Is there a reason NPR didn't actually report the facts from the report? Here they are:
- The September monthly average sea ice trend for the entire Arctic Ocean is now -13.3% per decade relative to the 1981-2010 average. Trends are smaller during March (-2.7% per decade), but are still decreasing at a statistically significant rate.
- The mean annual surface air temperature anomaly (+2.0° C relative to the 1981-2010 mean value) for October 2015-September 2016 for land stations north of 60° N is the highest value in the record starting in 1900 (Fig. 1.1). This is an increase of 3.5° C since the beginning of the 20th Century, and the largest annual increase since 1995. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes. http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Portals/7/EasyDNNNews/thumbs/271/...
I am really shocked at the Americans here on HN. I have to say it straight out. In the rest of the western world, there is no debate about what's happening. But even here on HN, with the high quality of debate, this thread has descended into discussion of whether global warming is real or not or a maybe even good thing. It's real, it's only americans who are sceptics. Please wake up, you've been brainwashed by your corrupt media (yes, I mean Fox News amongst others).
Unfortunately climate change has become a shibboleth for political tribal affiliation. To be conservative (in the tribal sense) means holding disbelief in climate change. Note that I'm not exempting liberals from this sort of behavior, many liberals believe in the existence of climate change without having the slighest understanding of it because that's what the rest of the tribe does. No amount of facts, exhortations, threats or pleas will make a difference now. Unless members of the conservative in-group change their minds and spread this message, its going to be a permanent fixture of the American worldview.
My hope is that the people most responsible for spreading doubt (e.g. fossil fuel lobbyists) live long enough to see the consequences, but this is unlikely. The most likely scenario is that the brunt of this problem will be borne by future generations, assuming we don't get really unlucky and trigger an extinction event. :-(
God damn, what a fucked world we live in. I wish I had the comfort of disbelief these people have.
Conservatism could potentially be a red herring here, with the underlying colluding factor here being age. The older generations of Americans have seen amazing feats of scientific analysis and engineering since WWII and the proceeding decades of booming innovation, typically unparalleled by other nations that eventually came to assimilate technologies born out of US-led wartime R&D. Iron-clad theories of physics and chemistry were refined during these times and tested for durability with rigorous predictive precision and straightforward practical applications.
The older American worldview of science is nostalgic for an era of unprecedented modeling accuracy that gave a compact summary of how the near-atomic world worked, consequently fueling a backlash against the rise of disciplines that intend to study far more complex systems albeit with the inability to perform experiments in the fashion of the basic sciences.
Nutrition, psychology, economics, and climate research all tout the banner of at least using some parts of the scientific method, which to those Americans who have been spoiled by the awesome forecasting of more reductive studies, are left to question the legitimacy of fields that fundamentally cannot perform experiments with the same exacting repeatability and direct hypothesis testability that was so blazing branded into the public zeitgeist for what American STEM should be capable of accomplishing.
In addition, given that at least the first three of those disciples mentioned above are notoriously abused in the US by governments and corporations as retroactive justifications for legal, social, and economic policies by paying for expert testimony and directly funding questionable studies on condition of flattering results, it is extremely hard for the American public to trust any hard-to-swallow policy-advocating scientific communities without (ir)rational skepticism.
Americans dealing with science are like romantically-oblivious nerds dealing with a heart-wrenching series of rejections and betrayals. If as a scientist you want to court these delicate creatures, please proceed with gentle and loving care building trust and helping them heal from the toxic relationships that soured their faith in domain experts. Denigrading them that they should just get over the past already and put their faith in the absolute consensus of the world is truly not helpful.
"I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change." -James Lovelock
It's not that people are acting stupid and should know better, a lot of people are just incapable of understanding the implications of a complex situation like this.
People also fail to appreciate how much would need to be sacrificed to reach the emission reductions that are being demanded. (For example, the 80% reduction target the EU is pushing for).
Slashing energy usage means slashing many of the benefits of living in a post-industrial society. Think living in one-room houses (no cheap heating), eating bread and potatoes in winter (no imported food), working locally with little career progression (no easy commuting) and many people returning to manual labour (no cheap machinery). All this to prevent 60cm-1m of sea level rise by 2100 - something we can manage, if we maintain the civilisation we have worked so hard to build.
A 80% reduction in carbon emissions does not mean an 80% reduction in energy use.
If we took the very dramatic changes of switching all energy to nuclear, changed to a mostly vegetarian diet, and replaced as much of transportation usage as possible with electric we would end up with an 80% or greater reduction in emissions and still enjoy plenty of the benefits of a post-industrial society.
A combination of insulation, thoughtful design (south-facing glass, adjustable awnings, solar water heating, heat pumps vs. resistive electrical heat, etc.) and renewably sourced electricity go a long ways towards the heating issue. I live in a cold-ish city in a 2 bed apt with only electric storage heaters (which are awful) and pay for supposedly 100% renewable (wind/solar/geothermal) energy and my bill peaks at €65 a month in the winter.
Commuting:
There are also thousands of businesses within a 30 minute walk from my home. Not turning cities into parking lots and skidpads with a building dropped here and there helps. If I cycle, the number of businesses in that range increases by about a factor of 9. (I cycle around 3 times as fast as I walk, so can cover a distance roughly three times as far, or area ~9 times as great). If I don't like pedaling, an e-bike or 50-150cc scooter/motorcycle will get me even farther.
Food:
I'm not well informed enough on this to comment. Where I live already has pretty bland food with loads of bread and potatoes. Good burritos, though. I'd miss that. We'd probably eat a lot less meat. I could do with a better supply of soyrizo, anyway.
Effects:
Sea level rise is far from the only concern. Stronger storms, drought, the displacement of peoples and an ensuing refugee crisis as their crops fail and water supplies dwindle, ocean acidification, and changing weather systems from the loss of the Arctic ice cap (and possibly a chunk of Greenland) are just a few of them. Also, I suppose this makes me impossibly impractical but hey, the loss of polar bears would make me sad. Maintaining the civilisation we built at the cost of the natural world we inherited isn't fantastic; watching the forests of my home (California) be completely devastated by drought, heat, and beetles is a bummer, to put it mildly.
If you live in a place with geothermal energy its not surprising that you have cheap energy. Otherwise, we've already invested a lot in making buildings more energy efficient, but heating is simply very energy-intensive. Commuting by bike might work for single young urban professionals, but not for people with families. We know what a society without the motor car looks like - it looks like almost every society in history, where people either lived in villages or extremely cramped cities. In brief, most visions of ecologically-friendly future seriously underestimate the value of cheap energy and personal transport.
As for the effects of climate change, they look intimidating as a whole - when you look at each item individually, they are unpleasant but manageable. Humans have been dealing with the weather for millennia, after all.
> Stronger storms, drought
These happen routinely now. Yes, it would be preferable to have less storms and drought, but we know how to handle them.
> the displacement of peoples
In the last decade the Chinese have built scores of new cities across the third world - it's not that hard for people to move.
> an ensuing refugee crisis as their crops fail and water supplies dwindle
We grow crops in many different climates now. Crop failures happen now in poor countries with bad infrastructure and management. Societies with sufficient capital and technology can adapt to almost any climate. (In extreme climates, with desalination plants and hydroponics - or people could just move).
> Maintaining the civilisation we built at the cost of the natural world we inherited isn't fantastic
This is really the crux of the issue - should the standard of value be maximising human flourishing, or minimising human impact?
I suppose we have different ideas of what makes a place pleasant. Sprawling suburban hellscape where I'm screamed at whilst riding my bicycle and my child can't walk outside without a substantial risk of being smashed into the pavement doesn't sound like a nice place for a family to me. I hope I'm right, since I moved to the city a few years ago and am starting one now.
That's FUD. Energy sources that emit little CO2 are being deployed commercially right now.
Your argument is equivalent to saying, in the 60s, "These guys believe the future is in toy computers that fit under your desk. If they succeed, the majority of people will have to turn to abacuses to do their taxes."
Eh, stupidity is a pretty good reason, but I don't think it's that. If it was then the line should be : "Climate change = Shits fucked and will get even more fucked, yo." That is a simple enough line to tout even to a heroin addict. Climate change isn't all that complicated as a concept (exact predictions, yes, but like, 'the color blue' is pretty easy a concept even though like photons and retinal pigments and neurons aren't). Hanlon's Razor is: "never attribute to conspiracy what you can attribute to stupidity". Well, stupidity isn't really cutting it anymore, so I think you can start to say conspiracy is a reasonable answer now too.
What I tried to say is that there's a difference between being stupid and being able to grasp the implications of a complex situation. People tend to be dismissive of the things they can't understand. When combined with uncertainty (who can we trust anymore) and paranoia (they are plotting against me), people are finding solace in conspiracy theories.
When compared to water scarcity, climate change is a very complex problem. The solutions to water scarcity are easy. Use less water, or make more water available. Both have an immediate effect.
The solution to climate change is not simple. Yes, emit less CO2 and other greenhouse gasses. But the amount of things you can supposedly do to achieve that are numerous and the effects are maybe not even visible in your lifetime.
I think that climate change denial is an example of a Cargo Cult, with parallels in every aspect with the ones seen in the Pacific islands.
The cult leaders have spent their whole lives debating with people and poring over the wording of documents, they then see another group of people threatening to drive the narrative in society in future and react by adopting the debating style of this group and by trying to detect linguistic errors in scientific documents. They miss the point that their skillset just isn't applicable to the problem.
The cult followers were in a clientelist relationship with the leaders before, they have received cargo in the past and would like to continue to receive it in the future so are happy to go along with the cult.
Let's be honest about why conservatives have this "healthy skepticism": because the fossil-fuel industry has successfully linked belief in anthropogenic global warming with liberalism. It's a correct association to some degree in that part of the solution would mean more regulation of business, but the value of such an association is that it becomes an us-versus-them situation. You don't have to understand it to disagree with it. And to be quite frank, that's the case - the majority of people who hold a disbelief in climate change are ignorant of the basic premise. In fairness, the majority of people who hold a belief in climate change are also ignorant of the basic premise. This is because, as mentioned above, it's no longer a scientific issue in the mainstream view, it's a political one.
Anecdotally, every "skeptic" I've ever met has used arguments to justify their disbelief such as:
- "scientists are not always right"
- "the climate changes all the time"
- "the Earth is so big, how could we have any effect"
- "if global warming is happening then how come it's so cold"
- "CO2 rises and falls regularly"
...and on and on. These are not examples of "healthy skepticism", they are examples of ignorance. It's ludicrous to think that I could hold a "healthy skepticism" on the efficacy of heart transplants when I don't know the first thing about human anatomy, biology or medicine, but this is exactly what is happening with an equally complex scientific issue.
I will treat an informed dissent respectfully, but let's not shit ourselves about how many opinions meet that bar.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. But I know exactly how the next 20 years will play out. Climate change skeptic/deniers will go through the following evolution in the message:
- The climate isn't changing in any meaningful way
- The climate is changing, but not because of people
- Sure the climate is changing because of people's actions, but changing our ways is too expensive, we'll just have to adapt
- Of course everyone always believed we should have done something about climate change, but liberals stood in the way of the solutions we suggested (something invented about public vs private solutions)
"Liberals" have stood in the way, in their own way. Any kind of bold technological approach immediately runs afoul of "environmentalists", who are powerless to stop the existing destruction of ecosystems but will protest till the cows come home about anything new. They would sooner see the Great Barrier Reef die of acidification than a single new nuclear plant.
> It's ludicrous to think that I could hold a "healthy skepticism" on the efficacy of heart transplants when I don't know the first thing about human anatomy, biology or medicine, but this is exactly what is happening with an equally complex scientific issue.
I also find it interesting you speak of the complex nature of the study of climate change yet make the blanket statement that anyone who disagrees is an ignorant person. I would be correct in assuming you are a scientist that has studied climate change?
> I will treat an informed dissent respectfully
And therein lies the problem. You assume every person who 1) disagrees with any part of climate change and 2) holds politically conservative views are too ignorant to form their own opinions based on their own self study. You assume they are a bunch of low IQ ignorant hicks that can't think for themselves and must rely on big evil corporations to feed them their climate change arguments.
I'd like to apologize for the tone of my previous message, it was rather harsh. I do believe that AGW is real and that the only way to avoid it becoming a catastrophic problem is with an incredible combination of innovation and cooperation. Seeing that this issue has become politicized scares the hell out of me, because I feel like I'm watching a screaming match about how to defuse bombs while the fuse on a big one has already been lit. I'm frightened for myself and for my future children. Some days it's hard to get out of bed...when I really think about the magnitude of this problem and the potential damage, I imagine that civilization is unraveling before my eyes, and I think "what's the point?"
What I was trying to say in the previous message is that the majority of people, conservative or liberal, are ignorant of the basic premise. Liberals happen to be largely ignorant of the issue in a way that leads them to vote the way I like, but they hold the same majority ignorance. We aren't having liberal versus conservative fights over the efficacy of various surgical procedures, airplane designs or pharmaceutical drugs because most people are ignorant of these things (myself included) - again, because these are scientific issues and should not be political. Climate change has been politicized, the majority of people hold a strong opinion in spite of being ignorant of the basic premise. Individuals, regardless of political leaning, may do enough research on their own to develop an informed opinion, but the majority (from both sides) do not.
You having done your own research that leads you to the conclusion that AGW is not happening doesn't make you ignorant. I disagree with you, but I am not insulting you. So hopefully I made my point clearer: I am not making the blanket statement that anyone who disagrees is an ignorant, low IQ hick. I _am_ making the claim that, much like the economy, a complex issue which most people don't really understand has been boiled down to simple, tribal arguments by both sides with the unfortunate consequence of stalling urgent, badly needed action.
You don't need to apologize to me personally. For what it's worth, I agree with a lot of what you are saying regarding climate change and I do think we, humanity as a whole, should be doing more than what we are currently doing. Even if climate change is absolutely not man made, cutting carbon emission would still be good thing.
My point is, from the viewpoint of conservatives, most liberals think conservatives are dumb hicks who don't know anything and are just brainwashed by big oil and the GOP. This viewpoint is perpetuated by statements similar to those you, with no malintent, made. You lament about the politicization of climate change yet you yourself initially related conservatives to those who use ignorant excuses to ignore or reject climate change. For the most part, when someone disagrees with climate change, they are instantly labelled as an ignorant science denier who has done no research on their own. That's not a good way to have a fruitful conversation with someone and it will never help solve any problems related to climate change.
> For the most part, when someone disagrees with climate change, they are instantly labelled as an ignorant science denier who has done no research on their own. That's not a good way to have a fruitful conversation with someone and it will never help solve any problems related to climate change.
Your point that conservatives can't dissent without being piled on is valid, and it's one of the reasons I apologized and tried to frame my point more tactfully (the other being that I felt bad for being nasty). The inability to have tactful conversations where we really listen to the viewpoints of one another troubles me deeply (I regret contributing), and is no doubt a major contributor to the intense polarization we are currently experiencing.
We are all, myself included, prone to uncritically accepting peer views and refusing to accept facts which contradict our narrative. Science, though imperfect, attempts to temper our irrationality with reproducible results and critical, fact-based consensus. The fossil fuel industry is responsible for dragging the issue of climate change from science into politics. I'm not saying they brainwashed a bunch of idiot rubes, but they did successfully muddy the water on a complex issue and connect it to identity. This is why I reacted so strongly to the phrase "healthy skepticism"; thoughtful individuals may be displaying this, but broadly I see it as the fossil fuel industry having exploited the instinct to draw more closely into one's tribe to guard against outsiders.
An extremely unhealthy skepticism that is not shared by any scientist in the field. That skepticism is the result of self-interested propaganda from energy companies spreading FUD. Unmerited skepticism is just as dumb as unmerited belief.
And that seems to be part of the problem: You just made a statement that is quickly proven false[0], which leads to further skepticism from these people.
> Scientists arguing that global warming is primarily caused by natural processes
I count eight people who seem to have worked in (broadly) related fields:
Timothy Ball, historical climatologist, and retired professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg
William Kininmonth, meteorologist, former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology
Anthony Lupo, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Missouri
Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and professor of geology at Carleton University in Canada.
Murry Salby, atmospheric scientist, former professor at Macquarie University and University of Colorado
Nir Shaviv, professor of physics focusing on astrophysics and climate science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Roy Spencer, meteorologist; principal research scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville
George H. Taylor, retired director of the Oregon Climate Service at Oregon State University
You could probably raid a single decent university and find more people working on understanding AGW better.
This is the equivalent of saying "Zoologist X Somebody in University of North Carolina said there's no link between smoking and lung cancer!", and keeping smoking while having a lung cancer while ignoring mountains of research, except that it's not your own lung this time.
This is the U in FUD. Online rando makes seemingly factual but ultimately irrelevant argument. Sure, some "scientists" are skeptical of human-generated climate change. But most of them are not climate scientists, and they have no more authority in the field than an entomologist would have when making pronouncements about theoretical physics.
And that, my friend, is a pitifully short list given the total number of climate scientists in the world. 97% say that humans are causing climate change. So yeah, keep spreading the BS and start shopping for real estate away from the coasts.
The scientists on the list are any scientist, not specifically climate scientists or even related fields. Would you trust a chemist's diagnosis of your mother's cancer? Of course not.
What's more, the vast majority of their statements doubting an aspect of climate change are not even part the peer reviewed scientific literature. They are simply opinion statements. And they only found a couple dozen people to put on the list? Not a very strong showing..
All of this is found in the linked Wikipedia article itself.
to be frank, conservatives only changed their tune on this when it was so painfully obvious that they had to. creative backtracking to still be against any action while looking less like a neanderthal != delightful open-mindedness. and many, like my dad, still call the entire thing a hoax.
Veritassium debunks this claim on climate change, along with a dozen others, in less than 7 minutes in an informative and entertaining way. It's a great video, you should at least watch it.
In short, during the 70s, there were some papers on global cooling. But even then, there was still 6 times more papers on global warming. Science overall has been looking in the correct direction for a long time now. The narrative isn't changing.
Manifest destiny stems in part from a religious belief in American moral superiority and the necessity and morality of its expansionism and imperialism.
As a variant of that, I'm suggesting only what I've heard from (and grew up with) midwest American Christians, not least of which is language from the Vice President elect, and many other Republican elected officials: that god created the earth for man to use and consume however he wanted, and therefore there's no good reason to believe that humans can even screw up the planet, because that'd sortof be a bait and switch and god wouldn't do that to us. That man has superiority over all the plants and animals (as it says in the bible) means we can do with them as we will, there are no negatives to completely obliterating entire species, there's no meaningful consequence to that, man doesn't have the power to alter the earth in such a negative way that humanity becomes incompatible with the earth.
I think it's dangerous nonsense. However, I know people believe in this. Around 10 years ago the local paper asked readers if hell was real, and sinners go there to burn for eternity, and the majority of readers said yes. And so on.
So, you know, insane but also socially acceptable mythology. But these are also the same people who say they're sick of political correctness, but get all pissy when their dangerous beliefs are questioned. shrug
I don't think that's really manifest destiny. But sure, I've heard the stuff about dominion over the Earth. It's bad Christian theology in addition to being bad politics. That Man is to have dominion over the Earth does not imply that there's nothing he can do to make it worse for himself and his fellows. But I'm often surprised at how little many Christians I meet seem to know about the Bible or Christian theology. I guess it's mostly a cultural affiliation for many people.
I think we're in agreement that American Christians are uniquely, or perhaps especially, ignorant about a number of things, climate change and their own religion.
One thing (of many) that made me absolutely furious during the American presidential debates, is that climate change and the environment in general were not brought up at all. Not a single time. The people running the world will be the death of us all, putting a chase for profit over everything else. I'm mad as hell, but feel absolutely powerless.
Unfortunately, the debates devolved into issues more about "character" than issues. Speaking more broadly about the campaigns, the candidates spent more time defending their characters than talking about issues. In particular, Hillary spent an inordinate amount of time defending against faux-issues like using a personal email server and sending classified documents through it. Adding to the ridiculousness of the situation was the amount of time reputable news outlets spent covering the faux-issues.
Many US citizens are furious about the situation. Unfortunately, appealing to the lowest common denominator has become the modus operandi for campaigns here. I suppose the answer is to raise the lower common denominator through education over generations. Given the fight against education reform I don't see it happening anytime soon.
A large part of it, for me personally, is what I perceive to be "over-alarmism". Climate is a complicated subject and climate science is still evolving. The media tends to focus on the worst case scenarios, and tends to exaggerate too much. This triggers my bullshit meter and makes me pay closer attention. Other things like the usage of the term "denier" for skeptics, the over-emphasis on scientific consensus, and the near-religious zeal with which any amount of what I consider to be healthy skepticism is met with doesn't help.
That's not to say that the arctic isn't warming (it is), or that the arctic sea ice isn't melting (it is). I would be more receptive to the data if it were brought to me with all of the considerable uncertainties exposed. I remember the days when scientists had a hard time saying anything definite in the media without a lot of caveats.
I doubt these are specifically American traits. The politicization of both sides of the argument and the us vs. them mentality that pervades all dialogue any more that doesn't allow for non-extreme positions is probably the real problem.
You're framing this argument as one of the skeptics versus the media, and ignoring the science.
The gold standard of climate science is probably the IPCC AR5 report and if anything it is underestimating climate impacts like the shrinking northern summertime polar ice cap.
The data is also all out there, with all the uncertainties you like, but its not going to be "brought to you", you're going to have to do a bit of work to read the original sources. IPCC AR5 is out there for you to read any time you'd actually like to get educated.
Yes, true. And I have looked into it and actually follow certain websites that show data graphs to see how things are actually progressing on a regular basis. I've gone so far as to write programs to parse data sets and graph data.
I was just trying to figure out why climate skepticism seems to be a predominantly American thing, though. American media and the great political divide seem to be good candidates. I'm not sure whether "over-alarmism" is an American media-only trait or not, though. It might also have something to do with a historical importance placed in American culture on rugged individualism and an acceptance of alternative viewpoints, but that seems to be fading as the years progress, from what I've seen.
Unfortunately, I have to agree. If there's any solace to be had in the US' accelerating decline and China's rise, it's that (rather shockingly) China seems to be more likely to do something about environmental issues than those who will be running the US in a few weeks are.
That shouldn't really be any solace at all, though.
On what grounds do you conclude that China is more likely to do something about environmental issues? The record on air pollution is not good. Also, China burns an enormous amount of coal and the stats on whether consumption is going up or down are mixed. [1] The current consumption levels are unsustainable from a C02 perspective, so this is a big issue.
I'm not for a moment excusing US behavior but it's clear that all large economies are going to have problems changing their consumption patterns, often for reasons that are unique to each economy in question.
China is not "more likely to do something". China is "doing something". China is the worlds biggest investor in Green Tech and has surpassed Europe and the US combined.
I would say the difference is that China's leadership knows it's gone off the rails, whereas the US's leadership is mostly still in complete denial.
China's growth has forced them to acknowledge that their industrial expansion is not sustainable. The US leadership, meanwhile, has not had the necessary wake-up call.
China's authoritarian system of government means they can be much more quick and heavy-handed about changing direction without as much fear of making unpopular decisions, and they're already doing that. The US is hampered by the fact that its politicians are beholden to constituencies and lobbyists.
China seems to see green energy as being a business opportunity — these days, almost everyone except those with vested interest in the status quo do — and is making enormous investments. This, unfortunately, is probably the key to solving global warming: Make solving it financially desirable, and people, governments and companies will be incentivized by greed alone.
It's not exactly a novel approach, but we seem to have finally reached a tipping point where "green" no longer has the stigma of feeble, touchy-feely liberal environmentalism, which makes all the difference.
They have a powerful authoritarian regime run by engineers. In cases where there is a need to act quickly and decisively, that is an advantage. No need to convince the public (which in this case is already on board).
China seems to have acknowledged, through action at least, that the state of the environment is a concern. They are certainly putting their money towards renewables. [1]
Americans are one of the heaviest polluters per capita; so that could be why. Also, they often blame countries with highest emissions (in total) (China), as if climate change cares about borders.
Not to mention that the US has been (albeit largely in ignorance) one of the heaviest emitters of GHGs for something like 150 years. China? A couple of decades?...
All we can do is exactly the same as all you can do... do everything you can, at all levels, to get carbon out of the atmosphere and oceans, to reduce energy use where you live, and to encourage and support realistic way of getting carbon out of the air/ocean and back into the soils and rocks.
One thing to note - perhaps people from the US would care more if climate change were reported in units they could understand. Given the profound and ubiquitous scientific illiteracy that typifies the US, I'd be shocked if most realized that a 2C rise !≃ 2F
Indeed. To American ears, it's really not significant, other than in the "open up vast swaths of Northern farmland to much greater diversity of crops" sense.
The skepticism most commonly found in the US, based on my anecdotal evidence, is not toward whether AGW is happening, but rather why anyone ought to care. Some even consider it a good thing.
But probably consider "rampant immigration" as relevant. Unless they're up for genocide, which they quite frankly probably are, it is their problem. Genocide or not.
If you show evidence contrary to the "consensus", you get labeled as a practitioner of "voodoo science" by the IPCC, such as when Indian researchers reported that the IPCC study on Himalayan glaciers disappearing. Oops turns out the Indians were right after all.
Examining claims made by climate scientists is no different than examining claims made by physicists or chemists. I have seen examples of the "models" being manipulated or wildly inaccurate in climate science. There's a large monetary incentive to produce climate science research, and a large amount of the process (IPCC) is controlled by politicians and their appointees.
It's ripe for abuse and we need to stay vigilant, because every solution that's come out of these groups has been cap-and-trade and carbon taxes, both of which are total garbage solutions that just result in govt. taking more of our money. If we were really serious, we'd be funding the crap out of fusion power research. Fusion is the only way imo, the current renewable energy approach is too slow to advance, too inefficient, and too resource intensive. If we could get that working, we could power the planet on a bathtub of water and we wouldn't have to waste time and massive resources blanketing the planet in solar panels.
I am much more shocked about the negative sentiment here at HN about any post that could be seen as criticism on the global warming theory.
Personally I believe that it is a good thing to be critical about everything thats written in the mainstream media. A lot of nonsense is being written and copied by everybody without any critical thinking. It's also happening when it comes to climate change. I'm not denying it, but I do think that there is a lot about its implications that we don't understand very well yet.
> Personally I believe that it is a good thing to be critical about everything thats written in the mainstream media.
Are you critical about how to conduct effective medical trials in your everyday life? Are you critical about the best catalogue hierarchy for books in a public library? Are you critical of the driving techniques of truckers under snow conditions?
You can critique anything in life and there's a hell of a lot of things that are important for which we recognize that we have little knowledge in the domain and that our criticism is mere curiousity but has no relevance whatsoever.
For some reason only a narrow band of Americans think that their knowledge or their credentials on the subject allows them to challenge the topic critically or consider that the the scientific consensus on the matter is wrong.
It's a bullshit argument from bullshit skeptics. Critical thinking comes from having a minimum baseline knowledge of the subject. I have yet to meet a skeptic who does.
The actual, real skeptics are the peers of climate scientists who have domain knowledge and can ask about the modeling techniques in papers, what equations were utilized, what assumptions are taken and so on. Without that it's the same level of intellectual drudgery as anti-vaxxers.
Years ago I had little opinion on climate change. During the big email scandal[1] I decided to look into it myself, as an outsider. I downloaded the leaked emails. I downloaded various data sets. I also followed online arguments between climate scientists and climate skeptics.
After trying to grok the mammoth amounts of data, I realized that it would take me forever just to come up to speed. I decided to focus on the arguments. What I found was that the climate scientists could answer every objection, and I could trace back to the data itself and validate what they were saying. The "skeptics" would either: repeat their claim without acknowledging the rebuttal, or would switch to arguing something else completely, or would not reply at all only to go somewhere else and repeat their rebutted claim(s) without modification. Being something of a skeptic myself (in an evidence-based way), I recognize this pattern of behavior. It's not skepticism; it's denial. It's a marketing campaign.
When you have a true skeptic of climate change look into it, you end up with the Koch-funded Richard Muller deciding that, yeah, it's real science done well and that climate change is real.
Let me start with the disclaimer that I am not denying climate change, judging by some reactions that apparently wasn't clear enough.
Now to what you are saying. First of all, being critical of what the media writes about some scientific subject, is not the same as being critical of the scientist that did the research. Many times research is wrongly quoted or taken out of context.
Secondly, sometimes some research seems to contradict with other. For instance, as I mentioned already in another reply (and got already downvoted to -4 by now), while research clearly shows that the Arctic ice is melting, the Antarctic ice is growing. I find those seemingly contradicting facts interesting, they show that we apparently do not understand everything about the subjec t yet.
Science makes progress from new facts and experiments that can't be explained by the current theory. If people would refuse to see those facts, progress would never be made.
> As such, the behavior of Antarctic sea ice is not a paradox as some have suggested, but instead is consistent with the geophysical characteristics in the southern polar region that starkly contrast to those in the Arctic.
Of course we don't understand everything, we don't understand everything about any subject. When you see contradictory headlines, dig deeper. Don't stop and think "I knew it, these people don't know what they're doing".
> Secondly, sometimes some research seems to contradict with other. For instance, as I mentioned already in another reply (and got already downvoted to -4 by now), while research clearly shows that the Arctic ice is melting, the Antarctic ice is growing. I find those seemingly contradicting facts interesting, they show that we apparently do not understand everything about the subjec t yet.
No, it shows that you haven't been reading the minimum baseline material.
Antartic ice surface is spreading but the volume is decreasing dramatically. The surface spread is due to lower atmospheric temperatures given the transfer of energy from the atmosphere to the ice, leading to the melt in ice shelves that used to be stable.
There is no point of contention there and if you had actually done the research this should have come up easily.
Well, it seems you haven't read the Nasa report that I was referring to. The increase that was measured was not in surface but in mass. Unless the density of the Antrarctic ice is increasing dramatically as well, that means volume is increasing, not decreasing.
The press release you reference, and the paper it grew from, has been echo-ing around HN (and the cryosphere research community) for a while. Last time was two months ago; see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12796646
Short summary: the study partly conflicts other results, and the mass loss seen in that study may be more due to the limitations of their measurement technique (radar altimetry) versus other techniques (gravity).
Claimer: while not involved in ice mass quantification, I talk regularly with people who do it full time, publish regularly, are leads on space instruments to measure it, etc.
And, like other commenters nearby, I want to caution you on your approach to "skepticism" and "keeping an open mind".
You seem to be selecting one press release from the hundreds released every year, and using its partial conflict with other information to call the whole hypothesis (significant ice melting caused by global warming) into question. That's not a valid mode of inquiry - especially when you don't have the training and time to keep up with current work.
It's like walking into an IC fab and asking why they are not using EUV lithography (it was in this article in Wired!) when you didn't even take a semiconductor physics class in college.
The right place to start, if you really want to get informed, is the IPCC AR5 report (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/). Reading press releases only makes sense if you can put it into context.
> I am much more shocked about the negative sentiment here at HN about any post that could be seen as criticism on the global warming theory.
The theory was first proposed in 1820, demonstrated in a lab in 1864, proposed with climate predictions 1894, and studied ever more intensely ever since.
It's about as old as the germ theory of disease.
So the same standard applies: if you attack the germ theory of disease or the global warming theory, you need to show some demand evidence, or else, put up with lots of negative sentiment vented by people who are justly angered that you asked for their attention and didn't show them enough respect to warrant their attention.
When you are presented with uniform agreement of countless scientists, debating it is a waste of time. Seriously. I just can't understand how people still believe debating this makes any sense.
Yeah, I think debating the issue gives legitimacy to the climate change deniers. People have largely stopped debating creationists for this same reason. I think a Venn diagram of creationists and climate change deniers would have quite a bit of overlap.
"I am much more shocked about the negative sentiment here at HN about any post that could be seen as criticism on the global warming theory."
And by the looks of the responses your post received, your reaction is justified.
While its roots may be in science, the Climate Change movement has become a church unto itself. And one that does not treat potential Martin Luthers kindly.
Thank you for providing such obvious evidence in support of my argument with your actions.
I had wondered if my post would have spawned a lengthy discussion in which I would have to properly assemble a series of arguments with supporting links as rebuttals. But to have my point so clearly illustrated right out of the gate...oh, what a gift!
Thought the same myself. More often than not, it all comes across like climate change is some vengeful god who we must sacrifice for and express an unshakable belief in.
Would love to see more pragmatism and less dogma. I think that would help.
This is ridiculous. Saying that we have to stop putting so much CO2 in the air is not a vengeful god, it's just the facts. Wanting the sea levels to not rise and displace millions of people from their homes is pragmatism. You are the one who is putting ideology above facts.
Your stance that people trying to mitigate global warming are acting like "climate change is some vengeful god who we must sacrifice for and express an unshakable belief in." is ideology. Your denial of the scientific consensus is ideology. Your coming here to post in an expression of your ideology. It doesn't matter if you want the sea levels to rise or are just in denial of the facts and think they won't.
Of course it matters what you write, it's just your motivation for what you write isn't really relevant. I don't know if you are just some edgy guy hanging out trying to rile people up, some true believer who's sincerely thinks climate change is a hoax, or somewhere in between. The great thing about science is things are true or false on their own.
Also clergy don't think they can magically divine people's true beliefs unless you are talking about D&D, so you really need to work on your metaphors.
I disagree. There are those that work on sustainable, inexpensive, and not environmentally damaging energy production. This kind of work is pragmatic, as it approaches the problem as one we can solve.
There are also those that seek to punctuate the discussion and create strawmen, like yourself - that's the dogma side :)
The scientific and technological approach to these problem is pragmatic, of course. In the most parts of the world dogmatic science was abolished after the middle age.
So I don't know what your comment actually tries to communicate, apart of this strawmen thing, which itself is a strawmen.
I tried to explain that technological approaches are pragmatic anyway. However, a technological solution isn't in sight currently, therefore a political solution would be necessary to buy more time. And I can't currently see any dogmatic political actions anywhere. But as you seem to be convinced that "there is too much dogma" you surely could, couldn't you?
Who here or in the article is trying to stop discussion on sustainable energy? Or do you think that somehow talking about Arctic ice melting is somehow impeding energy research?
> In the rest of the western world, there is no debate about what's happening
I'm not sure what weight that should carry. From my understand a vast majority of Western European countries are opposed to GMOs, another area where the science is settled.
In fact, there is greater scientific consensus around the safety of GMOs than even climate change.
vast majority of Western European countries are opposed to GMOs
That opposition, generally speaking, has nothing do with whether GMOs are safe to eat or not. It has to do partially with the potential long term effects on the ecosystem and partially with skepticism towards the business practices of the main players in the GMO field.
My issue with global warming activists isn't its science but it's masking of the actual problem: over population. Global warming with a doubling of population will of course be an issue - but by the time we double population(50 years?) don't worry - things will be so bad: limited food, terrible air, almost no employment, the extra +3 degrees won't matter.
> But even here on HN, with the high quality of debate
Maybe the debate here on other topics, from technical to political, is also of low quality? Just with the flavor of "quality", like carefully argued (but absurd) mini-essays? Much like politicians and the media which use carefully-manicured gravitas to give the flavor of truth without the nutrients?
Being irrational enough to destroy yourself isn't all that compartmentalized. It's not just about climate change, it's about economics and national ideology. Which certainly includes what we do all day in our jobs.
We, the ones doing the science, are here to discuss this with you. We have the data and do the research. I can find the right colleague and ask them any question for you. However, this has been done over and over again on many websites.
Our agenda is knowledge, especially on the lower levels where the work is done. We want to know how the world works, and there are enough open questions even without this issue. We don't need to invent stuff to find problems to work on.
Seriously, if anyone could show that what we are finding is wrong, everyone would have a big celebration. It can be really depressing to be stared into the face by such a huge problem and be powerless to do anything against it, as a human. The only thing available is to write, and tell everyone about it, because only everyone can fix it. Really, we'd be overjoyed.
Really, we are people here. You're accusing us of lying. That hurts, not just on a personal level but on an existential one, because without all of you, we cannot fix this and only observe it get worse and worse. Is this a life you would want?
> the planet simply has periods of warmer temperatures and periods of cooler ones
Here's the problem with people like you: In the face of assured doom for yourself if you're young enough, or most likely your children or siblings' children, you choose to either:
1. Make highly ignorant statements without doing even the slightest bit of research, in a manner that is consistent with people suffering from a clear lack of skill in critical thinking.
or
2. Troll people.
And it is completely impossible to tell on which side you fall. As such it is entirely impossible to approach you in any kind of sane or rational manner.
This part of your statement is actually a little bit of the problem here, too. Can you define more clearly what you mean by this?
I'm very interested in exploring the issue better, but having to constantly sift through piles of hyperbole from both sides, it makes it very hard to remain interested.
My trivial understanding of everything goes: greenhouse gasses cause warming and we're the primary source of their increase in the past century so, therefore, we're causing the planet to warm. That's easy enough to understand. But after that, I find that I'm either an idiot because, duh, its all a hoax or that our species will be extinct tomorrow if I don't do something yesterday.
It's incredibly tedious to try and gain a better understanding of everything.
I'd like to answer, but you didn't ask an actual question, so i'll take a blind stab.
Short version: CO2 causes general warming. Ice caps on the pole are necessary to keep the planet cool by reflecting a lot of the incoming light. General warming will cause ice caps to melt, which causes more energy from the sun to be absorbed, which causes even faster warming. Permafrost areas will also thaw, releasing CO2 and methane, resulting in even more warming. Strong heat increases can damage rain forests, reducing the CO2 absorption, also speeding up warming. Result: Best case scenario: Loss of coastal regions to sea rise. Worst case scenario: Earth becomes a second Venus.
Edit: To downvoters: If i got facts wrong, please do correct me. The above is my understanding of the sitation and i may have gotten some wrong.
> This part of your statement is actually a little bit of the problem here, too. Can you define more clearly what you mean by this?
That was my question. I appreciate your summary of the situation and I think your worst case assessment answers my question. Unfortunately, there's an incredibly huge gap between "loss of coastal regions" and "Earth becomes a second Venus". One situation sounds highly surmountable while the other sounds like the certain extinction of our species. When you use phrases like "assured doom", I tend to think of outcomes more like the latter and I find that type of rhetoric almost as unhelpful as denying the whole situation. It just doesn't help anyone.
I apologize for picking on you specifically, you're just the first one to express this kind of sentiment I came across.
Unfortunately, there's an incredibly huge gap between "loss of coastal regions" and "Earth becomes a second Venus"
And you are basing this on what, exactly? Because the answer right now to that question is "we don't know how huge that gap is". And we do not have a second Earth to test your theories on. Are you really willing to take the risk of assured doom based on your belief that "the gap between now and assured doom is incredibly huge"?
Here's the thing with dynamic equilibrium: it is only locally stable. We do not know how exactly how resilient our ecosystem or our planet is to rapid changes. Some of us are not willing to find out, because we only have a single destructive test at our disposal.
I made that statement based on my limited ability to extrapolate how our species might deal with the two scenarios. It sounds much, much easier to me, while still being incredibly challenging, to deal with large population displacement versus dealing with our planet becoming entirely uninhabitable.
Now, if I understand what you're saying, it sounds like our understanding of the probabilities of the two scenarios occurring isn't exactly known. While the two scenarios, at face value, sound incredibly different (to me at least), the likelihood of one happening over the other could be very similar. I agree that we should absolutely take that position seriously and that we should absolutely do things to guard against the possible outcome where our planet becomes uninhabitable.
All that I'm asking is that we say it like that. Lets say that instead of speaking in absolutes (e.g. "its a hoax", "we're doomed"). That's all I'm taking issue with. It doesn't help the discussion no matter what side of the argument those kinds of statements come from.
> And we do not have a second Earth to test your theories on. Are you really willing to take the risk of assured doom based on your belief that "the gap between now and assured doom is incredibly huge"?
To be clear, I don't have any theories I'd like to test nor do I know what I might be willing to risk. As I said in my original comment, my understanding of everything is incredibly rudimentary and I'm trying to do a better job seeking information to help me answer questions like that.
> if I understand what you're saying, it sounds like our understanding of the probabilities of the two scenarios occurring isn't exactly known
Incorrect.
A complete planet-devastating runaway scenario is much more likely, as it requires merely that humans continue to operate as they are doing right this very moment.
The best case scenario only comes about if we get our shit together.
That's the gap that separates worst and best case: Humans change nothing <---> Humans make a supreme effort. Probabilities follow directly from the probabilities of these two things.
Now, if I understand what you're saying, it sounds like our understanding of the probabilities of the two scenarios occurring isn't exactly known
No, what I'm saying is that we don't even know whether these really are two separate scenarios. We can't afford to plan for a large population displacement because by the time we get to that point, there may be nothing we can do to prevent our planet from becoming uninhabitable.
'Unfortunately, there's an incredibly huge gap between "loss of coastal regions" and "Earth becomes a second Venus"' … maybe there's not. And that's part of the problem. Psychologically people perceive differences as "linear". It's part of how our brains are wired: to go from A to B draw a mental line and try to walk it at a constant speed. The greater the difference, the longer the line, thus the longer it takes to get from A to B. Hence the "huge gap" sentiment. But climate is not a linear system. Going from A to B could be a tiny step. Or oscillating, or dampening, or all sorts of funny things. Modelling of, for example, oceanic plankton (which gives more than 50% of the atmospheric oxygen) showed that the difference between "happy ~20% oxygen in the atmosphere" to "no oxygen ever again" is a small temperature change [1,2]. Non-linear systems are very hard. But they are fact, not fiction. That one last metric ton of CO2 could really be the difference between "life as usual" and "goodbye complex life on Earth". Communicating that fact is unfortunately even harder. Because people cannot perceive these changes, they're stuck in the linear mindset. And this worries me, because when we realize we need to really do something it's probably already far too late. If it isn't already (but in that case, science won't matter…I'd rather turn the page to "existential philosophy in the face of extinction").
To me it seems like simple risk management, even with a small probability the loss would be near infinite, whereas the loss of "doing something" is probably negligible. (carbon tax, energy transition, discouraging procreation, anti-consumerist lifestyle … probably all beneficial for humanity from a birds-eye view)
In a way i can understand you, in another way: Consider what "the entirety of Florida, New York and California is forced to move inland" will mean in practice. Then consider what the same would mean for less affluent countries.
Filtering out new accounts would set a tremendously dangerous precedent. There are many rather prolific, insightful, and level-headed users here that prefer creating new accounts for each thread they engage with in order to reset karma and enforce privacy. Rather than fuel animosity behind the veil of anonymity, these users are trying to preserve the instinctive behavior of out-group participants and even under-represented experts to engage with intellectually honest criticism when the signals of authority such as identity and karma are missing.
The problem you're seeing here isn't due to anonymity, but rather self-selecting hostile interactions by participating with front page news as soon as posted. This is typical of HN and really any technically-bent social media, where the first to interact are typically the most outspoken and inflammatory regardless of identity visibility, with the rational high-quality debate trickling in once the topic starts significantly eroding in popularity.
I'd also be happy with banning climate change denial here, similar to how I assume Holocaust denial would be treated. Climate change is an existential threat to our planet and everything on it. There is no debate to be had. The science is in. Denialism of climate change is just as legitimate as Holocaust denial, which is to say, not at all legitimate.
No-one would be opposed to "taking better care of the place we live". This is a strong indication that this is not an honest way to frame the dispute.
Cuts in emissions (e.g., the 80% cuts the EU is pushing for) will require major cuts in energy usage. We know what a low-energy economy looks like - it looks like a pre-industrial economy. We might not need to go back to the middle ages, but we'd need to reverse many advances of the industrial revolution.
In contrast, we're facing a maximum of 59cm of sea level rise by 2100. (IPCC estimate). That's not desirable but it is manageable - at least if we maintain our technological, industrial civilisation.
If climate change is not happening/harmful, resources spent on addressing it are wasted (to the extent they affect CC), and cannot be used to address other issues such as biodiversity, disease, and human suffering.
The actions taken to mitigate or counter-act climate change could have 'collateral benefits', but be less effective than other environmental remediation or human charity. The 'loss' would be (the benefits of the best alternative program) - (the benefits of the ACC mitigation/counter-action).
If your priority is to save a few endangered species, the best way to do it is to go out and save those species, not to 'try to reduce or offset anthropogenic climate change'; there are many species which are extremely endangered, and for a great intro to the topic, I suggest Douglas Adam's brilliant book.[1]
We are faced with tough choices, and should acknowledge them to be difficult; I don't know that I could bear telling parents that their children will die because I see climate change as a higher priority than disease.
I'd have trouble with that too, and don't particularly want to live on neo-Venus either.
I was trying to make the point that even if you favor a given course of action, the costs and benefits should be assessed, and neither should be dismissed.
I agree here. I think people who deny climate change just need to nut up and say that their priority is the economy. the economic cost in reversing climate change means they lose big time.
Is this a good reason to not favor that course of action? or is it laden with self-interest? is "I'll lose my whole business" a cost that anyone would be willing to pay for the benefit of the climate? how do we convince this kind of person? in the face of this opinion, should we not dismiss it?
The vast majority of people who take either side of a political debate do so on genuine belief that it is the best policy for everyone.[1] Very few take positions out of self-interest, unless the voting group is <100 people.[2] The problem is that most people make up their minds very quickly based on intuitive and emotional factors, and only bring in reason later on.[3]
As a result of all this, saying that they are dishonest or lying is wrong, but appeals to complex intellectual arguments won't work; you should give opponents their due though, as the complex intellectual arguments wouldn't convince you either (even if you are wrong).
So you're saying that oil companies are against climate change policy not because it directly harms their industry, but because they genuinely believe the climate is not being harmed by their industry?
even if that (their belief that it isn't being harmed being genuine) were true, there is literally direct evidence to show this (climate is being harmed by industry) is not true. carbon emissions and the greenhouse effect - it's a fact that industry contributes heavily to carbon emissions. and it's a fact that carbon emissions create increasing temperature by allowing heat to bounce around inside the atmosphere.
What you're saying is, I don't believe in climate change because of these scientific facts (which, are relatively non-complex. we put stuff in air. stuff in air makes air warmer), I believe in it because I'm a bleeding heart liberal? come on.
How many people really need to have their minds changed for congress to create legislation around climate change? Around a hundred eh.. hmm. Self-interest is definitely not a part of this though. they just don't want to change anything because its what they genuinely believe is best!
christ, even arguing that they have this genuine belief is a crock of shit. there's not test for sincerity of belief.
The majority of the people you are facing off against do not represent oil companies, or even work for them.
I am saying that you probably arrived at your view by your intuition, after looking at who was on either side of the debate, and how you felt about the 'issue', then you found evidence to support your view. The idea that any of us arrives at their view solely through a careful analysis of the facts is quite optimistic, and I think Hume was on the money 250 years ago. If you believe you are capable of a careful examination of the views on the other side, I implore you to read Alex Epstein's book all the way through, and give him a fair hearing; I would bet you $20 at even odds that you cannot read his book and give an accurate summary of his arguments, because you will find it too frustrating.[1] Changing your view because the facts contradict your intuition and peers is an extremely painful and slow process, which most of us resist at all costs.[2]
There are many tests for the sincerity of beliefs.[3]
so you mean lobbying groups for big oil aren't involved in the legislative process? hm. coulda fooled me.
I literally formed my opinion this in grade 12 earth science class, where I was first shown inconvenient truth followed by a direct rebuttal. I found gore to be unconvincing, but I found the rebuttal even worse.
I'll see if I can find the book for cheap. From reading reviews it's fairly clear that the author isn't exactly unbiased or entirely fact-based.
you've got to be fucking kidding me if you think "intuition" is unrelated the self-interest. instead of side-stepping, might you answer my questions?
are you truly saying that politicians and public figures who are involved with oil companies and against climate change are doing so out of anything but self-interest?
ultimately your argument is fallacious. you're dismissing my more salient points by attacking my reasoning process rather than my argument itself. I'm just as self-interested as they are, right? I only believe what I want to believe, I'm just intuiting and agreeing with my peers.
Are you truly telling me that someone looks at industry, like actually looking at factories and the way they operate, and their intuition is that this is good for the environment.
furthermore general economics disagrees with you when it comes to the decisions of people who run the oil industry. how are they acting in anything but self-interest when they fund climate-change denial? it provides a direct economic benefit to them.
Opportunity costs. For example, we're currently devoting a lot of money and attention to climate change that could instead be devoted to things like malaria and malnutrition.
(It should be obvious, but this is not an argument that climate change isn't real. Just that if it weren't real, we'd want to know, and act upon that.)
could instead be devoted to things like malaria and malnutrition.
You know what is the biggest cause of global malnutrition? Climate change, because it is causing more erratic weather patterns that destroy harvests worldwide.
You know what the biggest cause is for the spreading of the malaria mosquitoes beyond the tropics? Climate change again, because it makes some (highly-populated) regions a more favourable habitat.
Climate change isn't some hypothetical problem anymore, like it was in 1850. It is here now, and is already causing problems like you mentioned, that we are spending so much money on countering. But we're treating symptoms, not the cause. I fully expect our spend on treating the symptoms of climate change will rise to unmanageable levels in mere decades.
I want to be clear that this is not a reply to what I said. I argued that if climate change weren't real, we'd want to know about it, and I made it perfectly clear that I was not saying climate change is not real. You replied that climate change is real and causing problems today.
> climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050; 38 000 due to heat exposure in elderly people, 48 000 due to diarrhoea, 60 000 due to malaria, and 95 000 due to childhood undernutrition
Meanwhile, today malaria is killing around 600 000 people a year (ten times that number), and malnutrition around 3 million (thirty times). So, while I'm open to convincing, color me skeptical that today, climate change is the "biggest cause" of those things, for any reasonable definition of "biggest cause".
(Granted, you said "spreading of the malaria mosquitos beyond the tropics". To the extent that this problem is different from the problem of malaria in general, it's moving the goalposts.)
(I also note that even if climate change were the biggest cause of those problems, the best solution to those specific problems might not be to fight climate change. Perhaps instead we should work on growing more resistant wheat, or eradicating mosquitos.)
I'm not arguing that climate change isn't real or that we shouldn't try to solve it. But I categorically reject the idea that if it weren't real, we should nevertheless act as though it were.
I want to be clear that this is not a reply to what I said.
I understood what you said, but in my view you were painting a false dichotomy: it's not a matter of "either climate change or all-these-other-useful-things", it's a matter of "all-these-other-useful-things because of our inability to address climate change directly".
in which case how do we prove this to be real beyond doubt?
what do we do when people treat their opposition as faith, i.e. belief despite lack of evidence.
for some people it will never be real. what do we do about that? is that a legitimate thing to take into account? does that faith mean we cannot act as though climate change is largely human-driven?
You don't wait until you've proven it beyond doubt. But you say "this is our best model, we're pretty confident it's right in the essentials, and we're going to act on it but remain open to being wrong; here are our policy proposals". You don't say "this is our best model, and here are our policy proposals based on it, but even if our model is wrong we would make the same proposals anyway".
I have no particular insights into the other questions.
Ironically, solving malnutrition and malaria will lead to an increase in population, which makes solving the problem of Global Warming even harder (and if you don't think overpopulation is one of the key issues when it comes to climate change, then I'm not sure you're able to have a rational discourse on the matter)
In interconnected systems, there's an opportunity cost to opportunity cost.
Depends on the timeframe you're looking at. Within a single generation you're correct.
Once you step into more generations though, fertility rates drop as child survivability rises, as it becomes much more viable to rely on a few children as insurance for old age. Source: Hans Rosling, Gapminder
You're not wrong, but I hope we can all agree that "let millions of people die to slightly reduce global warming" is very far down on our list of things to try.
Even if humans cannot affect change in the climate, we are still going to need to prepare for that change. investing in renewables etc affects much more than climate. Good investments for the future tend to overlap with solutions to human-driven climate change.
When preparing for a change, it's good to know whether or not you're leaning on a button that makes the change happen faster. If you are, you can try to lean less hard on that button, and buy more time to prepare. If you're not, then attempting to lean less hard is wasted effort. (It might accidentally have some benefits, but you could have gotten those benefits anyway, if you thought they were worth it.)
It would be really surprising if our best-value course of action, relating to climate change, was exactly the same regardless of whether climate change were human-influenced or not.
I don't see anything anywhere to show that the way carbon emissions increase global temperature to be false. greenhouse effect is a commonly observed phenomenon, and it's a plain fact that we emit carbon at extreme rates compared to pre-industry civilizations.
we know that pushing this button has coincided with a change in climate trends over the last 200 years. what we have to prove is then that a. this is not a natural change, and b. this change can be slowed down or reversed.
would you say that if science proved we are past the tipping point that nothing should be done to reverse the effect we've already had?
You seem to be arguing that climate change is real and human-caused. I do not understand why you're arguing this, when I have repeatedly said that I am not arguing against it. I'm merely arguing that we want to know, contra the user who suggested it didn't matter if it was true or not because we should act the same in either case.
Yeah I understand you. I'm just trying to get across the point that we do know, as far as we can, but it's not enough for most people who are in denial. saying we should act the same way in either case is just an auxiliary way to shut those people up.
I think it's clear that if we could know, and if we could all agree on that, that it would be important to accomplish. but I don't think we can ever all agree on it. so it's not important to accomplish (in fact you could say it's already been accomplished, we already know, and it's not enough, we don't all agree despite the fact. that's what I'm trying to get across by arguing the point of human-caused real climate change)
So, you just signed up to comment on this article ? Is there a "climate change article" alert system that sends notifications to troll farms to sign up and flood comment boards ? Would love to learn more about how that works.
The chance that we are going to have an unexpected climate change acceleration is growing uncomfortably large.
Given recent political trends, the space of possible solutions is getting narrower and narrower. I would say that only a major technological advance will save us now.
Unexpected? Climate scientists been harping on that risk for the last 25 years. The chance that we are going to have a broadly discussed climate change acceleration is certainly growing - but I doubt even climate change skeptics would suggest that it was unexpected.
Up until the 1950s though it was thought that water vapor saturation of the IR absorption lines would nullify any effect of increasing CO2 concentrations.
It wasn't until the USAF started doing careful analysis of the upper atmosphere that it was discovered that the upper atmosphere is dry enough that increasing concentrations of CO2 there will act like throwing a warm blanket around the planet and that the sea-level saturation of H2O wouldn't matter.
Unexpected by most. The 'problem' is known, the consequences, I'm pretty sure, are not something most people have taken in consideration, plus, it's unimaginable how much can go wrong. Shit, now I'm depressed.
Reading this I now wonder, climate change might be impossible to slow (it was already impossible to revert in a tangible timeframe IIUC), governments might try to spend money in finding ways to cope with warming consequences ?
That's not really an option: As long as we pump CO2 into the atmosphere climate keeps changing and at some point you just run out of money if it's spend on consequences. And at that point the problem is still there.
The Montreal Protocol is quite successful in repairing the ozone layer. It is not like we always failed rolling back industrial missteps.
Isn't the CO2 density issue far larger than the Ozone layer holes ? I've never seen it mentionned, so I assumed that "fixing" the CO2 issue was not possible yet, and that we would only stop emission as much as possible hoping the system not to tilt out of balance.
"Isn't the CO2 density issue far larger than the Ozone layer holes ?"
The Ozone layer affects us directly on anatomical level. The rising quotient of atmospheric CO₂ will affect us more economically than in other ways.
"«fixing» the CO2 issue was not possible yet, and that we would only stop emission as much as possible hoping the system not to tilt out of balance"
The system will most likely "tilt out of balance" as the mere stopping of all CO₂ emissions won't stop the current self-evolving situation. The Arctic, Antarctic, and other regions that still have ice-sheets will melt simply due to risen global temperature. This it itself will cause a further rise in global temperature. Then, again due to global temperature increase, there are significant reserves of methane trapped in shallow layers of permafrost that are at risk of getting released into the atmosphere. Methane will enhance the current green-house effect as it does a much better job than CO₂ in this regard.
In conclusion, we are, how the Chinese say, "living interesting times"!
The holes on the Ozone layer could potentially have a larger impact than any reasonably prediction for Global Warming. But stopping it was relatively much simpler.
We've baked in a considerable amount of future warming that we can't get out of, even with aggressive reduction of CO2. That means that we're going to have to accept some of the costs of warming.
That doesn't mean that we should give up on reducing CO2. If we dig up all the carbon in the ground, burn all the gas, coal and oil then we wind up in a 4,000+ ppm CO2 world that the Earth hasn't seen since 40M years ago in the Eocene. In 200-300 years that would melt Antarctica. There were jungles in the Arctic back then. And it took on the order of 40M years to get here and we'll turn the clock back in a few hundred years.
Presumably I won't be around to see it, but I still would prefer that not be my generations legacy.
And we will be forced to deal with whatever the consequences no matter what so your question is a bit meaningless. The only choice we have is over how bad those consequences will ultimately be -- somewhat bad, really bad, or horrifically bad.
To be fair, its likely that horrifically bad is not on the menu since Tesla is selling cars and batteries, people are buying them, and the US military is even on board solar power since they don't like IEDs blowing up their fuel convoys -- so some mitigation will be happening no matter what the government does. But "drill baby, drill" is going to optimize for having the most costs to offset in the future.
> If we dig up all the carbon in the ground, burn all the gas, coal and oil then we wind up in a 4,000+ ppm CO2 world that the Earth hasn't seen since 40M years ago in the Eocene. In 200-300 years that would melt Antarctica
The bigger problem here is that at 4,000+ ppm CO2, a good chunk of people will simply suffocate. Have you ever tried to do perform work that requires high cognitive load in a poorly ventilated room?
Now multiply the effects of that x3, and realize that there's no escape from this, anywhere on the planet. You can't simply open a window and let in that fresh 400 ppm air anymore.
Evolution might start selecting for individuals that are successful without higher cognitive function, aka selecting for physically fit imbeciles that can function in a 4,000 ppm CO2 world.
That's a hypothetical scenario, of course. Western Civilization will be long gone before CO2 levels reach anywhere near 4k.
In the case CO2 density reach high levels, in an evolutionary way it may be "better" (more supply). So now I wonder, what traits could be developped it there was that much more C02 around.
What I mean is when near a crash, you can spend some budget trying to brake, but you'll have to reflect on how you gonna brace and roll because it's gonna happen; not just stop at "hey we broke as hard as possible, sorry".
Climate change has been the "asteroid" heading to earth for a 100 years, directed here by our own doing. We're all at varying points of the grief spectrum. Personally I'm in the acceptance stage. It's going to happen, it will likely lead to societal and economic collapse to some degree, and that is the only thing that will maybe change the way we do business.
It may not be highly publicized, but you can bet your ass many (likely unelected) officials in the US already care and have been paying attention for some time. The same goes for Canada, Denmark (Greenland), and the Scandanavian countries. Whether for the right reasons is a different debate; from a military standpoint, it's far too strategic of a region for them to not care. The same could be said for big business (natural resources and shipping routes).
I don't underestimate the class based sabotage. Don't think the human primate won't sell out is own kind, just because they're warned in advance.
The incuriousity of U.S. media really is remarkably repellant. None of the presidential debates brought up climate change at all. No one asks whether the politician believes the ozone hole problem was real, and whether it was set on a course of self repair by global political agreement, and local legal enforcement. Whether there was a free market fix for this in any sane time frame. No questions. That's holding people too accountable somehow.
Asking if people understand the ozone hole is maybe like asking whether 2+2=4 or some other value. Sure they'd say 4 (ozone problem was real) but somehow global warming is some 6+6!=12 but no one is ever held accountable for such absurdity. And why? The general population doesn't count that high. So the answer is in fact debatable. There's no common frame of reference with a huge percent of the American population.
Meanwhile in California, it is pretty much widely accepted. But they have "socialist" education and infrastructure investment; not this free market starve the beast strategy being used in bum fuck Kansas and Texas where people are getting dumber than rocks by the day, and like it, because their taxes are lower and Jesus isn't questioned. But they wonder why business won't move there.
Anyway this can't be treated as a problem only majoritatian democracy can solve. Leave it up to the majority and it's hopeless. This is a consensual problem, work the system just like this is a minority right, even though in the end the majority benefits.
In addition to scrambling to try to slow or halt antropogenic climate change, or doubting that it's caused by humans and pretending the entire topic is taboo, why isn't there a concerted effort (yet) to try to get our societies to adapt, mitigate, or thrive in this new reality?
Is this simply the status quo and isn't talked about?
Or we're not that desperate yet, only some places of the world like the Maldives, Tuvalu, and Solomon Islands?
When discussing controversial topics, the bar for civility and substantiveness is higher, not lower, otherwise these threads fall apart much too quickly. Please leave out things like "jesus christ some of you are pathetic". We detached this flagged subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13176426.
NASA, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Medical Association, the American Meteorological Society, the American Physical Society, The Geological Society of America, the IPCC, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, these 198 worldwide scientific organizations (https://www.opr.ca.gov/s_listoforganizations.php), and 97% of surveyed climate scientists.
Welcome to being on the wrong side of overwhelming agreement.
But I'm sure your "research" is more valid than theirs.
Maybe if the CO2 quotas wasn't in reality a ponzy scheme it would have made it easier to sell this doomsday scenario to the avarage joe. Its quite obvious that climate change has grown into an industry of lobbyists and worthless quotas swapping hands for billions of dollars. An absolutely worthless industry that has no progress to show even after decades.
The only real solution to global warming caused by man is depopulating the planet (Think Georgia guidestones) is that really something you want to do?
Yes, "cap and trade" plans are completely inadequate to address the problem, but "the only real solution is man depopulating the planet" seems questionable given that burning fossil fuels is not a sine qua non of continued human existence.
"reducing fossil fuel use is like pissing your pants to keep yourself warm."
Bullshit, there are already many countries(0) that generate >90% of their electricity using renewable sources. Given the fast growing electric motor industry, we could get rid of fossil fuels pretty fast. It's only a political question, not technological.
Yes, and so what? 90% less fossil fuel spend in electricity does not equal a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for a person (Humans emit greenhouse gasses directly and indirectly for alot of other purposes than electricity).
So maybe you can fit 90% more people into the equation if you reduce their emissions sufficiently, but that will be voided by the exponential growth of the human population within generations.
It's less than clear that the human population is going to continue growing at breakneck speed when industrialization is generally associated with much lower birth rates, and even staving off the problem for "generations" would be a success.
> Findings from a 2015 government census show that the average Chinese woman has 1.05 children — a legacy of the one-child policy that changed on Jan. 1 to a two-child policy. It is the lowest fertility rate in the world, according to People’s Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party.
It's logical that people would stop having so many kids once a society has industrialized because the cost of raising and educating them is relatively more expensive while the benefit to having them labor with you is essentially gone.
And how many projections about world population have been overshot through out the past 50 years? Oh yeah thats right, all of them.
As long as we have religions that advocate mindless reproduction just to keep their dominance, you will never end the acceleration of human reproduction.
Most humans want kids, its in our nature, but if all humans have 10 kids each, and they get 10 each... etc etc. you will come to the realization that growth in human population is unstoppable without some cataclysmic event or totalitarian master/slave society where only the top gets to reproduce.
I pick the indiscriminatory cataclysmic event any day over elitist governance over the right for reproduction.
In a book written in 1954, predicted that climate change would become urgent in 1990, predicted population peak of 9 billion which is similar to current estimates, predicted the peak would happen this century.
He'll probably end up proven wrong in the end, but by years and hundreds of millions rather than centuries and billions.
This one is more fun and shows the real time population and breaks it down into countries. It’s scary and fascinating to watch India’s population steadily ticking upward relative to pretty much every other country. So if the population eventually tapers, it will not be an even distribution (no surprise). Where will the people in India go, I wonder? If you scroll down to “World Population by Country” and look at the migrants rate, it appears net migration is out of India, higher than any other country, but not high enough to compensate for the growth.
Can't be arsed to make an effort post now, but you're overlooking the effects education, healthcare and wealth distribution have on controlling amounts of children without any sort of force required. Gapminder provides a tool to explore this data on your own, and one of its founders, Hans Rosling, has made many videos explaining it in an accessible fashion.
Immigrants also generally have higher fertility than native-born people; at least that is the case in the US. But that effect doesn't seem to last into their US-born children
Do you know of a good reference for the generational fertility of immigrants to Europe?
In the US second generation immigrants have fertility much closer to that of the population at large than first generation immigrants.
(so you could expect that people moving to the US have less grandchildren and so on than people that stay in countries with higher fertility rates; their emigration reduces the velocity of global population growth...)
No unfortunately there is not complete data, not for my country at least because we only keep track of immigrants in the first two generations, then they are considered "danish".
All though new evidence suggests that 3rd generation is much more religious, criminal etc. though I have seen no statistics about how many children 3rd generation "non western" immigrants have. You can read all about the fertility rate and population growth in Denmark in this PDF: http://www.dst.dk/Site/Dst/Udgivelser/GetPubFile.aspx?id=190...
This is official danish statistics, if it doesn't change, we will be a muslim country in a century or so. (Keep in mind that the PDF is pre-refugee crisis)
Surely this must be a "hoax" perpetrated by Mother Nature on Humankind...
...just like the "Little Ice Age" that led to harsh weather, droughts, famines, wars, and various epidemics in Europe from the 14th to the 19th century.[1]
How does nature play a "hoax"? The Little Ice Age was not caused by humans, whereas the science tells us that global warming is caused by human activity.
The article referenced is an example of propaganda by selecting the facts that fit the narrative. The authors conveniently fail to mention that there some areas on Earth that are actually cooling (Antarctica being the prime example [1], but there are others).
Articles like the above are the reason why I don't trust research/finding being published anymore - at least not without full disclosure who paid for that research. The ugly truth is that scientists need money, and some have no problem manipulating data, per their sponsors' interests.
This applies to both sides of the climate debate equally.
Say you have a house, you've owned it for 40 years. Winter and summer comes and goes, the house warms up and cools down regularly. To argue by analogy, you are then saying that the acute changes a human occupant could make to that environment are irrelevant as the seasons will still come and go? It's ridiculous.
Humans can affect the global habitat. The short-term extreme changes we are making via industry can easily overcome the slow long-term natural changes.
If you light a fire in your living room during the winter, it heats your house up. derp.
How about we look at the trend over 22000, and notice what effect, if any, we've seen recently, since the huge globalized industrialization we've seen post WWII?
That q-and-a is a great reason why one should not seize on one obvious interpretation of a press release, out of context, as some kind of gotcha. You have to know the context about the limitations of the data, what it's really measuring, and what the dominant physics are.
It has been warmer before, only a few thousand years ago and the proof is there that it may have had many previous ice free periods. there is also proof that just a thousand years ago we were warmed and that is based on Chinese studies of clams.
the key take away is that climate is more cyclical than many are willing to give credit too, studies of the Greenland Blocking Index when taken back more than a hundred years show the occurrences of similar warming periods.
So what to do about, study it and try to understand all the causes without focusing on simplistic the sky is falling scares which rarely do more than tire an already tired public of what many perceive as merely scare tactics
I have yet to see a legitimate study which doesn't acknowledge directly or indirectly the cyclical climate trends. What they do tend to point out are data from the current period which are extraordinary in size or in scope.
"study it and try to understand all the causes without focusing on simplistic the sky is falling scares..." This is one such study. It's looking at a region and noting an unprecedented trend. Perhaps you meant to refer to the article's positioning, rather than to the study itself?
Who cares if it's been warmer before or if it would warm (albeit much more slowly) anyway due to natural causes. The fact is, we know the warming is driven by greenhouse gases and while there are some of these occurring naturally we are certainly making things much worse. Your arguments are no reason not to take a aggressive stance on cutting carbon emissions.
Put another way, the real question is not are we causing it but can we slow or stop it by making changes. And the answer to that is undeniably yes.
As to the argument that the earth survived warm periods a thousand years ago so it's no big deal - are you kidding? There are billions more people alive today, and probably hundreds of millions in places that will be affected by sea level rise or droughts, not to mention the economic impact of other extreme weather events.
> Put another way, the real question is not are we causing it but can we slow or stop it by making changes. And the answer to that is undeniably yes.
This.
Whether it's man made or natural, it's the main issue. The main issue is that global warming is obviously a negative issue. Can it be stopped? If so, what are the steps to stop it and how do we proceed. Why would we not try to stop something negative?
It's not the absolute temperature that is alarming. It is the change in temperature. Previous changes have been over millennia. These changes have been over 100 years. The graphic that puts it in the best perspective I have seen is an xkcd cartoon (be sure to scroll all the way to the end):
You know, my takeaway from that graphic is that higher temperatures appear to be pretty well-correlated with improved human quality of life.
And of course the graphic doesn't show a cost-benefit analysis for any of its three future scenarios. Would it be worth a nickel to preserve the current environment exactly as it is? Maybe (although maybe some change would be good; I don't know). Would it be worth $1 quadrillion a day to prevent a single town of 1,000 people from being submerged by rising oceans? Almost certainly not.
What are the costs of each scenario, and what are the benefits? Is it worth losing a few houses in Miami if it means that Oslo produces more food?
That the world has always been changing has always been true, whether respecting climate or any number of other factors. That we're affected by change has also always been true. That we can have an effect on it is relatively new, and that we ought to is unproven. Frankly, the 20th century makes me very suspicious of any technocratic solution which claims to be able to predict every possibility and make the best choice (remember the Aswan Dam!). That doesn't mean we should do nothing, either (doing nothing is itself a choice which needs to be justified too!), but it means we should be very suspicious of easy answers which claim to be all benefit and no cost.
You really don't understand anything about dynamical systems do you? It's incredibly naive to assume we will land in some nice stable equilibrium where it's a couple of degrees warmer globally. The truth is we don't know where the climate will end up, but we know that we are in the process of exiting our current 'stable equilibrium'. The worst case scenario (and that is the only one we should be concerned with!) is a global mass extinction event. We've already had 5 of them - one of which was due to runaway greenhouse warming - https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinction...
> It's incredibly naive to assume we will land in some nice stable equilibrium where it's a couple of degrees warmer globally.
I don't assume that, nor did I write it. A mass extinction event would have high costs; it's entirely possible, though, that preventing one would have higher costs still (after all, it's not beyond belief that even if the Earth returned to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, mankind could survive).
All I wrote is that we need to consider costs as well as benefits of any scenario, to include doing nothing, and that I currently have relatively little faith in those who are confident in their estimates of costs and benefits. It's a bit surprising that either of these is so controversial.
Are you aware that the current situation is due to humans using fossil fuels and the problems can be addressed if governments weren't blocking progress? Or are you in denial that this situation is man-made?
I'd say I'm more of a realist, whatever is happening is happening, and whatever the results are going to be are going to be.
Likely some of what is happening is caused by humans and some is outside our control. Likely our actions will make little difference. Realistically the whole world runs on fossil fuels and that is not going to change anytime soon or quickly. Sure they can raise taxes significantly, but that is going to make the food at the grocery store much much more expensive before it makes any serious change on the environment.
You seem to be in denial about how prohibitively difficult it would be to 'fix' this problem.
We don't know, but it doesn't mean we should be actively trying to make it happen sooner. Heck, there's a pretty big difference if next mass extinction happens few years/decades from now or few thousand years in a future, when we might be better prepared for it. We all gonna die one day, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve our lives now or make it better for our children.
Haven't we been trying to improve our lives and the lives of our children for 30,000 odd years... Take a look at the situation we created, this world is the direct result of our desire to make things better... We've literally destroyed the earth.
We are not destroying the earth. The earth will go on with or without us. We are destroying the future of millions of humans. It will cause a great deal of pain and suffering. It may even cause the extension of our civilization or even our species.
Why not? From a purely nihilistic/hedonistic point of view, I can honestly say the strategy with the most personal utility to me is to shrug and say "whattyagonnado" .
So basically we have no free will so why should we change things? what.
"if it's our species time to go"
but it's NOT. we can make a change. this is like seeing a bulldozer slowly approaching your house - and instead of picking up and moving, despite the difficult, resigning yourself to death. It's illogical, it makes no sense.
This isn't a philosophical debate, but consider something like physicalism rather than free will.... No point in getting into a debate about that, but if you believe in science then you kind of have to believe in determinism.
We aren't really special, we ONLY think we are, we are restricted to the same laws as all other animals over all of time. We THINK we are different and ACT differently, but the 'effects' will still come to our 'causes.'
Take a stoic perspective rather than a defeatist one on the deterministic nature of things and it stops being something to get angry about.
You're telling me that this isn't a philosophical debate and then telling me a philosophical opinion.
Pragmatically, we make decisions. If a car is flying at you at high speed, stopping to think about determinism means you die instead of just jumping to the side and living.
your contribution here is literally null, que sera sera. Yes, the future is not ours to see, but guess what: that means it isn't set in stone.
case in point: heizenberg. measuring something by bouncing photons off it changes it's path. you can't know the future without changing it. thus we can change the future.
to apply my point - yes, it is determined that the climate will change, temperature will drop and rise. claiming that current changes are a part of this natural change is to say that it was pre-determined, and we didn't do anything to change this.
your mistake is elucidated when you consider this analogy:
'the earth is going to be consumed by the sun eventually. so we shouldn't do anything to save our environment.'
The kind of future you're talking about is going to happen whether we like it or not. but it's SO FAR away. the changes in climate that you say are pre-determined are on a geological time-scale.
we can determine it is following this path. but we want to measure it. so we do, and we change it's pre-determined path.
it still is and was always pre-determined. but it is not the same original determination.
I definitely understand determinism. Did you know there is soft and hard determinism?
I'm proving to you here that the future can be determined, but unknown. We can then seek to know it, and in doing so change it's path to another one that is just as determined.
I'm just noting the correlation. In some cases it's likely that causation goes one way (e.g. post-industrial changes), but in other cases it's not (e.g. well before there were enough men to make a mark on the Earth).
Of course, even back then there's still a post hoc, propter hoc fallacy to watch out for: the mere fact that civilisation has done better as the world has warmed — if it is even a fact — doesn't mean that warming is the cause.
It could be as simple as increased sunlight leading to both more plant growth and more heat, and more plant growth leading to more food & other resources for man's use. Which — if the case — would raise the question of how much is too much: a greenhouse in winter can be great, but an unvented greenhouse in summer can be unlivable for plants or anything else.
Global warming doesn't mean "it'll get a few degrees warmer and sea levels will rise a bit and things will settle into a new normal and we'll all have to cope by just moving inland a bit and no longer having to shovel snow in the winter".
The ecosystem is a huge, dynamic, non-linear system. A key characteristic of a non-linear system is that relatively small changes can have huge cascading effects.
When you disrupt the system by introducing an imbalance — by pumping out CO2 — the result is usually a period of chaos until the system settles on a new equilibrium. We don't know what equilibrium is exactly, because we don't know what the first step is — there'll be a cascade of effects.
For example, we know that melting ice will decrease ocean salinity, and we know that the balance of salinity is crucial in driving the global ocean conveyor belt, which in turn has an impact on local climates, storms, wind patterns, rainfall. That's ignoring the cascading effects of melting tundras unlocking enormous methane deposits that could turn Earth into another Venus.
In the short term, the effect on agriculture is probably the scariest problem, even scarier than rising sealevels forcing coastal settlements inland (mass displacement has never been a happy occurrence for the people being displaced or those who have to receive them). Society is completely dependent on food production to stay civilized. If crops fail, livestock die, too, and eventually people.
> A huge number of the world's greatest cities are on the coast since cities have a tendency to develop around ports.
Sure. That effects the cost of rising sea levels and the benefit of lowered sea levels. I'm not saying, 'let's do nothing!': I'm saying, 'let's perform a cost-benefit analysis' and 'I'm suspicious of anyone who has high confidence in his cost-benefit analysis'[1]. It's remarkable that so many folks find those to be distressing views.
[1] Particularly if his analysis supports giving him and people like him the sort of social power that great apes tend to crave like a drug. The Aztec priests had every incentive to believe that the human sacrifices they performed kept the Sun in his track — I won't say that the acted in bad faith (although their actual faith was appallingly bad: if one's religion requires ripping the hearts out of people and then engaging in cannibalism, maybe one should re-evaluate one's religious options), but they were still factually wrong.
> I mean, how much do you figure flooding New York permanently would cost?
I honestly don't know the answer; I never said or implied that I did: I just noted the questions we have to answer to make a rational — rather than an emotional — decision.
> Hurricane Sandy cost billions of dollars.
True, but an awful lot of that was repair, wasn't it? If you abandon something, you don't need to spend money fixing it first. There would certainly be huge costs in losing New York City, but there would be some benefits too. And, again, taking the measures needed to not-lose-New-York isn't free: there are costs associated with that course of action.
It truly boggles my mind that so many folks here think that, 'something must be done; this is something; this must be done!' is valid when applied to climate change, when we would all recognise it as invalid in a software-development context.
You'd have to build some replacement if you decided to abandon most of our major cities, unless your plan is just to forget about all the economic activity that happens in them.
- The September monthly average sea ice trend for the entire Arctic Ocean is now -13.3% per decade relative to the 1981-2010 average. Trends are smaller during March (-2.7% per decade), but are still decreasing at a statistically significant rate.
- I couldn't find a trend line for the average sea surface temperature. They did have a map with the changes plotted visually -- http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Portals/7/EasyDNNNews/thumbs/285/...
- The mean annual surface air temperature anomaly (+2.0° C relative to the 1981-2010 mean value) for October 2015-September 2016 for land stations north of 60° N is the highest value in the record starting in 1900 (Fig. 1.1). This is an increase of 3.5° C since the beginning of the 20th Century, and the largest annual increase since 1995. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes. http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Portals/7/EasyDNNNews/thumbs/271/...