Why Climate Skeptics Are Wrong

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-climate-skeptics-are-wrong/

by malkia • 9 years ago

36 21 9 years ago

pirocks• 9 years ago

I fail to see what this article adds beside "climate skeptics are wrong", in paragraph form. Am I missing something?

davesque• 9 years ago

Not sure what you mean. They put forward an argument (that skeptics must put forward a plausible alternative to AGW and have not done this) and cite a reputable source which supports their argument.

PhilWright• 9 years ago

The point of the article is that is more than one path to the mainstream beliefs on climate change.

If you have a single path of research that leads to a conclusion then you have a valid but relatively weak conclusion. But if you have five separate paths of research all leading to the same conclusion then you have a much stronger case. The article claims there are many such independent paths to the mainstream conclusions on climate change. It also concludes that the skeptics do not have even a single path of research that leads to position of the skeptics.

It is like evolution. You can conclude evolution from just comparative biology. But you can also get the same conclusion from genetics. They are independent of each other as research paths but give the same answer. That increases confidence in the conclusion.

jriot2• 9 years ago

Part of me believes what really is causing the most issues are the proposed solutions to fix climate change. Most of the recommendations I have read insist on raising taxes. I will never vote yes on any tax increase, as I don't trust our politicians enough to see them utilizing the extra tax revenue wisely e.g., R&D for renewable energy etc... Climate change is real, but we can't tax our way to a solution.

Fej2• 9 years ago

I would tend to agree with you on the distrust of politicians; however I believe that it is important to distinguish between taxes primarily meant to raise money and taxes primarily meant to cause a change in behavior.

What I am trying to get at is: the income tax, for example, exists so that governments can finance their operations. A heavy tax on cigarettes, on the other hand, is meant to change the population's behavior - to push smokers to quit. The extra revenue is useful but not the main point of the legislation. The goal is to reduce the number of smokers.

Such as it would be with a carbon tax. As someone thoroughly concerned with the state of our habitat, I would be thrilled to see a carbon tax here in the US - even if the politicians took the extra money raised by the tax and burned it. The point of a carbon tax is to reduce carbon emissions; raised monies are a secondary benefit.

Erem• 9 years ago

What is a solution you could get behind then?

I would love to be proven a fool, but where you see an eagerness to tax I see a lack of free market solutions for tragedies of the commons such as the atmosphere.

flukus• 9 years ago

I will never vote yes on any tax increase, as I don't trust our politicians enough to see them utilizing the extra tax revenue wisely e.g., R&D for renewable energy etc... Climate change is real, but we can't tax our way to a solution.

Because the is the most cost effective and simplest solution. It has a proven track record with the Montreal protocol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol

I'm certainly not wedded to the idea, but there doesn't seem to be any other viable options on the table.

tonyedgecombe• 9 years ago

You don't really need to raise taxes, just shift them around, so you take some tax away from income and move it to carbon for instance.

The difficulty is you need to do this in a coordinated way otherwise you just end up shifting your carbon intensive industries overseas. This is why reaching a global agreement is so important.

The R&D thing is a red herring, business will respond to the economic situation it finds itself in.

Sunset• 9 years ago

Have fun convincing China to commit economic suicide.

jriot2• 9 years ago

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/06/04/some-modes...

One solution. While a small footprint, it is bigger than the comment section combined (assuming we aren't millionaires with private jets and yachts). When politicians and celebrities promote enacting a carbon tax that reduces our economic activity, while having a negligible effect on them.

Fej2• 9 years ago

Neat little article, preaching to the choir unfortunately. I wonder if there's a single climate denier around here.

Useful to send to others, though.

DanBC• 9 years ago

There are dozens. They come out in every climate thread.

aaron695• 9 years ago

I am a climate denier.

Happy to agree with AGW but this is NOT what climate denial is about.

This is why this article is fake.

What global warming is about, not the religious babble in articles like this, is how bad is it? and how bad is dealing with it?

Then as a scientist and logical person go down the best route.

And the evidence to me is clear, the best route is to not deal with it. Hence we once again start a religious war in threads like this.

How to deal with these religious wars is unclear, but if you want to really help the world, solving this would be an amazing start.

A large part of the population will always be religious, be it about the gods or GMO's or Global warming. How does one solve these issues? This is really where it's at.

pale-hands3• 9 years ago

If you are "Happy to agree with AGW", you're not a climate denier, or even a climate skeptic as Scientific American would define it. (Unless, of course, your agreement with AGW is not really that). The article is about consilience of evidence, and doesn't even touch on mitigation, so it's hard to guess what you are reacting against.

Your characterisation of the controversy as religious is interesting to me. We would both probably apply the adjective "religious" to firmly held beliefs that are unsupported by the facts, but would disagree as to the facts. And we would both not apply the "religious" adjective to ourselves.

polotics2• 9 years ago

On HN you really get the hard edge of denialism, probably well financed shills, very interesting.

Clearly the massive non-sequitur in the statement below is super interesting obfuscation: the article states that global warming is real, so how can you call it fake if you agree that it is real?

(quote) "Happy to agree with AGW but this is NOT what climate denial is about. This is why this article is fake." (end quote)

As I understand it this sleight of words is used just for the confusion, trying to get readers into fast-thinking less rational mode.

Then the money shot, delivered with no analysis, no model, and crucially, no evidence:

(quote) "And the evidence to me is clear, the best route is to not deal with it." (end quote)

We are not talking about climate warming, but its direct consequence which is climate disruption, a few degrees warming leading to much higher likelihood of extreme weather events, this has not been news since at least Katrina and the california drought & fires.

Not dealing with it is not an option when your house is burning. Implictly there is the hope that somebody else's house or lake gets hit, but for the US it's no dice, there are massive fragilities everywhere. (Jersey, NYC subway, ...)

Carbon gets gigantic subsidies, not just direct but also in military budgetting for oil supply protection.

Please go to www.realclimate.org

singularity2001• 9 years ago

I thought this discussion was settled long ago. But then people thought Germans were 'cultured' in 1933.

lcuff• 9 years ago

It is distressing to see the post flagged, and only get 36 upvotes as of 6 June, when the article on Alex Honnold is currently going through the roof (473 and counting). It makes me wonder if people have read the posting guidelines at all. Mainstream media is going to be all over Alex Honnold, and it's fun, but ultimately fluff.

After going to University in the '70s when global cooling was a concern, and after seeing Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", I undertook a journey: I was willing to be persuaded either way. I read pro and con media, and followed the links to their cited scientific articles. The evidence is overwhelming, as the Scientific American article says. But many intelligent people don't "believe" in global warming. This by itself is a hideously dangerous and perplexing problem.

Why Climate Skeptics Are Wrong

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