6 ms·

Personally I am still not convinced climate change is completely caused by human activity. But I think we are accelerating a natural climate change. “Climate s

by tdrdt 5y ago

Personally I am still not convinced climate change is completely caused by human activity. But I think we are accelerating a natural climate change. “Climate simulations generally do not reproduce this kind of warming in the Arctic Ocean, meaning there’s an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms driving Atlantification,” My takeaway: because we still know so little about the mechanisms we should be more careful about our environment. It's very naive to pump tons of CO2 into the atmosphere without knowing what will happen.

w-j-w 5y ago
https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- WithinReason 5y ago
  That XKCD concatenated data from different studies with different temporal resolution, so it's very misleading. Past data came from Marcott et. all, who said: “the paleotemperature records used in our study have a temporal resolution of about 120 years on average.” “no temperature variability is preserved in our reconstruction at cycles shorter than 300 years, 50% is preserved at 1,000-year time scales, and nearly all is preserved at 2,000-year periods and longer.” Recent data came from yearly measurements, so preserves variability on a yearly basis. In other words, the way past data was determined, sudden changes would be hidden, like the temperature spike that it shows in the 20th century.
- xscott 5y ago
  Do you ever wonder why that comic only goes back 22,000 years? If it had gone back just a little more, say 25,000 years (a rounder number), it would be much more complicated to explain what happened. If it had gone back 400,000 years, which is basically nothing in geological scales, it would bring up some really interesting questions.
Proven 5y ago
> Personally I am still not convinced climate change is completely caused by human activity I'm not concerned at all. The real problem is that the silly efforts to "do something" are a collosal destruction of wealth while having no effect whatsoever on climate.
karmelapple 5y ago
Do you consider yourself in agreement with scientists that focus on studying the climate, or in disagreement with them? From what I understand, the scientific consensus [1] is not that climate change is completely caused by human activity, for the very reason you mention: it’s complicated. :) But like you also mention, the consensus is that we are we are at least partially causing it, even if it’s not “completely.” If we’re not causing 100% of the change, but perhaps 50%, I’m not sure if that’s much of a distinction in terms of what policy to change. Do you agree? [1] https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus - “Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.” It does not say or imply 100% due to those human activities. The ACS says, “The Earth’s climate is changing in response to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and particulate matter in the atmosphere, largely as the result of human activities.” Even there, it’s not saying completely, although it’s saying largely, which definitely has a distinction.
- tdrdt 5y ago
  Do you agree? Absolutely! I think we are very 'unlucky' (stupid) that we are accelerating a natural climate change that causes global warming.
  - peteradio 5y ago
    I think it's interesting to consider the scenario that humans are not causing the climate to change, but it is changing catastrophically nonetheless. How is our strategy different? Is it at all?
    - Zababa 5y ago
      I think in that case we would focus on ways to cope with climate change. For example, air conditionning everywhere would make sense. What's difficult about the current crisis is that you can't use too much energy to fight it without making it worse.
      - 5y ago
listless 5y ago
Let's just say for a moment that human-caused climate change is either minimal or even non-existent. At this point, would we even be able to admit that? So much political and scientific capital has been invested here that if we were to find out that maybe it's not what we think it is, it would do catastrophic damage to people's faith in science and institutions. And they are precariously positioned as is.
- soperj 5y ago
  It would do more damage to keep lying at that point.
- pjkundert 5y ago
  I think that the whole "Trust the Science" trope has already damaged people's faith in science and institutions. If we had, instead, encouraged "Trust the Scientific Method" and taught people to think and replicate claims, we'd be in a much better place. But, the lack of access to raw datasets (and the packaged code to transform them into claimed results) has led to a total "trust" environment, with no ability to "check scientist's work". What other outcome could we have expected?
  - q1w2 5y ago
    This was especially poignant in the spring of 2020 when scientists and health officials were telling people that masks were NOT effective at preventing covid-19 infection. ...and that such idiotic positions were amplified on social media and opposing opinions were silenced.
    - listless 5y ago
      People forget this ever happened. Our memory is short. I would add to this that cloth masks barely work at all, and yet we’re still encouraging people to wear them (1). It’s this kind of thing that we need to stop doing. Just tell people the truth and encourage them to wear a surgical mask. 1) https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210907/masks-limit-covid-spread-study https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210907/masks-limit-covid-s...
anonymouse008 5y ago
My biggest concern is the lack of attribution to earth’s orbit around the sun… if our Goldielocks zone is so precious, then one would expect any deviation in the orbit to deliver measurable differences in effects caused by earth’s proximity to the sun, no?
- boc 5y ago
  I used to think this until someone pointed out that the earth isn't a fixed distance from the Sun.. it varies throughout the orbit from a minimum of 91 million miles to a maximum of 94.5 million miles away. So there's already a 3.5 million mile margin of error in our Goldilocks zone... we'd have to go way beyond a few miles of annual change to feel any impact.
- sailingparrot 5y ago
  The Goldielocks zone is not tiny by human standard. It's goes from about a third of earth orbit's radius, to 10x it's radius. However climate would be extremely different at 0.3x, 1x and 10x, which I assume is what you really meant. The orbit of Earth is also extremely stable, barely changing, and with time the earth is getting farther from the Sun, not closer, as the Sun is slowing losing mass since it's burning fuel to produce heat and light. The speed at which we are getting further away is however ridiculously tiny: a few centimeters a year. To give you a sense of perspective, earth is closest to the sun in January and furthest in July. It is ~5 million kilometers nearer in January, and that only amount to about 6 or 7% more solar energy received. So, any deviation of earth orbit's over the past 100 years that would explain climate change would need to be massive. Not the kind of things we wouldn't notice, and also not the kind of things that would allow us to be talking about it today. If earth's orbit was changing that much, that would mean our solar system is not stable, probably making life impossible.
- waych 5y ago
  All energy on Earth is derived from the Sun. The amount of radiation from the Sun, and the fact that it isn't constant nor uniform, is conveniently ignored in all the climate science I've seen. It is also awfully very convenient to ignore the fact that Earth's climate has been ever changing since its beginning.

by tdrdt 5y ago

w-j-w 5y ago

https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/

WithinReason 5y ago
That XKCD concatenated data from different studies with different temporal resolution, so it's very misleading. Past data came from Marcott et. all, who said: “the paleotemperature records used in our study have a temporal resolution of about 120 years on average.” “no temperature variability is preserved in our reconstruction at cycles shorter than 300 years, 50% is preserved at 1,000-year time scales, and nearly all is preserved at 2,000-year periods and longer.” Recent data came from yearly measurements, so preserves variability on a yearly basis. In other words, the way past data was determined, sudden changes would be hidden, like the temperature spike that it shows in the 20th century.
xscott 5y ago
Do you ever wonder why that comic only goes back 22,000 years? If it had gone back just a little more, say 25,000 years (a rounder number), it would be much more complicated to explain what happened. If it had gone back 400,000 years, which is basically nothing in geological scales, it would bring up some really interesting questions.

Proven 5y ago

> Personally I am still not convinced climate change is completely caused by human activity I'm not concerned at all. The real problem is that the silly efforts to "do something" are a collosal destruction of wealth while having no effect whatsoever on climate.

karmelapple 5y ago

Do you consider yourself in agreement with scientists that focus on studying the climate, or in disagreement with them? From what I understand, the scientific consensus [1] is not that climate change is completely caused by human activity, for the very reason you mention: it’s complicated. :) But like you also mention, the consensus is that we are we are at least partially causing it, even if it’s not “completely.” If we’re not causing 100% of the change, but perhaps 50%, I’m not sure if that’s much of a distinction in terms of what policy to change. Do you agree? [1] https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus - “Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.” It does not say or imply 100% due to those human activities. The ACS says, “The Earth’s climate is changing in response to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and particulate matter in the atmosphere, largely as the result of human activities.” Even there, it’s not saying completely, although it’s saying largely, which definitely has a distinction.

tdrdt 5y ago
Do you agree? Absolutely! I think we are very 'unlucky' (stupid) that we are accelerating a natural climate change that causes global warming.
- peteradio 5y ago
  I think it's interesting to consider the scenario that humans are not causing the climate to change, but it is changing catastrophically nonetheless. How is our strategy different? Is it at all?
  - Zababa 5y ago
    I think in that case we would focus on ways to cope with climate change. For example, air conditionning everywhere would make sense. What's difficult about the current crisis is that you can't use too much energy to fight it without making it worse.
    - 5y ago

listless 5y ago

Let's just say for a moment that human-caused climate change is either minimal or even non-existent. At this point, would we even be able to admit that? So much political and scientific capital has been invested here that if we were to find out that maybe it's not what we think it is, it would do catastrophic damage to people's faith in science and institutions. And they are precariously positioned as is.

soperj 5y ago
It would do more damage to keep lying at that point.
pjkundert 5y ago
I think that the whole "Trust the Science" trope has already damaged people's faith in science and institutions. If we had, instead, encouraged "Trust the Scientific Method" and taught people to think and replicate claims, we'd be in a much better place. But, the lack of access to raw datasets (and the packaged code to transform them into claimed results) has led to a total "trust" environment, with no ability to "check scientist's work". What other outcome could we have expected?
- q1w2 5y ago
  This was especially poignant in the spring of 2020 when scientists and health officials were telling people that masks were NOT effective at preventing covid-19 infection. ...and that such idiotic positions were amplified on social media and opposing opinions were silenced.
  - listless 5y ago
    People forget this ever happened. Our memory is short. I would add to this that cloth masks barely work at all, and yet we’re still encouraging people to wear them (1). It’s this kind of thing that we need to stop doing. Just tell people the truth and encourage them to wear a surgical mask. 1) https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210907/masks-limit-covid-spread-study https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210907/masks-limit-covid-s...

anonymouse008 5y ago

My biggest concern is the lack of attribution to earth’s orbit around the sun… if our Goldielocks zone is so precious, then one would expect any deviation in the orbit to deliver measurable differences in effects caused by earth’s proximity to the sun, no?

boc 5y ago
I used to think this until someone pointed out that the earth isn't a fixed distance from the Sun.. it varies throughout the orbit from a minimum of 91 million miles to a maximum of 94.5 million miles away. So there's already a 3.5 million mile margin of error in our Goldilocks zone... we'd have to go way beyond a few miles of annual change to feel any impact.
sailingparrot 5y ago
The Goldielocks zone is not tiny by human standard. It's goes from about a third of earth orbit's radius, to 10x it's radius. However climate would be extremely different at 0.3x, 1x and 10x, which I assume is what you really meant. The orbit of Earth is also extremely stable, barely changing, and with time the earth is getting farther from the Sun, not closer, as the Sun is slowing losing mass since it's burning fuel to produce heat and light. The speed at which we are getting further away is however ridiculously tiny: a few centimeters a year. To give you a sense of perspective, earth is closest to the sun in January and furthest in July. It is ~5 million kilometers nearer in January, and that only amount to about 6 or 7% more solar energy received. So, any deviation of earth orbit's over the past 100 years that would explain climate change would need to be massive. Not the kind of things we wouldn't notice, and also not the kind of things that would allow us to be talking about it today. If earth's orbit was changing that much, that would mean our solar system is not stable, probably making life impossible.
waych 5y ago
All energy on Earth is derived from the Sun. The amount of radiation from the Sun, and the fact that it isn't constant nor uniform, is conveniently ignored in all the climate science I've seen. It is also awfully very convenient to ignore the fact that Earth's climate has been ever changing since its beginning.