They're a surprisingly good source for major articles. If you had important information for a mass audience and wanted to reach that audience, it would be a good choice of publication.
I mean, they got rid of GEN McChrystal, among other things.
Your statement is ridiculous. I could say anything and argue it should be judged on it's own merit, where are the sources? There were zero citations in this article.
He wants things handed to him. Rather than follow up via the multiple sources they provided, along with a link to the project itself, he'd prefer we do that work for him.
Which is sad, really. That people don't want to take the time to research things on their own, and simply expect things handed to them.
What source are you looking for exactly? The piece was about the Dark Snow Project, and the journalist trekked around Greenland with the guy that founded it.
I want data, and analysis of data, and the initial conditions required to produce said data. If you don't provide that, you are not providing scientific value. Rather, you're writing an opinion piece that can only ever be as accurate as the author's knowledge, and well, The Rolling Stone doesn't produce scientifically educated authors.
If you want data on public research and don't go looking for it yourself, then you are just lazy. You know the name of the scientist and the project from the article which is all you need if you then want to look deeper. Stop winging.
This is the same Rolling Stone that placed the younger Tsarnaev on their front cover like some sort of rock icon. Fuck Rolling Stone and everything associated with it.
If you're upset about Tsarnev then you either didn't read that article or get the point. The photo they used was a real one, it wasn't doctored, the point of which was to ask the question of how this seemingly intelligent, non-extreme, all-American looking boy could become radicalized and become involved in a terror plot. That article was an example of the kind of real journalism that's lacking in this country.
Rolling Stone has for years now been a great source for good journalism. It's not just a music magazine and hasn't been for a long time. They've been doing a lot of good investigative reporting for at least the past ten years that I know of and maybe more.
You may not like what you read but the fact that it came from Rolling Stone is totally irrelevant. You want sources? Read the article. They're in there. You want citations? Read an academic journal. What magazine or newspaper that you know of puts citations for every little thing in their articles? None. Because they're not publishing academic papers. If no source is valid without the citations you require then no magazine is a valid source by your logic - logic that's flawed.
The problem being that acknowledgement is what these crazy people are looking for and RS just gave it to them.
Keep in mind, the best form of censorship is a market based one. When a company does wrong, I'd rather a boycott than have some government do-gooder step in.
You wouldn't, but that's because it's not a science article. It's a pop culture magazine article portraying a climate change researcher as a rock star. There's very little discussion of the falsifiable hypotheses he wants to test - some bits about models, reflectivity, and black microbes is all you get. But biographies are okay, they can help to put a face on things. That said, I didn't find it the most compelling read but the picture of the waterslide was worth it.
> But biographies are okay, they can help to put a face on things.
Damn right. They do far more for science than people realize. You make science fun and exciting, and it draws people in. Not everyone wants to start with all the technical data.
Yes, I read it. How exactly do you expect me to determine the validity of the words in the article? Please tell me you don't simply believe them to be factual based on their articulate organization. If you do, there is no hope for this conversation.
The response to this is a great example of how far Hacker News has fallen. The readership here appears to be in a state of believing what The Rolling Stone says in place of actual scientific research.
If you want an example of how intellectual forums die, this thread is it.
HN has always featured sciencey articles from the popular press (as well as complaints about the decline of HN, for that matter), so your claim is at first glance untrue. It does seem testable, though. Do you have any data to support it?
It’s a magazine article about a science topic, a.k.a. the most normal thing in the world. Only in bizarro-HN-world would that even begin to raise any eyebrows.
Yes, journalists are in fact allowed to write about science topics and there is nothing wrong with that in itself. No, not everything that’s written about science has to have been published in a peer-reviewed science journal. Good science journalism is awesome and there should be much more of it.
It’s this honestly bizarre cynical and twisted worldview that’s wrong with HN, most certainly not that someone posted this article.
You are completely free to question the media and think for yourself. The linked article provides more than enough information to actually get you started.
No one ever claimed you have to accept what the article says.
Baseless complaints about the source does not qualify as "question media". Your comment is mindless contrarianism, not the intelligent skepticism you think it is.
You're free to question media. Welcome, in fact. I would love nothing more. But you didn't do it, and to act as though you did when someone calls you out is dishonest.
Yeah, that's great, but for fuck's sake, you don't "question media" by simply launching into an ad-hominem attack against the Rolling Stone. Stop trying to defend your little tantrum up above by having another little tantrum.
His tantrum is so childish it is embarrassing. He responds to himself complaining about the response his whiny ad hominem comment received. The ironic icing on the cake is that he is complaining about how far HN has fallen!
0% of what you claim to be responding to is what he actually said. For someone that claims to be want to carefully evaluate the information presented to him you might want to figure out what he actually said.
It's an infection it acquired from an incestuous relationship with Reddit, where anything that isn't peer-reviewed or watermarked is the object of karma-whoring wannabe-internet-detectives.
The eyebrow-raiser is that Rolling Stone is hardly a non-biased source, I don't think they even try to pretend otherwise. Therefore by default you should view anything you read there with skepticism.
You should read everything you read anywhere with skepticism. The big problem is that people vary their skepticism more according to how much they want to believe something than the credibility of the source.
A metric assload of popular articles without sources or citations make the front page every day. But the only one anyone complains about is one related to global warming. Because it's somehow worse? No. Because many people are incapable of examining that particular issue without emotion.
Certainly, and they feed on each other in a crazy feedback cycle. However, that doesn't and shouldn't diminish the fact that the actual science solidly favors one side.
I'd recommend the second portion of the video, as it’s a good old fashion, boring, highly scientific and un-emotive description of one particular view of how higher arctic temperatures can affect the climate.
I also found the second portion worked well as a tutorial on the basics of how the world’s climate actually works.
I'll expect you to make the same comment on posts that claim to want to "change the world". This is an actual world changing event, not some marketing bullshit.
> The readership here appears to be in a state of believing what The Rolling Stone says in place of actual scientific research.
You're clearly concerned with citations, so I'll ask for one: where did anyone here say, even implicitly, that they valued a Rolling Stone article in place of actual scientific research?
> If you want an example of how intellectual forums die, this thread is it.
Ok, let’s try to apply some intellectual thinking to the article.
Firstly, The Rolling Stone is not a scientific journal, but rather a magazine catering to the general public.
Secondly, I read the article, not as a scientific paper on climate change, but rather an article about a particular climate change scientist, Jason Box.
The article presents Box's opinions on climate change and his latest prediction that black snow could have a big impact on the rate of ice melt.
How is that any different, to say, an article asking Bjarne Stroustrup's his opinions of the C++11 standard?
It's an opinion piece, from someone whose opinion should be worth reading, if only because they have expertise in that field.
Uh, Rolling Stone has some serious journalists. I find him a bit shrill, but Matt Taibbi had some pretty good coverage of the financial coverage in Rolling Stone over the last few years.
Setting aside the defense of RS by sibling comments, part of the reason this article is of interest is its presentation format.
Find a peer-reviewed science journal that also provides a rich multimedia experience and you can argue that there is a source that is "better" for the purposes recognized here (content and presentation format).
So Arctic albedo causes the new scary feedback in the climate system? What happens when the old scary feedback mechanism (water vapor) condenses into opaque white clouds?
Warmer air holds more vapour than colder air, so there's less condensation to be had. I can't say what the extent of that is, but there is a form of feedback there.
It sounds like you're putting the cart before the horse. Why would the atmosphere be significantly warmer if condensed clouds are reflecting solar energy into space?
Furthermore, if there is a robust model suggesting that extra water vapor in warm air negates the effect of cloud albedo, wouldn't that hypothesis be supported by the tropospheric temperature record?
No cart before the horse. It's just a potential feedback mechanism - if something else is causing warming, this may help accelerate it. It's not an isolated factor.
My weather science is weak - which is why I can't say what the extent of this is - it's just that shiny snow moved into the atmosphere does not necessarily cause an equal amount of shiny clouds. It may even create more clouds - the same amount of water makes more cloud than ice - but it's a complex picture, and warm air can hold a hell of a lot of water in invisible vapour form.
It choked my Mac mini. Tens of thousands of CPU's around the world are roaring to this web page, causing enough global warming to melt buckets of ice. BUCKETS, I TELL YOU!!
I'm on a dinky little Sony Vaio 11" and no-script on FF has been my friend. Best thing is that it charges pretty well on a car or solar panel or bicycle + dyno or what have you.
It's ultimately disadvantageous to magazine publishers in particular (since they seem to serve the most bloat) when people will eventually block scripts en masse.
Props to them for capturing the feeling of a beautiful magazine on a web page. I wish my favourite newspaper websites would pull that off in their larger pieces.
It's terrible. Scrolling is super slow and jerky, and I'm afraid to zoom/resize to a comfortable reading view because of it.
I don't see why this is necessary for a "beautiful magazine feeling"? Couldn't they just used big pictures, a nice font and great layout, but in plain HTML+CSS it would give me the exact same experience, except of course 1000x better.
A while ago I came across a similar article (maybe it was Rollingstone as well) about Daft Punk's new album. I really wanted to read about Daft Punk so I suffered through that experience. The photos were very pretty but still I really wonder what sort of computer such pages are optimized for? My laptop is not super powerful but also just 1.5 years old. I used the latest Chrome on Win7, that should put me in their target audience for optimizing website experience right?
(of course that's assuming my experience is not the intended one and it's more pleasant for people on more powerful computers?)
But for this article, from the title I pretty much just wanted to know what's up with the ice in Greenland and what this means. So I didn't persevere and instead came looking to the comments here to see if the article is even any good.
Not if the message (and all the graphics) reaches people who will understand that our climate undergoes significant changes. Having a couple of buckets of ice melted today is OK, if it will contribute to fewer melted buckets of ice tomorrow.
First time since I'm on the web (and that's since around IE4) I almost missed the content below the fold.
I thought it was a myth that people might not know that they should scroll a bit.
But this page? Flashy animation, logo, social icons. First thought "Maybe that's all? Seems sufficient for 2013", but the title on HN suggested that this page contains some content. Second though "I guess it's broken. I'm on linux. Sometimes server don't respond fully. Possible."
"Maybe I hover over some things? But the animation has no distinct features. Maybe I click around. Maybe touch mouse wheel. Wow! Whoever approved this design was an idiot."
Well. Global warming is an important issue, but the janky scrolling on that site caused me to shoot past important info, get a little frustrated, and close the article.
On second thought:
But I think you and I agree on the same issue, we're just misunderstanding each other.
Whenever I see an article with a headline like this, I always wonder... was it actually faster than anyone ever predicted? Was there really not at least one crazy guy in the 70's who said "Man, Greenland's ice sheets are going to be completely gone by the year 2000".
Or at least a more aggressive model from somebody. Seems a bit unbelievable not a single scientist got the current melting within the range of one of their models.
The small number of predictions of an ice age appeared to be much more interesting than those of global warming, so it was those sensational 'Ice Age' stories in the press that so many people tend to remember.
I'd like a TL;DR.
The global warming is sufficiently alarming that we shouldn't care about how its too much javascript, or fonts are not easy to read.
I read through most of the article and it doesn't seem to actually give the explanations for the phenomenon, how it exactly works, and how to make accurate predictions.
On Arctic albedo affected by Box's wildfire hypothesis, I'm wondering if those earlier deep core samples correlate with historic big blasts like Santorini, Krakatoa's red sky for a year, and...is that Yellowstone super blow up recent enough?
Through the last years the trend is to less and less ice in the Summer. 2005 and 2006 -- more ice, all other years less and less, 2012 lowest points in the chart.
99 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] threadThat isn't to say it isn't true, it may well be, but seriously, find a better source.
I mean, they got rid of GEN McChrystal, among other things.
The 2009 "The Great Vampire Squid" was a good article, although it probably went too far. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american...
The Operators was a great book; it grew out of the article in RS, and was excerpted there. http://www.amazon.com/Operators-Terrifying-Americas-Afghanis...
I liked their Billy Corgan article, although that's music.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/may...
He wants things handed to him. Rather than follow up via the multiple sources they provided, along with a link to the project itself, he'd prefer we do that work for him.
Which is sad, really. That people don't want to take the time to research things on their own, and simply expect things handed to them.
You are expecting this to be something it is not. And not even trying to be.
Rolling Stone has for years now been a great source for good journalism. It's not just a music magazine and hasn't been for a long time. They've been doing a lot of good investigative reporting for at least the past ten years that I know of and maybe more.
You may not like what you read but the fact that it came from Rolling Stone is totally irrelevant. You want sources? Read the article. They're in there. You want citations? Read an academic journal. What magazine or newspaper that you know of puts citations for every little thing in their articles? None. Because they're not publishing academic papers. If no source is valid without the citations you require then no magazine is a valid source by your logic - logic that's flawed.
Keep in mind, the best form of censorship is a market based one. When a company does wrong, I'd rather a boycott than have some government do-gooder step in.
Damn right. They do far more for science than people realize. You make science fun and exciting, and it draws people in. Not everyone wants to start with all the technical data.
Hell, the best scientists understand this.
You can read the article (which you clearly haven't done) and answer this question yourself.
If you want an example of how intellectual forums die, this thread is it.
The article gives plenty of caveats.
Is there anything factually wrong in the article? Or is it that you disagree with his hypothesis? Or is it simply the lack of cites?
Yes, journalists are in fact allowed to write about science topics and there is nothing wrong with that in itself. No, not everything that’s written about science has to have been published in a peer-reviewed science journal. Good science journalism is awesome and there should be much more of it.
It’s this honestly bizarre cynical and twisted worldview that’s wrong with HN, most certainly not that someone posted this article.
How dare people question media?
How dare people think for themselves instead of accepting what media tells them?
How dare they?
You have vilified everything that goes wrong with a democratic society.
Your mentality is the problem.
No one ever claimed you have to accept what the article says.
You're free to question media. Welcome, in fact. I would love nothing more. But you didn't do it, and to act as though you did when someone calls you out is dishonest.
Care to back that up with some data?
I hope you mean that as directed to both sides of the argument, because it's certainly true.
Despite the alarmist title, I found this a good video on the topic of climate change:
"The Alarming Science Behind Climate Change's Increasingly Wild Weather"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-RDE7z2T0k
I'd recommend the second portion of the video, as it’s a good old fashion, boring, highly scientific and un-emotive description of one particular view of how higher arctic temperatures can affect the climate.
I also found the second portion worked well as a tutorial on the basics of how the world’s climate actually works.
You're clearly concerned with citations, so I'll ask for one: where did anyone here say, even implicitly, that they valued a Rolling Stone article in place of actual scientific research?
Ok, let’s try to apply some intellectual thinking to the article.
Firstly, The Rolling Stone is not a scientific journal, but rather a magazine catering to the general public.
Secondly, I read the article, not as a scientific paper on climate change, but rather an article about a particular climate change scientist, Jason Box.
The article presents Box's opinions on climate change and his latest prediction that black snow could have a big impact on the rate of ice melt.
How is that any different, to say, an article asking Bjarne Stroustrup's his opinions of the C++11 standard?
It's an opinion piece, from someone whose opinion should be worth reading, if only because they have expertise in that field.
Find a peer-reviewed science journal that also provides a rich multimedia experience and you can argue that there is a source that is "better" for the purposes recognized here (content and presentation format).
Neat design though.
Furthermore, if there is a robust model suggesting that extra water vapor in warm air negates the effect of cloud albedo, wouldn't that hypothesis be supported by the tropospheric temperature record?
My weather science is weak - which is why I can't say what the extent of this is - it's just that shiny snow moved into the atmosphere does not necessarily cause an equal amount of shiny clouds. It may even create more clouds - the same amount of water makes more cloud than ice - but it's a complex picture, and warm air can hold a hell of a lot of water in invisible vapour form.
We can certainly agree on that point.
Pop Quiz! Who said, "I can see Russia from my house"?
Answer: Not Sarah Palin, it was Tina Fey.
I suppose she's nutty enough to actually say something like that, and so isn't really a good joke eh? People might actually pass on the quote.
This was her a few weeks ago:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/sarah-palin-global-...
Requests: 148
It choked my Mac mini. Tens of thousands of CPU's around the world are roaring to this web page, causing enough global warming to melt buckets of ice. BUCKETS, I TELL YOU!!
It's ultimately disadvantageous to magazine publishers in particular (since they seem to serve the most bloat) when people will eventually block scripts en masse.
Edit: Forgot to mention, I also use this http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
Although I changed 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0 and it seemed to have no ill effects.
I don't see why this is necessary for a "beautiful magazine feeling"? Couldn't they just used big pictures, a nice font and great layout, but in plain HTML+CSS it would give me the exact same experience, except of course 1000x better.
A while ago I came across a similar article (maybe it was Rollingstone as well) about Daft Punk's new album. I really wanted to read about Daft Punk so I suffered through that experience. The photos were very pretty but still I really wonder what sort of computer such pages are optimized for? My laptop is not super powerful but also just 1.5 years old. I used the latest Chrome on Win7, that should put me in their target audience for optimizing website experience right?
(of course that's assuming my experience is not the intended one and it's more pleasant for people on more powerful computers?)
But for this article, from the title I pretty much just wanted to know what's up with the ice in Greenland and what this means. So I didn't persevere and instead came looking to the comments here to see if the article is even any good.
I thought it was a myth that people might not know that they should scroll a bit.
But this page? Flashy animation, logo, social icons. First thought "Maybe that's all? Seems sufficient for 2013", but the title on HN suggested that this page contains some content. Second though "I guess it's broken. I'm on linux. Sometimes server don't respond fully. Possible."
"Maybe I hover over some things? But the animation has no distinct features. Maybe I click around. Maybe touch mouse wheel. Wow! Whoever approved this design was an idiot."
On second thought: But I think you and I agree on the same issue, we're just misunderstanding each other.
Or at least a more aggressive model from somebody. Seems a bit unbelievable not a single scientist got the current melting within the range of one of their models.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s...
TL;DR
The small number of predictions of an ice age appeared to be much more interesting than those of global warming, so it was those sensational 'Ice Age' stories in the press that so many people tend to remember.
From that I'm pretty sure that wiki page that 'global cooling' was not the only concern.
also http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-c...
http://www.rollingstone.com/search?q=Javascript
I read through most of the article and it doesn't seem to actually give the explanations for the phenomenon, how it exactly works, and how to make accurate predictions.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_imag...
Through the last years the trend is to less and less ice in the Summer. 2005 and 2006 -- more ice, all other years less and less, 2012 lowest points in the chart.
Climate change is de facto happening. We need to mitigate not hope we can stop the ball rolling.