Every "fact" you state really includes the opinion that the "fact" is indeed a fact.
Is climate change man-made?
Is climate change man-made?
2. death as in death of the body, it's very much inescapable
3. the last part is just uncertainty, hardly an argument against objective reality
I’d argue against absolute certainty in any knowledge. That isn’t a statement about reality, just our measure of it.
Note that the truth of this statement does not depend on any certainty about external reality, nor does it depend on certainty that what I perceive or remember is happening or actually happened.
It absolutely assumes a unitary conscious experience versus what increasingly seems to be the case, a bunch of narratives our brains thread into a cohesive story ex post facto.
Put another way, there very well may be hard limits to how much a human-like consciousness can understand itself.
That is exactly the reality I am asserting, whether or not they actually describe an "external" reality
And what I can be certain about is what my internal reality is.
And if you think I cannot be sure of that, I think I can be certain about I think my internal reality is.
And if you think I cannot be sure of even that, I think I can be certain about I think what I think my internal reality is.
It's perception all the way down, recursively. The reality is result of this taken to infinity.
There's abundant evidence to the contrary — at least as far as your recollection of what your consciousness previously experienced.
(IOW: Memory is extremely fallible.)
I said I can be sure of what I am recollecting, not whether the my recollection actually matches what happened.
Coming back, what is objective reality, anyway? Each person perceives the reality differently. And if you go down to measure single basic part of the reality you will find out the act of measurement already changes the outcome. Or we can agree about the final, ideal state but not how to get there.
True, but isn’t the problem here that even though there are many facts, no one of us knows most of those facts with absolute certainty, and we learned them from other people, therefore we primarily hold opinions about facts as opposed to know them first hand.
My experience of gravity correlates with the explanation I was given in physics class, but I haven’t myself proven anything about it, and I just trust other people’s stories when they tell me gravity affects light or time.
I think about this often when contemplating arguments; there’s almost nothing I personally know first hand. Like you I believe in facts, but I recognize that I’m not the source of most facts, and I’m relaying a story someone else told me. I’m guessing this is one of the reasons facts can be so easily argued, because there are gaps between facts being established and facts being told and shared. Like, it’s pretty common for scientific research results to be oversimplified and told & shared in a way that doesn’t capture the entire truth, right?
No, I am not arguing against the existence of an objective reality. I argue against the capability of most people to accurately assess what that objective reality is. You for example apparently cannot even assess the meaning of my clear and simple sentence, why would I trust you to be able to assess any more complex situation?
Your sentence was very much ambiguous, you should think before writing
When having the climate change conversation with deniers I roll it back to; is the climate warming? They almost always[0] agree it is and we agree it’s evidenced. So now we’ve agreed on a fact and have common ground to advance the conversation. Then I can make my case that if we know the climate is warming then we have a responsibility/necessity to reduce our contribution to it and should likely invest in finding ways to reverse it. Because even if we are not the cause, we have a lot at stake.
[0] in rare case they can’t agree to this, I usually ask them if they’ve encountered a source for that and then ultimately implore them to at least read something on the topic before forming their opinion about it, there’s plenty of data available I won’t push them down any path that may be seen untrustworthy or politically misaligned with their beliefs, I just leave it alone there because it’s usually quite obvious they’re parroting the talking points of some pundit without doing any research themselves. As the article mentioned, this argument would just become an ego war more than anything.
edit: i think probably the cities are getting "warmer" but that's not climate change that's city change. In that cities are growing, generally, with more stuff paved over. We need to plant more trees and have less concrete/asphalt in cities if we want to reverse this trend. also less people, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.
how many? how many with long records?
hint:
it's less than 10
hint 2:
there's less than 3 in the northern hemisphere in rural areas.
I don’t want to convince anyone the data is there and believable or even that even lacking any structured data or scientific method it just seems like a sensible explanation of actual witnessed events. How does polar and glacier ice disappear in such a short time if the climate is not warming? Why are there so many habitats exhibiting “heat stress” that is seen impacting plants/animals/etc? All far away from the concrete heat sinks you mention.
offhand, if you're looking for heat stress because your funding was granted so you can find heat stress, you're probably going to find heat stress.
My issue is with models. there are models that disagree with the models that the ICCC is using, and models that disagree with both. Are we exiting a global mini ice age? are we about to enter another more severe ice age? the past 50-60 years has been tedious to try and track which way the climate is going.
but i'm sure this time we're all correct!
You can make skeptical arguments against this is you're willing to dismiss empirical data and methodology behind scientific facts. The people who do this aren't consistent and cherry pick which empirical data, models and methodologies to dismiss. It tends to align with some belief challenged by the science. Or their financial interests.
It's much harder to be a consistent skeptic, since empirical data is verifiable, and the scientific method works for all sorts of fields and technologies. But it could all be dream of a mental patient in a simulation god programmed while making a bet with the devil.
Climate change being man-made or not definitely does not fall into “this is a fact”
A ten year old can debate what they want, opinions don't change scientific facts (burning fossil fuels puts greenhouse gases in the air which trap heat from the sun). Consensus meaning most most climatologists agree on what the data and models are telling them.
There are not two sides to the basic facts of the matter (complexities around which models are more accurate or what society should do is a separate matter).
To answer your question, if by climate change you refer to the dramatic post-industrialisation acceleration of warming and climate disturbances, the correct answer is "the overwhelming majority of existing evidence points to yes".