Hot or Not? • Hacker News Board

Re: Hot or Not?

#161

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 3:51 PM UTC

olodus wrote: post #157

itsoktocry wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Al Gore is not a climate scientist so why would we really listen to his predictions. Wait a minute, do you think Al Gore was, or even claimed to be, the person doing the research he was popularizing?

I don't know or care who provided him with his information but parts of it clearly didn't pass scientific rigour. Since it seems the claims done by Al Gore was here used to discredit the actual climate science, I felt I needed to comment on that some of those claims by Gore would clearly not been possible to publish in a paper, making it not science.

This exchange is quite telling:

Mike E. 14 hr ago edited 14 hr ago

    You maybe missing the trees for the forest. Global or local mean or median    temperature is a nebulous (no pun intended) indicator. It's the increases in daily weather variance, incomprehensibly-fast melting of major glacial masses, rising sea levels, and frequency and intensity of storms, fires, famines, and species' extinctions that are the "forest". These are consequences of anthropogenic GHGs that reduced Arctic sea ice (nearing an inevitable blue ocean event) and increased global sea thermal energy absorption which destabilized the jet stream from more predictable cycles. GHGs lead to a -11 F snowpocalypse in Austin, megadrought in US West and SW, "Hurricane Alley" shifting eastward, 100 F in the high Arctic town of Verkhoyansk, water trains of India, and slumping and melting of Siberian and other permafrost areas releasing absurd amounts of methane.

author creon levit 7 hr ago

    The variance (locally) is shown in the plots. What do you see re: variance?

    "Incomprehensible" glacier movement? As I understand it nine time in the life of the human species the glaciers have advanced to cover much of N. America and then retreated to where there was little or no polar ice at all.

    Frequency and intensity of storms? I suggest downloading the data on all hurricanes for the last ~100 years (as long as they've been recorded) from the NOAA national hurricane data center. I did that. I plotted it. Guess what I found?

    Fires... I lived in Napa California during the big Napa fires. How much was due to climate change, and how much was doe to terrible forest management by the forest service and the state? (don't thin the forests, don't clear dead trees, etc).

    Species diversity is very complicated. A whole different matter. So much to say at another time.

    Famines? Have you looked at famines vs. time for the last 1000 years? Other than the global covid mismanagement disasters of 2020-2022 (lockdowns, etc) famines are becoming a thing of the past - though if we continue killing our soils with mono-crop soy, etc they will recur.

    Arctic (and Antarctic) sea ice is another deep topic.

    Austin was a fluctuation. They happen. Don't kill your local electric utilities - you may want them when things get dicey (or icy :).

    Look into the history of draughts (and floods) over the last 200 years in the W and SW US.. Write a post and send me the link.

    You raise a lot of points. (or less politely, you are shifting the goalposts 12 times in one paragraph). I am just plotting local temperatures for 75-100 years. Nothing more.

After that exchange I'm fairly convinced this article wasn't written with the goal of 'doing science' however misguided.

Re: Hot or Not?

#162

Post by misslibby » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 6:20 PM UTC

jdlshore wrote: post #160

starkd wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not all "crackpots". Many environmentalists have come forward stressing the importance of walking back some of the verge-of-catastrophe alarms that have been pulled. (Shellenberger, Bjorn Lomborg, and one former Obama administration advisor, to name a few). They are not saying its a non-problem, but they are saying it's completely manageable without destroying civilisation by hiking the cost of energy. These…

I wasn’t familiar with those names, so I looked them up. Neither is a climate scientist. According to Wikipedia, “ Shellenberger's positions have been called "bad science" and "inaccurate" by environmental scientists and academics.” Lomborg’s book was found to be “scientifically dishonest through misrepresentation of scientific facts.” I'll let you have the last word.

The "environmental scientists and academics" in question have probably also been accused of bad science by their opponents. And who gets to decide who is the scientist in that debate?

Shellenberger and Lomborg have presumable studied the issue for decades, so at what point does one cross into "being a scientist" territory? Years of study apparently doesn't do it, so what does? Obama's seal of approval?

You are confusing science and specific systems of doing science, like say a countries university system. A specific system of doing science does not automatically produce good science.

Re: Hot or Not?

#163

Post by misslibby » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

mikkergp wrote: post #101

misslibby wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think it is weird that people who try to do their own research end up in the "happy to ignore science" camp, as you put it? I don't think they "ignore science", they just realize it is a lot more complicated and messy than the narrative of the scientific consensus wants us to believe.

We rely on a scientific consensus _because_ it's complicated and messy. The fact that climate change is complicated and messy is a given. Every talk on climate change starts out with it's super complicated and…, but then people get mad that it's not simple, try to make it simple themselves and get mad when other criticize them for trying to explain it in 3 pages. Then all of a sudden they don't believe in science. Al…

I did not get the impression that "it's complicated" is the usual way to introduce it. The usual way is to claim billions of scientists allegedly agree and it is supposedly settled science.

"Also, the IPCC put out a like 1000 page report, it's not like this information is being hidden."

Yeah that is actually more fishy than convincing. They should be able to present it in a digestible manner. A 1000 page report is just spam, created with billions of funding. It is also not all hard science afaik, it is a lot of bla bla "this and that will become an issue because of climate change", difficult to find the meat.

Re: Hot or Not?

#164

Post by misslibby » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 6:25 PM UTC

uniqueuid wrote: post #135

misslibby wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are merely constructing an idealized authoritarian elite of scientists whom nobody can question because allegedly their craft is too complicated for mere mortals. Sorry, but no. A lot of people have an academic education, for example, and are capable of reading scientific papers. You have to be able to make a solid point that other people can verify. The last couple of years have already shown that institutions a…

Sorry, but I disagree, and my point is even simpler. Take the evolution of temperature measurements through proxies (although that is not my field). If at some point it becomes known that some method of measurement is biased, then that implies a re-evaluation of past research. Every time such adjustments happen, there is a meta-learning regarding the pace of adjustments and the severity, and also regarding which peop…

"And this is just the measurements part: There is also the problem of predatory journals etc etc. - all of these can skew the "consensus" if you don't account for them."

But doesn't this very sentence from you imply that there is no such consensus as you claim? Apparently there are lots of publications that disagree, so where do you get your consensus from?

" the composition of the field is always changing to some degree and (2) you will never get all scientists to tell you their opinion at the same point in time"

That is why I don't care about a "consensus" - science is not a democracy. I care about verifiable facts, and open discussion.

"So I'm pretty convinced that your argument of a pure, "individually verifiable" science is desirable, but has never existed and never will."

I am not saying that science should output 100% true facts only. Everything only has probabilities. I am saying that scientific output should be verifiable by other people. Scientific facts are not determined in a democratic way, they already exist and are only being discovered.

Re: Hot or Not?

#165

Post by misslibby » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 6:26 PM UTC

tehsauce wrote: post #138

misslibby wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How big is the enormous body of scientific work?

“More than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans, according to a new survey of 88,125 climate-related studies“ https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-ag...

I looked into the source of the 99% claims before, and in general, they don't say what you claim they say. They may find that most scientists agree that humans have an impact on climate, but that doesn't mean they agree on the doomsday scenarios.

Re: Hot or Not?

#166

Post by mikkergp » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 6:50 PM UTC

misslibby wrote: post #163

mikkergp wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We rely on a scientific consensus _because_ it's complicated and messy. The fact that climate change is complicated and messy is a given. Every talk on climate change starts out with it's super complicated and…, but then people get mad that it's not simple, try to make it simple themselves and get mad when other criticize them for trying to explain it in 3 pages. Then all of a sudden they don't believe in science. Al…

I did not get the impression that "it's complicated" is the usual way to introduce it. The usual way is to claim billions of scientists allegedly agree and it is supposedly settled science. "Also, the IPCC put out a like 1000 page report, it's not like this information is being hidden." Yeah that is actually more fishy than convincing. They should be able to present it in a digestible manner. A 1000 page report is ju…

You should cure cancer.

Re: Hot or Not?

#167

Post by kelnos » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

steve_avery wrote: post #9

I find this really cool, kudos to the author for trying to build up an understanding from the actual data. I find it interesting to see that the median temps in these select cities don't seem to be wandering up that much. I wonder if there is some statistical tool to analyze the slight upward angle on the linear regressions of the medians. I am surprised that these data do not show a more extreme departure. I believe…

> I find it interesting to see that the median temps in these select cities don't seem to be wandering up that much.

I can think of three possibilities:

1. The cold days have been getting colder, and the hot days have been getting hotter. The median temperature could still be somewhat constant in this scenario if the not-too-cold and not-too-hot days have temperatures that haven't changed much.

2. Even if the cold days have stayed roughly the same temperature, spikes and outliers in the hotter temperatures could still fail to move the medians that much. Consider that the median is often used to actively reduce the contribution of outliers to the data. Then it becomes a question of whether or not those spikes and outliers are meaningful or important.

3. Climate change is just a hoax (not something I believe, but it's certainly a "possibility").

Re: Hot or Not?

#168

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

misslibby wrote: post #162

jdlshore wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn’t familiar with those names, so I looked them up. Neither is a climate scientist. According to Wikipedia, “ Shellenberger's positions have been called "bad science" and "inaccurate" by environmental scientists and academics.” Lomborg’s book was found to be “scientifically dishonest through misrepresentation of scientific facts.” I'll let you have the last word.

The "environmental scientists and academics" in question have probably also been accused of bad science by their opponents. And who gets to decide who is the scientist in that debate? Shellenberger and Lomborg have presumable studied the issue for decades, so at what point does one cross into "being a scientist" territory? Years of study apparently doesn't do it, so what does? Obama's seal of approval? You are confus…

It requires continued adherence to the scientific method. As soon as you stop doing that you stop being a scientist, whether your name is Shellenberger, Lomborg or Watson for that matter isn't relevant. Science is what you do not who you are.

Re: Hot or Not?

#169

Post by kelnos » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 9:14 PM UTC

Is median the appropriate thing to look at here, even? A big reason why you might use a median value when analyzing data is to reduce the effects of outliers. But when we're talking about climate change, aren't the outliers actually important to consider?

Re: Hot or Not?

#170

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 9:16 PM UTC

misslibby wrote: post #164

uniqueuid wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I disagree, and my point is even simpler. Take the evolution of temperature measurements through proxies (although that is not my field). If at some point it becomes known that some method of measurement is biased, then that implies a re-evaluation of past research. Every time such adjustments happen, there is a meta-learning regarding the pace of adjustments and the severity, and also regarding which peop…

"And this is just the measurements part: There is also the problem of predatory journals etc etc. - all of these can skew the "consensus" if you don't account for them." But doesn't this very sentence from you imply that there is no such consensus as you claim? Apparently there are lots of publications that disagree, so where do you get your consensus from? " the composition of the field is always changing to some de…

> Everything only has probabilities.

But that does not mean that when there are two possible outcomes that these carry equal weight: the evidence for human influenced climate is so vast and so well researched that it would take an absolute miracle to displace it at this point.

> I am saying that scientific output should be verifiable by other people.

It is. Reproducibility and peer review are part and parcel of science and it is always done by other people than the ones involved in the original research.

But to you 'other people' may include people that have not studied the subject matter and that are not capable of following the arguments. Those people will end up having to pick a side, just like you have done, you are on the side of the 0.1% versus the 99.9%, likely because that decision works better for you in some way or other. But that does not make you a scientist any more than it makes me one. And I'll throw my lot in with the 99.9%, not because it makes my life any easier but simply because that makes good sense.