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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

#41

Post by splawn »

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…

You want honesty? Scientific discovery doesn't care about economic models. The chemical properties of CO2 are not affected by politics. You don't get to vote on thermodynamics. There is no debate regarding the existence of AGW, except outside of science.

What is this leftist ideological economic model you speak of?

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

#42

Post by timthelion »

abduhl wrote: post #36
rndmize wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've long been thinking about creating an army of bots to promote my views on HN. Now I'll definitely do it!

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

#44

Post by mikeash »

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…

I don't understand. Do I understand correctly that you accept that anthropogenic climate change is happening? If so, then you're not a denier and none of this applies to you.

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

#45

Post by mikeash »

jbattle wrote: post #28
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…

Honestly I think HN draws a crowd that leans contrarian by nature. A lot of people here like a good argument and like to feel they've arrived at conclusions on their own brainpower, no matter how popular or unpopular. (There's a tempting trap that holding an unpopular opinion is validation you are thinking for yourself)

There is definitely a strong contrarian theme in the tech community in general.

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

#46

Post by sethrin »

nickff wrote: post #19
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…

So if I just say that whatever I believe is the 'reality of _", the conversation should switch to the potential ramifications of the ideas I believe? It seems like you are just saying that we should discuss the issues you (or some arbitrarily selected group of your choice) believe to be contentious issues. If you have some non-viewpoint-based standard for what is a legitimate topic of debate, I would be happy to see…

Empirical topics should be debated with empirical evidence. To the degree to which an objective reality exists, we consider scientific facts to be objective. At this point the empirical evidence for climate change and AGW is beyond debate; we have ruled out alternative theories. Similarly, gravity and the germ theory of disease are settled science; they are not going to ever be overturned in any meaningful way. If you are not willing to concede that objective facts exist, that must be your own business, but otherwise I'm afraid you're going to have to accept that AGW has been conclusively proven.

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

#47

Post by FrancoDiaz »

mikeash wrote: post #44
FrancoDiaz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't understand. Do I understand correctly that you accept that anthropogenic climate change is happening? If so, then you're not a denier and none of this applies to you.

You didn't me understand correctly.

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

#48

Post by mikeash »

FrancoDiaz wrote: post #47
mikeash wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Do I understand correctly that you accept that anthropogenic climate change is happening? If so, then you're not a denier and none of this applies to you.

You didn't me understand correctly.

Could you elaborate? Specifically, what did you mean by "I actually don't 'deny' that there could be anthropogenic climate change" if not that?

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

#49

Post by FrancoDiaz »

mikeash wrote: post #48
FrancoDiaz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't me understand correctly.

Could you elaborate? Specifically, what did you mean by "I actually don't 'deny' that there could be anthropogenic climate change" if not that?

I'm not absolute in saying that there isn't anthropogenic climate change. I'm saying politics are a big factor in the whole debate.

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

#50

Post by cmurf »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #34
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.

I think there's a stronger correlation for religious people being active climate change deniers. Surely the creator would not destroy EVERYONE all at the same time?! That would be capricious and unfair!

But I admit I can't think of a purely free market solution for avoiding climate change, and perhaps as libertarian types haven't figured out how to innovate those incentives they just have to deny it's not real rather than admit the free market isn't going to innovate those incentives and arrive at a correction on its own before it's too late. The reality is, it's already too late. Now we're in the position of having to manage the consequences of our failure: soft landing vs hard landing.

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