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Climate science document hacked

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Re: Climate science document hacked

#11

Post by electromagnetic »

te_platt wrote: post #10
tome wrote: post #2

These people have acquired millions if not billions of taxpayers' money Millions I can imagine. That's several peoples salaries over several years. But billions? Surely he shouldn't be making such an extreme claim without detailing how he thinks that value is broken down. It seems obviously nonsense just by rough order of magnitude estimates.

Does he mean climate scientists in general or Hadley Climate Research Unit specifically? Or some mix? From http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220 : "Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today" Billions of taxpayers money is no exaggeration for the general case.

Hadley is presently the only place where proof of tampering has emerged, which IMO casts serious doubt on any work emerging from Hadley if it cannot prove that its work is not being tampered with.

IMHO I doubt this is an endemic problem in climate research, no matter how much I despise the many statisticians claiming they're scientists. Statisticians show correlations, scientists prove causation. However with literally billions of dollars on the table, it certainly makes me curious of the validity of other researchers work.

With a $1.7B cake on the table, are people lying so that the host of the party (the federal government) gives them a slice?

Re: Climate science document hacked

#12

Post by mattmaroon »

WilliamLP wrote: post #5

It's kind of amusing to see these guys froth at the mouth at the prospect of scouring through millions of lines of text to find a couple of scientists with less than absolutely pure motivations and research methods. When the witch-hunt succeeds, it of course invalidates everything we leftist propagandists try to convince the people that we know!! It's exactly parallel to creationists taking some instance of one scien…

I'm just flagging it all and suggesting everyone else do the same. I don't know how global warming skepticism got so popular here, but it's at best way off-topic and at worst trolling.

Re: Climate science document hacked

#13

Post by jacquesm »

mattmaroon wrote: post #12
WilliamLP wrote: post #5

It's kind of amusing to see these guys froth at the mouth at the prospect of scouring through millions of lines of text to find a couple of scientists with less than absolutely pure motivations and research methods. When the witch-hunt succeeds, it of course invalidates everything we leftist propagandists try to convince the people that we know!! It's exactly parallel to creationists taking some instance of one scien…

I'm just flagging it all and suggesting everyone else do the same. I don't know how global warming skepticism got so popular here, but it's at best way off-topic and at worst trolling.

It's only a few accounts that post almost all climate change 'skeptic' posts here.

Re: Climate science document hacked

#14

Post by DanielBMarkham »

mattmaroon wrote: post #12
WilliamLP wrote: post #5

It's kind of amusing to see these guys froth at the mouth at the prospect of scouring through millions of lines of text to find a couple of scientists with less than absolutely pure motivations and research methods. When the witch-hunt succeeds, it of course invalidates everything we leftist propagandists try to convince the people that we know!! It's exactly parallel to creationists taking some instance of one scien…

I'm just flagging it all and suggesting everyone else do the same. I don't know how global warming skepticism got so popular here, but it's at best way off-topic and at worst trolling.

What? Weren't you here for the Ron Paul epidemic of 2008?

I'd agree with you except 1) it's a story about server hacking, 2) it's a story about not only politics but science, and 3) there's been a long-term trend of posting climate articles on HN

I get tired of being sucked into the political side of the debate -- no winners there -- but dang it, climate change science is a really fascinating topic from a purely intellectual standpoint. The Earth is not just a black body, and various carbon-based molecular absorption spectra is not the do-all, end-all metric that pop science writers say it is. CA programming has a default behavior of producing runaway models, as Wolfram so aptly points out in NKS. Lots of cool and tech-weenie stuff in here. (But also lots of emotion, so I concede that it ticks a lot of folks off. But 100% "Erlang Innards" is probably not going to happen any time soon)

Re: Climate science document hacked

#15

Post by gjm11 »

electromagnetic wrote: post #11
te_platt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does he mean climate scientists in general or Hadley Climate Research Unit specifically? Or some mix? From http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220 : "Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today" Billions of taxpayers money is no exaggeration for the general case.

Hadley is presently the only place where proof of tampering has emerged, which IMO casts serious doubt on any work emerging from Hadley if it cannot prove that its work is not being tampered with. IMHO I doubt this is an endemic problem in climate research, no matter how much I despise the many statisticians claiming they're scientists. Statisticians show correlations, scientists prove causation. However with literal…

The snippets of emails I've seen that allegedly come from the Hadley archive do not, in fact, constitute "proof of tampering".

Re: Climate science document hacked

#16

Post by chasingsparks »

mattmaroon wrote: post #12
WilliamLP wrote: post #5

It's kind of amusing to see these guys froth at the mouth at the prospect of scouring through millions of lines of text to find a couple of scientists with less than absolutely pure motivations and research methods. When the witch-hunt succeeds, it of course invalidates everything we leftist propagandists try to convince the people that we know!! It's exactly parallel to creationists taking some instance of one scien…

I'm just flagging it all and suggesting everyone else do the same. I don't know how global warming skepticism got so popular here, but it's at best way off-topic and at worst trolling.

I think you would have to explicitly define climate change skeptic. That term leads to confusion. The set of people who do not believe there is any evidence for climate warming are strawdogs -- they are simply wrong.

However, there are other groups that are conflated with the straw dog group.

Examples:

There are people who claim climate models are wrong, as they have lost all predictive ability over the past ten years. They are correct that these models have proven to be bad models; they are incorrect in assuming, as bad models, this necessarily means temperature will not be as high. It is also possible that the temperature could be higher than forecast. It may refute their estimations, but not offering a better model weakens their argument.

There are others who claim that not only is the evidence overwhelmingly in favor of global warming, but anthropogenic warming. However, they claim that the costs of adopting "do anything to stop this" measures are ill-advised. The costs would be too high, they don't take into account any benefits, and they completely discount the emergence of new technologies.

Skepticism is a good thing. When someone practices bad science by massaging data, it's bad science, regardless of what side of line they are on. Personally, I roughly fit the mold of my second example. I think global warming is obviously true; sun cycle theories are wholly inadequate; anthropogenic makes the most sense; and spending hundreds of billions on existing technologies for reducing emissions is a foolhardy plan.

Re: Climate science document hacked

#18

Post by bokonist »

mattmaroon wrote: post #12
WilliamLP wrote: post #5

It's kind of amusing to see these guys froth at the mouth at the prospect of scouring through millions of lines of text to find a couple of scientists with less than absolutely pure motivations and research methods. When the witch-hunt succeeds, it of course invalidates everything we leftist propagandists try to convince the people that we know!! It's exactly parallel to creationists taking some instance of one scien…

I'm just flagging it all and suggesting everyone else do the same. I don't know how global warming skepticism got so popular here, but it's at best way off-topic and at worst trolling.

Would you advocate flagging all posts about global warming, period? Or just about skepticism? Would you advocate flagging all posts about science, or just scientific matters that are controversial?

Re: Climate science document hacked

#19

Post by radu_floricica »

mattmaroon wrote: post #12
WilliamLP wrote: post #5

It's kind of amusing to see these guys froth at the mouth at the prospect of scouring through millions of lines of text to find a couple of scientists with less than absolutely pure motivations and research methods. When the witch-hunt succeeds, it of course invalidates everything we leftist propagandists try to convince the people that we know!! It's exactly parallel to creationists taking some instance of one scien…

I'm just flagging it all and suggesting everyone else do the same. I don't know how global warming skepticism got so popular here, but it's at best way off-topic and at worst trolling.

If you treat it reddit-like, then yes. But it still is a pretty interesting mix of how to do (or not to do) science when a lot of politics is involved.

Re: Climate science document hacked

#20

Post by CWuestefeld »

chasingsparks wrote: post #16
mattmaroon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just flagging it all and suggesting everyone else do the same. I don't know how global warming skepticism got so popular here, but it's at best way off-topic and at worst trolling.

I think you would have to explicitly define climate change skeptic. That term leads to confusion. The set of people who do not believe there is any evidence for climate warming are strawdogs -- they are simply wrong. However, there are other groups that are conflated with the straw dog group. Examples: There are people who claim climate models are wrong, as they have lost all predictive ability over the past ten year…

Another POV that should be considered:

Even if those fearing climate change are correct, the poor quality of the models shows they're right for the wrong reasons. And since they don't really understand what's happening, then any proposal to "fix" the problem might work, or might itself be disastrous. We don't know.

It should be completely clear that Al Gore's "precautionary principle" is bunk. And I'd claim that this whole thing is too important to use the Earth as a laboratory, to "do something -- ANYTHING -- to fix this".

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