You also get media exhorting loudly and frequently about the problem which causes people to tune out.

Several weeks ago, a several friends messages me and asked me if I was okay... somewhat taken aback, I replied, that yes, I was indeed fine. One in particular went on to explain that that they saw an article about a heat dome in Texas, and were concerned for my safety. I explained that it was no hotter than normal here, and that everything was just fine. They seemed perplexed by my answer. I'm still perplexed why everyone was so concerned - it's always hot in North Texas in July, at least we're not in a drought this year.

At some point stories like this cause folks to just tune it all out, at the media selling hysteria. Blood sells as they say. We have a lack of media responsibility too here causing some of this. If the news media keeps presenting everything as on fire, you'll want to find information that tells you it's not.

Thinking about an equation like (how much an average individuals life will be affected * number of people who will be affected), the co2 ppm should probably be a front page headline every day. Yet the most popular newspapers in my country (and other countrys' that I check) only have one story once every few months at best.

It's possible folks used that merely as a conversation opener. Sure there was some concern but primarily they wanted to reach out and talk. Concerns for hysteria are valid, but there are more plausible explanations.

Some people try to adjust their opinions by getting pieces of information and considering which ones fit and which ones don't within a (more or less) rational frame.

In contrast, everyone has their opinions biased by what they repeatedly hear others say. And if they "like" what they hear, the story, then almost everything is lost.

But it's not just "don't let the facts get in the way of a good story", it's more like there's a lot of people who is incapable to see that some pieces simply don't fit together. They understand what a contradiction is, but it can't reach their eyes when there's a story that already shines more brightly for them.

Not a lot of people believes they "can reason about complex systems based on their gut feeling". That's what you see they are doing, but that's not how they think about it. They simply see a bright light, and call it understanding. You are only pointing at dimmer lights beyond their blindness. First, you need to teach them how to put pieces of information together in a field where they aren't blinded by a nice story already. Then, they have to start applying their newly found rational thinking to other areas where their gut/irrational/random feelings are stronger, until they see that those are very fallible.

No one has so much time though, so we shall continue giving them flak and trying to become great preachers on HN instead.

I wasn't in this conversation but I'm sure he also said that the planet is millions of years old and the climate always has its ups and downs.

The planet will be fine. It's a rock. It's the inhabitants who will have a problem.

Which is completely true! Antarctica was even covered by rainforest at one point! It's just the rate of change that's the issue (by many many orders of magnitude).

(https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2148-5)

I always refer those people to this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1732/. It visualizes things very powerfully. Yet, I never get a response anymore after sending this to them.

Can you comprehend those papers (and by implication have you read them?) If so congratulations - you have a strong academic background in a science related to climate. Most people do not.

That is the insidious nature of being uneducated or ignorant in a heavy science subject. I'm fairly well educated, and had a meteorological related job for many years, and I still have a hard time parsing many of these papers. So my options are:

A. Spend huge amounts of time learning the heavy math involved

B. Find someone else who seems educated enough, and trust their ELI5

C. Make my own conclusions based on an imperfect understanding of the science

D. Make my own conclusions based on experience and whatever knowledge I have at the moment

Now I do understand enough about atmospheric dynamics to know, at a high level, that human induced climate change is occuring, why it's happening, and some fuzzy understanding of some of the effects we will see. But I don't think a generic USA highschool level education will be able to inform people enough to have the same understanding, which is why we are in this boat. It seems mostly the people who really understand the what/when/why/how of the situation are STEM field graduates.

I have an extensive (ie graduate level) background in a natural science but nothing directly climate related. I too find the primary literature on the subject difficult to understand but that's only to be expected.

What frustrates me is the apparent lack of reasonably technical secondary resources that are both relatively objective (ie not sensational, don't omit important details) and up to date. When I've previously taken the time to dig in I found it difficult to figure out what the various prevailing hypotheses were other than "things will change somehow" and also quite difficult to gauge the confidence of various longer term projections that I came across. Basically it wasn't readily clear to me what was and wasn't known. It would be nice to see a broad but still technical picture laying out a range of concrete scenarios and their estimated probabilities.

Meanwhile, everywhere I look I'm bombarded with overly sensational media pieces aggressively telling the layman which superficial beliefs to adopt without much in the way of why. It seems angry and religious to me and I strongly suspect that introduces psychological bias against whatever is said.

> What frustrates me is the apparent lack of reasonably technical secondary resources that are both relatively objective (ie not sensational, don't omit important details) and up to date.

This is a really good point. As you say, it seems the only two places to get information about climate related research are at the extreme ends of a spectrum, one heavily rigorous but prohibitively technical, and the other extremely flippant but very accessible.

> When I've previously taken the time to dig in I found it difficult to figure out what the various prevailing hypotheses were other than "things will change somehow" and also quite difficult to gauge the confidence of various longer term projections that I came across.

I think this is a symptom of the way we conduct the scientific process in the modern era. It takes a lot of time to do good research, and it takes a mass of research to develop a consensus, especially when it comes to predictive analysis.

Plants like CO2.

Up to a point. But ..

"when plants take in an excess of CO2, their chemical makeup changes in a way that that’s harmful to the humans and animals that depend on them for nutrition: higher concentrations of CO2, increases the synthesis of carbohydrates like sugars and starches, and decrease the concentrations of proteins and nutrients like zinc, iron, and B-vitamins. “

https://globalhealth.washington.edu/news/2019/04/23/high-co2...

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abfcfa

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2018.00924...

Life on earth is definitely not in danger, it’s seen worse.

Both political stability and the lifestyles to which we are accustomed, however, are.

And the reclining political stability will make it even harder to do long term investments with no immediate pay-off. Which will probably reinforce this climate crisis.

Unfortunately it would seem we're in for a wild ride either way. Unless I've completely misunderstood the projections anything we're seeing right now is small compared to the rate of change expected in ~15 years. And (again assuming I've understood) the system has a lot of inertia so there's no way to completely prevent the changes at this point.

What happens in 15 years?

The rate of temperature change increases. Siberia thaws and releases massive amount of methane. The Gulf Stream slows down and throws a critical regulator of temperature in the Western world into disarray. (According to news reporting earlier this week, the first signs of it slowing down are starting to appear.)

Positive feedback loops are powerful things.

Either everything changes, or stays the same. That's why radical climate measures are a tough sell.

It's quite clear that things won't be staying the same. What precisely happens, however, seems to be up in the air.

I'm not a climate scientist, but some things to consider:

There was recent research showing that the Greenland ice sheet is probably not as stable as previously thought. (https://theconversation.com/ancient-leaves-preserved-under-a...) (https://www.pnas.org/content/118/13/e2021442118)

The long term stable ("permanent", hah) wind currents that cross the ocean (ie the trade winds) have significant effects on local sea levels (ie the coast line that they pass near). If those change things will get "interesting" in many places. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_winds) For example: (https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-amtrak-sea-level/)

I wonder if this is what the dinosaurs were thinking as the fireball in the sky got bigger and bigger. Let's ask them!

To be clear, climate change is very likely to present us humans enjoying our comfy lifestyles with extreme (from our perspective) difficulties. It is not, however, even remotely comparable to a large meteor impact.

They seem fine, some are chirping outside my window right now.

Carbon-based DNA-replicating life didn’t go anywhere though, if that’s of any comfort.

Birds are dinosaurs.

Counter example: I had an argument with someone in Bay Area that boiled down to the fact that my existence is adding CO2 to the atmosphere, which is absolutely true, and that I should feel guilty.

I’m not going to go vegan myself. But things like making your home well-insulated to save on cooling/heating is a great idea. For some people it’d mean to skip on vacation or two. But it's probably worth it.

As an implied American, maybe you should? I mean look at North America's footprint compared to anyone else...

North America produces only 1/3 of the amount of CO2 that the Asia-Pacific region does. Sure the per-capita argument flips it on its head, but the climate doesn't care about per-capita CO2, the real amount is what matters.

One way to look at the world events is to follow the money. Green energy hysteria makes some people and corporations extremely wealthy (pumping money from people/government into pockets of "green" corporations) and also is a new colonial tax for the developing countries. Two birds with one stone.