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Of course, there will always be people who are less than noble in their pursuits. In academia, in NGOs, in environmental groups, in government, in private indus
by socialist_coder 10y ago
Of course, there will always be people who are less than noble in their pursuits. In academia, in NGOs, in environmental groups, in government, in private industry, everywhere.
Ask yourself though, even if all this climate change and global warming is FUD, what happens if we respond to it like it is real? Result: we have a cleaner planet (cleaner air, cleaner water, oceans that still support life) and we have a sustainable path when fossil fuels do eventually run out.
What happens if we ignore it? Result: the potential demise of the world as we know it...
Think about it from a risk vs reward perspective. It's clearly much riskier to ignore than it would be to take a hit on our economic growth and pivot hard to 100% renewable energy.
- blahi 10y agoI don't dispute there is climate change. It is pretty self-evident at this point that the climate is changing. What is not clear at all is whether humans are responsible for it.
- Flockster 10y agoSorry, but at this point this gets absurd. I can understand that for some people it is beneficial to deny the idea of climate change. But since you are already acknowledging the self-evidence of it, how is it "not clear at all", that the change is not human made?
- collyw 10y agoThe scientific consensus is that it is probably man made.
- blahi 10y agoThe scientific community could not possibly hope to have a definite answer to that. Hard liners on "man-made" climate change are sponsored through various channels just like hard-liners on no climate change at all. I am no ecologist, but I know my statistics, math and logic. From what I've read on the subject, claims that it is man-made are based on assumptions which don't hold and huge jumps in logic and conclusions. What we can safely deduce is that there is some shift in the climate with temperatures increasing. Humans probably are a contributing factor without any way of knowing how much we contributed overall. Every paper which claimed something differing from the above made HUGE jumps in their logic.
- dragonwriter 10y agoThe claims that climate change is likely mostly man made are based on a combination of well-established physics and chemistry as well as observations of how climate change correlates with the various conditions which are theorized to drive it, which gives a pretty clear idea of the direct contributions, and we have very good ideas of the root causes of those direct contributions, at least to the extent of which ones are largely the result of human activity (e.g., atmospheric CO2) and which are not (e.g., variations in solar conditions.)
- blahi 10y agoYeah, those physics and chemistry models are made by scientists who are really, really smart and are 100% correct, 100% of the time. They have lab coats and all. It's definitely possible to model the whole climate system. Amazon is making recommendations with machine learning AI and shit.
- collyw 10y agoAnd your qualification is that you read HN? I'll stick with the scientists thanks.
- dasboth 10y agoGood point. I've often wondered: apart from wanting to be right, what do climate skeptics have against e.g. transitioning to renewable energy?
- blahi 10y agoIt's very fucking expensive. And those articles frequently on the front page of HN are biased and are not telling the whole story. That's the problem. NGOs are framing the public discourse in a very one-sided way. If you raise concerns, you are a "denier" and downvoted into oblivion because people just want to believe the beautiful story of clean energy vs. greedy capitalist pigs.
- dasboth 10y agoThat's definitely true, it's rare to see a fully civilised discussion where those concerns are addressed without the accompanying rhetoric. Having said that, surely it's a fact that we'll run out of fossil fuels at some point and will need an alternate source of energy, and that will be expensive no matter when we do it, so why not start early?
- blahi 10y agoYou don't seem to grasp what I am saying at all. I am not against upgrading our energy capabilities. This whole comment chain started because of the claim that only lizard people have incentive to lie. This couldn't be further from the truth. There are snake people who lie, scream and spread FUD who just want to take the lizards' place. Their screaming leads to a lot of tension and escalation. THIS IS A PROBLEM. SOLVE IT RIGHT NOW. This is what FUD is after all. This leads to rash decisions. We don't know where and when to invest. Should we invest in more nuclear and supplement with distributed photovoltaics? Should we build giant panels? Should we focus on batteries and what kinds of batteries? Or should we focus on hydro power instead? Or maybe beam energy from space (it's a thing)? What about clean chemical reactions? And most importantly - when should we start and when should we double down on it? What are the checkpoints of R&D and production grade equipment? What should we wait on? Opportunists did what they do best - they found an opportunity to get attention and are exploiting it for their gain. This goes against the general public's gain. That's what I am against. Repeating completely unproductive rhetoric to get the tension high.