Giant Middle East dust storm caused by a changing climate, not human conflict

http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/9264.html

by upen • 10 years ago

58 47 10 years ago

dominotw• 10 years ago

combination of climatic factors and unusual weather.
Summer 2015 was unusually hot and dry relative to the last 20 years

So data over last 20 yrs is enough to conclude "changing climate" ?

Middle East becomes more arid in the long term due to climate change

This article[1] blames it on ' farmers who pump water from limited underground aquifers '. Is there any proof that middle east is becoming more arid and it due to 'climate change' ?

1. http://www.aljazeera.com/video/middleeast/2013/03/2013322185...

yequalsx• 10 years ago

I read the article linked to in the submission. I did not read the research paper that the article references. When experts publish a research paper in an area that I have no expertise in I assume the following:

1. They might be wrong.

2. If they are wrong it almost certainly isn't for the reason I think they might be wrong.

3. 2) is especially true if the reason I think they might be wrong came to me within 5 minutes of thinking about the issue.

4. My first glance thought about the paper being wrong most likely is itself wrong.

Instead of concluding that the reporter writing

" Summer 2015 was unusually hot and dry relative to the last 20 years"

means this is the sole reason for the conclusion of the scientists it's better to wonder what all the factor are that led them to their conclusion. What is it that they know that I don't know that makes them believe this conclusion? That's the right starting point for investigation and understanding.

mikeash9• 10 years ago

Interesting how all the climate change deniers come out of the woodwork whenever stories like these are posted, even though HN leans fairly heavily liberal and extremely heavily scientific the rest of the time.

Is the HN population actually like that, or are these people trying to push an agenda and otherwise not participating in the site? Either way, I sure wish we could discuss these things instead of getting bogged down in "it's all nonsense" every time.

marcosdumay• 10 years ago

The answer is in their comments history.

I've seen both cases. Even people with completely reasonable histories.

nickff5• 10 years ago

Most topics on HN have people staunchly defending different camps; this is just an obvious one. As an example, Signal is very controversial, so there are a few people who say it's great for privacy, and another group that say it's misleading and less secure than it appears. Full disclosure: I don't have a position on Signal, but I'm a big fan of Moxie.

How would you "discuss these things" without having different points of view? Should we all just post 'this climate change is even worse than I thought', then respond 'I knew it was this bad, see my post from 2 years ago'?

mikeash9• 10 years ago

There are plenty of things to discuss within the broad camp of "accepts that climate change is real and a potential problem." For example, the severity, the cause of individual events, the best responses, the potential dangers in the future, etc.

Instead, we just get these condescending posts completely dismissing any notion of climate change at all.

I do not see this phenomenon with other fact-based topics discussed here. When there's a story about vaccine, we're not flooded with people telling us how vaccines are full of toxins and don't prevent disease. When there's a story about genetics, we're not flooded with people telling us that evolution is a hoax. Physics stories don't get flooded with comments pushing Time Cube or whatever. Yes, we do get some comments like that, but not many.

Sure, something like Signal is controversial, but that's something that's naturally based on opinion. Dissent about the tradeoffs of something like Signal is quite different from dissent about the reality of climate change.

diogenescynic• 10 years ago

Big Oil companies fund climate skeptics and hire public affairs companies who pay people to promote those views online. It may or not be happening here, but it's definitely a thing: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-money-funds-...

and: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/21/climate-...

and: https://thinkprogress.org/denier-bots-live-why-are-online-co...

and: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2485252/social-media/ar...

jbattle• 10 years ago

Honestly I think HN draws a crowd that leans contrarian by nature. A lot of people here like a good argument and like to feel they've arrived at conclusions on their own brainpower, no matter how popular or unpopular. (There's a tempting trap that holding an unpopular opinion is validation you are thinking for yourself)

mikeash9• 10 years ago

There is definitely a strong contrarian theme in the tech community in general.

rndmize• 10 years ago

In the case of this particular article, it looks like most of the denial posts are a single account (sameoldsameold, 2 hours old currently). Since all the posts by that account are now marked flagged/dead, and the account climatedenier is less than ten minutes old and is already posting along the same lines, I'd guess its the same person.

Unless this person is tremendously emotionally involved in the idea of climate change, I don't see why an average HN reader would spend this much time on a single thread or create new accounts to post.

It leaves me feeling like this is the efforts of a publicity firm or something similar - I remember reading some years back (well before the recent drama) about Russian government-run media control orgs that hired people to post comments to promote their view or damage opposing ones with bad arguments. Years before that, there was similar material from SF-based firms doing manipulation on reddit and digg. No reason to assume this no longer exists imo.

abduhl• 10 years ago

"Accusations of astroturfing or shilling without evidence are not allowed on HN. Rushing to that as an explanation is, invariably, evidence of sloppy thinking—or maybe non-thinking, of the kind that political passion leads us all to."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13345070

Florin_Andrei2• 10 years ago

HN leans fairly heavily liberal and extremely heavily scientific the rest of the time.

HN also has a strong libertarian bias. There's some correlation between subscribing to that type of dogma and being an active climate change denier.

cmurf2• 10 years ago

I think there's a stronger correlation for religious people being active climate change deniers. Surely the creator would not destroy EVERYONE all at the same time?! That would be capricious and unfair!

But I admit I can't think of a purely free market solution for avoiding climate change, and perhaps as libertarian types haven't figured out how to innovate those incentives they just have to deny it's not real rather than admit the free market isn't going to innovate those incentives and arrive at a correction on its own before it's too late. The reality is, it's already too late. Now we're in the position of having to manage the consequences of our failure: soft landing vs hard landing.

DrScump• 10 years ago

  HN also has a strong libertarian bias.

Having a sizable libertarian presence is not the same as having a "strong libertarian bias".

creaghpatr• 10 years ago

Consider Jessica Livingston's The Sound of Silence essay that was posted this morning

Giant Middle East dust storm caused by a changing climate, not human conflict

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