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It is a pet peeve of mine when I hear a scientist parrot this trope: "always kind of wondering why there’s persistent levels of denial about something that the

by kls 7y ago

It is a pet peeve of mine when I hear a scientist parrot this trope: "always kind of wondering why there’s persistent levels of denial about something that the science is more or less settled on" It seems like we have lost all rational and respect for skepticism and correlating verification in science. Personally I think warming is real (I am skeptical about all the doomsday predictions, as all of them have been flat out wrong.) but I would far from venture to say it is settled, there are still really big issues like the disapproval of the Hockeystick paper which a portion of other research relies on. The Pause Buster paper and the major discrepancy in Tree Ring data. Not to mention that the CRU antics gives plenty of valid reasons to be skeptical of clear agendas invading science. These bots being more proof of the case, there are clearly agendas on both sides and everything needs to be validated. Skepticism is a health part of science and making authoritarian statements like "it is settled" only invites the suspicion that one is trying to deflect true scrutiny, whether that is the intent or not.

orev 7y ago
A theory is like a library full of books and papers. You can pull down any book and probably find something to argue about in it, but the overall story told by all the books all clearly point to the same conclusion.
- kls 7y ago
  I don't disagree which is why I mentioned that I felt the data does show an arrow towards the world warming, but that is a personal feeling based on a personal assumptive conclusion based on the research I have seen. There are still serious questions about how much of that is natural cycle and how much we are doing. We know we are doing some, we don't know how much, but we keep saying that this is settled science when more valid questions need to be asked.
  - cryoshon 7y ago
    >serious questions about how much of that is natural cycle and how much we are doing. We know we are doing some, we don't know how much, but we keep saying that this is settled science when more valid questions need to be asked your statement is false, and it's a climate denialist talking point which was important enough such that climate scientists systematically examined and refuted it in the context of numerous pieces of peer-reviewed literature: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044005 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044... ""Despite a high degree of consensus amongst publishing climate researchers that global warming is occurring and that it is anthropogenic, this discourse [that humans may not be responsible for some degree of climate change], promoted largely by non-scientists, has had a significant impact on public perceptions of the issue, fostering the impression that elite opinion is divided as to the nature and extent of the threat [when it is not]."
    - kls 7y ago
      It's not false, the article you link to provide no data, nor does any of it's references that I checked and basically just states a lot of scientist agree. Which I don't deny, I have my skepticism as to how accurate climatology and climate physics disciplines are but that is a personal view, i don't view it as a pseudoscience but I put a lot less faith in it than I do mathmatics. The article sited provides no data that would break down CO2 contributions based on natural phenomenon vs emissions. The only study I know of that does is the tree ring data paper and it has since been found to have significant mathematical errors and in need of revision based on the findings. This article is a sociology piece at best describing the natures of how denialist and right wing fanatics operate and how climate scientist tend to agree, but even with that there are social implications of funding, group think etc.
  - UncleMeat 7y ago
    > There are still serious questions about how much of that is natural cycle and how much we are doing. People have looked everywhere for alternative explanations and failed.
- aldoushuxley001 7y ago
  I don't know what libraries you frequent, but most of the ones I go to have books with wildly varying conclusions...
JadeNB 7y ago
> "always kind of wondering why there’s persistent levels of denial about something that the science is more or less settled on" > It seems like we have lost all rational and respect for skepticism and correlating verification in science. There is a huge gap between skepticism and denialism. The deniers aren't out there gathering competing data; they are simply declaring 'no' to established data.
aalleavitch 7y ago
This is nonsense. The only agenda here is money. Those bots are all twisting discussion towards climate denialism and in support of fossil fuel companies. You can draw a straight line to mass disinformation from the budgets of major oil companies. It's a PR expense, and why wouldn't they? On the margin it's in their interests and they won't have to foot the bill from any sort of environmental issues that follow. They don't have to care if the world burns. You can't have pure science in a world where financial incentives are towards lies and obfuscation. This isn't justifiable skepticism, this is information warfare.
- aldoushuxley001 7y ago
  Yup, lotta money funding climate alarmism. The whole university industry seems tainted by it now.
  - aalleavitch 7y ago
    How much money do you think is in the "university industry" as opposed to the oil industry? Hint hint: one lives on charitable donations from the other. Seriously, the idea that environmental activists and professors could ever hold a candle to the resources of an $4.6 trillion industry is laughable.
    - rednixion 7y ago
      Pretty sure tuition and tax payer funds are not in the "charitable donation" category
    - kls 7y ago
      I know a thing or two about reef research. I don't know much about oil or university money but I do know reef research and destruction being linked to climate change has seen significant investment by the sugarcane industry. We know that nitrogen fertilizers are killing the reefs by leaching needed chemicals from them. There is certainly money in the other direction, how much is unknown but deflecting environmental damage onto climate change is certainly big business for some industries damaging the environment.
jorblumesea 7y ago
> It seems like we have lost all rational and respect for skepticism and correlating verification in science. I think many non-scientific people are weighing in on "science" like they have any understanding on the subject. The fact that almost every climate scientist agrees with each other about climate change is pretty telling. Most of the "skeptics" are uneducated people who do not understand basics of science, even less complex climate systems. Others are malicious actors who are on the pay of corporate interests, as this article points out. I have yet to see a truly skeptical point come from an actual scientist (that isn't on a corporate payroll).
- Loughla 7y ago
  Wait for the response to your statement from a seemingly naive person. It will be something about how a majority of scientists once believed in [insert disproven theory here]. It will be made in seeming naivete, but will 100% be from a bad actor. Across all websites, across all platforms, whenever someone says "well almost every climate scientist agrees with this", somebody crawls out to make that statement.
awb 7y ago
If CO2 had a color or a smell it would be settled. Conspiracy theories tend to play upon things that people can't easily directly observe.
allovernow 7y ago
>It is a pet peeve of mine when I hear a scientist parrot this trope I don't think scientists are the ones saying that. At the very least you're right that they shouldn't be. It's unscientific. Laymen tend to underestimate the complexity and chaotic nature of climate and climate models. And the very limited time window with which we are analyzing a phenomenon which occurs on hundred thousand to million+ year scales. And the number of tweakable parameters in climate models which give you the freedom to [accidentally] get just about any results you want while simultaneously backfitting data... It's actually a little more complicated than CO2->warming->catastrophe. In the same vein, anyone who says petroleum companies knew about climate change in the 80s is being foolish. No one "knew" about climate change in the 80s. It took 30 years of science to get from that conjecture to the point where we're anywhere near certain of what's going on. And even now the science is clearly biased - what does the field do, for example, when there is consistent evidence that it's predictions are far too warm? They go digging for explanations like oceanic absorption, rather than adjust their models. Geoscience, by it's nature as a non experimental soft science which can only extrapolate from sparse historic data, is messy. Industry geoscience is one of the highest paid and cushiest industries, far more funding and maturity of theory and tooling than that of climate science - yet we regularly drill $100MM-$200MM dry holes across industry. Climate science is in an even worse state - you have no dry holes to tell you you're wrong. To say this is settled science is foolish.
- aalleavitch 7y ago
  We don't have the luxury of eating the investment on a "dry hole" when this is a global phenomenon. How is the path of highest caution not warranted here? What exactly are we losing by aggressively switching to renewables? This isn't an academic question. It is an incredibly practical one.
  - refurb 7y ago
    If we spend hundreds of billions of dollars fighting CO2 (capturing it, moving to more expensive energy sources, etc), that’s hundreds of billions of dollars that could have been spent elsewhere, on other problems like cancer, heart disease, etc.
jimbob45 7y ago
The problem is that global warming is too large a subject to be distilled down for debate. It's like cancer. Can one cure cancer? Maybe, but not in one blow. Even discussing something like breast cancer versus colon cancer is practically discussing apples versus oranges. The same for global warming: discussing the hole in the ozone layer versus acid rain versus rising temperatures versus melting polar ice caps doesn't feel like you're talking about anything that fits comfortably under the umbrella of "global warming" or even "climate change". That is to say, the concept of "climate change" is a PR disaster that desparately needs its conversation redefined.
scarejunba 7y ago
Any modern epistemological system results in increased posterior probabilities of the AGW hypothesis given the evidence we have so far to the point that extraordinary evidence is required to nudge that probability. This is no different than saying "the science is settled on the Earth being flat - it's not". That's not a dramatic cover-up of the flatness of the Earth or a rejection of the scientific method. It's an expression of surprise on the part of an informed person who looks at the balance of evidence for falsifiable theories that fail to falsify. In the end, we all have our own epistemological systems but if yours does not lead to high probabilities for AGW, your model probably doesn't have high predictive value for reality. That doesn't mean I'm mad at you. I'm just as surprised you'd waste your time on it as much as I'm surprised other people waste their time on other stuff like flat earthism, creationism, etc.
jlebar 7y ago
> making authoritarian statements like "it is settled" If you are allowed to have and share your opinion that it's not settled science, would you be willing to elaborate on how it is "authoritarianism" for a scientist to share their opinion that it is? > These bots being more proof of the case With tweets like "Get lost, Greta"?
- kls 7y ago
  They come from a position of trusted authority. I am just some hack on the internet. It is not settled, it may be settled that the world is warming, it may be even settled that we are contributing a significant potion of it but the impacts are not settled and there is intentional bad science putting the blame of climate change to deflect it from real environmental poisoning. Claiming it's settled yields victory to said bad science as they get to parrot that it is settled and no more action is needed.
  - jlebar 7y ago
    Genuinely trying to understand your position here: It's "authoritarian" for a scientist to claim, based on their good faith expert opinion, that a particular scientific question is "more or less settled" if...you disagree with their assessment? Surely that's not what you believe?
    - kls 7y ago
      They are an authority, Saying it is settled tried to end the debate in the laymen eyes. OK maybe I can draw an analogy maybe it will just be more confusing but I will try. I see it as akin to a police officer telling you, you are under arrest. Where I am just screaming citizens arrest at you. In the one case you stop what you are doing, and don't make any sudden moves it's the end of the conversation you are under arrest by the authorities. In the other case you are just looking at me thinking what the hell is this crazy person screaming citizens arrest and expecting me to freeze. In the case of the cop, I expect him to not go around telling people they are under arrest unless the are certain the person needs to be arrested. They have a moral duty to not try to arrest innocent people. They come from a position of authority. Scientist are like this their words hold more weight, I understand that it can be aggravating to believe something and just want to shut down the conversation but that is not beneficial.
cryoshon 7y ago
>there are clearly agendas on both sides and everything needs to be validated one side features scientists who have been developing the same story for nearly 40 years with ever-greater detail. they don't have paid PR professionals or troll farms, but they have a body of facts, which, when taken as a whole, are unimpeachable in their prescription for what needs to happen to prevent future global warming. perhaps you may say that an individual paper's finding is refuted. sure. we expect that to occur with no fewer than 5% of all papers within most fields. the other ~95%, while imperfect, will continue to support the same broad stroke conclusions as well as many of the most relevant supporting details. in contrast to this standard of evidence, the other side features people who stand to lose money by allowing the body of facts to be acted upon. they have the money to pay PR professionals and make advertising campaigns, etc. they can pay their own scientists to do some fake research, but the cat is already so far out of the bag that it's career suicide to do so. in other words, their position is so hopelessly lost that they can't even find credible fall guys within the field of climate science to make up nonsense which supports their agenda. think about that for a minute. in this situation, we should expect the scientists to continue doing what they've always done: developing their research to be ever-more comprehensive and detailed, thereby giving the other side a smaller and smaller space to live in. in reaction, the other side will try to muddy the waters as much as possible for as long as possible to give them time to pivot their money to somewhere where the scientists can't harm it by exposing facts. this is what they're doing with the bot campaigns: repeating talking points like you have to muddy the waters and prevent meaningful organized action which would harm their financial bottom line. it's appallingly clear. this isn't really a situation where you talk about "both sides" having agenda and "needing to validate" everything. there's no contest anymore. everything has been validated. the agenda of one of the sides has been exposed as utterly devoid of merit, not to mention egregiously underhanded. the agenda of the scientists has been simply to be listened to all along, so that the common good can be serviced rather than discarded.
- datashow 7y ago
  > one side features scientists ...... they don't have paid PR professionals or troll farms. Who are "they"? If they means scientists, I can totally believe they don't have paid PR professionals or troll farms. If they means the "side", do they really have no paid PR professionals or troll farms? I doubt it. The article itself reported 5% bots on this "side".
Angostura 7y ago
> I am skeptical about all the doomsday predictions, as all of them have been flat out wrong Can you give an example of a ‘doomsday prediction’ made by a mainstream scientific body - rather than a commentator or politician - that has proved to be flat out wrong?
- kls 7y ago
  National Climate Assessment (No. 4), May 2014. "Climate change is contributing to increases in wildfires across the western US and Alaska." US Forest Facts and Historical Trends "the U.S. forest area has decreased by less than 1.4 percent over the 90 years from 1907 to 1997" https://file.scirp.org/Html/1-8601410_67248.htm?utm_campaign=8504943975_93629807025&utm_source=lixiaofang&utm_medium=adwords&gclid=Cj0KCQiAnL7yBRD3ARIsAJp_oLbjip4C5uRfMvG58DZBmRDVtokXIUMLTSZRcnd2X9PU8E2VmsbFUYAaAlp9EALw_wcB https://file.scirp.org/Html/1-8601410_67248.htm?utm_campaign... There are also countless predictions on the intensity of hurricanes by scientist related to climate change. But one has to ignore almost 100 years of research on the natural 9 to 13 year cycles of hurricanes to make the models work.
  - stonogo 7y ago
    Unforested land burns too. It burns frequently, in fact. And it tends to destroy crops and kill people. The scirp.org paper you linked, which was published in 'iBusiness,' a journal "dedicated to the latest advancement of Internet and Business," spent a bit of time railing against single-variable studies and then proceeded to make claims based on Google searches for statistics, then evaluating them in context of a single variable. For instance, he measures the slope of the fit-line of the number of wildfires, but completely ignores the size of those fires -- which has increased measurably since the 1980s. It's an easy mistake to make, especially since the author is not a climate expert, a wildfire expert, or any other kind of physical scientist -- he's an economist. I'm hoping it was a mistake, despite his footnotes being a stream of angry ranting about unnamed malpracticioners and assumptions about other people's motives. This kind of surface-skimming faux-literature-review is extremely harmful. I'm confident in that assessment of your selection of this paper because you left the adwords UTM tag in your link. A better paper to support your position would have been this one: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-010-9858-x https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-010-9858-... which posits with some evidence that some forms of climate change may reduce burn fuel, via killing off vegetation that is sensitive to temperature change. Here is an example of the other side, which focuses on a specific bioregion and does consider both incidence rate and size of fires: https://www.pnas.org/content/108/32/13165 https://www.pnas.org/content/108/32/13165 Both of these papers, incidentally, were referred in the very same fourth National Climate Assessment. Please evaluate the qualifications of the people whose papers you read to inform your opinions.
jchrisa 7y ago
Even if going gonzo with carbon emissions was fine for the planet, a carbon tax plus basic income would be better than the status quo, for a multitude of reasons.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  I've long been supportive of a carbon tax, but why would that be a good thing in your hypothetical world where carbon emissions don't affect global climate? The public health costs of local air pollution are criminally underrated, but CO2 is far from the most relevant emission there.
voldacar 7y ago
I don't think it's scientists so much as it is redditors and "I fucking love science!!!" people
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mturmon 7y ago
This comment is typical of HN climate-change skeptics: - "Warming is real", *but* - "skeptical of all the [unnamed] doomsday predictions", *and* - dropping a few random facts about specific puffed-up "discrepancies" You're way in the weeds, and you're not an expert. The place for technically-literate outsiders to start is https://nca2018.globalchange.gov https://nca2018.globalchange.gov, or the science-specific report linked on that page. The folks who compiled those reports specifically waded through the literature and summarize it technically.
- kls 7y ago
  You are right I am not an expert, that being said I have a confidence in my scientific background enough to weight a science as a whole, and there is no doubt that climate science is not on par with say physics or chemistry. I think this validates my skeptical position, until it matures into a more solid science that can make accurate predictions. That being said, I am not an expert and I do not plan to become an expert, but I will remain skeptical until repeatable outcomes can be produced. Just because my post fits a pattern does not negate the need for those answers. I will freely admit that I have developed a bias and my skepticism comes from personal experience with reef restoration and the sugar industry funding climate papers to deflect from nutrient reef poisoning. It has shown me that there is an agenda on the other side as well. To note though my skepticism is more towards the predictive outcomes and not towards there actually being something to climate change.
  - snowwrestler 7y ago
    I just want to point out that the theory of human-caused climate change rests directly on our understanding of thermodynamics, and was first proposed by scientists who were initially developing that understanding over 100 years ago. To say that climate science is not on par with physics does not make sense; it's like saying a wooden house is not on par with a piece of wood.
    - kls 7y ago
      Climatology is not thermodynamics just as organic chemistry is not biology. To equate them is a false dichotomy. Just because one builds on the other does not mean that they are as fundamentally sound in their predictive ability.
grecy 7y ago
> I am skeptical about all the doomsday predictions If you want to see how fast it changing, come on up to Alaska and the Yukon and spend a few years if you want to see it with your own eyes. I saw a glacier in 2009 that has now receded 8 kilometers. Alaska sets high temperature records every summer now. Or, you know, go hang out in Australia.
tasty_freeze 7y ago
> Personally I think warming is real (I am skeptical about all the doomsday predictions, as all of them have been flat out wrong.) You aren't nearly as informed as you think you are, and you are badly misinformed. I strongly recommend a dose of youtube channel potholer54. "Youtube!" I can hear you scream. Just a second. The channel is run by an actual science journalist with a degree in geology. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hadfield_(journalist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hadfield_(journalist)) However, what makes his channel unique is that he repeatedly says things like, "I'm just a dummy, so don't trust me. However, I'm experienced in researching primary sources and I can read, and you can too." Typically his climate videos are debunking the denier videos, and he does in a calm, humorous manner. He cites all of his sources, unlike the vast majority of the denier sites. Also, he collects no money for his efforts and has a low key suggestion if you care to donate to a charity. He doesn't post frequently because most of his videos are well researched (sometimes he puts out quick responses to counter claims made to his videos). Watch a few of his videos and you will realize that there is a ton of BS out there, not only from the deniers, but from the popular press doing a crappy job in science communication. For example, some prominent denier, like Anthony Watts, will say, hey, it is 2020 and the scientists said such and such island would be underwater by now. The speaker is very self confident and mocking, and scores multiple hits simultaneously: (a) the scientists are wrong, (b) the media is lying to you, (c) we are superior to all those clucking hens. Potholer will find the actual research being talked about (which Watt doesn't give the attribution for) and points out all the ways Watts is wrong. For instance, he picks one paper which had the most aggressive timeline and cites that as "climate scientists" making the claim. Second, the original paper gave a range of 2030-2060, and again the blogger cites the lower end and never mentions that it was part of a range. Third, the paper never said the island would be under water. It said that the island would become uninhabitable because of sea water rising enough to creep into the freshwater storage on the island. But it gets worse, because not is the one blogger wrong, every other climate denier will refer to that blogger in their own writings, and again, none of them actually read the original paper. OK, I just did a quick scan of recent videos and start with this one, since it is exactly on the subject of your claim. "How accurate are predictions about climate?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugwqXKHLrGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugwqXKHLrGk
specialist 7y ago
Baseline: 4% of people believe lizard people run govt. A mere 3% of scientists doubt climate crisis. Given how lucrative skepticism is, I'd expect many more defectors.

by kls 7y ago

orev 7y ago

A theory is like a library full of books and papers. You can pull down any book and probably find something to argue about in it, but the overall story told by all the books all clearly point to the same conclusion.

kls 7y ago
I don't disagree which is why I mentioned that I felt the data does show an arrow towards the world warming, but that is a personal feeling based on a personal assumptive conclusion based on the research I have seen. There are still serious questions about how much of that is natural cycle and how much we are doing. We know we are doing some, we don't know how much, but we keep saying that this is settled science when more valid questions need to be asked.
- cryoshon 7y ago
  >serious questions about how much of that is natural cycle and how much we are doing. We know we are doing some, we don't know how much, but we keep saying that this is settled science when more valid questions need to be asked your statement is false, and it's a climate denialist talking point which was important enough such that climate scientists systematically examined and refuted it in the context of numerous pieces of peer-reviewed literature: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044005 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044... ""Despite a high degree of consensus amongst publishing climate researchers that global warming is occurring and that it is anthropogenic, this discourse [that humans may not be responsible for some degree of climate change], promoted largely by non-scientists, has had a significant impact on public perceptions of the issue, fostering the impression that elite opinion is divided as to the nature and extent of the threat [when it is not]."
  - kls 7y ago
    It's not false, the article you link to provide no data, nor does any of it's references that I checked and basically just states a lot of scientist agree. Which I don't deny, I have my skepticism as to how accurate climatology and climate physics disciplines are but that is a personal view, i don't view it as a pseudoscience but I put a lot less faith in it than I do mathmatics. The article sited provides no data that would break down CO2 contributions based on natural phenomenon vs emissions. The only study I know of that does is the tree ring data paper and it has since been found to have significant mathematical errors and in need of revision based on the findings. This article is a sociology piece at best describing the natures of how denialist and right wing fanatics operate and how climate scientist tend to agree, but even with that there are social implications of funding, group think etc.
- UncleMeat 7y ago
  > There are still serious questions about how much of that is natural cycle and how much we are doing. People have looked everywhere for alternative explanations and failed.
aldoushuxley001 7y ago
I don't know what libraries you frequent, but most of the ones I go to have books with wildly varying conclusions...

JadeNB 7y ago

> "always kind of wondering why there’s persistent levels of denial about something that the science is more or less settled on" > It seems like we have lost all rational and respect for skepticism and correlating verification in science. There is a huge gap between skepticism and denialism. The deniers aren't out there gathering competing data; they are simply declaring 'no' to established data.

aalleavitch 7y ago

This is nonsense. The only agenda here is money. Those bots are all twisting discussion towards climate denialism and in support of fossil fuel companies. You can draw a straight line to mass disinformation from the budgets of major oil companies. It's a PR expense, and why wouldn't they? On the margin it's in their interests and they won't have to foot the bill from any sort of environmental issues that follow. They don't have to care if the world burns. You can't have pure science in a world where financial incentives are towards lies and obfuscation. This isn't justifiable skepticism, this is information warfare.

aldoushuxley001 7y ago
Yup, lotta money funding climate alarmism. The whole university industry seems tainted by it now.
- aalleavitch 7y ago
  How much money do you think is in the "university industry" as opposed to the oil industry? Hint hint: one lives on charitable donations from the other. Seriously, the idea that environmental activists and professors could ever hold a candle to the resources of an $4.6 trillion industry is laughable.
  - rednixion 7y ago
    Pretty sure tuition and tax payer funds are not in the "charitable donation" category
  - kls 7y ago
    I know a thing or two about reef research. I don't know much about oil or university money but I do know reef research and destruction being linked to climate change has seen significant investment by the sugarcane industry. We know that nitrogen fertilizers are killing the reefs by leaching needed chemicals from them. There is certainly money in the other direction, how much is unknown but deflecting environmental damage onto climate change is certainly big business for some industries damaging the environment.

jorblumesea 7y ago

> It seems like we have lost all rational and respect for skepticism and correlating verification in science. I think many non-scientific people are weighing in on "science" like they have any understanding on the subject. The fact that almost every climate scientist agrees with each other about climate change is pretty telling. Most of the "skeptics" are uneducated people who do not understand basics of science, even less complex climate systems. Others are malicious actors who are on the pay of corporate interests, as this article points out. I have yet to see a truly skeptical point come from an actual scientist (that isn't on a corporate payroll).

Loughla 7y ago
Wait for the response to your statement from a seemingly naive person. It will be something about how a majority of scientists once believed in [insert disproven theory here]. It will be made in seeming naivete, but will 100% be from a bad actor. Across all websites, across all platforms, whenever someone says "well almost every climate scientist agrees with this", somebody crawls out to make that statement.

awb 7y ago

If CO2 had a color or a smell it would be settled. Conspiracy theories tend to play upon things that people can't easily directly observe.

allovernow 7y ago

>It is a pet peeve of mine when I hear a scientist parrot this trope I don't think scientists are the ones saying that. At the very least you're right that they shouldn't be. It's unscientific. Laymen tend to underestimate the complexity and chaotic nature of climate and climate models. And the very limited time window with which we are analyzing a phenomenon which occurs on hundred thousand to million+ year scales. And the number of tweakable parameters in climate models which give you the freedom to [accidentally] get just about any results you want while simultaneously backfitting data... It's actually a little more complicated than CO2->warming->catastrophe. In the same vein, anyone who says petroleum companies knew about climate change in the 80s is being foolish. No one "knew" about climate change in the 80s. It took 30 years of science to get from that conjecture to the point where we're anywhere near certain of what's going on. And even now the science is clearly biased - what does the field do, for example, when there is consistent evidence that it's predictions are far too warm? They go digging for explanations like oceanic absorption, rather than adjust their models. Geoscience, by it's nature as a non experimental soft science which can only extrapolate from sparse historic data, is messy. Industry geoscience is one of the highest paid and cushiest industries, far more funding and maturity of theory and tooling than that of climate science - yet we regularly drill $100MM-$200MM dry holes across industry. Climate science is in an even worse state - you have no dry holes to tell you you're wrong. To say this is settled science is foolish.

aalleavitch 7y ago
We don't have the luxury of eating the investment on a "dry hole" when this is a global phenomenon. How is the path of highest caution not warranted here? What exactly are we losing by aggressively switching to renewables? This isn't an academic question. It is an incredibly practical one.
- refurb 7y ago
  If we spend hundreds of billions of dollars fighting CO2 (capturing it, moving to more expensive energy sources, etc), that’s hundreds of billions of dollars that could have been spent elsewhere, on other problems like cancer, heart disease, etc.

jimbob45 7y ago

The problem is that global warming is too large a subject to be distilled down for debate. It's like cancer. Can one cure cancer? Maybe, but not in one blow. Even discussing something like breast cancer versus colon cancer is practically discussing apples versus oranges. The same for global warming: discussing the hole in the ozone layer versus acid rain versus rising temperatures versus melting polar ice caps doesn't feel like you're talking about anything that fits comfortably under the umbrella of "global warming" or even "climate change". That is to say, the concept of "climate change" is a PR disaster that desparately needs its conversation redefined.

scarejunba 7y ago

Any modern epistemological system results in increased posterior probabilities of the AGW hypothesis given the evidence we have so far to the point that extraordinary evidence is required to nudge that probability. This is no different than saying "the science is settled on the Earth being flat - it's not". That's not a dramatic cover-up of the flatness of the Earth or a rejection of the scientific method. It's an expression of surprise on the part of an informed person who looks at the balance of evidence for falsifiable theories that fail to falsify. In the end, we all have our own epistemological systems but if yours does not lead to high probabilities for AGW, your model probably doesn't have high predictive value for reality. That doesn't mean I'm mad at you. I'm just as surprised you'd waste your time on it as much as I'm surprised other people waste their time on other stuff like flat earthism, creationism, etc.

jlebar 7y ago

> making authoritarian statements like "it is settled" If you are allowed to have and share your opinion that it's not settled science, would you be willing to elaborate on how it is "authoritarianism" for a scientist to share their opinion that it is? > These bots being more proof of the case With tweets like "Get lost, Greta"?

kls 7y ago
They come from a position of trusted authority. I am just some hack on the internet. It is not settled, it may be settled that the world is warming, it may be even settled that we are contributing a significant potion of it but the impacts are not settled and there is intentional bad science putting the blame of climate change to deflect it from real environmental poisoning. Claiming it's settled yields victory to said bad science as they get to parrot that it is settled and no more action is needed.
- jlebar 7y ago
  Genuinely trying to understand your position here: It's "authoritarian" for a scientist to claim, based on their good faith expert opinion, that a particular scientific question is "more or less settled" if...you disagree with their assessment? Surely that's not what you believe?
  - kls 7y ago
    They are an authority, Saying it is settled tried to end the debate in the laymen eyes. OK maybe I can draw an analogy maybe it will just be more confusing but I will try. I see it as akin to a police officer telling you, you are under arrest. Where I am just screaming citizens arrest at you. In the one case you stop what you are doing, and don't make any sudden moves it's the end of the conversation you are under arrest by the authorities. In the other case you are just looking at me thinking what the hell is this crazy person screaming citizens arrest and expecting me to freeze. In the case of the cop, I expect him to not go around telling people they are under arrest unless the are certain the person needs to be arrested. They have a moral duty to not try to arrest innocent people. They come from a position of authority. Scientist are like this their words hold more weight, I understand that it can be aggravating to believe something and just want to shut down the conversation but that is not beneficial.

cryoshon 7y ago

>there are clearly agendas on both sides and everything needs to be validated one side features scientists who have been developing the same story for nearly 40 years with ever-greater detail. they don't have paid PR professionals or troll farms, but they have a body of facts, which, when taken as a whole, are unimpeachable in their prescription for what needs to happen to prevent future global warming. perhaps you may say that an individual paper's finding is refuted. sure. we expect that to occur with no fewer than 5% of all papers within most fields. the other ~95%, while imperfect, will continue to support the same broad stroke conclusions as well as many of the most relevant supporting details. in contrast to this standard of evidence, the other side features people who stand to lose money by allowing the body of facts to be acted upon. they have the money to pay PR professionals and make advertising campaigns, etc. they can pay their own scientists to do some fake research, but the cat is already so far out of the bag that it's career suicide to do so. in other words, their position is so hopelessly lost that they can't even find credible fall guys within the field of climate science to make up nonsense which supports their agenda. think about that for a minute. in this situation, we should expect the scientists to continue doing what they've always done: developing their research to be ever-more comprehensive and detailed, thereby giving the other side a smaller and smaller space to live in. in reaction, the other side will try to muddy the waters as much as possible for as long as possible to give them time to pivot their money to somewhere where the scientists can't harm it by exposing facts. this is what they're doing with the bot campaigns: repeating talking points like you have to muddy the waters and prevent meaningful organized action which would harm their financial bottom line. it's appallingly clear. this isn't really a situation where you talk about "both sides" having agenda and "needing to validate" everything. there's no contest anymore. everything has been validated. the agenda of one of the sides has been exposed as utterly devoid of merit, not to mention egregiously underhanded. the agenda of the scientists has been simply to be listened to all along, so that the common good can be serviced rather than discarded.

datashow 7y ago
> one side features scientists ...... they don't have paid PR professionals or troll farms. Who are "they"? If they means scientists, I can totally believe they don't have paid PR professionals or troll farms. If they means the "side", do they really have no paid PR professionals or troll farms? I doubt it. The article itself reported 5% bots on this "side".

Angostura 7y ago

> I am skeptical about all the doomsday predictions, as all of them have been flat out wrong Can you give an example of a ‘doomsday prediction’ made by a mainstream scientific body - rather than a commentator or politician - that has proved to be flat out wrong?

kls 7y ago
National Climate Assessment (No. 4), May 2014. "Climate change is contributing to increases in wildfires across the western US and Alaska." US Forest Facts and Historical Trends "the U.S. forest area has decreased by less than 1.4 percent over the 90 years from 1907 to 1997" https://file.scirp.org/Html/1-8601410_67248.htm?utm_campaign=8504943975_93629807025&utm_source=lixiaofang&utm_medium=adwords&gclid=Cj0KCQiAnL7yBRD3ARIsAJp_oLbjip4C5uRfMvG58DZBmRDVtokXIUMLTSZRcnd2X9PU8E2VmsbFUYAaAlp9EALw_wcB https://file.scirp.org/Html/1-8601410_67248.htm?utm_campaign... There are also countless predictions on the intensity of hurricanes by scientist related to climate change. But one has to ignore almost 100 years of research on the natural 9 to 13 year cycles of hurricanes to make the models work.
- stonogo 7y ago
  Unforested land burns too. It burns frequently, in fact. And it tends to destroy crops and kill people. The scirp.org paper you linked, which was published in 'iBusiness,' a journal "dedicated to the latest advancement of Internet and Business," spent a bit of time railing against single-variable studies and then proceeded to make claims based on Google searches for statistics, then evaluating them in context of a single variable. For instance, he measures the slope of the fit-line of the number of wildfires, but completely ignores the size of those fires -- which has increased measurably since the 1980s. It's an easy mistake to make, especially since the author is not a climate expert, a wildfire expert, or any other kind of physical scientist -- he's an economist. I'm hoping it was a mistake, despite his footnotes being a stream of angry ranting about unnamed malpracticioners and assumptions about other people's motives. This kind of surface-skimming faux-literature-review is extremely harmful. I'm confident in that assessment of your selection of this paper because you left the adwords UTM tag in your link. A better paper to support your position would have been this one: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-010-9858-x https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-010-9858-... which posits with some evidence that some forms of climate change may reduce burn fuel, via killing off vegetation that is sensitive to temperature change. Here is an example of the other side, which focuses on a specific bioregion and does consider both incidence rate and size of fires: https://www.pnas.org/content/108/32/13165 https://www.pnas.org/content/108/32/13165 Both of these papers, incidentally, were referred in the very same fourth National Climate Assessment. Please evaluate the qualifications of the people whose papers you read to inform your opinions.

jchrisa 7y ago

Even if going gonzo with carbon emissions was fine for the planet, a carbon tax plus basic income would be better than the status quo, for a multitude of reasons.

wutbrodo 7y ago
I've long been supportive of a carbon tax, but why would that be a good thing in your hypothetical world where carbon emissions don't affect global climate? The public health costs of local air pollution are criminally underrated, but CO2 is far from the most relevant emission there.

voldacar 7y ago

I don't think it's scientists so much as it is redditors and "I fucking love science!!!" people

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mturmon 7y ago

This comment is typical of HN climate-change skeptics: - "Warming is real", *but* - "skeptical of all the [unnamed] doomsday predictions", *and* - dropping a few random facts about specific puffed-up "discrepancies" You're way in the weeds, and you're not an expert. The place for technically-literate outsiders to start is https://nca2018.globalchange.gov https://nca2018.globalchange.gov, or the science-specific report linked on that page. The folks who compiled those reports specifically waded through the literature and summarize it technically.

kls 7y ago
You are right I am not an expert, that being said I have a confidence in my scientific background enough to weight a science as a whole, and there is no doubt that climate science is not on par with say physics or chemistry. I think this validates my skeptical position, until it matures into a more solid science that can make accurate predictions. That being said, I am not an expert and I do not plan to become an expert, but I will remain skeptical until repeatable outcomes can be produced. Just because my post fits a pattern does not negate the need for those answers. I will freely admit that I have developed a bias and my skepticism comes from personal experience with reef restoration and the sugar industry funding climate papers to deflect from nutrient reef poisoning. It has shown me that there is an agenda on the other side as well. To note though my skepticism is more towards the predictive outcomes and not towards there actually being something to climate change.
- snowwrestler 7y ago
  I just want to point out that the theory of human-caused climate change rests directly on our understanding of thermodynamics, and was first proposed by scientists who were initially developing that understanding over 100 years ago. To say that climate science is not on par with physics does not make sense; it's like saying a wooden house is not on par with a piece of wood.
  - kls 7y ago
    Climatology is not thermodynamics just as organic chemistry is not biology. To equate them is a false dichotomy. Just because one builds on the other does not mean that they are as fundamentally sound in their predictive ability.

grecy 7y ago

> I am skeptical about all the doomsday predictions If you want to see how fast it changing, come on up to Alaska and the Yukon and spend a few years if you want to see it with your own eyes. I saw a glacier in 2009 that has now receded 8 kilometers. Alaska sets high temperature records every summer now. Or, you know, go hang out in Australia.

tasty_freeze 7y ago

> Personally I think warming is real (I am skeptical about all the doomsday predictions, as all of them have been flat out wrong.) You aren't nearly as informed as you think you are, and you are badly misinformed. I strongly recommend a dose of youtube channel potholer54. "Youtube!" I can hear you scream. Just a second. The channel is run by an actual science journalist with a degree in geology. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hadfield_(journalist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hadfield_(journalist)) However, what makes his channel unique is that he repeatedly says things like, "I'm just a dummy, so don't trust me. However, I'm experienced in researching primary sources and I can read, and you can too." Typically his climate videos are debunking the denier videos, and he does in a calm, humorous manner. He cites all of his sources, unlike the vast majority of the denier sites. Also, he collects no money for his efforts and has a low key suggestion if you care to donate to a charity. He doesn't post frequently because most of his videos are well researched (sometimes he puts out quick responses to counter claims made to his videos). Watch a few of his videos and you will realize that there is a ton of BS out there, not only from the deniers, but from the popular press doing a crappy job in science communication. For example, some prominent denier, like Anthony Watts, will say, hey, it is 2020 and the scientists said such and such island would be underwater by now. The speaker is very self confident and mocking, and scores multiple hits simultaneously: (a) the scientists are wrong, (b) the media is lying to you, (c) we are superior to all those clucking hens. Potholer will find the actual research being talked about (which Watt doesn't give the attribution for) and points out all the ways Watts is wrong. For instance, he picks one paper which had the most aggressive timeline and cites that as "climate scientists" making the claim. Second, the original paper gave a range of 2030-2060, and again the blogger cites the lower end and never mentions that it was part of a range. Third, the paper never said the island would be under water. It said that the island would become uninhabitable because of sea water rising enough to creep into the freshwater storage on the island. But it gets worse, because not is the one blogger wrong, every other climate denier will refer to that blogger in their own writings, and again, none of them actually read the original paper. OK, I just did a quick scan of recent videos and start with this one, since it is exactly on the subject of your claim. "How accurate are predictions about climate?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugwqXKHLrGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugwqXKHLrGk

specialist 7y ago

Baseline: 4% of people believe lizard people run govt. A mere 3% of scientists doubt climate crisis. Given how lucrative skepticism is, I'd expect many more defectors.