"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
Feynman
--
In this case, nature will not just not be fooled, it will extract retribution, unfortunately also on those that weren't fooled in the first place.
philipov · 1h ago
"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do learn from history are doomed to watch everyone around them repeat it."
chongli · 1h ago
Let’s not get carried away with hubris. Nature wrote our genes. Nature made us the way we are.
All this nonsense you see going on is ultimately a result of cognitive biased thinking, especially confirmation bias. The fact that we differ so deeply from these biases was not our decision, it was thrust upon us by nature and it helped us survive in an environment very different from the one we found ourselves in now.
beardyw · 1h ago
However those biases are supposed to favour our survival and, more importantly our children's survival. That's how we got this far.
It says something when we act against that.
quantified · 58m ago
You're getting downvoted, but you have pointed to a possibly important factor. We're intelligent, but definitely have primate intelligence, and we're closest to the murderous bastards known as chimpanzees.
That said, nothing about this has been inevitable. So many accidents along the way. There are many other results that have been possible. Our social/political setting may be related with technology but it's wholly unclear how deterministic each step has been.
thrance · 1h ago
No, most people believe in climate change. In a fundamentally anti-human move, oligarchs have put a climate denier in office so he would push against doing anything about it, as it goes against their short-term interests.
FranzFerdiNaN · 1h ago
It was ordinary people who elected Trump. Ordinary people filled with hate, who wanted someone to act out their violent dreams on others.
SauciestGNU · 1h ago
You're right, but those ordinary people have been heavily propagandized for decades. They of course bear responsibility for the evils they visit upon the world, but they were (knowingly or otherwise) taking directions.
stfp · 21m ago
It was also a lot of gerrymandering and disinformation and complacency
tvaughan · 1h ago
Yes, and I hope everything they voted for happens to them personally
tremon · 1h ago
It was oligarchs that put Trump in the position to be elected in the first place. It was oligarchs that prevented him from being sentenced for his crimes. It was oligarchs that bought his election the second time around.
With a little help from foreign friends, of course.
vdupras · 1h ago
My pet theory, if we indulge in a bit of conspiracy theory about the oligarchs, is that they're in fact benevolent and that the final outcome with be a net good for humanity in relation to the climate challenge.
I mean, Trump is so blatantly destroying american influence that it would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. When you think about the alternative, that is, a "regular" american elite saying that climate action is important with their regular hypocrisy, pretending to be doing anything at all, but in fact going the other way, then things don't look so bad in the medium term. Sure, a bit of short term pain, but otherwise, might end up being better off.
I mean, try to put yourself in the shoes of one of those oligarchs a few years ago and ask yourself how you'd actually solve the climate problem, given current cultures around the world. Maybe you'd come up with the "let's prop up Trump".
That being said, it's just a pet theory. I actually have doubts that such smart oligarchs exist.
paulsutter · 1h ago
The old reports were somehow protecting us?
Carbon emissions can only be reduced by engineering and manufacturing advances
jacquesm · 1h ago
In a way, yes, they were: they forced us to contemplate the long term consequences of our short term actions. Denying that is the opposite of protecting us (and, eventually, our offspring, who will deal with the consequences in a way that we never will).
Carbon emissions can first and foremost be reduced by reducing the combustion of fossil fuels.
Everything else is just bookkeeping and icing on the cake.
paulsutter · 48m ago
> Carbon emissions can first and foremost be reduced by reducing the combustion of fossil fuels.
Exactly! It can’t be reduced or increased by edits to federal PDF files that nobody reads
Commercial efforts are the only solution, and will happen because new energy is cheaper and better. Photovoltaic and battery improvements are our best path forward. Industrial policy can help but we’ve never really had that in the US
tremon · 1h ago
Carbon emissions can also be reduced by our extinction.
myko · 1h ago
The impression I get from the extreme right (trump and his fans) is that they don't want to reduce carbon emissions at all and are working for the opposite. Denying the reality of climate change is one tool in their chest to get others to ignore it as well.
throwaway4496 · 1h ago
Nature has no feelings, there will be no retribution, things will work out just fine, it will just be tough for us, maybe even wiped out, but nature will prevail. life will find a way, look at places where humans get excluded, everything regenerates.
It is not a crises of nature, it is a crises of habitat for us as species, and a bunch of other like us.
Etheryte · 1h ago
This is a pretty pointless nitpick. It's akin to saying that a large meteor strike is not the end of the world because the planet will still be here.
throwaway4496 · 1h ago
Is this a joke?
Because exactly what you're suggesting happened, a meteor strike, and it was not the end of the world because the planet is still here, and so is life, well, maybe not dinosaurs, screw them anyways.
But the point is, it is very unlikely that humans will change the environment more than the various glaciation events alone, meteor strikes, major volcanoes turning oceans into acid, and so on.
But then again, the tendency to think "we are it" is a hard one to reason with, and in a funny way a variation of "I am it" which creates climate change denialism for ones personal benefits. So go on, be mad.
mikodin · 1h ago
I think there is also a reality in which our scope of what we care about is widened beyond just the human species. As a species that has such a powerful impact on other beings, it would be nice to try and reduce the amount of unnecessary suffering and pain that we place on them. While we cannot eliminate it, life takes life yadayada, we can reduce it and try to curb the mass extinction that we are actively causing.
From another angle, it's taken a really long time for evolution to get to this point, what can be experienced from the myriad life forms is quite wide and widening, it would be a shame to return to only the level of a microbe.
Must we take everything else down with us?
throwaway4496 · 1h ago
You think the scope of what humans can do will surpass the impact of various ice ages? the various volcanism/anoxic events?
simiones · 1h ago
"Save the planet? The planet's fine - it's us that are fucked."
-- George Carlin
KingOfCoders · 1h ago
Yes, I always found environmental protection kind of funny, nature does not need protection, it will survive until Earth becomes finally uninhabitable [0], it's us that might not make it that long if we don't take enough care.
What we call environmentalism is actually 5 different concerns:
- human health, pollution
- preservation of natural resources useful for humans
- preservation of biodiversity, nature in its original state
- concern for animal suffering
- aesthetic concern for human habitat
These things typically overlap, but sometimes they even contradict.
wffurr · 1h ago
And how many other species will we take down with us?
jfengel · 1h ago
The study questioned whether heat records are truly increasing and whether extreme weather is worsening.
I thought we were past that. I thought that it was now about questioning whether it was human caused, or the size of the impact.
Apparently we really are going back, and revisiting basic arithmetic.
aeroman · 1h ago
I would say we are largely past the second threshold too (that the warming is human caused). The last IPCC report had as the first statement in the summary for policymakers (from WG1 - the physical science group)
A.1 It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.
The previous report (from 2013) only said (and much further in)
Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system.
The equivalent statement from AR4 (2007) was
The understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling influences on climate has improved since the TAR, leading to very high confidence that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, ...
You could argue there is more of a question about what to do about it (e.g. try and mitigate climate change or just pay for the damanges). There is pretty good evidence at this point that mitigating the change through reducing CO2 emissions is a lot cheaper and comes with a host of other benefits (energy security, improved public health), but I can see wherer there might be arguments to have about this.
gchamonlive · 1h ago
> I thought we were past that
We are.
Before we had disagreements in the scientific community by respectable agents.
Now these are not a return to old debates, it's just that the current administration is abusing its authority to control information.
It's just a manifestation of the post truth.
This administration is abusing its authority to subvert instruments intended for specific uses in order to apply them to the trumpist agenda. The censorship of universities, sacking of govt agents that disagree with the administration, deportation of students, civilians being sent to El Salvador, the wrongful application of the Magnitsky law...
You don't need to take these threats at face value in order to stand agains them.
throw0101d · 1h ago
> I thought we were past that. I thought that it was now about questioning whether it was human caused, or the size of the impact.
I thought we were past the question of whether the Earth was round or flat. Yet here we are.
akaosns · 1h ago
I believe in global warming, but the quasi religious responses here are hard to read.
Conserving the environment and taking steps to reduce our impact on the planet is a good thing. To that end, I’m ok with believing in global warming. I believe some of the narrative is used for selfish ends (green energy companies are looking to make a profit, too) and abused, but on the whole it’s a noble cause.
The replies here that are more or less “wow, can you believe these people don’t trust the word of the priests?” are extremely tiring. “Science” in this division is little different from belief. None of us (experts included) have the data nor intellect to holistically evaluate a system as complex as our planet. Our current understanding is likely wrong in some way.
There are plenty of good reasons to preserve the planet. We don’t have to resort to heretic burning and tribal shaming. It’s short sighted and intellectually lazy.
jfengel · 55m ago
If you don't want to trust the priests, fine. Go do the work yourself. Or take no position at all.
Actively rejecting the work of scientists based solely on ideology, that is religion, in the worst sense of the word. They're not heretics. They're just liars.
akaosns · 32m ago
You could replace the word “scientist” with “priest” in your post and it would be no different.
Rejecting or accepting based on ideology is wrong. And given we lack the technical ability to fully understand global warming, there is no objective truth here.
ZeroGravitas · 1h ago
We never moved past that. They always used whatever worked on their audience with no commitment to consistency.
If you are sophisticated then they have quite elaborate, yet factually incorrect, justifications about not hurting the global poor etc. that they'll use.
But if they can get some traction with blaming the Jews for orchestrating an elaborate conspiracy or a Chinese hoax or just blatant denial of reality and recorded fact they'll keep doing that too.
Whatever works. They have the money and the political power to get away with it.
vkou · 1h ago
> I thought we were past that.
Honest people are past that.
ManBeardPc · 2h ago
Ironically climate will also rewrite the US and the rest of the world in return. More so that we are losing several important years because the US as a big contributor is now governed by complete climate deniers. Currently having the hottest summer so far, but coolest summer we will see at the same time is something I hoped to never experience.
softwaredoug · 59m ago
I’m not sure the US matters as much as other economies. And our emissions peaked around 2005 and continues to decline. We will still continue to reduce emissions in the next few years because old energy sources just are losing economic viability.
The US is just choosing to make a huge mistake and not participate in growth markets like clean energy, etc.
throw0101d · 1h ago
“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.” — George Orwell, 1984
throw9349494 · 2h ago
> undermine the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming.
Perhaps they should write "wide", "100%" or "unquestionable" concensus. I feel not using proper adjectives is undermining this consensus!
nlitened · 1h ago
Consensus is not a scientific thing, it’s a political thing
kdavis · 1h ago
Despite a significant number of up votes in a short amount of time (174 in 1 hour as of this comment a comment to time ratio higher than anything on the front page) this got moved off the front page. Suspicious.
softwaredoug · 1h ago
I largely ignore this and just look around the world at the remarkable, sudden success of green energy and electric vehicles. We may solve the root of the problem while Republicans still call it a hoax.
(It’s mostly a sad statement now about US ceding a huge growth area for its industrial base here.)
noobermin · 1h ago
I'm not in America anymore. But my general feeling jn America would be a sense of dread at being left behind.
softwaredoug · 1h ago
Yes except for Silicon Valley and finance, we are giving up any chance of market leadership in these areas. Ironically if we wanted manufacturing jobs we’d focus on growth areas.
Our energy and automobile companies will suffer longer term by being able to hold onto old, not economically viable ways of doing things until the bitter end.
Barrin92 · 1h ago
People will drive Chinese electric cars, while the US pulls up an Iron Curtain, people drive 30 year old diesel trucks and closes the universities down. What's next, a down to the countryside movement, everyone has to do five years of hard farm labor in Iowa?
softwaredoug · 1h ago
Yes it’s horrible for US economic leadership and IMO is less about climate change and more about US willful ignorance sacrificing market leadership.
throwaway_trump · 1h ago
I still find it hard to believe how far the US has fallen. It really is a shitshow
throwaway4496 · 1h ago
This is the tragedy of empires, "how could it fall?" until it is done.
>The novel describes the rise of Berzelius "Donald" Windrip, a demagogue who is elected President of the United States, after fomenting fear and promising drastic economic and social reforms while promoting a return to patriotism and "traditional" values. After his election, Windrip takes complete control of the government via self-coup and imposes totalitarian rule with the help of a ruthless paramilitary force [ICE], in the manner of European fascists such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. The novel's plot centers on journalist Doremus Jessup's opposition to the new regime and his subsequent struggle against it as part of a liberal rebellion.
"If we stopped testing right now, we'd have very few cases, if any"
exasperaited · 1h ago
"All new numbers".
Honestly I think this stuff goes very under-reported. The world has become so used to anti-intellectualism that simple ignorance in the highest office(s) is now excusable, and criticising it is implicitly cast as political. Which is a state of affairs that can be weaponised.
(Lest people think I am sniping at the USA from the UK, I'd observe that we as a nation were bounced into a monumental decision by a series of politicians who flatly refused to make their numbers add up when challenged)
thrance · 1h ago
Damn, I forgot about that one. There should be a page with a collection of the most egregious stupidities he said, that you could just link to whenever someone is still arguing in his favor.
exasperaited · 1h ago
We really should have understood what was going to happen in the world when someone else tweeted:
"Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April"
Many things make me think Elon Musk uniquely benefits from Gell-Mann amnesia but the idea that anyone should have listened to him about anything other than rockets or cars should have been jettisoned right then and there. Because what he was saying was unsupportable by evidence right at the moment he said it.
Instead, here we are.
ZeroGravitas · 47m ago
He also tweeted about making cars with sub 10 micron accuracy for all parts, so I wouldn't trust him with cars or rockets either.
Clearly his money employs a lot of smart people, some of whom are not actively doing evil.
misja111 · 1h ago
Does anybody know where I can find a copy of the new report? I'd be interested to read what arguments they came up with.
A coordinated response is being prepared by climate researchers debunking the whole thing, but the news story has already passed so I don’t know whether it will matter.
jrmg · 1h ago
Last sentence in the executive summary, which I think really does sum up the report:
“U.S. policy actions are expected to have undetectably small direct impacts on the global climate and any effects will emerge only with long delays.”
Hilift · 54m ago
This is part of the trend of "there needs to be room for opposing views". Similar to when JD Vance visited Europe in February and scolded the EU on not suppressing views from elements such as AfD, which is essentially East Germany in every demographic.
When asked about the Indian Removal Act, President Andrew Jackson stated that if he had not taken the action, the native peoples would have been wiped out. Effectively he was saving them from genocide.
"According to historian H. W. Brands, Jackson sincerely believed that his population transfer was a "wise and humane policy" that would save the Native Americans from "utter annihilation". Jackson portrayed the removal as a paternalistic act of mercy."
As am environmentalist, I've talked to many people not living in the US who are losing hope on humanity because of this kind of constant stream of news coming out of the US.
I understand how it happens, but I'd hope people understood that Trump's USA is not the world. Just like people in general know not to extrapolate what Putin's administration is doing in Russia, they need to be able to do the same for the USA. At the moment, in my opinion, both administrations are lost causes, and you can just choose to follow, support and advocate many other positive signals around the world.
hshdhdhj4444 · 1h ago
Social media is overwhelming and dominated by the U.S.
A lot of people in countries that are making positive steps are losing hope unnecessarily because of this.
The U.S. is 25% of the world economy and declining.
Growing economies are ripe for growing with more climate friendly policies, not just because of the environmental impact (both from an AGW and local environmental perspective) but because of energy security and sovereignty perspectives, but also to reduce dependence on the petro-dollar.
ethbr1 · 1h ago
Even absent US involvement, getting China and India away from oil and coal is critical.
China is decreasing the percentage of fossil fuels in its total mix over the last 15 years (while still growing total energy generation).
India... less so.
softwaredoug · 1h ago
The real story is the US ceding economic leadership in emerging markets like green energy, and instead encouraging its energy and automobile companies to pursue strategies not actually aligned with long term growth.
Even in the US the vast majority of new power generation is clean energy. EVs and Hybrids are about 20% of new car sales and climbing. Even if there’s a short term road bump with oBBB, battery innovation and costs continue to drive cost down.
The US economy will suffer by not trying to compete in these markets, and will need to depend on other economies more and more.
> Just like people in general know not to extrapolate what Putin's administration is doing in Russia, they need to be able to do the same for the USA.
One is in a box and can't really reach anything else without nukes. The other has his nukes in everybody's backyard, and the entire world economy depends on the world order that has him at the top.
brabel · 1h ago
The USA got to the top quickly, and might fall just as quickly. China is taking a wide lead already on many areas. The USA is still definitely controlling world order, but the system that put them at the top is already being challenged by the "global south" and you can see how the USA has noted that and is already actively trying to interfere with it (which just validates the effort as it shows they're taking it seriously).
reustle · 1h ago
On a similar note, does anyone notice the issue of most official temperature readings in different climates often reading 5+C lower than what is actually observed locally?
jemmyw · 7m ago
If an official reading is an average over an area or over a time period then it'll always be lower than the peak observed temperature. It doesn't matter so long as it is consistent.
Keyframe · 1h ago
Well, that's evil? It's deliberate so it can't be stupid. What else is there to say.
tornikeo · 1h ago
I'm thankful for the US administration to truly give other countries a chance to come forward and something good, and take the center stage.
But, as good as that opportunity is, I'm afraid the 3 years this administration has left wouldn't be enough to fully disassemble the US advantage. :)
gschizas · 1h ago
It seems you might be too optimistic here. I doubt Trumpism will end with Trump.
rsynnott · 1h ago
In general, hard climate change denial as an ideology is only _really_ a thing in states that produce a lot of oil (or, specifically in the case of Australia, coal), and not all of them (notably it never caught on to any great degree in Norway). It's really very much motivated reasoning, and even Trump-esque movements outside the US generally don't push it too hard.
ChrisRR · 1h ago
And scientists who need the actual data will ignore the revised versions and just read the originals with the data they need
m000 · 1h ago
Coming up next: US to rewrite its past laws of physics.
“I seek not to know the answers, but to understand the questions.”
— Confucius
vdupras · 1h ago
A few new facts we'll see pop up:
1. There has always been town-destroying wildfires every summer. It's always been like that.
2. It has always been the case that AC units were necessary for a human to survive an american summer. I mean, look at native americans, they always had AC units!
3. Los Angeles always flash flooded 10 feet up across every summer.
4. America has always been at war with Canada.
5. Wildfire smoke across the sky for the whole damn summer? Always been thus. What do you mean, blue?
mrtksn · 1h ago
This is weird, it will cement climate change skepticism as crazy fascist thing unless it's followed by high-quality convincing body of work that discredit the current climate change work done globally. I wonder if that part will follow because it is possible to follow to some extent as it is very likely that there are plenty of low quality works done on the matter.
They need to be right about fraud in climate change research only once and the climate change research needs to be right %100 of the time and they need to have had communicated that correctly %100 of the time. They will have some worst case scenarios or oversimplifications and predictions that did not come to be true in obviously demonstrable way. It will be tough.
Regardless, this wouldn't mean much for EU, China, Japan and other fossil energy importing countries as with the Russian invasion of Ukraine this has become a matter of national security and not just some hippie ideal. It doesn't make sense anymore to drop clean and renewable energy even if the Trump administration proves that releasing smoke is the healthiest thing ever and helps with increasing the penis size.
So they are going to re-write history to fuel some ideology, as the fossils were to be extracted anyway.
js8 · 1h ago
I actually suspect once China moves to full electrification, they will become more demanding to other countries about climate goals. Geographically, they're in a tight spot so they have a big stake in mitigating climate change.
EU is also somewhat pushing with more aggressive carbon pricing.
piva00 · 1h ago
> So they are going to re-write history to fuel some ideology, as the fossils were to be extracted anyway.
There's no ideology, you have it reversed, it's always about money.
The oil industry is a huge donor of funds and spend 8-10x more on lobbying conservative politicians. The ideology is tacked on top of the money to justify the donations, and for their voters to gobble it up and repeat the lines as if rolling coal would be an ode to freedom.
KingOfCoders · 1h ago
With rewritten histories and a fictional past
- "Master Race", New Model Army, 1986
Havoc · 1h ago
Doctored Epstein vid. Inflation data full of estimates. Firing the guy that delivered bad job data. Shutting down monitoring satellites. Releasing modified constitutions. Now this
…US really is going all in on detaching from reality
exasperaited · 1h ago
In the normal world, once you hitch yourself to a single implausible claim, you're bound by circumstance to try to keep it in line with reality, by making a series of supporting claims that inevitably build on weaker and weaker ground.
One of the problems honest people have understanding habitual liars is that they think liars are always incentivised to try to keep their lies plausible within a world of shared truth -- that they will always ultimately be caught out.
Hence the idea that the coverup is always worse than the crime. Everyone thinks the domino run of implausible claims ends with the liar being caught out when one lie does not move things on for the liar.
But in systems of power, in fact, there comes a point where it doesn't really matter whether something you're saying is true, it just matters that you say enough things that people get caught up trying to make them make sense and are distracted from what you are doing.
The dominos just keep falling forever.
This isn't new at all: one of the most influential men in Russian politics, Vladislav Surkov, absolutely learned to weaponise theatrical untruth in this way:
And there have long been fears that Surkov's techniques were infecting the West (through Hungary, Turkey etc.)
The problem is people simply don't want to believe, at any deep level, that these people lie for the sake of it, when in fact they clearly do. And they get caught up on the idea that since decent people think being caught lying is shameful, liars will always feel shame when caught out.
Once you understand that they do not, you can understand that any given lie may not be told to hide a specific misdeed; it may simply be told to add to the haze of untruth that allows the liar to go about their business.
TrackerFF · 2h ago
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
arethuza · 2h ago
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
raphaelj · 2h ago
Meanwhile, according to the IEA, renewables investments exceed those in fossil fuels since +/- 2022 [1], and are expected to be the top electric power generator by 2026 [2].
The Trump administration is basically following Kodak's strategy from the early 00s.
Eastman Kodak (the spun-off film business) in the 2020s has been more or less stable. They even brought a discontinued film (E100) back. Production and pricing are now in line with the limited demand from film studios and hobbyists.
raphaelj · 2h ago
Made a typo, I meant 00s. I edited it, thanks :)
seydor · 2h ago
That can be fixed with absurd tarriffs on PVs
xorcist · 2h ago
At least they don't follow Kodak's strategy from the late 10s, with KodakCoin.
Oh, wait.
iand675 · 1h ago
Has this data has been archived elsewhere?
exasperaited · 53m ago
Probably. But it is important to understand that this will matter to fewer and fewer people over time.
Because they don't edit the data to make a new objective truth that survives scrutiny, they edit the data to demonstrate their power over data.
People referring to the archived data will simply be denied access to the conversation moving forward; "our opponents keep fighting old battles when the world has moved on".
It works. And it will continue to work shockingly well even when the underlying phenomenon asserts itself in ways that are predicted by the archive data. Look at how Florida is torn between climate change denial and the actual reality of sea-level rises affecting the Keys.
thunfischtoast · 1h ago
"Then they went back to the barn, and there, sure enough, painted on the wall, it said: 'No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.' And underneath, in slightly smaller letters, it said: 'Sheets are a human invention.'"
claiir · 1h ago
> Asked by CNN's Kaitlan Collins why previous editions of the National Climate Assessment were no longer available online, former fracking company CEO Wright responded [..]
lol
28304283409234 · 29m ago
"We are at war with EastAsia. We have always been at war with EastAsia."
croes · 1h ago
The sad part is it’s not only the US. In many countries this kind of denial brings more votes than reality and science
jacknews · 1h ago
War is peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength
rs186 · 1h ago
Well, now that they can rewrite the constitution (although symbolically), rewriting previous reports isn't such a big deal by comparison.
croes · 1h ago
Reminds me of King Arnulf when Hy-Brasil was sinking in Eric the Viking
mnmalst · 2h ago
Sorry for not being more eloquent about it but:
You can't make this shit up.
jacquesm · 1h ago
You don't have to, you're living it.
jmclnx · 1h ago
The instruction manual called "1984" arrived forty years late.
But the insurance companies are in the know. House insurance rates are raising a lot in many at risk states and areas. Just heard Texas joined that fun.
So seems capitalists involved with insurance and finance know the real facts.
verisimi · 2h ago
We've seen this before with climategate - people seem to be endlessly editing the historical records.
jasonjayr · 2h ago
Historical records, especially pre-record keeping are revised when new techniques and sciences discover better, more reliable ways of interpreting the physical geological evidence left in the world behind us.
What is the basis of these revisions?
WillAdams · 2h ago
A good example of this is revisions EDIT: of the interpretations :ENDEDIT of historical data:
Apparently the Japanese continued using wooden buckets longer than other navies, resulting in Pacific data being skewed.
defrost · 1h ago
Closer reading should tell you that no one, no data scientist at least, is rewriting raw historical data - the temperatures recorded in ships logs by various ships are preserved unaltered.
What is discussed there is part of all data interpretation, the transfer functions between raw measures of <something> and the inferred values of <interest>.
WillAdams · 54m ago
Thank you for that, I have edited my (hasty/poorly-worded) comment.
raphaelj · 2h ago
> What is the basis of these revisions?
Ideology
cluckindan · 2h ago
Money.
mlhamel · 2h ago
Stupidity
sligor · 2h ago
revision based on new findings is how science works
revision based on ideology is how fascism works
wccrawford · 1h ago
Records should never be edited.
They can be reinterpreted, but we must never edit or delete the original records.
wizzwizz4 · 1h ago
Right, and we're not:
> Historical records, especially pre-record keeping are revised
Here "historical records" means "the best-known interpretation of historical evidence": it's not talking about modifying records made pre-record keeping. Of course we still have access to previous interpretations: people have gone to pains to ensure they're preserved (despite certain former stewards trying to erase them), and those people are building more resilient systems to avoid this happening again.
In this case, nature will not just not be fooled, it will extract retribution, unfortunately also on those that weren't fooled in the first place.
All this nonsense you see going on is ultimately a result of cognitive biased thinking, especially confirmation bias. The fact that we differ so deeply from these biases was not our decision, it was thrust upon us by nature and it helped us survive in an environment very different from the one we found ourselves in now.
It says something when we act against that.
That said, nothing about this has been inevitable. So many accidents along the way. There are many other results that have been possible. Our social/political setting may be related with technology but it's wholly unclear how deterministic each step has been.
With a little help from foreign friends, of course.
I mean, Trump is so blatantly destroying american influence that it would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. When you think about the alternative, that is, a "regular" american elite saying that climate action is important with their regular hypocrisy, pretending to be doing anything at all, but in fact going the other way, then things don't look so bad in the medium term. Sure, a bit of short term pain, but otherwise, might end up being better off.
I mean, try to put yourself in the shoes of one of those oligarchs a few years ago and ask yourself how you'd actually solve the climate problem, given current cultures around the world. Maybe you'd come up with the "let's prop up Trump".
That being said, it's just a pet theory. I actually have doubts that such smart oligarchs exist.
Carbon emissions can only be reduced by engineering and manufacturing advances
Carbon emissions can first and foremost be reduced by reducing the combustion of fossil fuels.
Everything else is just bookkeeping and icing on the cake.
Exactly! It can’t be reduced or increased by edits to federal PDF files that nobody reads
Commercial efforts are the only solution, and will happen because new energy is cheaper and better. Photovoltaic and battery improvements are our best path forward. Industrial policy can help but we’ve never really had that in the US
It is not a crises of nature, it is a crises of habitat for us as species, and a bunch of other like us.
Because exactly what you're suggesting happened, a meteor strike, and it was not the end of the world because the planet is still here, and so is life, well, maybe not dinosaurs, screw them anyways.
But the point is, it is very unlikely that humans will change the environment more than the various glaciation events alone, meteor strikes, major volcanoes turning oceans into acid, and so on.
But then again, the tendency to think "we are it" is a hard one to reason with, and in a funny way a variation of "I am it" which creates climate change denialism for ones personal benefits. So go on, be mad.
From another angle, it's taken a really long time for evolution to get to this point, what can be experienced from the myriad life forms is quite wide and widening, it would be a shame to return to only the level of a microbe.
Must we take everything else down with us?
-- George Carlin
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future
- human health, pollution
- preservation of natural resources useful for humans
- preservation of biodiversity, nature in its original state
- concern for animal suffering
- aesthetic concern for human habitat
These things typically overlap, but sometimes they even contradict.
I thought we were past that. I thought that it was now about questioning whether it was human caused, or the size of the impact.
Apparently we really are going back, and revisiting basic arithmetic.
A.1 It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.
The previous report (from 2013) only said (and much further in)
Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system.
The equivalent statement from AR4 (2007) was
The understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling influences on climate has improved since the TAR, leading to very high confidence that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, ...
You could argue there is more of a question about what to do about it (e.g. try and mitigate climate change or just pay for the damanges). There is pretty good evidence at this point that mitigating the change through reducing CO2 emissions is a lot cheaper and comes with a host of other benefits (energy security, improved public health), but I can see wherer there might be arguments to have about this.
We are.
Before we had disagreements in the scientific community by respectable agents.
Now these are not a return to old debates, it's just that the current administration is abusing its authority to control information.
It's just a manifestation of the post truth.
This administration is abusing its authority to subvert instruments intended for specific uses in order to apply them to the trumpist agenda. The censorship of universities, sacking of govt agents that disagree with the administration, deportation of students, civilians being sent to El Salvador, the wrongful application of the Magnitsky law...
You don't need to take these threats at face value in order to stand agains them.
I thought we were past the question of whether the Earth was round or flat. Yet here we are.
Conserving the environment and taking steps to reduce our impact on the planet is a good thing. To that end, I’m ok with believing in global warming. I believe some of the narrative is used for selfish ends (green energy companies are looking to make a profit, too) and abused, but on the whole it’s a noble cause.
The replies here that are more or less “wow, can you believe these people don’t trust the word of the priests?” are extremely tiring. “Science” in this division is little different from belief. None of us (experts included) have the data nor intellect to holistically evaluate a system as complex as our planet. Our current understanding is likely wrong in some way.
There are plenty of good reasons to preserve the planet. We don’t have to resort to heretic burning and tribal shaming. It’s short sighted and intellectually lazy.
Actively rejecting the work of scientists based solely on ideology, that is religion, in the worst sense of the word. They're not heretics. They're just liars.
Rejecting or accepting based on ideology is wrong. And given we lack the technical ability to fully understand global warming, there is no objective truth here.
If you are sophisticated then they have quite elaborate, yet factually incorrect, justifications about not hurting the global poor etc. that they'll use.
But if they can get some traction with blaming the Jews for orchestrating an elaborate conspiracy or a Chinese hoax or just blatant denial of reality and recorded fact they'll keep doing that too.
Whatever works. They have the money and the political power to get away with it.
Honest people are past that.
The US is just choosing to make a huge mistake and not participate in growth markets like clean energy, etc.
Perhaps they should write "wide", "100%" or "unquestionable" concensus. I feel not using proper adjectives is undermining this consensus!
(It’s mostly a sad statement now about US ceding a huge growth area for its industrial base here.)
Our energy and automobile companies will suffer longer term by being able to hold onto old, not economically viable ways of doing things until the bitter end.
Edited for LOLs...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_Aren't_Real
Honestly I think this stuff goes very under-reported. The world has become so used to anti-intellectualism that simple ignorance in the highest office(s) is now excusable, and criticising it is implicitly cast as political. Which is a state of affairs that can be weaponised.
(Lest people think I am sniping at the USA from the UK, I'd observe that we as a nation were bounced into a monumental decision by a series of politicians who flatly refused to make their numbers add up when challenged)
"Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April"
Many things make me think Elon Musk uniquely benefits from Gell-Mann amnesia but the idea that anyone should have listened to him about anything other than rockets or cars should have been jettisoned right then and there. Because what he was saying was unsupportable by evidence right at the moment he said it.
Instead, here we are.
Clearly his money employs a lot of smart people, some of whom are not actively doing evil.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025-07/DOE_Criti...
It is really just a collection of 'skeptic' arguments form the last 20 years or so. Science magazie had an article about it
https://www.science.org/content/article/contrarian-climate-a...
A coordinated response is being prepared by climate researchers debunking the whole thing, but the news story has already passed so I don’t know whether it will matter.
“U.S. policy actions are expected to have undetectably small direct impacts on the global climate and any effects will emerge only with long delays.”
When asked about the Indian Removal Act, President Andrew Jackson stated that if he had not taken the action, the native peoples would have been wiped out. Effectively he was saving them from genocide.
"According to historian H. W. Brands, Jackson sincerely believed that his population transfer was a "wise and humane policy" that would save the Native Americans from "utter annihilation". Jackson portrayed the removal as a paternalistic act of mercy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Removal_Act
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/15/nx-s1-5298683/jd-vance-afd-ge...
I understand how it happens, but I'd hope people understood that Trump's USA is not the world. Just like people in general know not to extrapolate what Putin's administration is doing in Russia, they need to be able to do the same for the USA. At the moment, in my opinion, both administrations are lost causes, and you can just choose to follow, support and advocate many other positive signals around the world.
A lot of people in countries that are making positive steps are losing hope unnecessarily because of this.
The U.S. is 25% of the world economy and declining.
Growing economies are ripe for growing with more climate friendly policies, not just because of the environmental impact (both from an AGW and local environmental perspective) but because of energy security and sovereignty perspectives, but also to reduce dependence on the petro-dollar.
https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/china#what-sources...
https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/india#what-sources...
China is decreasing the percentage of fossil fuels in its total mix over the last 15 years (while still growing total energy generation).
India... less so.
Even in the US the vast majority of new power generation is clean energy. EVs and Hybrids are about 20% of new car sales and climbing. Even if there’s a short term road bump with oBBB, battery innovation and costs continue to drive cost down.
The US economy will suffer by not trying to compete in these markets, and will need to depend on other economies more and more.
One is in a box and can't really reach anything else without nukes. The other has his nukes in everybody's backyard, and the entire world economy depends on the world order that has him at the top.
But, as good as that opportunity is, I'm afraid the 3 years this administration has left wouldn't be enough to fully disassemble the US advantage. :)
— Confucius
1. There has always been town-destroying wildfires every summer. It's always been like that.
2. It has always been the case that AC units were necessary for a human to survive an american summer. I mean, look at native americans, they always had AC units!
3. Los Angeles always flash flooded 10 feet up across every summer.
4. America has always been at war with Canada.
5. Wildfire smoke across the sky for the whole damn summer? Always been thus. What do you mean, blue?
They need to be right about fraud in climate change research only once and the climate change research needs to be right %100 of the time and they need to have had communicated that correctly %100 of the time. They will have some worst case scenarios or oversimplifications and predictions that did not come to be true in obviously demonstrable way. It will be tough.
Regardless, this wouldn't mean much for EU, China, Japan and other fossil energy importing countries as with the Russian invasion of Ukraine this has become a matter of national security and not just some hippie ideal. It doesn't make sense anymore to drop clean and renewable energy even if the Trump administration proves that releasing smoke is the healthiest thing ever and helps with increasing the penis size.
So they are going to re-write history to fuel some ideology, as the fossils were to be extracted anyway.
EU is also somewhat pushing with more aggressive carbon pricing.
There's no ideology, you have it reversed, it's always about money.
The oil industry is a huge donor of funds and spend 8-10x more on lobbying conservative politicians. The ideology is tacked on top of the money to justify the donations, and for their voters to gobble it up and repeat the lines as if rolling coal would be an ode to freedom.
…US really is going all in on detaching from reality
One of the problems honest people have understanding habitual liars is that they think liars are always incentivised to try to keep their lies plausible within a world of shared truth -- that they will always ultimately be caught out.
Hence the idea that the coverup is always worse than the crime. Everyone thinks the domino run of implausible claims ends with the liar being caught out when one lie does not move things on for the liar.
But in systems of power, in fact, there comes a point where it doesn't really matter whether something you're saying is true, it just matters that you say enough things that people get caught up trying to make them make sense and are distracted from what you are doing.
The dominos just keep falling forever.
This isn't new at all: one of the most influential men in Russian politics, Vladislav Surkov, absolutely learned to weaponise theatrical untruth in this way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov
And there have long been fears that Surkov's techniques were infecting the West (through Hungary, Turkey etc.)
The problem is people simply don't want to believe, at any deep level, that these people lie for the sake of it, when in fact they clearly do. And they get caught up on the idea that since decent people think being caught lying is shameful, liars will always feel shame when caught out.
Once you understand that they do not, you can understand that any given lie may not be told to hide a specific misdeed; it may simply be told to add to the haze of untruth that allows the liar to go about their business.
The Trump administration is basically following Kodak's strategy from the early 00s.
--
[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-investment-2025/exe...
[2] https://www.eco-business.com/news/iea-renewables-will-be-wor...
Eastman Kodak (the spun-off film business) in the 2020s has been more or less stable. They even brought a discontinued film (E100) back. Production and pricing are now in line with the limited demand from film studios and hobbyists.
Oh, wait.
Because they don't edit the data to make a new objective truth that survives scrutiny, they edit the data to demonstrate their power over data.
People referring to the archived data will simply be denied access to the conversation moving forward; "our opponents keep fighting old battles when the world has moved on".
It works. And it will continue to work shockingly well even when the underlying phenomenon asserts itself in ways that are predicted by the archive data. Look at how Florida is torn between climate change denial and the actual reality of sea-level rises affecting the Keys.
lol
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength
You can't make this shit up.
But the insurance companies are in the know. House insurance rates are raising a lot in many at risk states and areas. Just heard Texas joined that fun.
So seems capitalists involved with insurance and finance know the real facts.
What is the basis of these revisions?
https://www.science.org/content/article/world-1-3%C2%B0c-or-...
Apparently the Japanese continued using wooden buckets longer than other navies, resulting in Pacific data being skewed.
What is discussed there is part of all data interpretation, the transfer functions between raw measures of <something> and the inferred values of <interest>.
Ideology
They can be reinterpreted, but we must never edit or delete the original records.
> Historical records, especially pre-record keeping are revised
Here "historical records" means "the best-known interpretation of historical evidence": it's not talking about modifying records made pre-record keeping. Of course we still have access to previous interpretations: people have gone to pains to ensure they're preserved (despite certain former stewards trying to erase them), and those people are building more resilient systems to avoid this happening again.