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Giant Middle East dust storm caused by a changing climate, not human conflict

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Re: Giant Middle East dust storm caused by a changing climate, not human conflict

#31

Post by cholantesh »

climatedenier wrote: post #25

Common sense says the same thing that caused the dust bowl in the USA (changes, as noted in the article, to the land use, abandoned agriculture, etc.) caused this dust storm. Then a team of comes along to set the record straight with their conspiracy theories about knowing everything, etc. People come by to see what's all the fuss about... labeled as "deniers", a term used to associate people that disagree with anthr…

>you probably haven't heard of burden of proof.

Seeing as ample evidence has been put forward for AGW, as opposed to the alternatives proposed, this seems unlikely.

Re: Giant Middle East dust storm caused by a changing climate, not human conflict

#32

Post by mikeash »

nickff wrote: post #30
mikeash wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say there's a major difference in that believing a majority of economists is usually mathematically impossible, since there's almost never consensus on anything in that field. Edit: as proof, I will soon have at least two replies telling me that I'm wrong and that all proper economists agree on idea X, where each comment's X is incompatible with the other's.

Seems like there is a consensus among economists who do research on gun violence, and they agree that guns make people safer.[1] I am certain that you have now been persuaded by this evidence, and believe concealed carry should be permitted worldwide... Or maybe you dismissed the result because you dislike the conclusions and conveniently believe John Lott is untrustworthy? I picked this example because I suspect it'…

This may surprise you, but I don't have particularly strong views on gun control. I reject the claims of the pro-gun side that guns are a useful and necessary defense against tyranny, and I do think gun control would probably be useful and good, but I don't argue that side strenuously and don't vote based upon it. Going even further, I think American liberals should abandon their gun control fetish at least for the time being, because it's costing them a lot of votes for no particularly good reason. As far as issues go, this one is way down the list in importance.

Anyway, on to the actual link. My first question is, why is it useful to survey the opinion of economists on gun violence? That doesn't seem like the right field to poll at all. Shouldn't you be asking criminologists?

Re: Giant Middle East dust storm caused by a changing climate, not human conflict

#33

Post by orf »

climatedenier wrote: post #25

Common sense says the same thing that caused the dust bowl in the USA (changes, as noted in the article, to the land use, abandoned agriculture, etc.) caused this dust storm. Then a team of comes along to set the record straight with their conspiracy theories about knowing everything, etc. People come by to see what's all the fuss about... labeled as "deniers", a term used to associate people that disagree with anthr…

> you probably haven't heard of burden of proof.

I don't think the climate systems on Earth care about whether or not you believe in something, or if the considerable amount of proof produced by the vast vast majority of climate scientists meets your always unreachable (and dare I say it uniformed) goalposts.

Re: Giant Middle East dust storm caused by a changing climate, not human conflict

#34

Post by Florin_Andrei »

mikeash wrote: post #14

Interesting how all the climate change deniers come out of the woodwork whenever stories like these are posted, even though HN leans fairly heavily liberal and extremely heavily scientific the rest of the time. Is the HN population actually like that, or are these people trying to push an agenda and otherwise not participating in the site? Either way, I sure wish we could discuss these things instead of getting bogge…

> HN leans fairly heavily liberal and extremely heavily scientific the rest of the time.

HN also has a strong libertarian bias. There's some correlation between subscribing to that type of dogma and being an active climate change denier.

Re: Giant Middle East dust storm caused by a changing climate, not human conflict

#35

Post by milfandcookies »

mikeash wrote: post #32
nickff wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like there is a consensus among economists who do research on gun violence, and they agree that guns make people safer.[1] I am certain that you have now been persuaded by this evidence, and believe concealed carry should be permitted worldwide... Or maybe you dismissed the result because you dislike the conclusions and conveniently believe John Lott is untrustworthy? I picked this example because I suspect it'…

This may surprise you, but I don't have particularly strong views on gun control. I reject the claims of the pro-gun side that guns are a useful and necessary defense against tyranny, and I do think gun control would probably be useful and good, but I don't argue that side strenuously and don't vote based upon it. Going even further, I think American liberals should abandon their gun control fetish at least for the t…

I'm interested to hear why you believe that guns are not a useful and necessary defense against tyranny.

Re: Giant Middle East dust storm caused by a changing climate, not human conflict

#36

Post by abduhl »

rndmize wrote: post #29
mikeash wrote: post #14

Interesting how all the climate change deniers come out of the woodwork whenever stories like these are posted, even though HN leans fairly heavily liberal and extremely heavily scientific the rest of the time. Is the HN population actually like that, or are these people trying to push an agenda and otherwise not participating in the site? Either way, I sure wish we could discuss these things instead of getting bogge…

In the case of this particular article, it looks like most of the denial posts are a single account (sameoldsameold, 2 hours old currently). Since all the posts by that account are now marked flagged/dead, and the account climatedenier is less than ten minutes old and is already posting along the same lines, I'd guess its the same person. Unless this person is tremendously emotionally involved in the idea of climate…

"Accusations of astroturfing or shilling without evidence are not allowed on HN. Rushing to that as an explanation is, invariably, evidence of sloppy thinking—or maybe non-thinking, of the kind that political passion leads us all to."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13345070

Re: Giant Middle East dust storm caused by a changing climate, not human conflict

#37

Post by randallsquared »

milfandcookies wrote: post #35
mikeash wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may surprise you, but I don't have particularly strong views on gun control. I reject the claims of the pro-gun side that guns are a useful and necessary defense against tyranny, and I do think gun control would probably be useful and good, but I don't argue that side strenuously and don't vote based upon it. Going even further, I think American liberals should abandon their gun control fetish at least for the t…

I'm interested to hear why you believe that guns are not a useful and necessary defense against tyranny.

Let's please skip that right now. It's far from the original topic, and there are so many places you can find reasoned arguments for either side.

Re: Giant Middle East dust storm caused by a changing climate, not human conflict

#38

Post by MaulingMonkey »

nickff wrote: post #30
mikeash wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say there's a major difference in that believing a majority of economists is usually mathematically impossible, since there's almost never consensus on anything in that field. Edit: as proof, I will soon have at least two replies telling me that I'm wrong and that all proper economists agree on idea X, where each comment's X is incompatible with the other's.

Seems like there is a consensus among economists who do research on gun violence, and they agree that guns make people safer.[1] I am certain that you have now been persuaded by this evidence, and believe concealed carry should be permitted worldwide... Or maybe you dismissed the result because you dislike the conclusions and conveniently believe John Lott is untrustworthy? I picked this example because I suspect it'…

> Seems like there is a consensus among economists who do research on gun violence, and they agree that guns make people safer.[1]

This is a very "American" focused survey both in content and in responses. I'd be wary that you're oversimplifying. I wouldn't label the survey response to Question 3 "consensus" either.

>> Of the valid email addresses, 43 were Americans, 4 were Canadians, 2 were Australians, and one was Swedish.

>> Yet, while researchers from both the United States and Canada have extremely similar views that private gun ownership makes people safer, the few researchers from Australia and Sweden are much more supportive of gun control.

Aaand this is why I hesitate to suddenly generalize the American solution to other parts of the world. I'd like to see the opinions of a statistically significant number of non-american economists before coming up with non-american answers.

> I picked this example because I suspect it's an issue you will be extremely reluctant to change your mind on.

My mind hasn't changed here - but my views already align roughly with the "consensus" you've pointed out - although with the additional, gigantic caveat, that these views apply to gun policy in America, where among other things, I believe there's no possibility of putting the genie back in the bottle with regards to widespread firearms availability.

I feel it would be jumping the gun to try and apply the same approach to violence and crime in, say, Japan - based on only the above survey.

Re: Giant Middle East dust storm caused by a changing climate, not human conflict

#39

Post by FrancoDiaz »

mikeash wrote: post #18
nickff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most topics on HN have people staunchly defending different camps; this is just an obvious one. As an example, Signal is very controversial, so there are a few people who say it's great for privacy, and another group that say it's misleading and less secure than it appears. Full disclosure: I don't have a position on Signal, but I'm a big fan of Moxie. How would you "discuss these things" without having different poi…

There are plenty of things to discuss within the broad camp of "accepts that climate change is real and a potential problem." For example, the severity, the cause of individual events, the best responses, the potential dangers in the future, etc. Instead, we just get these condescending posts completely dismissing any notion of climate change at all. I do not see this phenomenon with other fact-based topics discussed…

I am what you would call a "denier". By the way, when you people use that term, it makes you sound very cultish, especially the calls from leftists for the death penalty for deniers.

I actually don't "deny" that there could be anthropogenic climate change, but until the left wants to have an honest debate on the costs (economic, freedom), and also when the left stops "denying" that it fits conveniently into their ideological economic model, then there can be no honest conversation.

There are plenty of things to discuss within the broad camp of "accepts that climate change is real and a potential problem." For example, the severity, the cause of individual events, the best responses, the potential dangers in the future, etc.

So you really don't want to discuss it? It's either your reality or the highway, as your other respondent alluded to.

Re: Giant Middle East dust storm caused by a changing climate, not human conflict

#40

Post by aroberge »

FrancoDiaz wrote: post #39
mikeash wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of things to discuss within the broad camp of "accepts that climate change is real and a potential problem." For example, the severity, the cause of individual events, the best responses, the potential dangers in the future, etc. Instead, we just get these condescending posts completely dismissing any notion of climate change at all. I do not see this phenomenon with other fact-based topics discussed…

I am what you would call a "denier". By the way, when you people use that term, it makes you sound very cultish, especially the calls from leftists for the death penalty for deniers. I actually don't "deny" that there could be anthropogenic climate change, but until the left wants to have an honest debate on the costs (economic, freedom), and also when the left stops "denying" that it fits conveniently into their ide…

Perhaps if you didn't equate "denier=the right", "non-denier=the left" and didn't make swiping statements like "until the left wants to have an honest debate on the costs", and refer to "you people", you might find that others might be willing to discuss.
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