Nasa.gov: Evidence of Climate Change • Hacker News Board

Re: Nasa.gov: Evidence of Climate Change

#91

Post by lutorm » Mon, Oct 25, 2010, 3:27 AM UTC

enko wrote: post #55

lutorm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean I should believe a huge stream-of-consciousness ascii file over scientific papers? Sorry, that's not going to fly with me. And your money argument doesn't work. Are you seriously saying those who argue AGW is NOT real don't have a financial interest in that?

> Are you seriously saying those who argue AGW is NOT real don't have a financial interest in that? Are you seriously saying that every single person who has ever questioned the establishment line on AGW has a financial interest in some kind of carbon emitting industry? Bollocks. I am not a "believer" or a "denier" but rather a skeptic, of both sides, whom I find to be very agenda-driven. Now you might think I'm an i…

Please. I didn't say "every single person" any more than you did.

I'm exactly like you. Except that I happen to generally think that the vast majority of climate scientists probably are honest and know what they are doing.

But neither you nor me are pushing our opinion in the media, in congress, etc. So we're not really relevant to your argument, neither of us.

Let's think about who have financial interests, shall we:

On the "would prefer a world where fossil fuels are fine and dandy all around" side we have entities like oil and automobile companies, which just so happen to be some of the largest and most powerful organizations in the world.

On the "would prefer the world be going to hell" side we have... green-tech startups? Maybe climate scientists have a slight incentive because research funding is probably easier to get if people generally think an issue is important. But that might have been true 20 years ago. Nowadays I bet you'd get as much funding really proving there's nothing to worry about, lots of politicians would like that to be true. For the oil companies, on the other hand, there's no silver lining, they need to sell less oil and that'll come right out of their bottom line.

If we now compare the amount of money in climate research grants with oil company profits, it is at least to me pretty clear which side I think has the largest financial interest.

Re: Nasa.gov: Evidence of Climate Change

#92

Post by lutorm » Mon, Oct 25, 2010, 3:29 AM UTC

sesqu wrote: post #74

lutorm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The magnitude of the fluctuations should really be judged against the error bars, not against zero. That's what tells you whether the change is significant.

But that doesn't tell you whether it's important. Statistical significance is a measure of trustworthiness, given assumptions about the generating process. It tells you nothing about whether the data is in any way meaningful, after assuming relibility. What does tell you about that type significance of (rational) data is the delta, which requires the 0 in order for you to see the scale. Now, in many interesting cases…

But that doesn't tell you whether it's important

Yeah, I'll buy that.

Re: Nasa.gov: Evidence of Climate Change

#93

Post by alanh » Mon, Oct 25, 2010, 3:55 AM UTC

M1573RMU74710N wrote: post #83

kia wrote: post #20

Why did they decided to cut the graphic at 400,000 years before today? Maybe that's because a couple of million years ago the concentration of CO2 was well above today's level? By the way here is another picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_CO2_with_glaci...

The fact that C02 levels have been higher is not necessarily in contradiction to the article, nor an important omission. This issue as other's have pointed out is the CAUSE of the current levels and the implications thereof. In the past the high levels of C02 were at least partially due to ice ages, which prevented the normal processes for the mitigation of C02, once the levels built up enough the greenhouse effect m…

You repeatedly type cee-zero-two. It's the letter O, as CO₂ stands for (mono-)carbon dioxide, a gaseous molecule with one carbon and two oxygen molecules. I'm sure you know that, but hey, if you didn't, there you go.

Re: Nasa.gov: Evidence of Climate Change

#94

Post by TerraHertz » Mon, Nov 01, 2010, 1:32 AM UTC

TerraHertz wrote: post #37

For anyone who still thinks Anthropogenic Global Warming is real, some reading material: http://everist.org/archives/links/!_AGW_links.txt http://everist.org/archives/links/!_CRU_emails_links.txt Oh and yes, the graph was limited to 400K years,because otherwise it would show CO2 levels in the past FAR higher than today. And it doesn't show CO2 vs temp over geological timescales, because that graph clearly shows that…

Ha. Quite a few people getting upset about my post. 'huge stream-of consciousness ascii list', etc. Ha ha ha! Points:

* It's TWO lists. Pay attention.

* They're not 'stream of consciousness', they're chronological archives of links to AGW related articles, posts, papers, documentaries, etc.

* They're ascii because that works best for maintaining such a record. Deal with it.

* They're 'huge' because there's been so much going on in the AGW discussion, especially since the CRU emails story broke. I'm not in any way trying to present a convenient summary, but an archive of events. Deal with that too.

Also,can't help laughing at the poor sods who still believe (or pretend) that '95% of climate scientists agree AGW exists and is due to CO2' twaddle. Yeah, if they did I'd have been wasting my time keeping such lists.

However,there's no such consensus, only a small number of individuals pretending they represent a near-universal consensus. And being supported in that effort by various media and journals. As becomes clear to anyone who actually looks into the matter. Which could involve reading through a 'huge list of references'- heaven forbid that it might require actual effort. Or that anyone would dare to subvert the 'consensus' by providing a convenient list of dissenting resources.