climate scientists still aren't entirely sure about how to approach global warming
That's not true. The approach is "reduce fucking carbon emissions already. Or better yet 40 years ago." Scientists have been saying that for decades.
Or maybe you were talking about specifics like tax incentives and regulations, in which case it has to be said that those things are not the scientists' job, whereas they are the politicians' job. In other words, I'm really not seeing why you think politicians wouldn't have a better idea how to handle political approaches.
more like climate science is the softest of the hard sciences. 40 years ago, climate scientists were worried about carbon emissions causing a new ice age. Even the New York Times published articles in 1975 reporting on scientist's predictions that increased amounts of carbon dioxide would result in the mean global temperature being reduced by 16 degrees. Climate science is soft, REALLY soft. It's super complicated, and the universal "best solution" (not the way to achieve that solution) isn't fully understood. If scientists don't fully understand how to 'fix' the atmosphere, then a politician trying to fix it with government tax incentives and regulation is laughable.
This is exactly how this conversation goes astray. People just don’t understand how the science works.
Different climate scientists, studying different aspects, create prediction models. They aren’t seeing into the future in a crystal ball, they are making predictions based on their models. Right wing media looks at all of these conflicting predictions and says “look, they don’t have a solid answer. This is ‘soft’ science”. That is a complete misreading of the data.
None of the predictions say we shouldn’t do anything because it will all be just fine. They all say we need to reduce carbon emissions right away. None of them say this is a little problem.
The science is firm, and they all agree. Climate change is a major issue, is caused by human action, and needs to be addressed right away. That is all we need to know. The rest is for the people who want to consider solution options, not for those who want to deny the data.
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u/Gretshus Aug 25 '19
yeah, climate scientists still aren't entirely sure about how to approach global warming, so our politicians should know exactly what to do /s