Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

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> To be absolutely clear, I'm not questioning that something is wrong, I think we're in major trouble. But I am still genuinely surprised that this peril doesn't present itself in any economic data I can find. Any insights into when we will feel this our how/when this environmental destruction will become visible in our economic data would be appreciated.

Simply put, The environmental destruction isn’t what you think. For instance, Based on my experience climate modeling and working with environmental papers - I don’t believe carbon emissions has a meaningful impact on global warming.

Further, and in way of example: the warming should lead to increased food production (they often say as much in their papers). What will happen is greater soil erosion, so we have to protect against that (or we will long-term) have crop problems.

The general point, is the system is more complex than we realize. There are no one-off answers because the system will always be adjusting to try to keep an equilibrium AND so will humans. Farm Fishing is on the rise, protection zones are being setup, global fishing rules have been ignored, but local ones have not, etc etc

"Based on my experience climate modeling and working with environmental papers" And what experience is that, exactly?

I worked with several academics and corporations as a contractor building their simulations. I’ve also read a lot of papers as well, etc.

Like most simulations, they pretty much only can match reality so closely. for instance, we don’t have many long term measurements, so we make (educated-ish) guesses. Academics also repeatedly run their models, tweaking parameters to get the results they want. Frankly, I don’t trust any research using simulations, after being paid to work on environmental, biological systems, simulations for drones and machines (trucks, construction, etc). (Drones and other machines at least had a way to quickly test).

> we don’t have many long term measurements, so we make (educated-ish) guesses

Out of curiosity, what are some examples of these measurements/guesses you are referring to?

Funny that's contrary to the experience of > 95% of climate scientists. I would trust that over an unsupported reference to your experience, whatever that is.

We generally expect models to have predictive value, at least through a set of historic data, before we lens them much credence. We have made an exception for climate models. I believe following basic scientific procedures is a better plan than listening to what amounts to a widely-hekd belief structure. It is particularly galling when we could be using time and effort to combat the proven environmental catastrophes such as air and water qualities, deforestation, and issues such as the one that started this thread.

You know all those climate models are back tested with the historical data too right?

Climate modeling is a tricky thing because the system is so complex and we are continually surprised by interactions and effects we didn't expect.

However, climate science is about far more than just models. The models are actually the least compelling part.

> Funny that's contrary to the experience of > 95% of climate scientists.

That’s an appeal to authority though. What’s wrong with the following statement?

“95% of numerologists strongly believe in the predictive power of numerology so therefore we should trust them.”

When people question the foundations of an entire field, presenting a giant sample of people who work in said field an implicitly agree with the foundation by labeling themselves as such isn’t really a compelling argument?

Guess what percentage of catholic priests think faith in Jesus is important?

That's a fair point if you're going to question an entire field.

I think the difference in this case is the arguments and evidence presented by climate science is generally accepted by experts and policy makers outside of the field.

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