[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.

[civility]

> I suspect the majority would do the opposite and deny/understate the problem.

I don't know. I've seen so much fear-mongering in my life. We're all going to die from zika, n1h1, ebola, killer bees, aids, mrsa, terrorists, and so on. In each case, there's something to be afraid of, and you might actually know someone who died in one those ways, but the media and the lay people blow it way out of proportion. The people I've know who died have been from drugs, suicide, heart failure, stroke, and car accidents.

> The sensible thing to do in the absence of information is precisely to imagine the worst outcomes and act with them in mind.

I can't accept that as sensible. It's easy to contrive unacceptable courses of action by applying that rule: "The police don't know who the murderers are, so they lock up everyone to avoid the worst outcome." "The doctor isn't sure how bad the infection is, so we amputate all the limbs just in case."

[specialist]

I think about this all the time.

America has an apocalyptical culture. Probably from the cultural imprint of our end times themed christianity during the early years. That whole book of revelations madness. (The Puritans who first colonized the New World were fruitcakes, even back then.)

But we did come very close to snuffing ourselves with nukes a few times.

And ever since I started paying attention to ecological collapse, mid 1980s, pretty much all the predictions have come true. (The only confusing bit there is we've also had amazing technical progress, masking the underlying destruction.)

I so hope that I'm just being an alarmist and it's all going to work out. I have kids, and hopefully grandkids one day. Yet I remain concerned.

[kaybe]

Very often the reason we don't die from these things is because we take precaution. Imagine we had done nothing against ebola or aids, we'd have millions of deaths by now. (In the case of aids, not all places were so lucky [0].)

Same for the ozone hole, or dying trees from acid rain. When the source of the problem is identified, we can fix it, and that's the case for greenhouse-gas-caused climate change.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aids#Economic_impact

[ThomPete]

Risk management has a cost. The question is what is the price? What are you willing to pay for being "safe". What are you willing to risk?

Are future generations worth more than current? Should we militarily prohibit poor countries from using fossil fuels which they use to better their lives?

You can say worst outcomes with other things too, meteor, nuclear war, pandemic, terrorism, etc. you always have to find a balance.

With the climate change debate, this balance is completely ignored and people are seriously suggesting making fundamental changes to society without having any ability to know what the consequences of those will be.

Climate catastrophism is itself a potential danger.

[specialist]

I'm willing to risk removing the subsidies for carbon. Then let the Freedom Markets™ decide which sources of energy are better. Economically.

[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%?

[civility]

I think Bayes theorem might be worthwhile here. Besides, going with the majority or authority as a principal is almost the definition of dogma. That's not likelihood in any rigorous sense.

[Gupie]

When weighing up the likelihood of something it is valid to consider the opinions of experts. Dogma is believing what an authority says is incontrovertibly true. I am not saying that man made climate change is incontrovertibly true, only incontrovertibly highly likely. It is true that the view of the great majority of the experts in a field has authority, particularly in regards to science, but it is an justifiable authority, not one for example one built solely on tradition.

[dfilppi]

Fortunately Galileo didn't follow that strategy

[amanaplanacanal]

Well sure, he did original research.

If you are suggesting most people should do original climate research, you are going to be disappointed.

If I get cancer, I assume that consensus medical science is going to give me the best treatments.

[wizlord]

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2ftwt1/iama_scientist...

[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

[wizlord]

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2ftwt1/iama_scientist...

[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.

[ThomPete]

Not that's not the scientific consensus but thanks for proving my point by arguing in blind faith.

The scientific consensus which EVERYONE agrees about even the so-called skeptics is that the climate is changing.

There is no consensus that it's human-caused, there are some indications that humans have an effect but you won't find any actual scientific proof of how much.

So the real question here is why you blindly believe something that you haven't even understood. You are literally just repeating the media not actually science which is a much more subtle discussion.

[Frondo]

Actually, yeah, something like 99% of working scientists in climate-related fields agree it's human-caused. There've been a number of meta-studies about this.

If you want to know more, you can google this. It's a discussion that, if not for the fossil fuel money being pumped into stirring up controversy (also well demonstrated, also google-able), would have been settled long ago.

As a depressing parallel, there are also HIV deniers, too. There's one prominent scientist, I think the guy who invented PCR, who claims that HIV has nothing to do with AIDS, and he's got a small following. It's dwindled over the years, but he's still out there, trying to raise doubts despite the mainstream science on HIV leading to treatments and even possible cures, while his work leads to nothing.

Edited to mention: of course! There are also evolution deniers! Why does everyone dismiss them, but open their arms to skeptics of human-caused climate change? What's different about human-caused climate change and evolution?

[adrianN]

The IPCC reports speak a pretty clear language. For what reasons do you not believe them?

[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.

[ThomPete]

I understand how it works and I assume you can see the problem with this. The IPCC report is there to prove human impact on the climate it's not there to show IF humans have impact on the climate.

[Gupie]

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

That is very unlikely.

[maxlybbert]

I remember science bloggers complaining that the recent IPCC report didn’t predict enough doom and gloom to get political results.

They may well be right, but they weren’t saying that they had reason to believe the IPCC had understated the influence carbon dioxide, methane, or some other gas has on the climate, or that predicted emissions where wrong, etc. They were complaining that the report didn’t have enough scare mongering. That’s not science, and it could easily lead to a big overcorrection in a few years.

[ThomPete]

Not really once you realize how much of the fearmongering is completely baseless.

There is literally no scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change that we don't know how to deal with today let alone in 10-40-100 years from now.

[ljcn]

This is obviously not true. How would you stop runaway methane release from permafrost for example?

[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.