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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

The doomsday cult

Oh shut it. You can't have any knowledge at all about this issue and not appreciate that the problem is not temperature as such but the rapidity of the change - over 150 years rather than 15000. Your troll post is an insult to intelligence.

Folks, don't waste your time trying to reason with such bad-faith arguments. It's a form of theft, because the time cost to refute bullshit is about 10x that to spew bullshit. And the above post is just that - bullshit.

Before someone invokes the HN guidelines and talks about curious conversation, recognize that throwing phrases like 'doomsday cult' into a discussion of a serious scientific project that has hit a milestone after many years of effort has only one purpose, and that is to derail. Flagging and downvoting are all very well, but there are also times when it's necessary to call bullshit.

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You seem angry, so I'm going to try to explain (from my perspective) why someone may have the perception that you reacted to.

There is plenty of criticism over relying on mathematical models that fail to accurately predict the future (all of the glaciers were predicted to have melted 3 years ago, snow was supposed to have been a thing of the past, etc.), cherry picking data, questionable measurement & sampling, not considering other forcing inputs, etc. It's a complicated claim that has valid criticism on it's foundational pieces If any foundational premise of the claim is invalidated, the entire model is invalidated. The consensus models are complicated so I'm not surprised that it has a difficult time standing up against scrutiny & needs to be adjusted frequently.

There is also dissent among scientists, including from Nobel Laureates (who had opportunities cancelled after dissenting). "The doomsday cult" reference comes from the doom & gloom sensationalism. For example, I a heard chorus of "we are fucked" from coworkers in the office about 15 years ago in response to some news back then. I don't agree that "we are fucked". Humans have been through more environmentally challenging times with less technology & global knowledge.

The climate is changing...always has changed & always will change. What are we going to do about it? Are we going to pretend that we can stave off the inevitable, taxing/restricting the population which weakens their ability to adjust to these inevitable changes...while wealth is concentrated to the elites? There is a widespread perception that is happening. When the issues reach it's crescendo later in this decade & the fallout in the 2030s (winter occurs after the Solar Solstice, solar exposure increases during winter), there will be many who will not buy the APGW narrative as the reason for their problems. The peaceful solution is a decoupling from systems that don't benefit the person/group, which I expect to happen. Others, such as Peter Turchin think there is a high probability of violent uprising & he seems to think addressing APGW is a unifying force...I disagree on both premises but I think his analysis is valid & worth getting into.

I think the animus generated by climate alarmism putting the blame on the population reduces effective cooperation among people & will be exasperated as the climate does change, as the Geomagnetic wander deepens in it's cycle, as magnetic fields fluctuate in our solar system, etc. A spirit of cooperation will unify humanity while the blame game will cause conflict. Doom & gloom is unhelpful. The "doomsday cult" will increase in their doom & gloom as people walk away from their petulance & their social leverage wanes.

> all of the glaciers were predicted to have melted 3 years ago

I don't think any mainstream models predicted that? Which model was that?

Also remember that our actions are influenced by models. "If current trends persist, then in 20 years [...]" may very well be true, but if we take action based on those predictions (e.g. change the trend) then the outcome will be different.

You can see this clearly in population levels of things like elephants[1] or whales[2]: people who were predicting the extinction of whales and elephants weren't wrong.

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/african-elephants

[2]: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/General-estimated-popula...

Also, the ozone holes, acid rain, and things like Y2K. “This thing would have been very bad, but we (expensively, with great effort) fixed it, so it was okay” somehow becomes, in the public imagination, “this was not a real thing”.

Yup, loads of examples! I really like the population levels of threatened species because the charts for that are so incredible concrete and demonstrate the point very well in a very concise manner. Something like Y2K or acid rain is a lot less concrete.

The population levels of threatened species is a straightforward model with predictive value unlike the climate models. One issue with the climate models the algorithm frequently changes, not all inputs are accounted for, measurement problems & factors introduced (the 1930s thermometer measurements were higher than the equal thermometer measurements today but factored to be lower in the model), and the length of natural cycles (many are longer than modern instrumentation & some last > 1000 years).

The most outlandish sensationalist claims grab mainstream attention (no snow by 2020) and when the predictions turn out not to be true, the advocates retreat to "well it was never a mainstream model". Classic Motte & Bailey. So in this case, the models that predict doom & gloom in the mid-term future saturate the media (Bailey) and when the predictions turn out to be false, it was claimed to never be a mainstream model (Motte).

If it's not a mainstream model, why are news outlets scaring the population with these fringe models? Even the IPCC director is chiding the doomsayers to not be so extreme in their prognostications.

Weather reports now use scary red color schemes to represent highs when a few years ago, higher highs were represented with a sun & blue color scheme. News coverage of heat outweigh coverage of summer time record lows & record sized hail in the mid US & Europe.

At the risk of being downvoted in bad faith by the doomsday cult, I will lay out a rationale of not giving into the doom & gloom, but rather to promote a more effective system of adaptation opposed to blind faith in institutions.

> Also, the ozone holes, acid rain, and things like Y2K. “This thing would have been very bad, but we (expensively, with great effort) fixed it, so it was okay” somehow becomes, in the public imagination, “this was not a real thing”.

The decrease in large volcanic eruptions had a large impact on the restoration of the ozone layer, which coincided with the ban on CFCs in 1987.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_volcanic_eruptions_150...

Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of reducing air pollution. However, there are other factors. A new ozone hole was recently discovered & the "Cosmic Ray Electron Reaction" model shows that non-human factors have a significant impact. So we have three factors, such as volcanic eruptions, CFCs, & Cosmic Rays which can deplete the ozone layer.

https://bgr.com/science/scientists-found-a-massive-new-hole-...

I think this drives at the heart of this discussion. Even if we ban CFCs, holes in the ozone layer will still occur. Even if we ban CO2, climate change will still occur. Due to change being inevitable, the best investment is in adaptation. An effective system of adaptation covers all of the possible cases. Banning CO2/CFCs does not stop climate change/ozone layer depletion, leaving us in the same position of needing to adapt.

Adaption is pro-people while bans are pro-institutions. I favor helping the people in tangible ways instead of funneling money to large capital interests & the elite cadre. Funneling money to the elites always enables corruption & waste. I would rather everyone be strengthened to adapt to the coming changes to the climate instead of forcing them to have faith in institutions led by the elites that will be unable to stop the climate changes, but have promoted fringe models to scare the people into complying with funneling money to the elites.

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