So zero political solutions here? Just a list of technological aspects of a solution?
How can people not know that the problem here is getting people to do something, it is definitely not that we don't know what to do which is a minor problem in comparison.
What about a group who have starving children and will clear-cut a forest to feed them no matter what agreements are in place? How much violence is used to enforce this plan and how is it organized? How are these projects funded, where does the money come from and what is done with those who are powerful and won't cooperate?
It is hard enough to get international cooperation now, and as climate related refugee problems multiply exponentially it will not get easier. Technocrats are not saving us here.
Doesn't it seem though that politics is a deadlock, with nations playing a game of chicken that has no winner? It's a case of the tragedy of the commons. No power broker is going to sacrifice their economy or political backers enough to make a difference, as there would always be someone else with a more short term view take advantage of their temporary weakness.
It seems that there is no feasible solution other than technical, however unlikely a technical solution is.
No it wasn't. It was an attempt to start thinking about the problem. Everyone knows it is completely insufficient. I agree that we need it, even dearly, but we do need to focus on creating easier and more commercially advantageous solutions to reduce the amount of force (political or otherwise) required to implement an effective solution. Otherwise, frankly, forget it. People are going to be kicking and screaming against it and we just don't have the time for their bs. So studies like these are also insufficient, but in my opinion one of the more important aspects of moving forward with just getting this done rather than talking about it.
The Drawdown looks like it’s trying to help the policy makers on how to effectively reduce CO2. Different countries are making different decisions that work for them.
I’m not sure why someone is complaining about this book. It seems like it would quite helpful.
The Paris Agreement, for example, lets countries decide what’s best for them.
For instance, according to the site, onshore wind turbines appear to be one of the better solutions for generating electricity.
You are right, but only if you discount the more extreme solutions to those tragedy of the commons/power broker problems.
There is a historically effective solution to those problems, the one we all hate to think about, that has a high likelihood of failure, causes massive amounts of suffering and has multi-generation length unintended consequences: violence.
As I mentioned in another comment, by the time it is clear to the common person that their immediate suffering is due to climate change that could have been prevented by political means, it will have been too late. Mass uprisings typically do not overthrow governments until immediate survival is threatened.
The problem is that the economical background of our society is based on exploiting all resources and pushing the limits of the society itself (both with high reproduction rates and in mass production of goods).
If we want to change the climate situation, we first need to change the whole economic system and related political measures.
If history relied on those in power giving up their power, rather than people taking power away from them, we would be living in a very different world.
Political vs. technological is a false dichotomy. There are many other dimensions to the world. Personally, I think we need a monumental social breakthrough akin to the enlightenment to solve climate change.
But people don't rebel until some force was clearly threatening their survival. If people rebel only when their immediate survival is threatened by global warming, it will already be too late.
I have a pet theory that there is some self indulgent delusion in not recognizing the real issue in order to preemptively take the high ground for an "I told you so."
In many multiplayer games for example, I've seen many support or healer character be the most toxic. By playing the non-fun helper healer, he or she takes the high ground to blame the rest of the team, oblivious that the toxicity is destroying the real thing that matters.
I sense something similar in some developers I work with and some in this proposal as well. Which isn't to say that technical experts giving technical advice and political experts giving political advice isn't good. It's just a similarity I feel.
And are aware that they are more serious and have put more thought into their ideas. So they are much more likely to say "I told you so" because, often, they literally did.
Political arguing about CO2 and warming has been going on for 20 years or so and the atmospheric CO2 levels keep rising. If there is going to be a fix it will probably have a big tech aspect like solar + batteries becoming really cheap.
Climate refugees have a large shot at flipping the cost / benefit ratio here. If we can get someone to enthusiastically explain we need to solve this problem by paying labor in OH, PA etc to work together with scientists and businesses right now. Or else we are gonna pay relocating a bunch of people, paying for wars, and generally just wasting a ton of bad money. It’s a problem with solutions that could really unite a bunch of people who are really divided right now, and history is calling for someone to step up and seize it
All serious estimates I've seen suggest dealing with climate change is much cheaper than ignoring it (this Drawdown book agrees, and suggest 70 Trillion in benefits on a 20 Trillion investment).
I wouldn't be surprised if climate migration was included in those costs, though I guess in terms of human death and misery translated into monetary terms, rather than "ooh scary immigrants".
It's kind of weird how that has been successfully kept out of the conversation. Reminds me of all the headlines I read, even from sympathetic sources about the "high cost" of single payer healthcare, when again, serious estimates suggest it's cheaper overall.
This provides lists of actions that countries would probably want to do anyway, and provides estimates of carbon savings. When trying to meet international treaties for reducing carbon emissions the countries now have a long list of positive actions they can take to make their countries stronger, cleaner and wealthier while meeting their goals.
Nit picking on one issue: Nuclear. I'm glad they at least listed it as a solution but I feel that there's way too much agenda in here that isn't based on the science.
It has potential to avoid emissions, but there are many reasons for concern: deadly meltdowns, tritium releases, abandoned uranium mines, mine-tailings pollution, radioactive waste, illicit plutonium trafficking, and thefts of missile material, among them. [1]
Nevermind:
* that >60% of the carbon-free electricity in the USA comes from nukes right now,
* that by displacing air pollution, nukes worldwide have saved 1.8 million lives and prevented 65 billion tonnes CO2-eq [2]
* that nobody died or is expected to die from radiation at Fukushima
* that uranium enrichment is by far the easiest way to illicitly traffic weapons materials (which can happen without any nuclear power)
* that Hanford was a cold-war nuclear weapons facility that did not prioritize waste storage, and that it was totally unrelated to commercial power generation
The capabilities of nuclear energy to thwart climate change are real and gigantic. Getting costs down would help, and the Koreans have been doing an amazing job at that. The French electrified their whole country with nukes in 10 years by standardizing designs and that's been wildly successful. This solution should have said something like: "If we can standardize a safe Gen III+ reactor and get costs down, nuclear can and will grow as our climate champion."
Coal, gas, etc increased global warming - but we are talking about timescales of <100 years (sometimes <50) to reverse those changes with appropriate action. Nuclear is not like that, it takes thousands of years (plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24000 years) to undo or cleanup anything related to nuclear. When we started with coal/oil/gas/etc - we didn't know at that time about these side effects. Now the same could be said about nuclear as well. If radioactive material 10 times the size of chernobyl fallout [1] was released, would that mean the perpetual end of earth, possibly leading to a worse than climate-change kind of scenario? That's why countries like Germany have started shutting down nuclear power plants. Its like favoring a known evil rather than an unknown devil.
Note: I'm neither a proponent or opponent of nuclear energy.
I think you're right that that's what people are concerned about. I'd mention that we have 17,000 reactor-years of commercial experience over the past 7 decades in nuclear. We understand the risks fairly well, though admittedly we are still learning. It is clear that nuclear reactors net save millions of lives over fossil-fuel alternatives. 10x Chernobyl fallout would be very bad but it would be nowhere near the global warming predictions we're seeing. Additionally, Chernobyl was a bad design without a containment running a risky experiment with safety systems turned off. The 4 reactors at Fukushima got hit with a huge earthquake and tsunami and no one died from their failure, and we know from models that no one will die from the radiation that was released. It's exceedingly unlikely that modern reactors would go Chernobyl, much less 10x Chernobyl.
Germany has turned away from clean-air nuclear energy and replaced it with brown coal and more clean-air renewables but that's costing them a lot [1]. That's expensive fear, and only feasible for the richest of nations.
Side note: Long half-life doesn't necessarily correlate with problems after an accident. It's actually the short half-life stuff that is biologically concentrated (Sr-90, I-131, Cs-137) that can cause the biggest issues. For instance, Uranium-238 has a 4.5 billion year half-life and it's not a radiological hazard (this just means the energy comes out really slowly).
"there's way too much agenda in here that isn't based on the science"
1) The concerns they list are the actual concerns of significant segments of the population. Such as e.g. an overwhelming majority of the German electorate.
2) I personally think that some of those concerns are overweighted. You apparently do as well.
3) Failing to weigh those concerns the way you and I do does not constitute "having an agenda not based on the science", key word "the".
4) They are evenly applying "the" science of GHG reduction to all solutions. It's not their job to follow a specific agenda on the debated science of side topics such as those you single out.
Nuclear power activates identity framing for a lot of people. For some it is anti-, but for others it is pro-. The anti-nuclear people typically own the identity issue. The pro-nuclear people sometimes do, but sometimes want to claim a "these are the scientific facts with which it is irrational to agree" kind of super-identity.
Good points. I guess "bias" is more of the word that I was looking for than "agenda". My concern is that they're parroting unproductive fears about nuclear energy that society has gone critical with without pointing out some key facts that are pivotal to fighting climate change, such as that nuclear reactors are gigawatt-scale, 24/7 reliable, carbon-free electricity generators that demonstrably have killed fewer people per kWh than almost anything else out there.
But you're right that they're parroting what many people would parrot because that's how social memes work. I guess it's on me to expose more people to reasoning that convinces them that atomic energy is a good path in our fight against climate change.
I notice a contradiction in two of your points that happened to fall together:
Apparently nuclear displacing other generation saves many lives, yet Fukushima, which shut down Japan's Nuclear didn't cost any lives. It seems like your trying to have it both ways.
Aha! Excellent observation! However, I said that no one died or will die from radiation released at Fukushima, which I stand by. But people did die during the mandated evacuation (many people ironically evacuated to places with naturally higher radiation than they would have gotten had they stayed), and yes, people will die from increased air pollution that results from shutting down the nukes.
So people died because they were afraid of radiation, not because of the radiation itself [1]. This is why I feel we need to push back against fear-driven outcry against nuclear and try to keep it based on things we can measure.
To be fair, during Fukushima the policymakers didn't know how dangerous the radiation was going to be so calling the evacuation was tough. So building reactors with proper safety systems for their environment is also a total necessity moving forward. The high-water line in the area was known to be closer to 20m than the 10m seawall that they had built there.
Let's assume that for a moment all their numbers are correct (it's a huge assumption) and let's also assume that they will all be achieved (cough).
Their numbers add up to approximately 100% of 2017 annual fossil fuel emissions.
That means that all of the excess CO2 currently in the atmosphere is beyond the reach of the combined 80 solutions they propose. Greenhouse gas production rates continue to increase (Earth has plenty of semi-natural processes of its own that are only starting to be triggered). You can't double-count these 80 solutions, so they're inadequate to even stop the growth.
"drawdown" seems a misnomer. There's no reversal here, only a slowdown.
This is the most challenging engineering problem ever to confront mankind, and we haven't risen as a species to meet it.
Now, time to get back to the latest ICO, because some things are important.
"Let's assume that for a moment all their numbers are correct (it's a huge assumption)"
The entire framing of their approach is to only consider peer-reviewed literature -- holding themselves to the highest standard we have, the one most free of "assumption." It is rhetorically deceptive to open by characterizing them as making assumptions.
Only if you discount the evidence that we are almost always optimistic about these things at this stage of the research.
Anyone good at doing high level policy accounts for the fact that you always need a lot of margin for optimistic error when combining multiple solutions.
I think the most interesting way to sort this data is not by "total atmospheric reduction" but rather by "savings". I.e., where do the economic and ecological incentives align?
EVs and Wind & Solar are unsurprising gold/silver/bronze winners.
District Heating is an interesting idea I had never thought of. And it synthesizes well with other top winners outside of the energy production space, most of which boil down to "improved density and less moving around".
IMO these are all big wins from a lifestyle perspective as well, all other things equal (of course, not all other things are equal in most places -- schooling, safety, etc.)
Educating girls in poor countries, I'll posit, offers the only hope for a future without recurring mass violence. The empirical evidence is that where girls are educated, they acquire power to control their own fertility, and also the will to do so, that being the best means to concentrate limited household resources toward quality education for their own children.
And this voluntary, culturally-based impetus toward population control is the only plausible moderator of the runaway consumption of critical resources that now threatens mass suffering on a civilizational scale. CO2 uptake capacity of the biosphere being of course only one critical, supply-constrained resource among several, e.g. fresh water, fertile land, fisheries.
I think trying to argue specifically about climate change in the US at least - is dead - politics as such prevent the scope of change needed - that said - we as a planet should work more on sustainability - there are technological and cultural solutions that can be put in place, (mostly by private industry) to make the way we consume our planets limited natural resources more sustainable.
Carbon as far as I'm concerned has turned into a straw man preventing us on working on the larger (and more complex) problem of sustainability.
I think another thing to consider for a moment is, if we want a "western" standard of living for all people living on this planet, we either need less people, or we need to figure out how to use the limited resources we have a lot more efficiently.
Humans in the end will adapt to a warmer planet - the range of habitable places however may change - this says nothing to the other animals living here - they're not so lucky.
It only covers two types of solutions, reducing carbon emissions and carbon sequestration. What about more extreme or dangerous solutions such as weather manipulation and reflecting solar energy through materials in orbit?
They chose to be intellectually conservative in their first round of work. They are attempting to find peer-reviewed, quantified estimates for as many approaches as they can manage.
My personal thought is to make a geoengineering company to perform carbon sequestration. At first you would figure out how to grow large amounts of switchgrass and or algae using some type of automated planting either in deserts or in the ocean. Then start breeding or make GMO plants that would more efficiently sequester carbon. Also, try to make other systems that would lower temperature like a space based shade or changing the albedo of the ground or atmosphere .
We humans are really inventive in ways of making money. Bringing more unhospitable lands back to sanity? Allowing for more consumption without the need to curb lifestyles? A lot of money can be made from here.
Sorry, this is all flawed. Just an agenda of constraining ourselves and limiting human influence. Won't work. We humans are inherently driven to expand and use more and more energy for our needs. This is a given. Any solutions trying to ignore this are doomed.
What we need is technological solutions to _reverse_ global warming effects. Like iron fertilization of oceans.
Howdy! I work in cleantech, and I guess it's that time again for a what-can-you-do-about-it post :)
To start, here's my favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!"
==So what can you do about it?==
The biggest thing this article doesn't say that is most relevant to the HN audience is that you can work at a new energy technology company! Our industries are out of the R&D stage and are currently focused on scale and growth[1], and we need as many smart people as we can get. There are lots of companies hiring software engineers (including mine).
==How do I find a job fighting climate change?==
I'd recommend browsing the exhibitor and speaker lists from the most recent conference in each sector (linked below). Check out the companies that interest you and see if they are hiring.
* Energy Storage[2][3]
* Solar[4][5]
* Wind[6]
* Nuclear[7]
* Electric Utilities[8][9]
* Electric vehicles[10]
Also, if you're in the SF bay area, I'd recommend subscribing to my Bay Area Energy Events Calendar[11]. Just start showing up to events and you'll probably find a job really quickly.
I have a background in electrical/computer engineering, but much of that has faded from memory. For the past 15 years I've been a software developer, starting out in the embedded space, and today working on cloud telecom. I feel like I don't have the background or domain knowledge required to break into a career in clean energy, though it's a space that interests me a lot (both intellectually, and because of survival-of-the-species reasons). Do you have any suggestions how I might break into this field, beyond attending the events you listed (or is that enough?)? Is there a need for my skills more or less as-is, or am I looking at a steep learning curve and more "entry-level" positions until I can train up?
I stopped at "telepresence". This is silly, and as published as a pay for book, I suspect it will actually cost the environment more from it's printing and shipping than the influence it will have to make a change.
This comment constitutes gaslighting. The primary expression of climate change science, the IPCC, has been based on models which incorporate cloud cover and oceans for decades. Here is the first sentence of their landing page on models:
"Numerical models (General Circulation Models or GCMs), representing physical processes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and land surface, are the most advanced tools currently available for simulating the response of the global climate system to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations (criterion 1 -- see list here)."
We banned this account for only posting troll comments. There's nothing wrong with contrary opinions posted in a civil and substantive way on Hacker News, but that's not what this is.
Let's see, water vapor, CO2, and methane are greenhouse gasses which means that they absorb Planck black body infrared radiation from the surface of the earth.
Since we can't see those gasses, they don't absorb visible light.
There is CO2 from volcanoes. Since 70+ percent of the surface of the earth is covered by water, first-cut, ballpark 70+ percent of the volcanoes and CO2 from the volcanoes are under water, commonly 3-7 miles down. We know that ocean volcanoes are important because they are responsible for a major fraction of all the smaller islands in the oceans.
We know that there is a lot of CO2 dissolved in the oceans and that cooler water absorbs more CO2 and warmer water, less. So, first-cut, we have to suspect that warming of the surface of the oceans, from any source at all, will release CO2 into the atmosphere and cooling of the surface of the oceans will absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.
We know from the ice core samples going
back 800,000 years or so that about 800 years after the start of some significant warming, atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased.
We know that for about the last 20 years, we have been able to measure some significant increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations but saw nearly no measurable increase in global average atmospheric temperatures. So, this time, really, higher CO2 didn't cause higher temperatures.
Clearly first-cut, if higher CO2 concentrations increase temperature, then lower CO2 concentrations will reduce temperature.
From the ice core and other historical data, both temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentrations have varied significantly. But (1) in this whole record, not once was significant cooling closely preceded by significantly lower atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and (2) only once, since the coolest part of the Little Ice Age, have significantly higher temperatures been closely preceded by significantly higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Indeed, in recent years, from 1940 to 1970 CO2 concentrations, from human activities, volcanoes, ocean out gassing, or whatever increased significantly but global average atmospheric temperatures actually fell enough to be measured. So, there higher CO2 led to lower temperature, not higher.
Conclusion: The idea that changes in CO2 concentrations have been a major cause of changes in temperature are refuted. Instead, there must be other causes that in the historical record have been much, much more important, that is, caused many more temperature changes, than CO2.
For more, no one is claiming that the cooling of the LIttle Ice Age was caused by lower CO2 concentrations -- the cause of the Little Ice Age was not lower CO2. Then, sure, first-cut, the cause of coming out of the Little Ice Age, which really is the recent warming, should have been from a reversal of the cause of going into that period and, thus, not CO2, from humans or anything else.
For more, the Medieval Warm period was warmer than now without relatively high CO2 concentrations. So, current temperatures are not unique, and the last time the cause was not CO2 -- so, we have to wonder if this time current temperatures are due to CO2.
If concerned about global average atmospheric temperature, looking at CO2 is "digging in the wrong place" and is very much "the wrong stuff".
From the historical record, it's fully clear that CO2 has little or no effect on temperature.
For more, many efforts were made to model CO2 in the atmosphere and the resulting effects on global average atmospheric temperature. The models made temperature predictions for future years. Many of those models and predictions are summarized in a graph at
By now we can compare the model predictions with actual temperatures.
Results: From nearly all the models, the temperatures predicted were way too high.
Conclusion: Nearly all the models failed to correspond to reality.
In science, we try to make predictions. When the predictions from some candidate science are badly wrong, then we junk the candidate science. So, we have to junk the techniques of the models.
Consequences: We are left with no meaningful way to predict the effects of CO2 on temperature.
As above, we already know that CO2 has from at most a minor role down to no significant role at all in global atmospheric average temperature and that other causes dominate.
In particular we have no meaningful science that says that CO2 from human activity has significantly warmed the atmosphere or will in the foreseeable future.
To have the world spend trillions of dollars on reductions in CO2 from human activities would cause massive destruction of our economies and is not justified.
For more, to consider CO2 seriously, we would have to consider volcanoes including in the oceans and CO2 in and from the oceans, and so far we have no good way to do that.
There is a theory for the cause of temperature changes that actually closely fits the historical record of temperature change. That cause is the level of sun spot activity. More sun spots cause warming. How? Clouds have a net cooling effect. A significant fraction of clouds are caused by water droplets caused by cosmic rays. More sun spots cause more solar wind which blocks cosmic rays, slows cloud formation, and causes warming.
Sorry, it would be nice to have solid science for the climate, science that would let us predict the climate accurately and, in particular, the effects on climate from various levels of CO2 from human activities. So far, first-cut, the evidence is that CO2 from human activities is having no significant effect on climate at all.
Really, it appears that to predict global average atmospheric temperatures, we should focus on predicting sun spots.
To explain the high interest in global warming, f'get about science and, instead, do something much simpler that makes much more sense, just follow the money.
The Mayans killed people to pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky. Lowering human sources of CO2 to slow global warming is no better founded.
I have a suggestion: Suit up Saint Laureate Al Guru and send him to the sun to do a close up, hands on, field study of sun spots. Then we will take up the subject of global warming when he returns.
Thanks for the thorough explanation. Do you have sources? I want to read papers, I don't want to read your unsourced statements. Can you post links to any peer-reviewed papers supporting your claims? Or, if there is a big conspiracy not to publish such research, at least pre-prints written by actual researchers where publishing was refused? (and which really analyses data, and which doesn't read like anti-vaxx or flat-earth rants)
Following the money works both ways, you can find climate sceptics funded by the oil industry (Heartland institute for instance). So yes I do want to follow the science.
The reasoning in my post is nearly self contained.
For more, mostly all you need are just two boxes of common data:
First, you need the historical data, especially the ice core data. No doubt you can find that data via many sources on the Internet. See also the video clip I mention below. For the rest of the data, just look up the Medieval Warm period, the Little Ice Age, and the cooling from 1940 to 1970. That's enough for what I wrote from the data and its analysis.
Second, you need the results of the models, and I gave a reference that showed the predictions and compared them with the actual measured temperatures. You are welcome to chase down the detailed predictions of the models, one model at a time for some dozens of models. I confess, I didn't do that chasing down.
For the explanation in terms of sun spots, that the sun spot data fits the temperature data and the explanation in terms of cosmic rays, see the video
As I recall, that video also explains the 800 year lag in the ice core data and the Medieval Warm period.
If you want to argue with the video, fine with me. My main objective is to debunk the claim that CO2 is a threat, and I did that without mentioning the video.
The video argues the sun spot explanation, and so far it appears to be the best, e.g., at least it appears to the only at all reasonable explanation that even begins to fit the darned data, but otherwise is tough to check -- e.g., how cosmic rays create water droplets that result in clouds to have a significant cooling effect.
So, if you don't like the sun spot explanation, then fine: The CO2 argument is still solidly debunked and refuted just by my little post.
Oil company money? My interest in this subject is only as a responsible citizen. I'm being paid by no one for this interest. And I seek and expect no payment, fame, or anything else but just to contribute as a citizen. Here I'm taking time from my startup to be a good public citizen.
The idea that CO2 is a threat of significant global warming stands on nothing solid and is easy to debunk and refute, and I did that quite solidly and thoroughly just in my post. All that is needed to pull down the claims is JUST my little post. The argument, the subject, really is just that simple. No peer-reviewed papers are needed to say that jumping off a tall building is dangerous or that the claims of a threat of CO2 are nonsense.
The claims that CO2 is a threat are a flim-flam, fraud, scam driven by money -- the video clip explains a lot about that.
Really, as I wrote, it's better just to follow the money.
"The argument, the subject, really is just that simple."
I almost lack words at this point. I hope you never come in a decision where you need to judge a scientific inquiry in a way that has consequences for others. At least not about anything more complex than, indeed, whether it is dangerous to jump off a tall building.
At the point where you have to declare that the others are just idiots you KNOW that you have taken a wrong turn somewhere. At the very least, you need to spend some time looking into the counter-arguments.
No, I certainly should not just find the ice core data on the internet. To do anything useful with that data I would need to understand how it was gathered, the physical processes that lead to the gases being absorbed, whether gases move within the ice after freezing, what the uncertainty in mapping centimeters to years, and a thousand questions like that which I can't even know that I should ask. At the very minimum, I should look through the data through a statistical model including uncertainties.
Since I don't have a year to study the science of ice core data fulltime, I need to rely on papers written up and conclusions made by those who know the data better. Ideally both papers written by climate change supporters and sceptics. Ideally peer-reviewed, but if there's a conspiracy going on I can always read rejected papers...
But just downloading and looking and drawing consequences from that myself -- or worse, look at some simplified plot made by some conspiracy theorist and draw conclusions from that -- if I do that I might as well make myself a nice tin-foil-hat and become a member of flat earth society.
I've almost completed a PhD in astrophysics right now, and I know that if someone were to just download the images taken of the cosmic microwave background and conclude anything at all from them, without knowing the full details of the assumed physical models, instrumental effects, and the data analysis pipeline, the results would be ludicrous. That doesn't mean our results are ludicrous though, because we've spent years understanding the data.
All data needs to be deeply understood before drawing any conclusions. I certainly don't understand ice core data, and since you're not giving me any papers I bet you don't understand ice core data either. You are simply repeating arguments made by others who, hopefully do -- hence I asked for references. Your assurances and explanations here are worthless; that doesn't mean one shouldn't discuss science in social media, but when one does, it can only be as summaries of what people who do know the data well are saying (but if you got it from the documentary I guess I can pick up the trail from there).
Scientists screw it up all the time. That I can support. But the issue just being "too simple" for scientists to understand, and everyone just being stupid, and the matter really being very simple -- then I know you have taken a wrong turn somewhere. If you end up being right in the end, and global warming is wrong, then it is not because you are brilliant, it is because you lucked out in seeing the right documentary first.
Your skepticism about the ice core data is correct. But, it was the ice core data that was nearly all the data in Al Gore's movie that did a lot to get the global warming scare going. So, in a sense, just take that data, see the 800 year lag, and declare Gore's argument junk.
I don't say that the alarmists are idiots -- I'd say that they are after money. Apparently Al Gore made a lot. So did Elon Musk (supposedly ballpark $5 billion in subsidies). And many others. The movie I linked to has one of the most credible guys, Lindzen, explaining how the money works. Al Gore started the money flow, and Maggie Thatcher had a role, too.
I'm not going to check the ice core data for the points you mentioned. Presumably some people have done that. So, then, sure, maybe the original papers from the Russians at their Vostok station, etc. would be a place to look.
If you do go look and do then take the ice core data at face value, and the 800 year lag, then return to my argument in my little post and drive a stake through the heart of the global warming alarmists.
It's not about science. Instead it's about money and power. Without the issues of money and power, there would be no IPCC, Paris Accord, Kyoto whatever, subsidies for "renewable" energy, much of anything about solar cells, wind turbines, or carbon sequestration, and the whole subject would have less attention than worms 7 miles down in the Pacific.
Since the real issues are money and power, no way am I going to check in detail the ice core data for questions at the level of detail you mentioned. The alarmists, seeking money and power, have suckered a lot of people, and for me to spend time checking all the details of the ice core data would be my getting suckered because it's about money and power, not science. In particular, the contention you see is due to money and power, not doubts about the data. That's all just part of the real world outside of good science.
Wow, I am sorry but this is the perfect example of discursive pre-modern era way of analysing nature. Frankly the only excuse is if you're a time traveller just landed from the 1780's.
Nowadays we do computer models, is yours on github?
I will reuse your post it's just perfect.
If you want to learn: https://youtu.be/7IbyiOoVgnQ
First, you found nothing factually wrong with what I wrote. Your "pre-modern" maybe be relevant in, say, English literature but says nothing wrong with what I wrote. Besides, the 1780s knew next to nothing about the ice core data.
Second, for your video clip, it references a paper from the 1800s that claims to predict the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere on the temperature of the atmosphere and mentions that that prediction agrees with what we get from our climate models. Okay: But as I pointed out and gave a reference, the climate models predicted temperatures that now we can compare with actual tempertures and see that nearly all the predictions were way too high. I wrote this; I did that. It's silly to have to write it again simply because you didn't read it the first time.
The talk goes on, mentions greenhouse gasses, and then concludes that the greenhouses gasses are warming the atmosphere. He concludes "simple". I thoroughly debunked that claim.
Again, once again, over again, yet again, one more time, this time just for you, maybe you will actually read it this time, (1) the ice core and other historical records show NO, zip, zero, zilch, times that significant cooling was closely preceded by significantly lower CO2. So, the cooling had another cause. And the records show at most only one time when significant warming was closely preceded by significantly higher CO2, and that was as we were pulling out of the Little Ice Age.
For (2), as I showed with the modeling predictions compared with actual temperatures, the modeling failed massively.
So, net, from this data, we have to reject the claim that CO2 has a significant effect on temperature and, instead, conclude that so far it appears that CO2 has no significant effect on atmospheric temperature. That's what the ice core and other historical data says, and the failed models don't change that.
Here's one more: In your video clip, he shows ice core data for the last 400,000 years. There can see temperature and CO2 going up and down roughly together. But, as has been observed and explained many times, the CO2 went up about 800 years AFTER the temperature went up, and, as I mentioned, not even once was significantly higher temperature closely preceded by significantly higher CO2. So, no way can we conclude from that data that higher CO2 caused higher temperatures. Instead, from that data, higher temperatures caused higher CO2 800 years later. Moreover, as I mentioned, not once in that data were lower temperatures closely preceded by significantly lower CO2. So, lower CO2 didn't cause the cooling. Indeed, the higher CO2 from the warming didn't stop the cooling!
From that data, we have to conclude that CO2 has essentially no significant effect on temperature at all and that the temperature changes have causes other than CO2..
The video has the guy looking right at the data that contradicts his claims, and he still makes his claims. Maybe he is an idiot, is getting paid, is in some quasi-religious quest, or some such. But his lecture content is junk.
His video clip is long, but already we know that he has made some debilitating mistakes.
Your video clip should get you to read, pay attention to, understand, and accept what I wrote.
I think the reference to "pre-modern" is referring to your (over-)confidence in having realized something very simple, simple enough that a 10 paragraph post on HackerNews can possibly put things straight, and then the arrogance in assuming that hundreds if not thousands of climate researchers are, consciously or unconsciously, overlooking these very simple things.
If a question of research can indeed be settled in a 10 paragraph post on HackerNews, then that question is, in a sense, pre-modern, out of its simplicity alone.
In the modern world: For each of your paragraphs, I can be almost sure to find a long trail of researchers having carefully evaluated it. The story is never as simple as you make it out to be. If anything, your over-confidence sets off my anti-vaxxer flat-earther alarm. But show me sources and I'll read them (then for each of those I can go and find the 10 papers proving those wrong, then the 10 papers proving those papers wrong again; and so on...). In the modern world, the story is never as simple as you make it out to be.
PS: Your concrete arguments is the least interesting part of what you write. The interesting part is that you think something is simple enough that you should be able to convince us about it in a HackerNews post, yet IPCC is either consciously or subsconsciously overlooking it. You must be aware that this is basically a conspiracy theory (that doesn't make it false of course, it is possible for a conspiracy theory to be correct).
I bring you the Wikipedia page for Heartland institute to show how oil is funding the sceptics; also it is deeply human to want to believe there is no disaster coming. Do you on your side have anything concrete for why so many climate researchers today are sacrificing their integrity?
New cross-polar shipping routes are being explored for the first time in our history, drastically shortening the distance which boats travel between China and Europe.
Can you agree that air which is less polluted is a good thing? Or that rich soil which has a variety plant growth is better than a lifeless desert? Or that clean water is better than polluted water? And so on. Much of this boils down to "stop polluting the environment we live in". Focus on means of reducing pollution and the labels (global warming or not) will take care of themselves.
So, your line of reasoning doesn't really work: if CO2 weren't a threat we would make entirely different pollutant trade-offs then the case where CO2 threatens to end life as we know it.
I admit that my reasoning is overly simplistic but, for those who struggle with whether or not global warming is scientifically sound, focusing on the basics will often result in them arriving at similar conclusions as to how to act (eg: using energy from the sun when possible is better than using energy from coal), and that's a good thing rather than arguing over any particular label.
How can people not know that the problem here is getting people to do something, it is definitely not that we don't know what to do which is a minor problem in comparison.
What about a group who have starving children and will clear-cut a forest to feed them no matter what agreements are in place? How much violence is used to enforce this plan and how is it organized? How are these projects funded, where does the money come from and what is done with those who are powerful and won't cooperate?
It is hard enough to get international cooperation now, and as climate related refugee problems multiply exponentially it will not get easier. Technocrats are not saving us here.