[bsder]

> I am a firm believer in climate science, but this reaction suggests that the post you're replying to is correct.

Sorry, there are things in this world called facts. There are things in this world that are empirically correct. As far as science can determine, climate change is factual and real. If that isn't your position, you really don't believe in climate science. And I'm calling you out on it--this isn't a "truthiness" zone.

The climate politics, aka what should be done about it, is a very different problem and falls under social and economic "science".

[RickS]

Right. I agree with all of that. My position is that I defer to the majority of scientists on the topic. The argument I'm making is a bit different, though:

No amount of supporting evidence renders a topic exempt from scrutiny.

Climate science is solid, to my knowledge. And while I think most of the people who want to see it pulled down from the pedestal are wackos, intellectual humility demands that they be allowed to continue to try. Not with the same tired tactics – they shouldn't be able to DDoS debate with the same old crap. But to the extent that people can come up with novel, testable angles.. the question shouldn't be forbidden.

There's subjectivity here. IMO there are good faith and bad faith attempts to challenge eg climate science. The overwhelming majority are in bad faith. But the good faith versions of the question should not only go unpunished, but be encouraged.

It doesn't seem to go that way in practice. Certain lines of inquiry are de-facto forbidden in science, at least informally.

[0xy]

Climate change is empirical fact, the extent of climate change is not. Within the scientific community, there are wildly differing theories about impact and causes.

As for climate modeling, there are WILD differences in projections.

This is why there are constant "X years until point of no return!" articles in tabloid media, which are all different and usually incorrect.

Immediately shooting people down for being anti-science for suggesting the impact is on the lower end of the prediction spectrum is not scientific.

[SiempreViernes]

Making this sort of "the models are uncertain" claims without any mention of the uncertainty being mainly regarding the political choices made in the future is a classic of the last 30 years of climate change denialism.

Further strengthening your denialist status is the fact that you in a separate post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22050842) try to pass off state censorship of criticism to its (suggested) policies as suppression of research disproving climate change.

Also, insisting the wildfires are caused more by arson than exceptional drought and heat is also unambigiously mainstream denialism.

If you are serious about going into the climate change discussion, you obviously have some reading to do about the status of the research, and more importantly the over 30 years of organised and well funded attempts to discredit and suppress climate research.

[Gabriel_Martin]

Not really, this is a tired trope, climate change mostly boils down to well-established physics relating to energy transference which is pretty consistent to my understanding, here's Nasa also saying as much: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-mo...

[refurb]

What's a tired trope?

Back in 2014, Nature did an entire series of articles that attempted to explain the "global warming pause".[1]

And now, recent articles claim there never was a pause.[2]

So it's apparent there is disagreement even among those scientists who are firm believers in global warming.

[1]https://www.nature.com/collections/sthnxgntvp [2]https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18122018/global-warming-h...

[modo_mario]

Did you actually read the second article you linked?

[thu2111]

Well, it's actually much worse than that. We expect disagreement in science on the interpretation of data. What we don't expect is disagreement about actual measurements, especially not for something as basic as temperature. It's not like the disagreement here is about the output of a particle accelerator, it's literally about "what was the temperature in the recent past" which should be well beyond any controversy or disagreement.

The problem with our societies approach to climatology is anyone who scratches the surface of this field sees problematic practices, but the moment they try and talk about it legions of what can only be described as true believers attack them and do everything they can to shut them down and destroy them completely. Our societies discussion about climate has become totally unhinged. You now see important people who seem to literally believe the world will end in just a few years or decades. There's absolutely no reason to believe this, yet any attempt to bring the discussion back down to earth via actual scientific discussion is attacked as "denialism".

[thomaskcr]

Facts are things like CO2 levels are rising, ocean temperatures are rising, etc.

What will happen as a result of those changes and how it will impact us are models. The application of those models fed by assumptions for the trends/changes in the parameters are forecasts. Forecasts and models aren't facts.

So are you defending the facts? Or are you calling your favorite models/forecasts facts and saying no one can question them?

Seems to me that science education is as much an issue as the taboos...