8 ms·

Even though it looks like a cool bag of facts, this really is just a bunch of correlations without good citations indicating any causal effect. Which is actual

Even though it looks like a cool bag of facts, this really is just a bunch of correlations without good citations indicating any causal effect. Which is actually confirmed at the end: > We can't conclude that these isolated incidents are caused by climate changes. On the other hand, we can conclude that such incidents have already become more common. And that it will likely cost us several hundred billion NOK to arm ourselves against all this water. I'm worried that this kind of reporting only helps climate-change deniers. EDIT: Leaving the original comment in place, but it seems like there actually are citations behind the "Source" button which is present on many slides but doesn't work correctly for me on any browser that I've tried. Thanks to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34161145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34161145 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34161168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34161168 for pointing this out.

truthwhisperer 4y ago
[dead]
willnonya 4y ago
So, attempting to be objective and realistic are harmful to the cause?
- cube2222 4y ago
  Correlation is not causation. If you're indicating causation without any sensible proof, citation, or well-reasoned hypothesis, and just give a "scary" slideshow with "yeah, that might be climate change... or it might not, idk", then that will help people who are trying to show that "climate-change reporting is a bunch of BS" support their narrative. A lot of people will then, when they see a few such examples, assume that all climate-change reporting is like that.
  - lukeschlather 4y ago
    If you're bringing up the question of what causes global climate change in response to an article that is pretty narrowly focused on local climate change in Norway, a lot of people will assume that you know that global climate change is generally understood to be caused by human behavior, but are looking for ways to cast doubt on that fact without actually arguing the point.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - realworldperson 4y ago
      [dead]
  - notahacker 4y ago
    > If you're indicating causation without any sensible proof, citation, or well-reasoned hypothesis, and just give a "scary" slideshow with "yeah, that might be climate change... or it might not, idk", then that will help people who are trying to show that "climate-change reporting is a bunch of BS" support their narrative. If you're determined to imagine that even stuff like literal temperature changes aren't sensible proof of climate change, that hypotheses linking the weather in Norway to the weather in the rest of the world or temperature changes to changes in flora and fauna need to be thoroughly explained to be plausible, and don't trust that quoted academics have actually done the research unless the journalists hyperlink their original papers, then yeah, maybe the acknowledgement that climate isn't the only factor affecting flora and fauna in Norway (no shit!) is the clincher that it's all a big con. But then, if you're determined to imagine that entire fields of scientific research and thousands of actual published scientific papers must all be irredeemably flawed because a pop science article which doesn't pretend to be anything other than a list of things observed in Norway takes a less rigorous approach, I'm not sure improving the article is going to change matters. It's not like news articles opposing the theory of anthropogenic causes for climate change or global warming in general are renowned for reading like academic studies...
- TotoHorner 4y ago
  That's the entire point, they didn't attempt to be objective nor realistic. That's honestly the biggest issue with a lot of these radical climate activists too. They use intentionally misleading arguments to exaggerate timelines and pretend we're already screwed. The media certainly doesn't help as more climate alarmism generates more clicks. And of course, if you say that they're exaggerating then you immediately get branded a "climate change denier". Now you have a generation of 20 year olds who think it's immoral to have children because of climate change and other dumb shit like that.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The sad part is if we’re already screwed it defeats the argument of doing much of anything anyway so everyone continues doing what they were going to do anyway.
    - TotoHorner 4y ago
      Nope. It's not binary. That's the entire point.
      - brutusborn 4y ago
        I think you and the parent are both correct. If we are “screwed” (I.e no action will prevent runaway warming) then any response to prevent warming is pointless. However you are correct that being “screwed” or not is a false binary (we don’t know if warming is reversible but it is likely we can make a positive change and avoid runaway).
  - LastTrain 4y ago
    You lost me at “radical”, which makes you sound like a nut. What about this article is radical? Are they suggesting violence?
    - IncRnd 4y ago
      What makes you think Radical means violence? Radical was used 100% correctly according to its definition. Radical (adjective) [1]: believing or expressing the belief that there should be great or extreme social or political change [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/radical https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/radic...
- geertj 4y ago
  > So, attempting to be objective and realistic are harmful to the cause? Yes, this can harm the cause. Providing honest true facts while not providing data supporting causation can cause people to become skeptical of climate change if some of true facts change because they were caused by something other than climate change.
- SkyBelow 4y ago
  Humans aren't great as being logical. A scientist giving an expertly sourced claim with plenty of disclaimers is going to have their idea given less importance than a charismatic speaker using conviction and force but having no evidence and being entirely wrong. Humans like confidence more than facts. I'm not sure what the fix is, because a scientist is generally speaking with the level of confidence that matches their knowledge and understanding. Do we ask them to be more confident even if it goes past what their knowledge and understanding can justify? And thanks to the Gell-Mann Effect, even if you invest time and resources into convincing the population the expert is right in one case, they still default back to believe the confident and charismatic speaker who doesn't know what they are talking about (or even worse, is being purposefully misleading).
yt-sdb 4y ago
I don't understand your complaint. Consider this fact: > There is less snow in the lowlands. In parts of the Oslo wildlands, the skiing season has become nearly 40 days shorter. So we have an observable, measurable, falsifiable fact. It correlates or trends with global mean temperature changes. We have a mechanism of action. We have an arrow of causality, based on established scientific observations and experiments going back decades. I'm not sure what else you want. You mention lack of citations, but they do have citations. For example, the browning water section clearly links to this paper [1]. That paper looks at data going back three decades and emphasizes (in the title, no less) the very arrow of causality you want. "Correlation is not causation" is a weird, toothless complaint here. They're not plotting fedoras on the x-axis and global mean temperature on the y-axis. I'm worried that this kind of Hacker News comment only helps climate-change deniers. [1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.estlett.6b00396 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.estlett.6b00396
- cube2222 4y ago
  Thanks, going through the slides, I haven't noticed the linked paper. It's worth noting though that the part I quoted is still a part of TFA, and does still embody the issue I mentioned. EDIT: I see now. The "source" button they've used for citations doesn't work correctly for me in Safari and Chrome (it scrolls way up, and only if you scroll back down will it start showing the footnotes). It's also only in Norwegian.
- starkd 4y ago
  The complaint is that it is a little too "on point" to be a serious discussion that weighs multiple angles. These are journalists determined to convey a particular point. It does not mean they are wrong. It just means it is not credible journalism.
  - Cort3z 4y ago
    Why is it not credible? They display only facts and link to sources for “conclusions”. What other angle is there to weigh?
float4 4y ago
> this really is just a bunch of correlations without good citations I only noticed the translucent "source" buttons after reading for 10 minutes or so. Maybe you missed them as well? Haven't looked at any of the sources myself though. Example: https://imgur.com/a/nAkDvg2 https://imgur.com/a/nAkDvg2
Xylakant 4y ago
It’s certainly an issue, but in a complex system, you’ll never be able to pinpoint a single cause with a full evidence chain. It will never be possible to link a specific weather incident to climate change, like you could never directly link a single lung cancer case directly to smoking. But what had pretty certainly been established is that climate change increases weather extremes. This might be correlation, but there’s a plausible mechanism how increasing temperatures increases extreme rainfall: a warmer atmosphere holds more water. And for all the other examples, they also explain what’s the pathway from climate change to effect - warmer winters make more larvae survive, overwhelming the trees,… If that kind of reporting helps climate deniers, no reporting is possible and all is lost.
mandmandam 4y ago
> I'm worried that this kind of reporting only helps climate-change deniers. There is one thing consistent on the entire spectrum of climate-change deniers, from ignorant to sociopathic to self-interested: They're not working with reality. So, catering reporting to their various bubbles of ignorance is a fool's mission.
- starkd 4y ago
  That is needlessly lumping all "deniers" into one category. Some deny any evidence of any warming. Others admit there may be warming but there is nothing we can do about it. Still, others admit it is warming but it is not severe and our focus should be on mitigation strategies.
  - seanw444 4y ago
    And on the flip side, many climate-change proponents seem to be on a crusade to show how dumb skeptics are.
starkd 4y ago
The language is very dramatic and sensational. It just feels more like propaganda to me than a scientific opinion. The reality is seldom this clean. This doesn't even pretend to entertain other opinions.
mrburnsss 4y ago
I don't have anything to say other then it's disgusting how people add the term "denier" on to subjects that aren't clear cut and settled like they believe they are, while also using an obvious illusion to the most horrible human event of the last century. (holocaust denier)
- loopdoend 4y ago
  *allusion
gerbilly 4y ago
> this really is just a bunch of correlations without good citations indicating any causal effect. Say your house gets broken into and there is a broken window and you are missing some cash and jewellery. Would you _also_ say that calling it a burglary—absent any security camera footage—would be correlation without causation? I mean, for all we know it might have been a bear which broke in and just happened to take only money and jewellery. There might be a blinged out bear partying at the local bar nearby! It's easy to cast doubt on any theory, and much harder to advance a theory. Also I see that you did eventually find the citations, but the tone of your comments suggest to me that you might just as easily transpose your doubt casting onto the sources, and the sources sources ad infinitum... But of course my claim is based purely on correlations.
- cube2222 4y ago
  Some things are obvious, some things are less so. Nuance matters. > It's easy to cast doubt on any theory, and much harder to advance a theory. I agree. > Also I see that you did eventually find the citations, but the tone of your comments suggest to me that you might just as easily transpose your doubt casting onto the sources, and the sources sources ad infinitum... But of course my claim is based purely on correlations. I'm not sure why you're inferring that. I both believe in climate change and find the sources I've now seen good enough for my non-expert point of view. I'm casting doubt in an effort to improve the quality of the arguments, not to undermine climate change or its seriousness.
anthropodie 4y ago
Stop worrying about climate change deniers. Even if you give a perfect citation they will not believe you.
shepherdjerred 4y ago
> I'm worried that this kind of reporting only helps climate-change deniers. As someone who believes in climate change, this is the exact sentence that I want to see more often. It feels less like an agenda is being pushed and instead the reader is meant to think critically. We can't be sure what is and isn't climate change. All we can do is make observations and that's exactly what is being done here.

truthwhisperer 4y ago

[dead]

willnonya 4y ago

So, attempting to be objective and realistic are harmful to the cause?

cube2222 4y ago
Correlation is not causation. If you're indicating causation without any sensible proof, citation, or well-reasoned hypothesis, and just give a "scary" slideshow with "yeah, that might be climate change... or it might not, idk", then that will help people who are trying to show that "climate-change reporting is a bunch of BS" support their narrative. A lot of people will then, when they see a few such examples, assume that all climate-change reporting is like that.
- lukeschlather 4y ago
  If you're bringing up the question of what causes global climate change in response to an article that is pretty narrowly focused on local climate change in Norway, a lot of people will assume that you know that global climate change is generally understood to be caused by human behavior, but are looking for ways to cast doubt on that fact without actually arguing the point.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - realworldperson 4y ago
    [dead]
- notahacker 4y ago
  > If you're indicating causation without any sensible proof, citation, or well-reasoned hypothesis, and just give a "scary" slideshow with "yeah, that might be climate change... or it might not, idk", then that will help people who are trying to show that "climate-change reporting is a bunch of BS" support their narrative. If you're determined to imagine that even stuff like literal temperature changes aren't sensible proof of climate change, that hypotheses linking the weather in Norway to the weather in the rest of the world or temperature changes to changes in flora and fauna need to be thoroughly explained to be plausible, and don't trust that quoted academics have actually done the research unless the journalists hyperlink their original papers, then yeah, maybe the acknowledgement that climate isn't the only factor affecting flora and fauna in Norway (no shit!) is the clincher that it's all a big con. But then, if you're determined to imagine that entire fields of scientific research and thousands of actual published scientific papers must all be irredeemably flawed because a pop science article which doesn't pretend to be anything other than a list of things observed in Norway takes a less rigorous approach, I'm not sure improving the article is going to change matters. It's not like news articles opposing the theory of anthropogenic causes for climate change or global warming in general are renowned for reading like academic studies...
TotoHorner 4y ago
That's the entire point, they didn't attempt to be objective nor realistic. That's honestly the biggest issue with a lot of these radical climate activists too. They use intentionally misleading arguments to exaggerate timelines and pretend we're already screwed. The media certainly doesn't help as more climate alarmism generates more clicks. And of course, if you say that they're exaggerating then you immediately get branded a "climate change denier". Now you have a generation of 20 year olds who think it's immoral to have children because of climate change and other dumb shit like that.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The sad part is if we’re already screwed it defeats the argument of doing much of anything anyway so everyone continues doing what they were going to do anyway.
  - TotoHorner 4y ago
    Nope. It's not binary. That's the entire point.
    - brutusborn 4y ago
      I think you and the parent are both correct. If we are “screwed” (I.e no action will prevent runaway warming) then any response to prevent warming is pointless. However you are correct that being “screwed” or not is a false binary (we don’t know if warming is reversible but it is likely we can make a positive change and avoid runaway).
- LastTrain 4y ago
  You lost me at “radical”, which makes you sound like a nut. What about this article is radical? Are they suggesting violence?
  - IncRnd 4y ago
    What makes you think Radical means violence? Radical was used 100% correctly according to its definition. Radical (adjective) [1]: believing or expressing the belief that there should be great or extreme social or political change [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/radical https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/radic...
geertj 4y ago
> So, attempting to be objective and realistic are harmful to the cause? Yes, this can harm the cause. Providing honest true facts while not providing data supporting causation can cause people to become skeptical of climate change if some of true facts change because they were caused by something other than climate change.
SkyBelow 4y ago
Humans aren't great as being logical. A scientist giving an expertly sourced claim with plenty of disclaimers is going to have their idea given less importance than a charismatic speaker using conviction and force but having no evidence and being entirely wrong. Humans like confidence more than facts. I'm not sure what the fix is, because a scientist is generally speaking with the level of confidence that matches their knowledge and understanding. Do we ask them to be more confident even if it goes past what their knowledge and understanding can justify? And thanks to the Gell-Mann Effect, even if you invest time and resources into convincing the population the expert is right in one case, they still default back to believe the confident and charismatic speaker who doesn't know what they are talking about (or even worse, is being purposefully misleading).

yt-sdb 4y ago

I don't understand your complaint. Consider this fact: > There is less snow in the lowlands. In parts of the Oslo wildlands, the skiing season has become nearly 40 days shorter. So we have an observable, measurable, falsifiable fact. It correlates or trends with global mean temperature changes. We have a mechanism of action. We have an arrow of causality, based on established scientific observations and experiments going back decades. I'm not sure what else you want. You mention lack of citations, but they do have citations. For example, the browning water section clearly links to this paper [1]. That paper looks at data going back three decades and emphasizes (in the title, no less) the very arrow of causality you want. "Correlation is not causation" is a weird, toothless complaint here. They're not plotting fedoras on the x-axis and global mean temperature on the y-axis. I'm worried that this kind of Hacker News comment only helps climate-change deniers. [1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.estlett.6b00396 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.estlett.6b00396

cube2222 4y ago
Thanks, going through the slides, I haven't noticed the linked paper. It's worth noting though that the part I quoted is still a part of TFA, and does still embody the issue I mentioned. EDIT: I see now. The "source" button they've used for citations doesn't work correctly for me in Safari and Chrome (it scrolls way up, and only if you scroll back down will it start showing the footnotes). It's also only in Norwegian.
starkd 4y ago
The complaint is that it is a little too "on point" to be a serious discussion that weighs multiple angles. These are journalists determined to convey a particular point. It does not mean they are wrong. It just means it is not credible journalism.
- Cort3z 4y ago
  Why is it not credible? They display only facts and link to sources for “conclusions”. What other angle is there to weigh?

float4 4y ago

> this really is just a bunch of correlations without good citations I only noticed the translucent "source" buttons after reading for 10 minutes or so. Maybe you missed them as well? Haven't looked at any of the sources myself though. Example: https://imgur.com/a/nAkDvg2 https://imgur.com/a/nAkDvg2

Xylakant 4y ago

It’s certainly an issue, but in a complex system, you’ll never be able to pinpoint a single cause with a full evidence chain. It will never be possible to link a specific weather incident to climate change, like you could never directly link a single lung cancer case directly to smoking. But what had pretty certainly been established is that climate change increases weather extremes. This might be correlation, but there’s a plausible mechanism how increasing temperatures increases extreme rainfall: a warmer atmosphere holds more water. And for all the other examples, they also explain what’s the pathway from climate change to effect - warmer winters make more larvae survive, overwhelming the trees,… If that kind of reporting helps climate deniers, no reporting is possible and all is lost.

mandmandam 4y ago

> I'm worried that this kind of reporting only helps climate-change deniers. There is one thing consistent on the entire spectrum of climate-change deniers, from ignorant to sociopathic to self-interested: They're not working with reality. So, catering reporting to their various bubbles of ignorance is a fool's mission.

starkd 4y ago
That is needlessly lumping all "deniers" into one category. Some deny any evidence of any warming. Others admit there may be warming but there is nothing we can do about it. Still, others admit it is warming but it is not severe and our focus should be on mitigation strategies.
- seanw444 4y ago
  And on the flip side, many climate-change proponents seem to be on a crusade to show how dumb skeptics are.

starkd 4y ago

The language is very dramatic and sensational. It just feels more like propaganda to me than a scientific opinion. The reality is seldom this clean. This doesn't even pretend to entertain other opinions.

mrburnsss 4y ago

I don't have anything to say other then it's disgusting how people add the term "denier" on to subjects that aren't clear cut and settled like they believe they are, while also using an obvious illusion to the most horrible human event of the last century. (holocaust denier)

loopdoend 4y ago
*allusion

gerbilly 4y ago

> this really is just a bunch of correlations without good citations indicating any causal effect. Say your house gets broken into and there is a broken window and you are missing some cash and jewellery. Would you _also_ say that calling it a burglary—absent any security camera footage—would be correlation without causation? I mean, for all we know it might have been a bear which broke in and just happened to take only money and jewellery. There might be a blinged out bear partying at the local bar nearby! It's easy to cast doubt on any theory, and much harder to advance a theory. Also I see that you did eventually find the citations, but the tone of your comments suggest to me that you might just as easily transpose your doubt casting onto the sources, and the sources sources ad infinitum... But of course my claim is based purely on correlations.

cube2222 4y ago
Some things are obvious, some things are less so. Nuance matters. > It's easy to cast doubt on any theory, and much harder to advance a theory. I agree. > Also I see that you did eventually find the citations, but the tone of your comments suggest to me that you might just as easily transpose your doubt casting onto the sources, and the sources sources ad infinitum... But of course my claim is based purely on correlations. I'm not sure why you're inferring that. I both believe in climate change and find the sources I've now seen good enough for my non-expert point of view. I'm casting doubt in an effort to improve the quality of the arguments, not to undermine climate change or its seriousness.

anthropodie 4y ago

Stop worrying about climate change deniers. Even if you give a perfect citation they will not believe you.

shepherdjerred 4y ago

> I'm worried that this kind of reporting only helps climate-change deniers. As someone who believes in climate change, this is the exact sentence that I want to see more often. It feels less like an agenda is being pushed and instead the reader is meant to think critically. We can't be sure what is and isn't climate change. All we can do is make observations and that's exactly what is being done here.