Ask HN: Are you a former climate change denier? What changed your perspective?
I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;ll get flak for this. I&#x27;m not a climate change &#x27;denier&#x27;, but I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;ll be called that by some. In fact, I &#x27;believe&#x27; in climate change, meaning that the climate is changing. Because I believe the climate is <i>always</i> changing. When people use the term &quot;climate change&quot; these days, they (IMO) assume that the climate has been steady state for millennia until recently (last 50 years?), and that it&#x27;s only been changing recently, that it&#x27;s a sudden thing, and that it&#x27;s all our fault.<p>The climate has changed, waxed and waned many, many times over the ages. There was an ice age that ended about 10,000 years ago. There was a warming period, followed by a cooling period in the middle ages (search Little Ice Age on wikipedia). Where were all the carbon emissions then? There&#x27;s plenty of evidence that the climate changes all the time, and there is no &#x27;normal&#x27; climate, no &#x27;set point&#x27; where it is &#x27;supposed&#x27; to be at -- that&#x27;s simply not how climate works. We don&#x27;t really know how it works, all of the factors involved. But there is no specific set point that the climate is &#x27;supposed&#x27; to get to and maintain. What kind of silliness is that?<p>Yes it is changing, getting warmer, but there&#x27;s a lot of scare mongering going on that we&#x27;re at fault, and I don&#x27;t think we&#x27;ve figured that out yet. Who&#x27;s to say it won&#x27;t start cooling off again sooner or later? If you&#x27;re old enough to remember, in the 1970s (and maybe 1980s) we were scare mongering over the coming ice age, a global cooling that was going to freeze us all out. How ironic we&#x27;re now in the midst of the opposite.<p>I will say that one very positive thing about all the scare mongering is that we&#x27;re pouring money into clean fuels and methods, which is brilliant -- we should have been doing that all along, and if it takes some fear to push that, great.<p>For those who condemn people like me who aren&#x27;t convinced that the warming trend is all our fault, be very careful about your science. Just because 4 out of 5 scientists or 99% of scientists agree or believe climate change is happening (it is) and that it&#x27;s our fault (that&#x27;s not clear yet), doesn&#x27;t make it true. The number of people who believe in God doesn&#x27;t improve God&#x27;s chances of existing, any more than the number of athiests who disbelieve in God makes God disappear. Belief is not reality. Belief is belief. Reality is reality. The two are <i>not</i> the same, and they are <i>not</i> related or dependent on each other in any way. But too many of us get hijacked by our beliefs and go nuts because we think it&#x27;s realty.<p>Also understand that one published study is regurgitated with the same sensational headlines in 1,000 or more news outlets, making it &#x27;appear&#x27; that there is a consensus of all these news outlets. No, it&#x27;s the same piece of news, sensationalized and then repeated a thousand times over, not a 1,000 different news outlets reporting on a 1,000 different, separate studies that all came to the same conclusion. We have some serious mental biases that come from repetition -- stop watching the news! (How many news stations report how many planes landed safely? None. How many report the one plane crash that happened? All of them, in gory detail.)<p>Recall that cholesterol used to be the big threat to our health these past 40+ years. Surprise! We&#x27;re now finding out over the past few years that it ain&#x27;t so. A whole generation or two of scientists had to pass on before we got to today where cholesterol is not considered a cause of CHD. Back in the &#x27;fat and cholesterol cause CHD&#x27;, you didn&#x27;t get your science <i>funded</i> if you weren&#x27;t taking that position as truth, and if your research wasn&#x27;t geared towards proving exactly that. Go read up on how Alzheimer&#x27;s research has been stymied for decades because scientists refused to accept that the beta amaloids were a <i>symptom</i> of the disease, and not its cause.<p>Be careful of the agendas of those who say climate change isn&#x27;t happening. But also be wary of those who claim to know that it is, and that it&#x27;s all our fault -- they have their own agendas.<p>And when anyone, <i>especially</i> a scientist, says &quot;the science is settled&quot;, you are now in the realm of a dogmatic religion, closed-minded to any evidence that contradicts the belief in the &#x27;faith&#x27;.<p>So, climate getting warmer? Seems to be, yes. Carbon emissions causing it? Hmm. Not so sure yet. Humans causing it? Again, no clear cut evidence that shows how <i>this</i> warming period is due to us that explains how all the other warming periods came about that <i>weren&#x27;t</i> us. Will it never cool off again? No one knows, but it&#x27;s done so in the past, so the balance of probabilities is yes. Unless we really are the cause, and there&#x27;s a tipping point where we can never see a reversal, and we pass that point. Sure, it&#x27;s possible. It&#x27;s also possible we&#x27;ll be struck by an enormous chunk of rock that wipes out the human race, which I think is a serious threat, but for which we don&#x27;t seem to be putting a lot of energy and funding into providing early warning and a means to do something about it.<p>Whether we are to blame or not for the warming climate (as of today), I hope the hysteria continues for another decade or two -- the motivation it provides for developing cleaner energies and products won&#x27;t likely happen otherwise, just like had we not had the Cold War, the space race would not have happened, and we&#x27;d not have landed on the Moon. (Sorry, moon-landing deniers. It really happened.)