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0 pointsyogthos6y ago0 comments

The scientists did not fail to prepare for the pandemic, and the countries that had scientists in the driving seat handled the pandemic very well. For example, Vietnam currently has no deaths from covid-19 precisely because scientists were in charge. Meanwhile, countries like US, who dismissed the scientists have the highest death toll in the world.

Climate change denialists don't seem to grasp the concept of basic risk assessment. We don't know exactly what will happen, however we definitely know what could potentially happen. Claiming that just because the scientists might be wrong there's nothing to worry about is the height of insanity. You're essentially advocating for playing Russian roulette with our biosphere.

People who actually study the climate are the ones who have the best idea of what will happen. Period. These people are unanimously telling the rest of us that all the best available evidence suggests that horrific things will happen.

And now we're seeing these things starting to happen, and we're seeing them happen at a faster rate than was expected. Yet, idiots who have absolutely zero understanding of this domain continue to insist that there's nothing to worry about because they read something on Facebook that one time.

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oneiftwo6y ago· 2 in thread

>Vietnam currently has no deaths from covid-19 precisely because scientists were in charge

Vietnam was prepared because they, like Taiwan, knew from the start that China was lying and took proactive steps that western countries failed to take.

>Yet, idiots who have absolutely zero understanding of this domain continue to insist that there's nothing to worry about because they read something on Facebook that one time

I'm a geoscientist. The fact that climate dogma is righteous dogma doesn't mean it isn't dogma. You claim that none of us have the qualifications to question climate change, but somehow we are equipped to call "deniers" idiots?

>People who actually study the climate are the ones who have the best idea of what will happen. Period. These people are unanimously telling the rest of us that all the best available evidence suggests that horrific things will happen.

Except if you actually read an IPCC report (not the made for headlines summaries, dig in a page or two) you'll see that in reality scientists are far less certain, and all this world ending talk is literally worst case. And historic data tells us that even the most rapid historic climate changes happened over scales comparable to human lifespans.

>You're essentially advocating for playing Russian roulette with our biosphere

There's a grand irony here - once again, like the reopen controversy, the people have chosen the side of the majority of "scientists" and hunkered down, shaming others with worst case threats while ignoring that mitigation is also enormously expensive and pretending that anyone questioning the lockdown is a denier. Your dogma leaves no room for shades of gray.

I'm out of room to explain for the billionth time so I'll keep it short - climate change is one of the softest of sciences because it is purely model and backtest driven. That leaves a massive gap in capabilities to be nicely filled with unquestionable dogma. The fact that those ignorant Republicans don't understand climate change doesn't mean that the learned and capable among us shouldn't be free to question the narrative.

Look at how poorly we understand nutrition - that's arguably at least as rigorous of a science as climate change yet the difference here is at least the conclusions are falsifiable. Meanwhile the food pyramid has been dangerously incorrect for decades.

You put too much faith in modern institutions.

yogthosOP6y ago

>Vietnam was prepared because they, like Taiwan, knew from the start that China was lying and took proactive steps that western countries failed to take.

I keep seeing this nonsense repeated, but China reported cases very early on. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline...

The only difference was that Vietnam and Taiwan took it seriously and prioritized people's lives over the economy. Meanwhile, Western governments largely chose to do the opposite. This is the exact same pattern we're seeing with climate change denial as well. The institutions are prioritizing short term profits while ignoring the science.

>I'm a geoscientist. The fact that climate dogma is righteous dogma doesn't mean it isn't dogma. You claim that none of us have the qualifications to question climate change, but somehow we are equipped to call "deniers" idiots?

Being a geoscintist does not make you a climatologist. It's amazing to me that people who are experts in one domain think that gives them the authority to talk about other domains.

I'm deferring to the domain experts PRECISELY because I know this knowledge is outside my area of expertise. I'm calling the deniers idiots because you seem to think that you know better than people actually studying the field. I'm sure you'd be pretty appalled if I started telling you my notions about how I think geoscience works based on my extensive computer science knowledge.

>And historic data tells us that even the most rapid historic climate changes happened over scales comparable to human lifespans.

That's because historically things like mass scale industrial production did not exist. Humans are not operating on geological time, and it's surreal that this has to be explained to somebody calling themselves a scientist.

>There's a grand irony here - once again, like the reopen controversy, the people have chosen the side of the majority of "scientists" and hunkered down, shaming others with worst case threats while ignoring that mitigation is also enormously expensive and pretending that anyone questioning the lockdown is a denier. Your dogma leaves no room for shades of gray.

All I can tel you is that US accounts for roughly a third of the deaths worldwide while the number of deaths and reported cases continues to grow exponentially. So, yeah this is a perfect analogy for climate change denial. In both cases business interests are prioritized over science with similar results.

>I'm out of room to explain for the billionth time so I'll keep it short - climate change is one of the softest of sciences because it is purely model and backtest driven.

Your capacity to deny facts is absolutely stunning. We're no longer talking about predictions here. We're talking about actual events that are happening around us. Sounds like people like you will continue denying there's a problem as you're boiled alive in your own juices.

>You put too much faith in modern institutions.

I'm doing the opposite of that. I believe scientists and experts in the domain over the idiots who think that we should risk the fate of humanity to keep the growth economy going.

oneiftwo6y ago

>Being a geoscintist does not make you a climatologist. It's amazing to me that people who are experts in one domain think that gives them the authority to talk about other domains.

I literally consume the same data. It's a sister field. We have the same problems with the exact same uncertainty because we use the same instruments for collection. My opinion is valid but that doesn't matter because anyone who take a position remotely critical of climate science can expect an immediate, vicious, purely dogmatic response.

>I keep seeing this nonsense repeated, but China reported cases very early on. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline....

>The only difference was that Vietnam and Taiwan took it seriously and prioritized people's lives over the economy

It's easy to dismiss other peoples' arguments as "nonsense" when you misrepresent them. The question isn't whether China reported cases or not. It's the fact that China deliberately underreported cases and contributed to an underestimation of the pandemic by laymen and professionals alike who are too naive to understand the dishonesty typical of authoritarian regimes like the CCP. The peoples who have been dealing with China for millennia hold no such delusions.

>The ability to deny facts is absolutely surreal. We're no longer talking about predictions here. We're talking about actual events that are happening around us

This is only true if you cherry pick your literature. I'll remind you our discussion is about future predictions of which only catastrophic outcomes are suitable for (one sided) discussion. The fact that some minority of models agree with current measurements does not resolve the uncertainty regarding the predictions that spawned this entire discussion.

You underestimate the complexity and chaotic nature of science. Certainty in doomsday climate predictions is hubris.

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