Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 75 posts

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#21

Post by gavanwoolery »

markusbrutus wrote: post #14
gavanwoolery wrote: post #10

Politics and science really have no place together. Politics is about pushing the most favorable agenda, and science is about the pursuit of truth. Politicians and liars have always had close association. Politics and science are thus inherently at odds. That said, I have seen, on more than one occasion, scientists become untruthful for the sake of grants and political agendas (and this is not necessarily referring t…

Grants, careers and reputations aside there are fields like Mathematics where there can be no political agenda because the findings are not input to political decisions. Climate change is definitely not such a field and people are wary of agendas in either direction. Given the huge interests involved it is impossible for even the most well-intentioned layman to arrive at a safe conclusion without spending an unreason…

http://i.imgur.com/axlcWY1.jpg

The above graph is the source data for the famous "Hockey Stick" graph. The one below it is similar data taken from another location (IIRC one was taken in Arizona, the other California). Why they chose to use one and not both is beyond me. So, there are some types of science that are more based on perception. (Note, I'm not saying that this instance invalidates anthropogenic global warming, just that sometimes people present the data that favors their hypothesis).

The distribution of primes, on the other hand, relies on one set of data. We don't know everything about primes, and have some theories that may be invalid, but the data is isolated and irrefutable. This is how math is different IMO - it has a tendency to revolve around the nature of numbers rather than ever-changing real world measurements.

There is a lot of money in climate science and green tech. A friend of my parents got a multibillion dollar grant from the government to develop a clean energy solution, for example.

My usual disclaimer - I dont care one way or the other to what degree humans are warming the earth - I say act environmentally friendly either way.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#22

Post by moonchrome »

lemevi wrote: post #6

Why would emails be more important than the data? The data should speak for itself, only a politician is looking for "gotcha" phrases they can print in huge letters for a poster board that they put up while making speeches denying global warming. It's not that these politicians don't understand how science works, they understand how to manipulate people to favor legislation that is actually against their interests. E…

>The data should speak for itself

Are you serious ? Not only is there multiple way to interpret same data (after all there are so many competing models to explain it) and at best you can debate confidence intervals and models - it's far beyond non-experts expecting them to review the data directly is ridiculous - the only way they can work with experts is based on trust and credibility.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#23

Post by gaius »

oberstein wrote: post #16
lemevi wrote: post #6

Why would emails be more important than the data? The data should speak for itself, only a politician is looking for "gotcha" phrases they can print in huge letters for a poster board that they put up while making speeches denying global warming. It's not that these politicians don't understand how science works, they understand how to manipulate people to favor legislation that is actually against their interests. E…

The data should speak for themselves. Unfortunately people who don't know statistics think they can't, because as we found out from emails, the data were "manipulated" via statistical methods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_c... Honestly I'd rather we press scientists of all sorts for all their source code and modeling tool configurations including the raw data that hasn't been post-proces…

Any science based on simulation, any member of the public should be able to download, compile and run on their PC and get exactly the same results. It's the only way to be completely transparent. C and FORTRAN compilers are free.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#24

Post by mjn »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #20
leothekim wrote: post #5

"Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) wants thousands of e-mails among scientists and NOAA’s staff of political appointees that he thinks will show that the researchers had something to hide when they refuted claims that global warming had “paused” or slowed over the past decade." Apparently climate change science is not in the published research itself, but can only be found by going through someone's email. What bald-face…

It's indeed an exercise in douchebaggery, but the fact is, Smith has the right to subpoena the emails. They're public property. If you saw The Martian, you might remember the arguments among NASA managers about how much information on Watney's predicament should be revealed to the public. It was pointed out that their only legal option was to lay it all out there. That's pretty much how government agencies actually w…

The actual power being used here, the Congressional subpoena power, doesn't have anything to do with whether something is public property or not, so that isn't the basis they're claiming. It's a general quasi-judicial investigatory power, which can be used to compel any person to both appear physically, and turn over any documents in their possession that Congress, in their sole discretion, believes might be important to decisions made by Congress. That obviously has significant scope for abuse, which is why Congressional subpoenas tend to be controversial, especially if they're fishing expeditions.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#25

Post by acqq »

moonchrome wrote: post #22
lemevi wrote: post #6

Why would emails be more important than the data? The data should speak for itself, only a politician is looking for "gotcha" phrases they can print in huge letters for a poster board that they put up while making speeches denying global warming. It's not that these politicians don't understand how science works, they understand how to manipulate people to favor legislation that is actually against their interests. E…

>The data should speak for itself Are you serious ? Not only is there multiple way to interpret same data (after all there are so many competing models to explain it) and at best you can debate confidence intervals and models - it's far beyond non-experts expecting them to review the data directly is ridiculous - the only way they can work with experts is based on trust and credibility.

Wrong. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to repeat most of the basic calculations which give similar results.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#26

Post by moonchrome »

acqq wrote: post #25
moonchrome wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The data should speak for itself Are you serious ? Not only is there multiple way to interpret same data (after all there are so many competing models to explain it) and at best you can debate confidence intervals and models - it's far beyond non-experts expecting them to review the data directly is ridiculous - the only way they can work with experts is based on trust and credibility.

Wrong. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to repeat most of the basic calculations which give similar results.

Who cares if I can run a formula/program that tells me Y from X if I can't understand/trust the program/formula ?

If you think that stuff like economics/climatology/etc. has the same level of rigor and validation applied to it as established and verified theories from hard science then boy do I have some bad news for you (struggling for SD 2 as ideal vs SD 5 for eg.).

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#28

Post by cracker_jacks »

SilasX wrote: post #17
lemevi wrote: post #6

Why would emails be more important than the data? The data should speak for itself, only a politician is looking for "gotcha" phrases they can print in huge letters for a poster board that they put up while making speeches denying global warming. It's not that these politicians don't understand how science works, they understand how to manipulate people to favor legislation that is actually against their interests. E…

In theory, yes. Among ideal rational agents, yes. But in practice, science depends on the trust that scientists aren't actively subverting the process: failing to consider alternate hypothesis, fabricating data, ignoring data, deliberately filtering for confirmatory data, groupthink, etc. So an import safeguard is the ability to detect when someone is doing the above, even if the detector doesn't know the literature…

Then have a separate group of scientists reproduce the results and review the methodology used. Their publication should provide all the information necessary to reproduce and evaluate their findings. All the possible 'evidence' of misconduct will be there in the data.

Using a subpoena to threaten scientists for finding results you don't agree with is a form of censorship.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#29

Post by hyperbovine »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #20
leothekim wrote: post #5

"Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) wants thousands of e-mails among scientists and NOAA’s staff of political appointees that he thinks will show that the researchers had something to hide when they refuted claims that global warming had “paused” or slowed over the past decade." Apparently climate change science is not in the published research itself, but can only be found by going through someone's email. What bald-face…

It's indeed an exercise in douchebaggery, but the fact is, Smith has the right to subpoena the emails. They're public property. If you saw The Martian, you might remember the arguments among NASA managers about how much information on Watney's predicament should be revealed to the public. It was pointed out that their only legal option was to lay it all out there. That's pretty much how government agencies actually w…

> Smith has the right to subpoena the emails. They're public property.

Not necessarily -- they might be, ianal, but it's not the case that all government e-mails are automatically part of the public record. I recall from back in my journalism days that government workers have some assurance of confidentiality w/r/t e-mail communications if that assurance is needed to effectively carry out their job.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#30

Post by mtgx »

leothekim wrote: post #5

"Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) wants thousands of e-mails among scientists and NOAA’s staff of political appointees that he thinks will show that the researchers had something to hide when they refuted claims that global warming had “paused” or slowed over the past decade." Apparently climate change science is not in the published research itself, but can only be found by going through someone's email. What bald-face…

As a reminder, Lamar Smith was the creator of SOPA in the House. After that whole mess, they let this guy be in charge of the Science Committee in the House...
Post reply on HN