The "it's not man made" and "just a natural cycle" is easily disproven by showing historical temperatures change where it does, by pure accident, a hockey stick trick just last century.
Or it would if the audience wasn't resistant to proofs altogether...
50 million years ago, there were forests in the arctic and the earth was much hotter than it is right now. Climate change comes in both man-made and natural varieties, and it's important to acknowledge the difference.
it's absolutely a problem for us. But saying climate change is a natural cycle isn't wrong. We have sped up the process of climate change, so much that it is a problem for us.
Aging is a natural process. Now imagine there was a virus that would make everyone age 100 times as fast. It would then be a huge problem for humanity. That's the best way I have of describing climate change.
The rate of change matters, it's a crucial factor. Typically when the climate changes it's over the course of thousands of years. This in contrast is a rapid change.
I'm also not sure what your point even is. "Climate change comes in both man-made and natural varieties?" Ok, and this time happens to be manmade, so maybe we should do something about it.
You're absolutely right. Our current climate change is mandmade, and we need to do something about it. But saying climate change in general is only manmade is wrong, which is what I thought the commenter was saying.
Also we have built a very large amount of infrastructure that assumes the climate is the way it is now.
You think it's expensive and annoying to have software dependencies pushed to you when you aren't ready, try being forced to take SeaLevel 2.0 and HurricaneFrequency 10 before you are ready.
I think this is the main takeaway. If we lived on earth 50 million years ago when there were no ice caps, we would still thrive. But we would be living vey differently, in different areas, and dependent on different ecosystems. Such sudden change is the problem.
Arguing with proofs just ends up leading to Brandolini's law [1]. You can make the most researched argument against any ridiculous point and you just get back a shoot from the hip rebuttal that needs further research that ends need a lengthly explanation why it's also wrong and it just keeps going.
A long time ago I leaned that no one wins an argument. When it comes to choosing a side in an argument, people end up defending their side to the end. I think it can get worse when the other side is unfriendly.
This is what we have today when it comes to climate stuff. It's not a conversation. It's often not polite. This has the sad effect of pushing many people we disagree with further into their position. Which is exactly what we don't want.
One option is not to contradict but lean into the argument the other is making and let them judge if even the premise that they're positioning themselves opposed to your "wrong" argument puts them in a good position.
Let's accept "it's not man made" and "it' s a natural cycle and here we are still". The Black Plague was natural and surely we wouldn't want it today. We routinely take precautions against so many natural things so why not this?
Recalling La Rochefoucauld, "The only orator who never fails to persuade is emotion".
I appreciate the distinction between an argument and a conversation. In a conversation, one is hopefully just as open to being persuaded as one is to persuading.
If, by arguing, we engender negative emotions in our interlocutor, we will have employed the most potent orator against ourselves.
Or look at the isotope mix of the C in the CO₂ in the atmosphere. CO₂ from burning fossil fuels does not contain ¹⁴C. CO₂ from volcanoes also does not contain ¹⁴C. CO₂ from other sources does contain ¹⁴C. Subtract out all the CO₂ from volcanoes and whatever you have left that does not contain ¹⁴C came from burning fossil fuels.
To play devils advocate, they could say that they would need to zoom out to a couple thousands years to be sure or (I’ve actually heard this one) that it is a coincidence that temperatures picked up after the industrial revolution since the little ice age ended around the same time.
We've done that though. The climate stayed in a narrow 1 degree Celsius range since the end of the last ice age. It's likely that very stability that allowed agriculture and civilization to flourish. That epoch is called the Holocene. We've left that now and entered a new era. The Anthropocine, where the major driver in the climate is now us.
From what I understand, the sun has also been getting hotter, hasn't it? I agree that man contributes to climate change, but quantifying this is where I think the conversation gets interesting. I haven't really gone very far down this hole though as it seems too muddled. And then if you do conclude man is primarily at fault, what do you do? The US is only responsible for so much output, for example, and sources like nuclear aren't viewed positively.
The US is only responsible for for so much of worldwide murders. Why trying to limit the number of murders in the US, then? It won’t change the total number of murders on the planet in a significant way.
That analogy doesn't really apply imo.. Global murder totals don't impact me like murders in America do. Similarly, climate change effects all parties, no matter their contribution. A better analogy, imo, would be something like a leaking ship, where the portion we're responsible for has a pinhole that we're debating on if/how to patch up, while other parties have gaping holes gushing in water constantly with no clear intent to fix the hole, as we all begin our descent.
And in this case, I don't think buying a Tesla or some vegan burgers is going to make a substantial difference. As long as there's economic incentive to negatively contribute climate change, it will happen.
The point of the analogy was to represent that our actions may be essentially inconsequential if all holes are not sealed, and that larger holes or offenders should take priority. The hole size wasn't really all that important, but yes, a more accurate description would've involved a larger hole, probably.
How do we even get emission data anyway? Especially for other countries like China. For example this source is telling me our per capita emissions are higher than China, which I very much doubt:
https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...
Why would you doubt that? People are so much richer in the US, they drive more, they have bigger houses to heat and cool, they consume more in general.
Yeah, that's true. And they have a large population to dilute the mean. I'm surprised we're so close to them in terms of total Co2 output too, I thought they dwarfed us given how much production takes place there coupled with a more lax attitude.
That's a tired talking point. The investigation has been done and it's human activity by a country mile. You can Google it if you're curious.
Basically all countries have to cut emissions to zero or nearly zero. I think this is actually looking hopeful. Even China and India are on board. The US must do it's part too and demonstrate leadership in this area.
There's a massive phase change in the global economy away from fossil fuels. The counties that embrace it last will find the market already captured. It pays in this case to lead the way.
Well, I don't talk about this much so wouldn't know. From what I understand, atmospheric physics is extremely complicated, and it sounds like a _very_ hard problem to develop accurate models for, and we're limited to a relatively small sample size. I just have a hard time seeing it, as a field, arriving at clean conclusions.. I'll have to read into it more later, though.
Then how can you say beyond a reasonable doubt that the majority of climate change is caused by man? I think it’s obvious that man is messing up the climate but I don’t know it’s obvious that they are the main cause “by a country mile.”
The key phrase in the question was 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. I'm not versed in atmospheric physics, so of course I can't present an educated counter arguement to the consensus, but it's complexity alone makes me skeptical of any consensus that's reached. It was only so long ago that an ice age was eminent, right?
If you have any quality sources (books, videos, etc) I'd be interested in reading up more, it's an interesting topic that unfortunately developed a polarizing and polemic dialogue.
> It was only so long ago that an ice age was eminent, right?
Yeah, we go through ice age cycles. We've disrupted that now, and that might actually be a good thing on a long enough timescale.
I think your hang up is that you think it's all based on climate simulations. There's lots of evidence apart from simulations, which I'm also skeptical of.
Some reading material to get an overview of what we know and don't know and how we know it:
This is one of those rare few times where I feel I did not waste my time disagreeing with someone on HN. I like your attitude towards things you don't understand.
Thanks! Yeah it's all too easy to lump people into stubborn camps, especially on the internet, but I appreciate you not dismissing me. I like nature as much as the next guy, but I'm just naturally a bit skeptical and that can come off as entrenched in some contrary viewpoint I guess.
It's not. Ice core isotope evidence gives you resolution all the way down to a year or two. We're seeing a first derivative of temperature that is simply unattested in any of that data. Or any other data source, honestly.
It's true that over thousand year timescales the earth has seen excursions larger than this. We have no evidence anywhere for anything happening this fast in the climate other than large impact events.
Or it would if the audience wasn't resistant to proofs altogether...