[HN Gopher] There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming ...
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There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming (2024)
Author : doener
Score : 154 points
Date : 2026-02-18 20:09 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (science.nasa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (science.nasa.gov)
| doener wrote:
| Why did the Trump regime not discover and eradicate this
| heretical sentence?
| rebolek wrote:
| It will now.
| nabbed wrote:
| >There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an
| unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.
|
| This document was last updated in October 2024, but I am a little
| surprised to see this still available on a .gov site.
| RIMR wrote:
| Oh wow, a true statement on a government website. I'm sure
| they'll take it down within a day.
| gdulli wrote:
| Maybe a way to game the modern right is to draw attention to
| something true so that they remember it exists, then they try
| to censor it, thereby triggering a Streisand effect.
| tim-tday wrote:
| Everyone who can hear this has already heard it. Those who
| continue to pretend it is not happening are either deliberately
| deceptive so they can continue to make money from fossil fuels or
| unable to change their minds when faced by evidence due to
| identity politics.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| My impression is that almost no one denies the warming itself,
| just the link to greenhouse gasses. That link is unfortunately
| much harder to prove than rising temperatures by itself. The
| proof is there nonetheless, but it's easier to cast doubt on
| it, and that's what certain groups have been doing.
| tonylemesmer wrote:
| Even the qualification "in the last 10,000" years gives the
| doubters something else to dismiss global warming.
| Windchaser wrote:
| I've seen the full-court denial:
|
| - it's not warming, or not significantly
|
| - if it's warming, it's not because of humans, (or)
|
| - if it's warming, it's beneficial
|
| - if it's warming because of humans and that's bad, there's
| nothing we can do about it
|
| ETA: honorary mention for "what about China?"
|
| People I've argued about this with will switch
| interchangeably between these. Press them hard enough on one
| issue, and they'll just switch to another. It's a game of
| whack-a-mole.
| tencentshill wrote:
| Or "Why does 2 degrees matter?"
|
| Because when were 4 degrees cooler, NYC was under 1000 feet
| of ice. We really don't want to find out what 4 degrees
| hotter is like.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Wait really? 1000 feet is insane.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| It was actually about 2000 feet. The Laurentide ice
| sheet, it was 3 kilometers / ten thousand feet thick in
| some parts.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Same here. I'd also add "It's warming, caused by humans,
| harmful, but mitigating it would be even more harmful."
|
| Basically, anyone capable of thinking about it logically
| has at this point reached the conclusion that it's real.
| Anyone arguing otherwise is therefore necessarily not
| thinking about it logically, and you have to expect things
| like shifting claims.
| izzydata wrote:
| There are people that believe the warming, but don't believe
| it matters because the Earth used to be much hotter at some
| point in the past so it is a natural cycle. Yet they fail to
| realize that humans didn't exist then so there is no good
| reason to believe an Earth that hot can support human life.
| mattgrice wrote:
| I didn't even think the link to greenhouse gases is denied
| any more.
|
| The merchants of doubt ran out the clock and what I hear from
| the former deniers I know is that it is too expensive and too
| late to do anything now, being warmer will be nicer, and CO2
| is a fertilizer.
| degobah wrote:
| But POTUS 5 months ago:
|
| "If you look back years ago in the 1920s and the 1930s, they
| said global cooling will kill the world. We have to do
| something. Then they said global warming will kill the world,
| but then it started getting cooler. So now they just call it
| climate change because that way they can't miss. Climate
| change because if it goes higher or lower, whatever the hell
| happens, there's climate change. It's the greatest con job
| ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. Climate change,
| no matter what happens, you're involved in that. No more
| global warming, no more global cooling. All of these
| predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often
| for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people
| that have cost their country's fortunes and given those same
| countries no chance for success."
|
| https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-
| trump-...
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > "that have cost their country's fortunes and given those
| same countries no chance for success."
|
| This is a weird statement coming from Trump. I wouldn't
| think his base would care for improving the lives and
| economies of other countries, specially undeveloped
| countries.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| He frequently has campaign rallies and press conferences
| where he makes statements on both sides of the issue,
| though if the audience is limited he will tailor the
| message so only the side present hears the argument in
| their favor. Every post speech interview I've seen and
| heard from Trump supporters discount every thing he says
| that they personally disagree with and heartily approve
| everything he says that they agree with. Somehow he has
| insulated his own actions/words and his supporters, and
| it makes it difficult to reason with these supporters
| when you bring it up to them - it's quite uncanny.
| toast0 wrote:
| I mean, he's saying everyone else who tried to do
| something about climate change had bad results, so let's
| do nothing and we'll be better off.
|
| Doesn't seem weird to say that if you want to do nothing.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> My impression is that almost no one denies the warming
| itself, just the link to greenhouse gasses.
|
| I fall in that category. My suspicion is that water vapor
| from air travel is by far the biggest contributor. I saw the
| blue skys after 9/11. I read the NASA guys that said daily
| temperature range increased measurably. I saw the blue skys
| again during Covid19.
|
| I'm also of the opinion that anyone looking at historical
| data only going back 200,000 years or less is missing the
| larger picture. Sea levels are NOT at historic highs, we
| should expect them to rise further before receeding. We
| should expect glaciation again if we don't do anything, but
| speeding up warming IMHO is more likely to trigger glaciation
| that to "push through" whatever causes it and break the cycle
| (which would be a good thing).
|
| So as a long-term thinker all this hype is just that. If you
| don't have a plan to end the glacier cycle you're just making
| a big deal out of a small change in time-scale due to reasons
| (CO2 vs H2O) that may well be the wrong ones.
| 16bytes wrote:
| Not to be contrarian, but if you cared, you could easily
| rule out your suspicions.
|
| It's not even worth it to say why or how, since not even
| doing rudimentary research means that you aren't interested
| in developing a well-informed opinion.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Not to be contrarian, but if you cared, you could
| easily rule out your suspicions.
|
| That's just false. You might try to rule it out yourself
| to see. My comments here and the responses demonstrate
| that it's a waste of time to argue against people in the
| purity cycle of global warming. My position is one of
| moderation not denial - and I'm downvoted, told I don't
| care, and I haven't done even the minimum of research.
| Pffft. HN is not what it used to be.
| wat10000 wrote:
| It took me about five seconds to find this:
| https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/why-do-we-blame-climate-
| chan...
|
| Do you have any reason to believe otherwise besides a
| couple of anecdotes about looking at the sky and short-
| term temperature variations?
| 16bytes wrote:
| You are being down-voted not because of some imaginary
| "purity cycle", but because you discard without reasoning
| a vast amount of evidence to the contrary of your
| hypothesis.
|
| You've heard of the saying that extraordinary claims
| require extraordinary evidence? Holding a hypothesis of
| water-vapor from air travel being the primary driver of
| warming trends is extraordinary.
|
| Invoking the oft-repeated "do your own research"
| rhetorical crutch and referring to scientific consensus
| as "hype" doesn't help your case.
| Windchaser wrote:
| > My suspicion is that water vapor from air travel is by
| far the biggest contributor.
|
| Have you calculated the water vapor generated from air
| travel, and compared that to the water vapor already
| generated by the water cycle? (just normal evaporation from
| lakes/rivers/oceans/plants)
|
| Even as back-of-napkin math, this should be a pretty easy
| sanity check.
|
| I think you're off by a few orders of magnitude here, but I
| also don't want to discourage you from adopting a "check
| for yourself" mindset.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Have you calculated the water vapor generated from air
| travel, and compared that to the water vapor already
| generated by the water cycle?
|
| I've SEEN the effects with my own eyes. You can also see
| contrails seeding cloud formation on some days. Then
| there's the fact that these extra clouds are formed and
| dissipate on a 24 hour cycle, so part of the day they let
| in sunlight and part of the night they trap heat. These
| effects are significant and there is little research on
| the bigger picture effects of this (that I've seen).
| kibibu wrote:
| Clouds reflect radiant heat back into space. Contrary to
| your claim, "global dimming" was a very active research
| space for a long time, and in fact the water vapour and
| other airborne pollutants likely masked the impact of
| global warming.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| A friend of mine says he was convinced by
| https://xkcd.com/1732/
| Havoc wrote:
| Can't wait for trump and his gestapo to deport the entirety of
| nasa for telling the truth
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Why does NASA even have to do this? Build some cool rockets and
| get us to mars.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Living on Mars long-term is a practical impossibility.
| Certainly much, much harder than living on even a climate-
| changed Earth.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Humans have done a lot of things we once thought were
| impossible.
| retrac wrote:
| NASA launches and operates Earth-observing satellites for
| measuring the weather and climate.
| Windchaser wrote:
| Among other objectives, NASA's 1958 mission statement
| includes conducting aeronautical and space activities of the
| US for "the expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the
| atmosphere and space".
|
| So: atmospheric climate science directly falls under NASA's
| responsibilities.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Aeronautics_and_Space.
| ..
| webdood90 wrote:
| I've shifted my mindset to abandon this idea that humanity will
| survive forever, or that we should strive to live as long as we
| can.
|
| Intelligence is a scarcity and it cannot overcome the majority of
| people that are incredibly stupid or ignorant. So accepting that
| we are doomed relieves some of the stress. I won't have children
| to worry about their future, either.
|
| I still live my life in such a way that minimizes my impact on
| the world as much as possible. I still surround myself with folks
| that want a better world. But there is no stopping the impending
| doom and I'm trying not to be miserable with the time I have.
| izzydata wrote:
| Ultimately I think it will be a self correcting problem, but
| there is going to be an extremely long period of absolute hell.
| Global warming is eventually going to cause food and water
| scarcity on a level that will wipe out a huge percentage of the
| Earths population. Then the Earth will recover from there being
| fewer humans.
|
| If in 3000 years we discover humans were completely wiped out
| to the last person I would be pretty surprised.
| rolph wrote:
| Toba catastrophe theory:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youngest_Toba_eruption#Toba_ca.
| ..
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Agree, this is how excesses always get corrected in nature.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I agree that human extinction is very unlikely on anything
| like historical timespans. Maybe in a few million years, like
| any other species.
|
| I do think there's a decent chance of civilizational collapse
| in the near to medium term. It seems like everything is
| getting very fragile. So much economic activity revolves
| around extremely sophisticated machines with many critical
| components that are manufactured in just a few locations,
| sometimes a single location. A major war could shatter that,
| or climate change could push us over a tipping point where
| those capabilities can no longer be maintained, or it might
| just be a cascading random breakdown due to the modern
| economy being so complicated.
|
| If it happens, then I'm very pessimistic about the ability to
| ever come back from it. With all the easily accessible fossil
| fuels gone, getting industry going again is going to be a
| really tall order. So humanity might survive a long time, but
| it may consist of life the way it was in prehistory.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Humans won't get wiped out, not by global warming atleast. It's
| just going to suck and a _lot_ of us will die.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| I mean, all of humanity has lived in the period between two
| glacial eras, I don't expect us to go beyond that. This should
| be clear even to people who choose to ignore the facts about
| climate change.
| maxerickson wrote:
| We are currently in an ice age.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| So what are we going to do about China?
| doug_durham wrote:
| A troll response I presume. Or perhaps sarcasm without the
| indicator.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Not a troll comment. China produces as much or more CO2 as
| much as the next 5 countries combined.
|
| It's logical to start with the king of greenhouse emissions
| if you want to stop global warming.
| generj wrote:
| China is rapidly going green.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Is the US even more rapidly going green? https://ourworld
| indata.org/explorers/co2?hideControls=false&...
|
| China's emissions were 10 billion tons CO2 in 2017 and
| have increased every single year to 12.29 billion tons
| CO2 in 2024. Meanwhile, US decreased from 5.22 to 4.9 in
| the same time
| michaelmrose wrote:
| 1/4 the population. Per capita we are 65% worse not
| considering how much of China's pollution is on our
| behalf
| Windchaser wrote:
| Yeah, and don't even get me started on historic
| emissions.
|
| China has only produced significant CO2/capita in the
| last decade. The US and Europe are responsible for the
| accumulated GHG that have gotten us into the current
| mess. We blew nearly the entire CO2 "budget" for keeping
| us under 2C of warming, just by ourselves, so it's kinda
| odd to be pointing fingers at the foreigners who are just
| now halfway catching up to what we're emitting _now_.
| shoxidizer wrote:
| Both these trends have reversed in 2025.
|
| US emissions icreased by 2.5%
| https://rhg.com/research/us-greenhouse-gas-
| emissions-2025/
|
| China's emmisions have decreased by <1%
| https://e360.yale.edu/digest/china-emissions-decline
| laffOr wrote:
| There is no need for ordering right? All countries can
| start acting at the same time.
| renjimen wrote:
| Not per capita. The US is still the worst large country. If
| you account for offshoring manufacturing then the US looks
| even worse.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Why should should per-capita be most important? If
| country A keeps their population stable and emissions
| under control, but country B of the same starting
| population, keeps doubling their population and doubling
| their emissions, why should country A have an
| increasingly declined allowance of emissions when they
| were more responsible in keeping their total emissions
| down (by not having as many people)?
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| Because some countries pay others to pollute in their
| stead?
| layer8 wrote:
| China has a declining population, and had a one-child
| policy for many years.
|
| Also, you don't want all the low-population countries to
| each start contributing as much to global warming as the
| US.
| shoxidizer wrote:
| If country B splits into countries C, D, E and F, all of
| which emit less than country A, has it found an effective
| way to reduce emissions? Should all countries adopt the
| Monaco lifestyle to defeat global warming? I guess if you
| want to find a fair way to measure administration of land
| you could emmisions per hectare or rainfall.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Because per capita is the only thing that makes sense.
|
| If China were to split into 10 countries each emitting
| 10% of what they do now it'd be the exact same emissions,
| but according to you it would be much better.
|
| Similarly if the EU would become one country, that
| country would be high up on the list, much higher than
| member countries now! Oh no!
|
| Looking at per capita emissions is much more fair.
|
| Anyway, China's emissions are falling since last year (
| https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-
| co2-emissions-ha... ). What's the US doing?
| chucksta wrote:
| It can't realistically be solved at a per capita level
| though
| Scarblac wrote:
| Maybe we should start trying before we conclude that.
| renjimen wrote:
| Individuals can of course make choices to reduce their
| emissions, Americans more than most since they're
| starting higher. Buy less new stuff, eat less meat, fly
| less, etc.
|
| But policy is where real change needs to be made, and the
| effects of policy still scale with population in most
| cases.
| markdown wrote:
| Because country A just outsourced their emission
| production to country B.
| rayiner wrote:
| The climate doesn't care about per capita obviously.
| renjimen wrote:
| Climate doesn't care about political borders either.
|
| But per capita is more informative when thinking about
| policy for curbing emissions, which is how we actually
| change our effect on the climate.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| The rest of the world produces more than china.
| Checkmate.
| smt88 wrote:
| You can't really isolate China's emissions. They
| manufacture a huge proportion of the goods the rest of the
| world needs to operate. The green countries are essentially
| outsourcing their pollution to China.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| China is going to be fully green in a decade or two. India in 3
| or 4.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Nothing? China is solving the problem on their own. They
| already make substantially less carbon per person that most of
| the west. If we want to be like China it's a simple
| proposition: be OK with Manhattan project level investments in
| power transmission from places that have lots of renewables to
| places that need renewables.
| rayiner wrote:
| Climate is determined by total CO2 output, not per capita.
|
| That's a real problem, because China, and all the poor
| countries in Asia and Africa aren't going to stop increasing
| their CO2 output per capita until they reach western
| standards of living.
| Windchaser wrote:
| Sounds like we should pioneer better low-emissions tech,
| then, and pass it along to them. We've got more expendable
| income and a better tech base from which to do that.
| legitster wrote:
| The plan was always to put economic pressure on China to catch
| up to the rest of the developed world, but we can't exactly
| tell someone else to stop crapping their pants while we are
| still crapping our pants.
| hannob wrote:
| If the rest of the world wants to still have an industry once
| we finally decide to seriously use green technology, they
| should quickly catch up to China - if that's still possible.
|
| While China is still very reliant on fossil-fuels, and
| particularly dirty coal, they're at the same time working on
| dominating the post-fossil age at astonishing speed. After they
| already dominate solar and batteries, they're working on doing
| the same for a number of other future green industries. They
| are already dominating future technologies like Green Methanol
| that most people in Europe or the US have never heard of.
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| The same China that, added more new solar capacity in 2024 than
| the US currently has total? And is currently at 36% of its
| total energy use from renewable sources compared to the US's
| 23%? And has ~32GW of nuclear plants in construction compared
| to the US's 2.5GW?
|
| I hope we steal their playbook.
| epistasis wrote:
| We don't have to do anything about China, "China's CO2
| emissions have now been 'flat or falling' for 21 months"
|
| https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
|
| China is building clean energy for a good chunk of the world,
| including itself.
|
| A better question may be: What is the US going to do to make up
| for its historical emissions? The US got wealthy by creating
| far more emissions than China, and all those historical
| emissions are now a problem for the rest of the world.
|
| If people in the US try to turn climate action into a blame
| game, it will end very very poorly for the US.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Climate reparations now!
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| >If people in the US try to turn climate action into a blame
| game, it will end very very poorly for the US.
|
| Pure fantasy. What will happen to the US and who will do it
| to us?
| epistasis wrote:
| The US can't even get countries to enter trade agreements
| anymore, because it's throwing around threats of large
| tariffs and annexation of others' lands. The world could
| drop the dollar as the reserve currency, something that was
| gradually happening but is now accelerating.
|
| If the US starts trying to force other countries into
| climate action without taking into account its own
| contributions, the US will likely cut out of the global
| economy, and become far poorer as the rest of the world
| surpasses its wealth through vigorous trade.
|
| The US was the sole remaining superpower, but has recently
| decided to only occupy a much weaker position with a mere
| "sphere of influence" and ceding leadership in other parts
| of the world to others. The US is signalling to allies in
| Europe that it will no longer lead, that the prior world is
| over and the US is bugging out, meaning Europe will gain
| far more influence.
|
| The more that the US attacks others without providing any
| leadership, the less that the US will be able to take from
| the world. Up until recently, the US's position of massive
| economic strength was largely due to it's dominant position
| among nations and the goodwill that others had towards it.
| Turning the climate problem into a blame game on other
| countries would further weaken the US's position and
| options.
| maxglute wrote:
| Emulate them?
|
| PRC solar power production last year conservatively will
| diplace ~45 billion barrels of oil, or 10%-20% more than total
| global consumption per year. It's just retarded eco accounting
| that attributes emissions to renewable manufacturers while
| fossil exporters don't get any penalties for extracting
| emissions.
|
| Every year of PRC solar prevents doubling of oil, basically
| they're like the only significant country whose net
| contribution is negative for how much carbon sinks they
| manufacture. So the answer for US+co is obviously stop
| exporting oil and lng, and start exporting renewables.
| deadbabe wrote:
| I've given up. I've long assumed for a year now we are heading
| for warming that is even worse than the worst projections and
| it's all over. This has given me some peace, like accepting
| you're going to die.
| rolph wrote:
| you will age, you will weaken, you will cease, no choice or
| circumstance will change that. endeavor to create something
| that will persist through the eons, and that part of your mind
| will live forever.
| girvo wrote:
| Same, sadly. I've done far more than my part, and even my
| direct family hasn't, let alone the rest of the country, the
| world.
|
| I only hope I can have a decent life until it ends, and I hope
| it takes slightly longer than I think it will.
| raddan wrote:
| I still remain optimistic that the clever folks can avoid the
| absolute worst outcomes. However, I too am very frustrated
| that almost nobody gives a shit about the future. We are
| rapidly reaching the point where WE will live through the
| effects, and our own children will suffer much worse.
|
| I basically see it as a moral wrong and a grave ethical
| failure to use fossil fuels at this point. Except for home
| heating, I am now close to directly powering my entire life
| with clean, renewable energy. It was not hard. It was
| expensive, but only in the short term; I have effectively
| prepaid for my power needs for at least the next 25 years,
| and over than span it is very inexpensive.
|
| A modern EV is about the same price as any other car, goes
| about the same distance, and is only slightly more time to
| fuel in the worst case. In the typical case, you don't think
| about charging at all. The fact that I can't get my
| supposedly environmentally conscious family of scientists and
| engineers to care continues to stun me. Somehow saving money
| while improving the world is "a waste of money" while buying
| an expensive hobby vehicle or vacation home is not.
| Frustrating.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| I wonder if we should move beyond this messaging. It's well known
| to the smart half of the population that climate change is
| happening. There is apparently some debate on the cause. But this
| point is mostly irrelevant, it is problem-oriented thinking. By
| keeping the conversation in the problem-realm you invite
| troglodytes into the conversation to insert their bullshit.
| Instead, if we move forward with "presumption of truth"
| solutions-based messaging, we can start to talk about what we're
| going to do.
|
| Climate control is something more people will be on board with
| compared to trying to have a conversation about climate science
| to a person who didn't graduate high school.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Maybe those who didn't graduate shouldn't get to vote?
| weirdmantis69 wrote:
| IQ test, global events test and platform tests to be able to
| vote.
| 0ckpuppet wrote:
| we don't need evidence Earth is warming, because it's happened
| before humanity, and it will happen after we're gone. We need
| evidence that we're poisoning ourselves and the planet. Global
| warming's only accomplishment is giving the poisoners a pass when
| it was debunked. Private jets and climate change, choose one.
| mempko wrote:
| I'm pretty sure global warming isn't debunked. Yes, we should
| worry about all the other pollution too. But global warming is
| happening and we are causing it. What's different than nature
| doing it is the rate of change. Yes the earth was warmer in the
| past and would be in the future, but it has never warmed as
| fast as it is now.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| They predicted a warming planet based on human activity as long
| ago as the 50s
|
| We've known about the mechanisms of CO2 leading to atmospheric
| warming since the 19th century.
|
| We know humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
|
| We observe higher CO2 and warmer temps
|
| The evidence isn't that complicated.
| Windchaser wrote:
| I know you're getting dogpiled, but global warming has been
| validated, not debunked.
|
| The science behind it really got going in the 1890s, with
| Arrhenius' paper predicting climate sensitivity to CO2. That
| was bounced back and forth with rebuttals and counter-rebuttals
| until about 1950. Major debate points were how much role water
| vapor played, how this varied with
| temperature/altitude/pressure. (You can trace each part of the
| argument if you're so inclined; there's lots of neat science in
| there. The concept of "pressure broadening" was my favorite; it
| explores how spectral bands change with pressure).
|
| Around 1950, the science started settling out. Spectrometers
| had improved, we had clearer view that CO2 and H2O don't fully
| overlap in their spectra bands through the atmosphere, and we
| had the computing to do better calculations. By the 1970s, we
| were getting ice core data showing that the world had gone
| through huge temperature swings, and how this changed with CO2.
| Enough data had accumulated that a consensus was forming. In
| the 1980s, scientists were now concerned enough to form a large
| body to inform policymakers on this issue (IPCC; 1988). And in
| the 40 years since then, we've mostly sat on our hands, even as
| the science just gets clearer and clearer.
|
| I share all this long history to explain that the science went
| through nearly a century of rigorous debate even before
| politicians got involved. This a scientific issue, not a
| political one. And I'm glossing over 99.9999% of the detail
| here. There was an _extensive_ literature debate between the
| scientists, hashing out any point you can think of. You just
| have to go to your local uni library and start reading.
|
| TL;DR: saying that global warming is debunked is about as
| incorrect as saying that the Earth is flat. We have _extensive_
| evidence showing otherwise.
| gaigalas wrote:
| Very exciting to live in an apocalyptical era. I'm looking
| forward to discover which one of the several global threats to
| humanity will put us down first.
| excalibur wrote:
| I think the smart money is still on nuclear war, but the
| competition is getting fierce these days.
| gaigalas wrote:
| I think there's a strong argument for generalized systems
| collapse. It's a silent civilization killer, could be
| happening right now!
| barbazoo wrote:
| Kids alive today will get to see some wild shit toward the end
| of the century.
| randusername wrote:
| > Very exciting to live in an apocalyptical era
|
| Reminds me of that advice about depression more generally.
| Something like
|
| "If you can't be optimistic, settle for being curious about the
| way it all unfolds"
| bvan wrote:
| Oops, someone forgot to delete or redact it.
| layer8 wrote:
| Maybe they shouldn't have the "Do scientists agree on climate
| change?" link go to 404. ;)
| legitster wrote:
| Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know
| basically accept that the Earth is warming now. They just either
| disagree on the cause or proportion.
|
| Some people just naturally resist hyperbole or sensationalist
| rhetoric, and I find it very helpful to reframe the argument from
| doom and gloom and fire and brimstone to something more realistic
| and grounded:
|
| "The longer we put off doing something, the harder and more
| _expensive_ it will be in the future. In a Pascal 's Wager sort
| of way, many of the changes we are talking about don't even
| really cost us anything, and the potential that C02 is not a real
| culprit is more than made up by danger that it is. Making changes
| now is the _prudent_ and _financially sound_ decision. "
|
| In a large part, this is what the brief ESG trend on the stock
| market was briefly about before it got co-opted by a dozen
| different competing messages.
| aeternum wrote:
| The problem with Pascal's wager logic is you have to change
| your behavior based on all kinds of crazy low-probability
| events. You must worship every god, be an AI-doomer, a climate-
| doomer, a nuclear-doomer.
|
| Pascal's wager is generally agreed to be logically unsound, so
| it's somewhat insane that we've revived it in all these modern
| contexts. If you believe in it, at least be consistent and
| sacrifice a goat to Zeus every couple years.
| legitster wrote:
| Yes, and no. I think we actually do this logic a lot in our
| lives. Do I actually believe whole wheat bread is better for
| me, or do I just buy it on the chance it is? Do I go with the
| cheapest toothpaste or spend money on something that _might_
| be better? Do I buy an AWD car on the chance I am stuck?
|
| Sacrificing a goat, after all, does sound like a lot of work.
| But maybe I will wear a lucky hat to a baseball game?
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Another reframing that may be useful is energy
| security/redundancy.
|
| If you have a cheap source of solar panels and batteries, the
| only downside to installing them all over the country is up-
| front cost (which pays itself off quickly). The upside you gain
| is a substantially more robust, less centralized power grid
| that can continue to operate if something happens to impede
| your supply of fossil fuels or part of the grid gets cut off.
|
| Looking at how things have played out elsewhere in the world
| the past few years, that's powerful.
| nradov wrote:
| Where is this mythical cheap source of batteries? I mean you
| can go on Alibaba and order cheap 18650 cells in limited
| quantities but there's an enormous difference between doing
| that and having enough _reliable_ battery power to keep a
| nationwide grid supplying a modern industrial economy through
| several days of bad weather.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I'm a different kind of crotchety.
|
| I think it's real and potentially catastrophic. But I see very
| little chance of (sufficient) coordinated action to mitigate
| it.
|
| I.e., I think there's too much temptation for individual
| countries to pursue a competitive economic or military
| advantage by letting everyone but themselves make sacrifices.
|
| I hope I'm wrong.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Luckily the effect is much larger in the opposite direction:
| weaning oneself off of foreign oil is a huge advantage both
| economically and militarily.
| nradov wrote:
| Is it though? For developing countries, having a large
| supply of fossil fuels has always been a huge accelerator
| for industrialization and overall economic growth even if
| that fuel has to be imported. There really is no
| substitute, especially when you consider that it's not used
| only for transportation and power generation but also for
| manufacturing as an industrial heat source and chemical
| feed stock.
| guelo wrote:
| Trump is implementing multi decade right wing fantasies in
| many fronts. The idea that we can't achieve anything is
| limiting yourself when you're in a political arena. To win,
| like Trump, when you get power you have to attack on many
| fronts, cultural, capital, legal, and approach it as a zero
| sum scorched earth war where norms are another obstacle in
| your way.
| rayiner wrote:
| You weren't already doing that? You guys literally changed
| a dictionary definition to make a conservative appointee
| look bad: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/merriam-webster-
| changed-def...
|
| Trump, a democrat himself, is simply using the multi-front
| strategy he already knew.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > many of the changes we are talking about don't even really
| cost us anything
|
| I hear that often, but it's never followed by details about any
| of the actual changes that are being talked about. The ones I
| actually hear (especially politicians) advocate for are
| catastrophically expensive and dubious in their effectiveness.
| Banning coal or gas-powered cards might (might) be a good idea
| in the long run, but it definitely does cost us something.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Banning coal is a complete no-brainer at this point. Has been
| for quite a while. Never mind climate change, it's _horribly_
| polluting. The only reason it 's still remotely economically
| viable is because the people who burn coal don't bear the
| costs of their pollution. If they actually had to compensate
| people for all the cancer, lung disease, poisoned ground
| water, contaminated seafood, and other such problems they
| cause, coal would vanish.
|
| It's already to the point where the ridiculous coal fans who
| infest our government are forcing coal power plants to remain
| open when their operators want to close them because they're
| no longer profitable to operate.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| > Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know
| basically accept that the Earth is warming now
|
| My family is fundamentalist protestant, very midwestern, and I
| think about half of them believe that the earth is warming. Not
| trying to "win", just trying to say that a lot of this depends
| on the crowd you interact with. I don't know the percentage,
| but certainly there are still way too many people that don't
| even believe it. The very tired response is "well i wish it
| would warm up here _slaps knee_ ". Using the phrase 'Climate
| Change' at least reduces that objection.
| smitty1e wrote:
| "Climate Change" implies that some sort of "constant climate"
| is even attainable, irrespective of desirable.
| mithr wrote:
| It doesn't; that's kind of a first-glance reading of the
| phrase without really thinking about it.
|
| Something can said to change from a certain standard even
| if it wasn't perfectly constant to begin with. For example,
| if I always kept my house at 65-75 degrees for the past
| year, and now it's 85 degrees inside, I could certainly say
| that the temperature in my house recently changed and
| gotten warmer. That might lead me to check whether my AC's
| working, rather than say "well I guess the temperature has
| never really been constant, and 85 is within the range of
| possible non-constant temperatures, so everything's
| perfectly normal and nothing has changed."
| alt227 wrote:
| Your analogy doesnt work, becaue the earth has been
| warmer than it is now several times in the past. so the
| increased temperature is within the range of normal
| temperatures.
|
| The problem is not that the earth is warming, it is that
| it is warming at an artificially increased rate.
| mithr wrote:
| It's not meant as a perfect analogy for global warming,
| but rather an illustration of how a constant state isn't
| necessary for something to be said to be "changing",
| which was OP's claim.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Only with an excessively literal interpretation.
|
| If I pick up your house and drop it two streets over, that
| could be accurately described as a "location change" of
| your house. This is still true despite the fact that your
| house naturally moves some centimeters per year due to
| tectonic plates shifting around.
|
| Similarly, when global average temperatures saw long term
| trends of a fraction of a degree of change per millennium,
| then suddenly started changing at multiple degrees per
| century, it's pretty reasonable to call that "climate
| change" despite the fact that it was not _completely_
| constant before.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| And you're just like the deniers who pick apart irrelevant
| things, and then smugly smile.
| legitster wrote:
| My father in law was a massive climate change denier until
| some trees started dying on his property.
|
| He called out an arborist, and the arborist clearly explained
| that there wasn't enough rain anymore to support the number
| of trees on his land, and that the forest was slowly receding
| as the older/bigger trees took all the water from the other
| trees.
|
| It finally dawned on him that a place where trees used to
| happily live to hundreds of years old could no longer support
| trees.
|
| Still, he thinks CO2 is a con job cooked up by China and that
| global warming is divine punishment. But it's a good reminder
| that a lot of denialists are waiting for a personal,
| practical reason to care.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Yes, parts of my extended family who were anti-climate change
| and _proud_ went from "Global warming is a hoax", to "So what
| if global warming is happening" over the past 10 years.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> many of the changes we are talking about don 't even really
| cost us anything_
|
| This is the part that seems to vary widely based on which
| warming alarmist you're talking to. Many of them are _not_
| saying there are things we could do that "don't even really
| cost us anything" that would deal with the problem--they're
| saying we need to devote a significant fraction of global GDP
| to CO2 mitigation.
|
| Things that "don't really cost us anything" are probably
| happening already anyway, because, well, they don't really cost
| us anything.
|
| Building a lot more nuclear power plants is the key thing that
| doesn't really seem to be happening right now, that would be an
| obvious way to eliminate a lot of CO2 emissions. But of course
| that _does_ really cost us something. But it 's probably the
| most cost effective thing we could do on a large scale.
| legitster wrote:
| > Building a lot more nuclear power plants is the key thing
| that doesn't really seem to be happening right now
|
| I mean, this is the clear and obvious one. Nuclear
| theoretically should be much, much cheaper than it is if it
| were not for the regulatory costs thrust upon it.
|
| It also harrows out people who are legitimately concerned
| from "moralist concern junkies". You'd think climate change
| being a global existential crisis would make people open to
| nuclear energy or more drastic measures like geo-engineering,
| but the frequency with which people refuse to compromise
| undercuts the their legitimacy.
| nradov wrote:
| Among the large set of people who think we should take steps
| to reduce anthropogenic global warming there are at least two
| subsets who seem to oppose nuclear power. One is sort of
| pseudo-religious and believes that any disruption of the
| natural environment is a "sin" against Mother Nature. The
| other claims that nuclear power is too expensive and that we
| can solve the base load power problem more cheaply with
| battery storage, despite the lack of evidence that we'll be
| able to scale it up fast enough in the time available. And I
| have nothing against building more battery storage where it
| makes sense, but I don't think that's going to be sufficient
| by itself.
| randusername wrote:
| I can understand people having their own reasons for dismissing
| the facts or the rhetoric.
|
| What I can't wrap my head around is the conspiracy thinking
| around environmentalism.
|
| What's so nefarious about clean air and water? I'll never
| forget when my grandmother walked out of WALL-E because she
| said it was government propaganda. She is a regular person, not
| a coal magnate or anything.
| krapp wrote:
| You need to understand the political and cultural history.
| Environmentalism has been associated with leftist, feminist
| and communist ideology going back to the hippies and the
| antiwar movement (which makes it easy for many Americans to
| mistrust by default.) When Trump said he believed global
| warming was a Chinese hoax (remember that?) he was echoing a
| belief amongst the right that environmentalism and "global
| warming" was a plot to undermine American business and
| sovereignty, and that climate science supporting
| anthropogenic global warming was manufactured by "cultural
| Marxist academics" to push that agenda.
|
| This conspiracy thinking has been pushed by Republicans,
| right-wing think tanks, coal, oil, manufacturing and like
| industries attempting to undermine public trust in climate
| science since at least the 1970s.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial
| canadiantim wrote:
| I don't think the issue was ever people doubting that the earth
| is warming. Especially considering we're coming out of an ice
| age, it would be extremely worrying if the earth wasn't
| warming!
|
| The main point people disagree on is: how much are humans
| contributing to this global warming trend?
| perrygeo wrote:
| > Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know
| basically accept that the Earth is warming now
|
| Same. Empirical evidence is just too hard to ignore.
|
| It's quite amazing watching the "climate change isn't real"
| folks transition to "climate change is no big deal", then to
| "climate change is too hard/expensive to deal with".
| darylteo wrote:
| something something tilt of the earth.
| burnte wrote:
| > They just either disagree on the cause or proportion.
|
| And for very specific reasons, too.
|
| One reason is unwillingness to feel like they have to take
| responsibility.
|
| Another is conceding that would mean they might have to make
| changes, and laziness is powerful.
|
| The worst reason is that to acknowledge it would be to grant
| that an alternative political perspective is right about
| something, and one's own political identity is tied to that
| other political perspective being always wrong.
|
| "It is easier to con a man than to convince him he has been
| conned." Too much emotional investment in being right and too
| much fear of social repercussions simply for changing one's
| mind. The reality is changing one's mind to new data is the
| hallmark of integrity.
| chasil wrote:
| Reposting a previous comment...
|
| What is generally not understood is that our current icehouse
| phase is rare.
|
| 'A "greenhouse Earth" is a period during which no continental
| glaciers exist anywhere on the planet... Earth has been in a
| greenhouse state for about 85% of its history.
|
| 'Earth is now in an icehouse state, and ice sheets are present in
| both poles simultaneously... Earth's current icehouse state is
| known as the Quaternary Ice Age and began approximately 2.58
| million years ago.'
|
| Modern humans have existed for 60k years, all of which have been
| in this current icehouse.
|
| To cast a different shade on the meaning, this climate period is
| rare, easily disturbed, and difficult to restore even with vastly
| more powerful technology. The more common greenhouse state is
| unlikely to lead to a Venus runaway, but it will be hostile to
| us.
|
| We might very well require the rare climate, and perish in the
| common.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earthh...
| jongjong wrote:
| Difficult is good. It makes it more competitive. It levels up
| the game.
| reverius42 wrote:
| The dinosaurs did great with a bit of difficulty, too!
| seanw444 wrote:
| Finally a human with a context window larger than a few hundred
| years.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Previous climate changes happened over tens of thousands of
| years. This one is happening in decades.
|
| It's the speed, not the magnitude that matters. Change faster
| than evolution and migration will destroy ecosystems.
| e40 wrote:
| We've already lost the battle to prevent catastrophic change:
|
| https://davidsuzuki.org/story/is-it-too-late-to-escape-clima...
|
| And 7 of 9 boundaries have been crossed?
|
| https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-bound...
|
| This is starting to look more like the movie _Don't Look Up_.
| 100721 wrote:
| Wasn't that film explicitly about climate change denial?
| weirdmantis69 wrote:
| Well it was a metaphor I guess but I certainly took it that
| way.
| almosthere wrote:
| I think many people are unwilling to accept "climate change" or
| "global warming" because of the following:
|
| a) china is unwilling to do anything, and if that's the case,
| America shouldn't empty its pocket books on this issue.
|
| b) this climate change alarmist stuff has caused a climate
| disaster in the US because all the migration to Electric Only is
| causing us to use generators all over the place, which is crazy.
| We should instead focus on making clean nuclear and expanding
| solar. PG&E (in CA) has decided to cancel this migration because
| CPUC (or whatever their called) is in Newsome's pocket who is in
| PG&Es pocket.
|
| c) climate change extremists are unwilling to both hear yes it's
| happening and no we're not going to do anything about it, so the
| people responding are simply saying, no it's not happening.
| abcde666777 wrote:
| One of the challenges in doing something about climate change is
| the significant (and not entirely unfounded) distrust growing
| between the public and the government.
|
| Basically amounting to, "well, you say you're doing X to combat
| climate change, but is X actually a competent solution (I don't
| trust your competence), and are you doing it to actually help or
| just to line pockets (I don't trust your intent)".
|
| The other challenge is that we as individual humans are loathe to
| give up our comfortable lifestyle if such turns out to be
| necessary.
| lugu wrote:
| The problem isn't technical in nature. We need a brand-new
| socioeconomic system that outcompete liberal democracies while
| reducing CO2 emissions.. We are in deep trouble.
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