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

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

#111

Post by QuarterReptile »

montebicyclelo wrote: post #99
chromaton wrote: post #36

I hate to do this but... cherry trees only live about 15-40 years. They're cultivated and bred for their blossoms, among other things. How can we be sure that we haven't selected trees for earlier blooms?

The author’s post is based on meticulously collected data, compiled with great care. It would have taken a lot of time and effort. This rebuttal is a half baked idea that likely took mere seconds to put together. Great example of the asymmetry of skeptics vs evidence gatherers. Evidence gathering takes a vast amount of work and effort. Whereas skeptics can throw out vaguely plausible hypotheses, to easily sow doubt.…

You are objecting to the very concept of the scientific method, whereby a hypothesis is subjected to a barrage of dismissals and either emerges strengthened or is rejected based on one of those dismissals.

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

#113

Post by mythrwy »

whatshisface wrote: post #12
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…

What I think is really weird is the high level of correlation between the presence of the beliefs that it's not happening and that it doesn't matter if it is. Those are two separate questions that are almost completely distinct in terms of what facts lead to them, and they overlap only at the point where they both recommend no action against climate change. Yet, it is very common for people who believe the first to e…

"It's happening" and the effects attributable to humans burning fossil fuels is a scale though.

There's very little doubt C02 does increase the holding of heat. There's also very little doubt the earth has gotten slightly warmer over the past century.

Where I become skeptical is in the modeling and predictions. More heat means more evaporation means more cloud cover means less heat but clouds hold heat held in. The earth tilts slightly on it's axis. Energy output from the sun varies. There are so many interacting factors. "Butterfly effect" and all.

Then you throw politics and redistribution-ism and media sensationalism on top of it all and wow what a stinky mess.

Suffice it to say I personally don't think global catastrophe is imminent from C02. Not convinced at all. I lived through the ice age scare (here's Leonard Nimoy talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tAYXQPWdC0) and the start of the global warming alarm in the late 80's (which just didn't pan out as many expected 30+ years later). So I don't trust the ability to model long term climate changes and present it in an objective and non political fashion.

But I do believe humans are affecting the climate and from caution we should reduce C02 as we reasonably can without starving millions to death. It's cleaner anyway and fossil fuels are just nasty in other respects and they are limited.

Am I an illiterate unscientific "denier"? An oil company shill? Nope. Just a guy who has seen nonsense hype cycles which this certainly resembles come and go.

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

#114

Post by mythrwy »

_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.

You can care about other's opinions and feelings or not but you only damage yourself in the end if you don't because they don't go away with "well I'm right!".

Good luck on your "action". Isn't going to be much in the end I'd wager and the experiment will play out.

Fortunately for all of us the end effects on humanity are probably well over stated.

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

#115

Post by clircle »

clifdweller wrote: post #108
clircle wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a climate change denier, but I'm not sure if climate change is man-made. I believe the climate invariable changes, my issue is that we cannot determine the fraction of this variation that is due to human interference.

It's true there really isn't any proof we have done all of it or how much is from cO2 as to more general urbanization/deforestation; but that should be left to theoretical science and could take hundreds of years to figure out. In meantime does it hurt to make the assumption we are the factor pushing climate over edge and start to prepare methods to deal with it?

I have no idea. That requires policy, economics, decision analysis, and (probably) more convincing evidence that we are near an edge.

Again, I think the climate is changing. And I think it will continue to change in ways that adversely affect humanity.

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

#116

Post by Comevius »

_y5hn wrote: post #83
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.

There are tens of thousands of papers published each year about climate change, there is a 100% scientific agreement. The peanut gallery in the comment section knows better, but can't be bothered to contribute to the discussion.

https://www.hull.ac.uk/special/blog/why-people-still-believe...

It is denial or ignorance. They are not sceptical of anything, they wouldn't know what to be sceptical of.

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

#117

Post by throwawaylinux »

radford-neal wrote: post #91

This is not actually "indisputable" evidence. First, do we know that the date cherry trees blossom is controlled by temperature? This question isn't addressed in the linked post, or in the document it links to with the data. They seem to just assume it must be the case. However, the fact that the dates show very little change until the late 19th century is reason to doubt that temperature controls the date, since the…

It disappoints me to see this kind of article so uncritically received here. This is on par with, say, a "scientific" article claiming that the lack of a changing trend in the date of the Canadian wheat crop harvest is indisputable evidence that climate change does not exist.

As well as the possible influences you list there are many more - changes in local water or air chemical content, changes in cultivation techniques, planting arrangements, chemical treatments (fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, etc), changes in the biology of the plant due to natural or artificial selection, changes in pests or other influences of introduced or changing balances of plants/animals/fungi/bacteria. And surely many more I haven't listed.

Come on HN, I've seen you fiercely argue the finer points of computer science, rocketry, quantum mechanics and pounce on any slight inconsistency or omission! You don't need to throw rational thinking out the window when you read something that seems like it is "on your side". There exists far stronger evidence of climate change than this.

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

#118

Post by bitexploder »

manquer wrote: post #98
bitexploder wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN this week something like half of the articles (e: from a Google search) about PHP had SQLi in them.

While SQLi is still quite common, the use of good libraries and prepared statements even in PHP has increased a lot say in last 10 years, the % of projects / services on which SQLi was possible should have also reduced. In that HN thread you talked about someone had mentioned till sometime back even the official docs used to have examples with SQLi, which of course they don't anymore, making it slightly harder for ju…

My old book I wrote on PHP4 had SQLi in it.. heh. And I still ended up in appsec years later. Been doing that for 15+ years but my roots are software dev, so I use that and try to have a lot of empathy for developers. When I got started app sec was nascent and just becoming it’s own thing, and many in infosec had a very blame oriented mindset with developers. So it’s great to see how far we have brought things.

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

#119

Post by darkteflon »

Kluny wrote: post #110
xorcist wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you care to ask them what it is that they doubt, specifically? It's basically down to two choices. One can doubt the CO2 greenhouse effect, which everyone with a basic education should know the basic principles of, and which can be demonstrated in home experiments. Or one can doubt that humanity burns the amount of carbon that is reported, but these figures are publicly available in many forms, including the am…

It’s hard to do, cause most often it’s my dad and I have trouble staying calm because of that family dynamic. I could try asking though.

My mum is the same. I have never been able to wrap my head around it: if you have no formal (or even self-taught) training in a particular domain, shouldn't you be humble enough to accept that you're not in a position to assess the quality of the science in that domain, and so accept the consensus?

I have never heard the argument - from even the most ardent climate skeptics and deniers - that the consensus (by simple majority of climate scientists) is in fact anything other than that we are living through man-made climate change. The focus of such people is instead usually on the dissenting voices.

But then, how do such people dispose of the views of the majority? Is their belief that the dissenting voices are the correct ones based on some artifice of conspiracy? Do they doubt the bona fides of the majority? Do they think they are all bought and paid for? What exactly is the leap of logic that allows this person - the untrained and only incidentally interested layperson - to dismiss the opinions of this body of people?

Most people are good. They care about others and they have good intentions. Yes, their actions can be distorted by incentives. But on the whole people seek to do good. It seems to me that you'd have to falsify those (in my view, self-evidently fundamentally true) claims in order to dismiss the scientific consensus on climate change.

I look at my kids, then I look at my mum, and it's hard not to get pissed off.

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

#120

Post by montebicyclelo »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #111
montebicyclelo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author’s post is based on meticulously collected data, compiled with great care. It would have taken a lot of time and effort. This rebuttal is a half baked idea that likely took mere seconds to put together. Great example of the asymmetry of skeptics vs evidence gatherers. Evidence gathering takes a vast amount of work and effort. Whereas skeptics can throw out vaguely plausible hypotheses, to easily sow doubt.…

You are objecting to the very concept of the scientific method, whereby a hypothesis is subjected to a barrage of dismissals and either emerges strengthened or is rejected based on one of those dismissals.

The scientific method is not based on proposing a hypothesis, and then having people on the internet offer half baked rebuttals or dismissive comments.
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