Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets • Hacker News Board

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#81

Post by kriops » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

mikaeluman wrote: post #26

Certainly evidence of climate change. The man-made part is of course not demonstrated in this piece though. I rather don’t like the condescending attitude but will at least applaud the use of the word “skeptic” rather than “denier”; the latter being a more religious phrasing. Disclaimer: I do think man-made climate change is happening and something very much worth addressing. The interesting part is simply what to do…

The man-made part is one thing, but it's also important to distinguish evidence from proof. While this is absolutely an interesting, cool and curious observation, it is also circumstantial and should be treated as such. (Edit: As presented in the blog. I did not check out the actual paper referenced by the author.)

In my personal opinion the definite argument for any given position on climate change (the same standard would also apply for the 'sceptics'), like any other physical domain, would be a mathematical model with decent (and not retroactive) predictive accuracy. Of course the climate is an incredibly complex system, which makes creating accurate models incredibly difficult – do we even have a quantitative model for marginal changes in the mean global temperature with respect to e.g. co2 concentration in the atmosphere at the present time? I have not paid attention in several years, but when I was reading up on this several years ago the scientists had severe problems reeling in the uncertainty in said models. Something about the sun, oceans and many different kinds of fairly local feedback systems.

Anyways, you can't argue with predictive experiments!

Disclaimer: I also think man-made climate change is happening and something very much worth addressing, and I can confirm I disagree vehemently with many well intended strategies.

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#82

Post by jaza » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

kbutler wrote: post #62

tzs wrote: post #21

It looks like from around 1700-1900 the earliest peak bloom day got later, while the latest peak bloom day stayed about the same. After that, the latest peak bloom day started getting earlier and the earliest peak bloom day also started getting earlier. So right now peak blooms can occur about as earlier as their historically could, but seem much more unlikely to occur as late as they historically did. In other words…

Cars, asphalt, heating/cooling, industry, and population density increase? "According to the EPA, many U.S. cities have air temperatures up to 10°F (5.6°C) warmer than the surrounding natural land cover." https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/climate-change-impacts/... This "urban heat island" warming has progressed at the same time as CO2-driven global warming, and its measured magnitude (5.6°C) is larger than the es…

(author here)

Thanks for the info about "urban heat island" warming, I actually hadn't ever heard that phrase before. It makes total sense. And yeah, even CNN is right, urbanisation is almost certainly just as big a factor as (if not a greater factor than) regional / global climate change, in terms of the cherry blossoms.

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#83

Post by _y5hn » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

xrd wrote: post #4

It's a great article. The real problem with evidence like this is that the "believer" must strive for 100% accuracy; that is really hard. The "skeptic" only needs to have one single piece of data turn out to be inaccurate, and then can doubt the entire thing; that is really easy. And, we can hold both things in our heads. I just went to the Newport Aquarium in Oregon. There is a terrific exhibit which shows a paleobo…

I see very few skeptics. A true skeptic would be truly skeptical, including own ability and Dunning-Kruger effects. We mainly don't see that.

It would be a breath of fresh air for people to be open-minded and curious. Seek out cutting-edge information from experts now and then, and share that.

There's room for being concerned, but more than that, may not be too helpful for anyone.

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#84

Post by anonAndOn » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #17

monktastic1 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand. Why deny something that you claim not to know enough about?

Heh. Well, since you asked... There's a distressing pattern: the idea that "man made climate change exists, therefore disaster." The "disaster" part is the part I've never truly been able to convince myself of. I don't deny it -- you're right, it's more along the lines of agnosticism. But I think it's really easy to convince yourself of doom. However, striving to be something resembling a scientist, I recognize that…

You might be too young to know, but there were some famous holdouts living around Mt. St Helens in 1980.[0] They didn't believe any of the "stupid scientists" knew if the volcano was going to erupt. The holdouts are only famous because they are dead.

[0]https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/05/17/mo...

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#85

Post by ajnin » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:22 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #17

monktastic1 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand. Why deny something that you claim not to know enough about?

Heh. Well, since you asked... There's a distressing pattern: the idea that "man made climate change exists, therefore disaster." The "disaster" part is the part I've never truly been able to convince myself of. I don't deny it -- you're right, it's more along the lines of agnosticism. But I think it's really easy to convince yourself of doom. However, striving to be something resembling a scientist, I recognize that…

> How do you know we need to care?

The temperature difference between now and the last ice age, at a time there was 3km of ice over much of the northern hemisphere, and sea level was 120 below current average, was 5°C. Current predictions for the temperature increase in 2100 range from 2°C, if we make a huge effort to quickly and drastically reduce CO2 emissions, to 5°C if we keep going as we are. The reality will be somewhere between, I'll let you decide what you think is likely. We don't know exactly what the consequences are gonna be, but we know they're going to be dramatic, and if you think they won't affect you personally, you're probably wrong.

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#86

Post by readflaggedcomm » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:22 PM UTC

_jal wrote: post #44

sillysaurusx wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a climate change denier. A lot of us keep our opinions to ourselves, mostly because we know we don’t know enough about it. Articles like these help change my mind. Well, partly. The question I keep coming to is “how do you know any of this matters, for a definition of ‘matter’ that includes widespread upheaval of human societies?” But at this point I go meh, not worth the risk. Point is, condescending remarks onl…

> Point is, condescending remarks only push people away from your cause. Thanks for the honesty. Here's some more. Some of us don't care about your feelings at this point. It is past time for talking. There are always people with perverse incentives, or deeply held beliefs or grudges, who are unreachable. Screw 'em, it is time for action. If they want to argue, they can argue with each other.

"Screw 'em" sounds like an end unto itself, especially when climate justice demands the least influential people to embrace poverty.

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#87

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

kevinpet wrote: post #61

Climate change denier and climate change skeptic focus on whether climate change is happening, from the progressive technocrat view that from these facts there must naturally follow certain policies. If anyone actually wants to persuade the other side, they need to focus on showing that the policies are likely to accomplish their goals and the least intrusive means of accomplishing those goals. But the "we must do so…

> But the "we must do something" crowd can't even seem to accept nuclear energy, which people can interpret as a sign that preventing climate change is just an excuse for policy goals already desired for other reasons.

I mean… I’m finding that difficult to argue with. The rest of ”We must do something” is usually “even if it’s the wrong thing”. To which some people could say is nuclear, but I agree it’s an obvious future if it really was all about science.

Now I’m struggling to think of examples where the proposed solution isn’t a tax plan or an outright re-envisioning of society.

I’d like to find an example to see if the deniers still oppose it. I guess there are carbon scrubbers and planting trees. Are those things opposed more than they are pushed for?

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#88

Post by jaza » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

me_again wrote: post #73

"As far as I can tell, there's no other record of any other natural phenomenon on this Earth (climate change related or otherwise), that has been consistently recorded, in writing, more-or-less annually, for the past 1,000+ years. " We don't need humans to record something in writing. Evidence from physical processes can be used to infer historical climate and temperature, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleotherm…

(author here)

No, we don't need humans to record something in writing. But the point I was trying to make, is that maybe there are climate change sceptics out there who will discard any and all evidence that wasn't recorded in writing by humans, as "unreliable scientific mumbo jumbo". But they can't discard this particular evidence for having that particular fault (although such folk will no doubt still end up denying this particular evidence, on account of its other faults, of which I admit there are a number).

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#89

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:26 PM UTC

eschulz wrote: post #13

xrd wrote: post #4

It's a great article. The real problem with evidence like this is that the "believer" must strive for 100% accuracy; that is really hard. The "skeptic" only needs to have one single piece of data turn out to be inaccurate, and then can doubt the entire thing; that is really easy. And, we can hold both things in our heads. I just went to the Newport Aquarium in Oregon. There is a terrific exhibit which shows a paleobo…

You're right, those of us reviewing evidence must strive for 100% accuracy. One of the issues with the cherry blossom data is that it's difficult to be 100% sure that we can accurately keep track of the Japanese calendar 1200+ years into the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calendar

It seems beyond obvious that we also aren’t accounting for selective breeding of cherry trees. Humans have had a hand in everything else, why wouldn’t we assume here too.

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#90

Post by jaza » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

Kaytaro wrote: post #47

I "believe" in climate change, but this article does a pretty poor job of examining even the most basic of questions a skeptic would ask. Such as, what determines when the blossoms are peak bloom? How accurate were the ancient Japanese at recording days? I mean, just looking at the graph you can see it narrows near modern times which suggests we simply got better at recording accurate data.

(author here)

If you look into the academic papers published by Aono, you'll see that he goes into a fair bit of detail regarding both of those points: how he determined consistent historical peak bloom dates, and how he calculated consistent Gregorian dates from the ancient Japanese dates. Not being an expert in these things myself, I consciously chose not to try and explore them myself in much detail.