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by yt-sdb 1271 days ago
I don't understand your complaint. Consider this fact:

> There is less snow in the lowlands. In parts of the Oslo wildlands, the skiing season has become nearly 40 days shorter.

So we have an observable, measurable, falsifiable fact. It correlates or trends with global mean temperature changes. We have a mechanism of action. We have an arrow of causality, based on established scientific observations and experiments going back decades. I'm not sure what else you want.

You mention lack of citations, but they do have citations. For example, the browning water section clearly links to this paper [1]. That paper looks at data going back three decades and emphasizes (in the title, no less) the very arrow of causality you want.

"Correlation is not causation" is a weird, toothless complaint here. They're not plotting fedoras on the x-axis and global mean temperature on the y-axis.

I'm worried that this kind of Hacker News comment only helps climate-change deniers.

[1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.estlett.6b00396

2 comments

Thanks, going through the slides, I haven't noticed the linked paper. It's worth noting though that the part I quoted is still a part of TFA, and does still embody the issue I mentioned.

EDIT: I see now. The "source" button they've used for citations doesn't work correctly for me in Safari and Chrome (it scrolls way up, and only if you scroll back down will it start showing the footnotes). It's also only in Norwegian.

The complaint is that it is a little too "on point" to be a serious discussion that weighs multiple angles. These are journalists determined to convey a particular point. It does not mean they are wrong. It just means it is not credible journalism.
Why is it not credible? They display only facts and link to sources for “conclusions”. What other angle is there to weigh?
Did they display only facts that correlate to the desired conclusion or did they examine the I consistencies and counter points as well?

I don't disagree with their conclusion but the other commenter's point is reasonable. We live in a world where facts are fungible based on how they're presented and interpreted.

Few things are cut and dry despite how they are often presented.