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Richard Muller: I Was wrong on Climate Change

greenmanbucket · Youtube · 5 HN points · 3 HN comments
HN Theater has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention greenmanbucket's video "Richard Muller: I Was wrong on Climate Change".
Youtube Summary
Richard Muller became the darling of the climate denial community a few years ago when he made a number of statements questioning the integrity of climate scientists and science.
Since then, his own studies have (re)confirmed the rise in global temperature, and the cause, - human generated carbon dioxide.
Interviewed in December 2014, by Collin Maessen, in San Francisco.
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The right way to think about models at this scale is complexity isn't "Accurate" vs. "Inaccurate"; it's to use probabilistic/Bayesian reasoning. No map is a perfect representation of the territory, and no model can encapsulate the entirety of the earth. That doesn't mean maps and models are useless.

A couple counterpoints from former climate skeptics:

- Richard Mueller is a prominent physicist who founded an institute to debunk anthropogenic climate change, only to change his mind after thorough examination of the data. https://youtu.be/Sme8WQ4Wb5w

- Jerry Taylor is a libertarian and former climate debunker for the Cato Institute; a noteworthy pivot moment was speaking to a risk analyst for a financial institution, whose job it is to make bets on complex systemic risks in the context of uncertainty. He claimed that from a financial lens, AGW was a slam-dunk case for mitigation, not because of the certainty of any one model, but of the full probability distribution in aggregate. https://www.reckonings.show/episodes/17

adamrezich
sure, that's fine. the problem arises when politicians state that things must be done by x date or y year or else we're going to have a CLIMATE CATASTROPHE, because the models say so. models can't predict anything like this
lukifer
I agree there is a moral hazard / perverse incentive when it comes to alarmism, especially in politics (eg, specious references to "mushroom clouds" in the run-up to the Iraq invasion).

But as good Bayesians, we also have to consider the opposite case: crises and "black swan" events do happen. How do we filter signal from noise? We probably could have benefitted from more "enlightened alarmism" re: COVID in Jan/Feb 2020, when billions in preventative measures could have saved trillions to world GDP (and millions of lives).

It's a double-bind politically: given a non-trivial long-term risk, how does one frame its urgency? A calm and measured tone spurs little action (the unsqueaky wheel doesn't get the grease); a tone of urgency and panic bypasses badly-needed rational faculties, and/or flips the "bullshit detectors" based on the history of proverbial boys crying wolf.

While I'm not opposed to FDR-ish green infrastructure plans, the answer from economists is undramatic and uncontroversial [0]: tax the externality to establish a price signal, and return the dividend back to citizens, whose consumption behaviors then change in response to those signals [1].

Of course, we've had to contend with decades of FUD from vested O&G interests, no different than the tobacco cancer debacle [2], despite having had credible evidence for AGW since the late 70's. I'm happy to concede the potential for scientific groupthink and perverse Big Government incentives on the green side, so long as we're also acknowledging the enormous financial incentives for muddying the waters (uncertainty = inaction = status quo = profit).

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/economists-statement-on-carbon-...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax

[2] https://www.barbarafreese.com/industrialstrength-denial

No dispute. And yet, I don't see any other instances of the a near-45-degree angle spike over the last 20k years (with the obvious caveat that our data on the past is imperfect).

Like I said, not a smoking gun; just a clue that it's worth digging into. And from a Bayesian perspective, one must ask: what are the odds that that rising temperature would happen to correlate with CO2, for entirely unrelated reasons? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sme8WQ4Wb5w

Don't get me wrong, I find Greta-style alarmism and claims of "extinction" to be counter-productive. But given how difficult it is to get nerds to agree on anything, the fact that there are so few credible scientists on the other side of the issue gives me pause. Pure groupthink? Maybe. Hardly unprecedented. But we've been examining the data and improving the models for decades (including from those with a strong financial incentive to debunk AGW), and yet the scientific consensus continues trending in one direction. Skepticism is a good thing, but the evidence for AGW can't merely be handwaved away by causal narrative.

huffmsa
By no means do I want to hand wave it, I'm just personally not convinced of the presented outcomes.

I know that alarmism is the best way to get attention, but its also the best way for me to think you're a zealot who should be ignored.

Aug 10, 2019 · mhh__ on A Guide to Climate Change
The physicist Richard Muller had similar doubts about global warming, so he took some money from climate deniers (allegedly) and founded Berkely Earth. They used - at least at the time - more data than anyone else, dating back to the 1700s.

Surprise surprise they not only found that the temperature was rising with the so-called IPCC hockey stick, but also the correlation with CO2 was strong too.

https://youtu.be/Sme8WQ4Wb5w

Jan 28, 2017 · 5 points, 1 comments · submitted by nafizh
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