Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change • Hacker News Board

Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change

#201

Post by quanticle » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 7:18 AM UTC

steven2012 wrote: post #197

toomuchtodo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain your lack of belief when 97% of climate scientists (there's conflicting data on this; some reports show as high as 99%) agree that human activity is causing global warming? EDIT: That's not rhetorical. I'll entertain any logical reasoning you have as to why your reasoning is superior to those educated and practicing the subject daily.

For decades, scientists, doctors and dietitians said that eating fat caused heart disease, and you should decrease your fat in your diet. Only in the last couple of years has this "fact" been deemed wrong. I don't think you would have found a single scientist, doctor or dietitian since the 70s that would have disagreed with the above. It was taken as fact and anyone who thought differently would have been a laughing…

>If you read this thread, it's humorous to read all of the people who think that there is data going back millions of years that links CO2 to climate change.

Except... that data does exist. Sediment cores do contain evidence of past levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide to a fairly high degree of accuracy, and we have sediment cores going back up to about million years ago, or so.

>Global warming caused by CO2 has never been proven

Sure, you can't do a double-blind randomized control experiment with the earth, but when two variables are clearly correlated with a time difference, over millions of years, controlling for confounding factors, it's pretty clear that one causes the other.

>For example, North America was covered in ice at one point, and the temperature increased dramatically over the last hundreds of thousands of years. What caused this, and could the same process be responsible for the warming we have seen in the last several decades?

According to Scientific American [1], the last ice age ended because of a rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

[1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-thawed-the-la...

Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change

#202

Post by vlehto » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 8:25 AM UTC

magicalist wrote: post #190

vlehto wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argument from authority is not invalid when it can be backed with fact. It's often unnecessary, because you need the fact anyhow. In some cases it's justified to save time. Like in the military.

> Argument from authority is not invalid when it can be backed with fact. Your line of argumentation doesn't make sense here. We can look for backing up an authority with facts which come from...that same authority, who we then have to believe or not, short of replicating their study. Or we can get someone else to replicate the study, and someone else to replicate that study, and...suddenly we're talking about scient…

You have good point here.

The person I choose to believe is the one who talks about radiation balance and p-values and confidence intevals. Then I expect to see peer revieve publication and some peer revieved confirmation. It's also possible to establish somekind of authority to conduct meta-study. This works nicely in medical field.

Someone talking about "99%" of scientists is just distracting. Link the IPCC document and call it a day.

Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change

#203

Post by Evgeny » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 8:35 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #121

gnaritas wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no longer a matter of belief, the evidence is in, the overwhelmingly vast majority of climatologists say you're wrong; end of debate. Now it's time to do something about it.

I think that's a terrible idea. For hundreds of years, people thought stress and food caused ulcers. It was scientific fact and if you doubted it, you'd likely be labelled a crackpot. Until a scientist in Australia proved ulcers were caused by bacteria. So consensus was wrong. Very wrong. I'd prefer it if people kept questioning everything. How else do we push forward our knowledge?

Until a scientist in Australia proved ulcers were caused by bacteria. So consensus was wrong. Very wrong.

Interestingly, among people who have Helicobacter pylori in their stomachs, only a subset develops ulcers. Some people have bacteria, but no ulcer. I don't know if there is a consensus on why this happens, but it is correlated with stress. If you are stressed and have h.pylori, you are more likely to develop an ulcer, compared to h.pylori and no stress.

So the consensus was wrong, but still not a hundred percent wrong.

Source: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, Third Edition http://www.amazon.com/Zebras-Dont-Ulcers-Third-Edition/dp/08...

Quite a fascinating book on stress.

Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change

#204

Post by vlehto » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 9:18 AM UTC

gnaritas wrote: post #194

vlehto wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to be philosophist with a degree and specialization in philosophy of science to consistently make that argument. Are you?

No I don't, nor does my argument imply that since I didn't say it applies to everything but to a great many things. Everyone can use logic, but not all topics are matters of logic, climate science is not; it's a matter of evidence and correctly understanding the totality of the evidence requires one to be a climate scientist.

The evidence clearly points that:

1. CO2 causes the greenhouse effect. This can be replicated in aquarium. It's a fact.

2. Burnind fossil fuels creates CO2 as material does not disappear. Carbon included.

3. CO2 is not absorbed by oceans. It goes to atmosphere. Measurable fact, documented by Mauna Loa observatory since 1956.

4. The change in radiation balance shows in significant ways. As is shown by change in glacier mass balance. Again measurable fact, easily understandable by layman.

It is not hard so far. We have human made climate change there. Now if we go into the "what will happen and how much?" territory, 99% of climate scientist agree that we don't really know. There are educated guesses with freakishly huge error bars.

If we compare this to "should smoking be banned", nobody speaks about 99% of doctors. "Is flyin safe?" and you don't hear about 99% of engineers. This "99% of climate scientists" stuff makes the whole business sound like it's matter of opinnion.

Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change

#205

Post by lmm » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 10:37 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #121

gnaritas wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no longer a matter of belief, the evidence is in, the overwhelmingly vast majority of climatologists say you're wrong; end of debate. Now it's time to do something about it.

I think that's a terrible idea. For hundreds of years, people thought stress and food caused ulcers. It was scientific fact and if you doubted it, you'd likely be labelled a crackpot. Until a scientist in Australia proved ulcers were caused by bacteria. So consensus was wrong. Very wrong. I'd prefer it if people kept questioning everything. How else do we push forward our knowledge?

People should keep questioning. But it's time to stop the faux-modesty of "we might be wrong so we shouldn't do anything". We make the best decision we can based on the evidence at the time, and if the scientific consensus is right (which, while not certain, is very likely), we can't afford to do nothing.

Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change

#206

Post by pavlov » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 11:41 AM UTC

kbutler wrote: post #172

pavlov wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With too much reliance on cheap coal for economic growth, you end up here: http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9861174/beijing-pollution-... China's use of coal has probably peaked. Any developing country would do well to follow China's lead and build renewables rather than coal, whatever its short-term advantages.

> China's use of coal has probably peaked. Any developing country would do well to follow China's lead... Hmm. I think it's more correct to say the /rate of increase/ of China's use of coal has probably peaked. "China added 39 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity in 2014 — 3 gigawatts more than it added in 2013. That is equivalent to three 1,000 megawatt units every four weeks.[v] At the peak, from 2005 through 2011, Chi…

Greenpeace's analysis suggests that China's coal consumption has dropped 4% this year:

http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2015/11/09/2015-the-year-gl...

The discrepancy is mentioned in Greenpeace's report: "China is still building lots of new coal capacity — it’s just not using it."

Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change

#207

Post by pavlov » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 11:43 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #170

pavlov wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With too much reliance on cheap coal for economic growth, you end up here: http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9861174/beijing-pollution-... China's use of coal has probably peaked. Any developing country would do well to follow China's lead and build renewables rather than coal, whatever its short-term advantages.

China added 39 gigawatts of new coal power capacity in 2014. They issued permits for at least 150 new coal plants in 2015. They're building a new coal power plant every week, and issuing a new permit every two days. Just the new permits issued for 2015 alone would be equal to 40%+ of all US coal power plant output. While we're at it, let's remember to throw in the recent 14% revision upward in their coal use. Their c…

Not everyone agrees. Greenpeace's analysis suggests that the new coal capability isn't being used (yet), which has lead to a 4% drop in actual coal consumption this year:

http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2015/11/09/2015-the-year-gl...

Their analysts are working on the ground in China, whereas many other Western agencies just look at official numbers... So the truth may be somewhere in between, but Greenpeace's analysis can't be summarily discounted.

Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change

#208

Post by akvadrako » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 11:53 AM UTC

DougWebb wrote: post #91

rybosome wrote: post #65

When speaking with people who do not agree with me on the correctness or urgency of global warming, this is the argument I traditionally make: let's examine the worst-case scenarios. Regardless of whether or not you agree with the science, taking it seriously is a logical choice. The plausible worst-case scenario of charging ahead with measures to combat climate change isn't actually that bad, not to mention the anci…

I think the drawback to your argument is that you're not considering all scenarios. One "worst-case" I can think of is that we charge ahead with measures to combat climate change, harming big parts of the economy in the process, and wind up with the famine, drought, and flooding anyway because we didn't charge ahead with the right measures. It's extremely important to determine whether the global warming is caused by…

Why does it matter if we caused anything? If the Earth is going to get too hot or too cold for our survival, we should try to stop it. Maybe we haven't affected the climate yet, but if we try we probably can.

Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change

#209

Post by gd1 » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 12:29 PM UTC

vlehto wrote: post #204

gnaritas wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I don't, nor does my argument imply that since I didn't say it applies to everything but to a great many things. Everyone can use logic, but not all topics are matters of logic, climate science is not; it's a matter of evidence and correctly understanding the totality of the evidence requires one to be a climate scientist.

The evidence clearly points that: 1. CO2 causes the greenhouse effect. This can be replicated in aquarium. It's a fact. 2. Burnind fossil fuels creates CO2 as material does not disappear. Carbon included. 3. CO2 is not absorbed by oceans. It goes to atmosphere. Measurable fact, documented by Mauna Loa observatory since 1956. 4. The change in radiation balance shows in significant ways. As is shown by change in glacie…

1. F=ma, Newton's second law, can be replicated easily. It's a fact. 2. If I kick this soccer ball right here, applying a force, it will accelerate away from me. It's a fact. 3. Look, it has accelerated away from me, it's a measurable fact!

...a short time later...

4. Oh, I was standing at the bottom of a hill, so the ball just rolled back to my feet.

Do you understand? We are discussing an insanely complex system, with feedback loops everywhere, and a scant (at best) 100 years of quality data on a planet 4 billion years old. There is nothing simple about this. The physics of the radiation balance isn't in question, but for all we know it may be dwarfed by negative feedbacks. They are forced to fallback on computer models for a reason.

Nobody talks about 99% of doctors and smoking, because we can empirically test this. Hundreds of millions of people have smoked, and we have observed the effects.

The smoking/cancer analogy always makes me smile, because it is actually a very good one. Let's turn it around. The physics of how smoking causes cancer is pretty solid. We know about toxins and carcinogens, etc. But let's say I hand you a single human being, and I ask you, "if he smokes for the next 40 years, will he get cancer?". We don't have a freaking clue. The human body - the feedback of the immune system defences, nutrition, genetics - are beyond our power to model. Science is hopelessly unable to answer that question. And ponder this for a moment - we have 6 billion potential test subjects to work with! We have one earth. This is the state of climate science. The biosphere/atmosphere/oceans/etc. are every bit as complex as a single human body, and we have only one patient to study, and data for maybe 0.0000025 of the patient's lifetime.

But, I hear you say, "shouldn't we be cautious then? Shouldn't we quit just in case?". And fair enough, we probably should be cautious. But the counterpoint to that is that fossil fuel usage isn't a nicotine hit. It doesn't deliver us a few moments of pleasure in return for the risk of cancer. It fuels our entire industrial civilization. So the risk/reward calculation looks quite a bit different, doesn't it?

In one case, we have the potential risk confirmed by the empirical evidence of a test set of hundreds of million of smokers, and the potential reward being a nicotine hit. In the other, we have no way of testing the theorized risk outside of models, and the reward is the energy to power our entire civilization.

So yeah, it is an analogy that always makes me laugh a little.

Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change

#210

Post by mikeash » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 2:35 PM UTC

jinushaun wrote: post #200

mikeash wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If pollution is your focus but not global warming, then you'll focus more on scrubbing technologies and better combustion and the like. A lot of stuff can burn extremely cleanly now if you ignore CO2, and the only reading to look at CO2 is climate change. It's not important at all as a pollutant otherwise. I also doubt that people would be unified on pollution if not for global warming. In my experience, the people w…

I disagree. Switching the conversation back to pollution will have the same end result as focusing solely on climate change. Yes, a focus on pollution will result in cleaner dirty energy, but cleaner dirty energy is better than dirty dirty energy. Clean dirty energy is probably more likely to have lower CO2 emissions. Climate change deniers may try to deny pollution, but pollution is a lot harder to explain away. Pol…

Coal is probably a lost cause for plain pollution, but stuff like natural gas and petroleum should be burnable pretty much arbitrarily cleanly if you put in the effort. They're already extremely clean in the context of power plants.

The ideal combustion cycle with a hydrocarbon produces pure carbon dioxide and water. You'll never get all the way there, but you can approach it pretty closely. A world concerned only with pollution would likely converge on a lot of natural gas power plants and clean-burning oil-powered cars. A world concerned with climate change would converge on nuclear, solar, wind, and such.

Don't underestimate people's ability to deny the effects of pollution, too. Go look at the comments in the recent thread about Beijing's smog alert. There are a ton of people in there calling into doubt the health effects of chronic high-concentration particulate pollution, even from people who have experienced it first-hand, and this is the sort of stuff that makes your eyes and nose burn with a few minutes' exposure.

Lots of pollution is silent and long-term, too. Smog is very visible, but how about long-term contamination of groundwater or the oceans?

All in all, I just don't see much difference in membership in the set of climate change deniers and the set of people who think pollution controls are a bad idea.