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I imagine this is perfect for climate change deniers. Climate change is very difficult to fight because both undershooting and overshooting your predictions can
by 0xdada 7y ago
I imagine this is perfect for climate change deniers. Climate change is very difficult to fight because both undershooting and overshooting your predictions can come back and hurt you.
- duderific 7y agoI can only imagine the gleeful Fox News reporting once they get hold of this story.
- rainyMammoth 7y agoUnfortunately climate change became a political stance more than a science. It is now extremely difficult to get straight facts from both sides of this debate. Both sides feel like thy need to completely overstate and exaggerate the facts in order to create fear, urgency and hate for the other side.
- maxerickson 7y agoThere's not really 2 sides to the debate over on the science side.
- blowski 7y agoThere is serious debate on the science side about the extent to which we can do anything about it. From what I've read, some think yes, others think yes but only by reducing population and living like it's 1563, and others think it's already too late. These arguments mostly rest on opinions about technologies like carbon capture.
- lwhalen 7y agoIt's not nearly as clear-cut as one might hope. Cliff Mass, a respected University of Washington Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, is a noted 'skeptic' of the urgency of climate change, at least the anthropogenic causes thereof. I've heard of others, but he's the one that comes closest to mind.
- jdminhbg 7y agoI'd only say Mass is a skeptic of the shrillest, dumbest climate change predictions: the kind you get in the local alt-weekly, rather than the kind you get in actual scientific papers. Here's his most recent summary of his views, specifically how they apply locally: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/12/a-science-based-approach-to-dealing.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/12/a-science-based-appro...
- powowow 7y agoIt's really fucking clear-cut from a risk management point of view.
- lwhalen 7y agoI mean, so is Pascal's Wager. I'm no climate scientist, but from what little I've read is that _all_ climate models are terrible at predicting more than 10-20 days out, and are on the same level of accuracy as financial forecasting models (i.e., 'not at all'). In my vast and inky ignorance, I'm just not convinced we need to _drastically revamp the entire economy soup to nuts_ in order to satisfy predictions from inaccurate models populated with bad (or at least 'wildly variable') data.
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- gus_massa 7y ago> I mean, so is Pascal's Wager. I agree. > climate models are terrible at predicting more than 10-20 days out Note that if your weeding is in 30 days at noon, and you want to know if it's going to rain, then you are doomed. There are no good enough models for that precision. But if you want to estimate the total rainfall during the year the problem gets easier. Not very easy or easy, just easier than predicting which day will rain in approximately a month.
- viggity 7y ago“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had. Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.”
- maxerickson 7y agoDo you think they are describing "2 sides" there?
- gotoeleven 7y agoThe smugness is definitely one sided.
- rainyMammoth 7y agoEven though I trust scientist in this field I also believe it became increasingly politicized and not all papers are equally welcomed. As far as I can tell there is still a lot of work and debate around how much people contribute to climate change and what are the future previsions. It is important to let the ability for researcher to publish research that goes against the consensus.
- cm2187 7y agoAny science that doesn't have the luxury of proving by experiment is always on shaky grounds. I work in finance and have seen enough beautiful backtestings that perfectly predict the past but run into walls as soon as they go live, to take a prediction purely based on backtested mathematical model with a pinch of salt.
- minikites 7y agoBoth sides are not equally responsible for politicizing the issue and both sides of the "debate" are not equally valid.
- amyjess 7y agoThis is probably the best article on the subject I've seen: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/1/3/21045263/climate-change-1-5-degrees-celsius-target-ipcc https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/1/3/21045263... The short version is that the 1.5° C target favored by climate activists is completely unrealistic, and it's harmful. We've passed the point where limiting climate change to 1.5° C is realistically feasible: it's still theoretically possible, but it would require the entire industrialized work to engage in the same level of total societal mobilization as WW2 for a whole decade. That's not even remotely feasible. And when these activists say "it's 1.5° C or nothing", people are going to choose nothing. Voters will elect climate change deniers and/or decide that since they can't hit 1.5° C they might as well not lift a finger to stop climate change. However, it's not too late to limit climate change to 2° C, and while 2° C will have no shortage of harmful repercussions, it won't be the end of the world, and limiting climate change to 2° C is going to be way better for the planet than letting it run away to 3° C or 4° C or more. But the "1.5° C or nothing" rhetoric actively gets in the way of attempts to stop climate change at 2° C. The perfect is indeed the enemy of the good.
- powowow 7y agoYah, it's a real shame that the fossil fuel (and adjacent) industries spent decades spreading misinformation and disinformation, and funding the hell out of any effort that created even the tiniest bit of doubt in the public mind (be it fringe research or straight PR).
- cm2187 7y agoAlso the fact that climate change is being weaponised as an anti-capitalist vehicle by the left doesn't help persuading conservatives that it may be real/man-made/of the stated magnitude.
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- ljm 7y agoIt's a ridiculously uneven playing field that, like too many things, has practically become a sport with two sides supporting their own team. "If you're in any way even slightly wrong, we're right." Denial mixed with pride is a powerful drug and you see it in action everywhere; the amount of energy we expend on avoiding an uncomfortable truth, be it unrequited love, losing a loved one, or being found to be wrong in an argument. It doesn't really feel like we're fighting for the survival of our humanity. Maybe just prolonging our own individual existence so we don't have to deal with change, our beloved children be damned.
- Karunamon 7y agoI'd say this goes beyond being "slightly wrong" and into being outright fearmongering. If the science doesn't support a deadline, then you don't pull one out of thin air while passing it off as a scientific conclusion. To do otherwise is dishonest, even if you think you're doing it for noble ends.
- ljm 7y agoWe're just generally bad at estimating though, right? It's not just for climate change. Both nuclear fusion and the depletion of fossil fuels have been a good 50 years off now, for pretty much my entire three-decade lifetime. The estimates might well be genuine at the time of publication, but our response to them will make the estimates inaccurate. Maybe all we're managing is to maintain equilibrium rather than positive progress. I don't assume intentional dishonesty here because the risk of being completely discredited is way too high.
- Karunamon 7y ago>I don't assume intentional dishonesty here because the risk of being completely discredited is way too high. We're talking about the prediction "These glaciers will be gone by 2020". And I'm not going to subject myself to a bunch of science denier sites to come back with a list of other failed predictions, but there are quite a few of them. Ones that are far more dire and breathless than a tourist trap going away. If there's a risk of being discredited, it doesn't appear to apply to this topic. Intentional dishonesty? Nah, this is more like depraved indifference. There are no consequences for speaking out one's ass, and most attempts to enforce those consequences socially gets one branded as a "denier".
- egdod 7y agoIt seems like a pretty strong argument if the models are this unreliable.
- JustSomeNobody 7y agoYou could nail it every time and they'd still deny it. Look at flat Earthers.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoIt's 2020 and the glaciers are still there. Do you deny they still exist? Making predictions for things like climate on a year to year basis is a recipe for failure. The scale of the entire system is too large for predictions of such accuracy and do far more harm than good. "Soon" would have been a fine word to use here. Going with 2020 was just asking for a hit in credibility.
- JustSomeNobody 7y agoSaying "soon" is fodder for deniers as well. My point stands; they'll always deny it up until they're boiling in their own sweat.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoSimple solution: stop making predictions with a degree of claimed accuracy that doesn't exist. There's no good reason to put a deadline such as 2020 on a prediction except as an attempt to imply a degree of certainty that doesn't exist. Climate change skeptics exist for many reasons and these poorly thought out predictions just feed into them.
- bavell 7y agoThis x1000. Stop giving them ammunition to further muddy the waters!
- Johnny555 7y agoI think the reason is to imply the sense of urgency that does exist - whether the 7000 year old glaciers melt in one decade or two, that's still a warning that the climate is warming.
- awb 7y agoRight but OC's comment still stands: state the uncertainty rather than project certainty. "Glaciers are projected to disappear between 2020 and 2030 based on current emission trends" would still be alarming.
- bavell 7y agoExactly, you don't need to twist the facts to maintain the degree of urgency. Just needs the right framing. "This glacier likely won't survive long enough for your kids/grandkids to see themselves"
- beerandt 7y agoWell if we're going to still claim it's science, there needs to be a measurable range stated. Being over ambiguous just to be right can be just as misleading as overstating certainty. (Think Nostradamus type claims.)
- ThomPete 7y agoCan we please stop this absurd idea of "climate change deniers". No one is denying that the climate is changing. It always have and it always will. The discussion is about how much, how big a problem it is, how much of it is because of us and to what extent we can/should do anything about it. That's the actual debate. Calling someone a climate change denier is a cheap and sloppy shot at trying to lump a much more complex discussion into a simple pro/con.
- minikites 7y agoIt's changing a lot, it's a big problem, it's almost entirely because of humans, and we should do everything we can. https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- wolco 7y agoShould we do everything we can? A mass killing would reduce gases is that on the table? Let's agree to stop dealing in absolutes
- minikites 7y agoIt must be easy to argue with an inanimate straw-man.
- bureaucrat 7y agoYou don't know what earth's temperature was back then. And you're comparing the "estimated average" 20,000 BCE to 1800 to "the recorded temperatures" of 1800~ with a raw graph? And "coincidentally" earth's temperature changes dramatically after 1850s? God, no wonder why some people believe strange things.
- ThomPete 7y agoYou see that change in the dotted to solid line down in the end? Do you know why that is? That's the difference between temperature averaged over thousands of years and then suddenly measuring year over year. If you think that's a reasonable way of showing temperature changes, then I guess we have very different standards for what we consider evidence.
- zacharytelschow 7y agoI like the part where global warming bloviators cry the sky is falling and make exact predictions then when it doesn't occur insult those that disagree and say they don't understand science. Wouldn't a long string of failed predictions be indicative of failure to understand...?
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago> Wouldn't a long string of failed predictions be indicative of failure to understand...? No, the number of failures is completely meaningless, just as the number of successes is. The only thing that is relevant is the ratio of success vs. failure, somehow weighted appropriately based on the certainty claimed for the prediction and to correct for duplicated predictions.
- take_a_breath 7y ago==like the part where global warming bloviators cry the sky is falling== I wonder if this comment will contain any bias? ==Wouldn't a long string of failed predictions be indicative of failure to understand...?== Climate change deniers have a long string of failed predictions [1]. Would you say that is indicative of a failure to understand? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/dec/19/checkmate-how-do-climate-science-deniers-predictions-stack-up https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/dec/1...
- ravenstine 7y agoRepeatedly telling people that the sky is falling in N years, only for it to not happen(perhaps in that time scale), doesn't help at all. I've heard some say that people need to be scared in order to convince them to do something, but clearly it hasn't worked. It just comes off as the doomsday that cried wolf.
- sgt101 7y agoHow about telling them that Australia is on fire now? Doomsday for lots of Kangeroos and other animals, no wolves in Oz though.
- ravenstine 7y agoIf you want to tell people that, you ought to be sure that global warming actually has a significant impact. I don't know about Australia, but I know that the vast majority of fires in the US are caused directly by humans. Something like 90+% of them are started artificially(not by lightning strikes or something along those lines), which is kinda sad. But is climate change necessarily making the situation worse? How great would the Australia fires be if this was the year 2000? https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/89757/people-cause-most-us-wildfires https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/89757/people-cause-... https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/27/517100594/whats-the-leading-cause-of-wildfires-in-the-u-s-humans https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/27/517100594... Are the fires worse because of global warming? Kinda hard for me to say with certainty, but I doubt it makes that big of a difference at this point.
- beerandt 7y agoMarsupials are proof that Australia's climate has been hostile for a long time. Eucalyptus trees are evolved to make oil that volatizes in heat, and makes the atmosphere of entire valleys combustible in the dry season. Australia being on fire is just Australia.