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Comment by Loughla | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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".

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.

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

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

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

Please give us some tangible ways to determine it.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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?

> 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...

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.

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