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Looking at the comments here so far, it is, as ever, the never-ending debate as to whether climate change is real or not. I look at this really straightforward

Looking at the comments here so far, it is, as ever, the never-ending debate as to whether climate change is real or not. I look at this really straightforwardly: You discover a lump on your skin. It looks like cancer. Do you go to a doctor, or do you sit at home assuming it’ll all be fine? What is so wrong with seeking to mitigate risk? Would you sooner wait until it’s metastatic, and probably going to kill you, or have a potentially pointless surgery but definitely exclude the possibility of a painful death?

roenxi 8y ago
That analogy doesn't speak to me. It brushes over a lot of complexity, infuses value judgments and trivialises important issues. 1) Global warming is not really comparable to cancer. Cancer is a healthy system getting disrupted and ending, global warming is simply a system changing. The type of change threatened by AGW is very scary and expensive, but the future is going to involve radical change anyway. Deciding what the change is likely to entail and how many resources to set aside for dealing with it is an important part of the debate. 2) It appears you are invoking a variant of Pascal's Wager. Pascal's Wager is fundamentally unsound. It ignores the fact that we make decisions in a finite world, and some risks are too small to devote attention to (because there are an effectively infinite number of trivial risks that we need trivial effort to deal with, resulting in an infinite demand for finite resources). Resources are limited, if we did believe that climate change was 'not real', then devoting anything to motigating it would be unacceptable.
- jhanschoo 8y ago
  If we should change the perspective over from a person to the immune system of a person, it should be an apt analogy. Death by cancer is a system changing from an environment hospitable to the immune system to one extremely hostile to the immune system.
hindsightbias 8y ago
In some weird universe, people who think that dumping 10 gigatons of CO2 every year into the atmosphere “is not a problem” would have to prove that. But you don’t live in that universe. The onus is on you.
masonic 8y ago
It looks like cancer That's an apt analogy. A layperson can't credibly assess what cancer "looks like" in the first place.
nonbel 8y ago
>"Looking at the comments here so far, it is, as ever, the never-ending debate as to whether climate change is real or not." I have still never seen a single person argue that "climate change is not real", definitely don't see that in this thread.
- madaxe_again 8y ago
  That seems to be precisely what you’re arguing throughout it. At the very least you’re arguing that it’s a non-issue.
  - nonbel 8y ago
    Where did I say anything close to "climate change is not real"? My very first sentence in this thread is regarding "the possible grand solar minimum", an example of a phenomenon that would (supposedly) lead to climate change.
    - madaxe_again 8y ago
      Ok. So you’re arguing the climate is cooling, not warming. You know what, I don’t believe you’re a real person - I think you’re a disinformation sock puppet. I have no evidence for this, but by your measure the onus is on you to disprove this.
      - nonbel 8y ago
        >"Ok. So you’re arguing the climate is cooling, not warming." No. Why do you think I argued that? > "You know what, I don’t believe you’re a real person" Makes sense, since you keep responding to strawmen you created...

roenxi 8y ago

That analogy doesn't speak to me. It brushes over a lot of complexity, infuses value judgments and trivialises important issues. 1) Global warming is not really comparable to cancer. Cancer is a healthy system getting disrupted and ending, global warming is simply a system changing. The type of change threatened by AGW is very scary and expensive, but the future is going to involve radical change anyway. Deciding what the change is likely to entail and how many resources to set aside for dealing with it is an important part of the debate. 2) It appears you are invoking a variant of Pascal's Wager. Pascal's Wager is fundamentally unsound. It ignores the fact that we make decisions in a finite world, and some risks are too small to devote attention to (because there are an effectively infinite number of trivial risks that we need trivial effort to deal with, resulting in an infinite demand for finite resources). Resources are limited, if we did believe that climate change was 'not real', then devoting anything to motigating it would be unacceptable.

jhanschoo 8y ago
If we should change the perspective over from a person to the immune system of a person, it should be an apt analogy. Death by cancer is a system changing from an environment hospitable to the immune system to one extremely hostile to the immune system.

hindsightbias 8y ago

In some weird universe, people who think that dumping 10 gigatons of CO2 every year into the atmosphere “is not a problem” would have to prove that. But you don’t live in that universe. The onus is on you.

masonic 8y ago

It looks like cancer That's an apt analogy. A layperson can't credibly assess what cancer "looks like" in the first place.

nonbel 8y ago

>"Looking at the comments here so far, it is, as ever, the never-ending debate as to whether climate change is real or not." I have still never seen a single person argue that "climate change is not real", definitely don't see that in this thread.

madaxe_again 8y ago
That seems to be precisely what you’re arguing throughout it. At the very least you’re arguing that it’s a non-issue.
- nonbel 8y ago
  Where did I say anything close to "climate change is not real"? My very first sentence in this thread is regarding "the possible grand solar minimum", an example of a phenomenon that would (supposedly) lead to climate change.
  - madaxe_again 8y ago
    Ok. So you’re arguing the climate is cooling, not warming. You know what, I don’t believe you’re a real person - I think you’re a disinformation sock puppet. I have no evidence for this, but by your measure the onus is on you to disprove this.
    - nonbel 8y ago
      >"Ok. So you’re arguing the climate is cooling, not warming." No. Why do you think I argued that? > "You know what, I don’t believe you’re a real person" Makes sense, since you keep responding to strawmen you created...