This does beg a question... Does science deserve a higher standard of opacity for publicly funded research than our government overall? My sense is "let the process work to separate the signal from the noise" but I'd like to hear what others say.
I'm not sure what you're getting at (higher standard of opacity?) but in general, the consensus has been shifting toward open data and more open publishing (eg, ArXiv).
What I mean is, should we allow scientists a couple years to interpret the data from their experiments and models before forcing them to share it? Should we (as taxpayers funding the research) require them to disclose results before the peer review process?
I hear you on science being wrong. One of the best things about science is there is a self-correcting mechanism, though it takes a while. As one physics professor said, "A change in paradigm doesn't wait for the old masters to retire, it waits until they die."
All of the AR5 findings are based on published peer reviewed research. Working backward from the AR5 report deadlines, there is a deadline for appearance of the research in order to be potentially included in the final consensus report. In this sense, it is all open.
I think the issue in this case is that you can't take a graph from such a paper, or from a draft report, and interpret it in the absence of its context. This is a complex topic and there is a reason why they get the experts in a room to argue it out.
In particular, lay people tend to be myopic. With every piece of information, they tend not to ask, "is this true?"' or "does this fit with other related physics and phenomena I know in depth?" They just cut right to the end, and ask, "does this favor or disfavor my prior conceptions about climate change?"
To make a crude analogy, lay people tend to treat this like sports and not like science. So, that's why you let the process work and look at the final result. Unless you're a domain expert, you won't know how to interpret the arguments that lead up to the result.
I know several contributors to the AR5 research, and slightly know a couple of people in the IPCC working group.
A wonderfully trite platitude that can be selectively applied to any pet issue. Let me guess; you're a climate change skeptic.
edit: I'm not implying that it is wrong to be skeptical, I'm saying that the poster's alignment is obviously that of a skeptic because it's a common tactic for this particular brand of skeptic to suggest that politics is at play in the mind of scientists. If anyone agrees that politics makes good science then that statement is not a platitude.
i think many people need to be reminded that whenever we talk of "consensus" we talk of politics and not science. that's nothing to do with the specific topic at all, so no need to troll.
my criticism of the OP is that this IS a political discussion not a scientific one, anyway, so his comment is moot.
i think many people need to be reminded that whenever we talk of "consensus" we talk of politics and not science.
That's a red herring. It's a common tactic for those who disagree with a prevailing scientific idea to dismissively chide scientists as playing politics, as if the scientific consensus emerged from political donations instead of from conclusions based on data. Consensus does not imply unanimity or even that the data is correct, but it's only in climate science that we see people actively fight the broad conclusions of the scientific community as a whole.
The rest of your conspiracy crap has no place here. You are hung-up on a subpopulation that is likely not even on HN.
Where in any of my responses have I said anything about a conspiracy? It seems as if you're the one who is hung up on an ideology you're trying to inject into my argument.
Anywhere policy decisions are made, it is practical to vote on alternatives. This is where the "consensus" is justified.
Try not to interpret this as trolling but, I don't disagree with this statement. What is your point here?
"Where in any of my responses have I said anything about a conspiracy?"
as if the scientific consensus emerged from political donations...
...it's only in climate science that we see people actively fight
the broad conclusions of the scientific community as a whole.
Friend, you're stretching the definition of conspiracy quite a bit here. At the very least, a conspiracy theory would require some accusation of collusion between some parties. There is no secret plan, I'm just pointing out a common rhetorical tactic I disagree with.
That's interesting, I got the exact opposite vibe from marknutter's comment. Considering that the link was about a particular report indicating that climate change might be "less severe" than some think, and then subsequent claims that the report was "misleading", I suppose it's not necessarily clear from context which is supposed to be the "bad science" part.
I suppose there's a thin line between "trite platitude" and "observant insight". (Which one is this?)
Where is the insight? Politics makes bad science? Find me someone who disagrees with that statement; it's an empty shell of a response that says nothing about the topic.
I have no problem with skeptics, my problem is with the blanket labeling of science as politics when you disagree with the conclusions the scientists come up with.
I think maybe I can prove that this has disintegrated into politics and that it was inevitable.
Assume there is a political conspiracy to increase their power and create new taxes and that they are using global warming to get to this.
If so we would see a lot of reports, worried politicians and worried scientists (which we would also see if it was real) what we wouldn't see are solutions that aren't politically feasable (say banning cars) but maybe necessary if we are to prevent the climate change and we wouldn't see solutions that don't try to clamor peoples freedom (say putting up mirrors in the ocean to send some of the suns rays back out into space) but might work (IANACS so I don't know if it works).
So far what I have seen matches with what I would then expect.
People often claim that the skeptics are merely stuges paid by the oil companies - but what does that make of those scientists who are paid by the government? This isn't even talked about.
Basically my guess is that the movement significant amounts of money entered the scene science became impossible. Scientists won't share their data because there are grants and money and jobs at stake, they are willing to use underhand tatics to prevent dissenters from publishing (because there are jobs and grants and careers at stake).
I think maybe you don't understand what the word "prove" means.
> and we wouldn't see solutions that don't try to clamor peoples freedom (say putting up mirrors in the ocean to send some of the suns rays back out into space) but might work (IANACS so I don't know if it works).
Actually, solar mirrors or similar space structures have been proposed. The main reason they aren't part of the dominant current recommendations is that they are very high-risk, in terms of engineering, compared to the existing short- and long-term mitigation recommendations, and also that many of the existing mitigations mitigate other risks that share common causes with AGW but which solar mirrors don't.
I don't mind the skeptics; what drives me crazy is how many people see global warming as some sort liberal/one-world-government conspiracy. While government funding could be distorting the research, oil and coal companies have plenty of reason to incentivize findings as well, so I'd call that a wash. And while scientific opinion is sometimes proven wrong, to say that climate skepticism is dimissed fails to understand the culture of science and the way professional scientists think.
Maybe we'll get lucky, and climate change will be a mere inconvenience. I'd rather not take that chance, especially when there are so many other reasons to diversify from finite carbon energy sources. Meanwhile, I trust the scientific community to do what they do best, and keep digging deeper, whatever the answer may be.
Force skeptics to outer circles, and then ridicule anything that doesn't come from the inner circle. It's an incredibly effective way at insulating the brain from inconvenient argument.
If they have legitimate science to contribute there are plenty of channels for that.
I've spent way too much time on WUWT. There is very little discussion of science or statistics. It mainly focuses on politics, individuals (Mann, Gore, etc.) and nitpicking over insignificant errors.
Within a few hours topics will range from: climate change isn't happening to it is happening but it's not caused by humans to it's us but it will be beneficial and back again.
Users are banned and occasionally dox'd for contrarian comments on that site, so if you're concerned about 'insulating the brain from inconvenient argument', you shouldn't support WUWT.
Which is annoying and self-righteous, and laughably wrong, and charmingly unaware that it has exactly zero arguments to support its position -- apart from tone trolling, of course. I facepalmed on just about every paragraph, and I'm not even a graduate student. Just a taste:
> Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
... because there's no significant "skeptic" communities for relativity or geocentrism. Nobody has any vested interest in claiming those theories are false. Theoretical physicists and astronomers aren't constantly asked to defend their positions against fallacious argument after argument, nor have they to fight against a minor but very influential political minority which is on faith completely against them. No Secretary of Interior ever said: "If the troubles from theoretical physicists and geocentrists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used." If you can't see even that, there's no point in arguing.
And then the completely bullshit tangent about how the Nuclear Winter equation is just as goofy as the Drake equation, which just is... just... facepalm. Quick, Crichton, tell me the probability that life on a planet evolves to intelligence. Since, you know, you just argued that it's as well understood and measurable as the reflectivity of dust.
In regards to its line, that scientific knowledge is being perverted by politics... you know that psychological projection thing, when someone sees in others what they can't bear to see in themselves? I'm not usually someone that whips The Freud out that quickly but, damn, Crichton is really in contest for some psychoanalyzing. I mean, he's just argued that climate scientists are wrong, on purely political terms. Literally, he doesn't like the politics they do. Mind numbing.
Clearly. The question is whether shouting 'Do something! here's a list of ideas and we'll check everything else you can come up with. DO SOMETHING!' counts as intenting to do policy as the parent says.
The data is very scary. Seeing the conditions of the distant past makes me not want to repeat them. Before a scientist, I am a human being.
Parent - seriously, what do you want us to do? Sit back, take more data, calculate more models, write some papers that only other scientists read? You, everyone, pays us for doing this, and it's our responsibility to make you listen.
(Now, I'm quite young. My professors seem to have given up, one even said so. I sincerely hope it's not as bad as it looks.)
Understand that you are scientists in the real world and not in a Roland Emmerich movie.
You can warn and warn all you like, but if people don't listen, it's because they're free people who have made their own decisions through the political process. The answer is not to scream louder. They heard you, and don't care.
Want to end the debate on global warming? Make it moot. Turn your research into great products and technologies that reduce carbon emissions and are simultaneously what people want.
It's already happening: People are starting to want a Tesla S because it's considered by many to be the best car ever made. They're actually getting customers who don't give a rats ass about the environment, and that's exactly what you're going to need if you really want to save the world.
Oh, so one minute you say all those climate modellers should shut up and do more science, the other, they should spend a few years learning to be automative engineers?
We don't debate gravity through the political process. We can discuss how to tackle climate change, but that itself is not debatable.
And if they defend it, it's because it's under attack. The industry FUD would have many believe that it's the scientists that have a vested interest.
No. My point is only that scientists are not a 4th branch of government.
We don't debate global warming through the political process, nor should we. We debate what we might want to do about global warming through the political process. Your comment indicates you don't see the difference, and that's exactly what I'm worried about.
You're not granted political power simply for being right. Imagine if a new consensus was reached amongst economists that the minimum wage is bad for the economy, and were granted the power to eliminate it. I don't think too many here would be happy about that.
In my experience, all the critics of the science want NO action taken, except more science and R&D. Or even in Canada, the shuttering of scientific projects that could be inconvenient.
Sure, and I'm not trying to control what is being done. If everyone decides that they are fine with a world a few degrees warmer, ok. Nothing I can do. I just want to push for something, for politics to act on the knowledge gained.
A scientist is also a citizen - I don't see where you give away whatever marginal power you have as a member of the public. Everyone can push for the things they value, it's a democracy.
And.. it's just sad. You know, there are many people who have never heard of the concept. They're the ones to be hit first, and they don't even have democratic governments. Should we ignore them?
The data points at the sea rising - flat islands without money for dykes will disappear. Models consistently predict changing precipitation patterns - which is ok if you have money to migitate the changes.
I don't want to dismiss your whole comment, you do have a point. I'll happily pay money in subsidies to create a solar industry which can then be copied by everyone. However, as you also say, it's not enough to solve this with science and technology. If we were still in the middle of the last century, it maybe would. It's a political problem now which has to be solved with politics by politicians and citizens, and not by scientists. And as I said in another comment, every citizen has the right to push for his believes to be taken into account.
Yeah, my env. sci professor in 1st year was a climate scientist who had pretty much given up.
Even though he was getting a shit wage, he still had to endure those who thought it was people like him, rather than the Exxon and Shells of this world, that had a vested interest.
The data is extremely scary. Global temperature trends are about to drop out of the bottom of the 95% confidence interval for academic climate predictions[1]. Do we really want to live in a world where people are not whipped up into an environmentalist hysteria?
Cool, best possible outcome. Now if only we understood all the feedback mechanisms.. so what is your actual proposal? No change of course? Gentle change of course?
There are a lot of responses that are not hysteria. (And a very genereral term you chose there, since many of the problems are only loosely related as of now. Recycling won't really help, for example.)
If I were that scientists I would publish every scrap of paper I had and say please do something or prove me wrong. I wouldn't flip that somebody leaked something I was writing - I would make damn sure that there were nothing at all to leak.
I don't think it's a conspiracy in the sense that liberals have a secret convention where they decided to make up Global Warming.
I do believe though that global warming feeds into their belief that industry, growth and capitalism are somehow evil and confirms their pre-existing prejudices.
I don't self-identify as liberal, but I'd say that corporations and oil are the villains to mainstream liberals; you have to go pretty far left (as in, farther than Chomsky) to find those against all forms of capitalism.
That said, you're right about confirming pre-existing prejudices; in that sense, every ideology or belief is a conspiracy. Climate scientists are not immune to this phenomenon, but the act of science is to proactively try to correct for these kinds of biases, with the added constraint of having to "show your work". While mainstream science can get it wrong, 95+% consensus is very hard to achieve due to either ideology or external influence, especially worldwide. Those scientists might be wrong, but they're not all duping us as part of some plot.
You don't have to go very far to find people against "growth" in western societies. Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Oxfam etc all seem to think that growth is an evil that should be opposed.
I don't think they are duping us, but a mixture of pre-existing biases combined with enormous funding certainly helps to create the idea of a consensus.
Those groups exist, and do contain some anti-industrial proponents, but they have very little influence on policy. They get the same token gestures from the Democrats as the Republicans give the pro-lifers, only far, far less.
If there's a corruptive element to climate change policy, it's a cash grab from green energy companies. After 2000, the Democrats know that the green voters won't dare vote third party again (sadly), so don't care about appeasing them beyond gestures.
>Before we tackle that, we’re too close to an astounding point for me to leave it unspoken. At that 2.3% growth rate, we would be using energy at a rate corresponding to the total solar input striking Earth in a little over 400 years. We would consume something comparable to the entire sun in 1400 years from now.
400 years ago humans didn't have usable heat engines, mobile chronometers, thermometers, and numerous other technologies essential to living a life differentiated from that of the Neanderthals. It isn't for certain that we'll make similar progress in the coming 400 years, but it's plausible. I don't think it will take that long to construct a Dyson swarm, for instance. The physicist you link really begs the question when he forbids "space cadets".
It's also questionable to equate growth in economic well-being with growth in energy use. They have certainly been related for a long time, but advances in materials, miniaturization, automation, and other engineering will make the environmentalists' goal of stabilizing per-capita energy use feasible.
> I do believe though that global warming feeds into their belief that industry, growth and capitalism are somehow evil and confirms their pre-existing prejudices.
Well I see people using current events to feed into pre-existing prejudices and biases here on HN all the time, so now I find it harder to criticize liberals and conservatives for doing the same.
Yes, a cognitive bias can affect people on both sides. Someone can believe in anthropogenic global climate change but do so for weird reasons caused by a cognitive bias.
We should remember to gently remind them to check their biases.
Having said that, it's particularly annoying to have those biases pointed out while people ignore the strong biases caused by people being paid to obfuscate the information around climate change.
Exactly, but you can ad most of the green moment into it. Yes recycling is probably useful in most cases and yes we shouldn't throw garbage out the car window but if you look carefully you have a lot of people who speak loudly and do public acts, what you don't have is a hole lot of private doings.
I see climate change denial as an example of a cargo cult, the leaders want to regain their hold over their followers by copying the same rituals that they see the scientists performing.
Maybe it is just a hard-wired human response to disruption of a society by outside influences.
It's not a conspiracy, it's far more democratic than that. I would describe it as a "witch hunt" - where each person tries to show that he is more righteous and dedicated to the cause than the last person, and you gain social capital by being the most loudly enthusiastic. Oil company funding barely exists (it is four orders of magnitude less than government funding), and the best skeptics aren't taking their money anyway. I suggest you read people like Steve McIntyre if you haven't[1][2]. My biggest criticism of McIntyre's blog is that it is too dry and technical, but that is exactly what you want if you are looking for truth.
I don't trust the climate science community. I trusted them a lot more before Climate Gate. That's when I realized that climate science has become deeply, deeply politicized. One email from Phil Jones to McIntyre reads "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?". Why indeed Mr. Jones, would you want to share data with a skeptic? This is science after all, and science is nothing less than a method for supporting correct conclusions, and the "correct" conclusion is global warming.
Recent deviations of world temperature trends from climate models are only increasing my skepticism of the whole enterprise[4]. But I am alarmed to be going down such a path. If Global Warming were found out to be wrong, we would have to completely reevaluate how we come up with truth in society. That would be evidence of a massive misstep in our civilization.
If that drives you crazy then maybe you should try to look at the evidence they see:
Climate research is used as a reason to create tons of new government bodies, including international rules about what countries can do (Kyoto), intergovernment tax-schemes that are insanely corrupt (see European Co-limit trading, which had to be shot down due to fraud), taxes on gasoline and limits on what kinds of light bulbs I can use (which makes sense from a corporation standpoint, but if you really wanted to do something about the carbon emmisions you would care about my total emissions and not treat light separately).
You have small solutions like wind-mills and solar panels and greener cars that are supposed to prevent a cataclysmic disaster.
And you may claim that you trust the scientific community, but frankly if you also claim that oil money corrupts the scientists then so should government money - and indeed it appears that it does as each time something like this is leaked (and really if we are doing science what should there be to leak? it is supposed to be open to all) a lot of scientists gets really angry. It almost sounds like they are trying to cover up something.
Then you have the East Angelia leak (again that word leak, there shouldn't be anything to leak in science) in which the scientists talked about abusing the publishing process to prevent a paper they didn't want to be published from being published. That is the one that did me in, as I am not a climate scientist so I can only evaluate the truth based on what I see the scientists do, but even I know that if you don't like a paper and can simply point out where it is wrong then you do that. It is only when you can't point out an issue that you have to do back handed deals (and you are playing politics, not doing science).
And lets not get into the way those of us who are skeptical of climate change gets shot down when we voice our points they are almost never refuted we are simply told that we are various stodges for the oil companies, misinformed, etc.
Rightly so. They're not complaining that someone has leaked an internal report, this is a draft report which will be made public. Selecting snippets from an un-reviewed paper is silly, taking it potentially out of context and drawing your own conclusions is downright irresponsible.
Sorry, but isn't science about more than one person getting access to the data and re-running the experiments? While I understand that it is politically inconvenient for the scientists, that shouldn't really be what decides what the public gets access to (especially since this is a tax-payer founded study).
In fact wouldn't it be fair that they are to check their report into a public subversion repository as it is being written?
> Sorry, but isn't science about more than one person getting access to the data and re-running the experiments?
Yes, but that's not happening here. They've not released all the data with explanations of how thing were measured, caveats, and context.
> While I understand that it is politically inconvenient for the scientists, that shouldn't really be what decides what the public gets access to (especially since this is a tax-payer founded study).
You're making it sound like this will never be released. It's not like they'd hide it if the data showed things weren't as bad as expected, in which case a leaked report would be important. This is a leak equivalent to grabbing a corner from the notes on someones desk and then turning it into a news story. This is in no way a report about leaked information that should be public, it will be public. It has nothing to do with "it's my taxes", it'll all be made public. What they want to do first is have it reviewed and checked before slapping their name on it and saying "we're confident in the data and the analysis".
What happens if there's a problem with the way this data was captured, which means there's a particular correlation with something else that must be accounted for before it makes sense? What if there are conclusions that aren't supported by the data, which could be found in review and amended?
> In fact wouldn't it be fair that they are to check their report into a public subversion repository as it is being written?
Fair? Why? Unless you're acting as a reviewer there's no reason to see the paper before it's in its final form. In fact, knowing how bad we are at thinking things are true even when shown to be false, seeing anything that people aren't really quite sure about is an extremely bad idea.
If they were to shelve the whole report, then yes, a leak would be interesting. Otherwise it's a massive waste of time, which can seriously harm the credibility of the final paper.
This might be a good place to ask this. My mind is mostly made up, due to the fact I believe that the energy sector has a much higher profit motive to distort the facts than the academic one, but in any case:
How is a layman to interpret this science? Heck, how are reasonably smart people who are not climatologists to interpret it? How are time-starved politicians who are responsible for the related policy to interpret it?
Read it until 1) you reach a part with a reference and follow and read the reference or 2) if no reference, google the part that confuses you.
No one ever follows the references. It's a shame. The body of a piece of work is just a small contribution of a larger body which is the referenced works.
Short answer: you don't. How would you interpret reports filled with technical jargon, and most of it has no clear-and-obvious relation to normal every-day life?
You trust the people telling you what's what, and you analyze your standards and expectations of what can happen and plan accordingly. How do you plan against something you know next-to-nothing about, or you know so little that you can barely grasp the enormity of preparing for "global warming"? That's a great question, and it'll involve plans whose scope lies well beyond what you'll be doing tonight, tomorrow, next week, or 20 years from now -- it'll involve plans that include everybody and what we'll be doing tonight, tomorrow, next week, or 20 years from now.
Indeed, but hackers are like everyone else in that they have 24 hours in a day. A higher willingness to learn yes, but climatology is not something you can just take a weekend course and hope to understand.
"everyone else" is at a disadvantage because they probably have less of that intellectual curiosity, and less time to devote it to studying things which may not interest them at all.
> "My mind is mostly made up, due to the fact I believe that the energy sector has a much higher profit motive to distort the facts than the academic one, but in any case:"
The "we're all gonna die" faction gets four orders of magnitude more funding each year than the global warming skeptic faction. Oil company spending on climate science propaganda consists of a few $million here or these, and the best skeptics don't even take any of their money. The best ones are unpaid amateurs (like Steve McIntyre) or they achieved a position in academia decades ago before belief in global warming became required to advance. I suggest you read some skeptics like Steve[1] and see if you think he is as evil as Phil Jones thinks he is[2].
Moreover, the environmentalists control the institutions which create public opinion - namely the media and the universities. I'm guessing this is how your opinion was formed[3]. It's remarkable how utterly dominant cultural forces can see themselves as underdogs.
I find it interesting that you didn't cite your most pertinent claim.. namely "The "we're all gonna die" faction gets four orders of magnitude more funding each year than the global warming skeptic faction."
Further, the fact that you referred to people who believe the climate change theory as the "we're all gonna die" faction tells me squarely which camp you're in, and I'd thank you to avoid further such sneaky pre-framing of the argument if you wish for me to take your claims seriously.
The biggest skeptic propaganda organization that I know of is the Heartland Institute, which has an annual budget in the single millions. Greenpeace alone has an annual budget in the $hundred millions and there are dozens of other substantial environmentalist non-profits. The NOAA has a budget in the $billions, of which $hundreds of millions are dedicated to climate research, and that is not the only federal organization that deals with climate research. And there are other countries which have budgets allocated for this stuff. For example, all of the choicest anti-science quotes from climategate came out of the UK's University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit[1][2] and their struggle to prevent skeptics from accessing data.
I don't know that the global warming hypothesis is untrue. But I do know that our current process is not a method designed to find truth. Scientific data should be open to all humanity, and not hidden for the sake of advancing political agendas.
[1] "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
[2] "The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone."
There are really two questions here: Do I understand the science? Do I trust the scientists?
Understanding the basic theory is not that hard--certain gases in the atmosphere trap heat; we're adding more gases so we expect more heat to get trapped; and we've confirmed that by measuring rising temps. An afternoon on Wikipedia can fill in a lot of the details.
The question of belief might be more difficult, but I think it comes down to understanding that the scientific process works largely the same across disciplines. Black holes, quantum tunnelling, and retroviruses are at least as fantastic as a warming Earth. Do you believe scientists on those subjects? So why not on the physics of the Earth's climate?
Science is not really a buffet; I think one should either accept that it works, as a process, or don't. Picking and choosing is dangerous--because what is your criteria?
Of course individual scientists can be wrong, but how do we know that? Because other scientists proved it. So it always has to come back to scientific proof. Not op-eds and blogs.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadThis does beg a question... Does science deserve a higher standard of opacity for publicly funded research than our government overall? My sense is "let the process work to separate the signal from the noise" but I'd like to hear what others say.
But regardless of the level of openness, it's quite possible for Science to be wrong, badly wrong, for years. Check out the story of Dr Moniz, for example: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/19...
I hear you on science being wrong. One of the best things about science is there is a self-correcting mechanism, though it takes a while. As one physics professor said, "A change in paradigm doesn't wait for the old masters to retire, it waits until they die."
I think the issue in this case is that you can't take a graph from such a paper, or from a draft report, and interpret it in the absence of its context. This is a complex topic and there is a reason why they get the experts in a room to argue it out.
In particular, lay people tend to be myopic. With every piece of information, they tend not to ask, "is this true?"' or "does this fit with other related physics and phenomena I know in depth?" They just cut right to the end, and ask, "does this favor or disfavor my prior conceptions about climate change?"
To make a crude analogy, lay people tend to treat this like sports and not like science. So, that's why you let the process work and look at the final result. Unless you're a domain expert, you won't know how to interpret the arguments that lead up to the result.
I know several contributors to the AR5 research, and slightly know a couple of people in the IPCC working group.
edit: I'm not implying that it is wrong to be skeptical, I'm saying that the poster's alignment is obviously that of a skeptic because it's a common tactic for this particular brand of skeptic to suggest that politics is at play in the mind of scientists. If anyone agrees that politics makes good science then that statement is not a platitude.
my criticism of the OP is that this IS a political discussion not a scientific one, anyway, so his comment is moot.
Identify where I was trolling please.
i think many people need to be reminded that whenever we talk of "consensus" we talk of politics and not science.
That's a red herring. It's a common tactic for those who disagree with a prevailing scientific idea to dismissively chide scientists as playing politics, as if the scientific consensus emerged from political donations instead of from conclusions based on data. Consensus does not imply unanimity or even that the data is correct, but it's only in climate science that we see people actively fight the broad conclusions of the scientific community as a whole.
The rest of your conspiracy crap has no place here. You are hung-up on a subpopulation that is likely not even on HN.
Where in any of my responses have I said anything about a conspiracy? It seems as if you're the one who is hung up on an ideology you're trying to inject into my argument.
Anywhere policy decisions are made, it is practical to vote on alternatives. This is where the "consensus" is justified.
Try not to interpret this as trolling but, I don't disagree with this statement. What is your point here?
I suppose there's a thin line between "trite platitude" and "observant insight". (Which one is this?)
Assume there is a political conspiracy to increase their power and create new taxes and that they are using global warming to get to this.
If so we would see a lot of reports, worried politicians and worried scientists (which we would also see if it was real) what we wouldn't see are solutions that aren't politically feasable (say banning cars) but maybe necessary if we are to prevent the climate change and we wouldn't see solutions that don't try to clamor peoples freedom (say putting up mirrors in the ocean to send some of the suns rays back out into space) but might work (IANACS so I don't know if it works).
So far what I have seen matches with what I would then expect.
People often claim that the skeptics are merely stuges paid by the oil companies - but what does that make of those scientists who are paid by the government? This isn't even talked about.
Basically my guess is that the movement significant amounts of money entered the scene science became impossible. Scientists won't share their data because there are grants and money and jobs at stake, they are willing to use underhand tatics to prevent dissenters from publishing (because there are jobs and grants and careers at stake).
> and we wouldn't see solutions that don't try to clamor peoples freedom (say putting up mirrors in the ocean to send some of the suns rays back out into space) but might work (IANACS so I don't know if it works).
Actually, solar mirrors or similar space structures have been proposed. The main reason they aren't part of the dominant current recommendations is that they are very high-risk, in terms of engineering, compared to the existing short- and long-term mitigation recommendations, and also that many of the existing mitigations mitigate other risks that share common causes with AGW but which solar mirrors don't.
Maybe we'll get lucky, and climate change will be a mere inconvenience. I'd rather not take that chance, especially when there are so many other reasons to diversify from finite carbon energy sources. Meanwhile, I trust the scientific community to do what they do best, and keep digging deeper, whatever the answer may be.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/09/aliens-cause-global-wa...
I've spent way too much time on WUWT. There is very little discussion of science or statistics. It mainly focuses on politics, individuals (Mann, Gore, etc.) and nitpicking over insignificant errors.
Within a few hours topics will range from: climate change isn't happening to it is happening but it's not caused by humans to it's us but it will be beneficial and back again.
Users are banned and occasionally dox'd for contrarian comments on that site, so if you're concerned about 'insulating the brain from inconvenient argument', you shouldn't support WUWT.
> Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
... because there's no significant "skeptic" communities for relativity or geocentrism. Nobody has any vested interest in claiming those theories are false. Theoretical physicists and astronomers aren't constantly asked to defend their positions against fallacious argument after argument, nor have they to fight against a minor but very influential political minority which is on faith completely against them. No Secretary of Interior ever said: "If the troubles from theoretical physicists and geocentrists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used." If you can't see even that, there's no point in arguing.
And then the completely bullshit tangent about how the Nuclear Winter equation is just as goofy as the Drake equation, which just is... just... facepalm. Quick, Crichton, tell me the probability that life on a planet evolves to intelligence. Since, you know, you just argued that it's as well understood and measurable as the reflectivity of dust.
In regards to its line, that scientific knowledge is being perverted by politics... you know that psychological projection thing, when someone sees in others what they can't bear to see in themselves? I'm not usually someone that whips The Freud out that quickly but, damn, Crichton is really in contest for some psychoanalyzing. I mean, he's just argued that climate scientists are wrong, on purely political terms. Literally, he doesn't like the politics they do. Mind numbing.
Oh, but they want to be making policy, not science.
As an aside: I get the feeling from your comment that you might not be aware that Michael Crichton is dead.
How would you take it if people told you: "You're such an alarmist. Shut up, and keep working on your models"
And if scientists shouldn't speak up, who is left in public discourse?
The data is very scary. Seeing the conditions of the distant past makes me not want to repeat them. Before a scientist, I am a human being.
Parent - seriously, what do you want us to do? Sit back, take more data, calculate more models, write some papers that only other scientists read? You, everyone, pays us for doing this, and it's our responsibility to make you listen.
(Now, I'm quite young. My professors seem to have given up, one even said so. I sincerely hope it's not as bad as it looks.)
You can warn and warn all you like, but if people don't listen, it's because they're free people who have made their own decisions through the political process. The answer is not to scream louder. They heard you, and don't care.
Want to end the debate on global warming? Make it moot. Turn your research into great products and technologies that reduce carbon emissions and are simultaneously what people want.
It's already happening: People are starting to want a Tesla S because it's considered by many to be the best car ever made. They're actually getting customers who don't give a rats ass about the environment, and that's exactly what you're going to need if you really want to save the world.
We don't debate gravity through the political process. We can discuss how to tackle climate change, but that itself is not debatable.
And if they defend it, it's because it's under attack. The industry FUD would have many believe that it's the scientists that have a vested interest.
We don't debate global warming through the political process, nor should we. We debate what we might want to do about global warming through the political process. Your comment indicates you don't see the difference, and that's exactly what I'm worried about.
You're not granted political power simply for being right. Imagine if a new consensus was reached amongst economists that the minimum wage is bad for the economy, and were granted the power to eliminate it. I don't think too many here would be happy about that.
In my experience, all the critics of the science want NO action taken, except more science and R&D. Or even in Canada, the shuttering of scientific projects that could be inconvenient.
A scientist is also a citizen - I don't see where you give away whatever marginal power you have as a member of the public. Everyone can push for the things they value, it's a democracy.
The data points at the sea rising - flat islands without money for dykes will disappear. Models consistently predict changing precipitation patterns - which is ok if you have money to migitate the changes.
I don't want to dismiss your whole comment, you do have a point. I'll happily pay money in subsidies to create a solar industry which can then be copied by everyone. However, as you also say, it's not enough to solve this with science and technology. If we were still in the middle of the last century, it maybe would. It's a political problem now which has to be solved with politics by politicians and citizens, and not by scientists. And as I said in another comment, every citizen has the right to push for his believes to be taken into account.
Even though he was getting a shit wage, he still had to endure those who thought it was people like him, rather than the Exxon and Shells of this world, that had a vested interest.
[1] http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/29...
I do believe though that global warming feeds into their belief that industry, growth and capitalism are somehow evil and confirms their pre-existing prejudices.
That said, you're right about confirming pre-existing prejudices; in that sense, every ideology or belief is a conspiracy. Climate scientists are not immune to this phenomenon, but the act of science is to proactively try to correct for these kinds of biases, with the added constraint of having to "show your work". While mainstream science can get it wrong, 95+% consensus is very hard to achieve due to either ideology or external influence, especially worldwide. Those scientists might be wrong, but they're not all duping us as part of some plot.
I don't think they are duping us, but a mixture of pre-existing biases combined with enormous funding certainly helps to create the idea of a consensus.
If there's a corruptive element to climate change policy, it's a cash grab from green energy companies. After 2000, the Democrats know that the green voters won't dare vote third party again (sadly), so don't care about appeasing them beyond gestures.
>Before we tackle that, we’re too close to an astounding point for me to leave it unspoken. At that 2.3% growth rate, we would be using energy at a rate corresponding to the total solar input striking Earth in a little over 400 years. We would consume something comparable to the entire sun in 1400 years from now.
It's also questionable to equate growth in economic well-being with growth in energy use. They have certainly been related for a long time, but advances in materials, miniaturization, automation, and other engineering will make the environmentalists' goal of stabilizing per-capita energy use feasible.
Well I see people using current events to feed into pre-existing prejudices and biases here on HN all the time, so now I find it harder to criticize liberals and conservatives for doing the same.
We should remember to gently remind them to check their biases.
Having said that, it's particularly annoying to have those biases pointed out while people ignore the strong biases caused by people being paid to obfuscate the information around climate change.
Maybe it is just a hard-wired human response to disruption of a society by outside influences.
I don't trust the climate science community. I trusted them a lot more before Climate Gate. That's when I realized that climate science has become deeply, deeply politicized. One email from Phil Jones to McIntyre reads "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?". Why indeed Mr. Jones, would you want to share data with a skeptic? This is science after all, and science is nothing less than a method for supporting correct conclusions, and the "correct" conclusion is global warming.
Recent deviations of world temperature trends from climate models are only increasing my skepticism of the whole enterprise[4]. But I am alarmed to be going down such a path. If Global Warming were found out to be wrong, we would have to completely reevaluate how we come up with truth in society. That would be evidence of a massive misstep in our civilization.
[1] http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/06/yamal-foi-sheds-new-light...
[2] http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/23/steigs-bladeless-hockey-s...
[3] http://www.therightplanet.com/2011/11/phil-jones-for-your-ey...
[4] http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2157446...
Climate research is used as a reason to create tons of new government bodies, including international rules about what countries can do (Kyoto), intergovernment tax-schemes that are insanely corrupt (see European Co-limit trading, which had to be shot down due to fraud), taxes on gasoline and limits on what kinds of light bulbs I can use (which makes sense from a corporation standpoint, but if you really wanted to do something about the carbon emmisions you would care about my total emissions and not treat light separately).
You have small solutions like wind-mills and solar panels and greener cars that are supposed to prevent a cataclysmic disaster.
And you may claim that you trust the scientific community, but frankly if you also claim that oil money corrupts the scientists then so should government money - and indeed it appears that it does as each time something like this is leaked (and really if we are doing science what should there be to leak? it is supposed to be open to all) a lot of scientists gets really angry. It almost sounds like they are trying to cover up something.
Then you have the East Angelia leak (again that word leak, there shouldn't be anything to leak in science) in which the scientists talked about abusing the publishing process to prevent a paper they didn't want to be published from being published. That is the one that did me in, as I am not a climate scientist so I can only evaluate the truth based on what I see the scientists do, but even I know that if you don't like a paper and can simply point out where it is wrong then you do that. It is only when you can't point out an issue that you have to do back handed deals (and you are playing politics, not doing science).
And lets not get into the way those of us who are skeptical of climate change gets shot down when we voice our points they are almost never refuted we are simply told that we are various stodges for the oil companies, misinformed, etc.
In fact wouldn't it be fair that they are to check their report into a public subversion repository as it is being written?
Yes, but that's not happening here. They've not released all the data with explanations of how thing were measured, caveats, and context.
> While I understand that it is politically inconvenient for the scientists, that shouldn't really be what decides what the public gets access to (especially since this is a tax-payer founded study).
You're making it sound like this will never be released. It's not like they'd hide it if the data showed things weren't as bad as expected, in which case a leaked report would be important. This is a leak equivalent to grabbing a corner from the notes on someones desk and then turning it into a news story. This is in no way a report about leaked information that should be public, it will be public. It has nothing to do with "it's my taxes", it'll all be made public. What they want to do first is have it reviewed and checked before slapping their name on it and saying "we're confident in the data and the analysis".
What happens if there's a problem with the way this data was captured, which means there's a particular correlation with something else that must be accounted for before it makes sense? What if there are conclusions that aren't supported by the data, which could be found in review and amended?
> In fact wouldn't it be fair that they are to check their report into a public subversion repository as it is being written?
Fair? Why? Unless you're acting as a reviewer there's no reason to see the paper before it's in its final form. In fact, knowing how bad we are at thinking things are true even when shown to be false, seeing anything that people aren't really quite sure about is an extremely bad idea.
If they were to shelve the whole report, then yes, a leak would be interesting. Otherwise it's a massive waste of time, which can seriously harm the credibility of the final paper.
How is a layman to interpret this science? Heck, how are reasonably smart people who are not climatologists to interpret it? How are time-starved politicians who are responsible for the related policy to interpret it?
Read it until 1) you reach a part with a reference and follow and read the reference or 2) if no reference, google the part that confuses you.
No one ever follows the references. It's a shame. The body of a piece of work is just a small contribution of a larger body which is the referenced works.
You trust the people telling you what's what, and you analyze your standards and expectations of what can happen and plan accordingly. How do you plan against something you know next-to-nothing about, or you know so little that you can barely grasp the enormity of preparing for "global warming"? That's a great question, and it'll involve plans whose scope lies well beyond what you'll be doing tonight, tomorrow, next week, or 20 years from now -- it'll involve plans that include everybody and what we'll be doing tonight, tomorrow, next week, or 20 years from now.
"everyone else" is at a disadvantage because they probably have less of that intellectual curiosity, and less time to devote it to studying things which may not interest them at all.
The "we're all gonna die" faction gets four orders of magnitude more funding each year than the global warming skeptic faction. Oil company spending on climate science propaganda consists of a few $million here or these, and the best skeptics don't even take any of their money. The best ones are unpaid amateurs (like Steve McIntyre) or they achieved a position in academia decades ago before belief in global warming became required to advance. I suggest you read some skeptics like Steve[1] and see if you think he is as evil as Phil Jones thinks he is[2].
Moreover, the environmentalists control the institutions which create public opinion - namely the media and the universities. I'm guessing this is how your opinion was formed[3]. It's remarkable how utterly dominant cultural forces can see themselves as underdogs.
[1] http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/06/yamal-foi-sheds-new-light...
[2] http://www.therightplanet.com/2011/11/phil-jones-for-your-ey...
[3] http://anomalyuk.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-modern-structure.h...
Further, the fact that you referred to people who believe the climate change theory as the "we're all gonna die" faction tells me squarely which camp you're in, and I'd thank you to avoid further such sneaky pre-framing of the argument if you wish for me to take your claims seriously.
I don't know that the global warming hypothesis is untrue. But I do know that our current process is not a method designed to find truth. Scientific data should be open to all humanity, and not hidden for the sake of advancing political agendas.
[1] "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
[2] "The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone."
Understanding the basic theory is not that hard--certain gases in the atmosphere trap heat; we're adding more gases so we expect more heat to get trapped; and we've confirmed that by measuring rising temps. An afternoon on Wikipedia can fill in a lot of the details.
The question of belief might be more difficult, but I think it comes down to understanding that the scientific process works largely the same across disciplines. Black holes, quantum tunnelling, and retroviruses are at least as fantastic as a warming Earth. Do you believe scientists on those subjects? So why not on the physics of the Earth's climate?
Science is not really a buffet; I think one should either accept that it works, as a process, or don't. Picking and choosing is dangerous--because what is your criteria?
Of course individual scientists can be wrong, but how do we know that? Because other scientists proved it. So it always has to come back to scientific proof. Not op-eds and blogs.