7 ms·

Did the plethora of scientists claiming that it was an issue not factor in at all?

passivate 5y ago
We should listen to the scientists because they're the best we've got. But at the same time, we need to be humble and leave room for them to be wrong. This is where science shines - we should always feel comfortable shedding incorrect models/theories and embrace new ideas that might better explain the data. So yes, ACC is real, but we should still encourage honest people to investigate and propose a better explanation if there is one. Drowning out honest voices makes the entire scientific community look bad. (Certainly, we should not give a platform to dishonest, known frauds)
api 5y ago
The scientists seemed to have a single political leaning, which made me more skeptical. I saw it as religious apologetics for green ideology. The presence of any strong uniform ideology makes me extremely skeptical just like political interest does. I'd summarize as: I assume that strong ideological beliefs or political motives make people irrational, dishonest, and untrustworthy.
- sebular 5y ago
  You assumed that there was a strong uniform ideology because scientists aligned with one political party, when in fact there was a strong uniform body of data which caused the scientists to agree. They aligned with one political party because it supported an objectively correct stance, while the other did not. Your heuristics utterly failed you, leaving you blind to a devastating truth at a critical moment. While you seem to be on the road to acknowledging the truth about climate change, I can only hope that you are also ready to let go of the flawed reasoning that set you so far back.
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  It's a scientific issue though, not a political one. You shouldn't ever have been evaluating it through the lens of politics. You fell into that one side vs the other political trap.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- imoverclocked 5y ago
  I'm not sure why you are being down-voted for voicing your position. Thanks for sharing it. I think that if we (as a society) can't find a way to communicate basic truths to all of us, we are probably doomed; There has to be a way for everyone to be able to say "1 + 1 = 2" and not have endless debate about it. Trusting the leaders that we elect is probably part of that equation... but that also means those leaders need to understand these basic truths (as truths) as well.
  - User23 5y ago
    > I'm not sure why you are being down-voted for voicing your position. The climate zealots here are extremely aggressive with the downvoting. And yes the description zealot is fair. Denier is their word for heretic. Another sign of zealotry is the inability to recognize nuance. For example my pointing out that climate zealots act like zealots is observably true, but their brains will shut down and immediately label me as a “denier” even though I’m entirely agnostic on the subject. I really don’t care. I have better things to spend my intellectual energy on than learning enough to evaluate whatever evidence there is for a problem I can’t solve. But there’s no greater offense to a zealot than saying you consider his particular obsession irrelevant. Yet another sign of zealotry is an extreme desire for others to publicly affirm one’s beliefs. This should help you understand why gp is poorly received. Edit: As for why I bothered to post about zealots, it’s because I believe zealotry of all sorts, including climate zealotry, is far more likely to cause mass harm than whatever issue the zealots are obsessed with. For example climate zealots are actually seriously planning to blot out the sun. What could possibly go wrong?
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      > For example my pointing out that climate zealots act like zealots is observably true That's a tautology. Perhaps you could explain who exactly is a 'climate zealot', and why, without just painting everyone who doesn't agree with you as one.
      - User23 5y ago
        First, “observably” means I was making an empirical claim. The basis may be tautological which is to say logically sound, but the key point is that I and others have observed zealotry. Second, persons who are climate zealots are the ones who act like zealots about climate, rather than pornography or any other number of hobbyhorses that zealots obsess over. I think it’s fair to assume most everyone reading this is educated and experienced enough to know what a zealot is. It’s not up to me who is or isn’t a climate zealot, the class is duck typed. So much for that. Third, I’m not painting people who disagree with me as anything, because there aren’t any people who disagree with me. How exactly does one disagree with someone who has no belief to disagree with? Edit: Thank you zealots for proving my point.
- redisman 5y ago
  > green ideology Not sure why you’re downvoted so hard. What do you consider the green ideology? I have honestly never heard of such a thing - at least not in something one could describe as a negative thing
- anyfoo 5y ago
  How did you even know that the political leaning of scientists in, say, Spain, Germany, or Japan were? How did you know that scientists worldwide had a "single political leaning", when they were in other countries with a different political makeup?
- psychometry 5y ago
  Both scientists and politicians are uniformly in support of round earth theory. Does that make you skeptical that the earth is round?
- notJim 5y ago
  > The scientists seemed to have a single political leaning, which made me more skeptical. I saw it as religious apologetics for green ideology. Why didn't you consider that their "green ideology" comes from their scientific findings. Shouldn't all of our ideologies/beliefs be informed by our understanding of the world?!
edgyquant 5y ago
To be frank the science is way less apocalyptic in nature than certain politicians and people tend to be rhetorically speaking. Climate change isn’t going to wipe out humanity or all life on Earth and I’ve never seen a legit paper even come close to suggesting this. Yet I hear it from Joe blow all the time.
- imoverclocked 5y ago
  While science does tend to keep estimates and language neutral to focus on hard facts, I would argue that those facts have pointed to catastrophe for a long time [1]. The language of fact is often dry and what most people (myself included) naturally pay attention to are loud/charismatic/flashy presentations of topics. Visualization [2] of data helps understand just how much area we can expect to lose around the coasts. These kinds of datasets are available and scientists do their best to publish them but what the public ultimately gets are articles filtered through journalists who often "translate" what they hear. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/26/world/scientists-urge-rapid-action-on-global-warming.html https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/26/world/scientists-urge-rap... [2] https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/#/layer/slr/10/-13585575.604734166/4504014.1542522935/12/satellite/none/0.8/2050/interHigh/midAccretion https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/#/layer/slr/10/-13585575.60473416...
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    I’m not saying that climate change isn’t a problem or that it isn’t going to effect a lot of people. But millions of refugees fleeing the coastal areas and crazy weather patterns are not the same as the end of all life on earth or the end of humanity. Those last two are the common rhetoric from non-scientist who doomsay about climate change and it turns people off or in the worst case makes them think it’s all lies.
- baron_harkonnen 5y ago
  Have you read anything by Peter Ward? He's a fairly well respected paleontologist who has argued convincingly in both papers and popular books (most notably "Under a Green Sky"), that sudden rises in CO2 have been linked to the majority of major (and many minor) mass extinctions throughout history. He's not alone in scientists out there who believe that rapid climate change is a serious existential risk to humans and many species on Earth. We are already likely in the 6th largest extinction event. If you relax from "extinction" to "collapse of industrial civilization" the number of people who have studied and argued this academically grows quite a bit. I agree that no one seriously believes the extinction of "all life on Earth" is possible, quite a bit survived the End Permian. But existential risk to humans an much life on Earth is not out of the question based on geological evidence. Additionally scientists are humans too, and it is hard for any of us to seriously consider existential threats as realistic. If there's been a bias in past IPCC reports it's been for optimism, frequently ignoring feedback while assuming large scale carbon capture and storage.

We should listen to the scientists because they're the best we've got. But at the same time, we need to be humble and leave room for them to be wrong. This is where science shines - we should always feel comfortable shedding incorrect models/theories and embrace new ideas that might better explain the data. So yes, ACC is real, but we should still encourage honest people to investigate and propose a better explanation if there is one. Drowning out honest voices makes the entire scientific community look bad. (Certainly, we should not give a platform to dishonest, known frauds)

api 5y ago

The scientists seemed to have a single political leaning, which made me more skeptical. I saw it as religious apologetics for green ideology. The presence of any strong uniform ideology makes me extremely skeptical just like political interest does. I'd summarize as: I assume that strong ideological beliefs or political motives make people irrational, dishonest, and untrustworthy.

sebular 5y ago
You assumed that there was a strong uniform ideology because scientists aligned with one political party, when in fact there was a strong uniform body of data which caused the scientists to agree. They aligned with one political party because it supported an objectively correct stance, while the other did not. Your heuristics utterly failed you, leaving you blind to a devastating truth at a critical moment. While you seem to be on the road to acknowledging the truth about climate change, I can only hope that you are also ready to let go of the flawed reasoning that set you so far back.
CydeWeys 5y ago
It's a scientific issue though, not a political one. You shouldn't ever have been evaluating it through the lens of politics. You fell into that one side vs the other political trap.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
imoverclocked 5y ago
I'm not sure why you are being down-voted for voicing your position. Thanks for sharing it. I think that if we (as a society) can't find a way to communicate basic truths to all of us, we are probably doomed; There has to be a way for everyone to be able to say "1 + 1 = 2" and not have endless debate about it. Trusting the leaders that we elect is probably part of that equation... but that also means those leaders need to understand these basic truths (as truths) as well.
- User23 5y ago
  > I'm not sure why you are being down-voted for voicing your position. The climate zealots here are extremely aggressive with the downvoting. And yes the description zealot is fair. Denier is their word for heretic. Another sign of zealotry is the inability to recognize nuance. For example my pointing out that climate zealots act like zealots is observably true, but their brains will shut down and immediately label me as a “denier” even though I’m entirely agnostic on the subject. I really don’t care. I have better things to spend my intellectual energy on than learning enough to evaluate whatever evidence there is for a problem I can’t solve. But there’s no greater offense to a zealot than saying you consider his particular obsession irrelevant. Yet another sign of zealotry is an extreme desire for others to publicly affirm one’s beliefs. This should help you understand why gp is poorly received. Edit: As for why I bothered to post about zealots, it’s because I believe zealotry of all sorts, including climate zealotry, is far more likely to cause mass harm than whatever issue the zealots are obsessed with. For example climate zealots are actually seriously planning to blot out the sun. What could possibly go wrong?
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    > For example my pointing out that climate zealots act like zealots is observably true That's a tautology. Perhaps you could explain who exactly is a 'climate zealot', and why, without just painting everyone who doesn't agree with you as one.
    - User23 5y ago
      First, “observably” means I was making an empirical claim. The basis may be tautological which is to say logically sound, but the key point is that I and others have observed zealotry. Second, persons who are climate zealots are the ones who act like zealots about climate, rather than pornography or any other number of hobbyhorses that zealots obsess over. I think it’s fair to assume most everyone reading this is educated and experienced enough to know what a zealot is. It’s not up to me who is or isn’t a climate zealot, the class is duck typed. So much for that. Third, I’m not painting people who disagree with me as anything, because there aren’t any people who disagree with me. How exactly does one disagree with someone who has no belief to disagree with? Edit: Thank you zealots for proving my point.
redisman 5y ago
> green ideology Not sure why you’re downvoted so hard. What do you consider the green ideology? I have honestly never heard of such a thing - at least not in something one could describe as a negative thing
anyfoo 5y ago
How did you even know that the political leaning of scientists in, say, Spain, Germany, or Japan were? How did you know that scientists worldwide had a "single political leaning", when they were in other countries with a different political makeup?
psychometry 5y ago
Both scientists and politicians are uniformly in support of round earth theory. Does that make you skeptical that the earth is round?
notJim 5y ago
> The scientists seemed to have a single political leaning, which made me more skeptical. I saw it as religious apologetics for green ideology. Why didn't you consider that their "green ideology" comes from their scientific findings. Shouldn't all of our ideologies/beliefs be informed by our understanding of the world?!

edgyquant 5y ago

To be frank the science is way less apocalyptic in nature than certain politicians and people tend to be rhetorically speaking. Climate change isn’t going to wipe out humanity or all life on Earth and I’ve never seen a legit paper even come close to suggesting this. Yet I hear it from Joe blow all the time.

imoverclocked 5y ago
While science does tend to keep estimates and language neutral to focus on hard facts, I would argue that those facts have pointed to catastrophe for a long time [1]. The language of fact is often dry and what most people (myself included) naturally pay attention to are loud/charismatic/flashy presentations of topics. Visualization [2] of data helps understand just how much area we can expect to lose around the coasts. These kinds of datasets are available and scientists do their best to publish them but what the public ultimately gets are articles filtered through journalists who often "translate" what they hear. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/26/world/scientists-urge-rapid-action-on-global-warming.html https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/26/world/scientists-urge-rap... [2] https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/#/layer/slr/10/-13585575.604734166/4504014.1542522935/12/satellite/none/0.8/2050/interHigh/midAccretion https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/#/layer/slr/10/-13585575.60473416...
- edgyquant 5y ago
  I’m not saying that climate change isn’t a problem or that it isn’t going to effect a lot of people. But millions of refugees fleeing the coastal areas and crazy weather patterns are not the same as the end of all life on earth or the end of humanity. Those last two are the common rhetoric from non-scientist who doomsay about climate change and it turns people off or in the worst case makes them think it’s all lies.
baron_harkonnen 5y ago
Have you read anything by Peter Ward? He's a fairly well respected paleontologist who has argued convincingly in both papers and popular books (most notably "Under a Green Sky"), that sudden rises in CO2 have been linked to the majority of major (and many minor) mass extinctions throughout history. He's not alone in scientists out there who believe that rapid climate change is a serious existential risk to humans and many species on Earth. We are already likely in the 6th largest extinction event. If you relax from "extinction" to "collapse of industrial civilization" the number of people who have studied and argued this academically grows quite a bit. I agree that no one seriously believes the extinction of "all life on Earth" is possible, quite a bit survived the End Permian. But existential risk to humans an much life on Earth is not out of the question based on geological evidence. Additionally scientists are humans too, and it is hard for any of us to seriously consider existential threats as realistic. If there's been a bias in past IPCC reports it's been for optimism, frequently ignoring feedback while assuming large scale carbon capture and storage.