Ask HN: Who and when started the climate change debate and based on what data?

[danielovichdk]

I am curious to what started the climate debate and what data and science laid the ground for it.

Personally I am not convinced that what media refers to as human caused climate change is causing these fluxes in the weather and extreme incidents.

So when did it start? Who started it?

[devjab]

On the odd chance that you’re not a troll, what do you make of things like this:

https://climate.nasa.gov/internal_resources/2679/CO2_graph.j...

Do you think it’s made up? But to answer your question, “we” have speculated about the CO2 emissions and their impact on the green house effect since the late 1800s. The more recent warnings about climate change come from a lot of the science from 1970 and forward, and you can read more about that here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie...

The media has generally done a fairly bad job at covering it in my opinion. I think the movie “don’t look up” is the closest thing we’ve gotten to actual media coverage of how serious a threat climate change is and it’s satire. This doesn't just relate to climate change, however, just look at things like Brexit where you had British fishermen and British expats living in Spain voting for Brexit even though every expert told them it would be catastrophic for them. Then once it became catastrophic for them, they were like "I didn't know leaving the EU would mean I wouldn't be able to sell my fish or live in Spain". We have a real information issue in the west, where our educational systems and our mass media fails to actually inform people.

What would be more interesting in my opinion is to hear what you think is causing the climate changes, if it’s not man made as the science suggests.

[defrost → devjab]

A gentle starting guide with a good pedigree would be the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures.

These are a series of lectures on a single topic each, which have been held at the Royal Institution in London each year since 1825, missing 1939–1942 because of the Second World War.

The lectures present scientific subjects to a general audience, including young people, in an informative and entertaining manner. [1]

The 2020 series addresses the global energy balance, the basis of climate (and other things).

Planet Earth: A user's guide [2]

* 1. Earth Engine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgPheUeQm3E

    Geologist Chris Jackson shows us how the planet’s oldest rocks and fossils tell a story of radical climate changes throughout history and how the Earth’s finely balanced tectonic system – volcanoes – has controlled the level of carbon dioxide in the air.

* 2. Water World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg4IzxDs_0Y

    Physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski unpicks the Earth’s heating and plumbing systems, showing how shifting ocean water creates an engine that distributes heat and nutrients around our planet.

* 3. Up in the Air https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcZyyaXpWSQ

    Environmental scientist Tara Shine demonstrates how Earth produces a never-ending supply of oxygen – the raw material for all complex life

These are the very basics of the geophysics underpinning any understanding earth and climate.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Institution_Christmas_Le...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20210423091348/https://www.rigb....

[mdp2021 → devjab]

> We have a real information issue in the west, where our educational systems and our mass media fails to actually inform people

The submitter suggests a diffidence towards «media», which is consistent with your note;

and some people that gather information from (also geographically) disparate sources see the issue as apparently global. If you know about reliable, effective, high quality news sources outside the «west» (or even the happily odd ones inside the «west») please let us know.

[h2odragon]

If you squint at it right, "Noah and the Flood" is a "climate change" story.

see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Report_from_Iron_Mountain

[mdp2021 → h2odragon]

> Noah

Tsunami are (supposedly) "weather", not "climate".

Lisbon 1755, Messina 1908, Japan here and there, the Maliakos event in -462 that broke the Peloponnesian war, studied by Tucidides, are before the recent anomalies.

If Noah and Gilgamesh referred to climate change, that should be remembrance of many thousands of years past. The habitability of Mesopotamia that allowed for Jericho, the first city, is of around -10,000 - that is, after the "Younger Dryas", i.e. the last cold anomaly after the Last Glacial Maximum 20,000 years ago. That is the end of the Ice Age. If Noah and Gilgamesh did not refer to a tsunami, but to a climate change related event, the distance in time would be staggering.

[fsflover]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28930466

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13753440

[Fricken]

Do you have any data or evidence, or any kind of reasoned argument to back up your lack of conviction, or do you seriously expect us to take your claim at face value?