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I am often shocked how a community like HN could have so many global warming skeptics. It doesn't make sense to me because people who deal with software should

by mempko 5y ago

I am often shocked how a community like HN could have so many global warming skeptics. It doesn't make sense to me because people who deal with software should understand complex systems. Should understand how hard understanding complex systems are. And should understand how dangerous it is to disrupt complex systems so dramatically like we did the climate.

SubiculumCode 5y ago
There is something about software engineering, and I'm going to get hammered for this, that seems to convince people that everyone are idiots and doing it all wrong. It might be from personal experience explaining their field to family and friends, or perhaps it's brought about by constantly building things for themselves, idk. They seem to have especial disdain for scientists, who have a long and stories reputation as the intellectual elite, which might just rub their egos the wrong way.
- spiralx 5y ago
  > They seem to have especial disdain for scientists, who have a long and stories reputation as the intellectual elite, which might just rub their egos the wrong way. Doubly so for anything vaguely related to social sciences and other fields where theorising from first principles isn't the norm. "Historical" sciences such as astrophysics and epidemiology often get short shrift here as well. Engineers in general seem to be prone to opining outside of their area of expertise, the Salem Hypothesis that a creationist with an advanced degree was more likely to be an engineer than any other field was noted back in the early days of Usenet: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo
  - UnFleshedOne 5y ago
    To be fair, given recent reproducibility fiasco, social sciences were scorned for a good reason.
    - Teever 5y ago
      Is there anything to indicate that computer science and computer engineering will avoid their own reproducibility fiasco?
      - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        Well... there's computer science, and then there's computer science. All (most of?) the stuff done on P vs NP is good science that will stand up. Studies on which language features make it better for developers are social science, because they involve those pesky humans. That stuff is likely to suffer from a reproducibility crisis.
    - SubiculumCode 5y ago
      reproducibility in social sciences is usually a function of a)insurmountable costs of recruiting participants, b)complexity of the questions, and c) lack of standardization of humans. Sure social scientists would like to have N=1 billion, but they'd be lucky to get funding for 1,000.
      - UnFleshedOne 5y ago
        One of the problems is that the humans used were pretty standard -- all psychology students. Also publication bias.
        SubiculumCode 5y ago
        can't win. If your sample isn't diverse enough it isn't representative. It it is representative, its likely too small to get a reliable effect due to the number of confounds.
  - SubiculumCode 5y ago
    what a great link. Thanks for sharing.
- ghostwriter 5y ago
  > They seem to have especial disdain for scientists, who have a long and stories reputation as the intellectual elite, which might just rub their egos the wrong way. another reason could be that the level of reproducibility of results and openness and availability of sources (data, code, papers) in modern "science" branches is appallingly low for the software folks to take them (the scientists and their results) seriously by default.
- nnvvhh 5y ago
  I think the superiority felt by some software engineers stems from the simple fact that they are paid a lot and are seen as smart and valuable in the culture. They have economic power, and work on something that seems incomprehensible to many everyday people. The subject matter may also have something to do with it. We're taught that lots of problems can have their details reduced and abstracted away, and I think engineers can ignore the normal human elements of life that have a real effect. This is more armchair Freudish, but I also think that a feeling of intellectual superiority makes up for other areas that are lacking in similar feelings of value and power. Life as a computer science student is not cool or fun or sexy, so you fall back on what gives you power in wider society. Sort of like the idea that poor whites fall back onto their whiteness. People jockey for position using whatever they have.
  - 0_____0 5y ago
    Not only are they paid a lot, but they basically start their careers being paid lavishly in places like the SF Bay Area. To a 22 year old fresh grad, what does it tell you when life immediately rewards you with a top 10% income bracket out of university? This extends to the techno-elite as well. What drives the CEO of an electric car company to declare that the way to improve urban mobility is to build roads in tunnels underground? Well, clearly he must be doing something right, he's the richest man on earth!
kayodelycaon 5y ago
"Global warming" in the United States is a political issue that has nothing to do with science. A lot of our news reporting has so many contrary "scientific" studies that the average person doesn't know who to trust. Thus appeals to authority have no meaning if people don't trust that authority. The end result is anyone saying stuff they like is correct and anyone that isn't is wrong. The US also has a problem with people active trying to cripple and downsize government because it steals their money and tells them what to do.
- bink 5y ago
  I don't see "many contrary 'scientific' studies" in the news. What I do see is almost universal consensus among climate scientists that humans are accelerating climate change, with a few news personalities criticizing predictions that were off by a few degrees or inches of sea level rise and pretending that those errors somehow invalidate the general consensus. It's disingenuous at the very least to suggest that these errors disprove anthropogenic climate change or that there are valid studies that support both sides.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  US Citizen here -- I think that science plays an important role on both sides, but the cynical manipulation of news stories by the Oil and Gas industry and their well-paid allies, is backfiring finally. Please note that four prominent Republican Senators with Big Oil ties gave a press conference this year, and did not deny Climate Change.. this is news
  - wonderwonder 5y ago
    They dont have to deny climate change, they just have to vote like it doesn't exist and blame things like government overreach or protecting jobs or energy independence. Best of both worlds, it allows them to come off as reasonable without losing any donors.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  '"Global warming" in the United States is a political issue that has nothing to do with science' Replace Global Warming with almost any other scientific concept and you would also be right. The fact we have politicized everything in this country is not a strength and is going to have negative long term knock on effects. I see the politicization of the covid vaccine giving general anti vaxxers validation now and would not be surprised to see a resurgence of measles in the near term (couple of years). I am completely comfortable with everyone making their own choice on the covid vaccine (I am vaccinated), I get the concern and there is enough noise that I understand their viewpoint. Politicizing it though has been the wrong approach, we cant let people have their own opinions anymore, everyone that disagrees is the enemy. This is the same with climate change, immigration and presidential elections. Issue is that the political parties know that doing this makes their base rally tighter and establishes a motivational us vs them narrative. Its not going to end well.
rglover 5y ago
The skepticism isn't focused on whether it's happening (or even scientifically possible), it's on how much hyperbole is attached to the claims being made and how does that align with observed/measured reality. When the news is shouting "omg panic!! code red!!" based on the least realistic models in the IPCC reports, anyone who is intellectually honest says "well, wait...what aren't we being told here?" Because that happens more often than not, skepticism is further excited when you get politicians who claim to be in favor of climate change policy, only to then go and fly private jets, buy ocean front property, etc. This gets conveniently ignored by folks who have turned climate change into a religion. Every time you even begin to say "hey, we should consider this..." people sperg out and start calling you a "climate change denier" or some other disparaging term. Literally turning their brains off to counter argument because they can't handle the idea that they're living in an incomplete reality. There is absolutely nothing controversial about saying "let's look at all sides and evaluate carefully" (the scientific process as we've agreed upon it for millennia). People have been radicalized and frightened to the point where they no longer think rationally about the problem (and solutions) and instead get hyper-tribalistic, shouting down any reasonable discussion that doesn't automatically agree with their point of view. That's why people are skeptical.
- time_to_smile 5y ago
  > "omg panic!! code red!!" based on the least realistic models in the IPCC reports, You mean articles like this Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'? [0] Because that specific quote, "code red" is not BBC editorialization. It is a direct quote from UN Secretary-General António Guterres [1] > Today’s IPCC Working Group 1 report is a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse‑gas emissions from fossil-fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk. People accuse you ave being a skeptic not because you are saying "hey, we should consider this...", it's because, as exemplified by this exact comment, you are deliberately misrepresenting your position to make it seem more legitimate. "Code red" is not based on the "least realistic" models, they are based on our current pathway, that was what made the most recent IPCC report so alarming. Climate change poses an extremely serious, near term threat to our very way of life. I know that this can be hard to accept, but it is important to, at the very least, not silence those who are pointing this out. 0. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58130705 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58130705 1. https://www.un.org/press/en/2021/sgsm20847.doc.htm https://www.un.org/press/en/2021/sgsm20847.doc.htm
mythrwy 5y ago
An understanding that dealing with super complex systems with lots of interacting variables are very hard to accurately model and prediction value is likely to be low? Plus maybe just a general distaste for propaganda. For my own part I believe humans are affecting the climate to some extent. I don't see how anything else would be possible. But I'm early 50's and have been watching this closely for 30 years and don't believe the hype and doomsday predictions anymore. I don't think the models are good enough to say what will happen in sum. Should we get off fossil fuels and stop polluting? Yes as fast as practically possible. Is OMG the world ending oceans collapsing 12 years from now? Probably not and they don't actually know that.
- moistly 5y ago
  > But I'm early 50's and have been watching this closely for 30 years Likewise. And what I’ve noted is that the IPCC’s optimistic predictions keep proving far too optimistic, and their worse-outcome predictions keep coming true, sooner than predicted. I also see corporations that are loathe to change suddenly make commitments to change, and to make those changes pretty quickly. To my eyes, that is a big indication that things have started going well off the rails. I’m not looking forward to having to handle the wheels falling off of society in my senior years as crop failures, infrastructure collapse, and social unrest kick into high gear.
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    That's really strange, I'm curious what you have seen in the last 30 years that makes you feel catastrophe is more imminent (climate wise, not social or geopolitical, we probably agree that is off the rails lol). The polar ice caps were predicted to be gone. Still there. Coral reef collapse. They are flourishing. Massive rapid sea level rise. Very small, unnoticeable without measuring equipment. Increase in extreme weather events. Hasn't happened. In short, things aren't a whole lot different then they were 30 years ago. I realize 30 years isn't that long but still, there were some really extreme predictions (and I was worried) but they don't look to be coming to pass and I don't think they will for the next 30 either.
    - 5y ago
allemagne 5y ago
It might be true that tech people work more intimately with complex systems than people in most other fields, but that could also mean that there is more opportunity for getting away with obfuscation or representing a false level of confidence (and also dealing with people who do this). Maybe that understanding of complex systems could be more of an unconscious understanding that talented people can act out intuitively, or compartmentalize for a specific domain.
bts327 5y ago
Propaganda and hyperbole aside, it must be clear to even the most obtuse among us that the earth is a finite system sphere with finite system resources. Even if it isn't as bad as we're being led to believe, the steps we could be taking to mitigate a positive feedback spiraling collapse in the system loop are things we should be doing anyway. I don't see how anyone here can argue that generating millions of one-time-use plastic receptacles is a good idea in any system or in any way sustainable long term, so what is the harm in making the changes we should be making now, as if it were as bad as we're being led to believe?
- xscott 5y ago
  Why do people conflate climate change with plastic? Does creating reusable glass or metal containers use less energy or create less CO2 than making things from plastic? Plastic pollution (particularly in the oceans) is really disturbing, but other than burning it, I don't see what it has to do with warming.
  - brnt 5y ago
    Before we were concerned with the climate, we were with the environment. The amount of plastic pollution, especially the potential impact of microplastics, is part of that, like global warming. At least in my view, I see them all as negative impact on our environment. At minimum, negative for ourselves.
    - xscott 5y ago
      Mercury, pesticides, and plastics in the ocean are horrible in my opinion. However, I've seen more than one person who seems to think recycling is going to have an effect on atmospheric CO2 levels.
time_to_smile 5y ago
The bottom line is that the real impacts of climate change strike real, existential fear in a lot of HNers and many of them simply cannot handle that cognitively. People are drawn to tech in a large part because of their belief in the power of technology and the limitless possibility of the future. The very real potential impacts of climate change in our lifetime pose as serious threat to this. Rather than struggle with this most people here (or maybe a few loud, happy to flag comments they disagree with people) find it much easier to simply dismiss everything as excessive hyperbole. Climate change unquestionably posses a real threat to our way of life, and at this point mitigating it does as well. People in tech are used to only thinking in terms of optimism and finding a way to solve problems and really can't deal with serious problems that might not have a solution, but rather only different forms of compromise. Unfortunately the skeptics here are very aggressive. I have had several comments this week flagged for no other reason than disagreement (I know this because they have all been unflagged upon review). It's somewhat ironic because this bizarre extreme reaction from this community really makes it all the more clear that something is really wrong.
- vixen99 5y ago
  And what does it tell you that sadly there are bizarre extreme reactions elsewhere on this climate question? Before the British Government was forced to insist that the police use their existing powers to stop climate protesters preventing people from going about their ordinary business which including several people trying to get to hospital for cancer treatment, we learnt about non-climate-skeptic aggression on a physical level. The leader of their group famously declared he would not move even if the motorist was carrying a dying person to hospital. That's religious fervor of a kind reminiscent of the 14th C. We do indeed need to find ways of presenting our ideas and thoughts non-aggressively because none of us know the final truth about the immensely complex system that is the Earth's climate.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    > We do indeed need to find ways of presenting our ideas and thoughts non-aggressively... Absolutely. > ... because none of us know the final truth about the immensely complex system that is the Earth's climate. Even if we did know, don't block people going to the hospital to try to prove your point. First, it's insanely un-empathetic, to the point of sociopathy. And, theoretically, you probably claim to care about the climate because climate change is going to hurt people. Second, it's not going to win friends for your movement or viewpoint. It's counter-productive, no matter how urgent you think climate change is.
JohnClark1337 5y ago
Just because you're good at software doesn't mean you have to view the rest of reality the same way as everyone else who's good at software. This is just one aspect of life. Most people can not be completely divided into two groups, people pick and choose elements that make up their worldview which leads to many variations of belief.
pharmakom 5y ago
I once met a developer who claimed he didn’t believe climate change was real because the software used for modelling isn’t used by many people and probably has lots of bugs. I don’t agree, but it was an interesting take.
- xscott 5y ago
  Bugs and grad student software aside, ask anyone who thinks they can rely on a model to predict the future to implement a model of: a simple pendulum, a double pendulum, the three body problem, the stock market, and then finally the climate. Those are roughly in order of difficulty, and if they fail at an earlier one, you shouldn't trust the later ones. The first one isn't even chaotic, and I wouldn't trust a model built from first principles alone to be in phase past a dozen cycles or so. You can curve fit things after the fact (interpolation), but extrapolation is always on shaky ground.
  - smaddox 5y ago
    Large scale climate models are more like modeling the possible energy distributions of such pendulums into the future. That can be done analytically for pendulums. You can do it analytically for very simple models of climate, too, but more complex models that include enough of the forces to be predictive require computers.
    - xscott 5y ago
      I've heard similar arguments before, but the details really matter. The amount of heat and CO2 is going to rely on things like albedo on the ground and from cloud cover, as well as plant mass and more. I think it's a mistake to ignore feedback on any of that, and it doesn't take too many moving parts with feedback to create a chaotic system. If nothing interacted with each other, I think you could make reasonable energy-in / energy-out models. However even looking at big low-pass averages, plants/algae use CO2, and heat creates clouds, and clouds block sunlight, and so on. Unlike a double pendulum that bleeds a small amount of energy to friction, the climate bleeds a lot of energy into space, and the amount of energy it loses is a function of clouds, plant life, etc.
refurb 5y ago
I would say it's the opposite - those who have experience with complex systems understand how hard it is to accurately model them. And the climate models have shown that - take a look at the "global warming hiatus" from 2015. Major journals published evidence to explain the hiatus, then a few years later the conclusion was "there was no hiatus". It's pretty clear we can't even accurately tell what level of warming is happening.

by mempko 5y ago

SubiculumCode 5y ago

There is something about software engineering, and I'm going to get hammered for this, that seems to convince people that everyone are idiots and doing it all wrong. It might be from personal experience explaining their field to family and friends, or perhaps it's brought about by constantly building things for themselves, idk. They seem to have especial disdain for scientists, who have a long and stories reputation as the intellectual elite, which might just rub their egos the wrong way.

spiralx 5y ago
> They seem to have especial disdain for scientists, who have a long and stories reputation as the intellectual elite, which might just rub their egos the wrong way. Doubly so for anything vaguely related to social sciences and other fields where theorising from first principles isn't the norm. "Historical" sciences such as astrophysics and epidemiology often get short shrift here as well. Engineers in general seem to be prone to opining outside of their area of expertise, the Salem Hypothesis that a creationist with an advanced degree was more likely to be an engineer than any other field was noted back in the early days of Usenet: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo
- UnFleshedOne 5y ago
  To be fair, given recent reproducibility fiasco, social sciences were scorned for a good reason.
  - Teever 5y ago
    Is there anything to indicate that computer science and computer engineering will avoid their own reproducibility fiasco?
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      Well... there's computer science, and then there's computer science. All (most of?) the stuff done on P vs NP is good science that will stand up. Studies on which language features make it better for developers are social science, because they involve those pesky humans. That stuff is likely to suffer from a reproducibility crisis.
  - SubiculumCode 5y ago
    reproducibility in social sciences is usually a function of a)insurmountable costs of recruiting participants, b)complexity of the questions, and c) lack of standardization of humans. Sure social scientists would like to have N=1 billion, but they'd be lucky to get funding for 1,000.
    - UnFleshedOne 5y ago
      One of the problems is that the humans used were pretty standard -- all psychology students. Also publication bias.
      - SubiculumCode 5y ago
        can't win. If your sample isn't diverse enough it isn't representative. It it is representative, its likely too small to get a reliable effect due to the number of confounds.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  what a great link. Thanks for sharing.
ghostwriter 5y ago
> They seem to have especial disdain for scientists, who have a long and stories reputation as the intellectual elite, which might just rub their egos the wrong way. another reason could be that the level of reproducibility of results and openness and availability of sources (data, code, papers) in modern "science" branches is appallingly low for the software folks to take them (the scientists and their results) seriously by default.
nnvvhh 5y ago
I think the superiority felt by some software engineers stems from the simple fact that they are paid a lot and are seen as smart and valuable in the culture. They have economic power, and work on something that seems incomprehensible to many everyday people. The subject matter may also have something to do with it. We're taught that lots of problems can have their details reduced and abstracted away, and I think engineers can ignore the normal human elements of life that have a real effect. This is more armchair Freudish, but I also think that a feeling of intellectual superiority makes up for other areas that are lacking in similar feelings of value and power. Life as a computer science student is not cool or fun or sexy, so you fall back on what gives you power in wider society. Sort of like the idea that poor whites fall back onto their whiteness. People jockey for position using whatever they have.
- 0_____0 5y ago
  Not only are they paid a lot, but they basically start their careers being paid lavishly in places like the SF Bay Area. To a 22 year old fresh grad, what does it tell you when life immediately rewards you with a top 10% income bracket out of university? This extends to the techno-elite as well. What drives the CEO of an electric car company to declare that the way to improve urban mobility is to build roads in tunnels underground? Well, clearly he must be doing something right, he's the richest man on earth!

kayodelycaon 5y ago

"Global warming" in the United States is a political issue that has nothing to do with science. A lot of our news reporting has so many contrary "scientific" studies that the average person doesn't know who to trust. Thus appeals to authority have no meaning if people don't trust that authority. The end result is anyone saying stuff they like is correct and anyone that isn't is wrong. The US also has a problem with people active trying to cripple and downsize government because it steals their money and tells them what to do.

bink 5y ago
I don't see "many contrary 'scientific' studies" in the news. What I do see is almost universal consensus among climate scientists that humans are accelerating climate change, with a few news personalities criticizing predictions that were off by a few degrees or inches of sea level rise and pretending that those errors somehow invalidate the general consensus. It's disingenuous at the very least to suggest that these errors disprove anthropogenic climate change or that there are valid studies that support both sides.
mistrial9 5y ago
US Citizen here -- I think that science plays an important role on both sides, but the cynical manipulation of news stories by the Oil and Gas industry and their well-paid allies, is backfiring finally. Please note that four prominent Republican Senators with Big Oil ties gave a press conference this year, and did not deny Climate Change.. this is news
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  They dont have to deny climate change, they just have to vote like it doesn't exist and blame things like government overreach or protecting jobs or energy independence. Best of both worlds, it allows them to come off as reasonable without losing any donors.
wonderwonder 5y ago
'"Global warming" in the United States is a political issue that has nothing to do with science' Replace Global Warming with almost any other scientific concept and you would also be right. The fact we have politicized everything in this country is not a strength and is going to have negative long term knock on effects. I see the politicization of the covid vaccine giving general anti vaxxers validation now and would not be surprised to see a resurgence of measles in the near term (couple of years). I am completely comfortable with everyone making their own choice on the covid vaccine (I am vaccinated), I get the concern and there is enough noise that I understand their viewpoint. Politicizing it though has been the wrong approach, we cant let people have their own opinions anymore, everyone that disagrees is the enemy. This is the same with climate change, immigration and presidential elections. Issue is that the political parties know that doing this makes their base rally tighter and establishes a motivational us vs them narrative. Its not going to end well.

rglover 5y ago

The skepticism isn't focused on whether it's happening (or even scientifically possible), it's on how much hyperbole is attached to the claims being made and how does that align with observed/measured reality. When the news is shouting "omg panic!! code red!!" based on the least realistic models in the IPCC reports, anyone who is intellectually honest says "well, wait...what aren't we being told here?" Because that happens more often than not, skepticism is further excited when you get politicians who claim to be in favor of climate change policy, only to then go and fly private jets, buy ocean front property, etc. This gets conveniently ignored by folks who have turned climate change into a religion. Every time you even begin to say "hey, we should consider this..." people sperg out and start calling you a "climate change denier" or some other disparaging term. Literally turning their brains off to counter argument because they can't handle the idea that they're living in an incomplete reality. There is absolutely nothing controversial about saying "let's look at all sides and evaluate carefully" (the scientific process as we've agreed upon it for millennia). People have been radicalized and frightened to the point where they no longer think rationally about the problem (and solutions) and instead get hyper-tribalistic, shouting down any reasonable discussion that doesn't automatically agree with their point of view. That's why people are skeptical.

time_to_smile 5y ago
> "omg panic!! code red!!" based on the least realistic models in the IPCC reports, You mean articles like this Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'? [0] Because that specific quote, "code red" is not BBC editorialization. It is a direct quote from UN Secretary-General António Guterres [1] > Today’s IPCC Working Group 1 report is a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse‑gas emissions from fossil-fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk. People accuse you ave being a skeptic not because you are saying "hey, we should consider this...", it's because, as exemplified by this exact comment, you are deliberately misrepresenting your position to make it seem more legitimate. "Code red" is not based on the "least realistic" models, they are based on our current pathway, that was what made the most recent IPCC report so alarming. Climate change poses an extremely serious, near term threat to our very way of life. I know that this can be hard to accept, but it is important to, at the very least, not silence those who are pointing this out. 0. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58130705 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58130705 1. https://www.un.org/press/en/2021/sgsm20847.doc.htm https://www.un.org/press/en/2021/sgsm20847.doc.htm

mythrwy 5y ago

An understanding that dealing with super complex systems with lots of interacting variables are very hard to accurately model and prediction value is likely to be low? Plus maybe just a general distaste for propaganda. For my own part I believe humans are affecting the climate to some extent. I don't see how anything else would be possible. But I'm early 50's and have been watching this closely for 30 years and don't believe the hype and doomsday predictions anymore. I don't think the models are good enough to say what will happen in sum. Should we get off fossil fuels and stop polluting? Yes as fast as practically possible. Is OMG the world ending oceans collapsing 12 years from now? Probably not and they don't actually know that.

moistly 5y ago
> But I'm early 50's and have been watching this closely for 30 years Likewise. And what I’ve noted is that the IPCC’s optimistic predictions keep proving far too optimistic, and their worse-outcome predictions keep coming true, sooner than predicted. I also see corporations that are loathe to change suddenly make commitments to change, and to make those changes pretty quickly. To my eyes, that is a big indication that things have started going well off the rails. I’m not looking forward to having to handle the wheels falling off of society in my senior years as crop failures, infrastructure collapse, and social unrest kick into high gear.
- mythrwy 5y ago
  That's really strange, I'm curious what you have seen in the last 30 years that makes you feel catastrophe is more imminent (climate wise, not social or geopolitical, we probably agree that is off the rails lol). The polar ice caps were predicted to be gone. Still there. Coral reef collapse. They are flourishing. Massive rapid sea level rise. Very small, unnoticeable without measuring equipment. Increase in extreme weather events. Hasn't happened. In short, things aren't a whole lot different then they were 30 years ago. I realize 30 years isn't that long but still, there were some really extreme predictions (and I was worried) but they don't look to be coming to pass and I don't think they will for the next 30 either.
  - 5y ago

allemagne 5y ago

It might be true that tech people work more intimately with complex systems than people in most other fields, but that could also mean that there is more opportunity for getting away with obfuscation or representing a false level of confidence (and also dealing with people who do this). Maybe that understanding of complex systems could be more of an unconscious understanding that talented people can act out intuitively, or compartmentalize for a specific domain.

bts327 5y ago

Propaganda and hyperbole aside, it must be clear to even the most obtuse among us that the earth is a finite system sphere with finite system resources. Even if it isn't as bad as we're being led to believe, the steps we could be taking to mitigate a positive feedback spiraling collapse in the system loop are things we should be doing anyway. I don't see how anyone here can argue that generating millions of one-time-use plastic receptacles is a good idea in any system or in any way sustainable long term, so what is the harm in making the changes we should be making now, as if it were as bad as we're being led to believe?

xscott 5y ago
Why do people conflate climate change with plastic? Does creating reusable glass or metal containers use less energy or create less CO2 than making things from plastic? Plastic pollution (particularly in the oceans) is really disturbing, but other than burning it, I don't see what it has to do with warming.
- brnt 5y ago
  Before we were concerned with the climate, we were with the environment. The amount of plastic pollution, especially the potential impact of microplastics, is part of that, like global warming. At least in my view, I see them all as negative impact on our environment. At minimum, negative for ourselves.
  - xscott 5y ago
    Mercury, pesticides, and plastics in the ocean are horrible in my opinion. However, I've seen more than one person who seems to think recycling is going to have an effect on atmospheric CO2 levels.

time_to_smile 5y ago

The bottom line is that the real impacts of climate change strike real, existential fear in a lot of HNers and many of them simply cannot handle that cognitively. People are drawn to tech in a large part because of their belief in the power of technology and the limitless possibility of the future. The very real potential impacts of climate change in our lifetime pose as serious threat to this. Rather than struggle with this most people here (or maybe a few loud, happy to flag comments they disagree with people) find it much easier to simply dismiss everything as excessive hyperbole. Climate change unquestionably posses a real threat to our way of life, and at this point mitigating it does as well. People in tech are used to only thinking in terms of optimism and finding a way to solve problems and really can't deal with serious problems that might not have a solution, but rather only different forms of compromise. Unfortunately the skeptics here are very aggressive. I have had several comments this week flagged for no other reason than disagreement (I know this because they have all been unflagged upon review). It's somewhat ironic because this bizarre extreme reaction from this community really makes it all the more clear that something is really wrong.

vixen99 5y ago
And what does it tell you that sadly there are bizarre extreme reactions elsewhere on this climate question? Before the British Government was forced to insist that the police use their existing powers to stop climate protesters preventing people from going about their ordinary business which including several people trying to get to hospital for cancer treatment, we learnt about non-climate-skeptic aggression on a physical level. The leader of their group famously declared he would not move even if the motorist was carrying a dying person to hospital. That's religious fervor of a kind reminiscent of the 14th C. We do indeed need to find ways of presenting our ideas and thoughts non-aggressively because none of us know the final truth about the immensely complex system that is the Earth's climate.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  > We do indeed need to find ways of presenting our ideas and thoughts non-aggressively... Absolutely. > ... because none of us know the final truth about the immensely complex system that is the Earth's climate. Even if we did know, don't block people going to the hospital to try to prove your point. First, it's insanely un-empathetic, to the point of sociopathy. And, theoretically, you probably claim to care about the climate because climate change is going to hurt people. Second, it's not going to win friends for your movement or viewpoint. It's counter-productive, no matter how urgent you think climate change is.

JohnClark1337 5y ago

Just because you're good at software doesn't mean you have to view the rest of reality the same way as everyone else who's good at software. This is just one aspect of life. Most people can not be completely divided into two groups, people pick and choose elements that make up their worldview which leads to many variations of belief.

pharmakom 5y ago

I once met a developer who claimed he didn’t believe climate change was real because the software used for modelling isn’t used by many people and probably has lots of bugs. I don’t agree, but it was an interesting take.

xscott 5y ago
Bugs and grad student software aside, ask anyone who thinks they can rely on a model to predict the future to implement a model of: a simple pendulum, a double pendulum, the three body problem, the stock market, and then finally the climate. Those are roughly in order of difficulty, and if they fail at an earlier one, you shouldn't trust the later ones. The first one isn't even chaotic, and I wouldn't trust a model built from first principles alone to be in phase past a dozen cycles or so. You can curve fit things after the fact (interpolation), but extrapolation is always on shaky ground.
- smaddox 5y ago
  Large scale climate models are more like modeling the possible energy distributions of such pendulums into the future. That can be done analytically for pendulums. You can do it analytically for very simple models of climate, too, but more complex models that include enough of the forces to be predictive require computers.
  - xscott 5y ago
    I've heard similar arguments before, but the details really matter. The amount of heat and CO2 is going to rely on things like albedo on the ground and from cloud cover, as well as plant mass and more. I think it's a mistake to ignore feedback on any of that, and it doesn't take too many moving parts with feedback to create a chaotic system. If nothing interacted with each other, I think you could make reasonable energy-in / energy-out models. However even looking at big low-pass averages, plants/algae use CO2, and heat creates clouds, and clouds block sunlight, and so on. Unlike a double pendulum that bleeds a small amount of energy to friction, the climate bleeds a lot of energy into space, and the amount of energy it loses is a function of clouds, plant life, etc.

refurb 5y ago

I would say it's the opposite - those who have experience with complex systems understand how hard it is to accurately model them. And the climate models have shown that - take a look at the "global warming hiatus" from 2015. Major journals published evidence to explain the hiatus, then a few years later the conclusion was "there was no hiatus". It's pretty clear we can't even accurately tell what level of warming is happening.