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How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

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Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#21

Post by wolfgke »

frankquist wrote: post #17
wolfgke wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will more people who can contribute positively to climate science help if they had free access to those data? I think if we only consider it as science if it can be verified independently, also the "opposite side" (your "well-financed groups") has to provide evidence of the same high standard, which would strongly increase the level on which the debate is pursued (i.e. the opposing side also cannot get away with ou…

But then I wonder, how do you enforce the latter rule? ('the "opposite side" has to provide evidence of the same high standard'). Generally it seems like a lot of the media at least, which serve as a gatekeeper of sorts for which information gets disseminated to the broader public, do not really seem capable of or interested in enforcing such a rule. Policymakers, who should be quite interested in climate studies, mi…

I think it is easy (in the sense: takes little time) to check if the opposite side provides the data and source code of the computer program that lead them to the conclusions. If not, one can simply give out this reason.

If they do, on the other hand, I consider it as sufficiently scientifically intesting to analyze what different kind of model their program used (that lead to different conclusions) and why this model is better/worse etc.

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#22

Post by ajford »

DasBlob wrote: post #5
wolfgke wrote: post #2

I see a large problem in the fact that (as it seems) the original data and the computer code is not published, too. This is in my opinion a contradiction to the scientific principle that any result or conclusion has to be able to verified independently as much as possible. Though not publishing data and computer programs (and ideally a virtual machine for independent execution of the program code, too) is unluckily a…

While I certainly share your sentiment that both, data and analysis software, should be available, I do see a conflict of interest here that cannot be easily resolved. On the one hand, we do assert (wrongly, IMO) that competition is a necessary element to drive scientific innovation and consequently require scientific actors to adhere to economic principles, i.e. publish more and better-received papers. On the other…

I agree on the propriety of data for a limited time. I worked in the field of Radio Astronomy, and it was common to have a two year period where the data was private to the Primary Investigator (and co-investigators/consortium). I think this is a relatively acceptable approach, given how long it can take to process and fact-check data and papers.

I'm also for the publishing and tracking of code, as in many fields the data is becoming so vast that it's impossible to process or handle manually, and many pipelines and large scale systems are being built to handle this data. This inevitably means that a simple bug in code (or false/incorrect assumption by the author) can result in many lost hours and years of work.

But publishing code can also lead to biases, if there is an unintentional bias in released code or approaches that become popular within a given field.

In the field I worked in, there were two very common pipelines used by a huge majority of researchers, and I always wondered if there might be some unintentional selection effect being introduced. Well, it turns out someone else thought so too, so there's now an effort to rewrite one of these tools from the ground up without using any of the original code. It's only something like 60% complete right now, but hopefully soon it will be complete and we'll get to see if results compare, or if we spot any unintentional effects.

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#23

Post by ajford »

wolfgke wrote: post #21
frankquist wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then I wonder, how do you enforce the latter rule? ('the "opposite side" has to provide evidence of the same high standard'). Generally it seems like a lot of the media at least, which serve as a gatekeeper of sorts for which information gets disseminated to the broader public, do not really seem capable of or interested in enforcing such a rule. Policymakers, who should be quite interested in climate studies, mi…

I think it is easy (in the sense: takes little time) to check if the opposite side provides the data and source code of the computer program that lead them to the conclusions. If not, one can simply give out this reason. If they do, on the other hand, I consider it as sufficiently scientifically intesting to analyze what different kind of model their program used (that lead to different conclusions) and why this mode…

The problem is that budgets for science are controlled by the relatively uneducated (as is seemingly the case for most legislators), at least when it relates to the fields of science. And they are often easily swayed by unreviewed and unverified articles in public magazines/newspapers/blogs/etc. Even more so for the public, who hold a strong sway over legislators due to elections and what-not.

So it is in no way easy to force the opposition to uphold the stringent requirements of science, when they are clearly ignoring many of the facts staring them in the face (at least in the case of climate change deniers).

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#24

Post by frankquist »

wolfgke wrote: post #21
frankquist wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then I wonder, how do you enforce the latter rule? ('the "opposite side" has to provide evidence of the same high standard'). Generally it seems like a lot of the media at least, which serve as a gatekeeper of sorts for which information gets disseminated to the broader public, do not really seem capable of or interested in enforcing such a rule. Policymakers, who should be quite interested in climate studies, mi…

I think it is easy (in the sense: takes little time) to check if the opposite side provides the data and source code of the computer program that lead them to the conclusions. If not, one can simply give out this reason. If they do, on the other hand, I consider it as sufficiently scientifically intesting to analyze what different kind of model their program used (that lead to different conclusions) and why this mode…

That seems to be a sane way to go about it; but that is what you would do. Question is: would others. The broader argument that Bertil makes (I think) is that these decisions aren't being made based on aversion to your individual choice of behavior but based on aversion of a sort of media/public opinion war where one group isn't acting in good conscience and where the battlefield is not level (because the "opposite side" is well-financed and avoids peer review). I am not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with that, but if you accept that premise, for the level on which the debate would be pursued to strongly increase, it would be necessary that someone held up both sides to the same standard.

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#25

Post by phaemon »

SeanDav wrote: post #20

No idea why this is a surprising, even controversial result. We are are on the warming side of a recent (geologically speaking) ice age (actually glacial period) and we expect long term temperatures to be trending ever upwards.

No we're not. The complete opposite in fact: the planet would naturally be cooling now were it not for the increased amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#26

Post by elcapitan »

tremon wrote: post #16
DasBlob wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I certainly share your sentiment that both, data and analysis software, should be available, I do see a conflict of interest here that cannot be easily resolved. On the one hand, we do assert (wrongly, IMO) that competition is a necessary element to drive scientific innovation and consequently require scientific actors to adhere to economic principles, i.e. publish more and better-received papers. On the other…

both data and analysis software should be available I think that goes too far. The data alone is sufficient for independent verification, I don't think we should mandate that scientists publish their tools. However, I would very much support scientists using open tools to begin with. But if the tool is closed, that should not invalidate any results in the paper.

Not sure if there is so much to support - they most likely run some archaic Fortran code that only 5 people in the world understand, compiled for some specific cluster, where it runs multiple days for one dataset, and is only numerically stable in that particular environment.

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#27

Post by wolfgke »

elcapitan wrote: post #26
tremon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

both data and analysis software should be available I think that goes too far. The data alone is sufficient for independent verification, I don't think we should mandate that scientists publish their tools. However, I would very much support scientists using open tools to begin with. But if the tool is closed, that should not invalidate any results in the paper.

Not sure if there is so much to support - they most likely run some archaic Fortran code that only 5 people in the world understand, compiled for some specific cluster, where it runs multiple days for one dataset, and is only numerically stable in that particular environment.

This is why on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099720 I also suggested to provide a virtual machine image if possible (unluckily providing one is in my opinion not always possible). On the other hand if another team ran the code independently and we really saw that it is numerically unstable in another environment, this would be, in my opinion, a strong case for the importance of providing the source code.

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#28

Post by frankmcsherry »

I'm personally inclined to support the climate change folks, being a scientist and stuff, but it's a bit crap to claim that it was a one word typo when the original text apparently read:

> For predictor selection, both proxy climate and instrumental data were linearly detrended over the 1921–1990 period to avoid inflating the correlation coefficient due to the presence of the global warming signal present in the observed temperature record. Only records that were significantly ([pre]pThat isn't a typo, it is just being wrong. I'm glad they re-did the work to confirm it was still true, but it's hard to argue with folks who didn't think the claim was supported by the data.

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#29

Post by SeanDav »

phaemon wrote: post #25
SeanDav wrote: post #20

No idea why this is a surprising, even controversial result. We are are on the warming side of a recent (geologically speaking) ice age (actually glacial period) and we expect long term temperatures to be trending ever upwards.

No we're not. The complete opposite in fact: the planet would naturally be cooling now were it not for the increased amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

> "Technically speaking, we’re living during an ‘Ice Age’ today – in the sense that we have a world with glaciers. However, the present time is a relatively warm phase within a period of geological time when glaciers and ice sheets have typically been larger and more extensive than now."

Taken from: http://www.rgs.org/OurWork/Schools/Teaching+resources/Key+St...

There are other sources, but this is one example that makes it clear we have been in a warming phase the last few thousand years.

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#30

Post by dozzie »

frankmcsherry wrote: post #28

I'm personally inclined to support the climate change folks, being a scientist and stuff, but it's a bit crap to claim that it was a one word typo when the original text apparently read: > For predictor selection, both proxy climate and instrumental data were linearly detrended over the 1921–1990 period to avoid inflating the correlation coefficient due to the presence of the global warming signal present in the obse…

Well, what you expect from people who happen to turn around in their (unverifiable) models 180 degrees (Amazon jungle net produces oxygen! No, it's a net consumer!) and who routinely produce models that use some physical value (heat capacity in greenhosue effect), but fail to account for major substances influencing the value (water concentration in atmosphere)?
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