[adrianN]

Unless you literally don't believe the raw numbers coming from sensors all over the world there is no room for doubting that the climate is changing.

There can, and has been, plenty of discussion as to the reasons, but for at least thirty years now the consensus has been that human activity is responsible for the vast majority of the effects we've seen.

[civility]

Following the consensus is a fine choice if you're trying not to get lynched by the mob, but it really has very little to do with science. The scientific method does not say, "get everyone you think is smart to vote on it, if they all agree, it must be true". I really wish lay people would quit turning science into a religion and scientists into priests.

[adrianN]

I'm not a climate scientist, so I let the experts battle it out and then look at the scientific consensus. I trust experts in all areas of my life, because I don't have the time to become an expert myself. Following the consensus is a fine choice if you're a politician and your task is to ensure that future generations have a chance to live a more prosperous life.

[civility]

That's a very reasonable position, and I won't argue with you there. Many times you need to make a decision with imperfect or incomplete information.

However you go one step further and attack anyone who dares question that view, and you do it with the a sense of righteousness as though you did understand the topic and applied the scientific method to get there. That's just bullying, but you get away with it because you're part of a mob. I mean it's one thing for an expert to claim certainty and argue their point of view, but you aren't actually certain - you just picked the safer bet.

To be clear, I think the world would be a lot better place with less burning coal. I care a lot about the poisoning and pollution in the oceans. I think smog is disgusting. I probably have one of the smallest "carbon footprints" of any adult you know. However, I know a fair amount about programming, math, and simulations, and I don't trust anyone who says they can predict a chaotic system 50-100 years into the future.

And concensus doesn't compel me much at all. Once upon a time in America, you could probably get a concensus (even among scientists!) that God was real.

[adrianN]

The very fact that the climate is hard to predict and the models we use probably linearize a lot of nonlinear systems is what scares me most. The further we depart from normal average temperatures, the more likely it becomes that we hit some scary feedback loop the models don't account for and enter a hothouse Earth climate with palm trees at the poles.

[civility]

Yeah, in the absence of information or understanding, a lot of people like to imagine the worst. I guess that's a good defensive instinct.

[ljcn]

"A lot" maybe, but I suspect the majority would do the opposite and deny/understate the problem.

Also the parent comment is more about risk management. The sensible thing to do in the absence of information is precisely to imagine the worst outcomes and act with them in mind. The precautionary principle is a statutory requirement in law in some jurisdictions to help avoid the worst outcomes.

[Gupie]

Conversely if you are not a climate scientist what is the rational for not going with the consensus of 97% of climate scientists?

[civility]

Because there isn't any reason for me to jump to a conclusion. For other reasons, I already have a carbon footprint and voting record almost anyone in that consensus would approve of. Is it really important that I "believe" all the things people are afraid of? I'm pretty content to leave some topics unresolved until I get more information.

[Gupie]

I am not a fan of "believe" or dogma of any kind myself. I tend to go on likelihood. I ask myself is it more likely that the 97% are correct or the 3%?

[giardini]

Gupie says> "what is the rational for not going with the consensus of 97% of climate scientists?"

Simply that there is no such consensus - "'97% Of Climate Scientists Agree' Is 100% Wrong":

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2015/01/06/97-of-cl...

From the article:

"Bottom line: What the 97% of climate scientists allegedly agree on is very mild and in no way justifies restricting the energy that billions need...But it gets even worse. Because it turns out that 97% didn’t even say that..."

The Forbes article describes how the "97%" value was fabricated:

"Where did most of the 97 percent come from, then? Cook had created a category called “explicit endorsement without quantification”—that is, papers in which the author, by Cook’s admission, did not say whether 1 percent or 50 percent or 100 percent of the warming was caused by man. He had also created a category called “implicit endorsement,” for papers that imply (but don’t say) that there is some man-made global warming and don’t quantify it. In other words, he created two categories that he labeled as endorsing a view that they most certainly didn’t."

"The 97 percent claim is a deliberate misrepresentation designed to intimidate the public—and numerous scientists whose papers were classified by Cook protested..."

Read it and weep (or laugh).

[Frondo]

Your source for that article is a man named Alex Epstein, who is paid by coal industry figures to advocate for a "new industrial revolution".

> In a September 11, 2018 piece at the CIP website, Epstein disclosed “proudly” that one of his industry clients was Tyler White, president of the Kentucky Coal Association. [22]

Also interesting:

> Alexander Epstein planned to release his “Energy Liberation Plan” for consideration by 2016 political candidates. According to an article by Epstein in Forbes, the Energy Liberation Plan seeks to combat “backwards energy and environmental policies that are anti-development, not anti-pollution.” He contends that we are “squandering the opportunity of a generation, through blind opposition to our three most potent sources of power: hydrocarbon energy (coal, oil, and gas), nuclear energy, and hydroelectric energy.” [15]

I am reading, and I am neither weeping nor laughing, because this is exactly what I expected to see.

If this is someone you expect to accurately represent climate science, I think you are mistaken in holding them in that regard.

As a counterpoint, here's another take on the "97%" figure, a review of the several meta-studies that have been done on climate science:

http://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consen...

Their conclusion is that between 90 and 100% of climate science papers agree that 1) climate change is occurring and 2) it is caused by human industrial sources.

Of course, the man paid by the Kentucky Coal Association would disagree, but in this case I would defer to Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Sources:

* https://www.desmogblog.com/center-industrial-progress

* https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Alex_Epstein

[ThomPete]

Because that consensus is trivial. Probably 100% agree that the climate is changing which is the question people agreed on. Even so-called skeptics agree on that. It's all the other questions that have much more uncertainty and less consensus.

The use of that number is the kind of outright political manipulation that's so prevalent in this debate.

Keep in mind we aren't even talking about scientifically demonstrated conclusions, we are talking about speculated conclusions. The IPCC doesn't do any research themselves and don't check the data, its a meta-study.

What started my skepticism was when I realized they don't actually know how much human co2 emissions affect the temperature. Go try and find that number, you won't find it cause we don't know. Once I realized that and started understanding how the climate models work and saw how much interpretation and fitting and vague language was being used to obstruct the actual science, I realized that worrying about the environment was more rational. There is very very little actually demonstrated science in the climate debate it's almost entirely ideological and used by politicians to gain more power and create something to rally up voters around. In 10 years the climate catastrophism we see today will be laughed at. Just wait and see.

[esailija]

The scientific consensus is that climate change is happening and that it is human caused. Being "skeptic" about this is like being a flat earther. Baseless skepticism is not any better than blind faith.

[kaybe]

I really hope you are right. :)

> The IPCC doesn't do any research themselves and don't check the data, its a meta-study.

The people writing the chapters are involved in doing the research. (It's not like doing that is a full-time job, mind.)

> What started my skepticism was when I realized they don't actually know how much human co2 emissions affect the temperature. Go try and find that number, you won't find it cause we don't know.

For anyone wondering, look here:

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

Short answer - doubling the atmospheric CO2 should lead to an increase between 1.5 and 4.5°C, though more current work I remember narrowed the range down somewhere around 2.3°C-3°C. There is a lot of work down to narrow it down further.

[Gupie]

>> In 10 years the climate catastrophim we see today will be laughed at. Just wait and se.

That is very unlikely.

[acqq]

> I know a fair amount about programming, math, and simulations, and I don't trust anyone who says they can predict a chaotic system 50-100 years into the future.

Then you obviously don't know basic physics. The average temperature is much easier to predict (if some worse feedback doesn't get involved to make the development even worse, that is) than the microscopic "chaotic movements." I rather believe that what's behind your statement is that you just don't care what is going to happen in 50 or 100 years.

[civility]

> Then you obviously don't know basic physics.

Ugh, if you're going to just attack me, why not jump to the big guns and call me a shill for the oil company or some other cliche.

> The average temperature is much easier to predict

If you do enough averaging over a long enough period, this can be true. I mean, we can all tell the average position of a double pendulum. I'm guessing you think 1, 10, or 100 years is enough time to average temperature. Try looking at the last 400,000 years and tell me how well you can predict those swings.

> I rather believe that what's behind your statement is that you just don't care what is going to happen in 50 or 100 years.

You can believe anything you want, but I doubt you used the scientific method to get there.

[acqq]

> Try looking at the last 400,000 years and tell me how well you can predict those swings.

Actually if we had so reliable measurements for that period like we do for last hundred years, it would not be hard.

Your arguments have no basis, just an attempt to distract from the facts by grasping for what is not being discussed (e.g. 400 thousand years precise inference). Given the information we do have we have very good understanding of the relevant phenomena.

[lm28469]

> Following the consensus is a fine choice if you're trying not to get lynched by the mob, but it really has very little to do with science.

As opposed to ? Being so skeptic that you deny everything you don't personally believe in no matter the amount of proof your are given ?

[baq]

the scientific method is about hypotheses and experiments. we're running a global experiment now, with potentially disastrous consequences, which can't be repeated, and you're saying you're fine to wait for its outcome because it's unscientific to do otherwise, basic thermodynamics notwithstanding, and you dare to tell others that science is turning into a religion, where in fact you have an irrational approach to the problem at hand which you're rationalizing as 'scientific method'.

i'm afraid that in fact your stance on climate warming is a question of your identity instead of logical thought.

[ptah]

the scientific method DOES say that a result should be reproducible. and in this case it is reproducible beyond what is required for it to become accepted

[civility]

I'd believe the simulations are reproducible. However, re-running the atmosphere of the earth is certainly not an experiment anyone has reproduced. There's at least some room for questioning whether the simulations have sufficient fidelity to predict a chaotic system 50-100 years into the future.

Arguing this topic doesn't do me any good. It's like trying to tell a devout christian you think there's room for doubt and uncertainty about whether the apocalypse is coming. Most people just lock their heels and reinforce their current beliefs. This message will probably fade away into a light shade of grey, making me wonder why I even bothered.

However, every time I see someone trot out the word "concensus", as though that's relevant to good science, I grind my teeth.

[dTal]

>However, every time I see someone trot out the word "concensus", as though that's relevant to good science, I grind my teeth.

Me too. Because it's spelled 'consensus'.

[civility]

Heh, you got me there.

[agent008t]

It would be really interesting to know if the research/models have been verified by any independent researchers not employed in academia - ideally from the world of finance, where evaluating correctness of methodology and models is absolutely crucial. Ideally they would also be highly sceptical of the predictions and have a pro-economic growth bias.

[civility]

> and have a pro-economic growth bias

Sarcasm? Forgive me, but it's honestly tough to tell.

Amusingly, I think anyone who can make a model of the climate which can predict 100 years into the future really should make a model of the stock market a modest 1 year into the future instead. Having done so, they could make enough money to buy whatever technological or political change they think would solve the climate problem.

[agent008t]

No - I think having a pro-economic growth bias would be helpful, because they would likely have a higher hurdle for being convinced that we may indeed need to sacrifice economic growth to change the course of humanity's future for the better.

If they do their research and are convinced, it would mean a lot more to me than if someone who supported the conclusions of environmentalists' policies apriori reaches the same conclusion. If there is any such bias among climate scientists (e.g. people that go into climate science already hold certain beliefs about what should be done politically, and inadvertently favour the models / parameters / methodology that support their beliefs), this would help mitigate it to some extent.

[modzu]

just wanted to thank you. advocating for scientific literacy is my only stake in this debate

[anthuman]

The climate has always been changing. That's the problem. We have been in a "long trend" global warming period for at least 20,000 years.

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

Much of the world was under ice 20K years ago. And the earth has generally warmed since then and melted much of the ice ( with occasional refreezes ).

And the "consensus" that human activity is responsible is utter nonsense. Feel free to research where the "consensus" came from. Also, whenever "science" relies on "consensus", you have to start wondering because real science doesn't rely on consensus - it relies on hypothesis and experimentation. The speed of light isn't derived from "consensus" but rather experiments. Science isn't politics, people don't vote for what the facts of science are.

You talk of 30 years of consensus. Do you know what the consensus was before the consensus on global warming? We had 30 years of consensus on global cooling. And before then we had decades of consensus of malthusian collapse. And before then consensus on social darwinism. Strange how all these "consensus" driven science has been debunked as pseudoscientific nonsense.

We are in many millenia long global warming period. This trend started long before humans started using oil. Thinking humans are responsible for global warming is like thinking humans are responsible for the rise and decline of tides because we drink water.

[josho]

Your comment seems completely rational but ignores that we have science refuting your opinion. Not only that, the research on this comes from different branches of science that all converge on the same conclusions.

I suggest you do a little more reading on the topic. Storms of My GrandChildren is an easy place to start.

And as always if you have a good source that disputes climate science I would really appreciate a reference.

[soulofmischief]

I'm always changing. But you could point to a moment before and after I hit puberty, or, on a long enough scale, the period during which I morphed from teenager to adult.

This "the climate is always changing" was just classic anti-intellectual rhetoric spread in response to changing the name from "Global Warming" (Oh but the Earth isn't warming during winter!) to "Climate Change". Be careful. Don't let yourself be swayed by those who only wish to harm you.

[inflatableDodo]

>We had 30 years of consensus on global cooling.

No we didn't. That is completely and utterly false.

[adrianN]

At no point were more papers predicting cooling than warming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

[lm28469]

No one denies that the climate changed before and that it's a natural thing. The problem is that in 100 years we went from slow changes to 10 times the amplitudes ever recorded. The questions isn't "Do these cycles exist ?" it's "Are we sure we want to trigger one early ?"

Greenhouse effect is a very well studied effect. CO2 / other gases level are a very well studied field. CO2/other gases dramatically increased since the industrial revolution. Are you also denying that ?

When you study something you have to look at the settings in which it happens and look at the time frame. Sure changes happened 10k+ years ago, that's not invalidating anything related to our role in the current change.

> Thinking humans are responsible for global warming is like thinking humans are responsible for the rise and decline of tides because we drink water.

You won't win anyone over with such nonsensical arguments.

https://www.climatecentral.org/news/the-last-time-co2-was-th...

https://theconversation.com/the-three-minute-story-of-800-00...

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/global-warming/last-2000-years

https://xkcd.com/1732/

[consp]

You are mistakenly conferring the correlation between long and short term trends I think. The reason for long term trends is (as far as I know) somewhat uncertain and might be having an effect, but the short term trend is mostly attributed to humans doing things and can be shown to massively correlate to events (like the industrial revolution in the UK, massive oil consumption etc).

The consensuses you mention were in their time not a 'consensus' and dubious at best and already recognized by the contemporaries of the time.

> This trend started long before humans started using oil

Correct to a certain extend (see other post for sources), they started using (very broadly as greenhouse gas emissions concern) agriculture/herding first, wood, and coal. Oil as a source of greenhouse gasses is mainly 20th century thing.

[trophycase]

I urinate 5-6 times a day, but yesterday I went 60 times. But hey, it fluctuates by the day. Nothing to see here.

[modzu]

um, "climate changing" is uncontroversial. the question that science is trying to answer, is "why". one hypothesis being fossil fuel emissions. you will note even the IPCC does't claim to have a definitive answer. yet a bunch of programmers and entrepreneurs on HN have no doubts.

[tempestn]

Sorry, but that's just not true anymore. Fossil fuel emissions causing climate change has been proven pretty conclusively at this point. Anyone saying otherwise is either misinformed or is intending to misinform others. I do agree with you that the issue has been overly politicized though, which has taken something that would be simply taken as fact given the weight of evidence otherwise, and somehow made it controversial.

[adrianN]

So what's your gripe with "climate change" being in the name of the IPCC?

[modzu]

sorry it wasnt clear from my comment, but mainly that a governmental panel == politicized, and also that the IPCC reports to the UNFCCC, whose mission is to "stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human-induced) interference with the climate system". in other words, it assumes the hypothesis that the science should be testing

[tzs]

It's not a hypothesis. That greenhouse gases affect heat retention can and has been directly observed. That the rise in greenhouse gases is mostly human-induced can also be pretty directly shown by isotope analysis, which can distinguish CO2 that comes from burning fossil fuels or burning forests from other CO2 sources.

[adrianN]

Yeah well the UNFCCC is from the nineties. By then the consensus was already there that anthropogenic GHG emissions are the culprit.

[igor47]

it's politicized in the other direction. the ipcc reports have to be approved by all the member countries, many of whom (like the good 'le USofA) really don't want to take action on climate change. this results in IPCC reports that are watered down. for example:

> Political influence on the IPCC has been documented by the release of a memo by ExxonMobil to the Bush administration, and its effects on the IPCC's leadership. The memo led to strong Bush administration lobbying, evidently at the behest of ExxonMobil, to oust Robert Watson, a climate scientist, from the IPCC chairmanship, and to have him replaced by Pachauri, who was seen at the time as more mild-mannered and industry-friendly.[142][143]

[ThomPete]

The consensus is not science.

There is no accurate number not even a range which can be scientifically demonstrated.

The data is not showing what you think it is and it's not the data you are getting served. You are getting served interpretation of that data which is very very very different.

The reality is this:

Temperature increased 0.5 degree celcius from late 1800's to 1950 before there were any significant CO2 emissions. Then it took a break and continued with about the same up until today.

How much of those last 0.5-0.6 are caused by humans?

That would be science. What we have today is mostly political and ideological and only a fraction of it is actually scientific by any reasonable interpretation of that word.

[tempestn]

You might have a point if we were just taking temperature readings and guessing about the cause. However, the greenhouse gas effect is known, and can be easily demonstrated. Likewise, we can measure the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and see it rapidly rising[1]. We also know all the many human activities that release CO2 into the atmosphere. So there's a pretty clear causal chain here.

[1] https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-re...

[ThomPete]

It can be demonstrated but that does not mean the entire system can be.

There is as an example negative feedback effects too in the system.

The temperature hasn't increased significantly from 1960's til today relative to CO2 more than it did from late 1800 to mid 1900.

So the question still becomes if the temperature increased 0.5 degrees while we weren't emitting that much co2 and it's done more or less the same in more or less the same timeframe with us putting much more co2 out there. How big a part is really humans and how much is natural variation.

If you want to convince me you provide me with actual scientific demonstration that aligns with the claim.

If we know how much humans are actually affecting due to CO2 then we can figure out what we can do about it. But as long as we don't know how much humans affect it I don't see any scientific foundation to go into the kind of panic we have seen the last 20 years really getting into the extremes these days.

It's not science it's politics.

[tempestn]

> The temperature hasn't increased significantly from 1960's til today relative to CO2 more than it did from late 1800 to mid 1900.

> So the question still becomes if the temperature increased 0.5 degrees while we weren't emitting that much co2 and it's done more or less the same in more or less the same timeframe with us putting much more co2 out there. How big a part is really humans and how much is natural variation.

First of all, global average temperature increase actually has accelerated significantly since the 1950s: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2011-temps.html

The increase has not been proportional to the increase in C02 in the atmosphere, but that is expected. Temperature is not directly proportional to atmospheric greenhouse gasses. Rather, heat loss is dependent on them (and on other factors like surface color, which is affected by ice melting, to name one. The main one that has changed thus far though is atmospheric C02). Just because the earth is trapping more heat though, doesn't mean that the temperature will make a large change instantaneously. Instead, the change in temperature over time will be proportional to the difference between energy in from the sun, and energy out in the form of emitted heat. By increasing greenhouse gasses, we reduce the latter, causing temperature to rise over time.

Since heat emission is proportional to temperature, eventually (if we stopped emitting CO2) we would reach a new equilibrium at a higher temperature. In order to get back to a lower temperature, we need to eventually actually remove C02 from the atmosphere.

This is precisely why climate change is currently such a crisis: even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emission now, which is obviously impossible, we would still see a significant further increase in temperature due to the imbalance in heat transfer that already exists due to past emissions. The more that is added, the greater that increase will be.

Everything I've said is backed up by clear science, so if you're really looking at this with an open mind, please tell me what part you disagree with or are unsure about, and I'll be happy to provide supporting evidence.

[ThomPete]

You are confusing CO2 emissions with temperature. The temperature hasn't increased significantly, CO2 has.

[tempestn]

No, I'm not. CO2 has increased more than temperature, but both have increased, as you can see from the graph on the link I included next to that statement.