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srid  16d ago (cafeamericainmag.com)   Edited 16d ago   2958 thread views

The Vacuity of Climate Science

cafeamericainmag.com

There has been a lot of CW discussion on climate change. This is an article written by someone that used to strongly believe in anthropogenic global warming and then looked at all the evidence before arriving at a different conclusion. The articles goes through what they did.

I thought a top-level submission would be more interesting as climate change is such a hot button topic and it would be good to have a top-level spot to discuss it for now. I have informed the author of this submission; they said they will drop by and engage with the comments here!

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The deniers are just coping or contrarians.

It is very easy:

A) CO2 absorbs infrared radiation.
B) Industrialization increased its percentage in the atmosphere.

Preindustrial CO2 rate was under 300 parts per million.
2000 it was 370 ppm
2024 it reached 420 ppm

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region

It is skewing to the last decades: half of the emmissions from 1750 to now were emitted in the last 30 years.

The amount of coal and oil we burned and will burn is stunningly large. A hundred times more every year than all vulcanism. HOW could that NOT have an effect?

Preindustrial CO2 rate was under 300 parts per million.

2000 it was 370 ppm

2024 it reached 420 ppm

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region

It is skewing to the last decades: half of the emmissions from 1750 to now were emitted in the last 30 years.

Well, that's concerning...

On the other hand, excuse me, but how am I supposed to take anyone screaming at me about global warming seriously? All the "adults in the room" are coming up with galaxy-brained plans to limit air travel and ban internal combustion engines, when the vast majority of that trend is coming from Asia? Why are we building solar farms in clouded regions of the northern hemisphere instead of chipping in for the nuclear electrification of the developing world?

"people fail at dealing with complex things, are happy to exaggerate for rhetoric and ignore claimed implications" is nothing new

galaxy-brained plans to limit air travel

only for peasants, private flights are not going to be affected

ban internal combustion engines

luxury cars are exempt

Nevertheless, you have weird people going with full denial of established physics and screaming about 2nd law of thermodynamics without understanding it, and fail to interpret simple graphs.

Because apparently failing at dealing with complex things, exaggeration for rhetoric and ignoring claimed implication are easier to do. Or more interesting?

"people fail at dealing with complex things, are happy to exaggerate for rhetoric and ignore claimed implications" is nothing new

That's the thing, I don't know if it counts as a complex problem. It's a "you're picking small high-hanging fruits, when you haven't even started picking the big low-hanging ones" situation.

only for peasants, private flights are not going to be affected

luxury cars are exempt

I think I'm radicalized enough as it is, you don't need to encourage me more.

Nevertheless, you have weird people going with full denial of established physics and screaming about 2nd law of thermodynamics without understanding it, and fail to interpret simple graphs.

Yeah, contrarianism is a hell of a drug, ask me how I know. But this is why I think the establishment was, and is, playing a dangerous game, burning trust to meet short-term goals. We're probably gonna keep getting more and more people questioning the most basic things around them.

That's the thing, I don't know if it counts as a complex problem. It's a "you're picking small high-hanging fruits, when you haven't even started picking the big low-hanging ones" situation.

"nuclear power has scary failure modes, but it is rare, does not actually kill so many people compared to failure modes of hydro and regular operation of coal burning and can be actually power our civilisation is safeteism is only of strong variety rather than extremely insane variety" apparently is a complex problem. Too many people think that ideal answer without drawbacks is achievable and anything with problems should be discarded.

Kind of "you're picking small pretty high-hanging fruits, when you haven't even started picking the big ugly low-hanging ones"

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