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> The biggest single cut proposed by the passback document comes from NOAA’s satellite division, .... Researchers there were behind a study suggesting that ther
by tsomctl 10y ago
> The biggest single cut proposed by the passback document comes from NOAA’s satellite division, .... Researchers there were behind a study suggesting that there has been no recent slowdown in the rate of climate change — research that drew the ire of Republicans in Congress.
Yes, let's shoot the messenger.
- mikeash 10y agoWhen you "know" the message is wrong but the messenger won't shut up about it, these things start to sound like a good idea.
- jon_richards 10y agoIf you spend too long trying to convince someone there's a problem, then you are the problem.
- Analemma_ 10y agoThis is one of those comments that sounds profound if you give it a cursory glance, but actually makes no sense whatsoever.
- mirimir 10y agoOh come on, sure it makes sense. It means that you failed to communicate effectively. Or that communicating to them was not an effective strategy.
- Apes 10y agoOr the person you are communicating to has a conflict of interest and has a strong incentive to feign ignorance. Usually referred to as being "corrupt" for short.
- mirimir 10y agoIn that case, "communicating to them was not an effective strategy".
- mikeash 10y ago"Their strategy is not effective" is quite different from "they are the problem." Anyway, what would you propose that they do?
- mirimir 10y agoIf B is ignoring A, for whatever reason, then A can talk to others. Or more generally, do whatever it takes to workaround B.
- jon_richards 10y agoI may have butchered the quote a little bit (not a famous quote, just something told to me once). "If you spend too long convincing someone of a problem they can't see, they start to see you as the problem" gets the meaning better. It doesn't mean to give up, it just means that you are making yourself their enemy and thus probably making it harder to get your message across (look at the studies on showing scientific evidence to anti-vaxxers).
- ajmurmann 10y agoIf I'm not mistaken than the vast majority globally is convinced of man made climate change being an issue. The holdouts primarily seem to be a subset of US Americans. There is disagreement on what a fair solution would look like but the vast majority agrees on the problem.
- daxorid 10y agoLet us be honest: no they are not convinced. If they were legitimately terrified of existential disaster >400ppm, they would be IMMEDIATELY limiting industrial production and investing MASSIVELY into carbon sequestration and renewables. The fact that ALL NATIONS take half-hearted and half-assed measures to confront what the pro-AGW crowd paints as an extinction risk demonstrably contradicts your claim that "the vast majority globally is convinced".
- mikeash 10y agoCollective action problems are not that easy to solve, no matter how dire the consequences of failure.
- the8472 10y agoDid collective action not work for solving the hitler problem?
- ajmurmann 10y agoTaking down Hitler just needed one force to take down Hitler. We didn't need to convince the majority that Hitler needs to be taken down and agree on how to do it. There also was no competitive advantage to be won by preventing this from happening. If I keep my pollution deregulated on there other hand I have a big competitive advantage over everyone who does. Very different problem.
- rohamg 10y agoNot until it was almost too late.
- jon_richards 10y agoI see this was taken quite negatively. The point isn't that you _actually are_ the problem, the point is that you need to realize that they start to _see_ you as a problem. It means you have to consider what the other person is thinking and not just think "If I just keep telling them and showing them the facts, they'll see the light and come around to my side." Studies have shown that when you show scientific evidence to anti-vaxxers, they reject it and become more entrenched in their beliefs.
- mikeash 10y agoI understood the comment as saying that if you can't get your point across after a certain amount of time, it's your own fault. Thanks for clarifying, it makes much more sense now.
- findateamfirst 10y agoWhen on Earth did anti science trolls take such a prominent role in HN? It's not hard for me to imagine a misinformation campaign run against HN, because I can't really understand how someone technical could countenance anti climate change ideas.
- Analemma_ 10y agoYou can come up with reasons to justify anything, once you're motivated by ideology. Being "more technical" sadly really only means that the justifications you come up with are more technical-sounding.
- js2 10y agomikeash was being sarcastic.
- exclusiv 10y agoIf you've done any sort of computer modeling, it's pretty easy to understand why technical people would have doubts. It's pretty easy to do it wrong and it's pretty easy to make it look right. Anyway, questioning is science and the debate is more about whether the sky is falling, whether man is primarily responsible, and if so what the next steps should be. So you can acknowledge that deforestation contributes to global warming as an example while being skeptical of the claims and modeling the environmentalists make.
- exclusiv 10y agoThis also doesn't help ease concerns with those that are skeptical of many reports and models: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/5/climate-change-whistleblower-alleges-noaa-manipula/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/5/climate-chang... > “Gradually, in the months after [the report] came out, the evidence kept mounting that Tom Karl constantly had his ‘thumb on the scale’ — in the documentation, scientific choices, and release of datasets — in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy,” Mr. Bates said Saturday on Climate Etc. > “What John Bates has done is to expose this culture based not on robust science, but on promoting an agenda,” Mr. Pielke said in a comment on Climate Etc. “Regardless of one’s views on policies, the scientific method should not be hijacked as they have done.”