""Before humans burned the first coal to fire the first steam engine, the planet was warmer than this and had much higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.Both went back down."
Yes. That's true and it doesn't in any way mean that it is at all safe for humans to jack up co2 levels in such a short period of time. All of the available evidence from the people who discovered those things in the first place suggests that this is a massive gamble we are taking with bad odds and everything we hold dear is at stake.
""People twice your age lived through the end-of-the-world predictions of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But here we are, more technologically advanced than ever (for better or worse). But this time it's different! We have science!""
That's exactly right. Climate scientists aren't some kooks looking for clues to Armageddon in the bible or hearing voices. Global warming is happening. It's measurable. We know exactly whats causing it and we have very good reason to believe its dangerous to society and ecosystems. This has fuck all to do with doomsday cults. Don't look up is a perfect metaphor. If 97% of astrophysicists agreed that a meteor is on a collision course for the earth you wouldn't complain that you heard similar things from Jim Jones and you don't want to waste your tax dollars to divert some imaginary asteroid. For some reason with climate its socially acceptable to hold such an idiotic view.
""Science is a process carried out by people; people like John Cook, Michael Mann, etc, well-known frauds who were nonetheless widely touted by top journalists at outlets like the NYT and top politicians like Barack Obama.""
The findings of both Mann and Cook have been independently verified and expanded upon by a variety of scientific studies following separate lines of inquiry. As in following different lines of evidence using different methodologies. You are a partisan and the partisan media outlets have maligned these guys, but their work stands up. I'm sure theres a conspiracy you can conjure to explain this though.
""We see a constant stream of articles here on HN, highly upvoted, even, decrying the corruption in the peer review process, the research grant process, and confirmed by commenters telling tales of their time in the PhD research world.""
There are a number of different problems in academia and the peer review process. None of them have cast doubt on the consensus findings of the field of climatology. Actually one of the problems is predatory journals who accept anything for a fee and that's more really only a problem for climate contrarian scientists since that's the only kind of journal where they can pass "peer review" most of the time.
""These scientists were brought up in the same institutions that brought us COVID lockdowns, don't-mask--now-mask--nevermind-don't-mask, redefined vaccines-that-aren't-what-vaccines-used-to-be-defined-as, etc. And the media touts them just the same.""
Jesus next thing you're going to tell me to trust Q
""We see that this whole planet of humans has been kept in a state of panic for two years about COVID, because there exist entities who want to increase their power, and the way to transfer power is to convince people that it's necessary for their own good.""
They aren't transferring power. They're expending it. None of the covid measures has made it easier for one party to win an election or harder for the other. Biden hasn't been granted emergency authority to be president for life. No they've implemented measures to try to keep people safe and the backlash from it seems to make it less likely they stay in power. Not more. The whole narrative here is just self serving political hackery.
""But, no, of course, there couldn't be any similarity between these two issues behind the scenes. After all, it's scientific consensus! Which has always been a reliable indicator of objective truth, and is one of the cornerstones of the scientific process!""
There is a similarity, but it isn't behind the scenes. It's right here in these comments. Your narrative. That's what's similar. Conservatives need an enemy to rally the troops and that enemy is mostly democrats and anything they advocate for. Especially if opposing that thing happens to be in the best interests of coporate backers of the republican party. Just claim it's all a conspiracy to give the government power and the rank and file will eat it up. Good governance be damned. Future be damned.
""What's that idea, the Gell-Mann amnesia effect? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.""
No it's fool me once shame on you, fool me, we won't get fooled again
""If I weren't such a staunch advocate of free speech, I'd say that it ought to be criminal, how people have been convinced to live a life of fear, to think that there's no point to having a family, working toward the future, etc. How much suffering has been caused by these lies. It's simply evil.""
What's evil is downplaying actual dangers as lies and subjecting society to things like global warming and deadly diseases because you've come to associate these things with liberals. All the while banning books and passing anti 1st amendment, anti education laws under the guise of banning CRT in schools.
""Somewhere there must be a book that catalogues the dire, end-of-the-world predictions made by humans throughout the millennia. I'd implore you to find it, read it, be at ease, and live your life to the fullest while you have the health and means to do so. ""
Climate science is science. It is not tainted by the false predictions of con men and cult leaders. That doesn't work that way.
""John Cook, et al and the "97% consensus" paper was revealed to be a farce, its conclusion planned in advance on his Web forum, and the methodology cooked to provide the desired result. This is--or should be--common knowledge by now. The farce of Mann's "hockey stick" has been very widely reported, as well as the FOIA-leaked emails proving it, so you have no excuse to be ignorant of it, either.""
This is patently false. CookVerheggen 2014 - 91% consensus; Farnsworth and Lichter, 2011 - 84% consensus; Anderegg et al, 2010 - 97% consensus; Doran, 2009 - 97% consensus; Bray and von Storch, 2008 - 93.8% consensus; STATS, 2007 - 95% consensus; Oreskes, 2004 - 100% consensus, Lynas et al, 2021 - >99%.
Not only was cook right that there is a consensus, but there is even now a consensus on the consensus and the consensus has grown from 97% to >99%. Cook hasn't been discredited. He's been confirmed over and over by independent groups using completely different methodologies.
This is exactly the same case with Mann. Not only has the hockey stick been confirmed independently countless times other groups have extended the paleo climate reconstruction back over 100,000 years and still come to the same conclusion that current anthropogenic warming is unprecedented. Manns emails were hacked and snippits were taken out of context to paint a misleading picture of his methodologies.
One of his biggest critics physicist Richard Muller (https://youtu.be/8BQpciw8suk here he is criticizing mann) founded an institution called Berkley Earth specifically to investigate Manns findings. He got independent funding and hired the some of the greatest experts in relevant fields including one who received a Nobel while working there. They used the most rigorous statistical methods and were the first group to synthesize every available data set. They found that not only was Mann correct, but that they previous studies had actually underestimated the warming.
""The predictions about future global average temperature anomaly does not involve reproducible experiments, and the models have, thus far, all proven incorrect.""
This is false. The planet is about 1.1C above preindustrial temps. These temps are unprecedented in over 100,000 years. Many studies have predicted that the earth would be this warm at this time with this level of co2. Models are run with multiple emissions scenarios. The way denialsts come to the conclusion you have is to pick a scenario with higher co2 levels than we actually got and claim it overestimated warming. When you pick a scenario that actually reflects the co2 levels we have the predictions are all pretty much in line with what actually has happened.
""As Cook and Mann have shown, it is, and it does""
This opinion has been bought and paid for by fossil fuel companies who paid PR companies to smear these guys. The science stands up very well, but you've bought in and it doesn't matter if 10 or 10,000 studies confirm their findings you will dismiss it as a conspiracy.
""we're using climate change now""
Global warming and climate change are both terms which are in regular usage by climatologists. Global warming is what our greenhouse gas emissions causing. Climate change is a term used to describe the knock on effects of global warming like disruption to the jet stream, increased atmospheric water vapor, droughts, etc. The only time anyone tried to change out the terms global warming for climate change was when PR expert and republican political strategist Frank Luntz used focus groups to discover people showed less concern if climate change was used instead of global warming. After that republicans began insisting that climate change was the correct terminology and this idea spread somewhat in the media and even unwitting democrats. Scientists never insisted we use the term climate change over global warming. It's ironic that a right wing PR campaign is now put forward as evidence of some kind of moving of the goal posts.
> This opinion has been bought and paid for by fossil fuel companies who paid PR companies to smear these guys. The science stands up very well, but you've bought in and it doesn't matter if 10 or 10,000 studies confirm their findings you will dismiss it as a conspiracy.
If dang were made aware of that comment of yours, I wonder if he would sanction you for it. Readers (as if there are any) will note that I've made no such ad hominem comments about you, but have only commented on the facts and the logic of the issue.
Now, since I claimed that Cook, et al was a farce, you've said:
> Not only was cook right that there is a consensus, but there is even now a consensus on the consensus and the consensus has grown from 97% to >99%. Cook hasn't been discredited. He's been confirmed over and over by independent groups using completely different methodologies.
Again, this claim of yours is false. In fact, the claims of Cook, et al have been repeatedly proven to be misleading, false, and intentionally so:[0]
Two-thirds of the papers that Cook and his colleagues examined expressed no view at all on the consensus. Of the remaining 34%, the authors claimed that 33% endorsed the consensus. Divide 33 by 34 and you get 97%. But this result is essentially meaningless, because they set the bar so low.
The survey authors didn’t ask if climate change was dangerous or “manmade”. They only asked if a given paper accepted that humans have some effect on the climate, which as already noted is uncontroversial. It could mean as little as accepting the “urban heat island” effect.
So a far better question would be: How many of the studies claimed that humans have caused most of the observed global warming? And oddly, we do know. Because buried in the authors’ data was the answer: A mere 64 out of nearly 12,000 papers! That’s not 97%, it’s one half of one percent. It’s one in 200.
And it gets worse. In a follow-up study[1], climatologist David Legates read those 64 papers and found that a third of them didn’t even say what Cook and his team claimed. Only 41 actually endorsed the view that global warming is mostly manmade. And we still haven’t got to it being “dangerous”. That part of the survey results was simply invented, by politicians and activists.
Other researchers have condemned the Cook study on other grounds too. For instance economist Richard Tol showed[2] that over three-quarters of the papers counted as endorsing even the weak consensus actually said nothing at all on the subject. And evidence later emerged[3] that the authors of the paper were drafting press releases about their findings before they even started doing the research, which indicates an alarming level not of warming or of consensus but of bias.
Now, rather than assail you with accusations of conspiracy and partisanship, as you have repeatedly done to me, I'll leave speculation about your motives to the reader (as if there are any left here). But we can all see which kind of comment gets upvoted here, and which kind gets downvoted to death. "Science," indeed.
Yes. That's true and it doesn't in any way mean that it is at all safe for humans to jack up co2 levels in such a short period of time. All of the available evidence from the people who discovered those things in the first place suggests that this is a massive gamble we are taking with bad odds and everything we hold dear is at stake.
""People twice your age lived through the end-of-the-world predictions of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But here we are, more technologically advanced than ever (for better or worse). But this time it's different! We have science!""
That's exactly right. Climate scientists aren't some kooks looking for clues to Armageddon in the bible or hearing voices. Global warming is happening. It's measurable. We know exactly whats causing it and we have very good reason to believe its dangerous to society and ecosystems. This has fuck all to do with doomsday cults. Don't look up is a perfect metaphor. If 97% of astrophysicists agreed that a meteor is on a collision course for the earth you wouldn't complain that you heard similar things from Jim Jones and you don't want to waste your tax dollars to divert some imaginary asteroid. For some reason with climate its socially acceptable to hold such an idiotic view.
""Science is a process carried out by people; people like John Cook, Michael Mann, etc, well-known frauds who were nonetheless widely touted by top journalists at outlets like the NYT and top politicians like Barack Obama.""
The findings of both Mann and Cook have been independently verified and expanded upon by a variety of scientific studies following separate lines of inquiry. As in following different lines of evidence using different methodologies. You are a partisan and the partisan media outlets have maligned these guys, but their work stands up. I'm sure theres a conspiracy you can conjure to explain this though.
""We see a constant stream of articles here on HN, highly upvoted, even, decrying the corruption in the peer review process, the research grant process, and confirmed by commenters telling tales of their time in the PhD research world.""
There are a number of different problems in academia and the peer review process. None of them have cast doubt on the consensus findings of the field of climatology. Actually one of the problems is predatory journals who accept anything for a fee and that's more really only a problem for climate contrarian scientists since that's the only kind of journal where they can pass "peer review" most of the time.
""These scientists were brought up in the same institutions that brought us COVID lockdowns, don't-mask--now-mask--nevermind-don't-mask, redefined vaccines-that-aren't-what-vaccines-used-to-be-defined-as, etc. And the media touts them just the same.""
Jesus next thing you're going to tell me to trust Q
""We see that this whole planet of humans has been kept in a state of panic for two years about COVID, because there exist entities who want to increase their power, and the way to transfer power is to convince people that it's necessary for their own good.""
They aren't transferring power. They're expending it. None of the covid measures has made it easier for one party to win an election or harder for the other. Biden hasn't been granted emergency authority to be president for life. No they've implemented measures to try to keep people safe and the backlash from it seems to make it less likely they stay in power. Not more. The whole narrative here is just self serving political hackery.
""But, no, of course, there couldn't be any similarity between these two issues behind the scenes. After all, it's scientific consensus! Which has always been a reliable indicator of objective truth, and is one of the cornerstones of the scientific process!""
There is a similarity, but it isn't behind the scenes. It's right here in these comments. Your narrative. That's what's similar. Conservatives need an enemy to rally the troops and that enemy is mostly democrats and anything they advocate for. Especially if opposing that thing happens to be in the best interests of coporate backers of the republican party. Just claim it's all a conspiracy to give the government power and the rank and file will eat it up. Good governance be damned. Future be damned.
""What's that idea, the Gell-Mann amnesia effect? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.""
No it's fool me once shame on you, fool me, we won't get fooled again
""If I weren't such a staunch advocate of free speech, I'd say that it ought to be criminal, how people have been convinced to live a life of fear, to think that there's no point to having a family, working toward the future, etc. How much suffering has been caused by these lies. It's simply evil.""
What's evil is downplaying actual dangers as lies and subjecting society to things like global warming and deadly diseases because you've come to associate these things with liberals. All the while banning books and passing anti 1st amendment, anti education laws under the guise of banning CRT in schools.
""Somewhere there must be a book that catalogues the dire, end-of-the-world predictions made by humans throughout the millennia. I'd implore you to find it, read it, be at ease, and live your life to the fullest while you have the health and means to do so. ""
Climate science is science. It is not tainted by the false predictions of con men and cult leaders. That doesn't work that way.