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Comment by blindwatchmaker | Hacker News Reader

> Many of us understand very well that the climate is changing and that humans might have something to do with it, we just don't know to what extent.

Could you elaborate? I was under the impression that even conservative estimates by reputable climatologists showed some pretty drastic changes.

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They do, and they've consistently underestimated things so far. The guy's just a denier.

That's not true. The climate models typically show larger rises in temperature than have actually happened.

I found this within 5 seconds of Googling: https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/17/climate-models-versus-cli...

I'm not sure how good the source is, but it is consistent with what I've seen elsewhere.

Complex systems have less linearity than expected, but more hysteresis. The flat(ter) early naughties have already been well explained, mostly taking 98 as reference is where the effect comes from, we caught up since then, and ain't slowing down.

Yet everything is getting better, not worse because we've become better at dealing with issues. The number of people who died from drought has gone down not up according to some studies. Number of people out of extreme poverty is going up is going up not down.

https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/files/deaths_from_extr...

https://ourworldindata.org/famines

And the world is has gotten greener:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...

And so we are back to the beginning. We don't really know as much as some like to claim. So what is the goal of humanity? How do we measure human flourishing? How do we ensure we still get people to become more resourceful?

We can't have our cake and eat it.

The climate models predict larger increases in temperature than have actually occurred, and the increases in temperature appear to be slowing down. I think most (reasonable) people agree that climate change is caused by humans, but there still isn't much to do about it. Pretty much anything you do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is going to massively increase the cost of everything. Plus it puts your country at a disadvantage relative to countries that don't put in place the same policies.

Hydrocarbons have made the modern world possible by providing a relatively cheap and portable energy source. None of the renewables come close. They're also the main source of greenhouse gases and thus climate change. There is no practical policy proposal to decrease fossil fuel usage in the near-to-moderate future that would maintain living standards at their current levels.

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