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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

#51

Post by dragonwriter »

cmurf wrote: post #50
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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!

Climate change won't kill everyone at the same time, though.

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

#52

Post by mikeash »

FrancoDiaz wrote: post #49
mikeash wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course they are. It's a scientific question that has somehow turned into a political debate.

But that's separate from the question of your position on the thing itself. Do you think anthropogenic climate change is a thing, or not? If not, then you're kind of dancing around it. If so, then I don't get why you're so upset.

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

#53

Post by cmurf »

dragonwriter wrote: post #51
cmurf wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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! Climate change won't kill everyone at the same time , though.

Fair point. But then, so the story goes, God sent the flood no doubt killing most of humanity all at once in a rather capricious and vindictive act of collective punishment (and mass murder). So there may be some cognitive dissonance going on in more than one way.

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

#54

Post by FrancoDiaz »

mikeash wrote: post #52
FrancoDiaz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course they are. It's a scientific question that has somehow turned into a political debate. But that's separate from the question of your position on the thing itself. Do you think anthropogenic climate change is a thing, or not? If not, then you're kind of dancing around it. If so, then I don't get why you're so upset.

I thought I made my position pretty clear on the last post. When someone is presented with a theory, do you expect them to think it's a thing or not? I don't believe it's a binary option. Effects of global warming aren't even close to consensus even among believers.

I wasn't upset, but was pointing out that there's many things that you believe in that other people don't. I'm not sure what's so hard to understand.

For example, I believe that there's a huge political motivation on the left to believe in global warming that is separate from the science. I'm assuming you disagree. That's fine. You won't change my mind, and I won't change yours.

There is no consensus of agreement, so I'm not sure why you would assume that there would be on HN

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

#55

Post by FrancoDiaz »

mikeash wrote: post #52
FrancoDiaz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course they are. It's a scientific question that has somehow turned into a political debate. But that's separate from the question of your position on the thing itself. Do you think anthropogenic climate change is a thing, or not? If not, then you're kind of dancing around it. If so, then I don't get why you're so upset.

I was just thinkng of the butterfly effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

So the question isn't whether anthropogenic climate change is a thing. The questions are to what extent are the effects? What are the costs and efficacy of combating climate change?

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

#56

Post by eli_gottlieb »

nickff wrote: post #26
mikeash wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see more acceptance of the science, and discussion within that framework, rather than jumping straight to "all those stupid scientists are frauds, I know better than they do" every time climate change comes up. It's weird because that doesn't happen for other scientific topics. The group of scientists who spend their careers studying this stuff is not "some arbitrarily selected group." If you think it is,…

I look around HN and see that the same people who believe a majority of climate scientists do not believe a majority of economists. Do they then parse it down to 'labor economists', or just look at surveys of all economists? Should you trust anonymous surveys, or those of non-prestigious researchers, or those conducted by organizations with an interest in the result? It seems to me that all of these decisions are arb…

>I look around HN and see that the same people who believe a majority of climate scientists do not believe a majority of economists.

Does that make the majority of economists actually wrong?

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

#57

Post by creaghpatr »

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…

Consider Jessica Livingston's The Sound of Silence essay that was posted this morning

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

#58

Post by dwaltrip »

nickff wrote: post #26
mikeash wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see more acceptance of the science, and discussion within that framework, rather than jumping straight to "all those stupid scientists are frauds, I know better than they do" every time climate change comes up. It's weird because that doesn't happen for other scientific topics. The group of scientists who spend their careers studying this stuff is not "some arbitrarily selected group." If you think it is,…

I look around HN and see that the same people who believe a majority of climate scientists do not believe a majority of economists. Do they then parse it down to 'labor economists', or just look at surveys of all economists? Should you trust anonymous surveys, or those of non-prestigious researchers, or those conducted by organizations with an interest in the result? It seems to me that all of these decisions are arb…

The economic dynamics of human civilizations with billions of intelligent, autonomous individuals and rapidly changing technology are far more difficult to accurately understand and predict than long term climate trends.

Of course, this doesn't mean climate science is at all easy or that we have figured it all out.

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

#59

Post by woodandsteel »

nickff wrote: post #26
mikeash wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see more acceptance of the science, and discussion within that framework, rather than jumping straight to "all those stupid scientists are frauds, I know better than they do" every time climate change comes up. It's weird because that doesn't happen for other scientific topics. The group of scientists who spend their careers studying this stuff is not "some arbitrarily selected group." If you think it is,…

I look around HN and see that the same people who believe a majority of climate scientists do not believe a majority of economists. Do they then parse it down to 'labor economists', or just look at surveys of all economists? Should you trust anonymous surveys, or those of non-prestigious researchers, or those conducted by organizations with an interest in the result? It seems to me that all of these decisions are arb…

Interesting how the climate change skeptics were losing the argument here and so they diverted the topic to economics.

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

#60

Post by woodandsteel »

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…

>but until the left wants to have an honest debate on the costs (economic, freedom)

Twenty years ago when this debate was starting, the right said the left want to destroy the economy by forcing everyone to use renewable energy that costs twenty times what fossil fuel energy does.

Nowadays, renewable energy is as cheap as fossil fuels for many applications, and rapidly getting cheaper, and so it is being voluntarily adopted all over the world. But the right continues to assume it is just as expensive as it was twenty years ago. In fact, Donald Trump has said he loves solar, but its problem is it is very, very expensive.

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