Biden has this so wrong.

[srican69]

Denying climate change is not like denying gravity. Gravity is very easy to verify even for a kid. Climate change requires tons of data analysis on a global scale. Climate change is a hard problem to understand... Climate change, especially man made climate change requires us to detect a signal from a ton of noise and confounding factors.. Which is why the fuckers on the right can get away with denying it and people can be skeptical. Comparing climate change to gravity does nothing to win people over.

Green House effect is a much easier thing to understand and verify as physics behind it is simple and straightforward.

[JaneyVee]

1. It kinda is, just different centuries.

Can you imagine explaining gravity to the 15th century crowd. Yet, even they were probably more open-minded and less hostile to science than today's conservatives.

[HereSince1628]

2. Gravity is a poor choice of something easily understood...

But Biden is right about climate change being hard to understand in real time for many people.

Relatively tiny per capita contributions that seem to have no immediate local impact sum to enormous global effects through an anthropogenic process that plays out over timespans equal to or greater than human lives and which causes counter-intuitive results (i.e. cold mid-continental winters in NA due to ocean and atmospheric warming).

[longship]

3. It's an allusion.

And the science behind climate change is equally well established as gravity. So Biden's correct.

But it is still an allusion. Allow him that.

[GummyBearz]

8. Interesting..

Are you implying humans currently have a complete understanding of gravity? Stephen Hawking would be surprised to hear this...

[longship]

9. Nope. I would not say that.

Science is tentative. But that does not mean we know nothing about gravitation. Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact. Einstein got it mostly right. And yup! It is a difficult problem. After a century, we haven't made advances in the theory. However Newton gets our probes to distant planets just fine. And Einstein's relativity (in both inertial and non-inertial reference frames) works very well for the Global Positioning System.

But Biden is still clearly making an allusion here.

Regards.

[GummyBearz]

10. Yes it is just an allusion

There is still a difference between a good comparison and a not-so-good comparison. I think thats the point the OP was trying to make, and I agree with that aspect of his point... Apples to apples, not apples to oranges... etc.

[Orsino]

12. Complete enough for all practical considerations.

Complete enough not only to calculate loads and gravitational time dilation, but to land on the fucking moon. Much more complete in terms of practical predictions than our understanding of climate (or even weather) will ever be.

[GummyBearz]

13. Electromagnetics was more complete 130 years ago than gravity is today.

Just sayin...

[Orsino]

14. And yet for the purpose of setting political policy, that's not important.

It was not a non sequitur for Biden to bring up gravity in the context of climate denialism.

[GummyBearz]

15. Its really not important

And I don't have a problem with him making the comparison. I do have a bit of a problem with people claiming we know how gravity works, when we really don't.

Yes, we got to the moon. A great feat of engineering, chemistry, physics, materials science, etc. That doesn't mean we know how gravity works.

The cave man who realized its better to take a dump with his ass facing down instead of any other direction "solved" gravity for all his practical purposes, but I wouldn't say he knew how gravity works.

[Orsino]

16. Chaos theory hasn't figured out weather, either...

...but as with gravity, we understand enough to make a fuckton of practical predictions.

If it's not quite precise to say we know why gravity works, I won't fault any layman for saying we know how. The ISS is a powerful argument.

"Quite well, actually" is a tongue-in-cheek answer, but a very practical one.

[TheKentuckian]

4. Too many Americans cannot process beyond direct and immediate impacts

[Oilwellian]

5. Vice President Joe Biden Promotes U.S. as Fracking Missionary Force On Ukraine Trip

http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/04/23/vice-president-joe-biden-promotes-u-s-fracking-missionary-force-during-ukraine-trip

No surprise Biden's message on Climate Change is muddled.

[spanone]

6. you're not going to win deniers over....bidens right. it's like denying gravity.

[lame54]

7. I think he is trying to kill the "it's just a theory" meme...

gravity is "just a Theory" but as you pointed out it can easily be verified

[Orsino]

11. Not at all.

Gravity is a scientific theory that enumerates, describes and predicts the effects of masses on other masses. It quantifies what everyone accepted as universal but still ascribed to supernatural influence. Prior to the theory, people even identified "up" with heaven, forever beyond the reach of mortals, and "down" with a hell into which itvwas all to eady to fall.

Climate is also a more complete picture of reality which includes the weather which anyone can sense. The idea that it can be modeled scientifically is anathema to the corporate anti-science line that attempts to paint climate as ineffable, and theoretical models as not just wrong but vaguely heretical.