Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets • Hacker News Board

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#121

Post by neolog » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 7:59 AM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #117

radford-neal wrote: post #91

This is not actually "indisputable" evidence. First, do we know that the date cherry trees blossom is controlled by temperature? This question isn't addressed in the linked post, or in the document it links to with the data. They seem to just assume it must be the case. However, the fact that the dates show very little change until the late 19th century is reason to doubt that temperature controls the date, since the…

It disappoints me to see this kind of article so uncritically received here. This is on par with, say, a "scientific" article claiming that the lack of a changing trend in the date of the Canadian wheat crop harvest is indisputable evidence that climate change does not exist. As well as the possible influences you list there are many more - changes in local water or air chemical content, changes in cultivation techni…

It's easier to see nuance in an area you're an expert in.

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#122

Post by leereeves » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 8:44 AM UTC

darkteflon wrote: post #119

Kluny wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to do, cause most often it’s my dad and I have trouble staying calm because of that family dynamic. I could try asking though.

My mum is the same. I have never been able to wrap my head around it: if you have no formal (or even self-taught) training in a particular domain, shouldn't you be humble enough to accept that you're not in a position to assess the quality of the science in that domain, and so accept the consensus? I have never heard the argument - from even the most ardent climate skeptics and deniers - that the consensus (by simple…

I believe that climate change is real and man-made, but I don't find the "consensus" argument convincing.

It's well known now that science is heavily politicized, most published research is wrong[1], fraud is common[2] and largely ignored[3], and many promising scientists have been excluded from the field for a variety of reasons from politics to prejudice to simple personal conflicts with the superstars. Funding and continued employment can be endangered by publishing politically incorrect results - if those results are allowed to be published at all - while publishing the "correct" results is rewarded.

In an environment like this, it would be almost impossible for anyone who openly disagreed with the consensus to stay in the field. And once qualified people are driven out for these unscientific reasons, their opinion is no longer counted among the "consensus" of scientists, because the consensus is usually only measured among people working for a university or government agency.

In short, if you exclude everyone who disagrees, it's easy to manufacture any consensus you like (even something as completely wrong as Lysenkoism, to cite a rather extreme example of the principle).

1: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27884233

3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25922799

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#123

Post by mousepilot » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

clifdweller wrote: post #107

mousepilot wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I listen to experts then try to judge the experts credibility. This goes to listening to the sources of climate change believers and unbelievers. What sort of people believe climate change is real? What sort of people don't believe it? Also, what evidence does each side present, and how credible is this evidence? Just relating what I do.

This is one of the worst things about climate science as it currently stands. In General new theories are often looked about with skepticism until an experiment exists to satisfy the majority. Chemists in the early 1800s theorized matter was made of atoms but it wasn't until experiments were developed early 1900s and math worked on by Einstein got the whole community on board. Similarly we are still in a undecided st…

Climate change is one of those problems that you can't solve with experiments and controls, we'd have to have a test planet earth and run 200 year experiments or something lol

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#124

Post by fallingfrog » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

That trend line looks hand drawn, or else smoothed out over a 50 year time span at least. I wonder what a trend line drawing from just the last 10 years data points would look like?

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#125

Post by fallingfrog » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

radford-neal wrote: post #91

This is not actually "indisputable" evidence. First, do we know that the date cherry trees blossom is controlled by temperature? This question isn't addressed in the linked post, or in the document it links to with the data. They seem to just assume it must be the case. However, the fact that the dates show very little change until the late 19th century is reason to doubt that temperature controls the date, since the…

“ Then the mean date starts to get earlier, declining about linearly starting around 1900. One should note that it is generally accepted that CO2 didn't start to have a substantial effect on climate until about 1950..”

I think it’s because the trend line is smoothed out over +\-50 years data, or something like that. Or it might be hand drawn. I’m going to download the raw data and see what the trend line looks like using fewer data points.

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#126

Post by lovecg » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

swader999 wrote: post #102

ajnin wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious: current trends predict that the temperature increase from the pre-industrial age to 2100 might be as much as it was from the last ice age (look it up, it was a very different time). And this will happen roughly within 200 years, not 20 000. What makes you think this will be small and easy to adapt to ?

It isn't current trends, it's model based predictions which are woefully inadequate. These models can't predict historical weather or climate when rewound and started any number of years ago. Different models don't agree with other models. And yet we're making enormous policy changes with them. So one, I don't think it's worth trying to use these models for policy. Two, sea level rise has only been 1-3 mm per year si…

That’s a very serious accusation you’re making and it doesn’t agree with anything I’ve read about those models. On the contrary the predictions seem to match observations very well over the last couple of decades. This is not backtesting either which could be dismissed as overfitting - I’m talking literally take a model from 10, 20, 30 years ago and see what it predicted. Do you have any references to what you’re referring to?

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#127

Post by swader999 » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

lovecg wrote: post #126

swader999 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't current trends, it's model based predictions which are woefully inadequate. These models can't predict historical weather or climate when rewound and started any number of years ago. Different models don't agree with other models. And yet we're making enormous policy changes with them. So one, I don't think it's worth trying to use these models for policy. Two, sea level rise has only been 1-3 mm per year si…

That’s a very serious accusation you’re making and it doesn’t agree with anything I’ve read about those models. On the contrary the predictions seem to match observations very well over the last couple of decades. This is not backtesting either which could be dismissed as overfitting - I’m talking literally take a model from 10, 20, 30 years ago and see what it predicted. Do you have any references to what you’re ref…

Steve Koonin, one of Obama's former climate experts, does a great job of discussing the fatal flaws in his recent book "Unsettled".

You can also look at the IPCC reports themselves where they admit to model "limitations". Also note the confidence level their far out proclaimations are made with. It is typically "moderate" or "low". The news pieces rarely make mention of this confidence level though.

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#128

Post by nikhilsimha » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #3

Comevius wrote: post #2

"It's not projected data, it's actual data. It's not measured, it's observed." It's certainly elegant proof. If those climate change deniers could read they would be very upset.

I’m a climate change denier. A lot of us keep our opinions to ourselves, mostly because we know we don’t know enough about it. Articles like these help change my mind. Well, partly. The question I keep coming to is “how do you know any of this matters, for a definition of ‘matter’ that includes widespread upheaval of human societies?” But at this point I go meh, not worth the risk. Point is, condescending remarks onl…

I contend that you are not a denier. If you are convinced that there is an abnormal trend, caused by human activity, but are not too concerned with the trend - you are simply not an alarmist. I too, wouldn't be concerned if cherry blossoms missed a season.

The problem IMHO is, the climate science community doesn't connect the dots between warming -> unstable weather -> widespread upheaval.

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#129

Post by lovecg » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 10:11 PM UTC

swader999 wrote: post #127

lovecg wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a very serious accusation you’re making and it doesn’t agree with anything I’ve read about those models. On the contrary the predictions seem to match observations very well over the last couple of decades. This is not backtesting either which could be dismissed as overfitting - I’m talking literally take a model from 10, 20, 30 years ago and see what it predicted. Do you have any references to what you’re ref…

Steve Koonin, one of Obama's former climate experts, does a great job of discussing the fatal flaws in his recent book "Unsettled". You can also look at the IPCC reports themselves where they admit to model "limitations". Also note the confidence level their far out proclaimations are made with. It is typically "moderate" or "low". The news pieces rarely make mention of this confidence level though.

As far as I can tell he served as Under Secretary of Energy for Science and has zero climate science background. I’m not sure it’s accurate to call him a “climate expert”.

There are plenty of articles debunking his points as outdated strawman arguments, e.g. https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/wall-street-journal-a...

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#130

Post by darkteflon » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 11:33 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #122

darkteflon wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mum is the same. I have never been able to wrap my head around it: if you have no formal (or even self-taught) training in a particular domain, shouldn't you be humble enough to accept that you're not in a position to assess the quality of the science in that domain, and so accept the consensus? I have never heard the argument - from even the most ardent climate skeptics and deniers - that the consensus (by simple…

I believe that climate change is real and man-made, but I don't find the "consensus" argument convincing. It's well known now that science is heavily politicized, most published research is wrong[1], fraud is common[2] and largely ignored[3], and many promising scientists have been excluded from the field for a variety of reasons from politics to prejudice to simple personal conflicts with the superstars. Funding and…

Yeah, I don’t disagree with any of those points. I didn’t mean to imply that the consensus is always correct (although my poorly-worded comment above plainly leaves the door open on that), just that as an untrained layman you need to have the humility to refrain from forming an opinion against the consensus. Hot takes unwanted, basically.

There is definitely a process of pushback and mediation between consensus and dissenting voices in any complex field that needs to happen, but agree that that is very difficult in the current political climate. I was going to say that there should be some (self-imposed) threshold of expertise to participate in these conversations, but I guess if policies affect peoples’ lives then they should ipso facto have the right to form an opinion on them.

Personally, my concerns about the integrity of any scientific consensus generally are in this case, on balance, outweighed by the potential consequences of denying climate change and being wrong about it, versus accepting it at face value, doing something about it, then finding out later that it was wasted effort. But that’s a different (and perhaps better) argument from the one I was making above.