It amuses me to no end that both sides of the sword I laid on the table were immediately grabbed :)

Doesn't that sword cut both ways?

Sorta like anti-abortion people being pro-death penalty, and pro-abortion people being anti-death penalty?

In the general case they won't need persuading. But they'll be comforted to see reality represented.

Interesting. You see yourself as a comforter. Do you think that people who don't believe as you do will also feel comforted when they see their POV represented?

Are you? It's very falsifiable that not getting a measles vaccine is dangerous for you and your friends and countrypeople.

Tell me, what observations would change your mind on that? What is your falsification criteria? Be specific.

Have the humility to accept that you could be wrong, then be clear about what would change your mind.

CO2 concentration has increased due to the combustion of fossil fuels. You can falsify that by tracking where the CO2 is coming from and going to in the atmosphere.

Let's stipulate to both the greenhouse nature of CO2 and the human induced increase. Those could be interesting things to dive deeper into, but they're not relevant to the actual policy discussion.

Tell me how you would falsify economic models that predict doom 100 years from now, based on global average temperature increases. Again, what observations would change your mind?

But reducing the combustion of fossil fuels is still cheaper than not reducing the combustion of fossil fuels.

You seem to have a high degree of confidence in your economic model here.

Just for fun, can you name any economic model that has been able to predict further out than 2 years, for any economic indicator, ever, in the history of mankind?

You seem to start with at least something that sounds scientish, but then you jump to a conclusion that requires certainty that I'm not sure is justified.

So, I think what you're trying to say is that you are trying to persuade, but not the people you're talking to - you're trying to persuade future browsers of comments.

Do you think your comments are going to be persuasive to those future readers?

I'm less concerned with "misinformation" as I am with the inability to for people to think in terms of falsifiability. We live in an age where people have irrational certainty, and have lost track of the error correcting mechanisms that could help them get closer to the truth. Being able to state a clear, necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis, is a lost art.

I will assume that you and I are rich enough to handle disruptions and problems that are a much bigger deal to other people not so blessed. I can only hope that those people who are starving for cheap energy to improve their living conditions manage to get what they need to enter the ranks of the rich and comfortable as quickly as they can.

Given the impending doom, it seems like the only option is adaptation. It certainly seems to be the strategy both you and I have adopted at large, even if the details of our preps might differ.

Given the fact that you've been unpersuasive to enough people that no matter how much personal sacrifice you make, humanity still faces the doom you predict, where do you find hope?

Are you resigned to your predicted doom, or do you feel pressure to become more persuasive?

Ask yourself the question - what is the average global surface temperature of the earth this very moment?

Now pick any other day within the past year, when say, there was a massive cold snap, or massive heat wave. What was the average global surface temperature then?

Nobody experiences average global surface temperature. Not even regions experience average global surface temperature. You can have the exact 59 degrees average global surface temperature with *massive* variation in the distribution of that temperature - and it's the distribution that matters.

We are fooling ourselves if we believe we can measure the average global surface temperature accurately from ground stations, much less proxy records, and even more foolish to believe that it is a metric that matters.

Unless you're selling coffins, antibiotics, flood insurance and weapons.

Because most people think that corporations work like the government, which will never go out of business, or run out of money, because they can print it, and take it away from you by force.

If called them "employers" rather than "corporations", people might change their frame, but most positions on this are already pretty solidified.

An interesting thing about the christian framework of morality is the idea of second chances.

You sin. You repent. You atone. You are redeemed. You sin again. Rinse, repeat.

This is a system which balances incentives to try to maximize good behavior. It identifies sins, which it wants to minimize, but also leaves open a path to redemption, because we know sin is inevitable.

The climate apocalypse, on the other hand, has an imbalance. The consequences laid out by our moral and cultural superiors are stark, and violent. "Hellish hothouse", as it were. But the "nope, it's still useful to do anything we can" feels empty, and impotent, in the face of the inevitable hell that is being promised. In christianity, the sacrifice of jesus is an infinite atonement for our sins - the climate apocalypse doesn't quite have the same analogue.

I wonder if Truth_Quark actually feels some sort of atonement and redemption for their personal behaviors in the fight against AGW. Is the mere fact that they're "fighting the good fight" enough to make up for the hellish world that is inevitably going to come because we don't all believe them?

All stick, no carrot, doesn't seem to work as well as judiciously applied sticks and carrots.

It seems that apocalyptic thinking is endemic to the human condition.

I've always seen the christian apocalyptic perspective as mostly metaphorical, which generally puts limits on how deranged you can get with it. Yes, there are those sects from time to time that insist that on March 3rd, 2:00pm, this year, the world will end, but as far as I know, the dominant christian dogma on that is "soon".

The climate apocalyptic perspective has always seemed unpersuasive to me, because even if you managed to thanos snap all of western civilization out of existence, China and India aren't going to behave differently, unless forced by threat or application of violence. There has always been zero chance of effective coordinated global action on this.

Let's stipulate to a hellish, hothouse earth if china and india don't decarbonize. Assume every apocalyptic model is 100% true, and the tipping points are days away.

There is nothing that can be done. No virtue signaling will change ground reality. No amount of personal effort will move the needle. No amount of national effort will move the needle.

The only thing left to do is get right with your deity of choice, and blame as many other people as you can to take the focus off of yourself.

And if we're lucky, maybe, just maybe, it'll all turn out that the apocalypse is delayed but one more day at a time.

It's worse than that - are they willing to go to war, and kill billions of people, to enforce their will upon the planet.

They cannot get the results they want without the use of force. If you have a global problem that can only be addressed by global collective action, and you cannot possibly persuade the entire globe to join in on your proposed solution, the only option left is violence.

All perspectives include made-up crap. That's the point.

Irrational faith, in something, is required for all thinking, both rational, and irrational.

What that should inspire, is some sense of epistemic humility, no matter what your particular leap of irrational faith is.

But mostly, people undervalue humility, and have a very difficult time practicing it, as I'm sure you'd agree.

Smells like it was generated with the prompt, "write me a paper disproving simulation theory using the most obscure mathematics and physics possible".

Ah, "non-algorithmic understanding". As in, "axioms we take for granted because we can't prove them".

Godel teaches us that there is impenetrable mystery, even in the "perfect" world of abstract thought. Even if that doesn't mean that it's turtles all the way down, it should make you realize that even the most rational, secular perspective has its limits.

Okay, seriously slashdot, do better. Parent is at least 4:insightful.