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

What's Really Warming the World?

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 223 posts

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#161

Post by akvadrako »

christkv wrote: post #134

Here is something I've always wondered about. Coal, oil and gas is originally organic matter. By the creation of coal, oil and over millions of years the overall level of free carbon was reduced and probably lower temperatures. However by starting to burn oil, coal and gas we are increasing the freed carbon again back to some earlier historic level. I seems we would just be setting us up to a return to a even lusher…

This really needs to be given more attention, because the natural alternative to global warming is probably significant global cooling.

Looking at the long-term trend we've been in a geological ice age for the past 2M years, due to the poles being permanently frozen. During this ice age we've had a few interglacial periods lasting about 10K years, but the current one is still dragging on.

Either we are due for a return to glacialization or we've broken the trend; human caused warming is a likely factor.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#162

Post by dahdum »

curtis wrote: post #45
rectang wrote: post #8

> The only real question is: What are we going to do about it? Zilch, so long as politicians corrupted by the fossil fuel industry are in power. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -- Upton Sinclair

There is a substantial percentage of the electorate who are ideologically opposed to the very notion of climate change. They're ideologically opposed to conservation, they're ideologically opposed to large scale government interventions for any purpose, they are specifically opposed to any sort of tax so a carbon tax is right out, and they are even ideologically opposed not simply to environmentalism, but to (it seem…

I think there needs to be a grand compromise, but we're a bitter two party system that makes every issue a grand ideological debate.

Give me nuclear energy and I'll gladly pay that carbon tax.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#163

Post by Spooky23 »

akvadrako wrote: post #50
Spooky23 wrote: post #3

I was actually at a political event yesterday where some derp derp conservative was going on about how this stuff is all hoax. Meanwhile, we are in upstate NY, in late February, sitting outside enjoying the 80 degree weather which is warmer than Los Angeles.

You mean because it's 80° instead of 79° global warming must be real?

Meaning that in the nearly 40 years that I have been on earth, most of which within a 100 mile radius of where I live now, the average temperature at this time of year is around 20F.

I never recall a day that was that warm in February, in Albany, NY.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#164

Post by RyanZAG »

ScottBurson wrote: post #156
RyanZAG wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that's true, there is another issue here. If global warming went away tomorrow -- as in, it were to be completely proven to not exist -- every single climate change scientist would be out of a job. They'd literally have to start over their entire professional career from scratch with almost zero chance of getting any kind of funding. This includes everyone who peer reviews the papers too. Meanwhile if Agile is…

There is some risk of institutionalized bias such as you are suggesting. The possibility should not be dismissed entirely. But I don't think it's true that every scientist expressing a belief in anthropogenic global warming has a conflict of interest. Some number of them are tenured professors, for example. This is a good example of the value of the tenure system in academia. As for the papers in Nature and Science,…

> But I don't think it's true that every scientist expressing a belief in anthropogenic global warming has a conflict of interest. Some number of them are tenured professors, for example. This is a good example of the value of the tenure system in academia.

Even a tenured professor still wants to be published in leading journals. Plus he gets a huge amount of credibility within his own university by being constantly published. Tenure definitely is a positive here, but it's not a get-out-of-jail free card by any means as there are a ton of incentives for him to stick to the climate change dogma regardless.

> As for the papers in Nature and Science, well, I haven't read them, but given the extreme politicization of the issue, it doesn't surprise me that the authors are tending to omit qualifications and caveats, since many people who want to dismiss the evidence would pick up on these -- as we're seeing in this very discussion.

Great point! I agree fully. But is it really useful? Now instead of people picking up on these qualifications and caveats to attack the argument, they're pointing out the caveats themselves and saying 'Haha! You ommitted this! You have something to hide!'. So the cure they're trying to use here seems worse than the disease. We put in these qualifications and caveats to protect our work. A good Agile paper would include the criticisms of Agile too -- not because they want to, but because it's important to understand the weak points. Obfuscating it doesn't help anyone in the long run, and it doesn't stop the same people attacking it anyway.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#165

Post by sebringj »

It is so very pathetic that we have to see these types of diagrams spelling things out so elementary about global warming, now.

At the heart of this, I still believe strongly there needs to be some type of mandatory subject, as core as reading and math, about reasoning and classifying types of information, taught in grade school, given the recent turn of events in the American election.

If kids were shown the different ways information is generated and how the quality of the information directly correlates to the ways in which it was obtained, they would have some sort of toolset to understand the world to the point of it eventually being culturally unacceptable to be ardantly ignorant. This would radically dismantle strongly held beliefs of the past that are baseless in reason, bringing forth a brighter future. Of course this would be completely opposed and blocked by organizations that thrive on disinformation till their dying breath.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#166

Post by ABCLAW »

Homunculiheaded wrote: post #66

For a more rigorous, scientific and yet still thoroughly digestible talk I strongly recommend watching Dr. Richard Alley's talk "The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Climate History" [0] As a Bayesian I particularly enjoy Alley's running theme that: while there certainly could be alternative explanations for what is happening, we simply cannot find anything that explains the data better than CO2. I see…

Thank you for the link. This is a fantastic lecture that presents a very accessible synthesis of geologic and atmospheric science. Starts off a bit slow, but I suggest sticking with it.

It addresses a number of the arguments presented in this thread.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#167

Post by bjourne »

RyanZAG wrote: post #131
yongjik wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If global warming went away tomorrow -- as in, it were to be completely proven to not exist -- every single climate change scientist would be out of a job. 1. That's a bit like saying if powered aviation goes away tomorrow (as in, it is to be completely proven to be impossible), every single engineer at Boeing would be out of a job. 2. The incentive structure doesn't work that way. If you could show that global war…

> 1. That's a bit like saying if powered aviation goes away tomorrow (as in, it is to be completely proven to be impossible), every single engineer at Boeing would be out of a job. Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. If you were doing a study on whether powered aviation is going away tomorrow, 99% (well probably 100%) of Boeing engineers would tell you that it isn't. Obviously. But you cannot use that as a proof tha…

Your whole argument could be applied to biology too. If someone proved the theory of evolution false, millions of geneticists would be out of a job therefore we should suspect the theory of evolution to be false.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#168

Post by RyanZAG »

bjourne wrote: post #167
RyanZAG wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. That's a bit like saying if powered aviation goes away tomorrow (as in, it is to be completely proven to be impossible), every single engineer at Boeing would be out of a job. Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. If you were doing a study on whether powered aviation is going away tomorrow, 99% (well probably 100%) of Boeing engineers would tell you that it isn't. Obviously. But you cannot use that as a proof tha…

Your whole argument could be applied to biology too. If someone proved the theory of evolution false, millions of geneticists would be out of a job therefore we should suspect the theory of evolution to be false.

That's a great point -- and maybe explains why the theory of evolution had so much push back for so long? Maybe there's a link to skepticism and these kinds of financial or credibility links? Is it subconscious even? Could be useful in anticipating which theories would face more pushback?

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#169

Post by euyyn »

RyanZAG wrote: post #128
euyyn wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every single climate change scientist would be out of a job That's very flawed reasoning: Do you think these scientists didn't have a job before? > I was also thinking about the papers on Agile vs global warming, and the Agile papers generally read as far more balanced and generally go into much deeper detail than any global warming paper. Where are you getting your global warming papers from?

> That's very flawed reasoning: Do you think these scientists didn't have a job before? A huge percentage of them didn't actually. Most of the current researchers into climate change have always worked as researchers in this field. You have to remember the field has been around since the 60s, but has rapidly begun to attract PHD students and others because of the vast amounts of grant money devoted to it in recent ye…

> Where are you getting your Agile papers from?

Same place as lrenaud.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#170

Post by makmanalp »

cderwin wrote: post #144
makmanalp wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find this type of argument very useful because usually instead of making specific, falsifiable criticisms of the literature, this argument starts with "wow, scientists can be wrong or prone to human biases sometimes" which turns into a general "I have a touchy-feely sense that maybe some stuff is wrong with climate science", which quickly turns into "I guess most of the literature out there is completely wron…

You're right that non-scientific pressures existing isn't sufficient to support the position that scientific research is inaccurate. However, it certainly is solid ground for exercising a bit of skepticism about scientific research -- particularly when it is well documented that the political distribution of scientists does not reflect that of the greater population and the scientific issue at hand has become politic…

> I fear that if there were valid criticism to be heard, it would at best only fall on deaf ears.

I'm not closed to this point of view, but it sure seems to be a rare case indeed.

If you look at it from the reverse perspective, climate scientists have been explaining /basic/ material and conclusions to deniers for decades now. If you want to criticize, I don't think there should be a peer-review barrier but you sure should at least be familiar with the body of work you're criticizing. Or else, how could you possibly contribute anything of substance? Go read the IPCC reports, or /something/. That's just common sense. A lot of criticism fails to meet that minimum bar, and also has usually been addressed beforehand.

I'm not a climate scientist, but right now I'm taking a graduate level class in databases and data systems. We're reading a lot of papers, some from academia and some from industry. But what I'm realizing is how lacking in nuance and content the discussions on even highly technical places like HN can be at times. Like when I see stuff like "NoSQL is bad for joins", it's like "really? on what system? under what conditions?". The ease with which laymen can assert conclusive-sounding statements on a whim is terrifying. The more you learn, the more you get the opposite instinct - to withhold judgement until something seems very clear. This destroys conversation dynamics when scientists are pitted against climate deniers. And a lot of times, I suspect that the arguments made fall in the "not even wrong" category. Then, the people who make the assertions aren't even willing to listen to the counterargument because it's "too technical". As if everything has a pithy one-liner response. In the end, this results in a massive amount of frustration on the part of the scientists, which leads us to the pickle we're in today.

Anyway, this discussion reminds me of the whole discussion in the 50s/60s about the health effects of smoking, and how it took forever for doctors and scientists to convince people that this was real. All the tobacco industry had to do was to criticize specific bits and pieces, discredit specific researchers, call things "inconclusive", and suddenly their criticism was as legitimate as a huge body of research. That's the dangerous bit here. Take a look: http://www.who.int/tobacco/media/en/TobaccoExplained.pdf

Post reply on HN