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This is great and all, but what can we do about the people that don't believe this data? That's where the real issue is. I have a bunch of coworkers that think

This is great and all, but what can we do about the people that don't believe this data? That's where the real issue is. I have a bunch of coworkers that think scientists are making up this data and skewing results because their jobs depend on it and they want to continue to get funding. "Follow the money" is a common thing they say in regards to this, but also conveniently disregarded and deny that big oil/coal have more to lose. It's very difficult to fight ignorance, especially when they don't believe facts. This is the main issue with climate change deniers, not the inability to visualize the data.

adventskalender 7y ago
It is clearly made up data, as for example they predict the outcome of policies like carbon costs. Afaik even economists don't agree on the results of such policies. They are just making an assumption and the whole app is merely advertising for their preferred type of policy.
- mattnewton 7y ago
  I think you are being mistaken for saying the climate data they are using is made up, but your point is more subtle- they don’t show their work to tell you what the biofuel subsidies, for example, will do to CO2 levels.
  - adventskalender 7y ago
    I don't know about their climate data, I just think their claims of the impact of carbon costs are pure speculation. If they had a calculator for determining temperature increase depending on carbon output, it would be more credible. They are piping two complex system into each other - economic and climate. At least economics are not understood well enough to really make such predictions. And if the output of the economic model is unreliable, so is the result of the climate model.
- Brakenshire 7y ago
  You’re right, the climate data is likely to be solid but the economic modelling dubious.
linuxftw 7y ago
I'm firmly in the camp that CO2 has little to nothing to do with the temperature of the planet. Fact 1: The earth has been warming since the last ice age. Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently Fact 3: Water vapor accounts for almost all of the greenhouse effect. A planet that was already warming is going to continue to warm unless the energy input is changed. Speculative: Some people believe the data has been manipulated intentionally to show a larger increase in temperature than what is actually taking place. This was 'climate gate'. Finally, CO2 is the least of our worries. The real problem is toxic chemical pollution. Industrialized society is polluting our water and our food with toxic chemicals, slowly killing us all.
- ocschwar 7y ago
  > Fact 1: The earth has been warming since the last ice age. The Milankovitch cycles have crested since that warming. Without the CO2 we would be cooling. > Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently Citation needed. Furthermore, if you can explain how an increase in the solar output woudl warm the arctic more than the tropics, there's a Nobel waiting for you. > Fact 3: Water vapor accounts for almost all of the greenhouse effect. Water vapor has a habit of coming down as rain. > Speculative: Some people believe the data has been manipulated I challenge you to find a single temperature reading, longitude, lattitude, altitude and timestamp, and tell me when it was manipulated.
  - EdSharkey 7y ago
    > > Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently > Citation needed. Maybe they meant 'recently' as in geologic time and not "since 2000"? I think it's interesting that solar energy and magnetic fields and cosmic energy fluctuates from year to year. I think these primary inputs to the system not staying constant would make it impossible to model climate such that the model could be an accurate predictive tool. This particular tool seems rigged to show a certain outcome, and I feel bad for folks here who are frustrated by its +1C floor on temperature rise by the end of the simulation. That (crude) part of the design was probably meant to frustrate and/or panic people into taking action. I'm happy to see such obvious rigging of the game on display here and that folks are thinking about that.
PavlovsCat 7y ago
> what can we do about the people that don't believe this data? Organize the people who do believe it to exert pressure.
bogwog 7y ago
I'm inclined to believe this data because I trust MIT and believe that climate change is a very serious problem. But this app alone doesn't do a good job of convincing anyone of anything. For starters, it's just a bunch of graphs. I doubt most people who deny climate change are going to understand what they're looking at. But most importantly, there's no straightforward way for anyone to verify this data on their own, and it seems like this app is kind of bullshitting the numbers. For example, how could they possibly know that "highly subsidized" bioenergy will result in exactly 0.1F increase in global temperatures 80 years from now? > I have a bunch of coworkers that think scientists are making up this data and skewing results Can't you see their reasoning after using this app? I'm not saying this app is useless or full of lies. Not at all. But I think it can only really work as part of an education session or presentation, where someone can actually explain the reasoning behind that graph, where the data comes from, how they arrived at the conclusions, etc, instead of just throwing it on the internet and hoping it reaches republican farmers on Facebook.
- Retric 7y ago
  It’s interesting how you described that as exactly 0.1F. I have a very different way of looking at data. When I see a single significant digit I assume minimal precision. So, 0.1 is something like 95% chance of 0.1 +\- 0.05 would be optimistic, and 0.01 to 1 is pessimistic. I suspect this is a common issue with both scientific and technological reporting for a general audience.
  - bogwog 7y ago
    Increasing precision here doesn't increase confidence in these estimates. The phrase "highly subsidized" says basically nothing, yet it's enough to estimate global temperatures 80 years from now with a margin of error of 0.05?
    - zamfi 7y ago
      Click the three vertical dots to see what "highly subsidized" means -- it's a specific level of subsidy, which you can actually modify in greater detail in the "detail" view. I absolutely agree that this thing needs a margin of error on the visual output!
mistermann 7y ago
Some thoughts for your consideration, delivered with collaborative intent: > I have a bunch of coworkers that think scientists are making up this data and skewing results because their jobs depend on it and they want to continue to get funding. FWIW, I also happen to harbor this suspicion. How might one actually know whether there is an element of truth to it? > "Follow the money" is a common thing they say in regards to this, but also conveniently disregarded and deny that big oil/coal have more to lose. Whether big oil/coal have more to lose seems orthogonal to the question of whether bias is involved in climate science. If so, this sort of approach to debate seems counter-productive to me. > It's very difficult to fight ignorance, especially when they don't believe facts. I will confess, referring to climate models that are literally estimated projections of future temperatures as "facts", very much rubs me the wrong way. It doesn't put me in a very cooperative mood. To me, whether this reaction is "illogical" or not seems irrelevant, whereas the reaction itself seems extremely relevant, and completely overlooked in the analysis of the situation. I wonder, am I the only one that has this sort of reaction? Have we seen similar behavior in similar scenarios? > This is the main issue with climate change deniers, not the inability to visualize the data. I proclaim that you are speculating about what "the main issue" is with climate change deniers. You think you know (your perception of this appears clear as day), and you may even be right (by chance), but you do not know. I have a feeling that guessing wrong on such things might be far more impactful than we realize.
- multiplegeorges 7y ago
  It seems you misunderstand what scientists are saying and forming an incorrect opinion from that. > I will confess, referring to climate models that are literally estimated projections of future temperatures as "facts", very much rubs me the wrong way. The projections are statistical models. They have a range of values and probabilities associated with them. Without major change, the probabilities of catastrophic climate change are very, very high. Are they certain? Not mathematically, no. Would I take that bet? Any day of the week and you should too.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    > It seems you misunderstand what scientists are saying and forming an incorrect opinion from that. I feel highly confident that I don't actually misunderstand what scientists are saying, but rather you have misunderstood (misinterpreted due to heuristic modification during interpretation) what I have said. Would you be willing to quote particular statements I've made that you consider to be mistaken? > The projections are statistical models. They have a range of values and probabilities associated with them. Without major change, the probabilities of catastrophic climate change are very, very high. I agree. > Are they certain? Not mathematically, no. I agree. It is that they are commonly presented as if they are certain that I am complaining about. It is clearly incorrect/dishonest. It is claimed to be "science". Actual science does not say things it knows to not be true, but people that believe they are discussing matters purely on "the science" are regularly guilty of this. But try and get people (who well know this is true) to acknowledge this simple fact, and observe the amazing complexity of human psychology in its natural form. > Would I take that bet? Any day of the week and you should too. I do. And I suggest you consider being more open minded about what might be preventing us from making progress on this issue. Specifically: resist the natural urge to classify a lack of total agreement as opposition to your cause. Perhaps what appears to be opposition is anything but, and is actually new ideas that you've never considered before.
metalgearsolid 7y ago
The problem is propaganda. Climate change is the victim. Even staples of modern life, like vaccines, can be sullied by the private interests of the ultra wealthy/politically affluent.
- dmix 7y ago
  I don’t even think that’s the primary problem. I think the average person doesn’t give a shit about stuff like this, at least not to the point where they have to make personal sacrifices. It’s very very easy to live your daily life and not see any real world consequences outside of some sometimes shrill activists who aren’t the most persuasive people to the average lowest common denominator people. For one thing these sorts of people won’t be hanging out on an MIT website called EN-ROADS. Indifference is the biggest enemy, not some big orchestrated conspiracy (although there is some of that too, but that doesn’t explain why even most liberals aren’t doing anything about it).
  - plutonorm 7y ago
    They don't give a shit because the news they read, the entertainment they watch all tell them not to. The narrative has been set by private interests for decades - perhaps hundreds of years. So now these opinions look like they are coming from the grass roots.
    - asdf21 7y ago
      >They don't give a shit because the news they read, the entertainment they watch all tell them not to No, they don't give a shit because they don't need to. It doesn't affect their daily lives.
    - dmix 7y ago
      I live in Canada where the media is constantly harping on climate change so I’m not convinced it’s that powerful.
- plutonorm 7y ago
  I agree. The biggest problem the world is facing is the ability to buy opinion with money. Money buys you propoganda. We need to totally abandon the free market model in the information sphere.
darksaints 7y ago
I too think that people that refuse to believe are a problem, but honestly, they are nowhere near the primary problem. The primary problem is that people will greedily hold onto a broken status quo if fixing it means they might be held accountable. There is always someone else that is the problem, never yourself. In Seattle, almost everybody agrees with the scientific consensus on global warming. But if you ask them how to fix it, they'll tell you to go after the oil companies. Or corporations in general. Or China. Or India. But a carbon tax? One that raises my gas bill? No way! Everybody else is the problem, never me.
- mordymoop 7y ago
  Playing with the linked web app shows pretty clearly that a carbon tax, or taxes on oil and natural gas, will in fact do very little. The conclusion I'm forced to draw after playing with all the dials is that it's literally impossible to "austerity" our way out of this. We're going to have to invent and develop our way out of it. Don't trust me; play with the sliders yourself.
  - darksaints 7y ago
    A carbon tax is significant. By itself it shows 1C reduction potential. Sure that's not enough, but there are no silver bullets...not even new technology can do it on its own.
  - Ohn0 7y ago
    I wonder what the version of this web app and knobs would have looked like to address the threat of mountains of horse manure piling up in NYC, prior to the advent of the ICE which innovated the problem away.
deleted 7y ago
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solarwind 7y ago
It's not about climate it's about political control. It's a political boogeyman. Left wing politicians have successfully brainwashed a generation to believe they’re gonna die in 12 years unless socialists and communists control our planet and the lives of everyone on it. I was a huge believer in Climate Change as a youth. I wanted to save the environment. Then I caught one lie. Then two. Then three. Then I read the current data. Then I realized they’ve been exaggerating & fear-mongering headlines for decades. No climate apocalyptic predictions with due dates as of today have come true to date. Nature retracted their very alarmist paper, 10 months after publishing https://retractionwatch.com/category/by-journal/nature-retractions/ https://retractionwatch.com/category/by-journal/nature-retra... Whenever there is an extreme weather event, such as a flood or drought, people ask whether that event was caused by global warming. Unfortunately, there is no straightforward answer to this question. Weather is highly variable and extreme weather events have always happened. I’ve worked with global temperature data, and know that you can produce any shaped global temperature graph you want by picking the right set of stations. There are grossly inadequate amounts of both historical and current data to produce a meaningful long term temperature graph for the earth. Much of the data is fake – by their own admission. https://realclimatescience.com/overwhelming-evidence-of-collusion/ https://realclimatescience.com/overwhelming-evidence-of-coll... Climate scientists openly discussed getting rid of the 1940s warmth in the temperature data without understanding the anomaly. An email unveiled by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request said: “It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with why the blip”. http://di2.nu/foia/1254108338.txt http://di2.nu/foia/1254108338.txt One can download the original and altered data directly from the NOAA. ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2.5 You can see and construct the graphs yourself, first hand, with the data pre-plotted in a Google sheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mWanx8ojmOkcazzRhDaoHMHyDWxR3PqUP0EdtdIUU84/ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mWanx8ojmOkcazzRhDao... on the “Graphs” tab. Patrick Moore, Greenpeace co-founder has said: “I can adjust the data to show any trend I like.” Moore left Greenpeace because he felt they were pushing fear-mongering instead of science and logic. More background on the spat between Mr. Moore and Greenpeace can be found at https://thelibertarianrepublic.com/greenpeace-co-founder-patrick-moore-calls-out-his-former-group-for-rewriting-history/ https://thelibertarianrepublic.com/greenpeace-co-founder-pat... According to the Toronto Sun, Canada’s Department of the Environment just purged 100 years of data on climate change. Patrick Moore said: “I don’t care why they scrapped the data, that is simply wrong. They could make note of why they don’t trust it but to destroy it is a crime against science and history.” https://twitter.com/EcoSenseNow/status/1174909654297538560 https://twitter.com/EcoSenseNow/status/1174909654297538560 This seems suspicious as no data set should ever be purged, for posterity. This dataset could have simply been deprecated. Since the NOAA sensors have been unreliable the US has been building a new network higher-quality sensors called the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN) starting in year 2004. The vision of the USCRN program is to maintain a high-quality climate observation network. It is an error to mis-attribute warming to increased CO2 when many other known causal factors exist. Those other factors are the reason the USCRN was developed, funded, and put in place. The non-CO2 causal factors include increased population density in cities, increased energy use per capita, reduced atmospheric pollution, increased local humidity from human activities (lawn watering, industrial cooling towers), changed site conditions from rural to urban, long-term drought, and wind shadows from buildings in cities. https://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2017/03/us-air-temperature-trend-uscrn-2016.html https://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2017/03/us-air-temperatu... The new USCRN data has shown no significant warming trend in the USA in 12 years: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/08/the-uscrn-revisited/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/08/the-uscrn-revisited/ The USCRN data is rarely mentioned in NOAA’s monthly and annual “State of the Climate” reports to the U.S. public, instead buried in the depths of the NCDC website, one can get access to the data and have it plotted. The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) doesn’t do original research but reports on others’ research, which they call Assessment Reports. There have been 5 thus far. A scientist working with the IPCC said the IPCC is above Freedom of Information Acts: “One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 [Assessment Report 5] would be to delete all emails at the end of the process. … Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden.” “I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/11/23/climategate-2-0-new-e-mails-rock-the-global-warming-debate/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/11/23/climateg... Scientists with NOAA view global warming as a political cause rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data. https://observer.com/2017/02/noaa-fake-global-warming-data-paris-agreement-climate-change/ https://observer.com/2017/02/noaa-fake-global-warming-data-p... The IPCC report relies upon six long-term surface temperature datasets to come up with the 0.2°C per decade rate of increase. The report does not cite the two global temperature datasets derived from satellites: the University of Alabama in Huntsville reports that global average temperatures are rising at a rate of 0.13°C per decade, and Remote Sensing Systems reports the rate of increase at 0.18°C per decade. At the UAH rate of warming, the 1.5°C threshold would not be exceeded until around 2070. https://reason.com/2018/10/11/how-big-of-a-deal-is-half-of-a-degree-of/ https://reason.com/2018/10/11/how-big-of-a-deal-is-half-of-a... The myth of an almost-unanimous climate-change consensus is pervasive. It’s often said that 97% of scientists agree with the anthropogenic climate-change thesis. However, a 2012 poll of American Meteorological Society members also reported a diversity of opinion. 11% attributed the phenomenon to human activity and natural causes in about equal measure, while 23% said enough is not yet known to make any determination. Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/10/climate-change-no-its-not-97-percent-consensus-ian-tuttle/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/10/climate-change-no-its... The UN has been making the same claim that we only have twelve years to save the planet from global warming, for the past 30 years. The 12-year deadline is a talking point for politicians. However the IPCC said there is not some “magic global mean temperature or total emissions that separate 'fine' from 'catastrophic’” Source: https://www.axios.com/climate-change-scientists-comment-ocasio-cortez-12-year-deadline-c4ba1f99-bc76-42ac-8b93-e4eaa926938d.html https://www.axios.com/climate-change-scientists-comment-ocas... , https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/15/children-strike-school-climate-change/ https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/15/children-strike-school-cl... Someone at Reason read the UN/IPCC report, said there is no doomsday in it. https://reason.com/2018/10/11/how-big-of-a-deal-is-half-of-a-degree-of/ https://reason.com/2018/10/11/how-big-of-a-deal-is-half-of-a... No climate apocalyptic predictions have come true to date, despite 50 years of such predictions. https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyp...
marc_abonce 7y ago
I don't think climate change denialists are the target audience for this, though. I think this chart is extremely useful as a way to show people which approaches are more effective at mitigating temperature increase. For example, in my experience in this types of discussions, some people like to claim that "population control" should be a top priority. However, this page shows that the effect of it would actually be rather small compared to other approaches like carbon pricing or reducing methane emissions.
lopmotr 7y ago
Are there really that many people who think climate change isn't happening or isn't caused by those factors? That sounds like a strawman.
- hanniabu 7y ago
  There are definitely a lot. If you haven't experienced this personally then you must live in a heavily liberal area.
  - lopmotr 7y ago
    I'm sure there are some extreme people. But when I look at right-wing TV and journalism, I don't see climate change denial, nor human-causing-it denial. Instead, I see denial of the severity of the uncertain effects, criticism of the exaggerations of activists and criticism of the proposed policies around it. I've met people who would likely be called deniers because they say things like "it's not going to affect me or my kids, so I don't care". I think this attitude of accepting it but not being worried about it is extremely common and also commonly confused with denialism.
- tropo 7y ago
  I'm willing to pretend, if that it what it takes to stop the "fixes" from being applied. I'm not a fan of destroying the economy, especially if other countries get a less-restricted situation that lets them climb past us in the GDP-per-capita ranking. We will learn to deal with any climate changes that may happen.

adventskalender 7y ago

It is clearly made up data, as for example they predict the outcome of policies like carbon costs. Afaik even economists don't agree on the results of such policies. They are just making an assumption and the whole app is merely advertising for their preferred type of policy.

mattnewton 7y ago
I think you are being mistaken for saying the climate data they are using is made up, but your point is more subtle- they don’t show their work to tell you what the biofuel subsidies, for example, will do to CO2 levels.
- adventskalender 7y ago
  I don't know about their climate data, I just think their claims of the impact of carbon costs are pure speculation. If they had a calculator for determining temperature increase depending on carbon output, it would be more credible. They are piping two complex system into each other - economic and climate. At least economics are not understood well enough to really make such predictions. And if the output of the economic model is unreliable, so is the result of the climate model.
Brakenshire 7y ago
You’re right, the climate data is likely to be solid but the economic modelling dubious.

linuxftw 7y ago

I'm firmly in the camp that CO2 has little to nothing to do with the temperature of the planet. Fact 1: The earth has been warming since the last ice age. Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently Fact 3: Water vapor accounts for almost all of the greenhouse effect. A planet that was already warming is going to continue to warm unless the energy input is changed. Speculative: Some people believe the data has been manipulated intentionally to show a larger increase in temperature than what is actually taking place. This was 'climate gate'. Finally, CO2 is the least of our worries. The real problem is toxic chemical pollution. Industrialized society is polluting our water and our food with toxic chemicals, slowly killing us all.

ocschwar 7y ago
> Fact 1: The earth has been warming since the last ice age. The Milankovitch cycles have crested since that warming. Without the CO2 we would be cooling. > Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently Citation needed. Furthermore, if you can explain how an increase in the solar output woudl warm the arctic more than the tropics, there's a Nobel waiting for you. > Fact 3: Water vapor accounts for almost all of the greenhouse effect. Water vapor has a habit of coming down as rain. > Speculative: Some people believe the data has been manipulated I challenge you to find a single temperature reading, longitude, lattitude, altitude and timestamp, and tell me when it was manipulated.
- EdSharkey 7y ago
  > > Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently > Citation needed. Maybe they meant 'recently' as in geologic time and not "since 2000"? I think it's interesting that solar energy and magnetic fields and cosmic energy fluctuates from year to year. I think these primary inputs to the system not staying constant would make it impossible to model climate such that the model could be an accurate predictive tool. This particular tool seems rigged to show a certain outcome, and I feel bad for folks here who are frustrated by its +1C floor on temperature rise by the end of the simulation. That (crude) part of the design was probably meant to frustrate and/or panic people into taking action. I'm happy to see such obvious rigging of the game on display here and that folks are thinking about that.

PavlovsCat 7y ago

> what can we do about the people that don't believe this data? Organize the people who do believe it to exert pressure.

bogwog 7y ago

I'm inclined to believe this data because I trust MIT and believe that climate change is a very serious problem. But this app alone doesn't do a good job of convincing anyone of anything. For starters, it's just a bunch of graphs. I doubt most people who deny climate change are going to understand what they're looking at. But most importantly, there's no straightforward way for anyone to verify this data on their own, and it seems like this app is kind of bullshitting the numbers. For example, how could they possibly know that "highly subsidized" bioenergy will result in exactly 0.1F increase in global temperatures 80 years from now? > I have a bunch of coworkers that think scientists are making up this data and skewing results Can't you see their reasoning after using this app? I'm not saying this app is useless or full of lies. Not at all. But I think it can only really work as part of an education session or presentation, where someone can actually explain the reasoning behind that graph, where the data comes from, how they arrived at the conclusions, etc, instead of just throwing it on the internet and hoping it reaches republican farmers on Facebook.

Retric 7y ago
It’s interesting how you described that as exactly 0.1F. I have a very different way of looking at data. When I see a single significant digit I assume minimal precision. So, 0.1 is something like 95% chance of 0.1 +\- 0.05 would be optimistic, and 0.01 to 1 is pessimistic. I suspect this is a common issue with both scientific and technological reporting for a general audience.
- bogwog 7y ago
  Increasing precision here doesn't increase confidence in these estimates. The phrase "highly subsidized" says basically nothing, yet it's enough to estimate global temperatures 80 years from now with a margin of error of 0.05?
  - zamfi 7y ago
    Click the three vertical dots to see what "highly subsidized" means -- it's a specific level of subsidy, which you can actually modify in greater detail in the "detail" view. I absolutely agree that this thing needs a margin of error on the visual output!

mistermann 7y ago

Some thoughts for your consideration, delivered with collaborative intent: > I have a bunch of coworkers that think scientists are making up this data and skewing results because their jobs depend on it and they want to continue to get funding. FWIW, I also happen to harbor this suspicion. How might one actually know whether there is an element of truth to it? > "Follow the money" is a common thing they say in regards to this, but also conveniently disregarded and deny that big oil/coal have more to lose. Whether big oil/coal have more to lose seems orthogonal to the question of whether bias is involved in climate science. If so, this sort of approach to debate seems counter-productive to me. > It's very difficult to fight ignorance, especially when they don't believe facts. I will confess, referring to climate models that are literally estimated projections of future temperatures as "facts", very much rubs me the wrong way. It doesn't put me in a very cooperative mood. To me, whether this reaction is "illogical" or not seems irrelevant, whereas the reaction itself seems extremely relevant, and completely overlooked in the analysis of the situation. I wonder, am I the only one that has this sort of reaction? Have we seen similar behavior in similar scenarios? > This is the main issue with climate change deniers, not the inability to visualize the data. I proclaim that you are speculating about what "the main issue" is with climate change deniers. You think you know (your perception of this appears clear as day), and you may even be right (by chance), but you do not know. I have a feeling that guessing wrong on such things might be far more impactful than we realize.

multiplegeorges 7y ago
It seems you misunderstand what scientists are saying and forming an incorrect opinion from that. > I will confess, referring to climate models that are literally estimated projections of future temperatures as "facts", very much rubs me the wrong way. The projections are statistical models. They have a range of values and probabilities associated with them. Without major change, the probabilities of catastrophic climate change are very, very high. Are they certain? Not mathematically, no. Would I take that bet? Any day of the week and you should too.
- mistermann 7y ago
  > It seems you misunderstand what scientists are saying and forming an incorrect opinion from that. I feel highly confident that I don't actually misunderstand what scientists are saying, but rather you have misunderstood (misinterpreted due to heuristic modification during interpretation) what I have said. Would you be willing to quote particular statements I've made that you consider to be mistaken? > The projections are statistical models. They have a range of values and probabilities associated with them. Without major change, the probabilities of catastrophic climate change are very, very high. I agree. > Are they certain? Not mathematically, no. I agree. It is that they are commonly presented as if they are certain that I am complaining about. It is clearly incorrect/dishonest. It is claimed to be "science". Actual science does not say things it knows to not be true, but people that believe they are discussing matters purely on "the science" are regularly guilty of this. But try and get people (who well know this is true) to acknowledge this simple fact, and observe the amazing complexity of human psychology in its natural form. > Would I take that bet? Any day of the week and you should too. I do. And I suggest you consider being more open minded about what might be preventing us from making progress on this issue. Specifically: resist the natural urge to classify a lack of total agreement as opposition to your cause. Perhaps what appears to be opposition is anything but, and is actually new ideas that you've never considered before.

metalgearsolid 7y ago

The problem is propaganda. Climate change is the victim. Even staples of modern life, like vaccines, can be sullied by the private interests of the ultra wealthy/politically affluent.

dmix 7y ago
I don’t even think that’s the primary problem. I think the average person doesn’t give a shit about stuff like this, at least not to the point where they have to make personal sacrifices. It’s very very easy to live your daily life and not see any real world consequences outside of some sometimes shrill activists who aren’t the most persuasive people to the average lowest common denominator people. For one thing these sorts of people won’t be hanging out on an MIT website called EN-ROADS. Indifference is the biggest enemy, not some big orchestrated conspiracy (although there is some of that too, but that doesn’t explain why even most liberals aren’t doing anything about it).
- plutonorm 7y ago
  They don't give a shit because the news they read, the entertainment they watch all tell them not to. The narrative has been set by private interests for decades - perhaps hundreds of years. So now these opinions look like they are coming from the grass roots.
  - asdf21 7y ago
    >They don't give a shit because the news they read, the entertainment they watch all tell them not to No, they don't give a shit because they don't need to. It doesn't affect their daily lives.
  - dmix 7y ago
    I live in Canada where the media is constantly harping on climate change so I’m not convinced it’s that powerful.
plutonorm 7y ago
I agree. The biggest problem the world is facing is the ability to buy opinion with money. Money buys you propoganda. We need to totally abandon the free market model in the information sphere.

darksaints 7y ago

I too think that people that refuse to believe are a problem, but honestly, they are nowhere near the primary problem. The primary problem is that people will greedily hold onto a broken status quo if fixing it means they might be held accountable. There is always someone else that is the problem, never yourself. In Seattle, almost everybody agrees with the scientific consensus on global warming. But if you ask them how to fix it, they'll tell you to go after the oil companies. Or corporations in general. Or China. Or India. But a carbon tax? One that raises my gas bill? No way! Everybody else is the problem, never me.

mordymoop 7y ago
Playing with the linked web app shows pretty clearly that a carbon tax, or taxes on oil and natural gas, will in fact do very little. The conclusion I'm forced to draw after playing with all the dials is that it's literally impossible to "austerity" our way out of this. We're going to have to invent and develop our way out of it. Don't trust me; play with the sliders yourself.
- darksaints 7y ago
  A carbon tax is significant. By itself it shows 1C reduction potential. Sure that's not enough, but there are no silver bullets...not even new technology can do it on its own.
- Ohn0 7y ago
  I wonder what the version of this web app and knobs would have looked like to address the threat of mountains of horse manure piling up in NYC, prior to the advent of the ICE which innovated the problem away.

deleted 7y ago

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solarwind 7y ago

It's not about climate it's about political control. It's a political boogeyman. Left wing politicians have successfully brainwashed a generation to believe they’re gonna die in 12 years unless socialists and communists control our planet and the lives of everyone on it. I was a huge believer in Climate Change as a youth. I wanted to save the environment. Then I caught one lie. Then two. Then three. Then I read the current data. Then I realized they’ve been exaggerating & fear-mongering headlines for decades. No climate apocalyptic predictions with due dates as of today have come true to date. Nature retracted their very alarmist paper, 10 months after publishing https://retractionwatch.com/category/by-journal/nature-retractions/ https://retractionwatch.com/category/by-journal/nature-retra... Whenever there is an extreme weather event, such as a flood or drought, people ask whether that event was caused by global warming. Unfortunately, there is no straightforward answer to this question. Weather is highly variable and extreme weather events have always happened. I’ve worked with global temperature data, and know that you can produce any shaped global temperature graph you want by picking the right set of stations. There are grossly inadequate amounts of both historical and current data to produce a meaningful long term temperature graph for the earth. Much of the data is fake – by their own admission. https://realclimatescience.com/overwhelming-evidence-of-collusion/ https://realclimatescience.com/overwhelming-evidence-of-coll... Climate scientists openly discussed getting rid of the 1940s warmth in the temperature data without understanding the anomaly. An email unveiled by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request said: “It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with why the blip”. http://di2.nu/foia/1254108338.txt http://di2.nu/foia/1254108338.txt One can download the original and altered data directly from the NOAA. ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2.5 You can see and construct the graphs yourself, first hand, with the data pre-plotted in a Google sheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mWanx8ojmOkcazzRhDaoHMHyDWxR3PqUP0EdtdIUU84/ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mWanx8ojmOkcazzRhDao... on the “Graphs” tab. Patrick Moore, Greenpeace co-founder has said: “I can adjust the data to show any trend I like.” Moore left Greenpeace because he felt they were pushing fear-mongering instead of science and logic. More background on the spat between Mr. Moore and Greenpeace can be found at https://thelibertarianrepublic.com/greenpeace-co-founder-patrick-moore-calls-out-his-former-group-for-rewriting-history/ https://thelibertarianrepublic.com/greenpeace-co-founder-pat... According to the Toronto Sun, Canada’s Department of the Environment just purged 100 years of data on climate change. Patrick Moore said: “I don’t care why they scrapped the data, that is simply wrong. They could make note of why they don’t trust it but to destroy it is a crime against science and history.” https://twitter.com/EcoSenseNow/status/1174909654297538560 https://twitter.com/EcoSenseNow/status/1174909654297538560 This seems suspicious as no data set should ever be purged, for posterity. This dataset could have simply been deprecated. Since the NOAA sensors have been unreliable the US has been building a new network higher-quality sensors called the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN) starting in year 2004. The vision of the USCRN program is to maintain a high-quality climate observation network. It is an error to mis-attribute warming to increased CO2 when many other known causal factors exist. Those other factors are the reason the USCRN was developed, funded, and put in place. The non-CO2 causal factors include increased population density in cities, increased energy use per capita, reduced atmospheric pollution, increased local humidity from human activities (lawn watering, industrial cooling towers), changed site conditions from rural to urban, long-term drought, and wind shadows from buildings in cities. https://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2017/03/us-air-temperature-trend-uscrn-2016.html https://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2017/03/us-air-temperatu... The new USCRN data has shown no significant warming trend in the USA in 12 years: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/08/the-uscrn-revisited/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/08/the-uscrn-revisited/ The USCRN data is rarely mentioned in NOAA’s monthly and annual “State of the Climate” reports to the U.S. public, instead buried in the depths of the NCDC website, one can get access to the data and have it plotted. The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) doesn’t do original research but reports on others’ research, which they call Assessment Reports. There have been 5 thus far. A scientist working with the IPCC said the IPCC is above Freedom of Information Acts: “One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 [Assessment Report 5] would be to delete all emails at the end of the process. … Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden.” “I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/11/23/climategate-2-0-new-e-mails-rock-the-global-warming-debate/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/11/23/climateg... Scientists with NOAA view global warming as a political cause rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data. https://observer.com/2017/02/noaa-fake-global-warming-data-paris-agreement-climate-change/ https://observer.com/2017/02/noaa-fake-global-warming-data-p... The IPCC report relies upon six long-term surface temperature datasets to come up with the 0.2°C per decade rate of increase. The report does not cite the two global temperature datasets derived from satellites: the University of Alabama in Huntsville reports that global average temperatures are rising at a rate of 0.13°C per decade, and Remote Sensing Systems reports the rate of increase at 0.18°C per decade. At the UAH rate of warming, the 1.5°C threshold would not be exceeded until around 2070. https://reason.com/2018/10/11/how-big-of-a-deal-is-half-of-a-degree-of/ https://reason.com/2018/10/11/how-big-of-a-deal-is-half-of-a... The myth of an almost-unanimous climate-change consensus is pervasive. It’s often said that 97% of scientists agree with the anthropogenic climate-change thesis. However, a 2012 poll of American Meteorological Society members also reported a diversity of opinion. 11% attributed the phenomenon to human activity and natural causes in about equal measure, while 23% said enough is not yet known to make any determination. Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/10/climate-change-no-its-not-97-percent-consensus-ian-tuttle/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/10/climate-change-no-its... The UN has been making the same claim that we only have twelve years to save the planet from global warming, for the past 30 years. The 12-year deadline is a talking point for politicians. However the IPCC said there is not some “magic global mean temperature or total emissions that separate 'fine' from 'catastrophic’” Source: https://www.axios.com/climate-change-scientists-comment-ocasio-cortez-12-year-deadline-c4ba1f99-bc76-42ac-8b93-e4eaa926938d.html https://www.axios.com/climate-change-scientists-comment-ocas... , https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/15/children-strike-school-climate-change/ https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/15/children-strike-school-cl... Someone at Reason read the UN/IPCC report, said there is no doomsday in it. https://reason.com/2018/10/11/how-big-of-a-deal-is-half-of-a-degree-of/ https://reason.com/2018/10/11/how-big-of-a-deal-is-half-of-a... No climate apocalyptic predictions have come true to date, despite 50 years of such predictions. https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyp...

marc_abonce 7y ago

I don't think climate change denialists are the target audience for this, though. I think this chart is extremely useful as a way to show people which approaches are more effective at mitigating temperature increase. For example, in my experience in this types of discussions, some people like to claim that "population control" should be a top priority. However, this page shows that the effect of it would actually be rather small compared to other approaches like carbon pricing or reducing methane emissions.

lopmotr 7y ago

Are there really that many people who think climate change isn't happening or isn't caused by those factors? That sounds like a strawman.

hanniabu 7y ago
There are definitely a lot. If you haven't experienced this personally then you must live in a heavily liberal area.
- lopmotr 7y ago
  I'm sure there are some extreme people. But when I look at right-wing TV and journalism, I don't see climate change denial, nor human-causing-it denial. Instead, I see denial of the severity of the uncertain effects, criticism of the exaggerations of activists and criticism of the proposed policies around it. I've met people who would likely be called deniers because they say things like "it's not going to affect me or my kids, so I don't care". I think this attitude of accepting it but not being worried about it is extremely common and also commonly confused with denialism.
tropo 7y ago
I'm willing to pretend, if that it what it takes to stop the "fixes" from being applied. I'm not a fan of destroying the economy, especially if other countries get a less-restricted situation that lets them climb past us in the GDP-per-capita ranking. We will learn to deal with any climate changes that may happen.