I wonder when people in places that are proud of their weather will start to realize their base assumptions may no longer be valid. I lived in San Diego the summer of 2015 and it was brutally hot. People kept saying "the last few years have been pretty warm", but were generally dismissive when presented with the possibility that this was the new normal.
You got me wondering and apparently the average max temperature in SD in August 2015 was 81.
Here, it was 83 degrees at 11 last night and it's been a relatively cool summer. But wait, there's nothing like a humid 98 degree day in the middle of August. SD doesn't sound too bad.
The fact that human beings lived in places like Houston before the advent of air conditioner suggests that new normal will get adapted to pretty quickly. How did they do that?
I know someone that just moved to San Diego and apparently one of the selling points is their year round good weather. Not too hot, not too cold. I'm sure human beings can exist in warmer, or colder places, but whether they want to is another matter.
As someone who grew up without ac in Houston, it's pretty miserable. Lots of showers + a silly number of fans helps, but not that much. If you look at the historical population of Houston, it skyrocketed starting in the 50s as central air became widespread, so to answer your question most people didn't.
As someone who grew up w/o a/c in FL, it's doable ... in a house built before the 1950s so it wasn't designed around central air.
High ceilings, entire house on cinder blocks so there's a 3 foot crawlspace under the building, a large porch, roof-vents, etc. Florida cracker style.
It helps that we had the option to visit the public library or movie theater for a/c on the worst days, or go to a public pool.
Worst is to live in a house designed for a/c but not using it. Did that one summer, because we weren't home during the day and wanted to save money. Just left the windows open. Mold started to form, so we decided it was better to run the a/c with its built-in dehumidifier.
It's amazing how quickly people forget the value of a good awning, double-hung windows, and the high ceiling you mentioned. To be fair, there were days when it wasn't too hot outside but the apartment was sweltering.
As a downside, because there was effectively no insulation, when it was 40F outside, it was also 40F inside. We pulled out the space heaters to warm up the bathroom for the couple of weeks of winter.
Even today this happens in highly developed countries where AC is not common. A 2003 heat wave in killed 20,000 people in France, Spain and Portugal, in addition to tens of thousands more related deaths in the years that followed.
That number looks worse than it is. Many of the deaths were elderly people who already were of poor health, and would not have lived for long if that heat wave hadn't occurred.
A way to show that is true is by looking at the death rate shortly _after_ that heat wave; it is slightly lower than expected.
It's already happening. This summer flights were grounded in Arizona because ambient temperatures were higher than the safe operating range of commercial aircraft. That's the kind of thing (along with food shortages) that are impossible to ignore.
Moved to Chciago about 10 years ago in small part to escape the summer sweat in NC. The first few winters were seemed brutal, and the summers pleasant. Past few years have changed: hot summers and mild winters.
It's almost downright pleasant during the past several winter seasons. My snow shovel hasn't been getting much use and was wondering if it was all in my imagination.
The shock will be from electricity prices, not weather itself. San Diego heat is nothing. Houston and most of the rest of the south are unlivable without constant dehumidification (AC).
Currently they exist with really cheap energy. But what if carbon is taxed or exports of Nat gas become more preferable than domestic consumption?
With cheap energy, they can always just Add More AC™. Public places in Houston are kept at 68F in July. Look at Dubai where it's even hotter.
It always depends on your audience. Also, this gives them a way to mix both humidity with temperature - the "feels like" temperature. But, yes, not great.
This article is an example of why I find it difficult to intellectually buy into the warming climate theory. It would seem if one is trying to convince the public of "global warming" or "climate change" or whatever the current term is, that scientists would at least publish articles that lay-scientists like myself could read and be convinced. But that's not what we have here, no what we have here is a hyped-up oh my its getting hot article...
First off, your observation of the ridiculous x-axis labels. Really, "Extremely Hot" Is that supposed to scare me or something?
Second, what does this mean...
"...compared actual summer temperatures for each decade since the 1980s to a fixed baseline average." Did you sample at the same location each summer? Did you sample at the same point in the summer? Did you account for any changes in winter/spring/fall temperatures?
And finally...did they happen to point out the time periods are not all of the same length?
Everything today in "science" is just based off of pretty charts and cartoon graphics. That's their "proof".
The hottest I've been in was in Sep. 2006 in Waco Tx [0]. Mainly due to a hurricane in the gulf that pulled the humidity out of the air, but it wasn't so bad. Road my motorcycle to work that day. Summer 2007 was even stranger, rained almost every other day and temps never made it above 100 that year. Now I'm farther south. I was going to replace my A/C unit in 2015 because it couldn't keep up in the 104+ summer that year. But for the last two summers, it hasn't gotten above 101 and the A/C has been working fine, so here I sit.
This is mindboggling anti-intellectualism. There is absolutely zero substance to your claim. Scientific work is more rigorous and quantitative than ever, especially in climate science, and the fact that you are too lazy to learn the first thing about how modern science works doesn't change that reality. All I can say is I'd really, really wish that you'd educate yourself on how science works. Please start by reading some scientific journals, Nature Geoscience and Geophysical Research Letters are a good place to start.
So you can learn something about scientific findings. Their texts are quite thorough, and the data is there- it bewilders me why you're complaining about a figure for every 1000 words of text (normal ratio for a scientific paper). I don't think it's your opinion, or your observation- just some raw emotional feeling born out of a dislike for science and the people who do it.
I will try to engage with you. Here is a typical paper from Nature Climate Change this week. Can you explain exactly why you think the text has not enough substance and is overly reliant upon figures?
This isn't an effective way to engage with and change someone's point of view, and there's plenty of science on that. It may be intellectually satisfying to you personally, but that's no better than what you are denigrating here. If you actually care about the cause you profess to be for with your actions, please find a different way to express it, lest you hurt while trying to help.
Why? I don't know whether the person in question is trolling or not, but the stated unwillingness to study the data pretty much disqualifies any value that person's opinion might have. Expecting advocates of good environmental policy to convince every last intellectual holdout (who may or may not be sincere) is unreasonable. It's like demanding that NASA get buy-in from the flat earth crowd.
Because stating observations, whether true or not, isn't always an effective way forward. I was working under the assumption that the response was intended for the original commenter, which may have been assuming too much, but when it can be summarized neatly as "You're wrong. Your whole way of looking at this is wrong. Everyone else is right, and you need to just accept it." but with different words, I think it's not effective at engaging with that person. I think that the recipient of that might feel less inclined to accept an alternative point of view if that's how the interaction starts.
I don't think that's what we have here. We have someone that's not persuaded by what they've seen. Has anyone asked why? Even if someone is wrong, that doesn't mean they don't have something important to contribute.
I'm just sad the the first response wasn't something along the lines of: "Why? What does the graphic being a cartoon have to do with how accurate the data and the point it's trying to express is? Why are your experiences in a specific region supposed to map directly towards the overall global scenario? Why are you using hottest days in summer in your observation instead of total hot days, which is actually what's being discussed, since it's possible for the average to be much hotter, even if the largest outlier isn't as high for that year, right?"
It is not the responsibility of sensible people to persuade every last person in existence of the wisdom of a course of action; that's a recipe for paralysis.
What we have here is someone who expressed an aggressively ignorant counterfactual position and rebuffed polite encouragement to consult primary sources. Perhaps the person is trolling, perhaps they're just a fool, but either way people who make objections in bad faith do little other than waste time, and making endless excuses for them is a further waste of time.
This is why I said elsewhere on the thread that it's time to just move on without the buy-in of that part of the population that rejects the reality principle.
How so? The poster displayed a clear example of anti-intellectualism. It's a claim that there is no proof besides "pretty charts and cartoon graphics". Who exactly here isn't engaging? I suppose the old saying holds true here: At least you've found a way to feel superior to both of us.
To actually address your point, however. There is both a breadth and depth of scientific literature, which goes much beyond this nonsense of only "pretty charts". Even reading the linked article in the above nytimes article gives the detail the poster asked for.
Scientists work hard on this. They're not "making it up". They're not lazy. They're not just trying to get rich. Have you spent the last 10 years studying climate change? Have you read all the literature on the subject? From people who have claimed that it was human-driven or not, from scientists across the world and political spectrum. Scientists have. Their entire job is to stay up to date on the current research everywhere in their field.
When you have a problem you don't understand, or don't have enough information about, or don't have a good solution for, what do you do? You ask the expert. The scientists are the experts, and the scientists have a consistent, well-explained consensus on their positions (read the IPCC report for this exact thing). People's resistance to this consensus comes because of two reasons and two reasons alone. 1.) People don't understand climate change because it moves slowly, imperceptibly, and then violently. Climate is far away from an intuitive thing to study, and people's expectations for what's 'logical' in this case is in fact, not always 'logical'. 2.) People's preexisting political affiliations or preconceptions have colored their view. They believe that any position taken by Democrats must be a conspiracy, or ascribe to whataboutism and "moderation". "They're so adamant about this position! But both sides are wrong, so they must be wrong somehow!"
It's nonsense. The fact that so called "intelligent" programmers so easily fall for this garbage is sickening. People claim to be skeptical or logical, but it's all the same stuff with a different lens. Programmers are just as flawed, make their decisions on the same mindless emotional feelings, and don't question anything.
Reading the comments on this post made me lose faith that we will ever address any difficult political and societal challenges. We'll just argue for decades about whether they "actually exist".
Upvoted because you're right. But honestly, I wasn't trying to engage with that poster: I was trying to engage with readers, by fighting this kind of nonsense simply by calling it out as such. I wish I could respond with a substance filled, evidence based response to such a claim, but where would I even begin with such a thing? His claim itself is so vague and unsupported that it's more of an emotional feeling than an opinion that can be criticized. Perhaps someone better than me should try.
> But honestly, I wasn't trying to engage with that poster: I was trying to engage with readers
That's a valid reason to respond as you did. It was my assumption that you were targeting that towards the parent which was in error.
> I was trying to engage with readers, by fighting this kind of nonsense simply by calling it out as such.
That works well for getting people who agree with you to take notice. Unfortunately, if you don't use that to make a new argument to those that already agree with you, you're just preaching to the choir. I don't really have a problem with that, and I wouldn't have called it out if I interpreted it as that, but I also don't think it's all that productive (that's not really meant to be a critique, I'm just explaining my personal point of view on this at this point).
> His claim itself is so vague and unsupported that it's more of an emotional feeling than an opinion that can be criticized. Perhaps someone better than me should try.
When I can summon the strength myself to engage, I find that asking for more details and asking people to actually explain in more detail their belief works well. Often I find that what initially seems like an opinion completely unfounded in facts has some basis, but people are reluctant to go into them because of dismissive responses.
I'm sure we all have a few opinions like that, where we would love to have a good discussion on it, but it's become decisive enough that trying to start a substantive conversation and keep it one track is hard when people make large assumptions about the details of your opinion without actually asking. For example, try starting a conversation on actual differences in how the brain functions between the sexes, and whether that does or does not lead to specific advantages or disadvantages for one sec in certain types of thinking, and whether that advantage if it exists is completely subsumed by environmental factors. I suspect that conversation will quickly approach uselessness if it gets any traction. Some discussions still have far too much cultural and social baggage to happen fruitfully in public, even here, where I'm sure a larger than normal percentage of people would identify as rational intellectuals.
> Everything today in "science" is just based off of pretty charts and cartoon graphics. That's their "proof".
I would say the pretty charts and "cartoon graphics" are in direct response to people not actually examining the numbers, and discounting the way it's expressed/reported in the media. To be fair, getting to what a paper is really saying in a media announcement is sometimes an exercise in dissecting the Pr to do away with the hyperbole, but these graphics are actually a way to combat that. As long as they are built using the core data, it's another way to express what's going on, and hopefully in a way that captures people's attention better than the headlines they are already dubious of do.
Let's turn the premise around. Assuming the conclusions are correct and summers are getting hotter, how would you communicate that to someone like you who is rejecting that based on their personal experience, and has (presumably) already discounted the headline, the graphics meant to convey the same idea, and the underlying data they are presented from (whether through actual distrust of the data or distrust of the summarization to the point of not bothering to check it). If it's true, and we have data to show it, how should it be presented?
Dear lord... it's revealing how little effort you will put into any research or understanding of these results. You come off as proud of your ignorance, and it's not the article's responsibility to cater to your obtuse and idiosyncratic response.
These are average summer temperatures for a network of land based temperature sensors across the entire Northern hemisphere. Please read the source link at the bottom of the article before you ask such frivolous questions. Do you think this work was done by some lone guy in his garage? It's the results of a global dataset that dozens of scientists work on and mantain...
Conveying scientific research just feels impossible when this is the kind of response you can get even on a more educated place forum like HN. Depressing...
however be advised that they are on the cold side of the estimates. (Really if you would read the IPCC report with the same critical eye you are trying to nitpick the NY times, you would see that each and every scenario includes at least a plateau in emissions, they just don't have a scenario were emissions just rise like in the last 100 years.)
> First off, your observation of the ridiculous x-axis labels. Really, "Extremely Hot" Is that supposed to scare me or something?
You could of course inspect the linked paper, "Extremely hot" refers to summers that were once in thirty years hot in the time period from 1951 to 1980. It is just an accurate label.
"Extremely hot" without predicated value is cannot be an accurate label in any context. It's a relative label, alone. In this case it's means "largest positive normalized value". The proposition that it is accurate by existence on a graph, is dishonest. That isn't constructive.
Any label needs context, consider the label "3" or even "9 m/s^2," the first can refer to anything the second to an acceleration or to a gravitational field strength. In the case of weather, "extremely hot" is just what one would call a summer that is hotter above the usual variability. I would argue, that the label is rather good for the context of a NYT article in that the reader would refer to that category as "extremely hot."
Yes, they are relative values. The whole point of the article is to make a relative comparison of temperatures now to what they used to be. It's not trying to present absolute measurements.
The average reader gets no meaningful understanding from "Global average temperatures are up 0.5 degrees Celsius.
But looking at a graph like what's presented here, you can realize that a person in 1950, if asked what the weather was like on one of those red days, would tell you "It's goddamn hot, I can't remember it ever being this hot here." and now we get those temperatures all the time.
If you want raw data and absolute comparisons, there are plenty of places to get it. This is an NYT article written to help people understand in concrete terms that things have changed.
You're not a 'lay scientist' if you're just parsing newspaper articles, while ignoring the methodological explanation and cited sources.
You're just nitpicking at a short interactive widget, simplified for a general audience, as if it were the core argument of a paper in an academic journal - which it isn't.
You're not doing science; you are role-playing a character on the internet, and offering your intellectual laziness or lack of comprehension (idk which) as if it were a counter-argument - which it isn't.
It's true that this article solicits your interest in a phenomenon and does not walk through the full detail of everything, but provides only a short summary and a reference to sources. It'd be great if it were a fully-developed explainer that you could navigate through like a science documentary on one particular subject or a deep dive into Wikipedia. Maybe in a few years we';; be able to produce such elaborate tutorials on the fly using AI, and by asking astute questions you'll be able to interactively broaden your education or even make valuable suggestions from left field, and then you will indeed be a lay scientist. But in the meantime, you're LARPing.
Yet your problem with the x-axis goes away once you actually look into the methods. This sort of immediate conclusion that a study is worthless because a quick glance from non-experts reveals something that looks a little odd is just awful.
Do you think that no reviewers ever think of these things?
> Temperature categories are determined by the normal distribution, so that a third of temperatures fall in each of the main three categories: hot, cold and normal for 1951 to 1980. Summer temperatures for each subsequent 11-year period are compared to the 1951 to 1980 baseline.
It's not so stupid. It essentially drives home the point that a day that in the 1951-1980 period would be considered "hot", today would fall inside the "normal" range.
That is, your normal distribution of temperatures has shifted a bit to the right.
That depends on whatever the local mean and standard deviation is for the locale you're talking about. Absolute temperatures are meaningless in that context
Absolute temperatures in that context are not so much "meaningless" as actively misleading. Measuring in terms of standard deviation is much more precise and relevant, even if it feels less concrete to those not versed in statistics.
Because the values are normalized to what used to be typical in each measurement location. You can't do an Earth-encompassing graph like that in degrees C because what passes for "normal" or "extremely hot" in Los Angeles is very different from Seattle.
I like the graphic; it's very scary. But why were they not inclined to put actual units in the x-axis. Kind of hard to compare what is "cold" vs "normal" vs "hot" without having some kind of basepoint reference.
Yeah absolutely. Without an explanation of what the units are it's worse than useless. "Here's a diagram of an arbitrary metric I invented. Scary, isn't it?"
I'm no climate science denier but stuff like this just adds fuel to the fire. You might say we're just supposed to take it on faith ;)
I would counter that it's up to you to engage your curiosity and track back to the paper if you're interested in the particulars. You don't have to take it on faith, the link is right there in the article.
If you track back to the 2016 paper, Fig. 6, you find similar graphs (not as pretty, not interactive) with this explanation:
"Frequency of occurrence (vertical axis) of local seasonal mean temperature anomalies in unit of local standard deviation of Northern Hemisphere land areas."
It takes some time to unwrap the words there. The "anomaly" is the difference of an observation at a particular place and time from a seasonal and/or regional mean value. As you probably know, anomalies are pervasively used in geosciences. So in essence he's standardizing into what in statistics would be called a z-score,
z = (x - mu) / sigma
where mu is the regional/temporal average, and sigma is the local standard deviation.
I guess the above is probably the reason the NYT graphic did not explain it fully.
Some folks are growing olives on a Canadian island just off Vancouver. They had their first successful oil pressing from the trees just this last December. I'm looking forward to bamboo in New Hampshire.
Bamboo is nothing to look forward to unless you're using it as construction material or otherwise have a real use for it. Bamboo is basically a giant weed.
I understand that it also makes good biochar. Some varieties make good textile fiber, I personally like the feel of bamboo and bamboo hybrid textiles, and the ones I own seem to hold up better than cotton after washing. The fact that it is basically a giant weed (more specifically a grass, everyone's favourite type of weed) is great, because you can abuse it, and it'll still take up tonnes of space for you. It's not too hard to contain if you make sure to moat, vinegar, and block it thoroughly. A good place for an expired family pet or a political enemy. When compressed thoroughly (three or four thousand tons per square meter) with the fibers aligned, it makes for unusually uniform and dense planks, beams, and boards. If assembled while green, then treated with borax, it can make for very interesting (and outrageously strong) structures if you know what to do with it. If you go to extra lengths, it can be a centenarian building material.
The shoots are also good eats when cooked in rich stew or broiled with mayonnaise and chili.
To address several questions of why there are no "actual units in the x-axis":
If I understand correctly how this graph and the categories are constructed, the plotted data do not have associated temperature units. The temperature data from each location is first normalized and expressed in terms of standard deviations relative to the local temperature distribution in the baseline period. These normalized readings are then binned together to create the bell curve plots.
That's why there are no "extremely hot" data points in the baseline period: by definition these data points lie outside the local baseline distributions.
UPDATE: This approach makes sense: different locales will have different temperature distributions; that means that a single measurement (presented as a deviation from the mean temperature expressed in absolute units: e.g. 7 degree F higher than average) can be extremely anomalous in one locale, but can be within 1 standard deviation in another. But once these measurements are expressed in standard deviations, the absolute temperature units disappear.
TL;DR: While regional normalization makes sense in a stationary climate, the presence of trends tends to exaggerate extremes by increasing the apparent variance of the distribution.
Eyeballing the data from the NYT article, it appears that the authors have continued to make the same statistical mistakes. It is unfortunate that NYT would publish this, as the field (climate science) is quite aware of the problem with the original 2012 paper.
Looking at your graph here[1] it looks like your correction affects the shape of the distribution but not the shifting median. Is that a correct reading?
In Cairo this is a very big issue. I have heard
something like it raising the outside temperature by 15 degrees in the city proper. Those are likely going to be older air conditioners not following the latest standards though, and I don't know what the broader impact beyond Cairo is.
Depends on where very dramatically. If the A/C units are venting to the outside, not likely to have a dramatic impact outside the immediate area of the coils.
In the NYC subway system however, it apparently had a dramatic impact. From what I read (source not handy), before A/C came to trains the tunnels were relatively ok (<90°F), but since adding A/C to the trains, tunnels and platforms now hit way over 100° (L platform has been >115°) in the summer.
Energy can't be created or destroyed, only moved around. So the heat generated by an air conditioner can be calculated exactly by how much electrical power it consumes.
I get that. The amount of energy "created" by the AC is the amount that is consumed (electricity). However, AC is also a heat pump, displacing the heat in the air inside a structure to the outside of it. If you calculate all the inside AC air space in New York City and figure out that volume and the amount of the heat displaced, what local affect does it have on the air temperature on the sidewalk?
Your absolutely correct, but I just want to point out that thermal efficiency of an AC unit will be greater than 100%. I.e. it can drive more heat from one reservoir of air to another than the electric electric energy required to do so.
An overwhelming number of people I know are convinced all of this data has been falsified (usually by Democrats, but I hear all manner of wild conspiracies), and no amount of evidence will convince them otherwise. To them summers are not warmer, and anyone who remembers otherwise has a bad memory or isn't old enough to know better.
Is there anything at all we can do to change the minds of such entrenched folks? Or do we just write them off and move on?
Be transparent with the data. Stop making adjustments that are questionable and coincidentally result in increased warming. Stop blacklisting scientists who disagree with the consensus. Stop getting hacked and releasing emails showing people discussing how to "hide the decline". Stop gaming peer review by having the papers reviewed by a group of people who all agree. Stop making hyperbolic predictions about the future which are completely falsifiable and indeed end up to be false. Stop insisting that the models are completely accurate even though they have been completely inaccurate thus far. Stop accusing people who have questions about mitigation strategies as "climate deniers".
>> Stop gaming peer review by having the papers reviewed by a group of people who all agree.
> Are you accusing of fraud? Any example, please?
Your response to this sentence is what feeds the problem. It is completely fair to point out, in the context of this discussion, flaws in the process that produces some of this research. The parent was pointing out, in the sentence, one problem with the process which produces scientific papers. This is certainly a discussion that needs to be had, and responding in this way which is dismissive is exactly what the parent was saying. Science needs to be scientific about the publishing process. And yes, literally complete gibberish has been published before:
The academic peer review process is far from perfect, and the incentives of the humans involved does not necessarily align with producing the most accurate science.
Will you say that peer review papers about quantum mechanics are rigged because they are reviewed by a group of people who all agree that eveolution is real?
Will you say that peer review papers about Evolution are rigged because they are reviewed by a group of people who all agree that eveolution is real?
> The academic peer review process is far from perfect, and the incentives of the humans involved does not necessarily align with producing the most accurate science
And this is another subtle accusation of fraud. Do you have any proof of climate science papers are rigged?
> This is certainly a discussion that needs to be had, and responding in this way which is dismissive is exactly what the parent was saying
No, the parent was saying that climate papers are wrong beacuse the papers are only reviewed by people that think that climate change is real.
So because the process has flaws (like all processes), we should all just take a breather and tidy that all up to be rock solid before we move forward with anything? The earth would literally grind to a halt if we applied that reasoning to everything.
The system will never be perfect, if you take take a small number of instances of academic dishonesty and use that to debase something as enormous and researched as climate science, how could we ever hope to make decisions about anything?
If you applied this type of thinking to everything else how could you make any decision at all?
> So because the process has flaws (like all processes), we should all just take a breather and tidy that all up to be rock solid before we move forward with anything? The earth would literally grind to a halt if we applied that reasoning to everything.
No, not necessarily. I think that what the original poster was saying was that when a person questions climate change, they are met with the same type of response as when a person's religion is insulted. And for most people who believe in scientific truths, to them it is a religion in the sense that they personally cannot prove it. They are picking a group for its general beliefs, social acceptance, camaraderie, etc, but to not know any more about the science they believe in than most religious people know about the religion they profess to believe in.
> The system will never be perfect, if you take take a small number of instances of academic dishonesty and use that to debase something as enormous and researched as climate science, how could we ever hope to make decisions about anything?
Can I paraphrase? Say we were talking about the religion, and someone points out that there are cases where religious people abuse their power to hurt others. The response is often,
"The church will never be perfect, if you take a small number of instances of abuse of religious authority and use that to debase something as enormous and researched as god the almighty and the 10 commandments, how could we ever hope to make decisions about anything?"
Assuming that you are not religious, how would you respond to a religious person who made that argument?
> I think that what the original poster was saying was that when a person questions climate change, they are met with the same type of response as when a person's religion is insulted.
No, that's not what the original poster was saying.
The original poster was insinuating that all climate researchers are fraudsters, the original poster was insinuating that all climate research is wrong.
It's kind of sad that you think accuracy is the reason conservatives hate liberal ideas (sad because I know you're trying your best to help here).
You're talking about a political base that is currently thriving almost entirely on spite and a total absence of fact. They don't give a shit how accurate your x-axis is labeled, they're at the point where in some circles they discredit science as a concept.
> they're at the point where in some circles they discredit science as a concept.
Because the left has politicized science. Science should be apolitical. Many on the left do not fail to provide those on the right justifications for dismissing science outright. This will not be fixed until those on the left with a high respect for the impartiality of science start to condemn those on the left that abuse that science to further their message.
The right discrediting science as a concept is the effect, not the cause.
> Because the left has politicized science. Science should be apolitical. Many on the left do not fail to provide those on the right justifications for dismissing science outright. This will not be fixed until those on the left with a high respect for the impartiality of science start to condemn those on the left that abuse that science to further their message.
No. The fact the Right has moved so far past the center that they can't find facts to support their positions has resulted in the Right politicizing science and when that fails they ban information from being used and/or removing them from advisory boards.
> North Carolina, whose barrier islands are particularly vulnerable to sea level rise, was widely mocked in 2012 when the General Assembly passed a law barring communities from using a report containing 100-year projections of sea level rise—up to 39 inches—in their planning. Three years later a compromise was reached; legislators found a new report with a 30-year time horizon less alarming, and agreed that was permissible.
> In the interim, though, coastal planning lagged. Under then-Governor Pat McCrory (R), climate change information disappeared from the state’s Department of Environmental Quality Web site. The legislature altered the makeup of the Coastal Resources Commission, which overseas coastal planning, to remove some scientists and conservation group representatives and replaced them with more business-friendly members.
Science is always political. It's always been political, and it always will be political.
As easy examples, 1) a lot of underwater research was driven by the US military who wanted better ways to detect Soviet subs, 2) much of computer science in the 1960s was funded by the military through ARPA, 3) the Tuskegee Syphilis study existed because the people running the study thought it was better to let black people suffer in order to get scientific data - a decision solidly rooted in the race politics of the time, 4) much of Near Eastern archaeology is driven by politics related to the Abrahamic religions, far beyond what 'impartial science' might do, 5) the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funds so much education research (and journalists, think tanks, lobbying organizations and governments) that it can overwhelm opposition, including objections to the quality of the science.
(Eg, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulle... for how $200 million, which combined research and advocacy, helped convince many states to switch to the Common Core, even though there were no pilot studies or other solid evidence that it was worthwhile.)
Nor are scientists impartial. When Rowland and Molina published their findings about CFCs and the ozone layer, "they also made an effort to announce their findings outside of the scientific community, informing policy makers and the news media of their work." (Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_J._Molina .)
They didn't decide to be impartial and apolitical.
Curiously, like creationism, the only part of the world were climate change is a problem is in some sectors of USA.
In the rest of the world, even the right parties agree that climate change is happening and it is a real problem.
Don't blame the left for politicing something when almost ALL of the world, left or right agree and some right groups in USA are the ones making the noise.
It's not that the left has embraced a certain branch of science, it's that the right has embraced entrenched business interests, specifically oil and gas, to the point where they're forced to dismiss that science, because it's incompatible with profit maximization of those entrenched businesses.
Why is the assumption that when a political party hates something, it's because the opposing party did something wrong?
I know a lot of over-zealous liberals who have definitely misrepresented facts, but honestly I don't think I've seen anyone ever do anything that made me think "oh ok, science must be fake"
"Liberals" are just as wiling to dismiss science when it goes against their narrative. This is especially noticeable in anything related to the PC-driven anti-scientific "human studies" narratives of the "left" where historical facts, DNA research and simple things like social behavior statistics or IQ test results are muted because they promote the thoughtcrime.
Speaking of wrongthink :) - the reason IPCC models run hot is because the scientists in charge are acting un-scientifically by discarding the data that doesn't agree with the "impending anthropogenic global warming doom" narrative and over-concentrating on CO2 as the culprit behind the "climate change".
> the reason IPCC models run hot is because the scientists in charge are acting un-scientifically by discarding the data that doesn't agree with the "impending anthropogenic global warming doom" narrative
Any source for this claim?
> So again, goes both ways, except I haven't heard of any falsifications at the hands the non-alarmist camp to prove their position this way
There was no falsification, you have to research better and not read what Lamar Smith says.
By the way, even Dr. Bates says that the data is accurate
> “The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,”
The commenter seems to be saying that if the clmate scientists did all those things he prescribes and the data showed the world is getting hotter, he would believe them.
However, I think that is not at all what he really thinks. To start, he lays out a pattern of purposeful deception that it would make sense for the climate scientists to do only if they knew the data actually shows the world is not getting hotter. But how can the commenter know that unless he already knows that this is in fact the case? And on what basis could he know that if the true data is hidden?
My best guess is the commenter is a fanatic believer in conservative economic theory, which assumes that nature must be such that it is possible for the free market to expand without limit without governmental regulation and in the process bring only good to the human race.
No, I think that the data has been adjusted, sometimes purposefully and sometimes unknowingly, in a direction which results in more warming due to the peer pressure involved. Some of the adjustments are justifiable and some are questionable. Sometimes, the adjustments need to be adjusted because of additional changes in the environment. Sometimes this gets done and sometimes it doesn't.
Then, we have scientists who make models which should be falsifiable, but instead of declaring that the models don't work when they fail to match reality, they make adjustments to "fit the curve". Anyone who has dealt with models before knows that you can make any number of adjustments to fit any curve you want. After the adjustments, the models continue to be inaccurate. Sometimes, suspiciously, the models become more accurate in the near term but still predict the same huge temperature rise in the future.
Then, the activists on the left take the current claims made by science and extend them as far as possible. This is then stated as fact. See: Al Gore. Said activists use "97% consensus" to defend their hyperbolic claims, mostly knowing that the 97% consensus doesn't apply to their exaggerations.
These "facts" are then used as justifications for massive government involvement in the economy, which just so happens to line up with the political wishes of the left.
> No, I think that the data has been adjusted, sometimes purposefully and sometimes unknowingly, in a direction which results in more warming due to the peer pressure involved.
Any example of those pressures?
> Then, we have scientists who make models which should be falsifiable, but instead of declaring that the models don't work when they fail to match reality, they make adjustments to "fit the curve".
Any example of those fittings?
A lot of talking of "the left" like demons but none of you can't give just one example of those falsifications. Perhaps because there is none and "some right" is just inventing them?
I looked into this deeply about six months ago. I don't remember the specifics.
There's a paper out there where two completely separate groups of scientists disagree with each other on what the adjustments to the data should be. These are not alarmist versus deniers, these are both alarmist scientists who think it's a big problem.
They both can't be correct. Someone is making incorrect adjustments.
As to the models, when the models failed to predict reality, they should have been thrown out. But they keep turning out revision after revision of the models, which continue to fail to predict the future.
You cannot claim that models are predictive of anything until they have successfully predicted actual reality, but what these scientists are doing are saying "well, the models didn't predict well, but we made adjustments and now they predict better), which means nothing. For all we know, the adjustments could've made the predictions worse.
The other side defends by stating that the models are the best we have, but I would argue that they are worse than nothing. They have gone from being wildly inaccurate, to just somewhat inaccurate.
Of course I don't have any proof, because the internal deliberations are not public, the code for the models is not public, and the revisions to the data and models are not public.
Frankly, I'd be very happy if they would release the source code for the models so we could see what a clusterfuck they are.
> As to the models, when the models failed to predict reality, they should have been thrown out.
What models have failed to predict reality?, all the models have failed?
> Of course I don't have any proof, because the internal deliberations are not public, the code for the models is not public, and the revisions to the data and models are not public.
Really?
> Frankly, I'd be very happy if they would release the source code for the models so we could see what a clusterfuck they are.
So, you don't have any proof, you don't know that the IPCC models have been aligned with reality but you claim that they are a clusterfuck.
I think that you didn't look very deeply, or perhaps, you deep only on some sites that are not very scientifics.
Of course I don't have any proof. If I had proof, there wouldn't be any discussion.
A five minute Google search will show you that the vast majority of the models have ranged from being somewhat inaccurate to wildly inaccurate all in the direction of predicting more global warming.
Furthermore, I'm not aware of any other models with publicly released source code. In my opinion, that's ridiculous, since people want us to literally re-organize the economy around these predictions.
Do you want to defend the idea of keeping the source code for the models private?
The adjustments thing probably can't go away entirely, it seems like anytime you try to combine many distinct historical datasets you need normalizing adjustments.
Even with the same nominal weather station recording over the years:
Stations have moved to different locations over the past 150 years, most more than once. They have changed instruments from mercury thermometers to electronic sensors, and have changed the time they take temperature measurements from afternoon to morning. Cities have grown up around stations, and some weather stations are not ideally located. All of these issues introduce inconsistencies into the temperature record.
The data points become invalid. You can't just adjust them to become valid, then you are no longer measuring. You are telling the data what to be. There is no math that can do this, which is WHY apolitical physicists/engineers/mathtypes mock climate science.
When doctors tell you normal body temperature is 98 degrees they are dumbing it down for you, instead of relying on bad sampling from the past.
Suppose a station uses a mercury thermometer for the first 80 years then switches to a thermocouple, with an overlap of 10 years were both thermometers are run side-by-side. Suppose also that it shows that the old thermometer consistently reads 0.25° warmer than the digital one, and that calibration tests show that the new thermometer is accurate.
Do all of the old data points get thrown out of the window? What's wrong with adjusting the old temperatures by 0.25°?
If you're an physicist/engineer/mathtype, you should know many measurements always come with adjustments. All digital thermometers, for example, have non-linear response with temperature, and thus are linearized (adjusted) with a complex model that represents the response character of a thermistor (or any other digital temperature sensor).
There's whole disciplines in engineering that deal with getting good data from imperfect sensors. Have you heard of sensor fusion? Whole field that uses multiple sensors to mutually correct error. Have you ever wondered why digital barometers come with a thermometer? No, it's not because it's convenient, it's because a raw digital barometers reading fluctuates with temperature, so the temperature sensor is used to correct the raw output.
Also, stop thinking that the greenhouse effect doesn't apply on a planetary scale and stop thinking we don't produce more carbon than ever existed in human existence and thinking that it is some "mere coincidence" or just "natural"
> Stop getting hacked and releasing emails showing people discussing how to "hide the decline".
Victim blaming much?
Also, the infamous "hide the decline" is not what you believe it is. The point has been explained thoroughly by so many people, I don't feel the need to repeat it here.
That's like someone taking a phrase from Linus's mail saying "this nice trick allows us to hide the latency in module XXX", and then running to the press saying "Linux is hiding its latency issues! Linus himself said that!" Of course, what's unbelievable is that some people are willing to fall for that.
What mitigation strategies? You say that as if someone is trying to push some agenda that hurts you, we're not even to that point because we can't agree that the sky is blue and the planet is warming. Nobody is limiting your power use or instating curfews, you can have all the incandescent light bulbs you want and 5 TV's if you can afford the power bill. We're fighting right now (in the US that is, no where else for the most part) to move the gasoline further from the open flame, thats it. The only thing of note happening is the move (almost entirely driven by private enterprise) from fossil fuels to renewable energy. The worst case scenario of this switch is that the planet might continue increasing in temperature, albeit slower, but we'll have cleaner air (yes I know there are environmental considerations for renewables as well, but those issues can and will be worked through with time).
> Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position. The following is a partial list of these organizations, along with links to their published statements and a selection of related resources.
When you have 97% agreement on a subject its difficult to guarantee the 3% is represented in every peer review. That isn't "gaming" the system. That is just the reality of how Science works across the board.
You aren't going to magically find a small, vocal minority has the bandwidth and numbers to be represented 50% of the time like you find in politics.
Write them off and move on. By 'write them off' I mean ignore their input into the decision-making process insofar as it is detached from observable reality; we should still attempt to mitigate the impact that climate change is likely to have upon them (in terms of agricultural production, extreme weather events, epidemiology etc.).
Some 10% of the population is avowedly irrational and that's not going to change. I view this as psychic/psychiatric distress in the face of an overwhelming existential problem (part climate, part economic) and think the best thing is to just get on with trying to alleviate the stressors and hope those people gradually come back to reality.
This is not the right way to look at the issue. If the low-level data itself can not be made any more convincing, the only real option is to ignore staunch deniers. The right way to look at this, given the way it has been politicized, is to look from the perspective of any proposed policy change. And then for each given change, be sure that the evidence and arguments are solid at all levels of the discussion. That is:
1. The observed climate data is valid and complete.
2. The predictive models are reliable and sufficiently comprehensive and objective.
3. Specific problems are clearly articulated.
4. Proposed policies will solve the clearly articulated problems.
5. The proposed solution is realistic to implement worldwide, wont' have any unexpected side-effects, and won't cause worse problems than the problems it's solving. Negative side-effects should be acknowledged and addressed as best as possible.
While I have seen arguments that at least touch on most of those points, it's very difficult to arrive at level 5 and not have ANY room for mistakes or legitimate differences of opinion and perspective. So while it's nice to bitch and moan about the wild conspiracy theorists challenging the facts established at the lowest level, the opposition is just as justified bitching and moaning about all the political actors who have already decided what solution they want, and are just doing whatever they can to make sure that solution becomes policy, no matter the consequences.
What's frustrating is that lots of people will superficially disagree at 5 and seem reasonable, but if you dig a little deeper, they actually disagree at 1 and you are wasting your time.
It's unfortunately my prior at this point. The people with uninformed objections at 1 are a much larger group than people who agree with 1:n-1 and can have a nuanced discussion of n.
The problem is that people at level 1 are currency for the people who disagree at level 5. High-level partisans on both sides rely on propaganda and rhetoric to sway the lowest common denominator for support. Most of those people are not making up their minds about what to believe based on the scientific validity of the evidence. They're simply going with their gut.
I would like to point out that this summer is probably one of the coldest in a while. My flowers that are usually in full bloom from the hot summer, have yet to bloom.
My friend in Finland said the summer there is one of the coldest in the last 50 years.
Yes, the earth’s temperature has only risen something like 1C on average. All these anecdotal stories about the weather don’t help. Deniers who are experiencing cooler weather can simply point to that.
I would like point out quite opposite. Here in iran the summer has been so far one of the warmest summers anyone ever remembers. Last year was too. This year is so far hotter than last year.
I do live in very cold area in Iran. It is unbelievable how much weather has became warmer. Even i do remember when i was child , weather was noticeably colder. ( and I am in my 20's) . Let alone old peoples, who are literally ( all of them) in shock about how warm the weather became in last 5/10 years.
Here in Northern Virginia, near the DC area, it was so hot that winter never came. Grass, bushes and trees were still green during winter. It didn't snow this year. And it's been incredibly hot through spring and summer. Temperatures have been consistently rising each month for many years.
A serious question for those who are generally skeptical about climate change: Why do you think that so many scientists, nations, and people are generally in agreement that climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity. Who do you think gains by pushing the (in your mind, false) climate change narrative? I honestly want to know, I'm not trying to belittle.
Even ignoring the data (whichever way you interpret it), those of us who accept anthropomorphic climate change see a pretty clear case of "look who benefits" in terms of climate change. The vast majority of money and power is on the climate-change-is-fake side in America (if not worldwide). Huge, extremely powerful interests have a great deal at stake in whether or not we work to reduce carbon emissions and by how much. The switch from fossil fuels to renewable resources could lose some very powerful people a lot of money.
On the climate-change-is-real side, its much harder to tell. Climate scientists don't have that much to gain, maybe a little research money here and there but nothing in comparison to say the oil and gas industries and those that use petroleum and petroleum derivatives. Renewables are an emerging industry. Batteries, solar panels, wind farms, tidal power etc all represent a financial opportunity to whoever gets out front. China is making large strides in this industry, but still its an industry in its infancy, it doesn't have nearly the political and financial clout that entrenched fossil-fuel industries do.
Do you see why it might be confusing for some of us to see regular people essentially defending the powerful against the weak, as it were? I think that the overall of the research indicates that the earth is warming and we're the primary cause (in that we're the cause that it is increasing so rapidly, as opposed to at historic rates), I know there is some bad science as there always will be, but this situation just makes absolutely no sense from a logical perspective. It would be the most confusing conspiracy probably ever to have a worldwide, grassroots coordination to move to cleaner energy sources for bogus reasons and defeat the most entrenched and wealthy interests in probably all if history in the process. For what? If the reasons are bogus why do all these scientists care? Who benefits?
I believe in climate change and I am proud of some of the successes of the EPA/other US policies have had in protecting the global commons (ozone, lead, NOx, etc). But following your point, ignoring this to focus on a "who gains" perspective...
Trump used now-unsurprising hyperbole when he said that global warming was a hoax invented by the Chinese, but he was alluding to this point.
China has over a billion citizens, a disproportionate number of young men, and quasi open economy + closed political system where who you know & schooling strongly affects your ability to succeed. Also, like the US and Russia, it has tremendous natural & mineral wealth available for traditional enterprises.
In such a <em>political</em> climate, China has made it a national policy to out-compete America for traditional manufacturing jobs to keep all those people, particularly young men employed and rising. Cheap energy is a major manufacturing consideration and if you can get the American government to deficit spend money or regulate private industry on this, that fits China's national goals nicely.
(Encouraging deficit spending by the US helps keep the Renminbi cheap relative to the dollar in our crazy fiat world)
Russia has an even stronger incentive to encourage environmentalist policies by the US government because of its fossil fuel wealth and ambitions for the opening Arctic ocean without US competition there.
Ironically, historically, betting against American ingenuity and worldwide technological advancement has been a mistake; some minimally invasive level of US government intervention is probably worth it for mitigating global warming and blunting oil-rich oligarchies. But it is also still in the interest of current Chinese/Russian/Iranian/Venezuelan leaders at this time.
Finally this can be viewed two ways in US politics. On the one hand, environmental protectionism logically hurts the working class in America, to some difficult-to-quantify extent in the immediate term/recent past. On the other hand, America is a world leader. We may have some moral imperative, plus gains in technology financed in America lift all boats, including ours which is the largest and finest.
(may have to reevaluate the phrase "lift all boats")
Some interesting thoughts. Alternatively, I could see fueling the climate-change-is-fake side in America could benefit China and Russia in totally hypothetical ways.
1) We stay dependent on fossil fuels and make it harder for the world to make the transition, allowing Russia to continue making money exporting.
2) We stay out of the renewable energy research and manufacturing business globally, allowing China to corner that market while our traditional industries are propped up longer than they should be (ie, Coal) .
3) Our influence gradually weakens as we're the last holdout, despite being the most powerful and wealthy nation. Who will listen to the US on anything if we're anti-science and the only major holdout on climate change?
I agree with (1) from a long term perspective and think we should increase funding to green tech researchers. But I weigh political resistance to developing resources (ice breaking trade lanes, oil wealth, etc.) on the North American side of the Arctic ocean as benefiting Russia more than unquantifiable acceleration (due to more research funding) of the eventual long term, technology based decline of fossil fuels.
On (2) and (3) these are basically free market vs. government organized enterprise and left vs. right political arguments, so I'm not sure if I can rebut them articulately. And they probably come down to Putin's and Xi's personal opinions, not ours.
But if Xi wants to subsidize worldwide solar power production at the cost of China's other industries, I say go ahead and we'll probably still compete with private actors. They should lead some like us.
And again, I'm not saying there shouldn't be any US government organized enterprise in this field. For example I think the US, Russia, China, UK, and others could work together by laying a great circumnavigating high voltage DC cable for solar energy, on which ``the sun never sets''. But still the validity of (2) and (3) is definitely colored by political leanings.
Since the comments have become a general discussion of climate change, I decided to look up polls to see what public perception are. Fears of climate change seem to more or less track temperatures.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 203 ms ] threadHere, it was 83 degrees at 11 last night and it's been a relatively cool summer. But wait, there's nothing like a humid 98 degree day in the middle of August. SD doesn't sound too bad.
The fact that human beings lived in places like Houston before the advent of air conditioner suggests that new normal will get adapted to pretty quickly. How did they do that?
High ceilings, entire house on cinder blocks so there's a 3 foot crawlspace under the building, a large porch, roof-vents, etc. Florida cracker style.
It helps that we had the option to visit the public library or movie theater for a/c on the worst days, or go to a public pool.
Worst is to live in a house designed for a/c but not using it. Did that one summer, because we weren't home during the day and wanted to save money. Just left the windows open. Mold started to form, so we decided it was better to run the a/c with its built-in dehumidifier.
[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/study...
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave
A way to show that is true is by looking at the death rate shortly _after_ that heat wave; it is slightly lower than expected.
If you want to compare this number with e.g. car accidents, it would be better to count QALY's lost (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year), rather than deaths.
It's almost downright pleasant during the past several winter seasons. My snow shovel hasn't been getting much use and was wondering if it was all in my imagination.
Currently they exist with really cheap energy. But what if carbon is taxed or exports of Nat gas become more preferable than domestic consumption?
With cheap energy, they can always just Add More AC™. Public places in Houston are kept at 68F in July. Look at Dubai where it's even hotter.
Why not put it in numbers? It's not like we are strangers to numbers in degrees celsius or fahrenheit. Only a fool would do axes like that.
They could have just used this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_index
First off, your observation of the ridiculous x-axis labels. Really, "Extremely Hot" Is that supposed to scare me or something?
Second, what does this mean...
"...compared actual summer temperatures for each decade since the 1980s to a fixed baseline average." Did you sample at the same location each summer? Did you sample at the same point in the summer? Did you account for any changes in winter/spring/fall temperatures?
And finally...did they happen to point out the time periods are not all of the same length?
If your concern is lack of rigor in a pop science article, go to the primary documents instead. http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/
There is no current term, both describe different things
https://climate.nasa.gov/resources/global-warming/
The hottest I've been in was in Sep. 2006 in Waco Tx [0]. Mainly due to a hurricane in the gulf that pulled the humidity out of the air, but it wasn't so bad. Road my motorcycle to work that day. Summer 2007 was even stranger, rained almost every other day and temps never made it above 100 that year. Now I'm farther south. I was going to replace my A/C unit in 2015 because it couldn't keep up in the 104+ summer that year. But for the last two summers, it hasn't gotten above 101 and the A/C has been working fine, so here I sit.
[0]http://i.imgur.com/Cgu3Vuc.jpg
I will try to engage with you. Here is a typical paper from Nature Climate Change this week. Can you explain exactly why you think the text has not enough substance and is overly reliant upon figures?
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/n...
I'm just sad the the first response wasn't something along the lines of: "Why? What does the graphic being a cartoon have to do with how accurate the data and the point it's trying to express is? Why are your experiences in a specific region supposed to map directly towards the overall global scenario? Why are you using hottest days in summer in your observation instead of total hot days, which is actually what's being discussed, since it's possible for the average to be much hotter, even if the largest outlier isn't as high for that year, right?"
It is not the responsibility of sensible people to persuade every last person in existence of the wisdom of a course of action; that's a recipe for paralysis.
What we have here is someone who expressed an aggressively ignorant counterfactual position and rebuffed polite encouragement to consult primary sources. Perhaps the person is trolling, perhaps they're just a fool, but either way people who make objections in bad faith do little other than waste time, and making endless excuses for them is a further waste of time.
This is why I said elsewhere on the thread that it's time to just move on without the buy-in of that part of the population that rejects the reality principle.
To actually address your point, however. There is both a breadth and depth of scientific literature, which goes much beyond this nonsense of only "pretty charts". Even reading the linked article in the above nytimes article gives the detail the poster asked for.
Scientists work hard on this. They're not "making it up". They're not lazy. They're not just trying to get rich. Have you spent the last 10 years studying climate change? Have you read all the literature on the subject? From people who have claimed that it was human-driven or not, from scientists across the world and political spectrum. Scientists have. Their entire job is to stay up to date on the current research everywhere in their field.
When you have a problem you don't understand, or don't have enough information about, or don't have a good solution for, what do you do? You ask the expert. The scientists are the experts, and the scientists have a consistent, well-explained consensus on their positions (read the IPCC report for this exact thing). People's resistance to this consensus comes because of two reasons and two reasons alone. 1.) People don't understand climate change because it moves slowly, imperceptibly, and then violently. Climate is far away from an intuitive thing to study, and people's expectations for what's 'logical' in this case is in fact, not always 'logical'. 2.) People's preexisting political affiliations or preconceptions have colored their view. They believe that any position taken by Democrats must be a conspiracy, or ascribe to whataboutism and "moderation". "They're so adamant about this position! But both sides are wrong, so they must be wrong somehow!"
It's nonsense. The fact that so called "intelligent" programmers so easily fall for this garbage is sickening. People claim to be skeptical or logical, but it's all the same stuff with a different lens. Programmers are just as flawed, make their decisions on the same mindless emotional feelings, and don't question anything.
Reading the comments on this post made me lose faith that we will ever address any difficult political and societal challenges. We'll just argue for decades about whether they "actually exist".
That's a valid reason to respond as you did. It was my assumption that you were targeting that towards the parent which was in error.
> I was trying to engage with readers, by fighting this kind of nonsense simply by calling it out as such.
That works well for getting people who agree with you to take notice. Unfortunately, if you don't use that to make a new argument to those that already agree with you, you're just preaching to the choir. I don't really have a problem with that, and I wouldn't have called it out if I interpreted it as that, but I also don't think it's all that productive (that's not really meant to be a critique, I'm just explaining my personal point of view on this at this point).
> His claim itself is so vague and unsupported that it's more of an emotional feeling than an opinion that can be criticized. Perhaps someone better than me should try.
When I can summon the strength myself to engage, I find that asking for more details and asking people to actually explain in more detail their belief works well. Often I find that what initially seems like an opinion completely unfounded in facts has some basis, but people are reluctant to go into them because of dismissive responses.
I'm sure we all have a few opinions like that, where we would love to have a good discussion on it, but it's become decisive enough that trying to start a substantive conversation and keep it one track is hard when people make large assumptions about the details of your opinion without actually asking. For example, try starting a conversation on actual differences in how the brain functions between the sexes, and whether that does or does not lead to specific advantages or disadvantages for one sec in certain types of thinking, and whether that advantage if it exists is completely subsumed by environmental factors. I suspect that conversation will quickly approach uselessness if it gets any traction. Some discussions still have far too much cultural and social baggage to happen fruitfully in public, even here, where I'm sure a larger than normal percentage of people would identify as rational intellectuals.
I would say the pretty charts and "cartoon graphics" are in direct response to people not actually examining the numbers, and discounting the way it's expressed/reported in the media. To be fair, getting to what a paper is really saying in a media announcement is sometimes an exercise in dissecting the Pr to do away with the hyperbole, but these graphics are actually a way to combat that. As long as they are built using the core data, it's another way to express what's going on, and hopefully in a way that captures people's attention better than the headlines they are already dubious of do.
Let's turn the premise around. Assuming the conclusions are correct and summers are getting hotter, how would you communicate that to someone like you who is rejecting that based on their personal experience, and has (presumably) already discounted the headline, the graphics meant to convey the same idea, and the underlying data they are presented from (whether through actual distrust of the data or distrust of the summarization to the point of not bothering to check it). If it's true, and we have data to show it, how should it be presented?
These are average summer temperatures for a network of land based temperature sensors across the entire Northern hemisphere. Please read the source link at the bottom of the article before you ask such frivolous questions. Do you think this work was done by some lone guy in his garage? It's the results of a global dataset that dozens of scientists work on and mantain...
Conveying scientific research just feels impossible when this is the kind of response you can get even on a more educated place forum like HN. Depressing...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
or Nasa:
https://climate.nasa.gov/
or by now, just inspecting the measured global temperature by eye
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
Of course, these are introductory texts, so you should expect that there are some simplifications. You can of course just read the IPCC report,
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/
however be advised that they are on the cold side of the estimates. (Really if you would read the IPCC report with the same critical eye you are trying to nitpick the NY times, you would see that each and every scenario includes at least a plateau in emissions, they just don't have a scenario were emissions just rise like in the last 100 years.)
> First off, your observation of the ridiculous x-axis labels. Really, "Extremely Hot" Is that supposed to scare me or something?
You could of course inspect the linked paper, "Extremely hot" refers to summers that were once in thirty years hot in the time period from 1951 to 1980. It is just an accurate label.
The average reader gets no meaningful understanding from "Global average temperatures are up 0.5 degrees Celsius.
But looking at a graph like what's presented here, you can realize that a person in 1950, if asked what the weather was like on one of those red days, would tell you "It's goddamn hot, I can't remember it ever being this hot here." and now we get those temperatures all the time.
If you want raw data and absolute comparisons, there are plenty of places to get it. This is an NYT article written to help people understand in concrete terms that things have changed.
You're just nitpicking at a short interactive widget, simplified for a general audience, as if it were the core argument of a paper in an academic journal - which it isn't.
You're not doing science; you are role-playing a character on the internet, and offering your intellectual laziness or lack of comprehension (idk which) as if it were a counter-argument - which it isn't.
It's true that this article solicits your interest in a phenomenon and does not walk through the full detail of everything, but provides only a short summary and a reference to sources. It'd be great if it were a fully-developed explainer that you could navigate through like a science documentary on one particular subject or a deep dive into Wikipedia. Maybe in a few years we';; be able to produce such elaborate tutorials on the fly using AI, and by asking astute questions you'll be able to interactively broaden your education or even make valuable suggestions from left field, and then you will indeed be a lay scientist. But in the meantime, you're LARPing.
Do you think that no reviewers ever think of these things?
> Temperature categories are determined by the normal distribution, so that a third of temperatures fall in each of the main three categories: hot, cold and normal for 1951 to 1980. Summer temperatures for each subsequent 11-year period are compared to the 1951 to 1980 baseline.
It's not so stupid. It essentially drives home the point that a day that in the 1951-1980 period would be considered "hot", today would fall inside the "normal" range.
That is, your normal distribution of temperatures has shifted a bit to the right.
I'm no climate science denier but stuff like this just adds fuel to the fire. You might say we're just supposed to take it on faith ;)
"Frequency of occurrence (vertical axis) of local seasonal mean temperature anomalies in unit of local standard deviation of Northern Hemisphere land areas."
It takes some time to unwrap the words there. The "anomaly" is the difference of an observation at a particular place and time from a seasonal and/or regional mean value. As you probably know, anomalies are pervasively used in geosciences. So in essence he's standardizing into what in statistics would be called a z-score,
where mu is the regional/temporal average, and sigma is the local standard deviation.I guess the above is probably the reason the NYT graphic did not explain it fully.
Live Tree or Die!
The shoots are also good eats when cooked in rich stew or broiled with mayonnaise and chili.
Seems kind of arbitrary and when these types of things are arbitrary I wonder what alternative time frames with the same data might look like.
If I understand correctly how this graph and the categories are constructed, the plotted data do not have associated temperature units. The temperature data from each location is first normalized and expressed in terms of standard deviations relative to the local temperature distribution in the baseline period. These normalized readings are then binned together to create the bell curve plots.
That's why there are no "extremely hot" data points in the baseline period: by definition these data points lie outside the local baseline distributions.
UPDATE: This approach makes sense: different locales will have different temperature distributions; that means that a single measurement (presented as a deviation from the mean temperature expressed in absolute units: e.g. 7 degree F higher than average) can be extremely anomalous in one locale, but can be within 1 standard deviation in another. But once these measurements are expressed in standard deviations, the absolute temperature units disappear.
TL;DR: While regional normalization makes sense in a stationary climate, the presence of trends tends to exaggerate extremes by increasing the apparent variance of the distribution.
Eyeballing the data from the NYT article, it appears that the authors have continued to make the same statistical mistakes. It is unfortunate that NYT would publish this, as the field (climate science) is quite aware of the problem with the original 2012 paper.
[1] http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XN8uKkAKWbw/UJlrmG-yBfI/AAAAAAAADZ...
What and how much direct effect does the heat exchange have? What about the energy required to run the units?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island
In the NYC subway system however, it apparently had a dramatic impact. From what I read (source not handy), before A/C came to trains the tunnels were relatively ok (<90°F), but since adding A/C to the trains, tunnels and platforms now hit way over 100° (L platform has been >115°) in the summer.
Is there anything at all we can do to change the minds of such entrenched folks? Or do we just write them off and move on?
That would be a good start.
In which way the data is not transparent?
> Stop making adjustments that are questionable and coincidentally result in increased warming.
Please, any example of questionable adjustements?
> Stop blacklisting scientists who disagree with the consensus.
Any example of scientist blacklisted?
Stop getting hacked and releasing emails showing people discussing how to "hide the decline".
I think you didn't read what the emails were about, becuse your claim is wrong.
> Stop gaming peer review by having the papers reviewed by a group of people who all agree.
Are you accusing of fraud? Any example, please?
Stop making hyperbolic predictions about the future which are completely falsifiable and indeed end up to be false.
> Stop insisting that the models are completely accurate even though they have been completely inaccurate thus far.
Apart that nobody say that models are completely accurate, please, any source of your claim that "all of them have been copletely innacurate"?
> Stop accusing people who have questions about mitigation strategies as "climate deniers".
You don't have questions. You're plainly accusing everyone of fraud, deception and cheating.
> Are you accusing of fraud? Any example, please?
Your response to this sentence is what feeds the problem. It is completely fair to point out, in the context of this discussion, flaws in the process that produces some of this research. The parent was pointing out, in the sentence, one problem with the process which produces scientific papers. This is certainly a discussion that needs to be had, and responding in this way which is dismissive is exactly what the parent was saying. Science needs to be scientific about the publishing process. And yes, literally complete gibberish has been published before:
https://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-12...
The academic peer review process is far from perfect, and the incentives of the humans involved does not necessarily align with producing the most accurate science.
Will you say that peer review papers about quantum mechanics are rigged because they are reviewed by a group of people who all agree that eveolution is real?
Will you say that peer review papers about Evolution are rigged because they are reviewed by a group of people who all agree that eveolution is real?
> The academic peer review process is far from perfect, and the incentives of the humans involved does not necessarily align with producing the most accurate science
And this is another subtle accusation of fraud. Do you have any proof of climate science papers are rigged?
> This is certainly a discussion that needs to be had, and responding in this way which is dismissive is exactly what the parent was saying
No, the parent was saying that climate papers are wrong beacuse the papers are only reviewed by people that think that climate change is real.
The system will never be perfect, if you take take a small number of instances of academic dishonesty and use that to debase something as enormous and researched as climate science, how could we ever hope to make decisions about anything?
If you applied this type of thinking to everything else how could you make any decision at all?
No, not necessarily. I think that what the original poster was saying was that when a person questions climate change, they are met with the same type of response as when a person's religion is insulted. And for most people who believe in scientific truths, to them it is a religion in the sense that they personally cannot prove it. They are picking a group for its general beliefs, social acceptance, camaraderie, etc, but to not know any more about the science they believe in than most religious people know about the religion they profess to believe in.
> The system will never be perfect, if you take take a small number of instances of academic dishonesty and use that to debase something as enormous and researched as climate science, how could we ever hope to make decisions about anything?
Can I paraphrase? Say we were talking about the religion, and someone points out that there are cases where religious people abuse their power to hurt others. The response is often,
"The church will never be perfect, if you take a small number of instances of abuse of religious authority and use that to debase something as enormous and researched as god the almighty and the 10 commandments, how could we ever hope to make decisions about anything?"
Assuming that you are not religious, how would you respond to a religious person who made that argument?
No, that's not what the original poster was saying.
The original poster was insinuating that all climate researchers are fraudsters, the original poster was insinuating that all climate research is wrong.
He is the one being religious
Stop attributing data that doesn't match your assumptions to conspiracy.
You're talking about a political base that is currently thriving almost entirely on spite and a total absence of fact. They don't give a shit how accurate your x-axis is labeled, they're at the point where in some circles they discredit science as a concept.
Because the left has politicized science. Science should be apolitical. Many on the left do not fail to provide those on the right justifications for dismissing science outright. This will not be fixed until those on the left with a high respect for the impartiality of science start to condemn those on the left that abuse that science to further their message.
The right discrediting science as a concept is the effect, not the cause.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/north-carolina-state-hiding-c...
No. The fact the Right has moved so far past the center that they can't find facts to support their positions has resulted in the Right politicizing science and when that fails they ban information from being used and/or removing them from advisory boards.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/florida-has-seen-...
> North Carolina, whose barrier islands are particularly vulnerable to sea level rise, was widely mocked in 2012 when the General Assembly passed a law barring communities from using a report containing 100-year projections of sea level rise—up to 39 inches—in their planning. Three years later a compromise was reached; legislators found a new report with a 30-year time horizon less alarming, and agreed that was permissible.
> In the interim, though, coastal planning lagged. Under then-Governor Pat McCrory (R), climate change information disappeared from the state’s Department of Environmental Quality Web site. The legislature altered the makeup of the Coastal Resources Commission, which overseas coastal planning, to remove some scientists and conservation group representatives and replaced them with more business-friendly members.
As easy examples, 1) a lot of underwater research was driven by the US military who wanted better ways to detect Soviet subs, 2) much of computer science in the 1960s was funded by the military through ARPA, 3) the Tuskegee Syphilis study existed because the people running the study thought it was better to let black people suffer in order to get scientific data - a decision solidly rooted in the race politics of the time, 4) much of Near Eastern archaeology is driven by politics related to the Abrahamic religions, far beyond what 'impartial science' might do, 5) the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funds so much education research (and journalists, think tanks, lobbying organizations and governments) that it can overwhelm opposition, including objections to the quality of the science.
(Eg, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulle... for how $200 million, which combined research and advocacy, helped convince many states to switch to the Common Core, even though there were no pilot studies or other solid evidence that it was worthwhile.)
Nor are scientists impartial. When Rowland and Molina published their findings about CFCs and the ozone layer, "they also made an effort to announce their findings outside of the scientific community, informing policy makers and the news media of their work." (Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_J._Molina .)
They didn't decide to be impartial and apolitical.
Curiously, like creationism, the only part of the world were climate change is a problem is in some sectors of USA.
In the rest of the world, even the right parties agree that climate change is happening and it is a real problem.
Don't blame the left for politicing something when almost ALL of the world, left or right agree and some right groups in USA are the ones making the noise.
You're basically just saying that everybody else agrees, so you need to get in line.
No, what I'm saying is that everybody excep a little group abides to scientific facts.
Like in the case of Creationism, the little group disregards any scientific fact and proof because ideology.
I know a lot of over-zealous liberals who have definitely misrepresented facts, but honestly I don't think I've seen anyone ever do anything that made me think "oh ok, science must be fake"
It's just willful ignorance.
Speaking of wrongthink :) - the reason IPCC models run hot is because the scientists in charge are acting un-scientifically by discarding the data that doesn't agree with the "impending anthropogenic global warming doom" narrative and over-concentrating on CO2 as the culprit behind the "climate change".
So again, goes both ways, except I haven't heard of any falsifications at the hands the non-alarmist camp to prove their position this way - https://science.house.gov/news/press-releases/former-noaa-sc...
Any source for this claim?
> So again, goes both ways, except I haven't heard of any falsifications at the hands the non-alarmist camp to prove their position this way
There was no falsification, you have to research better and not read what Lamar Smith says.
By the way, even Dr. Bates says that the data is accurate
> “The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,”
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/how-culture-clash-noa...
So, any proof of data falsification?
However, I think that is not at all what he really thinks. To start, he lays out a pattern of purposeful deception that it would make sense for the climate scientists to do only if they knew the data actually shows the world is not getting hotter. But how can the commenter know that unless he already knows that this is in fact the case? And on what basis could he know that if the true data is hidden?
My best guess is the commenter is a fanatic believer in conservative economic theory, which assumes that nature must be such that it is possible for the free market to expand without limit without governmental regulation and in the process bring only good to the human race.
Who has said models are completely accurate? They're just estimates. (They can be under-estimates as well)
From what you say, it sounds like you don't think temperature is increasing. Is that correct?
Then, we have scientists who make models which should be falsifiable, but instead of declaring that the models don't work when they fail to match reality, they make adjustments to "fit the curve". Anyone who has dealt with models before knows that you can make any number of adjustments to fit any curve you want. After the adjustments, the models continue to be inaccurate. Sometimes, suspiciously, the models become more accurate in the near term but still predict the same huge temperature rise in the future.
Then, the activists on the left take the current claims made by science and extend them as far as possible. This is then stated as fact. See: Al Gore. Said activists use "97% consensus" to defend their hyperbolic claims, mostly knowing that the 97% consensus doesn't apply to their exaggerations.
These "facts" are then used as justifications for massive government involvement in the economy, which just so happens to line up with the political wishes of the left.
Any example of those pressures?
> Then, we have scientists who make models which should be falsifiable, but instead of declaring that the models don't work when they fail to match reality, they make adjustments to "fit the curve".
Any example of those fittings?
A lot of talking of "the left" like demons but none of you can't give just one example of those falsifications. Perhaps because there is none and "some right" is just inventing them?
There's a paper out there where two completely separate groups of scientists disagree with each other on what the adjustments to the data should be. These are not alarmist versus deniers, these are both alarmist scientists who think it's a big problem.
They both can't be correct. Someone is making incorrect adjustments.
As to the models, when the models failed to predict reality, they should have been thrown out. But they keep turning out revision after revision of the models, which continue to fail to predict the future.
You cannot claim that models are predictive of anything until they have successfully predicted actual reality, but what these scientists are doing are saying "well, the models didn't predict well, but we made adjustments and now they predict better), which means nothing. For all we know, the adjustments could've made the predictions worse.
The other side defends by stating that the models are the best we have, but I would argue that they are worse than nothing. They have gone from being wildly inaccurate, to just somewhat inaccurate.
Of course I don't have any proof, because the internal deliberations are not public, the code for the models is not public, and the revisions to the data and models are not public.
Frankly, I'd be very happy if they would release the source code for the models so we could see what a clusterfuck they are.
What models have failed to predict reality?, all the models have failed?
> Of course I don't have any proof, because the internal deliberations are not public, the code for the models is not public, and the revisions to the data and models are not public.
Really?
> Frankly, I'd be very happy if they would release the source code for the models so we could see what a clusterfuck they are.
So, you don't have any proof, you don't know that the IPCC models have been aligned with reality but you claim that they are a clusterfuck.
I think that you didn't look very deeply, or perhaps, you deep only on some sites that are not very scientifics.
A five minute Google search will show you that the vast majority of the models have ranged from being somewhat inaccurate to wildly inaccurate all in the direction of predicting more global warming.
Furthermore, I'm not aware of any other models with publicly released source code. In my opinion, that's ridiculous, since people want us to literally re-organize the economy around these predictions.
Do you want to defend the idea of keeping the source code for the models private?
For example, the man who empirically determined the normal human body temperature was, as best we can tell, using a thermometer that read too warm. (http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2015/08/the_average_bod...)
Even with the same nominal weather station recording over the years:
Stations have moved to different locations over the past 150 years, most more than once. They have changed instruments from mercury thermometers to electronic sensors, and have changed the time they take temperature measurements from afternoon to morning. Cities have grown up around stations, and some weather stations are not ideally located. All of these issues introduce inconsistencies into the temperature record.
-- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...
So, in summary, it's virtually impossible to combine a bazillion datapoints recorded over hundreds of years and not need adjustments.
When doctors tell you normal body temperature is 98 degrees they are dumbing it down for you, instead of relying on bad sampling from the past.
Not that medical science is that great either.
Suppose a station uses a mercury thermometer for the first 80 years then switches to a thermocouple, with an overlap of 10 years were both thermometers are run side-by-side. Suppose also that it shows that the old thermometer consistently reads 0.25° warmer than the digital one, and that calibration tests show that the new thermometer is accurate.
Do all of the old data points get thrown out of the window? What's wrong with adjusting the old temperatures by 0.25°?
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/thorough-not-thoroug...
Every data from every experiment in every field has to be adjusted, raw data is meaningless
There's whole disciplines in engineering that deal with getting good data from imperfect sensors. Have you heard of sensor fusion? Whole field that uses multiple sensors to mutually correct error. Have you ever wondered why digital barometers come with a thermometer? No, it's not because it's convenient, it's because a raw digital barometers reading fluctuates with temperature, so the temperature sensor is used to correct the raw output.
Victim blaming much?
Also, the infamous "hide the decline" is not what you believe it is. The point has been explained thoroughly by so many people, I don't feel the need to repeat it here.
That's like someone taking a phrase from Linus's mail saying "this nice trick allows us to hide the latency in module XXX", and then running to the press saying "Linux is hiding its latency issues! Linus himself said that!" Of course, what's unbelievable is that some people are willing to fall for that.
https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
> Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position. The following is a partial list of these organizations, along with links to their published statements and a selection of related resources.
When you have 97% agreement on a subject its difficult to guarantee the 3% is represented in every peer review. That isn't "gaming" the system. That is just the reality of how Science works across the board.
You aren't going to magically find a small, vocal minority has the bandwidth and numbers to be represented 50% of the time like you find in politics.
Some 10% of the population is avowedly irrational and that's not going to change. I view this as psychic/psychiatric distress in the face of an overwhelming existential problem (part climate, part economic) and think the best thing is to just get on with trying to alleviate the stressors and hope those people gradually come back to reality.
1. The observed climate data is valid and complete.
2. The predictive models are reliable and sufficiently comprehensive and objective.
3. Specific problems are clearly articulated.
4. Proposed policies will solve the clearly articulated problems.
5. The proposed solution is realistic to implement worldwide, wont' have any unexpected side-effects, and won't cause worse problems than the problems it's solving. Negative side-effects should be acknowledged and addressed as best as possible.
While I have seen arguments that at least touch on most of those points, it's very difficult to arrive at level 5 and not have ANY room for mistakes or legitimate differences of opinion and perspective. So while it's nice to bitch and moan about the wild conspiracy theorists challenging the facts established at the lowest level, the opposition is just as justified bitching and moaning about all the political actors who have already decided what solution they want, and are just doing whatever they can to make sure that solution becomes policy, no matter the consequences.
It's unfortunately my prior at this point. The people with uninformed objections at 1 are a much larger group than people who agree with 1:n-1 and can have a nuanced discussion of n.
My friend in Finland said the summer there is one of the coldest in the last 50 years.
And in the Ice Age the earth's temperature was only 4C below the average.
1C in the global Earth temperatue is a lot of energy
I do live in very cold area in Iran. It is unbelievable how much weather has became warmer. Even i do remember when i was child , weather was noticeably colder. ( and I am in my 20's) . Let alone old peoples, who are literally ( all of them) in shock about how warm the weather became in last 5/10 years.
Maybe just stop using local climate tout justify global warming?
Even ignoring the data (whichever way you interpret it), those of us who accept anthropomorphic climate change see a pretty clear case of "look who benefits" in terms of climate change. The vast majority of money and power is on the climate-change-is-fake side in America (if not worldwide). Huge, extremely powerful interests have a great deal at stake in whether or not we work to reduce carbon emissions and by how much. The switch from fossil fuels to renewable resources could lose some very powerful people a lot of money.
On the climate-change-is-real side, its much harder to tell. Climate scientists don't have that much to gain, maybe a little research money here and there but nothing in comparison to say the oil and gas industries and those that use petroleum and petroleum derivatives. Renewables are an emerging industry. Batteries, solar panels, wind farms, tidal power etc all represent a financial opportunity to whoever gets out front. China is making large strides in this industry, but still its an industry in its infancy, it doesn't have nearly the political and financial clout that entrenched fossil-fuel industries do.
Do you see why it might be confusing for some of us to see regular people essentially defending the powerful against the weak, as it were? I think that the overall of the research indicates that the earth is warming and we're the primary cause (in that we're the cause that it is increasing so rapidly, as opposed to at historic rates), I know there is some bad science as there always will be, but this situation just makes absolutely no sense from a logical perspective. It would be the most confusing conspiracy probably ever to have a worldwide, grassroots coordination to move to cleaner energy sources for bogus reasons and defeat the most entrenched and wealthy interests in probably all if history in the process. For what? If the reasons are bogus why do all these scientists care? Who benefits?
Trump used now-unsurprising hyperbole when he said that global warming was a hoax invented by the Chinese, but he was alluding to this point.
China has over a billion citizens, a disproportionate number of young men, and quasi open economy + closed political system where who you know & schooling strongly affects your ability to succeed. Also, like the US and Russia, it has tremendous natural & mineral wealth available for traditional enterprises.
In such a <em>political</em> climate, China has made it a national policy to out-compete America for traditional manufacturing jobs to keep all those people, particularly young men employed and rising. Cheap energy is a major manufacturing consideration and if you can get the American government to deficit spend money or regulate private industry on this, that fits China's national goals nicely.
(Encouraging deficit spending by the US helps keep the Renminbi cheap relative to the dollar in our crazy fiat world)
Russia has an even stronger incentive to encourage environmentalist policies by the US government because of its fossil fuel wealth and ambitions for the opening Arctic ocean without US competition there.
Ironically, historically, betting against American ingenuity and worldwide technological advancement has been a mistake; some minimally invasive level of US government intervention is probably worth it for mitigating global warming and blunting oil-rich oligarchies. But it is also still in the interest of current Chinese/Russian/Iranian/Venezuelan leaders at this time.
Finally this can be viewed two ways in US politics. On the one hand, environmental protectionism logically hurts the working class in America, to some difficult-to-quantify extent in the immediate term/recent past. On the other hand, America is a world leader. We may have some moral imperative, plus gains in technology financed in America lift all boats, including ours which is the largest and finest.
(may have to reevaluate the phrase "lift all boats")
1) We stay dependent on fossil fuels and make it harder for the world to make the transition, allowing Russia to continue making money exporting.
2) We stay out of the renewable energy research and manufacturing business globally, allowing China to corner that market while our traditional industries are propped up longer than they should be (ie, Coal) .
3) Our influence gradually weakens as we're the last holdout, despite being the most powerful and wealthy nation. Who will listen to the US on anything if we're anti-science and the only major holdout on climate change?
I agree with (1) from a long term perspective and think we should increase funding to green tech researchers. But I weigh political resistance to developing resources (ice breaking trade lanes, oil wealth, etc.) on the North American side of the Arctic ocean as benefiting Russia more than unquantifiable acceleration (due to more research funding) of the eventual long term, technology based decline of fossil fuels.
On (2) and (3) these are basically free market vs. government organized enterprise and left vs. right political arguments, so I'm not sure if I can rebut them articulately. And they probably come down to Putin's and Xi's personal opinions, not ours.
But if Xi wants to subsidize worldwide solar power production at the cost of China's other industries, I say go ahead and we'll probably still compete with private actors. They should lead some like us.
And again, I'm not saying there shouldn't be any US government organized enterprise in this field. For example I think the US, Russia, China, UK, and others could work together by laying a great circumnavigating high voltage DC cable for solar energy, on which ``the sun never sets''. But still the validity of (2) and (3) is definitely colored by political leanings.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/206030/global-warming-concern-thr...