This post is pure fear porn. Environmentalists have been making these same doomsday predictions since literally the 60s and deadlines continue to come and go without incident.

Look, the papers that predict what's more likely to happen aren't sexy, so they don't get read much if they're published at all. The truth is that based on all of our evidence regarding the speed of climate change in the past, if there's any change from human emissions it will be slow and take on the order of 100+ years, during which time the only measurable indicator will be an increased rate of turnover and spending for infrastructure projects, maybe a slight uptick in immigration, as we have a bigger storm or a bigger flood here and there.

That doesn't even mention the potential benefits to climate change - there's nothing that says that the earth won't potentially have more fertile land area if the permafrost thaws, for example. But such an attitude is clearly not popular among alarmists.

Climate change denialists don't seem to grasp the concept of basic risk assessment. We don't know exactly what will happen, however we definitely know what could potentially happen. Claiming that just because the scientists might be wrong there's nothing to worry about is the height of insanity. You're essentially advocating for playing Russian roulette with our biosphere.

People who actually study the climate are the ones who have the best idea of what will happen. Period. These people are unanimously telling the rest of us that all the best available evidence suggests that horrific things will happen.

And now we're seeing these things starting to happen, and we're seeing them happen at a faster rate than was expected. Yet, idiots who have absolutely zero understanding of this domain continue to insist that there's nothing to worry about because they read something on Facebook that one time.

Vietnam was prepared because they, like Taiwan, knew from the start that China was lying and took proactive steps that western countries failed to take.

>Yet, idiots who have absolutely zero understanding of this domain continue to insist that there's nothing to worry about because they read something on Facebook that one time

I'm a geoscientist. The fact that climate dogma is righteous dogma doesn't mean it isn't dogma. You claim that none of us have the qualifications to question climate change, but somehow we are equipped to call "deniers" idiots?

>People who actually study the climate are the ones who have the best idea of what will happen. Period. These people are unanimously telling the rest of us that all the best available evidence suggests that horrific things will happen.

Except if you actually read an IPCC report (not the made for headlines summaries, dig in a page or two) you'll see that in reality scientists are far less certain, and all this world ending talk is literally worst case. And historic data tells us that even the most rapid historic climate changes happened over scales comparable to human lifespans.

>You're essentially advocating for playing Russian roulette with our biosphere

There's a grand irony here - once again, like the reopen controversy, the people have chosen the side of the majority of "scientists" and hunkered down, shaming others with worst case threats while ignoring that mitigation is also enormously expensive and pretending that anyone questioning the lockdown is a denier. Your dogma leaves no room for shades of gray.

I'm out of room to explain for the billionth time so I'll keep it short - climate change is one of the softest of sciences because it is purely model and backtest driven. That leaves a massive gap in capabilities to be nicely filled with unquestionable dogma. The fact that those ignorant Republicans don't understand climate change doesn't mean that the learned and capable among us shouldn't be free to question the narrative.

Look at how poorly we understand nutrition - that's arguably at least as rigorous of a science as climate change yet the difference here is at least the conclusions are falsifiable. Meanwhile the food pyramid has been dangerously incorrect for decades.

You put too much faith in modern institutions.

I keep seeing this nonsense repeated, but China reported cases very early on. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline...

The only difference was that Vietnam and Taiwan took it seriously and prioritized people's lives over the economy. Meanwhile, Western governments largely chose to do the opposite. This is the exact same pattern we're seeing with climate change denial as well. The institutions are prioritizing short term profits while ignoring the science.

>I'm a geoscientist. The fact that climate dogma is righteous dogma doesn't mean it isn't dogma. You claim that none of us have the qualifications to question climate change, but somehow we are equipped to call "deniers" idiots?

Being a geoscintist does not make you a climatologist. It's amazing to me that people who are experts in one domain think that gives them the authority to talk about other domains.

I'm deferring to the domain experts PRECISELY because I know this knowledge is outside my area of expertise. I'm calling the deniers idiots because you seem to think that you know better than people actually studying the field. I'm sure you'd be pretty appalled if I started telling you my notions about how I think geoscience works based on my extensive computer science knowledge.

>And historic data tells us that even the most rapid historic climate changes happened over scales comparable to human lifespans.

That's because historically things like mass scale industrial production did not exist. Humans are not operating on geological time, and it's surreal that this has to be explained to somebody calling themselves a scientist.

>There's a grand irony here - once again, like the reopen controversy, the people have chosen the side of the majority of "scientists" and hunkered down, shaming others with worst case threats while ignoring that mitigation is also enormously expensive and pretending that anyone questioning the lockdown is a denier. Your dogma leaves no room for shades of gray.

All I can tel you is that US accounts for roughly a third of the deaths worldwide while the number of deaths and reported cases continues to grow exponentially. So, yeah this is a perfect analogy for climate change denial. In both cases business interests are prioritized over science with similar results.

>I'm out of room to explain for the billionth time so I'll keep it short - climate change is one of the softest of sciences because it is purely model and backtest driven.

Your capacity to deny facts is absolutely stunning. We're no longer talking about predictions here. We're talking about actual events that are happening around us. Sounds like people like you will continue denying there's a problem as you're boiled alive in your own juices.

>You put too much faith in modern institutions.

I'm doing the opposite of that. I believe scientists and experts in the domain over the idiots who think that we should risk the fate of humanity to keep the growth economy going.

I literally consume the same data. It's a sister field. We have the same problems with the exact same uncertainty because we use the same instruments for collection. My opinion is valid but that doesn't matter because anyone who take a position remotely critical of climate science can expect an immediate, vicious, purely dogmatic response.

>I keep seeing this nonsense repeated, but China reported cases very early on. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline....

>The only difference was that Vietnam and Taiwan took it seriously and prioritized people's lives over the economy

It's easy to dismiss other peoples' arguments as "nonsense" when you misrepresent them. The question isn't whether China reported cases or not. It's the fact that China deliberately underreported cases and contributed to an underestimation of the pandemic by laymen and professionals alike who are too naive to understand the dishonesty typical of authoritarian regimes like the CCP. The peoples who have been dealing with China for millennia hold no such delusions.

>The ability to deny facts is absolutely surreal. We're no longer talking about predictions here. We're talking about actual events that are happening around us

This is only true if you cherry pick your literature. I'll remind you our discussion is about future predictions of which only catastrophic outcomes are suitable for (one sided) discussion. The fact that some minority of models agree with current measurements does not resolve the uncertainty regarding the predictions that spawned this entire discussion.

You underestimate the complexity and chaotic nature of science. Certainty in doomsday climate predictions is hubris.

Again, as somebody who works in a complex field I know perfectly well that it's rare that somebody has broad expertise outside a fairly narrow domain. People who think they do are typically suffering from Dunning-Kruger effect. You also keep using the word dogmatic in a weird way that makes question whether you even know what it means.

>It's easy to dismiss other peoples' arguments as "nonsense" when you misrepresent them. The question isn't whether China reported cases or not. It's the fact that China deliberately underreported cases and contributed to an underestimation of the pandemic by laymen and professionals alike who are too naive to understand the dishonesty typical of authoritarian regimes like the CCP.

It's easy to dismiss nonsense when it is demonstrably nonsense. China was dealing with a novel virus and had no idea what to expect from it. There was no evidence that this was some novel influenza based on a handful of cases, or that it could easily spread between humans. However, China did report it on the 2nd of January, and the world had all the same information we had now at the start of January. It's really not surprising that you're a conspiracy theorist in general though.

The fact that China had absolutely no warning and has less deaths than US now really shows the difference between countries that trust science and those that do not.

>This is only true if you cherry pick your literature.

There's a unanimous consensus in the field, but I'm sure oneiftwo knows better because he's a "geoscientist".

>The fact that some minority of models agree with current measurements does not resolve the uncertainty regarding the predictions that spawned this entire discussion.

Show me a single model that's predicting things happening faster than what's observed. If there's anything the models can be faulted on is being too conservative with their predictions.

>You underestimate the complexity and chaotic nature of science. Certainty in doomsday climate predictions is hubris.

I do no such thing. I just understand the basic concept of risk assessment. Gambling our entire civilization on "I hope all the models are wrong and everybody in the field is overreacting" is complete and utter idiocy.

Continued existence of the human race is what's at stake here, and anybody who thinks we shouldn't err on the side of caution when it comes to that is a dangerous idiot.

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-mo...

People predict sportsball outcomes. A much smaller problem domain, with far more historical data, insane audience engagement (interest), and ample expertise.

Are sportsball predictions qualitatively better than pandemic predictions?

You realize that modern economics is basically divination for the same reason that climate science is uncertain? Structurally the two sciences are actually similar in critical points, namely that the domains are non experimental and purely model driven. Yes, you should be extremely sceptical of any economist who tells you that he's certain about anything.

>People predict sportsball outcomes. A much smaller problem domain, with far more historical data, insane audience engagement (interest), and ample expertise

You can't seriously compare the complexity of climate science with sports betting.

"... global and nearly universal failure of these same institutions to properly prepare for and handle covid..."

What should have happened?

How do we apply those lessons learned?

That's literally an absolute worst case prediction. You cannot guide policy exclusively with worst case predictions.

>We're not longer talking about hypotheticals here, we're observing these events happening right now

No, we're seeing warming and minor sea level rise right now - and even this is less certain than people would have you believe, we only recently realized for example that the mismatch between expected and current warming could be explained by the ocean acting as a heat sink. Imagine how many other similar phenomena we have yet to discover.

Physical systems tend to be nonlinear. Even a high rate of warming now does not preclude a comfortable maximum due to nonlinear restorative forces.

That's why nothing, literally nothing that we've observed to date, can significantly reduce the uncertainty regarding doomsday predictions.

>No, we're seeing warming and minor sea level rise right now

Read the links I provided earlier. These are not minor events. You're just parroting dangerous nonsense here.

>That's why nothing, literally nothing that we've observed to date, can significantly reduce the uncertainty regarding doomsday predictions.

And idiots will continue parroting this exact line as billions of people are dying. Exactly the same way idiots are protesting social distancing, lockdowns, and mask wearing in US right now. It's the same pattern with the same dangerous fools putting the rest of humanity at risk.

There is no purpose to have a discussion when your thinking is so narrowly black and white. Your worldview doesn't seem to allow for the shades of grey necessitated by uncertainty.

If all skepticism was met with the same belittling as climate science, we'd still be stuck in the dark ages. Don't think it's possible for an institution of sciences to be very wrong for a very long time about a very important topic? Look at the forces that caused us to fruitlessly pursue the amyloid plaque hypothesis for decades.

Consensus has a strong normalizing effect, but that does not necessarily mean that a given consensus is correct.

Anyway I'm being rate limited by sanctimonious downvoters so this conversation is effectively over.

Edit: by the way, with respect to the lockdown controversy, did you hear about the atrocious academic modeling code that informed the lockdown policy? A single 15k line C file which, among other things, does not seed random number generation and cannot be reproduced. So bad that I just found there's an entire website dedicated to a teardown[0]! But I'm an "idiot" for showing skepticism. Do you think climate modeling code is any better? Have you worked with academic code? I have. It's universally bad. But, again, I'm an "idiot" for expressing any degree of skepticism.

0. https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-review-of-fergusons-model/

There are no shades of gray here. We're weighing human extinction against an economic system here. These things are not comparable. The whole point of an economy is to facilitate human existence.

>If all skepticism was met with the same belittling as climate science, we'd still be stuck in the dark ages.

Your skepticism is not rooted in facts and evidence, but rather has an ideological basis. When all the experts in the field unanimously say we should be dealing with global warming, that's what we should be doing. Anybody who is not an actual climatologist needs to get the fuck out of the way.

>Don't think it's possible for an institution of sciences to be very wrong for a very long time about a very important topic?

Sure, it's possible, but only a fool would gamble the fate of humanity on that. The stakes are simply too high here. There are also no actual downsides to addressing climate change. Imagine the horror of having a cleaner environment and sustainable industry creating millions of new jobs and advancing our technology and science.

>Anyway I'm being rate limited by sanctimonious downvoters so this conversation is effectively over.

It's good to see that majority of people see the dangerous absurdity you promote for what it is.

>by the way, with respect to the lockdown controversy, did you hear about the atrocious academic modeling code that informed the lockdown policy?

And just like with climate change you ignore the actual facts all around you. 80,000 people died in US while 0 people died in Vietnam. Chew on that for a while next time you claim that following scientific consensus is the wrong thing to do.

Again, you don't seem to have any actual experience with risk assessment, because all risk assessment is grey. You weigh probability of outcomes and cost of outcomes and come up with a value. That's literally my point, that the you are at one end of a high dimensional extreme. That's what this entire argument boils down to.

Science is a high-d gradient descent search. You can easily get stuck chasing a local optimum, and bias and dogma like the kind that blinds your judgement can send groups of scientists in the wrong direction and, more importantly, keep them there for decades. Your exploration constant is far too low if you respond with such blind hostility to anyone with criticism. You're hindering progress and when your policy is guided by such one sidedness, that's dangerous. This doesn't just apply to climate science. We couldn't even get the nutritional pyramid right, and climate science is hard for the same reasons - non-expert mental, data and model driven and only verifiable in hindsight.

Not all scientific fields are equally rigorous. An appeal to a climatologist on the subject of climate is far weaker than an appeal to a physicist on the subject of physics because of the nature of the fields. Climate science by nature is extremely uncertain, i.e. you search the high-d space with less gradient information, and personal/institutional biases can converge to fill in those gaps nicely enough to have you trapped in a local minimum.

There is no meaningful comparison between the risk of human extinction with having to transition off fossil fuel economy. This is what this entire argument boils down to. On one hand, you have the end of civilization and possibly end of human existence, and on the other you have some temporary inconvenience. These are fundamentally not comparable.

>Science is a high-d gradient descent search. You can easily get stuck chasing a local optimum, and bias and dogma like the kind that blinds your judgement can send groups of scientists in the wrong direction and, more importantly, keep them there for decades.

You're creating a false equivalence between the two possibilities. All the best available science tells us this is happening. There is absolutely no scientific basis to doubt that this is happening.

So, yes there may be a chance that all our accumulated decades of observation and models are wrong, but it's far more likely that is not the case. Our observations are either matching or outpacing what the models predict. You just keep parroting the same nonsense over and over like a broken record. It's dangerous nonsense, and you don't seem to understand what's at stake here.