95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#111

Post by yummyfajitas » Sat, Feb 15, 2014, 5:56 AM UTC

TheEzEzz wrote: post #105

yummyfajitas wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there is some evidence - the existence of a guy claiming to be god's son, a bunch of people claiming miracles occurred, etc. These things are weak evidence in favor of christianity - similarly, there is weak evidence in favor of islam, mormonism, etc. Given that there is no similar evidence for the Anti-Christianity you postulate, the odds don't cancel. Another interesting result of this line of thinking: a rati…

> These things are weak evidence in favor of christianity I'm not convinced this is true. Certainly the story of Jesus is evidence , but it's not clear which direction the evidence should push us. Someone making a claim does not always mean our posterior estimate on the claim should increase. Here's a simple example: I hand you a small bottle filled with medical-looking pills and a nice label. I ask you, "What's the…

The right question: is P(prophet|says prophet) > P(prophet|says ordinary guy)?

My argument is only that any semi-mainstream religion is more likely to be true than some random arbitrary belief system. I.e., Christianity and Islam are both more likely than Anti-Christianity.

I just don't buy your argument that the evidence for all possible religions (including ones you made up for this argument only) cancel out. That's a massive coincidence. And if the evidence only cancels out 99.9999999% rather than 100%, you find yourself back in a Pascal's Wager situation.

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#112

Post by glenra » Sat, Feb 15, 2014, 6:03 AM UTC

MaysonL wrote: post #74

nieksand wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the impact of global warming is significantly smaller than predicted and the human-induced contribution to that reduced warming is also much smaller than claimed, then expensive "green" policies indeed need to be reevaluated. Your fault reasoning has nothing to do with it. Think of it from a programming perspective. You've suddenly discovered that your program runtime wasn't near as slow as you thought. Plus you'v…

Suppose that it's significantly greater than predicted? Are you willing to bet your future happiness, and the health and wealth of the rest of humanity, that it isn't?

> Suppose that it's significantly greater than predicted? Are you willing to bet your future happiness, and the health and wealth of the rest of humanity, that it isn't?

Yes. Of course I am. We make those sorts of bets constantly, because Pascal's Wager doesn't work. We can't not make those sorts of bets.

When somebody says "the end of the world is nigh!" it is almost always worth waiting a bit to see if in fact the thing they're worrying about is actually a problem. Hindcasting is nice and all but the real test is: Does the warming trend actually continue as predicted and if so, once it does get warmer, do we actually see negative effects from it that significantly outweigh all the likely positive effects of warming?

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#113

Post by sanxiyn » Sat, Feb 15, 2014, 6:07 AM UTC

001sky wrote: post #83

virtue3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I clicked the comments just to see this. Thank you :). I had a sneaky suspicion something was up when it was just some casual mention of data and not really providing sources or demonstrating a thorough understanding of the data. "If the deep ocean ends up averaging 4.1 deg. C, rather than 4.0 deg. C, it won’t really matter." He must be blissfully unaware of how badly the oceans are being affected right now by our im…

He must be blissfully unaware of how badly the oceans are being affected right now by our impact. This sentence really needs to cite actual data. "The oceans" are a pretty big place. And "localized" and "average" data are not comparable in any relevant sense given the scale. Even if you could measure the energy in the ocean to that level of precision (unlikely) your time series data would be so limited so as to prese…

We actually do have more than 3000 robots spread across the world's ocean measuring temperature. These robots have clever mechanisms to change their own density so that they can move from shallow depth to deep depth (up to 2000 m).

Conceived in 1999, this program has been running for more than 10 years now and we do have precise measurements of the energy in the ocean. We also do have less precise measurements before the program.

Sure, it would be better if we had more robots and more observation history, but we do have enough data to do the analysis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_(oceanography)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Ocean_Database_Project

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#114

Post by api » Sat, Feb 15, 2014, 6:07 AM UTC

jbooth wrote: post #4

I don't know enough about meteorology to comment on the article, but this quote bugged me: "And if humans are the cause of only, say, 50% of the warming (e.g. our published paper), then there is even less reason to force expensive and prosperity-destroying energy policies down our throats." No, there's the exact same amount of reason. This isn't a morality play, who's "fault" it is doesn't matter. If there were a met…

The climate change thing is almost a red herring vis a vis fossil fuels.

The supply of fossil fuels is absolutely limited. We don't know where these limits are exactly. But what we do know is that if we have no alternatives, our entire civilization will collapse when we run out of them. Billions of people will die. Centuries of learning will be forgotten. A new dark age will result.

Now that is "prosperity-destroying."

This is reason #1 to do everything we can to move beyond fossil fuels. Climate change may be reason #2, or maybe reason #3 after geopolitical concerns. But even if there is no manmade climate change at all, we must do everything we can to develop alternatives to fossil fuels now while we still have the time and energy to do so. The danger of collapse due to fossil fuel depletion is so great that I'm not even sure if climate change ranks.

So why are we still even arguing about this?

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#115

Post by polemic » Sat, Feb 15, 2014, 6:10 AM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #58

polemic wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the entire "humans are responsible for say n%" is the latest diversionary tactic by climate deniers to sucker rational people onto opposing policy that mitigates climate change. The argument is akin to saying "your program slowdown is - and I'm making up a number out of thin air - 50% caused by systems outside of your control so you should definitely spend 50% less time optimizing the things you can optim…

Let me get this right: you're saying that human emissions of CO2 need to be reduced in order to mitigate climate change regardless of whether CO2 emissions cause any warming? If humans caused 100% of the change then we can stop causing it. If humans caused 0% of the change then we can't stop causing it and must adapt to it. If humans caused 50% of the change, then we can stop some of it but will have to adapt to the…

Firstly, I said it was in invention. It's an argument that has the benefit of never having to provide any sort of evidence to back it up.

But since I'm forced to attack the strawman: let me put it another way: if humans are responsible for less warming than 100%, then we're going to have to do more to mitigate our effects, because we have to mitigate more human behaviour for the same outcome.

Until we're making meaningful changes - yet to happen - it's utterly irrelevant if we've caused 50%, or 100%.

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#116

Post by nerfhammer » Sat, Feb 15, 2014, 6:15 AM UTC

gruseom wrote: post #66

corresation wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people, once they've established a position, become incredibly "biased" in their views. Skeptical Science, which I mention because it is referenced some dozen times in here, is the sort of site that proselytizes to the converted. It has driven a stake in the ground demarcating its position, and everything has to be relative to that stake.

The tell is the angry sarcasm, which releases chemicals of pleasure in the brains of the already-convinced, but turns off anyone else.

I had been grasping for a word for this phenomenon for so long. Thank you.

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#117

Post by MaysonL » Sat, Feb 15, 2014, 6:16 AM UTC

waps wrote: post #98

beloch wrote: post #89

Climate change models are based on data. Old data, but real data. The concept wouldn't have even occurred to us had real, physical phenomena not suggested it. The deviation of recent data from predictive models does not indicate that nothing is going on an everything is tickety-boo. It merely indicates we don't fully understand what's going on and our models still don't have much predictive power. So, if we don't ful…

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that we have no idea what effect the policies have. They could be good, BUT they can also have bad results. I mean bad beyond just the economic implications. Since the climate system has been working a certain way for ~10000 years, I'd say the default position should be that nothing is going to change. What's missing from your reply is an answer to the data he's showing. A long…

Of course he's looking at one small set of data: temperature measurements. Consider the wide range of physical and biological changes occurring. Drunken forests. Polar ice melt. Bird migration changes (earlier spring and later fall, as well as some novel over-wintering). Changes in animal and plant ranges (including massive pest increases in some areas). Dying coral reefs. Increased extreme weather events (ask the insurance industry about their take on that). Screw the models. The data is pretty clear.

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#118

Post by Demiurge » Sat, Feb 15, 2014, 6:21 AM UTC

x0054 wrote: post #108

waps wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that we have no idea what effect the policies have. They could be good, BUT they can also have bad results. I mean bad beyond just the economic implications. Since the climate system has been working a certain way for ~10000 years, I'd say the default position should be that nothing is going to change. What's missing from your reply is an answer to the data he's showing. A long…

Climate engineering scares the shit out of me. I think this article is right, we do not fully understand global warming. We know something is happening, we do NOT know exactly what OR why. But we have the fucking hubris to assume that we can make it better (through climate engineering)!? Without even fully understanding the problem. That said, we can still work on improving the world and cutting down CO2 emissions AN…

We have the fucking hubris to assume that we can stop impacting it by emitting tons of chemicals into environment, turning tons of earth over, cutting down acres of forests. That's not making it better, that's just not making it as much as worse, as fast. We are way far from 'climate engineering' when we can't even reduce impact by 2%.

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#119

Post by pringles885 » Sat, Feb 15, 2014, 6:28 AM UTC

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #9

This is where the guy loses me: "then there is even less reason to force expensive and prosperity-destroying energy policies down our throats" and "increase energy prices and freeze and starve more poor people to death for the greater good" As if he gives a crap about poor people. People freeze not because of energy policies but because we have poor social welfare and exploitive foreign policy that itself is motivate…

Link to people freezing to death? I could name you far more deaths in crime-ridden Detroit, which has been run by left wingers for 50 years.

Re: 95% of climate models agree: the observations must be wrong

#120

Post by bowlofpetunias » Sat, Feb 15, 2014, 6:32 AM UTC

I would be much more open to taking climate change skeptics seriously if they didn't consistently descend into full on tinfoil-hat-speak.

"starve more poor people to death for the greater good"

Thank you for playing. No amount of "I'm a Ph.D., I'm a former NASA scientist" is going to help take you seriously after that.