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It's cases like this that make it so easy to be skeptical about global warming. There is a fair amount of real, verifiable evidence that global warming is real

It's cases like this that make it so easy to be skeptical about global warming. There is a fair amount of real, verifiable evidence that global warming is real, human-caused, and problematic, but none of it is dramatic enough to make a good story. Endangered polar bears, Hurricane Katrina, and out-of-control Malaria epidemics are a much easier way to get people's attention. Unfortunately, in the quest for a good story, the activists may give their critics so much scientific firepower as to eventually lose the political battle. It's happened with other environmental problems, and it looks poised to happen again.

ellyagg 17y ago
Evidence of anthropogenic warming is real, verifiable, and weak. Evidence that it is problematic, or that scientists are even remotely able to predict its magnitude and effect is nonexistent. But the costs of prevention are 100% real and enormous. One common argument for drastic public policy initiatives is the attempt by some folks to seize the moral high ground with "humans are terrible at long term planning". Yes, they are terrible at long term planning, because humans are really terrible at predicting the future, e.g., predicting the size and magnitude of AGW. It's simply not true that preventing a worst case scenario is worth any price. Coming up with imaginary worst case scenarios 50 or 100 years from now is as easy as pie. That's not valid risk assessment. Typically, AGW[1] proponents only argue from the expected value of our investment in preventing global warming. Since the purported worst case scenario is the extermination of humanity, the upside is our survival. Essentially, the expected value is infinite, so the net present value is infinite, so we should be willing to spend all our money to prevent even a possibility of AGW killing us off. Since no one knows the risk, even to within several orders of magnitude, your guess is as good as mine. Your opinion on AGW policy comes down to something entire aside from the science, namely, your moral view of, and problem-solving assumptions about, humankind as a whole. AGW is not currently acute[2]. I choose to believe that in a hypothetical (and vanishingly unlikely) case where it becomes acute, humans would weather it. [1] There is currently no good way to describe the for and against on this issue. Almost every knowledgeable person believes in the theoretical model of AGW. Most people believe there has been some AGW. The true division is between people who believe it's been proven that AGW is alarming and those who don't. "AGW skeptics" is not really an appropriate term. [2] Don't say it is. That's preposterous. AGW itself is weakly shown. Regional climate changes have not been scientifically linked to weak AGW. Regional climate change is the rule, including changes that melt ice and extinguish species.
- guelo 17y ago
  "Evidence that it is problematic ... is nonexistent." Wow. What's amazing to me about this rant is how the debate has moved over the last 10 years from "it's not happening" to "it's not a big deal". So, our massively complex ecosystem is changing in ways that our scientists don't fully understand and it's not a big deal? The ecosystem so complex that scientists have a hard time using the world's fastest supercomputers to try to model it. These real, verifiable changes to OUR ONLY ecosystem are not a big deal even though nobody knows the outcome? Your position is that playing russian roulette with our grandkids future is worth it because the price of action is overwhelmingly expensive (or infinite). But that's wrong, it's not that expensive. The European economies that have reduced their emissions according to the Kyoto protocol have been doing fine. Reducing the world's carbon emissions is easy, cheap and prudent.
  - artsrc 17y ago
    I suspect that reducing our emissions is actually not just cheap but cost negative. You invest in energy saving infrastructure, like insulation, solar hot water, public transport, more efficient appliances, lights, cars etc. Increase the usage of renewable resources, like solar, hydro and wind. And do R&D. Just wait for the next down turn and instead of cutting interest rates have the plans ready to do the investment. We probably have 4 to 10 years to do some good planning.
    - DaniFong 17y ago
      At present, it depends on the strategy taken, ad of course it will depend on the technologies developed. There are actually many many technologies which, at present, will save you money in the long run (and the run doesn't even need to be that long.) The main barriers to adoption are laziness, cost of capital, consumer behavior (not purchasing LED lights because they 'seem' too expensive), and most importantly, lack of education. Page 4 of this paper has a great graph where they examine costs and cost abatement for a variety of 'green' strategies. Hybrid cars are the most expensive! www.khoslaventures.com/presentations/Hybrids.pdf
    - Tichy 17y ago
dasil003 17y ago
I think humans are pretty much incapable of doing long-term science and coming to rational conclusions on any kind of climate or environmental issues. If any money is involved at all it gets politicized and science goes right out the window. Plus, time scales of even 10 or 20 years are too long to really enter our decision making process in any meaningful way. Essentially we will do whatever we want until there is an immediate crisis, and then we will deal with it to the best of our ability. Maybe that means mass deaths or extinction, or maybe the consequences will be manageable.
- guelo 17y ago
  The idea that this is an impossible problem to tackle is just more FUD spread by the skeptics. It is very doable, we've successfully done it in the past with other chemicals such as ozone. It will not destroy the economy. It WILL cause some extremely profitable industries to be less profitable which is why we still haven't done anything about it. If the horse buggy industry had been a massive multi-billion dollar influential industry they might still be around to the detriment of us all.
- astine 17y ago
  Maybe that means mass deaths or extinction, or maybe the consequences will be manageable. Levees; lots of them. :P
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    That's actually not a terrible solution for the first world. Coastal areas tend to be wealthy and levees are not that expensive.
- hazzen 17y ago
  I have long wondered if there is a good solution this this problem: given that politicians serve some short term length, say 2-6 years, before running for re-election and given that major policy changes can not be enacted overnight nor in one piece, is there any way we can get forward-thinking legislation into law? It seems that any major legislation should require an informed, rational public - something I do not believe to be possible. What solution is there, other than benevolent dictator (which is not a true solution)?
diego_moita 17y ago
Overall I agree, but there is another side to it: you can't win on ideology with science. There are lots of ideas/facts (e.g.: evolution, free trade, vaccines, etc) which science has a huge pile of evidence to support but still face a lot of resistance because of ideology, conflicts with political interests or plain dumbness. Global warming is just another one of these ideas.
guelo 17y ago
The complaints about inaccuracy of the "activists" are so hard to swallow when the skeptics have been throwing every dirty trick in the book to successfully derail any progress for decades now. "Gore made a mistake on the mosquitoes, what an idiot! and he's fat! har har har! dirty fucking hippies!." Our grandkids will look upon these people as monsters. I'm not sure why there is such a big climate-skeptic strain here on HN.
- JacobAldridge 17y ago
  I think it's because there's a "big [insert anything] skeptic strain here on HN". Edit: Which is a damn good thing, and why I love hanging out here.
- run4yourlives 17y ago
  With basically any argument, the skeptical position should be your default one. The person presenting the argument should be the one charged with convincing you of their point. It doesn't work the other way around. So, the fact that there are raving hordes of neo-religious freaks claiming that climate change science is bunk does not mean that those supporting the assertion that we are doing irreparable harm to our planet are absolved of all responsibility to actually prove that.
  - Locke1689 17y ago
    There's a difference between reasonable and unreasonable skepticism. A couple years ago there was a big debate about climate change on the xkcd forum. Fortunately, there was someone with some experience in the field itself. There is always a question of what the scientific opinion is on climate change. He answers that question pretty well in this post http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15290&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=global+warming&start=40#p406833 http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15290&st=...
  - guelo 17y ago
    OK, I understand that opinion here leans towards the skeptic crowd, and I used the word 'fucking' in my comment so maybe that's why I was downvoted so harshly. But why upvote this comment so much? It doesn't make any sense. The "person presenting the argument" are the scientists that have published hundreds of peer reviewed papers on global warming science. Apparently they're not doing a good enough job of convincing some people, but they're not trying to get people to blindly agree with them, their doing science! What more are they supposed to do to prove it?
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

ellyagg 17y ago

Evidence of anthropogenic warming is real, verifiable, and weak. Evidence that it is problematic, or that scientists are even remotely able to predict its magnitude and effect is nonexistent. But the costs of prevention are 100% real and enormous. One common argument for drastic public policy initiatives is the attempt by some folks to seize the moral high ground with "humans are terrible at long term planning". Yes, they are terrible at long term planning, because humans are really terrible at predicting the future, e.g., predicting the size and magnitude of AGW. It's simply not true that preventing a worst case scenario is worth any price. Coming up with imaginary worst case scenarios 50 or 100 years from now is as easy as pie. That's not valid risk assessment. Typically, AGW[1] proponents only argue from the expected value of our investment in preventing global warming. Since the purported worst case scenario is the extermination of humanity, the upside is our survival. Essentially, the expected value is infinite, so the net present value is infinite, so we should be willing to spend all our money to prevent even a possibility of AGW killing us off. Since no one knows the risk, even to within several orders of magnitude, your guess is as good as mine. Your opinion on AGW policy comes down to something entire aside from the science, namely, your moral view of, and problem-solving assumptions about, humankind as a whole. AGW is not currently acute[2]. I choose to believe that in a hypothetical (and vanishingly unlikely) case where it becomes acute, humans would weather it. [1] There is currently no good way to describe the for and against on this issue. Almost every knowledgeable person believes in the theoretical model of AGW. Most people believe there has been some AGW. The true division is between people who believe it's been proven that AGW is alarming and those who don't. "AGW skeptics" is not really an appropriate term. [2] Don't say it is. That's preposterous. AGW itself is weakly shown. Regional climate changes have not been scientifically linked to weak AGW. Regional climate change is the rule, including changes that melt ice and extinguish species.

guelo 17y ago
"Evidence that it is problematic ... is nonexistent." Wow. What's amazing to me about this rant is how the debate has moved over the last 10 years from "it's not happening" to "it's not a big deal". So, our massively complex ecosystem is changing in ways that our scientists don't fully understand and it's not a big deal? The ecosystem so complex that scientists have a hard time using the world's fastest supercomputers to try to model it. These real, verifiable changes to OUR ONLY ecosystem are not a big deal even though nobody knows the outcome? Your position is that playing russian roulette with our grandkids future is worth it because the price of action is overwhelmingly expensive (or infinite). But that's wrong, it's not that expensive. The European economies that have reduced their emissions according to the Kyoto protocol have been doing fine. Reducing the world's carbon emissions is easy, cheap and prudent.
- artsrc 17y ago
  I suspect that reducing our emissions is actually not just cheap but cost negative. You invest in energy saving infrastructure, like insulation, solar hot water, public transport, more efficient appliances, lights, cars etc. Increase the usage of renewable resources, like solar, hydro and wind. And do R&D. Just wait for the next down turn and instead of cutting interest rates have the plans ready to do the investment. We probably have 4 to 10 years to do some good planning.
  - DaniFong 17y ago
    At present, it depends on the strategy taken, ad of course it will depend on the technologies developed. There are actually many many technologies which, at present, will save you money in the long run (and the run doesn't even need to be that long.) The main barriers to adoption are laziness, cost of capital, consumer behavior (not purchasing LED lights because they 'seem' too expensive), and most importantly, lack of education. Page 4 of this paper has a great graph where they examine costs and cost abatement for a variety of 'green' strategies. Hybrid cars are the most expensive! www.khoslaventures.com/presentations/Hybrids.pdf
  - Tichy 17y ago

dasil003 17y ago

I think humans are pretty much incapable of doing long-term science and coming to rational conclusions on any kind of climate or environmental issues. If any money is involved at all it gets politicized and science goes right out the window. Plus, time scales of even 10 or 20 years are too long to really enter our decision making process in any meaningful way. Essentially we will do whatever we want until there is an immediate crisis, and then we will deal with it to the best of our ability. Maybe that means mass deaths or extinction, or maybe the consequences will be manageable.

guelo 17y ago
The idea that this is an impossible problem to tackle is just more FUD spread by the skeptics. It is very doable, we've successfully done it in the past with other chemicals such as ozone. It will not destroy the economy. It WILL cause some extremely profitable industries to be less profitable which is why we still haven't done anything about it. If the horse buggy industry had been a massive multi-billion dollar influential industry they might still be around to the detriment of us all.
astine 17y ago
Maybe that means mass deaths or extinction, or maybe the consequences will be manageable. Levees; lots of them. :P
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  That's actually not a terrible solution for the first world. Coastal areas tend to be wealthy and levees are not that expensive.
hazzen 17y ago
I have long wondered if there is a good solution this this problem: given that politicians serve some short term length, say 2-6 years, before running for re-election and given that major policy changes can not be enacted overnight nor in one piece, is there any way we can get forward-thinking legislation into law? It seems that any major legislation should require an informed, rational public - something I do not believe to be possible. What solution is there, other than benevolent dictator (which is not a true solution)?

diego_moita 17y ago

Overall I agree, but there is another side to it: you can't win on ideology with science. There are lots of ideas/facts (e.g.: evolution, free trade, vaccines, etc) which science has a huge pile of evidence to support but still face a lot of resistance because of ideology, conflicts with political interests or plain dumbness. Global warming is just another one of these ideas.

guelo 17y ago

The complaints about inaccuracy of the "activists" are so hard to swallow when the skeptics have been throwing every dirty trick in the book to successfully derail any progress for decades now. "Gore made a mistake on the mosquitoes, what an idiot! and he's fat! har har har! dirty fucking hippies!." Our grandkids will look upon these people as monsters. I'm not sure why there is such a big climate-skeptic strain here on HN.

JacobAldridge 17y ago
I think it's because there's a "big [insert anything] skeptic strain here on HN". Edit: Which is a damn good thing, and why I love hanging out here.
run4yourlives 17y ago
With basically any argument, the skeptical position should be your default one. The person presenting the argument should be the one charged with convincing you of their point. It doesn't work the other way around. So, the fact that there are raving hordes of neo-religious freaks claiming that climate change science is bunk does not mean that those supporting the assertion that we are doing irreparable harm to our planet are absolved of all responsibility to actually prove that.
- Locke1689 17y ago
  There's a difference between reasonable and unreasonable skepticism. A couple years ago there was a big debate about climate change on the xkcd forum. Fortunately, there was someone with some experience in the field itself. There is always a question of what the scientific opinion is on climate change. He answers that question pretty well in this post http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15290&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=global+warming&start=40#p406833 http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15290&st=...
- guelo 17y ago
  OK, I understand that opinion here leans towards the skeptic crowd, and I used the word 'fucking' in my comment so maybe that's why I was downvoted so harshly. But why upvote this comment so much? It doesn't make any sense. The "person presenting the argument" are the scientists that have published hundreds of peer reviewed papers on global warming science. Apparently they're not doing a good enough job of convincing some people, but they're not trying to get people to blindly agree with them, their doing science! What more are they supposed to do to prove it?

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]