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Comment by ghego1 | Hacker News Reader

> evidence

The problem with climate change is precisely this.

In order to convince everyone we need evidence. However evidence, strictly and scientifically speaking, can only be produced once a phenomenon is fully observed, understood, and reproducible.

In the case of climate change that means waiting for the changes to fully happen, which would be too late if climate change is indeed real.

So you are left with a choice: trust the partial data we have and conclude that climate change is happening, or deny it and hope it never materializes. The third option would be to consciously prefer to wait for climate change to fully materialize and only then take action, but this to me sounds a bit suicidal.

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I mean, the sky was orange and the sun never came out. The ice just keeps melting when it shouldn't. The hurricanes are getting worse. The years just get hotter.

It's happening, present tense. The data is in, you can see it with your own eyes. It's clear as day (pun intended).

Yep, that's great. It's also happened many times in the past when no documented industrial civilization existed.

There is a long term correlation with solar activity(CME's,Sunspots,Solar flares) that can attest for large climatic swings of the past.

The science is not clear as day, and if you stopped searching for the truth of the matter you've stopped do science.

> There is a long term correlation with solar activity(CME's,Sunspots,Solar flares) that can attest for large climatic swings of the past.

Based on 2020's level of solar activity, would you expect it to be hotter or colder than it actually is?

Because from what I've seen, you'd expect it to be colder.

Which means something else is causing the temperature rise.

So why bring up solar activity at all?

> Do scientists agree on climate change? > > Yes, the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists – 97 percent – agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change.

https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/

Climate Change: How Do We Know? https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

> that can attest for large climatic swings of the past

Large swings of the past aren't as quick as you think they are, or as we are experiencing today:

https://xkcd.com/1732/

The third option seems less detrimental than the second in a way. Even if one would be opposed to action to curb humankind's contribution to global warming (due to being unconvinced for any reason), at least the third option, while the proposed non-action seems to me that it would be the same as the second, would at least keep one's mind open to information rather than make a conclusion without conclusive evidence to do so. And while there seems to exist a gradient of possible perspectives/stances between the first and third, from my limited understanding, strong action is required in order to really do anything at all to slow the damage, making less drastic action somewhat moot and thus seems to somewhat polarize the situation -- necessarily so, I think.

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