Fact-check of viral climate misinformation quietly removed from Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: Fact-check of viral climate misinformation quietly removed from Facebook

#21

Post by zzzcpan » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 1:12 PM UTC

gh02t wrote: post #18

adrianN wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, there is no heated debate about the evidence among climate scientists, at least not on the points that matter for policy decisions. The debate only exists outside of expert circles.

There is no real debate about whether climate change is real nor whether or not it is a major threat, but there is still debate on policy-relevant points. I'm not a climate scientist myself, but I do work with a bunch of them and from what I gather from talking to them there is still a lot of work and debate over consequences, remediation, and urgency. The latter mostly ranging from "extremely urgent but we still hav…

Right, there is plenty of confidence that climate change is real and caused by humans, but pretty much zero confidence in the long term effects of climate change on human population.

Re: Fact-check of viral climate misinformation quietly removed from Facebook

#22

Post by AlexandrB » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #5

pacamara619 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thr problem lies not with the leaders, at least not in the western world, people just need to stop voting for conspiracy theorists, it really is that simple.

That is simply not true. No one is on track to meet the Paris agreement goals. This is not because every government is lead by conspiracy theorists.

I think we're suffering from what France suffered from at the beginning of WWI - peacetime generals (or in this case politicians). For the last 30+ years, the consequences for incompetence and fuck ups in politics have been generally low. The current do-nothing political class is a result of these very weak selective pressures. I don't think we'll see a change until more voters begin to feel the effects of climate change and related issues. Hopefully it will be a positive change to more competent leaders, but it's not looking great based on the last few years.

Re: Fact-check of viral climate misinformation quietly removed from Facebook

#23

Post by wizzwizz4 » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 1:33 PM UTC

zzzcpan wrote: post #21

gh02t wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no real debate about whether climate change is real nor whether or not it is a major threat, but there is still debate on policy-relevant points. I'm not a climate scientist myself, but I do work with a bunch of them and from what I gather from talking to them there is still a lot of work and debate over consequences, remediation, and urgency. The latter mostly ranging from "extremely urgent but we still hav…

Right, there is plenty of confidence that climate change is real and caused by humans, but pretty much zero confidence in the long term effects of climate change on human population.

Yeah; nobody knows for certain how long we've got left. Could be a century or more, could be a few decades. Personally, I'd rather not risk it.

Re: Fact-check of viral climate misinformation quietly removed from Facebook

#24

Post by wizzwizz4 » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

trabant00 wrote: post #19

perfunctory wrote: post #3

This is yet another reminder that climate change is not a science / technology issue. Science has been settled, technology exists. It's a moral courage issue. Moral courage that our leaders lack. So we have to do it ourselves. There are two broad categories of actions one can take. 1) personal life-style changes 2) system change activism. We are at the point where anyone concerned about the climate change has to do b…

You're describing the exact opposite of a scientific process. And even if science reached nirvana just now (spoiler: it did not) the exact action to take is nowhere close to being an easy choice. We're in a prisoner's dilemma in which if you stop polluting I can take advantage of that, kill you economically and the climate goes to hell faster because you where out tree hugging and left me to do whatever I want with t…

Assuming an ideal free market in a real-world environment. Fortunately, though, we have regulation, which can solve this issue! (In theory. Of course, for this to work, we have to have countries sticking to the agreements they've made with other countries, e.g. the Paris Agreement.)

Re: Fact-check of viral climate misinformation quietly removed from Facebook

#25

Post by bioinformatics » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 1:39 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #11

krona wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science has been settled Science can never be so arrogant. Most people probably know this but it's worth restating in a heated debate about the 'evidence': The null hypothesis exists for a reason; that is because we can not prove anything. We can only eliminate those theories which are demonstrably false.

As far as I know, there is no heated debate about the evidence among climate scientists, at least not on the points that matter for policy decisions. The debate only exists outside of expert circles.

Yes, you're right. When "science is settled" we scientists stop debating, exchanging data, collaborating and discussing about it. We move to new fields, where the science is not settled.

In the past 10-20 years we settled so many things, and predicted so many others, that we are running out of ideas on what to settle soon.

Re: Fact-check of viral climate misinformation quietly removed from Facebook

#26

Post by DuskStar » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #16

38140585 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Science has been settled" The science of what? That we have climate change pretty much "everybody" will agree on. The science of climate solutions is not even close to being settled. I have a Master in Energy (BSc in Energy) with focus on renewable energy. But try to get a group of professors from different fields to get along to see what is the way forward, or the mix of what. Nuclear energy, geoengineering, hydrog…

The sensible thing to do when the science that says that we need to stop producing CO2 as quickly as possible is clear but the solution space is not figured out quite so well is to set up a cap-and-trade system for emissions and adjust the cap to whatever the climate scientists think is reasonable for the warming goal we're trying to achieve. This has been known for a long time among economists; there even was a Nobe…

Isn't Cap+Trade just worse at everything (except optics) than an appropriate carbon tax?

Re: Fact-check of viral climate misinformation quietly removed from Facebook

#27

Post by adrianN » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 1:59 PM UTC

DuskStar wrote: post #26

adrianN wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sensible thing to do when the science that says that we need to stop producing CO2 as quickly as possible is clear but the solution space is not figured out quite so well is to set up a cap-and-trade system for emissions and adjust the cap to whatever the climate scientists think is reasonable for the warming goal we're trying to achieve. This has been known for a long time among economists; there even was a Nobe…

Isn't Cap+Trade just worse at everything (except optics) than an appropriate carbon tax?

I don't see a big difference between the two, but I'm not an economist. Why do you think that a tax is strictly better?

Re: Fact-check of viral climate misinformation quietly removed from Facebook

#28

Post by AstralStorm » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 2:11 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #16

38140585 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Science has been settled" The science of what? That we have climate change pretty much "everybody" will agree on. The science of climate solutions is not even close to being settled. I have a Master in Energy (BSc in Energy) with focus on renewable energy. But try to get a group of professors from different fields to get along to see what is the way forward, or the mix of what. Nuclear energy, geoengineering, hydrog…

The sensible thing to do when the science that says that we need to stop producing CO2 as quickly as possible is clear but the solution space is not figured out quite so well is to set up a cap-and-trade system for emissions and adjust the cap to whatever the climate scientists think is reasonable for the warming goal we're trying to achieve. This has been known for a long time among economists; there even was a Nobe…

What happens with trade systems is that they get gamed to the point of uselessness. They're implemented already and patently worthless, because the price would have to be truly high to matter.

This is not the way and a delay in implementing proper controls nobody can afford.

Re: Fact-check of viral climate misinformation quietly removed from Facebook

#29

Post by AstralStorm » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

DuskStar wrote: post #26

adrianN wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sensible thing to do when the science that says that we need to stop producing CO2 as quickly as possible is clear but the solution space is not figured out quite so well is to set up a cap-and-trade system for emissions and adjust the cap to whatever the climate scientists think is reasonable for the warming goal we're trying to achieve. This has been known for a long time among economists; there even was a Nobe…

Isn't Cap+Trade just worse at everything (except optics) than an appropriate carbon tax?

Tax is not good enough either, because of immediate gaming of "tax breaks".

Directly mandate use of clean solutions. No trade, just cap and regulate. Hard deadlines and checks. Including on outsourced deployments to close that loophole.

Re: Fact-check of viral climate misinformation quietly removed from Facebook

#30

Post by AstralStorm » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 2:14 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #24

trabant00 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're describing the exact opposite of a scientific process. And even if science reached nirvana just now (spoiler: it did not) the exact action to take is nowhere close to being an easy choice. We're in a prisoner's dilemma in which if you stop polluting I can take advantage of that, kill you economically and the climate goes to hell faster because you where out tree hugging and left me to do whatever I want with t…

Assuming an ideal free market in a real-world environment. Fortunately, though, we have regulation, which can solve this issue! (In theory. Of course, for this to work, we have to have countries sticking to the agreements they've made with other countries, e.g. the Paris Agreement.)

You mean like the Brussels Effect? Make it more expensive to not keep the rules.

Enough political will and all the polluters will bend to it.