Not really. 2c isn't a problem unless you have brought too expensive beach-front property in Malibu or something. Humans will adapt, it is what we do second-best.

I guess those affluent villagers living in huts in the Pacific Islands will just have to relocate to Manhattan's Upper East Side?

This of course boldly assumes that human kind is the main source of carbon emissions, and as boldly assumes that Earth can't really have all this carbon in atmosphere.

Yeah, damn that scientific consensus.

This scientific consensus already made several heavily wrong estimates. And mind you, we don't have a working, proven model of climate change. We only have some speculations based on some proxy variables, and those speculations tend to ignore most basic physics or statistics (e.g. discussing changes of temperature that are way below observational errors currently possible, or focus on marginal CO2 concentration, while H2O concentration is larger of orders of magnitude, and H2O has, for instance, much higher thermal capacity).

I would far rather we incorrectly rushed to decarbonise and replace with renewables than assume the science is wrong and have an oh fuck we're doomed moment in 30 or 40 years. I won't care, I'll probably be dead by then. My children would.

Decarbonising would remove many other pollutants and particulates from the atmosphere, and should lead to health benefits like reduced asthma in cities.

> Decarbonising would remove many other pollutants and particulates from the atmosphere, and should lead to health benefits like reduced asthma in cities.

But it's not all benefit. In rushing to decarbonize, we use alternative energy sources. A lot of battery and solar technology uses heavy metals that break down and seep into the water supply when they are improperly discarded. There are no magic bullet answers, the only solution is a holistic one and so far, only the climate scientists have won the attention of the politicians. Validity arguments aside, it makes you wonder if there's an ulterior motive.

So there are thousands of climate scientists which came, over and over again, to the same conclusion: that the extent of current heating is caused by co2 release, which is caused by coal-burning by mankind.

Those have all made several mistakes and continue to make them and the 15 scientists or so who are of a different opinion are probably right?

Is that what you are saying?

Some people have convinced themselves that climate change is not a problem. That's not based on scientific facts, but on superstitious beliefs ("it's a conspiracy", "we didn't do it", "there's nothing we can do about it anyway").

Study after study has showed that superstition cannot be overcome with facts. The more facts you present, the more they get stuck to their incorrect beliefs. It's depressing.

The only solution is to do what Elon Musk is doing: ignore the idiots and pursue what you believe is right.

There's a problem with this, however: we live in mostly democratic societies (and the non-democratic societies like China are even more carbon-polluting). So you can't just ignore the idiots and still fix the problem; you have to get them to agree there's a problem so they'll vote in people who will do something about it.

And, as you point out, these people can't be convinced with facts.

So, the real solution is to just ignore the idiots and start preparing for a future that resembles Mad Max. Or be like Musk and work really hard on establishing a colony on Mars before you're too old to make the journey there.

We had thousands of astrology and magic practicioners. It didn't make astrology or magic true in any way.

You know what makes modern physics true? Falsifiability and verifiability. You build a theory, make predictions, develop an experiment, and then conduct the experiment, multiple times. Climatology stops after the first two.

Granted, astronomy and cosmology operate in similar way to climatology, but we don't establish world-scale policies based on astronomy.

> You know what makes modern physics true? Falsifiability and verifiability. You build a theory, make predictions, develop an experiment, and then conduct the experiment, multiple times. Climatology stops after the first two.

This is, obviously and demonstrably, wrong. The data is out there, the methodologies are out there, and there is tons of related open-source software. You can conduct your own experiments and come to your own conclusions.

This guy [1][2], for example, did, and imagine what: he independently verified what 99% of climate scientists have been saying.

Why don't you give it a go? Put your money where your mouth is and see for yourself what is true and what isn't.

Edit: to the poster below, the data is public, just a quick google search away. For example [3].

[1] http://forums.sandiegouniontribune.com/showpost.php?p=533737...

[2] http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/thorough-not-thorough...

[3] ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v3/

I don't think we're on the same page.

First, we seem to call different things an experiment. The guy didn't made any experiment, he just charted some data. He didn't change CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, keeping everything else equal, to check if it would affect the resulting temperature.

Next, he only charted temperatures. This doesn't prove anything related to carbon concentration by itself, and we don't have proven models to have a causality implied one way or another. (Proven with analogous strictness and confidence as the theory of gravity.)

And finally, I don't claim there is no change to the climate whatsoever. Quite the contrary; humanity has seen the climate to change over its recent history (few hundred years). I just doubt highly that the change is caused by human carbon emissions.

And personally, I think it's really arrogant to assume that humanity is powerful enough to change the climate of the whole planet at this point.

> First, we seem to call different things an experiment. The guy didn't made any experiment, he just charted some data. He didn't change CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, keeping everything else equal, to check if it would affect the resulting temperature.

Right, and the LIGO didn't create two colliding black holes to measure gravity waves, but measure gravity waves it did.

"To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry is commonly based on empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning." [1]

> And personally, I think it's really arrogant to assume that humanity is powerful enough to change the climate of the whole planet at this point.

So your disagreement is based on superstitious beliefs, not the scientific method. Exactly as predicted in my previous post.

[1] "Rules for the study of natural philosophy", Newton transl 1999, pp. 794–6, after Book 3, The System of the World.

>> First, we seem to call different things an experiment. The guy didn't made any experiment, he just charted some data. He didn't change CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, keeping everything else equal, to check if it would affect the resulting temperature.

> Right, and the LIGO didn't create two colliding black holes to measure gravity waves, but measure gravity waves it did.

You think that some guy that merely charted some data is equivalent to some guy that developed a model, predicted what should be seen when some event Q happens, patiently waited for Q to happen, and then observed if his predictions matched what was measured while Q was happening?

> So your disagreement is based on superstitious beliefs, not the scientific method. Exactly as predicted in my previous post.

No, it's not based on superstitions. It's based on climatology's inability to deliver any explaination that actually make sense when one starts estimating how big values are in play (those that don't make sense ignore one of the basic principles, like only accounting the signal that exceeds measurement errors, or laws of thermodynamics).

> No, it's not based on superstitions. It's based on climatology's inability to deliver any explaination [...]

You have already established that you don't believe humans are (or even could be) causing global warming. You are not seeking any scientific proof for that - it is merely a superstitious belief that you are holding. A personal bias, if you will.

The rest of your posts are merely rationalizations for this bias. The problem is not that the science is not explaining climate change enough. The problem is that no possible explanation will penetrate your mind's defenses against the terrifying notion that you might be wrong.

Think of this: if thousands upon thousands of scientists, using hundreds of different methodologies and dozens of different datasets to arrive at the same conclusion, can't convince you; if the fact that, since the industrial revolution, humanity released into the environment energy equivalent to 50% the Triasic-Jurassic extinction event can't convince you; then nothing ever will.

At this point, there's only one thing left: grab one of those datasets and run any sort of analysis you wish. See for yourself what kind of results you come up with. Unless you are willing to walk the walk, there is no point in continuing this discussion.

>We had thousands of astrology and magic practitioners. It didn't make astrology or magic true in any way.

What made their practices bogus was that it wasn't scientific.

So you're using an argument that undermines your very conclusion.

The analogy to proponents of astrology and magic would be people who doubt the scientific consensus.

>We had thousands of astrology and magic practicioners. It didn't make astrology or magic true in any way.

No, but a large chunk of the US population believes in this stuff even today.

And they vote.

That's why we're doomed.

Maybe the skeptics don't like the idea of the alarmists hiding the raw data and then telling us what the results say.

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v3/

1. RTFM

2. Use high-school level math

3. Post your results to hackernews for discussion

Up to the challenge?

Regardless I love breathing in the shit air in my city when I go on a bike ride. It's really nice. No problem here, things are perfect, move along.

>This scientific consensus already made several heavily wrong estimates.

So we should trust something else over that?

Well, if the first assumption doesn’t hold, we’ll have to restrict our usage even more. Short of dimming the sun, I don’t see how you can keep “all this carbon in atmosphere” and still only get 2°C.

If the first assumption doesn't hold, restricting ourselves will not matter.

> Short of dimming the sun, I don’t see how you can keep “all this carbon in atmosphere” and still only get 2°C.

This one assumes the carbon is main or even major substance that keeps heat on Earth. You do realize that we have much more water in the atmosphere, and water keeps heat much better than carbon? It's not as simple as "more carbon, higher temperatures".

Yes, and there's a positive feedback loop between the two ("forcing").