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Comment by avip | Hacker News Reader

The scientific "debate" about the cause of climate change (not to be confused with insects population drop, which is a much more involved issue) at this point is similar in spirit to the "debate" about natural selection or the health impact of smoking.

In other words, there is no debate at all. We (the human race) have known about the GHG mechanism for over 50 years. We've had the instruments to validate our understanding for well over 20 years now.

There is some disagreement between projections, the models definitely don't converge to the same point in 20-100 years, but they just don't agree on the breadth and depth of the catastrophe or the timeframe we have left to take action.

There is also disagreement wrt proposed solutions. Some things (like mass afforestation) are really too complex for us to predict the impact.

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I'd rather have unanswerable questions then unquestionable answers; Climate science has become far too unquestionable.

There is always room for debate, especially in the face of consensus. Without it astronomers burn and science dies.

Fine. Debate it. Debate creation science while you're at it. However, it's time to figure out ways to mitigate the problem. We have a working hypothesis that has enough evidence on which to act.

There's room for debate, but that doesn't mean there's any actual debate going on. I.e. scientists are free to publish papers showing evidence that climate change isn't happening or not caused by human activity.

Where there isn't room for debate is the claim that there's actually an ongoing debate within the scientific community about the basics of climate change. That's just not true at the moment, and claiming otherwise is mistaken at best, and corporate propaganda at worst.

“The shape of the earth has become far too unquestionable. There is always room for debate as to whether the earth is flat.”

There is actually room for that. Beginners philosophy classes..

And it is a interesting philosophic question. How do we know, what we etc.

Yet such debates don't come up every single time we mention orbiting around the earth.

Funny thing that.

> Climate science has become far too unquestionable.

Seems to me climate science is constantly being questioned.

It’s questioned publicly by roughly half of the most powerful politicians of the most powerful country in the world, and t try uat country’s current leader. It was and still is questioned publicly by many of the most powerful companies in the world.

Can you be more specific? Are there particular questions or areas of research within the broad domain of climate science that you believe have been surpressed or ignored by the scientific community?

Most of my questions I have revolve around the solutions being put forth. In particular, how do we separate the wheat from the chaff in policy? I don't want the solution to the draught to be taking away cups of water in restaurants. Policy is where the controversy lies. Policy is where the difficult questions are.

It doesn't help that the text of things like the green new deal speaks so much about "ending oppression" and not about "this is exactly what's necessary to reach carbon stability". It takes what should otherwise be a scientific discussion and drags it into the mud of progressive politics.

Here's an example to what I'm talking about[1]:

> "It aims to “promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities and youth.”"

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/climate/green-new-deal.ht...

We have run out of room for debate in bad faith. It is unfortunate that debate in bad faith has been used to push political agendas. This is the source of the unquestionable answers I see; two much questioning of answers everyone knows is correct, including the people asking the questions for selfish gain. Thankfully the debate can still happen in the meaningful forums, such as the scientific community always looking at new studies and analysis. Just not in the political arena or media, where I haven't actually seen anything resembling an actual debate in a long time but just people arguing at cross purposes.

Leave the debate about science to scientists then.

The Galileo Gambit in the wild!

Stop with the bad-faith distractions.

We've known about GHG effect for over a century now.

https://www.livescience.com/63334-coal-affecting-climate-cen...

Sure. But if you spent some time in "climate debates" (which I do not recommend btw), you'd develop the habit of staying well within a safety margin of 30% for any stated fact (the US, a country of over 100mm people...)

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