Comment by jhedwards
2 days ago
> It's much like climate science today: any dissent at all, even just questioning the predictions of catastrophe, immediately brands you as a heretic.
I'm not sure I understand this. We've added hundreds of gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere. There's no mystery here, it's basic physics and chemistry that this will change things, and it's accepted that we don't know exactly _how_ things will change. The alternative: "adding gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere will _not_ change anything" is simply non-sensical. It goes against the basic rules of physics and causality. I'm happy to be proved wrong here, I just legitimately can't see how an alternative position makes any sense.
Edit: I see you specifically pointed out "predictions of catastrophe", which if that is true (and not just the position of radicals on Twitter) is indeed unfortunate.
Yes, there is overwhelming evidence of climate change. And that we are causing it.
However research into what we humans can do to ameliorate it is verboten. For example https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fertilizing-ocean... was an actual experiment that found a low cost way to both remove lots of CO2, and improve a fishery. But that line of research has been shut down.
Likewise research into the current impact is only allowed if it agrees with what is politically correct. For example many researchers have found that current severe California forest fires are mostly due to poor past policies, that have resulted in very dense forest, with a large fuel overload. But research that stresses the impact of climate change are easier to publish, and this shifts the apparent consensus on the causes of things like the major 2025 fires in the Los Angeles area.
From your link:
> Not geoengineering
> The project is also unlikely to bury much if any carbon dioxide for one simple reason: metabolism. As other iron fertilization experiments have shown, it is relatively easy to get plankton to bloom, but it is harder for that bloom to sink to the bottom of the ocean, where it takes CO2 with it.
This project is a net carbon emitter by design.
Do you really think that adding iron releases net carbon? That would be hard to explain chemically.
The worst case scenario laid out in that article is that most of the carbon absorbed, was later rereleased. So net zero carbon, not net carbon emitter.
I've seen other reports of that exact experiment that estimated a significant net carbon sink. The actual experiment failed to make measurements that lets us know which actually happened.
Regardless, we've certainly demonstrated that, at least sometimes, there is significant net carbon capture, at low cost. Given the certainty of global damage at present, I believe that this justifies continued experimentation. Even if it means accepting possible risk to local ecosystems. The local ecosystem can generally recover. The planet, not so much.
1 reply →
Climate science is much more complicated - there are many things you could disagree with beyond will tons of carbon change things, yes or no.
Like are we doomed or will it just get a bit warmer before we switch to solar for example.
There are also money issues like with the alzheimer's situation. If climate change is dooming us then we should send more money to climate scientists.
> If climate change is dooming us then we should send more money to climate scientists.
Depends! If you're a large fossil fuel company, the obvious move might be to spend more money on advertising agencies scientists, or entire foundations who question climate science instead.
... which they did. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-013-1018-7
Meanwhile, the basics were known since the 19th century. https://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf
> There are also money issues like with the alzheimer's situation. (that is: If climate change is dooming us then we should send more money to climate scientists)
Absolutely, the issues are similar
And if this can upend the business model of some big companies we'll give some "incentives" to some "doubtful" scientists even if their doubts are unfounded (actually very well founded but you get the gist)
Which sucks because such work should be free of pressures and incentives
> we should send more money to climate scientists.
Couldn't disagree more.
Please spend it on those who might actually fix something. There's plenty of can remove carbon or can undo the effect of X on Y. Let's stop falling back on the bad argument of we must leave nature alone right after arguing we change billion dollar industries because we can.
We shouldn't learn to be custodians watching the planet die because of past mistakes, we should be fixing and improving the planet and improving on nature because we can, must and should, shoulder this reaponsibility.
Please not _yet more modelling_ burning HPC into the ground just for a crappy bar line graph (based on assumptions)...
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I am baffled by the number of people on HN, presumably a website for and by technical people, who fail to consider secondary and tertiary effects when it fits their worldview to do so.
There is a yawning abyss of states in between extinction and 'boy sure is a few degrees warmer out here' and none of them are good.
Many organisms would benefit from a warmer climate, just not humans.
We rely on extremely narrow conditions for the fragile supply chains and power structures that keep us on the ragged edge of civilized to continue working. We had an extremely mild contagious disease outbreak, by historic standards, and our economy is still feeling the effects!
Imagine the impacts of something like wildly different rainfall patterns, increased rate of global infectious disease, shifted agricultural zones, changes to Jetstream patterns, large scale crop failures, loss of water supplies, temporary local ecosystem collapses etc. These changes are incredibly fast on the scale of what it takes to reach ecological equilibrium.
These of course mean nothing to biological life, writ large. Life will recover and adapt. To fragile human civilization they mean refugee crisis, resource wars, failed infrastructure, and ten thousand other existentially terrible things.
I get your point but on the other hand humans live quite well in places like Medicine Hat say where it swings from -40 C in winter to +40 C in summer. Against that the likely warming by say 2100 is I think 1.5C up from what it is today which might be just about noticeable?
> Many organisms would benefit from a warmer climate, just not humans.
and a whole fuckin lot that wouldn't, and that may collapse the ecosystem
> There's no mystery here, it's basic physics and chemistry that this will change things, and it's accepted that we don't know exactly _how_ things will change. The alternative: "adding gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere will _not_ change anything" is simply non-sensical. It goes against the basic rules of physics and causality. I'm happy to be proved wrong here, I just legitimately can't see how an alternative position makes any sense.
With any position, you have to distinguish between its thoughtful advocates and its thoughtless ones-every position has both
Any thoughtful “climate change sceptic” is going to say (a) of course the climate is changing-it always has and always will; (b) of course it is implausible than human activity has literally zero impact on that change. But that still doesn’t tell us: (i) the relative scale of anthropogenic versus natural causal factors; (ii) the validity of any specific predictions of future change; (iii) the likely socioeconomic impacts of any future changes that may occur. It is totally possible that a person may affirm (a) and (b) while questioning the “consensus” on (i) and (ii) and (iii)
Personally, I don’t have a strong opinion on the substantive issue - but I wonder about the extent to which mainstream discourse on the topic represents good epistemic hygiene. It is even possible that the sceptics are on the whole more wrong than right, but simultaneously the mainstream response to them is more irrational than rational.
Yes I believe GP was focused on the catastrophe part. It's very likely correct that our CO2 emissions are warming the atmosphere ocean etc, but it's not clear that runaway warming is inevitable or that life or geology have feedback mechanisms that turn an exponential into an S curve. That is, after all, basically what natural selection tends to do. Turning the table again, even if there are corrective factors humans might have immense suffering before it stabilizes. So we don't know.
You didn't ask, but my opinion on it is that we'll probably stabilize on a cleaner energy source and find natural countermeasures when suffering ticks up. Any top down pressure to change things whole cloth seems doomed, no matter how benevolent. We're closed loop creatures.
> but it's not clear
What better way to find out than to just try it and see if we end up with runaway warming? That surely can't cause any harm.
The analogy isn't a perfect one.
For Climate Change it's a question of opportunity costs. With expected inputs how much will temperature change? What are the effects of that change? How much effort to you put into changing the inputs? How much effort do you put into dealing with the effects?
The biggest difference is that Climate Change is a deeply political question with a bit of science tossed in. Alzheimer's is the mirror opposite - it's a scientific question with politics added to the same degree of most other things.
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