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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

> I personally don't even own or need a car

This is likely due to similar "annoying" regulation in the past, eg making space for bike lanes, investing in public transit and giving it more space than cars, and so on. These all have been protested using the same kind of vibes as how you're now protesting EVs and attached bottle caps. "We can't even park by the C&A anymore! Ridiculous! Will this madness ever end?"

What I'm trying to say is, when you say "boo climate policy", I read "boo progress". Is progress sometimes annoying? Sure! Is some of it ill-advised? Yeah also. (Or incorrectly billed as progress even). Is it then a better idea to just not solve problems and keep everything that's bad now, bad forever? No! It isn't! It's a completely show stopper argument. Usually with things like these, the annoyances are now, and the payoff is in the future. This holds for environmental policy just as much as bike lanes.

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Ehm no I've always been in favour of public transport. That's not annoying. Europe isn't as car centric as the US.

And like I said I'm not against these things. I just understand that some people speak up.

> That's not annoying

People found it plenty annoying when NL was as car centric as the US is now.

In some potential future when everybody has an EV you might not be against banning ICEs from city centers either. The annoyance is now, the benefit comes later.

What’s the exact, quantifiable payoff of tethered bottle caps?

And how many degrees will the earth cool down if everyone switched to EVs? The truth is that everything related to “carbon” has no quantifiable value. It’s like tithing at a church with the hope that God smiles upon you. How many tons reduction of CO2 results in a movement of the temperature? Let’s be precise because if we are making policy on this, the public has a right to know the exact benefit. And is the cost of that less expensive than the cost of not doing it? What exactly is the cost of not doing it? I’ve been hearing for 20+ years how we are just ten years away from disaster. 10 years is just long enough that it’s a few election cycles — so the politicians pushing this nonsense are rarely accountable for being continually wrong. Nothing in Al Gore’s movie came true. Ice caps were supposed to be done by now. They aren’t. So why are we still following that religion? It’s like a modernized version of a doomsday cult: “repent or rising seas will destroy the cities with the wrath of a vengeful Climate God.”

Are we allowed to question any of this? Shouldn’t someone be following the money to see who is getting rich off of this and who is enacting the policies that make those people rich?

Without those numbers, how can we determine if something is “progress?” We should be focused on real pollution: chemicals in the air and water, plastics in the ocean. CO2 isn’t a poison, nor a carcinogen, nor a toxin.

Why doesn’t the environmental movement unite behind banning high fructose corn syrup? Obesity in the U.S. is killing more people than climate change ever will.

No ICE downtown isn't about CO2, it's about smog.

You'll own nothing and be happy, in the name of saving the planet, of course.

I’m shocked that people here downvote someone asking for data

It's like asking for data to prove gravity exists. There's no scientific discussion about climate change.

Asking for data implies it's yet to be proven.... do you have data disproving the current academic consensus?

I’ve been pondering whether it makes sense to respond in earnest. I assume good faith on your side, so let me try.

> It's like asking for data to prove gravity exists.

This is at least how physics majors start. From first principles. You know, scientists.

Getting emotional due to your own assumptions about someone else usually effects the exact opposite of what you’re trying to achieve. Which, I assume, is mutual understanding.

> Asking for data implies it's yet to be proven

No, why?

> Do you have data disproving the current academic consensus?

How often has consensus failed, even very recently? If the data is strong, what harm is there in reiterating the data and the conclusions out of it so that everyone understands?

I’m not saying this from a high horse. Over the years I’ve had many emotional moments when challenged about what is true or right. In hindsight most of these moments came from my own inability to exactly lay out the logical chain of an argument that I’d made, where I’d followed the consensus.

It's an unwritten rule in social interaction that when you discuss a topic, you question it by asking for data on it. Signalling scepticism.

You can replay this in an LLM and ask how common people would interpret such a reply as you made. I believe you'll find it's exactly as my reply stated.

The real issue is that you are questioning an academic consensus. It's not you, not me, not the baker down the street. It's a very large, global, group of academics with many years or research to substantiate their claims.

If you want to investigate the topic it's on you to find the data and study it. I'd question your sanity if you actually did that. Because I'll wager you're not equipped to interpret the data, so you'd first have to train for the maths and science, before moving on to interpreting the data and deciding whether or not you agree with it.

For most people it makes more sense to respect the academic consensus. Even knowing that it can change if new discoveries are made. Because that's what science is about.

Has the consensus ever failed? The question belies the false belief that it shoudn't ever fail.

The entire idea of science is predicated on it failing and leading to new discoveries.

Hence it's on you to provide new data. That's science.

Sitting in an armchair questioning if science is accurate is exactly like questioning whether gravity exists. You know nothing either way, unless you measure it and provide data,

That essentially boils down to "You’re too dumb, trust the herd".

I do not buy into that. :)

Cheers!

That's your cross to bear ;)

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