
Tried to stir HN crowd but failed miserably (IPCC announcement) - couchnaut
http://anta2.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/hacker-blues/
======
rossng
Part of your problem is probably that it's not really news.

Pretty much everyone knows that climate change is happening and that we should
be doing something about it (not that that translates to much action).

The IPCC keep publishing reports like this mainly in an effort win over
'skeptics'.

~~~
swalsh
Its so predictable, futuretimeline.net published the story a few years ago:

[http://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2014.htm#ipcc](http://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2014.htm#ipcc)

~~~
aaronem
I hadn't seen that site before. I think it's really cute how they update their
past predictions [1] after the fact [2] to improve their apparent accuracy,
but you'd think they would have the sense to stop short of having "predicted"
the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion last year.

[1]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20121227101314/http://www.futuret...](http://web.archive.org/web/20121227101314/http://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2013.htm)

[2]
[http://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2013.htm](http://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2013.htm)

------
aaronem
Those who are willing to take IPCC at its word need no convincing. Those who
are not so willing also need no convincing. By now there's no third category
of meaningful size, and everyone on both sides is sick and tired of arguing
over it.

------
glenra
The IPCC's job is basically to find or invent ways to claim the sky is falling
and continually declare "it's worse than we thought" regardless of what the
data says. They've been doing this for long enough that by now most sensible
people have tuned out.

In context, the most recent IPCC reports confirm earlier impressions that the
likely costs of climate change are relatively small compared to the benefits
of economic growth over the same period whereas the cost of doing much _about_
climate change _now_ is much larger than the cost of doing nothing. So even if
we chose to get "stirred", what would you have us do about it?

Lomborg gives a few relevant numbers here:

[http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bj-rn-lomborg-
sa...](http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bj-rn-lomborg-says-that-
the-un-climate-panel-s-latest-report-tells-a-story-that-politicians-would-
prefer-to-ignore)

~~~
couchnaut
Most researchers say that actually IPCC is rather conservative in its views
not the other way around.

First time I hear about Lomborg. Will read later.

~~~
glenra
> _Most researchers say that actually IPCC is rather conservative in its views
> not the other way around._

Sure, if you're listening to people like David Suzuki you'd have that
impression. But on the other side there are people like Chris Landsea - here
was his resignation letter from the IPCC:

[http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy...](http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html)

The IPCC's charter is to tell us about _risks_ related to climate change. Not
the benefits. If there weren't any risks or we were fully informed about them,
the IPCC would have no institutional reason to continue to exist. So naturally
it focuses on the latest big scary "we just noticed THIS risk!" stories and
puts much less emphasis on "it turns out we were wrong about THAT risk!"
stories. For all we know, each new report could be exactly the same as the
last one in terms of the net overall danger documented and it would still
_look_ like things were "getting worse", because areas where things are
"getting better" generally aren't mentioned or are soft-pedaled.

For instance, the IPCC once tried to claim a high certainty that there'd be
more hurricanes in the future due to climate change (see Landsea's letter
linked above), but now they either don't make such claims or assign them a
much lower certainty level. The IPCC once claimed Himalayan glaciers would be
gone by 2035 ( [http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jan/20/ipcc-
hima...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jan/20/ipcc-himalayan-
glaciers-mistake) ); that turned out to be a mistaken claim based on grey
literature. If there were some sort of a rundown in each report listing all
the ways things "are worse" AND all the ways things "are better" since the
last one it'd be easy to keep score. But there isn't, and the summaries and
press releases emphasize any mentioned "this is worse" stories because bad
news travels fast.

Suzuki complains that the IPCC report doesn't focus on the loss of arctic sea
ice, but if they DID mention sea ice, they might have to mention that overall
sea ice levels worldwide are currently _above_ the long-term (30 year) average
because we've gained more sea ice cover in the antarctic than we've lost in
the arctic. And so on. (Given a big, complicated planet you can always find
SOME areas or trends that seem to be "getting worse" but that doesn't mean
throwing them - and only them - into the mix would make the report more
accurate.)

~~~
couchnaut
That's a highly political (i.e. lots of beating around the bush) resignation
letter. What's his point exactly? That IPCC has vested interests in fear
mongering or what? And what exactly are the good things that we can expect
from climate change? In any case I believe that just the accelerating rate of
catastrophic weather incidents is dismantling that argument(?). Of course
there is a multitude of interests and even a market for climate change (i.e.
books about it) but this doesn't mean that the problem is not there, evolving
and getting worse every day. He -too- does not deny that.

About the Arctic/Antarctic ice: I guess that
[http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php](http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php)
argument 25 addresses that. Also seeing the whole system oscillating between
extremes (too few ice - more ice) is not comforting or reassuring that it
reaches a new balance.

PS: I'm not Suzuki's spokesperson. I didn't even know the guy till yesterday.
Maybe he's overeacting and maybe not. I also note that the party is obviously
full of fear mongers and shady traders of all sorts. I also note that it is
not logical to dismiss the whole argument because of such people.

PS2: HN is the last place I would expect to find myself fighting against
climate change skeptics.

~~~
glenra
Landsea's point is that the IPCC was making alarmist official statements that
had no basis in fact and ran counter to the underlying scientific literature.
Landsea was the relevant expert on the subject and even he couldn't stop the
fear-mongering; he quit because he didn't want to be associated with it. The
issue he quit over was that there really _wasn 't_ an "accelerating rate of
catastrophic weather incidents" to the degree the IPCC was trying to claim at
the time.

On good things we can expect: The main measurable good thing we can expect
from the next 1-3 degrees of warming is increased agricultural productivity.
In the northern areas where most of the world's food is grown, warmer average
temperatures means a longer growing season which makes it easier to feed the
world. (It also increases the range where we can grow crops and makes winters
less bitterly cold in places like Canada.) Closer to the equator the warming
part doesn't help so much but the extra CO2 makes forestry more productive -
it helps trees grow better due to CO2 fertilization. (My main source on this
is the AR4 IPCC report - I haven't read AR5 yet.)

Also: many more humans die each year from excessive cold than from excessive
heat; a planet with less bitterly cold winters is a more habitable one.

Also: being warmer puts us a little further away from the next ice age.
Climate _always_ changes; given the choice, I'd rather it get a little warmer
than a little colder. (There is no reason to think the temperature in, say,
1990 was optimum for human life worldwide. We don't need to return to that,
nor do we need to keep it where it is now.)

With regard just to _sea_ ice it's not "oscillating between extremes" so much
as there's been a shift over time as to where more sea ice collects on the
planet - more in the south, less in the north. Changing sea currents and
weather patterns can do that over long cycles. When alarmists look at growing
sea ice in the south they dismiss it with "oh, the currents have changed" or
"oh, the weather patterns have changed" or "yeah, but ignore that and look at
the LAND instead!" but when they look at shrinking sea ice in the north they
tend to insist it's due to warming and only that; I'd like to see a little
more consistency.

SkepticalScience is not a reliable source - it's a propagandistic site run by
a cartoonist, not a scientist - but in this case that's not a factor: argument
25 at that link is about sea level rise. Since I agree that sea levels have
(very slowly) been rising over time, I'm not sure how that's relevant. (FWIW,
I also agree that measured temperatures increased in the last half of the last
century and that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that some recent warming has been
the result of human activity.)

> _HN is the last place I would expect to find myself fighting against climate
> change skeptics_

The article you wrote suggested in passing that the planet could become
uninhabitable in mere _decades_ because we've passed a bunch of "tipping
points" \- you're bound to get some pushback if you try to make wild-eyed
claims of that sort. If you want to say stuff like that you should try to
figure out where the claims are coming from, whether there's any science
behind them, and whether the science is any good.

~~~
couchnaut
So -according to Landsea- IPCC (an international scientific organization) is
moving in ways that are more political than scientific. Weird and disturbing.
Weird because I'd expect such an organization to be gravitating towards big
industrial nations' interests if we're to assume that they are susceptible to
lobbying - not the other way around. Disturbing because if they are doing
politics rather than science then we have a different kind of problem which is
that the bodies of experts that we should be trusting on very complex subjects
are not to be trusted and I don't know where that leaves us as a society.

I'll accept the point of not putting forward very well researched links but to
my defence: 1\. Climatology is far from my expertise. As is microbiology, or
nuclear power or space exploration. And that's why I'm ok with paying people
(from my taxes) to have an educated opinion on such matters. 2\. as you
probably know it's quite difficult to find who are the generally respectful
scientists (remember dismissing a whole lot of them just a while ago (IPCC)).
3\. I -sorry about that- thought that we're past scepticism on the subject as
I have only seen that attitude only in conspiracy theorists (right or left
leaning). 4\. I pitted the problem as a problem that can (or at least should)
be solved in the same way that humans have been improving their lives - with
ingenuity and a mind for the society as a whole.

Anyway - thank you for your long and researched answer and I sincerely hope
that Landsea is right because I don't believe that we're about to change
anything in our ways any time soon.

~~~
glenra
The IPCC is supposed to summarize the state of the existing literature, but it
was _born_ political, tends to attracts eco-activists of all sorts and relies
more than it should on "grey literature" \- unrefereed "reports" written by
ecological organizations. The IPCC also to some degree _generates_ the
consensus it is supposed to be merely reporting on, in that the lead authors
have been known to push specific articles into print supporting "their side"
of things and delay articles supporting "the other side" _with IPCC deadlines
in mind_ so that their side gets the last word. That's one part of the process
where excess alarmism gets to creep in. On the other side, your sources are
correct that the result then gets massaged into acceptability. The "summary
for policymakers" in particular is the result of political compromises -
various country's representatives argue about it and then the rest of the
document in some cases gets rewritten to reflect what the summary says,
leaving nobody happy.

Nonetheless, the IPCC documents aren't terrible and do tend to be worth
reading if you really want to know what's going on.

On being "past skepticism": The most credible skeptics tend to be
"lukewarmers". They believe reality is a bit more complicated and uncertain
than has been portrayed, they tend to suspect climate sensitivity is a lot
lower than the models predict and they tend to be suspicious of doomsday
claims generally. But almost nobody at this point doubts "CO2 is a greenhouse
gas" or that the planet has warmed, so all those "97% agree!" articles miss
the point - the skeptics "agree" too.

A couple good blogs for credible "skeptical" views are:
[http://judithcurry.com/](http://judithcurry.com/)
[http://climateaudit.org/](http://climateaudit.org/)

And a good blog for credible "alarmist" views is:
[http://www.realclimate.org/](http://www.realclimate.org/)

(the most _popular_ source for skeptical views is probably
[http://wattsupwiththat.com](http://wattsupwiththat.com) and the most
_popular_ source for alarmist views is probably skepticalscience. Those sites
are indeed more readable and approachable, but the extra readability in both
cases comes at the cost of (1) oversimplification of main posts, (2)
attracting much dumber comments. So browse those sort of site with care and
don't believe what you read there without checking it. )

------
hitchhiker999
Depending on who you ask:

\- Most major governments are ineffective, if not corrupt. \- We put almost no
resources into educating our children. \- It's pretty clear we've broken the
planet (or are breaking it fast) \- The masses are confused, and feel
helpless. \- The world economy appears to have been subjugated by central
banks. \- Our food is progressively getting more toxic. \- Corporations (in
general) have scraped together too much power. \- It's 2014 - this is not the
world we had dreamed of, it's lame, inefficient and generally run by
emotionally immature, tiresome, short sighted people. \- Many people have
given up at some level.

OP your point is valid, but I think (in some way) some of us are just thinking
'f-- it, let it roll, we deserve it'

Disclaimer: I have not given up, I think things will get better - perhaps
naive

~~~
couchnaut
Cannot disagree with any of the answers. Yet, it seems like this is one of the
problems that has to be dealt with, no matter how hard or meaningless that may
seem. Then again if I accept the inevitability of it all then not much of
everyday normalcy is making any sense.

------
Robadob
Such an issue is hard to affect on a personal scale, perhaps this is part of
the reason for the indifference?

If there isn't anything I can personally do to resolve it and it's a slow
barely visible change, I'll sit quietly and hope for some of the worlds
governments to fund a viable solution.

~~~
slvv
I totally agree. Of course climate change and its newly announced
irreversability is alarming. It's really hard, though, to figure out what
immediate, effective action one can take.

------
ChrisNorstrom
You have to include a provocative title that excites the newer HN members.
Rename the article "How race/gender/class sees irreversible climate change"
and re-submit it.

~~~
thenmar
I think this is a joke but I don't get it... could you explain please?

~~~
forgottenpass
Hacker News is not news nor for hackers, it's a place that (among other
things) likes to bikeshed social issues popular in bay area tech circles.

