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Australia’s top researchers urge politicians: “Listen to the science”
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ocschwar 7y agoThe chasm between politicians and science is staggering. For a truly terrifying example, there's the 2018 IPCC report. It's under 600 pages. The summary for policymakers is 25 pages, with the following 5 chapters each with an executive summary of about 2 pages. So let's say a 35 page read for politicians. For 170K a year, plus an expense account, plus a nice pension, we should expect each of the representatives of the United States Congress to slog through those 35 pages, right? If you want the terrifying truth, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZsHtpk0XII&t=217s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZsHtpk0XII&t=217s Greta Thunberg, providing the United States Congress with a roughly 3 paragraph TLDR of the IPCC report, and even this is news to probably most of them. CP Snow's essay The Two Cultures is all too true.
- eeh 7y agoI interpret climate inaction not as science ineptitude, but as defecting in a prisoners dilemma sense. The high capita emitters (AU/US/CA/NZ) are refusing to slow down economic growth (each country has to slow down to different degrees, depending on their existing energy mix), and are relying on other nations to make progress. Rich countries will adapt. Poor country may not have the resources to do this, and thus climate inaction is an inequality issue, not just a scientific issue. Politicians respond to votes and slowing economic growth is not popular. Either rich countries will willingly sacrifice growth to help the poor of the world (not going to happen), or we encourage international cooperation. This is what's happening (Paris, Kyoto), albeit with defectors who need to be punished.
- ocschwar 7y ago> I interpret climate inaction not as science ineptitude, but as defecting in a prisoners dilemma sense. I interpret politicians not doing the reading as politicians not doing the reading.
- nl 7y agoThis is a good, 11 tweet summary of why the science really is testable, falsifiable science https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/status/1217885474502729728 https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/status/121788547450272972...
- IntemerateApe 7y agoThat is good, but it is besides the point. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
- Covzire 7y agoThe inverse is also true. "It is easy to get men to claim something, when their salary depends on them making the claim." As supporting evidence: Statistics.
- ocschwar 7y agoNOte that most of the work this guy is talking about was done decades ago. As in, 8 iterations of Moore's Law before the present day. If there were problems in those models, you could show them today with just a few EC2 instances on Amazon Web Services. You would not need a supercomputer.
- romanr 7y agoPolitical party elected for money reasons that ignores science is a symptom of the problem, it is not the problem itself. Outdated laws and electoral two-party system is the problem. Why no “top researcher” ever urges to look at the root of the problem? Why researchers of political science do not sound the alarm to change outdated laws that were written 100 years ago when they couldn’t imagine shameless lobbying, mega corporations, manipulated social networks, and climate emergency that clearly requires different political system to manage it.
- bamboozled 7y agoThe other issue I see is that, traditionally, it wasn't a matter of the end of civilization if governments took 3, 4 year terms to do something about an issue. For example outlawing smoking in public places. This issue is so dire and serious but it doesn't fit in the headspace of these politicians and the voters that like them, it doesn't fit their traditional model of urgency. My tl;dr version; it's too late to wait any longer. We can't wait till these politicians retire for action.
- hndamien 7y agoWe don't have a 2 party system though?
- paranoidrobot 7y agoAustralia (as well as the US, UK, NZ, and I'm sure many other countries) have a two-party system as defined by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-party_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-party_system In Australia, in recent times that's the Liberal Party and the Australian Labour Party. While there have been influential minor parties, and even independent persons who hold the balance of power on occasion, the executive leadership is always from one of two major parties. Those parties may change over time, fwiw.
- boyter 7y agoAlthough the Liberal Party is a coalition with the Nationals who have a great deal of influence over the Liberal party and its policies when the Liberal party is unable to form a majority government on its own.
- djrobstep 7y agoIt's demonstrating naivety to think that inaction on climate change is driven by not "listening to the science". Reactionary politicians are well aware of what the science thinks - they're just prioritizing their class interests. The economic transformation necessary to properly fight climate is a threat to their status quo power, and so they resist it. "The science" is very much beside the point here.
- sfifs 7y agoI don't know why you're getting down-voted. This is basically the answer. In general, politicians tend to be very smart people - you have to be smart to convince people to vote for you (or even in dictatorships be your enforcers). However, the economic incentives are by and large not aligned and therefore decisions poor in the long term get taken.
- djrobstep 7y agoThe downvotes are for the same reason - critique of capitalism upsets people with ideological affiliation to it. You see it all the time on this forum. You can make narrow economic critique but broad, generalised critique of capitalism is off-limits.
- flukus 7y ago> I don't know why you're getting down-voted. It seems HN has stopped the usual astro-turfing these posts attract and it's been replaced by down votes and flagging. Normally a comment or two is enough to kill the thread.
- bedobi 7y ago> they're just prioritizing their class interests How? > transformation necessary to properly fight climate is a threat to their status quo power Is it? How would a carbon tax/cap and trade threat their "status quo power"?
- djrobstep 7y agoYou're seriously asking how pollution is profitable, and if transformation is a threat to the status quo?
- papito 7y agoRespect for science and clear evidence are becoming primo commodities these days - it seems all over the world. Get ready to live in a world of a LOT of stupid in it, and keep your wits about you. It's all a simulation nothing is real NOTHING MATTERS.
- pnako 7y agoIn a democracy politicians listen to voters, not to "the science". So those researchers perhaps should focus on convincing voters? Having actual scientists being the public face of global warming would be a welcome change from having spokesmen being TV people or high-school dropouts.
- gregoryl 7y agoThe people voting for this party are poorly educated, and derive almost all information from "mainstream" media, which is largely owned by Murdoch.
- jaimex2 7y agoMaybe it's people need to listen to the science first? Australia deserves everything it has gone through after purposely voting in PMs to 'scrap the carbon tax' and recently the guy bringing coal into parliament saying there is nothing to fear.
- lurker2823 7y agothe coal incident was not recent. educate yourself.
- LeonB 7y agoThe comment means that they recently “voted in” the guy who (previously) brought a lump of coal into parliament.
- WizardAustralis 7y agoIn some ways it kind of makes it worse that we knew a bit about who he was come election time. Truth be told, Scomo was barely a figure anyone would have recognized until he was suddenly PM. He was there in the shadows but few would have picked him to be our next PM. The re-election however I get the feeling that was a bit down to people starting to feel the pressure from a slowing economy. With that many were voting to ensure a system they knew even if not ideal. Better the devil you know than to try their hand on an nearly unknown candidate. I don't really know, there is so much noise in the political space nowadays that it is difficult to get much signal out of it.
- lurker2823 7y agohe won because people were afraid of what Shorten and his cronies were saying they would do, in my mind it's a bit of a 'stuck in between a rock and a hard place'
- jaimex2 7y agoThis is true, I hate that our election system boils down to just two parties in the end even if we do use preferential voting.
- selfishgene 7y agoShould politicians treat psychological research as "science" ... and if so, what p-value should be considered politically acceptable?
- greglindahl 7y agoAre you interested in talking about this article? Because it isn't about psychology.
- selfishgene 7y agoLet's remember that sometimes one man's science can be another's religion. Applying the label "science" doesn't remove any of the uncertainty associated with many so-called "scientific conclusions." In this regard, psychology is not all that different from climate change.
- AstralStorm 7y agoP-value is not likelihood. Politically acceptable is not the same as true. Consensus is currently politically unacceptable due to costs to industry.
- Paraesthetic 7y agoAustralian here, its not that we don't care about the climate (same for our politicians), its that we realise that we contribute to under 1% of the problem. However to reduce that 1% we would effectively have to kill off industries in which around half our workforce is employed. Thats a big re-skilling project. But then you look at China who is the main problem (also 1 billion people to our 26 million), and they are doing nothing.
- eeh 7y ago> also 1 billion people to our 26 million Do you understand the notion of per-capita emissions? Australia has higher per capita emissions than China, and thus must act accordingly. NSW has a hosepipe ban. Is my household exempt from this, simply because there's only 2 of us, and 2 is such a small number in comparison to NSW's population? No, everyone must do their part. Australia is not.
- Paraesthetic 7y agoI didn't in fact think of that being a factor, although being that we are where China mines their fuel I would say the economic cost would be terrible either way
- nl 7y agoHowever to reduce that 1% we would effectively have to kill off industries in which around half our workforce is employed. I assume you mean mining here. It contributes a lot financially, but according to ABS numbers employs 1.9% of the Australian workforce. http://lmip.gov.au/default.aspx?LMIP/GainInsights/IndustryInformation/Mining http://lmip.gov.au/default.aspx?LMIP/GainInsights/IndustryIn... People overestimate this considerably (obviously!!)
- greglindahl 7y agoChina has done more than nothing. You might want to check out how much wind and solar they've installed.
- 7y ago