correlations without good citations

I only noticed the translucent "source" buttons after reading for 10 minutes or so. Maybe you missed them as well? Haven't looked at any of the sources myself though.

Example: https://imgur.com/a/nAkDvg2

> this really is just a bunch of correlations without good citations indicating any causal effect.

Say your house gets broken into and there is a broken window and you are missing some cash and jewellery.

Would you _also_ say that calling it a burglary—absent any security camera footage—would be correlation without causation?

I mean, for all we know it might have been a bear which broke in and just happened to take only money and jewellery. There might be a blinged out bear partying at the local bar nearby!

It's easy to cast doubt on any theory, and much harder to advance a theory.

Also I see that you did eventually find the citations, but the tone of your comments suggest to me that you might just as easily transpose your doubt casting onto the sources, and the sources sources ad infinitum... But of course my claim is based purely on correlations.

Some things are obvious, some things are less so. Nuance matters.

> It's easy to cast doubt on any theory, and much harder to advance a theory.

I agree.

> Also I see that you did eventually find the citations, but the tone of your comments suggest to me that you might just as easily transpose your doubt casting onto the sources, and the sources sources ad infinitum... But of course my claim is based purely on correlations.

I'm not sure why you're inferring that. I both believe in climate change and find the sources I've now seen good enough for my non-expert point of view.

I'm casting doubt in an effort to improve the quality of the arguments, not to undermine climate change or its seriousness.

It’s certainly an issue, but in a complex system, you’ll never be able to pinpoint a single cause with a full evidence chain. It will never be possible to link a specific weather incident to climate change, like you could never directly link a single lung cancer case directly to smoking.

But what had pretty certainly been established is that climate change increases weather extremes.

This might be correlation, but there’s a plausible mechanism how increasing temperatures increases extreme rainfall: a warmer atmosphere holds more water. And for all the other examples, they also explain what’s the pathway from climate change to effect - warmer winters make more larvae survive, overwhelming the trees,…

If that kind of reporting helps climate deniers, no reporting is possible and all is lost.

Stop worrying about climate change deniers. Even if you give a perfect citation they will not believe you.

> I'm worried that this kind of reporting only helps climate-change deniers.

As someone who believes in climate change, this is the exact sentence that I want to see more often. It feels less like an agenda is being pushed and instead the reader is meant to think critically.

We can't be sure what is and isn't climate change. All we can do is make observations and that's exactly what is being done here.

So, attempting to be objective and realistic are harmful to the cause?

Correlation is not causation.

If you're indicating causation without any sensible proof, citation, or well-reasoned hypothesis, and just give a "scary" slideshow with "yeah, that might be climate change... or it might not, idk", then that will help people who are trying to show that "climate-change reporting is a bunch of BS" support their narrative.

A lot of people will then, when they see a few such examples, assume that all climate-change reporting is like that.

> If you're indicating causation without any sensible proof, citation, or well-reasoned hypothesis, and just give a "scary" slideshow with "yeah, that might be climate change... or it might not, idk", then that will help people who are trying to show that "climate-change reporting is a bunch of BS" support their narrative.

If you're determined to imagine that even stuff like literal temperature changes aren't sensible proof of climate change, that hypotheses linking the weather in Norway to the weather in the rest of the world or temperature changes to changes in flora and fauna need to be thoroughly explained to be plausible, and don't trust that quoted academics have actually done the research unless the journalists hyperlink their original papers, then yeah, maybe the acknowledgement that climate isn't the only factor affecting flora and fauna in Norway (no shit!) is the clincher that it's all a big con.

But then, if you're determined to imagine that entire fields of scientific research and thousands of actual published scientific papers must all be irredeemably flawed because a pop science article which doesn't pretend to be anything other than a list of things observed in Norway takes a less rigorous approach, I'm not sure improving the article is going to change matters. It's not like news articles opposing the theory of anthropogenic causes for climate change or global warming in general are renowned for reading like academic studies...

If you're bringing up the question of what causes global climate change in response to an article that is pretty narrowly focused on local climate change in Norway, a lot of people will assume that you know that global climate change is generally understood to be caused by human behavior, but are looking for ways to cast doubt on that fact without actually arguing the point.

Humans aren't great as being logical. A scientist giving an expertly sourced claim with plenty of disclaimers is going to have their idea given less importance than a charismatic speaker using conviction and force but having no evidence and being entirely wrong. Humans like confidence more than facts.

I'm not sure what the fix is, because a scientist is generally speaking with the level of confidence that matches their knowledge and understanding. Do we ask them to be more confident even if it goes past what their knowledge and understanding can justify?

And thanks to the Gell-Mann Effect, even if you invest time and resources into convincing the population the expert is right in one case, they still default back to believe the confident and charismatic speaker who doesn't know what they are talking about (or even worse, is being purposefully misleading).

> So, attempting to be objective and realistic are harmful to the cause?

Yes, this can harm the cause. Providing honest true facts while not providing data supporting causation can cause people to become skeptical of climate change if some of true facts change because they were caused by something other than climate change.

That's the entire point, they didn't attempt to be objective nor realistic.

That's honestly the biggest issue with a lot of these radical climate activists too.

They use intentionally misleading arguments to exaggerate timelines and pretend we're already screwed. The media certainly doesn't help as more climate alarmism generates more clicks.

And of course, if you say that they're exaggerating then you immediately get branded a "climate change denier".

Now you have a generation of 20 year olds who think it's immoral to have children because of climate change and other dumb shit like that.

You lost me at “radical”, which makes you sound like a nut. What about this article is radical? Are they suggesting violence?

What makes you think Radical means violence? Radical was used 100% correctly according to its definition.

Radical (adjective) [1]: believing or expressing the belief that there should be great or extreme social or political change

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/radic...

Radical in common speech (within the US) is used to describe an outlier in behavior - zealot, would be the closest synonym for the way radical is used. Violence over climate change would be radical. It's an example of very uncommon behavior, not a specific quality of a radical.

This slight disagreement is an issue of disparate definition. I believe the GP was simply being less than gracious in the interpretation of a comment, despite it making perfect sense how they came to their own understanding.

Thanks. Mostly I was just reacting to the term radical being applied to an article that expressed some mostly conventional views on climate change. What was the radical part?

Speculating about the cause and effects of climate change is radical?

The carbon footprint of a person in "the west" is far far larger than that of a person in China, India, etc. If reducing emissions helps the environment, then it is pretty obvious to anyone with a half developed brain that not having children (in the west) is a great way to reduce emissions.

Other reasons people don't have children:

- Socioeconomic disparities make it difficult to raise a family due to cost of living

- Uncertainty over the future with massive droughts (we have observed them), and ever increasing food scarcity imply that down the road, future generations will have a lot of issues to deal with, so why bring more people to needlessly suffer?

All in all, parent commenter assumes that young people are stupid, and fails to see that young people are generally concerned about their behaviour and the consequences. Commenter also fails to see that young people don't want to bring more humans to this planet because they don't want more people to suffer.

Bringing children to life is generally a very selfish act with dire consequences to anyone involved.

> Bringing children to life is generally a very selfish act with dire consequences to anyone involved.

No, it's not. I understand people having concerns about the future and especially regarding the expense of raising a child. But, to brand people "selfish" for having kids that they're able to provide good care for is silly.

If we are all "equal", then each one of us is allocated some amount of emissions that we may produce. Bringing children to the world reduces the slice of other people, and assumes that the kids will have a good enough life without too much suffering.

Many children have been born to families that had the wealth to provide for the children, but ultimately hurt them in the process or caused needless suffering.

> that not having children (in the west) is a great way to reduce emissions.

Why in the west? The west is already doing their (our) part by not having enough children to replace the current people here.

The 'rest of the world' has too many children, in some places even too many to literally just feed. Why deal with the areas where couples have <2, even <1.5 children on average and not with areas where the numbers are 5 or even more?

Also, doesn't that mean that we should also stop immigration? Moving someone from a poor country to a rich(er) one means more emissions since they tend to consume more due to more money than in their originating country.

> Why in the west?

The cost in emissions to raise a child in the west is far higher than in other countries.

> The 'rest of the world' has too many children, in some places even too many to literally just feed.

Countries like India and China have far lower emissions per capita than western countries, and especially if we account for carbon emissions and imports.

> Why deal with the areas where couples have <2, even <1.5 children on average and not with areas where the numbers are 5 or even more?

There are very few countries with as many children, all of them very low on emissions per capita, and the easiest way to drop that is by accelerating their growth, improving education, and QoL.

> Also, doesn't that mean that we should also stop immigration? Moving someone from a poor country to a rich(er) one means more emissions since they tend to consume more due to more money than in their originating country.

No idea. If you wish to reduce the need for immigration, the simplest way is to enable people to have children. US' policies on maternity, leave and so on are not helping the situation, and neither is the ever increasing CoL in European countries while we have as high tax rates.

> The cost in emissions to raise a child in the west is far higher than in other countries.

But the west is already way on the way to reducing population, even too much.

> There are very few countries with as many children, all of them very low on emissions per capita, and the easiest way to drop that is by accelerating their growth, improving education, and QoL.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?most_rec...

if you scroll down to the second table, sort by most recent value, you'll see many many large countries with numbers way above 2 (replacement value), and pretty much none of them will be developed western ones.

Again, why should the west not have children, while the rest can have 5? Shouldn't we focus our efforts on those 5 per couple, instead of 1.5 or watever the average for eg EU is?

> No idea. If you wish to reduce the need for immigration, the simplest way is to enable people to have children. US' policies on maternity, leave and so on are not helping the situation, and neither is the ever increasing CoL in European countries while we have as high tax rates.

But didn't you just say that we shouldn't have children in the west, because children pollute? But moving poor people to richer countries pollutes too, since they earn more there and pollute more in turn.

> Again, why should the west not have children, while the rest can have 5? Shouldn't we focus our efforts on those 5 per couple, instead of 1.5 or watever the average for eg EU is?

I did not express that only we should do it. I simply said that having fewer children, especially in western world, is a very obvious way to reduce carbon footprint.

> But didn't you just say that we shouldn't have children in the west, because children pollute?

That's not what I said. I said that it is pretty selfish, both towards other people, _and_ towards the children themselves but people seem to have glossed over the latter.

Just because I find it selfish doesn't mean that we should be doing what I propose. If it was up to me, we'd be heading for a voluntary human extinction, but for better or worse, we are not. I simply pointed out that claiming that young people are stupid and fall into traps is not the reason they don't have children.

> Socioeconomic disparities make it difficult to raise a family due to cost of living

Rather, the number of children per family tends to go down as income increases - compare Congo (6.2 children per woman in 2020, $577.20 GDP per capita) with Norway (1.5 children per woman in 2020, $89,154.39 GDP per capita).

Those are not directly related (although in some way they are).

Lack of education, contraceptives and social nets means that women in congo will have more children on average. If you get them all that and a stable pension after (so they won't need kids to keep them alive when old) the numbers of kids will fall.

On the other hand, in the "rich" western countries, no matter how high the income number is (compared to congo), that doesn't mean that a young couple can actually afford a home large enough to have a kid or two (or more), childcare and all the other kid-related costs.

Should ban immigration with the same logic?

The sad part is if we’re already screwed it defeats the argument of doing much of anything anyway so everyone continues doing what they were going to do anyway.

Nope. It's not binary. That's the entire point.

I think you and the parent are both correct. If we are “screwed” (I.e no action will prevent runaway warming) then any response to prevent warming is pointless. However you are correct that being “screwed” or not is a false binary (we don’t know if warming is reversible but it is likely we can make a positive change and avoid runaway).

I don't have anything to say other then it's disgusting how people add the term "denier" on to subjects that aren't clear cut and settled like they believe they are, while also using an obvious illusion to the most horrible human event of the last century. (holocaust denier)

*allusion

> I'm worried that this kind of reporting only helps climate-change deniers.

There is one thing consistent on the entire spectrum of climate-change deniers, from ignorant to sociopathic to self-interested: They're not working with reality.

So, catering reporting to their various bubbles of ignorance is a fool's mission.

That is needlessly lumping all "deniers" into one category. Some deny any evidence of any warming. Others admit there may be warming but there is nothing we can do about it. Still, others admit it is warming but it is not severe and our focus should be on mitigation strategies.

And on the flip side, many climate-change proponents seem to be on a crusade to show how dumb skeptics are.

The language is very dramatic and sensational. It just feels more like propaganda to me than a scientific opinion. The reality is seldom this clean. This doesn't even pretend to entertain other opinions.

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