It's interesting that we're not allowed to debate the existence of the crisis in the first place... it's just accepted as an a priori fact and anyone who provides even the slightest push-back is ridiculed and silenced.
They get ridiculed because they argue in bad faith with bad or even made up references and data.
Their predictions are basically useless. Decades ago these "debators" were arguing in favor of global cooling because solar activity is going down yet what we got is record temperatures after record temperatures practically every single year.
Even with correct data they intentionally misinterpret it or omit crucial factors. For example a graph where solar insolation, co2 levels and global temperatures are listed they remove the solar insolation data and then argue that there is no correlation between CO2 and global temperatures or state that past CO2 levels have been higher while ignoring that over the time of millions of years solar insolation has increased by a few percentage points and it takes less CO2 today to cause the same level of warming Vs millions of years ago.
Let's assume there was a "debate", why is one side acting in such a way? You would have to put on a tinfoil hat and explain this by saying something ridiculous like "the green lobby routinely funds junk science to discredit climate skeptics".
I haven't seen any new credible evidence in years that doesn't hyperfocus on one data point or weather event or just try to generally throw up a "well we don't really know do we it could be this other thing" to try to prove their claim. It's tiring and the data is overwhelming that we're warming the Earth.
Maybe because there's a scientific consensus at least on the fact that there's a global warming at the source of a ever growing climate instability and that the only people pushing against it are crazy people who don't know what they are talking about and crazy politicians willing to say that out loud in order to get elected, and coal/oil/gas lobbies paying for sham science (and aforementioned politicians) to say the contrary.
Funny by the way how the discourse about climate change has changed over the years from "It's not happening" to "It's not that bad". Altough in typical conspiracist style, some have always held both at the same time.
Is Freeman Dyson also a crazy person who doesn't know what he's talking about?
The appearance of consensus is manufactured by the media. They label each dissenter as an individual crazy person and somehow the mainstream narrative is the consensus.
And again, this labelling is done by the media. There's no high authority of science.
Because the disaster we're heading into is backed by laws of physics that have been proven again and again over centuries. It's not possible to come up with arguments to "push back" against it. If you think it is, you simply lack the level of required scientific education to understand what is going on.
The problem with this is there do seem to be quite legitimate physicists who disagree with the "sky is falling" conclusion that all popular discussion is premised on. I recently heard an interview with Dr. Richard Lindzen that, for instance, provides what sounds like a very reasonable counter to the prevailing attitude.
Anyone who says "the science is settled, the laws of physics cannot be violated" fails to realize what physics is even about. The vast majority of victories that physics has had since Isaac Newton are based on incredibly simplified models that strip out all of the complexity from a system. Basically everything interesting is treated as linear (as in f(x) ~ x) and a lot of the other stuff is just thrown into constants. After a few decades of working with that, both in theory and with experiments, you might get comfortable enough to add some small corrections to your theories. In this way you step closer and closer to "truth" but we are still very far off, even with our best physics, from fully understanding anything of even moderate complexity. This is not to say that we don't get incredibly useful results from physics (just look at our technology!), but it does mean that we need to constrain statements about how much we really understand and where our "laws" really are applicable. Take for instance the equation for kinetic energy, k=.5 * mv^2. Hugely useful, but dead wrong if you try to apply it to things moving at relativistic speeds.
The problem of climate science, from my perspective, is that we can't strip it down like we do for simple systems like a ball moving in space. Climate is inherently very complex; if you try to ignore how oceans interact with vegetation, how vegetation interacts with clouds, how clouds and rain are connected, etc, then your models can be interesting and might reveal something, but they can't be used to predict what will happen with any degree of confidence because they are too far removed from the real thing. And if you don't strip something out of the system when doing your modeling, well then good luck: you'll never understand anything at all because the thing is too complex to be used to calculate anything of interest.
That the planet is warming is backed by very good science but the magnitude of the ecological impact to humans is unknowable and thus not science at all.
Aside from borderline impossible claims of a runaway greenhouse effect, there is absolutely no world where human extinction is on the table and frankly I would argue that mass death is unlikely as historical evidence is by far in the favor of human adaptability.
Your argument doesn't work, if it ever did. People have already decided where they fall. You'll never beat them into submission; you'll only make their positions more entrenched.
There are two arguments, and they like to confuse people that they must be related.
There is all the data of what is actually going on in the world. Temperature readings, satellite images, etc. This can be called science and it is evidence, but it doesn't come with anything saying what is causing it. The equivalent of a primitive man meticulously measuring the rain.
Then there is the conjecture that this is all because of CO2 and its all our fault. This is purely religious argument, not at all different than the good old "Gods are punishing us" argument from a primitive man. The only evidence for this argument are some trash computer models which are running far beyond their predictive capability.
It's also inevitable that if we have "global warming god" and "global cooling god", one would emerge victorious.
It isn't science, it's just masquerading as science. The data analysis of real world data is science. The trash computer models attributing all of this to CO2 aren't science.
These are similar to the computer models in the COVID crisis which have overshoot reality by orders of magnitude.
imtringued|3 years ago
Their predictions are basically useless. Decades ago these "debators" were arguing in favor of global cooling because solar activity is going down yet what we got is record temperatures after record temperatures practically every single year.
Even with correct data they intentionally misinterpret it or omit crucial factors. For example a graph where solar insolation, co2 levels and global temperatures are listed they remove the solar insolation data and then argue that there is no correlation between CO2 and global temperatures or state that past CO2 levels have been higher while ignoring that over the time of millions of years solar insolation has increased by a few percentage points and it takes less CO2 today to cause the same level of warming Vs millions of years ago.
Let's assume there was a "debate", why is one side acting in such a way? You would have to put on a tinfoil hat and explain this by saying something ridiculous like "the green lobby routinely funds junk science to discredit climate skeptics".
rtkwe|3 years ago
UncleMeat|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
cassepipe|3 years ago
machina_ex_deus|3 years ago
The appearance of consensus is manufactured by the media. They label each dissenter as an individual crazy person and somehow the mainstream narrative is the consensus.
And again, this labelling is done by the media. There's no high authority of science.
johnteller|3 years ago
joshgev|3 years ago
Anyone who says "the science is settled, the laws of physics cannot be violated" fails to realize what physics is even about. The vast majority of victories that physics has had since Isaac Newton are based on incredibly simplified models that strip out all of the complexity from a system. Basically everything interesting is treated as linear (as in f(x) ~ x) and a lot of the other stuff is just thrown into constants. After a few decades of working with that, both in theory and with experiments, you might get comfortable enough to add some small corrections to your theories. In this way you step closer and closer to "truth" but we are still very far off, even with our best physics, from fully understanding anything of even moderate complexity. This is not to say that we don't get incredibly useful results from physics (just look at our technology!), but it does mean that we need to constrain statements about how much we really understand and where our "laws" really are applicable. Take for instance the equation for kinetic energy, k=.5 * mv^2. Hugely useful, but dead wrong if you try to apply it to things moving at relativistic speeds.
The problem of climate science, from my perspective, is that we can't strip it down like we do for simple systems like a ball moving in space. Climate is inherently very complex; if you try to ignore how oceans interact with vegetation, how vegetation interacts with clouds, how clouds and rain are connected, etc, then your models can be interesting and might reveal something, but they can't be used to predict what will happen with any degree of confidence because they are too far removed from the real thing. And if you don't strip something out of the system when doing your modeling, well then good luck: you'll never understand anything at all because the thing is too complex to be used to calculate anything of interest.
edit: added some words.
edit2: more words.
AbrahamParangi|3 years ago
Aside from borderline impossible claims of a runaway greenhouse effect, there is absolutely no world where human extinction is on the table and frankly I would argue that mass death is unlikely as historical evidence is by far in the favor of human adaptability.
pjkundert|3 years ago
nathanaldensr|3 years ago
But please, keep trying.
machina_ex_deus|3 years ago
There is all the data of what is actually going on in the world. Temperature readings, satellite images, etc. This can be called science and it is evidence, but it doesn't come with anything saying what is causing it. The equivalent of a primitive man meticulously measuring the rain.
Then there is the conjecture that this is all because of CO2 and its all our fault. This is purely religious argument, not at all different than the good old "Gods are punishing us" argument from a primitive man. The only evidence for this argument are some trash computer models which are running far beyond their predictive capability.
It's also inevitable that if we have "global warming god" and "global cooling god", one would emerge victorious.
It isn't science, it's just masquerading as science. The data analysis of real world data is science. The trash computer models attributing all of this to CO2 aren't science.
These are similar to the computer models in the COVID crisis which have overshoot reality by orders of magnitude.