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To my mind, it is "correlation" that is being posed as a "causation". Science is never certain, though the Climate Scientists are absolutely certain. See the di

To my mind, it is "correlation" that is being posed as a "causation". Science is never certain, though the Climate Scientists are absolutely certain. See the disconnect? It is more likely this alarmist/doomsday position will be ignored completely by the public (the boy who cried wolf scenario). A better framing may be to say something like this: "All physical systems of this planet are interconnected. While we cannot be absolutely certain the worsening of weather is related to our behavior, there is mounting evidence that our behavior does, to a great extent, influence the climate. So it is in our hands to alter our behavior so the future generations can enjoy the earth like we do today. We owe it to them."

kergonath 5y ago
> To my mind, it is "correlation" that is being posed as a "causation". Science is never certain, though the Climate Scientists are absolutely certain. See the disconnect? It is more likely this alarmist/doomsday position will be ignored completely by the public (the boy who cried wolf scenario). This is very reductionist. Science is not certain, but we are talking about ~90% certainty here. What we cannot do is point at a given specific event and say “this was caused by climate change”. But we have a significant statistical sampling of weather events and we definitely can say that this is unprecedented and caused by global warming. Simple Bayesian statistics show that what we keep seeing year after year is all but impossible without sustained global warming. > A better framing may be to say something like this: "All physical systems of this planet are interconnected. While we cannot be absolutely certain the worsening of weather is related to our behavior, there is mounting evidence that our behavior does, to a great extent, influence the climate. So it is in our hands to alter our behavior so the future generations can enjoy the earth like we do today. We owe it to them." That is not a better phrasing at all. You’ve lost all of your audience by the end of the first sentence. A single hurricane is not caused by global warming (though some events, like the melting of the permafrost, the melting of Greenland’s ice, or the collapse of Antarctica ice sheets definitely are); but collectively all these freak events and these 1,000 years floods every other years are consequences of global warming. It is too late for the future generation to “enjoy earth as we know it”, and trying to make it sound like it is a possibility is doing humanity a disservice. That ship sailed, the objective now should be to do everything we could to mitigate the effects of what we’ve already done. We need more than a little urgency to do this.

kergonath 5y ago

> To my mind, it is "correlation" that is being posed as a "causation". Science is never certain, though the Climate Scientists are absolutely certain. See the disconnect? It is more likely this alarmist/doomsday position will be ignored completely by the public (the boy who cried wolf scenario). This is very reductionist. Science is not certain, but we are talking about ~90% certainty here. What we cannot do is point at a given specific event and say “this was caused by climate change”. But we have a significant statistical sampling of weather events and we definitely can say that this is unprecedented and caused by global warming. Simple Bayesian statistics show that what we keep seeing year after year is all but impossible without sustained global warming. > A better framing may be to say something like this: "All physical systems of this planet are interconnected. While we cannot be absolutely certain the worsening of weather is related to our behavior, there is mounting evidence that our behavior does, to a great extent, influence the climate. So it is in our hands to alter our behavior so the future generations can enjoy the earth like we do today. We owe it to them." That is not a better phrasing at all. You’ve lost all of your audience by the end of the first sentence. A single hurricane is not caused by global warming (though some events, like the melting of the permafrost, the melting of Greenland’s ice, or the collapse of Antarctica ice sheets definitely are); but collectively all these freak events and these 1,000 years floods every other years are consequences of global warming. It is too late for the future generation to “enjoy earth as we know it”, and trying to make it sound like it is a possibility is doing humanity a disservice. That ship sailed, the objective now should be to do everything we could to mitigate the effects of what we’ve already done. We need more than a little urgency to do this.