Browser-based climate change simulation

> This is the right question and there is an easy answer: If all climate models are wrong, it still makes sense to reduce emissions, waste, garbage, cruelty to animals etc. Worst case would be that we "wasted" money on stuff that makes no difference to the climate.

See, this behavior is exactly what I find so fascinating. My comments were clearly not about the trustworthiness of climate models, but rather the conversation around climate models, and the potential impacts of misunderstanding people's underlying reasoning/motives for "not supporting" the climate change initiative.

I posted a link to a specific video that does a good job of explaining this type of behavior, with respect to the last election, following that up with questions that were clearly ("Can you see any possible parallels between the seemingly illogical behavior...") about the video itself, and the applicability of the ideas contained within, to the climate change debate.

And here you are, responding as if you didn't read a single thing I wrote, as if you are working from some completely different text, with distinctly different content.

What is causing this behavior? How does no one notice this? It's like a textbook perfect example of the elephant in the room.

> But did you answer the question from the other side? What if you're wrong and there IS man-made climate change? Well, then we simply can't afford to burn more fossil fuels etc.

I've answered this many times. I am not not opposed to, or in denial of (in any noteworthy way at least), the climate change science.

My concerns and interests are regarding:

a) the nature of the debate

b) the effectiveness of the current approach

c) the lack of willingness of people to discuss the topic in any form other than complete, blind wholesale acceptance - no criticism allowed, even if offered in the spirit of improvement

> Yeah, human psychology.

Yeah, "no biggie". Totally inconsequential.

> But how do you solve this if one part of humans think that the only thing that's left is a "giant middle finger to the system"?

As always, I recommend exploiting the massive computational power of the human brain, while being acutely aware of its sibling: the human ego.

A good place to start would be putting a little effort into determining whether "one part of humans think that the only thing that's left is a "giant middle finger to the system"" is an accurate (from a pragmatic policy perspective) representation of what is actually happening, and what the possible consequences if it assumed to be accurate, but is actually not.

I'm also all for handling in ecologically responsible and sustainable ways.

However, what is being proposed is adoption of unproven technology on a massive scale, at an enormous price. That is where the logic falls apart. Many times before, it has turned out that such forced technology changes were actually damaging to the environment.

If the new technology was actually better, in most cases it would be adopted without government pressure.

The extremism is the problem.

> However, what is being proposed is adoption of unproven technology on a massive scale, at an enormous price.

Which one are you talking about? The simulator website that this HN thread links to actually names taxes/subsidies and renewable energies that are already around as the most effective levers to keep temperature below 2 degrees Celsius.

> If the new technology was actually better, in most cases it would be adopted without government pressure.

Doesn’t explain why existing technology is still subsidized and renewable energy is not. Doesn’t explain why meat production and livestock factories are subsidized, or at least not taxed more. Eating less meat is one lever. Achievable by taxes. No side effects, no unproven technologies.

For example, in Germany, meat is taxed at 7%. Why? Why not 19%? This has nothing to do with being extreme. It’s a reasonable thing to implement.

So, please name the extreme things that you are afraid of.

I did not do this so far because it's ultimately beside the point. Climate science studies the climate, and not climate scientists, and I don't find the exact percentage of climate scientists agreeing or disagreeing with something at all interesting or relevant. Worse, harping on about that point makes it sound as if this was ultimately about some sort of popularity contest.

Well this is not a popularity contest, it's a scientific issue where there is a well-known method for making progress: You present logical arguments and counter-arguments, based on facts from credible sources (or original experiments). That's the only thing I'm interested in, and the he said / she said style of arguing that may get you points on reddit and twitter is super boring to me.

I've tried to make this point in various ways already, but it seems to be, possibly willfully, misunderstood, so I'm going to actually comment in detail on "refutations" of the Cook et al. 2013 paper [1].

The criticisms that I could find in the discussion section are that

1. paper abstracts are manually interpreted

2. there might be selection bias

3. while scientists might agree, they might disagree on the degree to which warming is occuring or to which it is a problem

Regarding 1.: Partly correct, misleading. Manual interpretation is a perfectly fine way to deal with natural language data. However, Cook et al. did not rely on this method alone. They also asked authors to self-assess. They compare their manual abstract rating to the self-assessment, and find the self-assessment to lead to substantially less "No position" ratings and more "Endorsment" ratings, while barely changing the "Reject" ratings.

Regarding 2.: Obviously correct. This is a potential issue in any empirical sociological study. In this case, however, the issue is limited, since 1) the total pool of climate scientists is limited, 2) the sample of papers (11944) and of scientists asked to self-assess (8547 asked, 1200 responses) is high and 3) the result is consistent with that of other similar studies [2].

Regarding 3.: While I agree that this would be more interesting than just distinguishing between rejection / endorsment / no position, it simply wasn't the question that Cook et al. were looking at.

Importantly, none of these points are particularly insightful, yet they were presented as if they constituted some sort of hidden knowledge uncovering a vast conspiracy. Points 1 and 2 are discussed by Cook et al. in their Discussion section, right there in the original paper. Point 3 isn't discussed because it's outside the scope of the paper.

So sure, you can now go and say "they used a sampling strategy, so there is the potential issue of sampling bias" and that is technically the truth. It is also incredibly disingenuous, since every single scientific work ever published has limitations. These limitations are understood and discussed by the scientific community. As long as no major flaw is found that invalidates the findings, the result stands.

This is just how science works. What else are you asking for? A mandatory self-assessment by every climate scientist in the world? Taking a sample and reporting statistics on the sample (while discussing any potential limitations to your sampling strategy) is the correct way to do it. It is therefore totally fine to say that 97% of scientists agree with artificial global warming, based on the study by Cook et al.

Depending on how exactly you ask the question, who you ask, and when you ask, you may get other results than 97% (Cook et al. have reviewed this in detail in [2]). That is not a contradiction, it is totally expected.

[1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024...

[2] This is reviewed in Cook et al. 2016, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/04...

So, you replied to something in which you are not interest, with words related to content in which you are interested? This is something I haven't seen before.

> It’s a strawman in a way. It’s like this argument "what harm is in asking questions" as if asking a question wasn’t a way to frame a conversation.

Things are sometimes like that, but this isn't one of those times.

I challenge you to choose some words I'm saying that you believe are guilty of that. And please don't frame it as if the actual conversation is about the topic you are interested in ("If all climate models are wrong, it still makes sense to..."), and it is I who changed the subject.

> IMHO, you make the conversation a lot more difficult. For sure, we can talk about human psychology and ego in terms of climate change.

I'm way ahead of you, this is what I was already discussing. My comment is right there for you and others to review, what you hope to achieve by feigning surprise is beyond me.

> Your points a-c:

My questions were written as a response to @svara's question: "How does that move the conversation forward?"

> a) It’s interesting to you, it’s boring for others.

Ok. May I ask: why did you reply?

> b) This includes a) and makes a) goal-oriented. Yes, we can talk about how effective the current approach is to deal with climate change. We can also talk on how to optimize this conversation. Part of this might be to understand the deniers to some extend. But this has its limits.

Does it? Upon what do you base this assertion?

> It’s hard to be goal-oriented with people that are merely destructive.

Upon what is your assertion that they are "merely destructive" based?

> It’s like talking to Nazis. At some point, this is pointless, because hate is all that comes out of their mouths.

This is an absurdly broad generalization, and it kind of sounds like the kind of thing someone on the internet would just make up. Once again, upon what do you base this assertion?

> c) Criticism is allowed. Derailing the conversation however is ineffective.

I'm not derailing the conversation. I introduced a new topic, and a conversation ensued based upon that new topic. You entered that discussion, and attempted to redirect the topic of conversation, and now you are giving me advice on how to conduct myself?

> Talking about conspiracy stuff that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny is ineffective.

Really? Lots of people believe conspiracy theorists and deniers actually spread their ideas.

> But it’s done all the time by deniers. And people who think climate change is real got a little tired by all the BS.

Sorry to hear that.

> Your last two paragraphs are cryptic.

You asked: "But how do you solve this if one part of humans think that the only thing that's left is a "giant middle finger to the system"?", and I replied telling you to essentially think. This is cryptic advice?

> Please add some actionable ideas to this discussion. Because simply asking me to think about stuff you are unable to point out exactly is lazy.

Entering a conversation, changing the topic, and then refusing to think is.....I dunno, absurd?

> All you keep repeating is that psychology and ego should be added to the discussion or the human brain should be exploited. Like how exactly? What’s your plan? What’s the goal you wanna achieve?

All of this is very clearly contained within the text of the discussion. I'm not sure if your ignorance is feigned or genuine, but I don't have the energy to find out. Not to say that I'm not curious though, this is one of the more interesting permutations of unusual behavior I've encountered yet.