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

Mirroring US climate data

climatemirror.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–166 of 166 posts

Re: Mirroring US climate data

#161

Post by nikdaheratik »

cool_look wrote: post #126
fisherjeff wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, no. This isn't about not accepting scientific output under a Republican president – science was well received under Bush, as I recall, and will continue to be under Trump. This is about the fear of losing scientific data that has already been produced.

On the surface it is about preventing deletion. But the subtext is that any 'discoveries' or 'corrections' will be rejected out of hand. The prime ones being the recent corrections to the land temperature record that cooled the 1930s and 1940s and heated 2009 onwards yielding a steady linear increase graphic. When those corrections are placed under the microscope and likely reversed, what will the reaction be ? Scien…

No, this is complete FUD, and disingenuous at best. What people who care are worried about is a repeat of what happened in Canada under the Harper government where the data was simply not available at all.

[edit] the difference is that it's not the administration or even the EPA that is putting it's reputation on the line if the data was manipulated, but the individual scientists themselves. No one with any sense believes that a scientist is going to fall on their sword and ruin their career just to make up some BS talking point that Trump can run with.

Re: Mirroring US climate data

#162

Post by pirocks »

battlebot wrote: post #97
nirav72 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When there is a broad consensus across the scientific community about climate change, does it even matter at this point if the data has been changed? The U.S isn't the only country that collects this data. So even if changed, it doesn't matter.

There was once "broad consensus" that the world was flat. I am not at all comfortable when there is so much consensus. There needs to be debate, disagreement, and healthy skepticism at all times.

I would argue that there has never really been a "broad consensus" that the world was flat, since before the greeks. Most of the notable greek philosophers believed that the earth was a ball/sphere.

Re: Mirroring US climate data

#163

Post by tostrstrudel »

fsttx wrote: post #38

Another useful tactic is to archive news and commentary (left and right) about current political events, both for accountability and perhaps, to prevent the rewriting of history in the era of "alternative facts".

I created a script that allows for periodic archiving of the text of the top articles on several large news sites. There's a configuration file that allows for selecting any RSS feed to pull from.

https://github.com/xtruan/newsbot

Re: Mirroring US climate data

#164

Post by gillianlish »

danbruc wrote: post #11

Having backups is obviously always a good idea but that aside, how likely is it, that mirroring this data is actually necessary? There are obviously at least some people believing that it is necessary but then there are always people convinced that the most silly things are necessary. I am really unable to tell whether this is more of an overreaction or an urgent necessity, especially as someone not living in the US.…

This isn't about necessity. This is about sending a message.

Message to Scientists - we value your work

Message to the World - we are not all bad

Message to future generations - we are not hopeless

Message to Trump - good day sir

Re: Mirroring US climate data

#165

Post by facetube »

sandworm101 wrote: post #129
wybiral wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Go look at any list of recently-cancelled television shows. You will be shocked at the number of them that you liked, but have now slipped from your mind. Public memory is fickle and it is very possible to remove even widespread facts. Change and censorship aren't synonymous and I have no expectation that anything will last forever. But it's easier to ignore and forget about something like a television show than so…

Id say that mass-censorship isnt the goal. You only have to keep a small mumber of influential americans distracted. That group (the perhaps 25% who have both a vote and money/time to donate), they dictate national policy. Everyone else can scream all they want to no end. The internet allows for such focused censorship.

Even fewer if you have a gerrymandered election system. Steve Bannon, now senior advisor to Trump, is on the board of Cambridge Analytica, a company that built (and presumably enabled the exploitation of) psychological profiles to maximize shares/distribution of content on social media, targeting specific geographic clusters:

1: http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data-cruncher...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica

3: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google-de...

The Trump campaign paid this group millions of dollars beginning in the summer of 2016.

Re: Mirroring US climate data

#166

Post by paradite »

dagss wrote: post #117
paradite wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to discuss a slightly different issue here. Aren't there already a plethora of peer-reviewed journal articles on the issue of climate change? Why is it still necessary to store the presumably raw data? Even my high school geography notes have an abundance of information on the issue of climate change (for and against). So I doubt if this is necessary at all.

That is a bit like asking what you need source code for after having compiled the binary program. Just like you have new versions of a program building on changes to source code, you can run newer and improved analysis on the scientific data (whether to see if you get the same result, a new additional insight or whatever). Journal papers are often no better than having the binary (or perhaps more accurately the stdou…

Ah. Never thought of it that way, makes perfect sense. Thanks for the analogy.
Post reply on HN