USA Temperature: can I sucker you? • Hacker News Board

Re: USA Temperature: can I sucker you?

#21

Post by sp332 » Sun, Aug 12, 2018, 5:14 PM UTC

conception wrote: post #10

oh_sigh wrote: post #6

What part do climate change deniers deny? Is it that the mean global temperature is going up, or the idea that it is going up because of human activities? I thought it was the latter.

It was the former and then the was overwhelming evidence. Then it was the latter... And now there's overwhelming evidence. So it's morphing into "it's too late there's nothing we can do!" Or it's not possible to organize etc. Still not helpful.

Or that things will be fine and the consequences are overhyped. And yeah some of them can be overhyped like sea level rise but overall it's still gonna be pretty dire if we do nothing.

Re: USA Temperature: can I sucker you?

#22

Post by bjourne » Sun, Aug 12, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

We really need to do something now! The summer has been un-fucking-believably hot. Climate change is not something that will happen in the "future" -- we have to avoid a global ecosystem collapse in the next 10-15 years. :(

Re: USA Temperature: can I sucker you?

#23

Post by gok » Sun, Aug 12, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

techsupporter wrote: post #18

> We can completely ignore the fact that over the years the average location of all the contributing stations has moved slightly northward to colder territory[.] Woah, that's not something I'd considered. Are weather stations that contribute to NOAA operated by the volunteer public, kind of like Weather Underground? Either way, that's pretty interesting that there's a distinct northward migration in at least one "dem…

That graph is...questionable. The entire Y axis only covers 55 kilometers. I’m sure the NOAA has more principled ways of accounting for station movement.

Re: USA Temperature: can I sucker you?

#24

Post by johnchristopher » Sun, Aug 12, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

conception wrote: post #10

oh_sigh wrote: post #6

What part do climate change deniers deny? Is it that the mean global temperature is going up, or the idea that it is going up because of human activities? I thought it was the latter.

It was the former and then the was overwhelming evidence. Then it was the latter... And now there's overwhelming evidence. So it's morphing into "it's too late there's nothing we can do!" Or it's not possible to organize etc. Still not helpful.

There's also "Yeah but it might be a good thing long-term" which was recently superseded by "But it's good for the economy and the market will fix it if it's really that bad.".

Re: USA Temperature: can I sucker you?

#25

Post by seiferteric » Sun, Aug 12, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #9

oh_sigh wrote: post #6

What part do climate change deniers deny? Is it that the mean global temperature is going up, or the idea that it is going up because of human activities? I thought it was the latter.

There's both kinds. Those who refuse to believe the mean average temperature is going up have been declining in numbers as the evidence becomes more and more irrefutable. So they have been jumping to the "OK but we can't know for sure that it is human activity causing it!" camp. There's also a third camp, which says "OK I get it, human activity is causing temperatures to rise, but we can't really do anything meaningf…

That last one is not denialism (maybe defeatism) and from my vantage point isn't too far from reality. I have yet to see any realistic proposed solution(s) to climate change.

Re: USA Temperature: can I sucker you?

#26

Post by analog31 » Sun, Aug 12, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #17

simplecomplex wrote: post #8

> climate change deniers Otherwise known as Republicans.

You're getting downvoted, probably because you're bringing politics into a political issue, and generalizing when clearly there are many educated republicans who believe in climate change, maybe more than there are climate change deniers. But you also raise a fair point, how many democrat climate change deniers are there? A very rare species indeed. Bottom line, identity politics suck!

Politics aside, I'm aware of precisely one prominent organization in the world that promotes climate change denial.

Re: USA Temperature: can I sucker you?

#27

Post by rayiner » Sun, Aug 12, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #9

oh_sigh wrote: post #6

What part do climate change deniers deny? Is it that the mean global temperature is going up, or the idea that it is going up because of human activities? I thought it was the latter.

There's both kinds. Those who refuse to believe the mean average temperature is going up have been declining in numbers as the evidence becomes more and more irrefutable. So they have been jumping to the "OK but we can't know for sure that it is human activity causing it!" camp. There's also a third camp, which says "OK I get it, human activity is causing temperatures to rise, but we can't really do anything meaningf…

There is a lot of scientific evidence for that last point. (Which, ironically, puts environmentalists on the back foot, causing them to deny science because a big chunk of environmentalism is based on political ideology and not the science or economics of the environment.)

Re: USA Temperature: can I sucker you?

#28

Post by guessthejuice » Sun, Aug 12, 2018, 5:28 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #6

What part do climate change deniers deny? Is it that the mean global temperature is going up, or the idea that it is going up because of human activities? I thought it was the latter.

> What part do climate change deniers deny?

It's two fold issue. People question the level to which human activity contributes to climate and they question the remedy to it.

Obviously climate change has always happened. It happened before human existence, climate change occurred throughout human history and climate change will happen after humans aren't around. Nobody is denying climate change. Climate change denier is actually a propaganda term invented by one group to attack another. Similar to christ-denier and other "denier" attacks. I prefer the neutral terms "climate change proponent and opponent".

One of the major pushback against the human created climate change is that we were in an little ice age until the 19th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Com...

Climate change opponents say the warming is a result of the natural end to the ice age cycle as has happened for hundreds of thousands of years.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature....

As you see, temperatures have declined and risen for hundreds of thousands of years ( with negligent human input ). So climate change opponents claim that the current climate change is just part of the climate's natural cycle.

Climate change proponents claim that the current warming is a result of human activity ( particularly fossil fuel based industrialization ). After all, we started using oil in the mid 1800s and temperatures started to rise since then. To climate change proponents, that's too much of a coincidence and they believe humans triggered the warming with fossil fuel use.

The second part is the remedy to climate change. Climate change proponents believe it is a "tragedy of commons" problem and we need a global system to manage the problem. Their solution is a global carbon tax system which manages and controls fossil fuel use and the global economy. Climate change opponents are against the globalist policies of climate change since it infringes on national sovereignty and gives too much power to a small group of globalists who can profit by trading on carbon credits/taxes/etc ( essentially another product for traders to gamble on ).

I'm sure I'll be attacked by both sides but this is essentially the core issues of the climate change debate. Is it a natural cycle vs human created? Is the remedy worse than the disease?

Re: USA Temperature: can I sucker you?

#29

Post by andrepd » Sun, Aug 12, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #14

sschueller wrote: post #12

Toxic chemicals in our water and air. Plastic in the ocean. Etc. Etc. These are all things that are killing us and are proven to be bad. We have to do something irregardless if climate change is mann made or not. The debate is irrelevant (at least until we get everything else cleaned up) Even climate change deniers want clean water.

Clean water is fairly distinct from climate change. Greenhouse gasses are mostly harmless aside from their warming effect, and the stuff that makes air and water unhealthy doesn’t warm the planet. Sometimes these two things go together, such as when replacing coal power plants with renewables. But sometimes they’re in opposition. For example, the Volkswagen emissions scandal was that they increased particulate pollut…

>For example, the Volkswagen emissions scandal was that they increased particulate pollution in order to decrease greenhouse gas emissions.

? The scandal was that they did it in testing only, so it passed the standards and they could turn it up in normal use.

Re: USA Temperature: can I sucker you?

#30

Post by splintercell » Sun, Aug 12, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #22

We really need to do something now! The summer has been un-fucking-believably hot. Climate change is not something that will happen in the "future" -- we have to avoid a global ecosystem collapse in the next 10-15 years. :(

I know the Pascal's wager argument for action on Climate change (which is that if there is even 1% chance of climate change being real then why not act on it since the downside of acting is nothing ), but the question is, what if climate change is NOT man-made?

If there is even 1% chance that climate change is a naturally occurring phenomenon then all our efforts to 'stop' greenhouse gas emissions is not going to give the results we want. Maybe building levies and moving cities inland be a better action plan? Maybe faster economic growth is a better solution than subsidized solar and wind.

I am trying to figure our arguments against the above argument.