[HN Gopher] Earth's energy imbalance removes almost all doubt fr...
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Earth's energy imbalance removes almost all doubt from human-made
climate change
Author : CarCooler
Score : 32 points
Date : 2021-08-01 17:20 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.yahoo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.yahoo.com)
| asaddhamani wrote:
| And yet the climate change deniers will find a way. I don't see
| why this has to be made into such a political issue when we have
| hard numbers and objective facts to back up the claim that we are
| causing global warming, it's clearly observable. The situation
| gets worse every passing year and we're still trying to appease
| the "doubters". Concrete and drastic measures need to be taken,
| it is high time.
| [deleted]
| vixen99 wrote:
| So what about China and other Asian countries who demonstrate
| by their actions that they've 'found a way'? They say one thing
| but do another, using many means to encourage the West to adopt
| policies that will increase energy costs while continuing to
| build coal-fired power plants themselves. Now why would they do
| that? In 2020, China brought 38 gigawatts of new coal-fired
| power into operation, more than three times what was brought on
| line everywhere else.
|
| Seems they're not quite on board with the idea that 'concrete
| and drastic measures need to be taken'. Clearly they don't
| think there is an existential threat. And they can hardly be
| accused of being ignorant of the science.
| KONAir wrote:
| Why is this being burried? Is there even any doubt about
| China's edge had been and still is ignoring envorimental
| sanctions and outright denying workers rights?
| trasz wrote:
| Because it's blatantly false. Just take a look at how many
| nuclear power plants are being built in China, and compare
| with eg the US.
| lumost wrote:
| Many economies that were considered developing during the
| Kyoto accords are now large economies but still pretending
| that they need to be excluded from such climate provisions.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| > a political issue > climate change deniers > appease the
| "doubters"
|
| I'm not sure if you're going to convince people about the
| correctness of a position if you utilize name-calling with
| negative connontations.
|
| That kind of approach is frankly unproductive.
| celeritascelery wrote:
| In my experience, the reason climate change doubters are so
| opposed is because of the "concrete and drastic measures"
| proposed. It has very little to do with "hard numbers and
| objective facts". People are reluctant to give up their
| lifestyle or lose a job for the sake of "global warming", so
| they focus on the possibility of it not being real instead.
| mekoka wrote:
| Identifying a phenomenon and its causes doesn't necessarily
| mean that you know how to address it. It's a common fallacy.
| Questioning prognostical conclusions and recommendations made
| based on not a single data point (we don't know of another
| planet that went through something similar) is a valid
| stance. Scientists have been wrong before. I remember Allan
| Savory confessing his regrets to the killings of thousands of
| elephants in an effort to prevent desertification, only for
| things to get worse. Later they realized that the ancillary
| effects of their grazing activities were actually
| contributing to slowing down and even reversing
| desertification.
| sprafa wrote:
| 69% of Americans believe climate change is real. https://clim
| atecommunication.yale.edu/publications/americans... That's an
| overwhelming majority. The 'doubt' is media-created FUD being
| replicated to pretend to be an issue.
| prophesi wrote:
| Conversely, 31% of Americans don't believe in climate
| change, which would be over 100 million people. That's
| pretty concerning. Though I also completely agree that the
| division is further exacerbated by the media.
| jhgb wrote:
| Apparently more USAians believe in climate change than
| evolution. Not sure if it's reassuring or scary.
| lumost wrote:
| 20% of Americans believe almost anything under the sun
| (although it's a different 20% for each issue). Demanding
| 100% belief in climate change to accomplish something is
| not the best strategy.
| prophesi wrote:
| That's fair, though you need people to understand the
| facts before you can even start the discussion. And it
| doesn't help that it's a partisan issue in the USA's
| broken two-party system, ensuring that the discussion
| gets nowhere.
| sprafa wrote:
| 69% of Americans believe climate change is real.
| https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/americans...
|
| That's an overwhelming majority. The 'doubt' is media-created
| FUD being replicated to pretend to be an issue. The issue is
| not the population, who overwhelmingly agree this is a problem.
| The problem is the ruling class does not want anything sudden
| to be done that would endanger their investments, and rapid
| change away from fossil fuels and other climate-change causing
| investments is a danger to their interests.
|
| A huge amount of issues in the world are manipulated to look
| like issues by the media. Don't fall for it!
| runlevel1 wrote:
| But only 55% of Americans believe it to be human-caused. From
| the actual report [^1]:
|
| > A majority of Americans (55%) understand that global
| warming is mostly human-caused. By contrast, only about one
| in three (32%) think it is due mostly to natural changes in
| the environment.
|
| The remaining 13% presumably answered "don't know" -- so
| there's at least some hope of reaching up to 68%.
|
| However, even if that 13% is won over, there's still another
| big barrier to meaningful legislation: Anthropogenic
| skepticism is over-represented in congress.[^2] Every state
| gets 2 senators regardless of population, and the more
| populous states tend to already have senators that believe it
| is caused by humans.
|
| [1]: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/201... [2]:
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/22/us-
| senat...
| sprafa wrote:
| That's the evidence that the climate change "doubters" are
| really concentrated on the decision-making/ruling elite.
| But the reason for that is simple - if you don't support
| climate-change legislation you get more funding. This is
| what I meant about the ruling class protecting its
| interests. It's not hard to see.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| Before there was Climate Change, there was Global Warming.
|
| Why was there a name change, a rebranding if you will? In
| some cases, there is conflation, but they mean very different
| things.
|
| When it comes to Climate, scientists say that climate is in
| 30 year intervals. Day to day that is just weather.
|
| > The problem is the ruling class
|
| I would be much more inclined to believe that there was an
| actual problem if the ruling class was not gallivanting
| around on private jets to nonstop events to preach to us
| plebes about the evils of our fairly tame lifestyles in
| comparison.
|
| Strangely, COVID has been great for driving down wanton
| energy use
|
| > that would endanger their investments, and rapid change
| away from fossil fuels and other climate-change causing
| investments is a danger to their interests.
|
| That sounds like one of the prevailing narratives in the
| media.
|
| However, I think the truth may be complex than that. After
| all, it is Exxon that did invent the ubiquitous Lithium-ion
| battery.
|
| https://energyfactor.exxonmobil.com/energy-
| innovation/rd/the...
|
| If we are going to replace our oil-based economy I have
| little doubt that the innovation behind it will come from
| either Academia or BigEnergy, and market reasons will drive
| this change.
| sprafa wrote:
| The market won't be able to adapt fast enough, I think.
|
| I don't think all prevailing narratives in the media are
| false. The idea that most of our industry benefits from
| climate change being considered an "externality" is true.
| Anyone who benefits from this unpriced "externality" has
| full interest in keeping it that way. And that's probably
| 90% of economic activity.
|
| I have little doubt that the innovation will come from
| industry, but the issue is that as long as we consider all
| of this an externality the market has no forcing function
| to change.
|
| On the Davos crowd who goes around talking about climate
| change while jetting around, that is a PR effort that's to
| be expected. In the end it doesn't matter. Since it's an
| economic externality to heat up the planet, we all benefit
| and get destroyed by it at the same time. A billionaire can
| be making great talks about climate change but it is
| impossible for him to achieve net-zero when so much of our
| economic activity relies on pricing climate change at 0$.
| The exception to this is literally 1 billionaire, who's
| invested humongous amounts of net worth into Tesla.
|
| Either way, there is 0 ways for the market to solve climate
| change when it is obvious that climate change is not priced
| into economic activity at all.
| mekoka wrote:
| I think climate change and the human factor are very easy to
| accept. Although, some years ago after listening to Freeman
| Dyson on the topic, I became aware that acknowledging the
| phenomenon doesn't imply that we necessarily also know where it
| will lead and what to do about it. Yet, many of the proponents
| are acting exactly as such, pushing their own agenda. Hence all
| the ensuing politics.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| I'm going to get down voted for not sensationalizing climate
| change like the doomers want... even though I do believe it is
| happening..
|
| But what's interesting is that the average temperature right now
| is estimated to be among the coolest the Earth has ever been.
|
| https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-hotte...
|
| Just because something is happening doesn't automatically make it
| a scary big deal.
| it_citizen wrote:
| The hottest/coldest day matters but the timescale matters too.
| Ecosystems (and probably humans) can adapt when those changes
| happen slowly. But human-made climate change happens way too
| fast.
|
| Here's a great way to visualize things: https://xkcd.com/1732/
| runlevel1 wrote:
| The linked page discusses it on the scale of millions of years.
|
| Humans have only been around for about 300k years and have only
| had permanent settlements for about the last 10k of them.
| lmilcin wrote:
| There wasn't any doubt for decades. Normal thinking people
| understand cause and effect. Understand basic science of
| greenhouse effect. Understand if energy is not reflected to space
| it is stored and that you can't do that forever with impunity.
| didibus wrote:
| It's fun to be able to know if the cause is man made, or just bad
| luck (happening naturally), but what is more important either way
| is what can we do to reverse or mitigate the negative impact of
| the changes to the climate?
|
| Now I don't think there's many left who deny that the climate is
| changing at all. But I think there are still some who aren't sure
| the changes to the climate will have a negative impact on
| humanity. I think this aspect I don't often hear discussed, after
| all, the climate changing could be good, or it could be bad, or
| it could be a mix of those in different places or different use
| cases.
|
| And once we start to agree that some of the changes will be bad,
| it also becomes important to discuss what could be done to
| mitigate the negative effects?
|
| The actual cause being man-made isn't that important, except
| possibly as a way to understand how to remediate the change. Like
| if we stopped all CO2 emissions would it really help?
|
| Off course, this is where things will get political, because any
| policy to attempt to mitigate the negative effects (current or
| predicted) will inevitably affect someone's bottom line (their
| money). So expect a lot of push back from the people who'd lose
| money, and a lot of promotion from the people who would make
| money. That political dance will make it really hard to figure
| out which are the actually good solutions and which aren't.
|
| Edit: It's true, beyond just financials, policies could also have
| an impact on people's lifestyles and life affordances and
| conveniences, that will also play a lot in the political dance.
| Retric wrote:
| You can't "solve" climate change via mitigation as the simple
| act of building infrastructure has an associated cost. The only
| thing you can do is minimize cost. Canadians buying air
| conditioners for example would reduce the numbers of dead in
| coming heat waves, but they're not free.
|
| It's not even just about economic impact. Mandating all roofs
| be painted white for example has a tiny mitigating effect, but
| while the economic cost is low enough to justify people don't
| want to be forced to paint their roofs white.
| empressplay wrote:
| Many houses in British Columbia still burn fuel oil so in
| that particular case if they all switched to reverse-cycle
| air conditioners it would be a net improvement
| Retric wrote:
| Heat pumps that only heat or only cool a house are still
| cheaper to build than heat pumps that do both.
| didibus wrote:
| I didn't use the word "solve" anywhere in my comment, can you
| clarify what you're referring too?
| Retric wrote:
| Mitigation means to reduce something. Building a taller
| levy reduces flooding associated with increased rainfall
| variability, but a taller levy doesn't mitigate climate
| change as you still have not changed rainfall or climate.
|
| In other words mitigating impacts isn't (solving/reducing)
| climate change.
| haskaalo wrote:
| > Like if we stopped all CO2 emissions would it really help?
|
| I assume yes. Right now CO2 emissions outnumbers the rate
| plants transform CO2 to O2.
| loopz wrote:
| No, it would take a hundred year for CO2 concentrations in
| the troposphere to start going down significantly. Cutting
| all emissions today won't help us enough as thresholds are
| being triggered that will release more and more greenhouse
| gases, reduce earth's albedo and acidify the oceans.
| biasedbrain wrote:
| One group of scientists, who can't imagine that their self
| invented model could be wrong, can't imagine any other reasons
| than man made changes for the results of their model simulation.
|
| How you get from that to "removes almost all doubt" is beyond me.
| Such hyperbole does more damage than good.
|
| I don't know anything about those scientists, I don't know
| anything about their model and their assumptions, so I am sorry,
| but for me it doesn't remove "almost all doubt".
| jt2190 wrote:
| It's unfortunate when we glom onto the headline and start
| arguing from there, because (assuming that NBC follows the
| traditional newsroom workflow) the scientists didn't write the
| headline, and the journalist didn't write the headline, the
| news editor did, and the news editor wrote the most attention-
| grabbing (a.k.a. "clickbait") thing they could.
|
| Now maybe if we dig into the article and the paper we'll see
| that the headline is really an honest reflection of the
| content, but I'll bet it's not.
|
| Edit: The words "remove all doubt" do not occur in the article,
| just the headline.
| em500 wrote:
| I don't disagree with you, but but at the same time I think
| that if the editor used "Anthropogenic forcing and response
| yield observed positive trend in Earth's energy imbalance" as
| the headline, probably nobody would have clicked, let alone
| read it. Heck, it probably wouldn't have made HN either.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| This is how deniers argue - latch onto trivial language in the
| title, and spew doubt. Instead of trying to understand, which
| would probably scare the pants off of them. So they put
| blinders on instead.
| torstenvl wrote:
| This is how extremists argue - spew the most outrageous ideas
| they can get away with, and when they cross the line into
| obvious lies, they attack the other side for "latching onto
| trivial language."
|
| The editorialization is patently false. You are wasting
| political capital by defending it.
| loopz wrote:
| How difficult is it to accept that humans affect the planet
| globally with unprecedented emissions of greenhouse gases?
| alecst wrote:
| >I don't know anything about those scientists, I don't know
| anything about their model and their assumptions
|
| So you didn't read the paper, you don't know who wrote it, and
| you're commenting on a paraphrase in the headline. What exactly
| are you contributing to the discussion?
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(page generated 2021-08-01 23:02 UTC)