Please don't take this as a denial of climate change, it is an honest question. How do scientists learn the levels of ozone, aerosols, green house gases, and the other data points going so far back at a global scale? Is the data from before the latter half of the 20th century spotty? If so, why is it considered good enough to use in a context of scientific research where quality and correctness of data is paramount?
They use so-called "proxy data". You measure something else that has been accumulated and preserved over time and that somehow correlates. You have to create a model, fit it so it correlates with recent measures and you are done.
Level of oxygen for example can be estimated from layers of ice. Mann used tree slice(s) for temperature estimation.
There's a lot of problems with proxy data and their models and there is a lot of space for scientific misdemeanor. Some journals recently started to require a full disclosure of all data and models on which they base their claims, which - surprisingly - isn't always the case.
As more data is gathered over time some models need to be adjusted. How much they need to be adjusted reflects quality of the model.
It's a serious problem in multiple areas in society these days; the inability to ask simple questions that may go against the "accepted" narrative without being personally attacked. Science, religion, politics, sports, it's everywhere.
It's a seriously sad state of affairs, but nothing new really, if you think about it. The reach of modern communications has inflated the problem in my opinion.
Here's the thing: honest enquiry is something that should be encouraged. Sea-lioning[1], JAQing off[2] and Gish gallops[3] should not. When you are buried to your eyeballs in bullshit, it's hard to see who is really someone willing learn, and who is just shoveling on more.
It boggles my mind that people use the term sealioning unironically. How can it possibly be that a sensible person thinks it's ok to make a hateful statement in a public place and when someone asks clarification about it they are the harassers?!
You are not a priest preaching to the ignorant congregation, if you don't want to deal with the bullshit get off the fucking podium.
Here's my sealion of a question. What parts of climate change research are actually backed up by the scientific method (experiments with falsifiable hypotheses and all that) and what parts are more akin to natural history or something else? To clarify, I believe humans caused the problem (it appears that stating this makes people like you more, which is weird, but ok) but I cringe every time I hear the word science attached to the debate. Is it like a social science? I think someone told me that we know for sure that greenhouse gas emissions cause ozone depletion but I can't remember anymore. What is the actual hard science here?
>What parts of climate change research are actually backed up by the scientific method (experiments with falsifiable hypotheses and all that) and what parts are more akin to natural history or something else?
I do not generally get involved in the climate change debate because it has multiple problems: it happens on scales (both time and space) that humans have difficulty observing, it is about a system with lots of feedback that could very well behave chaotically, direct observations of the phenomenon are limited compared to its timescale, experts of the subject are operating under perverse incentives, it is highly politicized and almost everything that's easy to read about the subject is blatant propaganda (see all the climate change denialist posted in this thread as well as the OP).
Your question is hard to answer because it assumes there is a shared and agreed upon definition of the word "science" that can be used to determine with certainty wethere something is science or not.
> Is it like a social science? I think someone told me that we know for sure that greenhouse gas emissions cause ozone depletion but I can't remember anymore. What is the actual hard science here?
I think it is in better shape than the average social science, the greenhouse effect and the ozone depletion are two separate phenomena, this [1] is the experiment that explains how the greenhouse effect works, the wikipedia page about ozone depletion explains the chemical reactions that lead to that.
1) You can't tell whether someone is "just asking questions" in good faith or not.
2) Dismissing a horde of people all raising the same problems with one's beliefs as "sealions" is a tempting shortcut to actually examining one's beliefs, which might in fact be wrong.
So the answer is to assume that everyone is pulling your chain in an effort piss you off with their bullshit? That is a prime example as to why I see all this as really sad. If one can't handle the bullshit, perceived or real, slung out in public discourse then maybe one shouldn't participate in the public discourse about that particular topic. Because most likely these are the type people who sling their own bullshit disguised as truth.
My memories of a debate, especially a scientific debate, was that both sides presented their best evidence to determine a likely winner. These days it seems the easiest way to win a debate is to insult the other side enough so that they shut up. If someone uses that tactic in a debate I immediately question the validity of their viewpoint; because it seems they question it themselves and are not willing to admit it.
Good question. I know of one way, which is to look at sedement and other physical evidence that is laid down gradually over time. For example, tree rings (of trees hundreds or thousands of years old, or maybe even petrified trees) and ice cores (for example, from Antartica; the chemical composition of the ice and the air trapped in it depends on the prevailing environment). As I understand it, your question has received much attention over the years and these techniques are mature and well-developed.
To understand these issues and much more, I highly recommend spend a little time on the IPCC reports:
They don't for aerosols/ozone past the 50s I dont think.
But carbon/methane/NO/etc... they get from ice samples that have trapped air bubbles from quite a long time ago. They also take a ton of samples from ice cores and the data is reproducible both in the north and south poles. I believe temperature is also learned from the ice samples.
Its either directly measured or inferred. Ice cores, lake bottom cores, old wood cores. The error bars are wider for some, I'm sure, but that's accounted for in the models, to degrees of course.
"Several causes have been proposed: cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation, an inherent variability in global climate, or decreases in the human population."
It seems we don't even know how the little ice age happened. How do we know these same forces aren't changing our environment now?
We've been having all these strange temperatures lately and also this:
The problem is that it's too political now. When claimed scientists are coming out and saying the science is "settled", I know we have a problem. Science is never really settled.
Remember that's a well-documented, established technique often used by people who want to obstruct things; create so much noise (as in signal-to-noise) and FUD (Fear, uncertainty, and doubt) as to confuse the public about the facts. In every field, you always can find someone to say anything on TV; heck, you can find tax attorneys who will say you don't have to pay income tax (good luck with that!).
> When claimed scientists are coming out and saying the science is "settled", I know we have a problem. Science is never really settled.
'Settled science' is jargon; it distinguishes theories that are still up in the air (string theory) from theories that have proven themselves as very reliable (gravity). Nothing in the world is ever "settled", but the evidence is pretty certain about climate change:
IIRC, 97% of climate scientists believe it's happening and caused by humans; the US National Academies of Science agree, as does the Royal Society in the UK; the US defense and intelligence communities are planning on it, as is the insurance and other industries. Sure, they all could be wrong, but so could the deniers. Who seems like a better bet, the 3%, or the 97%?
It's become a politicized issue, and as such, the media has created a narrative of 2 sides and a "debate." Take the 97% and put it into a different context and it makes the situation seem absolutely ludicrous.
If you had a sore stomach, and asked 2 groups of people to help you figure out why, would you trust the diagnosis from a group with 100 world-class doctors, surgeons, dieticians, etc... or 100 random people? When the random people say "Ya, but the doctor's don't know anything"... why would you believe them?
We've got global consensus from the leading experts in a dozen or so related fields, all pointing to the same thing. I trust the people that landed on the moon and can launch satellites to space to give me better information about the Earth's macro trends than the guy next door that uses his bible and the cold weather last week as his evidence of a trend.
Your medical example has happened before. And, it gives us the answer! People will believe the people who have better access to the media, which, in this case, was tobacco companies hiring hacks to push a certain line of evidence demanding that the media teach the debate and give equal time. And as a result we got hundreds of thousands of excess deaths.
Ironically, many of the same tobacco-cancer link deniers are now working in the service of the global warming denialist bloc. I guess oil barons pay better than southern planters.
>If you had a sore stomach, and asked 2 groups of people to help you figure out why, would you trust the diagnosis from a group with 100 world-class doctors, surgeons, dieticians, etc... or 100 random people?
Not unless two of those 100 random individuals were Barry Marshall and Robin Warren and the stomach pain was due to a peptic ulcer.
"Marshall and Robin Warren showed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid."
The point being that a reasonable belief long held by experts was shown to be false by careful scientific investigation. That said, I don't find this kind of meta-rhetoric helpful as it serves only to steer attention away from the pertinent matter at hand and to shut down discussion.
I get what you're saying, but Marshall was a doctor. He'd be in the 3% of the group of informed scientists that are working to figure out this scenario. My point is that the general public's opinion and perception of the issue shouldn't carry as much weight as the experts.
Apologies to anyone basing their beliefs on religious faith or personal experience. That's your choice, and unfair for me to judge.
As for straw man, I don't think that's technically correct, but it's a hard point to make without analogy.
Conventional wisdom is (I believe the majority of people are under the impression) that there's actually a scientific debate about this, and that the scientists and climatologists are all bickering about the causes. That's not the case, but we're largely ignoring that because the media and a few opposing scientists are casting doubt.
> IIRC, 97% of climate scientists believe it's happening and caused by humans
No, you didn't recall correctly. It's published papers taking a position on AGW and even that number is questionable at best:
To manufacture their misleading asserted consensus, Cook and his colleagues also misclassified various papers as taking “no position” on human-caused global warming. When Cook and his colleagues determined a paper took no position on the issue, they simply pretended, for the purpose of their 97-percent claim, that the paper did not exist.
Morner, a sea level scientist, told Popular Technology that Cook classifying one of his papers as “no position” was “Certainly not correct and certainly misleading. The paper is strongly against AGW [anthropogenic global warming], and documents its absence in the sea level observational facts. Also, it invalidates the mode of sea level handling by the IPCC.”
"IIRC, 97% of climate scientists believe it's happening and caused by humans"
Okay, show me a study that has the details on which parts are human made and which parts are caused by nature (with numbers). I have never seen this anywhere and You would think if they actually knew, we would have seen it by now. This isn't that difficult and it doesn't really make any sense that humans are causing 100%. Especially with things like the little ice age before we were around to pollute the earth.
"the US National Academies of Science agree, as does the Royal Society in the UK; the US defense and intelligence communities are planning on it, as is the insurance and other industries. Sure, they all could be wrong, but so could the deniers. Who seems like a better bet, the 3%, or the 97%?"
Well, if we are going to use this argument, we could very well think the solar system revolves around the earth rather than the sun.
What about our treatment of women and minorities? Everyone did it, so it MUST be the correct behavior..right?
How about smoking? Even Doctors promoted it at the time (they are experts, right?).
Being homosexual and transgender was seen as a mental illness for decades. But all the experts agreed, so it must again be correct, right?
I guess it is a mental illness!! The experts all agreed..I can't go against them..
Even more recently, "Hands up don't shoot". Forensic evidence came out and said that it never happened, yet we have mainstream media and seemingly intelligent people continuing on with the stretching of the truth to fit a narrative.
"but the evidence is pretty certain about climate change"
Yes, the climate is changing (a fact). But we still don't know if it's completely due to man-made changes or nature.
You also left out government funding and the politics around academia, which is very important when it comes to studies. It's pretty well known in the academic world that if you don't support the current narrative, you will not get funding.
I worked for many years in Academia and it's 99% politics if you want to actually get funding. If someone in a higher position doesn't like you for any reason, you can kiss it goodbye.
Climate change (also known as Global warming and Global cooling depending on what the new narrative is for the day) has been talked about since the 1970s. None of the predictions by scientists at that time came even close to true and it was a majority..just like today.
Science shouldn't be about trying to fit the evidence to a narrative. It should be trying to figure out the truth.
If you can't even debate me on these simple questions, how can I ever believe what you are saying is true?
Even the behavior here on HN is pretty telling. I ask a few questions and I am met with: hostility, anger, and people using words like "fucking". If it is this bad here, I can't imagine the climate scientists with contrary evidence. It's just like during the middle ages. Except they won't be burned at the stake, they will lose their careers.
You claim to be interested in the science, yet you reject what the overwhelming majority of scientists have to say, and only quote people who have no experience or expertise in the topic area and who produce very many innaccurate statements, which all get rapidly debunked. But because you reject science you ignore the debunking.
Well, it's much worse than that. It is not true that 97% of scientists agree with AGW theory. That claim is a lie, based on the paper by Cook, et al. That paper was a premeditated fraud. But people are still perpetrating the lie about consensus. The media loudly announced the claim, but the media has ignored the uncovering of the conspiracy. Of course, anyone can google it, if they want to...
So, you have 1) the consensus claim shown to be a lie, and 2) the IPCC shown to be telling scientists to deceive the public.
Either of those facts alone should sink the AGW movement. But it's hard to get the truth out to people who don't care enough to look it up themselves, because the media is invested into the false narrative.
"Honestly dude, do the fucking research. Read the IPCC. Hell even Wikipedia has the fundamentals extremely well explained. We know very, stupid well what's causing the climate to change. CO2 concentration is not just a correlation in the models, but has a directly observable physical effect that has been known about in labs and was later shown to be the primary reason for global warming."
It's interesting that we had a major climate change before the industrial revolution and we still don't underestand completely how it happened.
Maybe I'm just smarter than most climate scientists? After all the number fudging that has happened in the last few weeks (and during climate gate), I think it might just be the case.
>Again, "Do the fucking research" is not a debate.
Why do you want to debate instead of learn? Why not go read the IPCC report in which your questions are likely to be answered? Don't count on the lay interest of HN commentators, go read what the experts have to say directly. That's what that report is for.
>It's interesting that we had a major climate change before the industrial revolution and we still don't underestand completely how it happened.
We have a pretty good guess. Native Americans suddenly lost 95% of their population due to plagues introduced from Europe. They in turn stopped burning the forests of the Eastern US. The forests recovered, and pulled a huge amount of carbon out of the air. This caused an ice age.
I do learn. I learn by looking at all evidence and facts rather than just the ones that tell me what I want to hear. Even when it's been shown that evidence has been doctored (like during Climate gate and more recently with the temperature readings), it's just explained away to further write the narrative that man has caused Climate change and anybody that questions it is considered a kook. THIS ISN'T SCIENCE NO MATTER HOW MANY BLOGS AND WEBSITES SAY IT IS!!!!
The pope talked about it last week during his speech. He mentioned climate change, but he also mentioned that abortion is wrong (and hurting the environment) and that people that are transgender are against god.
Which part do you think the media picked up on?
The Left in the US has been demonizing religion for many years..especially the pope due to many anti-science beliefs. Now, because he happens to fit the narrative, he's talked about in those same communities like we should listen.
Since there isn't really any scientific basis for his opinion, it really makes me wonder about many of the other "studies" going around the Internet.
I've done research on many of the people that claim to be a 'Climate scientist' and most aren't even close.
"They in turn stopped burning the forests of the Eastern US. The forests recovered, and pulled a huge amount of carbon out of the air. This caused an ice age."
So there are other reasons why the climate changed.
Actually, all of the other comments to my post did it for me. I'm curious why seemingly intelligent people can be so easily manipulated by biased studies. Maybe it's the fire and brimstone articles.
Al gore knew this and is now a Billionaire because of it. He even tried to get the government to force entire industries to buy carbon credits from his companies. Nobody cared about this. Not even in the scientific community.
He was the one that championed the idea of "Global warming" and the scientific community followed it..even when he said foolish things like the science is "settled". I've heard this repeated over and over again. It's not..and if you say this, it's not science.
Even here on HN, anything said against him was down voted. If bullshit like this can be passed off as the truth, it again should make everyone question it.
How do you think the IPCC gets funded? Do you honestly think they would publish a report that bites the hand that feeds them? We need more independent studies.
If this were a big corporation funding a study on Climate change and it didn't fit the narrative, this is exactly what you would be saying.
When Money and Politics gets involved, the facts get muddied and hidden.
>The IPCC receives funding from UNEP, WMO, and its own Trust Fund for which it solicits contributions from governments. Its secretariat is hosted by the WMO, in Geneva.
What interest do these organizations have in inaccurate science? How could they possibly be more neutral?
"What interest do these organizations have in inaccurate science? How could they possibly be more neutral?"
If climate change is not man-made, they will no longer get funded. It's just as biased as any big company doing the same research, but it's excused because it's somehow seen as more 'scientific'
I can see through most of the political BS that people even here on HN can't seem to grasp. Why is that?
I am a little older and more experienced, that might be it. But I shouldn't really be that surprised from a community that willingly rallies around ideas that continues to subjugate them.
It puts me about 10 steps ahead of the majority of people.
> I can see through most of the political BS that people even here on HN can't seem to grasp. Why is that?
It isn't, you simply believe that it is; as the guy below said a clear case of Dunning Kruger, you are vastly overestimating your own intelligence. You've done nothing here but repeat plainly ignorant right wing propaganda that's not even smart enough to require disproving.
"Conversely, highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others"
Going a bit grey isn't being "immediately silenced". People can still read your comment.
I think you're reading too much into the "the science is settled" comment. It's a field where powerful interests work aggressively to discredit a majority view of scientists, and it's likely that some (magnified by the media) may use a term like that out of frustration to imply consensus and a wish to have policy makers progress on action.
I know it's easy to find an aberration on Wikipedia, but the pros know all that stuff, they live it every minute of the day.
I disagree with your points on climate science, but I do agree there's a bit of overreaction to what could be honest questions. However maybe this explains the response:
* Your questions do seem a little like assertions with question marks at the end, because they repeat some climate denial propaganda. In fairness, maybe that's all you've read (Suggestion: Don't get your climate science from mainstream media that is at all politicized (e.g., most UK newspapers, Fox, Huffington Post, etc.) It's a waste of time and misinformation. Try Nature (nature.com), Science (sciencemag.org), New Scientist, Scientific American; even the NY Times is better, though IME very incomplete).
* Many of the questions are easily answered with a little research, which make them look more like assertions and not like questions from someone interested in learning.
* Unfortunately, easily researched questions that repeat inflamatory propaganda don't add much to the conversation.
Perhaps on a less inflamatory subject, where others were less tired of propaganda and less concerned with it taking over the conversation, nobody would have downvoted you.
As someone who definitely doesn't agree with the mainstream opinion about all this, it comes across as fundamentally un-serious when you casually refer to the opposing argument as "propaganda" without any elaboration. I've used that kind of rhetoric probably too often and it is counterproductive. If you are genuinely interested in communicating what you believe to be good information to those who don't agree, please consider avoiding that kind of language.
I generally agree, but at the same time I'm not going to create a false equivalency. A significant portion of climate change denial is, in fact, a propaganda campaign. The points are not fact or information, but propaganda. Still, I could have and should have phrased it in a less inflamatory manner. Thanks for the reminder.
Some advice: there is definitely an acceptable way to challenge the mainstream here, but I don't think you've succeeded at it. Since all of your points have appeared here before, my suggestion is not to make them all at once (which encourages people who disagree with you not to bother responding and just to downvote) but rather to pick one or two of the most relevant points and back them up with extreme detail, meaning more than a link to Wikipedia.
For example, if we're talking about the proxy studies, you can mention how central they are to the larger debate and then go into detail about the long history of problems like the short-centered PC analysis in at least one of the MBH papers, or Briffa's divergence problem, or more recently the all-but-retracted Marcott paper.
Or alternatively, respond to someone claiming that the skeptics are completely responsible for politicizing the subject by pointing out that since the alarmists are demanding all the change, action, new laws etc, there is a very significant burden of proof on their shoulders. Then say that claiming "the science is settled" so they can skip to the legislation is very much why the subject is so politicized today.
And unfortunately, no community can completely avoid politics and groupthink at all times. So if you see a large number of people who seem like they will violently disagree with any but the most tactful of arguments then you can always just let them have their echo chamber and move on.
"And unfortunately, no community can completely avoid politics and groupthink at all times. So if you see a large number of people who seem like they will violently disagree with any but the most tactful of arguments then you can always just let them have their echo chamber and move on."
This was my entire point of posting everything, and the HN community made it quite nicely: real science can't be accomplished because group think and politics are getting in the way.
Silencing political opinions (this has become a political opinion now) is never the answer.
Thanks HN, I just wanted to thank you all for making my point for me, so I didn't really need to.
Apart from the rhetorical strategy, the only other suggestion is just to be polite and edit out as much snark as you can do without, like for example that last paragraph. You may find that people here are more welcoming of (tactful) contrarian and minority viewpoints than your average internet place, although they do like a lively argument.
Given that the essay links approvingly to Crichton's Aliens Cause Global Warming address, I think you might understand it better if you read the whole thing again.
