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Comment by gavanwoolery | Hacker News Reader

http://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX:.DJI

Look at the Dow Jones index. If you look at it today, it looks like a dramatic drop. If you look at it in the span of several years, that drop looks somewhat trivial.

Same thing goes for climate change. Go back 1 billion years, and you will find that the earth has warmed and cooled far more dramatically than in the last 100 years. I'm not denying anthropogenic global warming, I'm just saying that correlation does not necessarily equal causation.

(And for the record, I'm not pushing one political agenda or the other, I'm just trying to look at a given data set rationally).

Edit: either way, I encourage the pursuit of clean energy and reusable resources.

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Okay? Why even bring this up unless trying to cast a disparaging light onto global warming? You are, in fact, denying human caused global warming in your last comment, "I'm just saying that correlation does not equal causation." Every time I see this argument it's usually the first statement in the 'human's aren't really causing global warming, so we shouldn't try to fix it' circle-jerk.

What is the worst thing that happens if we try to address global warming, human caused or not? We get to keep the beneficial conditions that we've had since the beginning of humanity as we know it? Our children get to inherit a functioning and healthy planet? Society can continue on the way it has for many, many generations without plague or famine?

Stop it.

> What is the worst thing that happens if we try to address global warming, human caused or not?

It costs money. And why should we? If humans are really able to have a significant impact on the climate, we should try to warm the planet. I would personally prefer about 3 C warmer climate (central europe).

> Stop it.

No, you stop being so fucking patronizing.

> And why should we?

3 C rise in atmospheric temperature is not what I'd be worried about. It's the increased sea temperature, which will result in higher sea levels and greater levels of moisture in the air. Meteorological events could become vastly more frequent and powerful. But you are right, 3 C rise will be balmy. You know best.

> higher sea levels

I'm sure we'll deal with it. It's a (good) price for low energy prices.

> Meteorological events could become vastly more frequent and powerful.

I hope so, the weather is pretty boring here.

Sorry, but just as you are worried about having to spend to pay the cost of cleaning the air, others are worried about the cost of having their homes flooded or go through a prolonged drought ... therefore, it is good to try to think on both sides too.

It's horrible how climate change is now a religion not a science.

"Deniers and believers".

I'm a little confused about the anti-GMO folks who believe in climate change since the science argument applies to both but they only believe it in one case.

// I'm in the only way to stop current energy generation techniques is to invent something cheaper than gas and coal. Anything else won't stop the upcoming economies (e.g. China) from using gas and coal no matter how they pollute.

Some people don't resort to pseudoscience when making arguments againsts GMOs.

I find most people resort to pseudoscience and ignorance of the history of what they are currently eating when speaking against GMOs.

Your comment is both ignorant and false.

Same response to all those global warming deniers - the studies and science show GMOs are not harmful.

Well-established scientific theories have long had deniers. That did not make them not science.

Climate sensitivity is far from "well-established" science.

It's more established than politically motivated hacks pointing out that it gets cold in winter.

What, in your opinion, would make it "well-established?"

Please give us some tangible ways to determine it.

Shoot, I didn't know. Someone should tell the climate scientists.

You could say the same about evolution; there are plenty of deniers there! But one side is much more responsible for turning into a religious issue than the other.

You mean like this? http://youtu.be/KXosjqvMtlo?t=5m35s

there's a fine line. climate IS changing, has always been. but it's not caused by your farts.

http://youtu.be/YtevF4B4RtQ

The amount of time, energy and money wasted on this "problem" is staggering to me. Imagine if we put that time, money and resources to better use to solve real problems that affect peoples lives day in and day out.

> The amount of time, energy and money wasted on this "problem"

You don't mean this, do you?

http://drexel.edu/now/news-media/releases/archive/2013/Decem...

Can't tell if sarcasm...

Do you remember being at school, and being told that coal would run out by 2005, oil would run out by 2010, etc etc?

Didn't happen.

Remember seeing Al Gores film where he said the ice caps would vanish by 2012?

And your parent post talked nothing about changing how humans use the resources of this earth. He was pointing that if you look at data a certain way, you can use it to fit conclusions that may be incorrect.

He was just making the point that you need to have context when looking at data. Framing data to prove your point doesn't make your point correct (though, it doesn't make it incorrect either). Weather at a macro level is extremely complicated. Knowing if we understand all the variables involved is a very difficult task.

Be careful to the conclusions you jump to on such a small data set. Even 1000 years of perfect weather data when a planet that is billions of years old may not be as helpful as one would hope.

This is basically Pascal's Wager (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager), and I don't think it resulted in many Christians recently. Why do you think it would work better wrt attitude towards global warming?

I encourage us to adopt clean energy and reusable resources either way. Please don't straw-man me without knowing my feelings on the matter. (I put this in the edit above for clarification).

I didn't straw man your argument. I said that your statement that correlation does not imply causation, essentially, negates the previous statement that you aren't denying human caused global warming. That is a thing that you said. It's up there. I didn't fabricate anything. I didn't exaggerate. I didn't misrepresent.

I asked you what would be the worst thing to happen if we tried to stop global warming. Then I told you to stop it; I would like to repeat that statement here, again.

Stop it.

"Correlation does not imply causation" is a neutral phrase. It neither confirms or denies global warming, it simply says you have to be careful when you evaluate any given data set. If temperatures were dropping, I'd say the same thing. The goal of science is not to prove what you believe in, it is to attempt to disprove your hypothesis (that is science 101). Even if I were arguing against AGW (which I am not), it is not really in the spirit of science to say "stop it."

> "Correlation does not imply causation" is a neutral phrase.

In scientific context it is neutral. In political context it absolutely isn't.

For example, it's also the (ridiculous) argument used to argue that smoking doesn't cause cancer, or that you can't prove whether smoking causes cancer or whether cancer and smoking have a hidden shared cause. This became a fairly large debate in the 90s, even though the science is pretty one sided. If a scientific discussion can be derailed by arguments that are technically valid, that's a political problem.

In the case of global warming scientists can still disagree among themselves (as good scientists should), but from a political perspective there's consensus science has been settled 30 or so years ago. It's real, it's caused by us and now action has to be taken. Truisms like "Correlation does not imply causation" in a political context just impede the political change we need.

Climate sensitivity is still not settled. Climate scientists still don't know the magnitude of human made warming.

It's quite unsettling that anyone who debates climate science is told to STFU by people like you.

I have tried to point out the fallibility of consensus and suggestions to actually look at the actual observed climate sensitivity throughout these comments.

It seems that you cannot reason people out of a position they didn't reason themselves into, though I do see some glimmers of rational thinking and not just a whole pile of please shut up.

Anyone who just graduated high school has not seen any 'global warming' since they started kindergarten. These facts don't seem to get mentioned a lot, but 'consensus' gets a whole lot of airing. It saddens me to see so much fashionable rather than rational thinking. Perhaps it is an artefact of information overload that people can't get to the nub of a debate and discuss it rationally.

You think we should 'try to fix it' even if it's not human-caused (CO2)? Even if it's caused by sun or natural cycles or something else? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

man-made global warming is a joke. but if you like to try and keep the (always dynamic) climate in a near constant state, good luck. and feel good paying the tax.

Don't forget we're also near the end of a mini ice age so we should be expecting the earth to heat up. A lot of people forget this. Antarctica was once warm...

Climate scientists are very well aware of this.

> Climate scientists are very well aware of this.

For example, the IPCC report itself.

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/070.htm

By some predictions we are going into another mini-Ice Age (Ice Ages are typically preceded by climbing temperatures, which might seem counter-intuitive but a similar phenomenon is when you experience several warm, sunny days and then it suddenly gets very cold).

I guess I'm more likely to believe the climate scientists of the IPCC rather than "some predictions".

Evaluate all predictions critically, whichever side they are on. History has proven the minority right sometimes (again, I'm not suggesting one side or the other is right, I simply don't know who is right because I do not have a crystal ball).

>I'm not denying anthropogenic global warming, I'm just saying that correlation does not necessarily equal causation.

Sounds a whole lot like you're trying to cast doubt on it. There's as close to a scientific consensus as you're likely to ever get that the Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate, and we're the cause of it.

Consensus means nothing. If anything it encourages groupthink and makes doubt and scepticism unfashionable - which is the exact opposite to what you need for doing good science.

What matters is predictions, hypotheses and observations. These are the essence of science. You should be making arguments based on how a hypothesis has been tested against real world observations, not how many people agree with a particular position.

The parent quite rightfully points out that correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation, and you want to ping them for casting doubt. What you should be doing, in the spirit of scientific enquiry, is trying to find out how, in this case, causation can be disproven, to better advance knowledge.

Trying to throw someone from the temple for casting doubt belongs to religion, not science.

Trying to imply that a particular theory is less well supported than it is (intelligent design, climate denial) is the realm of pseudoscience, not science.

I understand what you mean by intelligent design, I've read that theory, and it's that certain characteristics observed in nature are irreducible complexity, which supports the hypothesis of a supreme being. It's certainly a colorful theory, but isn't supported by real world observations and changes in the fossil record.

Can you clarify what you mean by 'climate denial'. I don't know what that is supposed to describe.

Just as ID is a pseudoscientific attempt to cast doubt on evolution, motivated by ideology but dressed up as science, so too is denial of AGW an attempt to discredit climate science, motivated by ideology (or profit) and dressed up as science.

Climate models are tough and it's very difficult for us to forecast what the results of global warming will be, especially at local scales. That doesn't change the fact, well supported by science and not seriously doubted by any meaningful number of climate scientists, that the Earth is getting warmer and it's almost certainly due to our burning of fossil fuels.

There are two groups who try to make AGW seem less certain than it is: energy companies who have a financial interest in not seeing government action against carbon emissions, and libertarians who feel threatened by the reality of AGW as it would seem to mandate large-scale, international government regulations. That would call into question deeply held libertarian beliefs about the ability of the free market to achieve societal goods and avoid evils. Just as religious people (rightly) view evolution as a threat to their beliefs and respond by attacking evolution, so too do libertarians view AGW as a threat to theirs and respond in the same fashion.

Perhaps my question wasn't clear, I'll rephrase.

ID is a specific theory which you either support or you don't.

When does a person specifically support 'climate denial'?

If I say that the observed sensitivity is less than the forecast sensitivity from models, am I in denial?

If I note that the warming period from around 1979-2000 has paused, am I in denial?

If I state that the regulatory frameworks suggested and implemented have failed, am I in denial?

If I make statements that project historical climate change shows large variations, am I in denial?

The reason I ask this is there seems to be a drive to lump people into a category called 'denier', and I'm uncertain was to what that boundary is, as defined by the people who use it.

ID isn't a theory, it's an attempt to deny a theory. It was devised as a way to teach children that evolution is, if not false, at least not well accepted and not as ironclad as biologists claim.

Everything you just stated about AGW falls into the same category, and is cherry-picked "evidence" intended to dispute that AGW is a fact, which for all intents and purposes it is. Neither you nor I have the ability to judge to what degree this or that deviation from predictions affects the theory as a whole. You know who does? Climate scientists. You know what they've concluded? It's still a fact.

You seem to be very concerned that you not be labelled a science denier (as well you should be), while simultaneously being very concerned about denying the conclusions reached by scientists. Like IDers, you seem to want to pick this or that small part of the theory or this or that piece of evidence, cast doubt on it, then claim that disproves (or at least discredits) the theory as a whole.

"Denial" is the correct term, here. In both cases, there are well-supported and widely accepted theories that particular groups of people don't want to believe for ideological reasons. In both cases, the drive to defend ideology takes the form of an attempt to piece together enough seemingly rational pieces of disjointed evidence to discredit the theory that threatens that ideology. And, in both cases, the attempt to deny the theory is refuted and dismissed by those best equipped to judge it.

You can claim to be a skeptic, just as the person who claims there are holes in evolution that can only be explained by an intelligent designer claims to be a skeptic, but you're not. A skeptic is not someone who disbelieves or discredits, but rather is someone who reserves judgement and attempts to find counterarguments until the preponderance of evidence suggests that a claim is valid. Both evolution and AGW are supported by the vast preponderance of evidence. Disbelieving either is no longer skepticism, but denial.

Doubt is very good. Doubt is the foundation of science (the consensus used to be that the earth was flat). Not doubting is when something becomes faith or religion. I don't care what side the coin lands on, I only care that the methods used to predict the coin toss are sound.

Excelent point, but unless I were a scientist studying the subject, I would not dare try to refute the opinion of most of the researchers in the field. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_c...

Also wouldn't it basically be unprecedented if the climate didn't change?

Of course the climate is changing. Like it has done for millions of years. Big whoop.

Unfortunately, in this case there is a correlation: "In the scientific literature, there is a strong consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused primarily by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases.[2][3][4] No scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with this view,[5]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy

Yes, the question of "Is there AGW?" is not a debate, at least among scientists. The important question is "how much do humans affect the warming of the earth?" To date, we have not been able to determine this accurately because there are so many factors (our CO2 emissions, emissions from cows, volcanoes, under-sea vents, emissions reduced by trees and plants, increased output from the sun, etc - let alone measuring one of these accurately across the globe). A million variables, no way to isolate any two of them. There might be a "consensus" but that does not guarantee accuracy - I encourage you to write a computer program that will determine the global temperature next year, and see how accurate your prediction is - you will likely find it impossible, because among other things you do not know which volcanoes will erupt and how much more radiation the sun will output. 10-20 years ago, the consensus was that sea levels would rise by a few meters, but that has not happened.

Ok, but it seems simple to calculate the CO2 produced by fossil fuels, since oil production is controlled by a handful of companies and require them to collect from our air the wastes of the product they sell, just as is done with producers batteries and tires.

Argument by consensus is simply argument by headcount. It isn't an argument.

I can point out a long laundry list where the 'consensus' was completely wrong, yet every person with a letter behind their name supported it.

Consensus doesn't prove anything but the fact that a bunch of people agree on something. It doesn't make that thing true or false.

I'm not trying to argument by consensus. I'm saying "look, the researchers in this field are saying..." Why so much people thinks he knows more about a subject than the researchers?

It's still the same thing. You can state that the researchers say one thing...but that doesn't make that thing true.

10 years ago if I had a stomach ulcer, all the researchers and doctors would have told me I had stress and that is what caused it. They would have prescribed me treatments and told me to change my behaviours, which would have all been ineffective.

Two researchers thought outside the box, went against the consensus, ignored what all the researchers said, and proved that stomach ulcers were caused by a bacteria. An entire industry and field was turned upside down, and Nobel Prizes were handed out.

What's my point? You can never tell when research is right or wrong, so you must always be sceptical, and never say 'the science is settled, because there is a consensus'. You can never rely on the word of researchers, only on the proof that they have or have not generated.

Edit : I re-read the parent, which goes like this: >"Unfortunately, in this case there is a correlation: "In the scientific literature, there is a strong consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused primarily by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases"

I read this statement as saying correlation is proven by consensus - which is wrong no matter what the topic.

Not the same thing, they was not an ordinary person who discovered it, was a scientist with many years of research. I prefer this metaphor: just as there are many healers around claiming to know the "true" cause of mental illness, I still prefer to believe the researchers. Do you're refuting climate scientists simply because you believe they are wrong?

I make no claims about anything - I merely read an interpret the published results.

The reason 'healers' are wrong about mental illness is because their hyphotheses are either untested, or proven to be wrong. Not because lots of researchers agree with the opposite.

The 'ordinariness' of a person is immaterial - Einstein was a patent clerk who had a book published refuting his views by 100 experts. He was still right.

The point I am making here is that you should never argue a point by consensus, or by authority, for that matter. You should argue a point based on the results of testing a hypothesis and finding it true or false.

Scientists of any discipline do not become automatically right because they don a white cloak and publish in a journal - not when one does it, not when an entire industry does it. It is a fundamental mistake to believe in an argument from authority or an argument from consensus. Quite frequently, authorities do get it right (precisely because they have studied it for a long time), and most of the time, they all agree with each other (forming a consensus). But these things flow from the fact that something is right (and observable, and reproduceable) - not the other way around.

I say this to try and elevate the level of debate quite apart from climate science, or GMO, or any of the other fashionable arguments.

You got my point, climate deniers are doing the same as the 'healers'. When is spoken "consensus" on this issue, means it is the best hypothesis so far, and not just an opinion without foundation among a bunch of cientists. Einstein was not just saying that other physicists were wrong because he did not believe in something, he presented a verifiable hypothesis. (read more about his graduations). Someone who wants to discuss climate, should do the same as Einstein, he must study hard all the science and provide verifiable hypothesis before questioning who does. Questioning the researchers' work, people are acting as the 'healer' who says that doctors don't know anything about his own fields.

What you are saying is that the observed climate sensitivity to co2 has been much lower than the modeled climate sensitivity to co2. And that the earlier, alarming models showing large temperature rises are most likely to be incorrect for a variety of reasons.

And on that basis the case for punitive taxation no longer makes sense, and attention should be focused on the development of alternative, efficient and productive energy sources. This should be regarded as a technology challenge, rather than a public policy crisis whereby the blunt instruments of taxation and regulation should force the use of inefficient and costly energy sources.

And you'd be correct. You shouldn't be so shy about stating your position. I understand that stating a realist position has become unfashionable, but in the spirit of the PG essay 'What you can't say' [1] - I always make a point of saying the unfashionable thing. And that is that early models or climate sensitivity were wrong, and the public policy positions generated from those are counter-productive and ineffective.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/say.html

> Go back 1 billion years, and you will find that the earth has warmed and cooled far more dramatically than in the last 100 years.

You're confusing a wide range of historical temperatures with a rate of change. Today's rate of change is unprecedented. A temperature change of 10 or 20 degrees Celsius over ten million years isn't likely to wipe out species, but that same change over 500 years is much more likely to greatly reduce populations of species that cannot adapt fast enough -- including us.

Yes, the climate has fluctuated over geological time. Scientists know this.

The difference is a) the rate at which it is warming and b) the fact that all living things have adapted to a completely different climate.

Climate change means mass famines and suffering, mass disruptions in commerce as whole industries implode, increased conflicts over dwindling resources, and mass extinction. It's a big deal.

As far as agriculture, crops have evolved to certain soil types and climactic conditions. For examples, yield rates are going down for grains like wheat due to warmer nights, and the soil in Iowa in 2012 was too hot for seeding corn! It won't be a simple as moving the crops northward as the world gets hotter: soil types and ecological conditions are important for crops too.

As far as mass famine and suffering: whole countries will be wiped off the map. That means refugees. It means fewer resources for more people.

As far as more more violence associated with climate change: see dwindling resources and refugees. The US Department of Defense predicts that there will be armed conflicts over desertifying regions, especially Africa, which experience some of the worst climate change [1]. The USDOD is not made up of hippies.

As far as mass extinction: it's already happening. Due to CO2, the ocean is 30% more acidic than it was in the 70s, and the shell fish industry on the wet coast is dying [2]. (Shellfish are particularly sensitive to ocean acidficiation.) This is just the beginning, and the great coral reefs of the world are dying too.[3]

Basically, in my view, climate change is the single most consequential event in human history, and its scope will extend beyond humans too. The aggregate pain and suffering and the unimaginable loss will have a profound effect on the human psyche.

If anyone reading this is concerned, I urge them to join 350.org [4], which is a climate change activist organization. 350 is named after NASA scientist James Hansen's estimate for the upper bound of acceptable CO2 PPM for humanity to thrive in. We passed 400PPM in 2012; humanity evolved in the upper 200's. James Hansen was head of NASA's Goddard Institute before he retired to organize against climate change full time [5].

350.org's main initiative at the moment is divestment: getting major educational institutions to divest from fossil fuels as a social statement. To sign the petition for your school, go to http://gofossilfree.org/ [6] .

The climate change movement desperately needs conscientious, scientifically aware individuals to stand up!

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/science/earth/09climate.ht...

[2] http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/...

[3] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ocean-acidificatio...

[4] http://350.org

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen#Research_and_publi...

[6] http://gofossilfree.org/

I appreciate that you're clearly a passionate activist, but your statements are alarmist and counterproductive.

'Whole countries wiped off the map'..'mass famine and suffering'...'yield rates going down'...

These are unsupported by real world observations. I understand you wish to alarm people into joining your activist groups, and the more dramatic language, the better (I assume this has been A/B tested). But I think the dramatic language undermines your cause.

The last report I saw was that grains harvest have recently broken records, despite a smaller overall percentage of land devoted to crops. This is mostly due to technology improvements in farming and grain types.

Climate change is an ongoing process which humans have had to, and will have to, deal with. They will use ingenuity, technology and skill to deal with whatever arises.

So you're free to say and believe whatever you want, but I don't think this was really the place for a long recruiting ad.

The highest point in the Maldives is 2.4M, and by 2100, nearly all inhabitable land will be underwater [1]. Likewise the average elevation of Bangladesh is a few feet. In effect, these countries will be wiped off. With tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of refugees due to climate change, mass famine and suffering will result.

That's just logic. If calling that situation "mass famine and suffering" is "alarmist" of me, what words would you prefer?

As far as yield rates, climate change will decrease yield rates [2], but you're right that science will mitigate and address some of these issues. From my link:

> Through the years of 1985 through 2011, wheat breeding programs boosted average wheat yields by 13 bushels per acre, or 0.51 bushels each year, for a total increase of 26%. A simulation also found that 1.8 degree Fahrenheit in projected mean temperature was found to decrease wheat yields by 10.64 bushels per acre or nearly 21%.

Yes, humans will adapt. But in the process, hundreds of millions of people will suffer very gravely, and an innumerable # of species will go extinct in the ocean alone. I'm a huge tech guy, but it's silly to think technology will be able to address all of these issues.

I stand by what I said. Conviction is important to move the ball forward.

[1] www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/02/the-island-president-mohamed-nasheed_n_1383413.html

[2] http://www.agriculture.com/crops/wheat/climate-chge-may-affe...

Are you aware that Bangladesh has been on a trend of gaining land mass? It gained ~1000 square kilometers between 1973 and 2008. Given current trends it'll gain another thousand in the next 50 years. If it ever starts losing land mass, it should by then be in a decent economic position to deal with the problem. (Unless we tank the world economy in the meantime, I suppose...)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7532949.stm

2.4 M in 85 years? That is 28 mm a year increase - current observations are about 3mm per year. That is an exponential growth that is unlikely to occur.

2.4 M is the highest point. In other words, on a number line, the rest of the country falls to the left of it. Averages are an important concept to master.

Also, as positive feedback loops kick in (e.g., trapped methane will be released from the ice, and methane is a 50x stronger greenhouse than CO2), heating will occur much more rapidly.

Finally, ice sheets will melt pretty rapidly, as melting water acts as a lubricant, and encourages faster ice breakage and melting. There's a documentary on this I'll try to link.

What makes you think new positive feedback loops will kick in faster than old ones run out of steam or new negative feedback loops kick in?

I agree - climate change is a big deal. In fact, it doesn't even matter what our CO2 output is with respect to this problem -- even if we cut it off completely we still have to brace for the threats of climate change. Coming Ice Ages and warm periods could have potentially devastating effects, and we need to be ready. That said, I don't think the temperature will change significantly overnight so we have some time to prepare.

This is a ignorant response. The nature of climate change isn't the empirical data; that's simply validation of the various scientific models of the earths climate. To date our models have been fairly accurate and we've been predicting this as far back as the 1800's.

Does the rate of temperature change matters? In all those billion years, the rate has never been so steep.

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