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Please abstain from propagating the "both sides" nonsense. One can admit to degrees of model uncertainty without insinuating that climate change is a matter of

• randyrand 8y ago
  How can you even say that? Climate science has uncertainty. There are definitely still things being debated.
  • Symmetry 8y ago
    Would you be willing to play Russian Roulette with a revolver with four bullets in the chambers just because there's uncertainty about whether the gun would go off when you pulled the trigger? Yes, there's a chance that climate change is going to no big deal. The most likely future occurrence is that things go the way the sober scientists at the IPCC give in their median prediction - a disaster but an eminently manageable disaster. The bit threat is that uncertainty goes both ways and climate change could very well end up being much worse than our median estimates. That's what keeps me up at night instead of urging more efforts go towards mitigation.
    • vladimirralev 8y ago
      Just watch the video. They talk about all of this. I don't understand why I am getting so many nasty comments especially when those points are addressed in this video. Both guys are serious scientists and respect each other while feeling completely embarrassed by the zealots. You talk about the russian roulette with climate, but the issue is far more complicated. There are bunch of other russian roulettes to consider with policy and society. What if society needs carbon to run the economy and keep the jobs and peace? What if oil-dependent countries collapse and turn to war, terrorism or mass-migration? Those are substantial risks that can kill many people and affect the quality of life for the worse globally too. You see what happened in France when they raised the fuel tax. It's not hard to imagine some worse scenarios.
      • Symmetry 8y ago
        Ok, I finally watched the video and I don't think it was worth my time at all. It was nice that they were polite to each other but really we have understood the basics of how increased C02 causes global warming for about a century. Current detailed climate models are kind of crap, Nate Silver went into why in some detail in his book on modeling, The Signal and the Noise, which I recommend but that doesn't change the anything I said in the above post - climate models are as likely to undershoot the dangers of warming as they are to overshoot them. Christy basically seemed to be arguing that there's uncertainty so he was permitted to believe what he wanted to. That's not a rational way to approach problems, especially given how he exaggerated the nature of the uncertainty.
        • vladimirralev 8y ago
          I think you need to watch it again, because your summary sounds just wrong. Both scientists agreed completely that humans caused CO2 raise and it caused warming. All the actual arguments are way way past those basic facts that are agreed upon. Did you listen when they agreed that proposed measures will not stop ocean water levels from rising? Did you listen to the cost-benefit analysis and socio-economic impact? Why are you ignoring this point? You don't think it's important? If climate models are as likely to undershoot then how do you explain that ALL the best models in consideration overshot the last 30 years and not a single model undershot? If it was just as likely shouldn't we be seeing some models undershooting?
          • Symmetry 8y ago
            No, obviously ocean waters can't be stopped from rising. The question is all about how much they're going to rise. It really annoys me when people treat global warming as an all or nothing quantitative affair. Yes, every climate model overshot air warming leading up to 2014. But they also all undershot ocean warming. That's because, for some reason nobody understands, from 1998 to 2014 all the extra thermal energy caused by CO2 forcing went into the ocean. But since 2014 air temperatures have shot up very rapily and now we're back on the trend-line predicted by models.[1] But really, you could just as easily have argued that models were undershooting because they all predicted cooler oceans than we got. And Ocean warming is the important part for determining sea levels. Christy was dishonestly cherry picking stats to make it look like errors only go in one direction when really they go in both. If all you know about the global warming debate is what was in that video I can see how you found it convincing but it's actually a very shallow treatment of the whole topic. It's really hard to get into depth in a video, that why so many of us are reluctant to watch them when someone links to one. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record#/media/File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record#/med... EDIT: And in the future, can you try summarizing things from a video like this you found persuasive rather than just telling people to watch the video? If you had mentioned the "Overshot for the last 30 years" thing it should have been immediately obvious to people who follow climate science what was happening and how you'd been mislead. Then I wouldn't have had to wade through an hour long video trying to figure out what you found persuasive in it. I'm generally reluctant to watch videos linked off of Hacker News because they usually aren't worth it and after this I think people are going to find it even harder to persuade me to do so without better evidence.
  • Comevius 8y ago
    Climate change has uncertainty, but climate change itself or that it is caused by human activities proved to be very certain. We are quite far beyond that.
  • avmich 8y ago
    Everything has uncertainty, even the reality of the world. We usually don't debate things which are "certain enough".
    • randyrand 8y ago
      Not ever detail of climate change is certain. Some details are still up to speculation. The big picture seems pretty certain tho