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

UK Government: Climate change scientists broke the law hiding data

timesonline.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 76 posts

Re: UK Government: Climate change scientists broke the law hiding data

#11

Post by ugh »

TheBranca18 wrote: post #7
kunley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the verbal purity and political correctness the point from the OP is: someone was trying to force the conclusion than the climate is warming more than it is. Isn't that clear?

Verbal purity? They are two totally different concepts. This isn't about making sure you use the right term, it's making sure you understand the difference between the two. And yes it was clear. I think anyone reading the article should come to that conclusion. Your comparison was shallow and silly and I called you on it.

Please tell me about the difference. As far as I know climate change is the more general term while global warming can be used to refer to the current climate change. Both terms are equally valid, even if global warming might fall a bit short in describing all the effects of climate change. (It will get warmer, but there will likely be other effects that are often less well understood.)

There is hardly any harm done in using both terms interchangably.

(Edited out ocean acidification - I guess that one is strictly speaking neither an effect of climate change nor of gloabal warming. It's rather just caused by the same thing that also causes the current climate change.)

Re: UK Government: Climate change scientists broke the law hiding data

#12

Post by akira_x »

kunley wrote: post #6
TheBranca18 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article talks about climate change. You might want to learn the difference between climate change and global warming before you dismiss it with a one-liner.

Regardless of the verbal purity and political correctness the point from the OP is: someone was trying to force the conclusion than the climate is warming more than it is. Isn't that clear?

What's clear that this tampering should not be fodder for a flippant response about being the "new swine flu". If we can't trust scientist to do their job without "fudging" the numbers, then who are we to trust? I want my tax money going to more research, but now I am not so sure and thats the real tragedy.

Re: UK Government: Climate change scientists broke the law hiding data

#13

Post by TheBranca18 »

TheBranca18 wrote: post #7
kunley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the verbal purity and political correctness the point from the OP is: someone was trying to force the conclusion than the climate is warming more than it is. Isn't that clear?

Verbal purity? They are two totally different concepts. This isn't about making sure you use the right term, it's making sure you understand the difference between the two. And yes it was clear. I think anyone reading the article should come to that conclusion. Your comparison was shallow and silly and I called you on it.

I always thought that global warming was a subset of climate change. The fact that the title of the article included climate change made me puzzled as to why global warming was used.

Re: UK Government: Climate change scientists broke the law hiding data

#14

Post by yannis »

I am glad this is breaking out slowly but surely and the C02 saga will probably be the greatest scientific scandal of our time. I have been following the story for as far as I remember as I had an interest in Ice Ages. This article http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/zjmar07.pdf is very good at debunking some of the myths. You can play with a model online with this http://cs.clark.edu/~mac/physlets/GEBM/ebm.htm#tiptop and you can download a more sophisticated program http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/ from Goddard, or you can write your own Clojure one, like the one we had yesterday here at HN.

There is no doubt that an increase in CO2 will increase temperatures. However, this is only part of a model. C02 can get absorbed by the Oceans and other earth mechanisms and balance out. If you follow the Palaeoclimate literature (ice cores in Antartica) the rise in temperature gave a rise to C02 and not the other way round.

You can look how the famous hockey stick curve looks if plotted against historical times (it looks more like a series of hills).

Serious variations in temperature (on a global level) are caused mostly by sunspot activity. I am sure other HN posters can add 100's more argument to these.

However, as humans there is no doubt that we are destroying our environment. As such I am very much for better policies in this respect but certainly NOT for trading carbon credits and fattening fat cats further.

Re: UK Government: Climate change scientists broke the law hiding data

#15

Post by sree_nair »

TheBranca18 wrote: post #4
kunley wrote: post #3

Global warming is the new swine flu.

The article talks about climate change. You might want to learn the difference between climate change and global warming before you dismiss it with a one-liner.

Can you elaborate on what the Difference is ?. And why you think this finding doesn't impact the climeate change findings?

Re: UK Government: Climate change scientists broke the law hiding data

#16

Post by [deleted] »

TheBranca18 wrote: post #7
kunley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the verbal purity and political correctness the point from the OP is: someone was trying to force the conclusion than the climate is warming more than it is. Isn't that clear?

Verbal purity? They are two totally different concepts. This isn't about making sure you use the right term, it's making sure you understand the difference between the two. And yes it was clear. I think anyone reading the article should come to that conclusion. Your comparison was shallow and silly and I called you on it.

[deleted]

Re: UK Government: Climate change scientists broke the law hiding data

#17

Post by kunley »

akira_x wrote: post #12
kunley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the verbal purity and political correctness the point from the OP is: someone was trying to force the conclusion than the climate is warming more than it is. Isn't that clear?

What's clear that this tampering should not be fodder for a flippant response about being the "new swine flu". If we can't trust scientist to do their job without "fudging" the numbers, then who are we to trust? I want my tax money going to more research, but now I am not so sure and thats the real tragedy.

That's my point: mistrust to organizations who try to push certain conclusions in order to gain profits, in a similar way as it was swine flu & vaccines. That's the meaning of my comparison.

Btw if you care about your taxes, what about Carbon tax?

Re: UK Government: Climate change scientists broke the law hiding data

#18

Post by ErrantX »

ugh wrote: post #11
TheBranca18 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verbal purity? They are two totally different concepts. This isn't about making sure you use the right term, it's making sure you understand the difference between the two. And yes it was clear. I think anyone reading the article should come to that conclusion. Your comparison was shallow and silly and I called you on it.

Please tell me about the difference. As far as I know climate change is the more general term while global warming can be used to refer to the current climate change. Both terms are equally valid, even if global warming might fall a bit short in describing all the effects of climate change. (It will get warmer, but there will likely be other effects that are often less well understood.) There is hardly any harm done…

> There is hardly any harm done in using both terms interchangably.

The only caveat is that Global Warming has been intrinsically linked to the word "Man Made" by various people. Rightly or wrongly the phrase has a much more specific connotation than just a subset of climate change.

Re: UK Government: Climate change scientists broke the law hiding data

#19

Post by kunley »

TheBranca18 wrote: post #13
TheBranca18 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verbal purity? They are two totally different concepts. This isn't about making sure you use the right term, it's making sure you understand the difference between the two. And yes it was clear. I think anyone reading the article should come to that conclusion. Your comparison was shallow and silly and I called you on it.

I always thought that global warming was a subset of climate change. The fact that the title of the article included climate change made me puzzled as to why global warming was used.

Because I'm commenting article content, not the title. Of course the global warming is the subset of a climate change -- the subset most relevant in the article.

Re: UK Government: Climate change scientists broke the law hiding data

#20

Post by akira_x »

akira_x wrote: post #12
kunley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the verbal purity and political correctness the point from the OP is: someone was trying to force the conclusion than the climate is warming more than it is. Isn't that clear?

What's clear that this tampering should not be fodder for a flippant response about being the "new swine flu". If we can't trust scientist to do their job without "fudging" the numbers, then who are we to trust? I want my tax money going to more research, but now I am not so sure and thats the real tragedy.

Now, its clear what you were getting at with the reference to the swine flu. As far as carbon tax, its good and bad. Good that it will supposedly encourage competitiveness. Bad that most companies will just move to a state or country that doesn't have the tax.
Post reply on HN