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Watching Hacker News argue about climate change is like watching the blind argue about colors. Please stop. In general you have no idea what you are talking a

Watching Hacker News argue about climate change is like watching the blind argue about colors. Please stop. In general you have no idea what you are talking about. Again and again and again and again there are comments along the lines of, "I did five minutes of Googling about this issue and I've come up with a fatal flaw in climate science!" Do you really think that the tens of thousands of scientists who do their life's work in this area are all fucking idiots? Every last one of them? You are late to the party. How greenhouse gases work has been thoroughly explored. The science of whether we'll get a substantial human-caused climate change from increasing the amount of atmospheric CO2 by 35% is done. It's over. The science now is in determining/predicting just how much it will be, and in predicting the effects. Every thread about climate science on Hacker News is one giant facepalm. Every thread. Please stop.

pg 17y ago
Your comment has even less evidence or analysis than the comments you're complaining about. It's just an angry assertion. It's ok for people to who are not experts in a subject to explore it. If you feel they're on the wrong track, help them by giving them information.
- antonovka2 17y ago
  There's an over-abundance of information. All that's left for HN is angry, emotional quibbling by those who lack the basic qualifications to evaluate the data and science, even if they were interested in actually doing so.
  - Panoramix 17y ago
    The comments I've read so far present interesting POV's backed up by data and observations. I don't see how that qualifies as "angry emotional quibbling". I don't see the problem with discussing science either. Newton's law of gravitation has been around fot 322 years, and it has been shown to be just a very good approximation (like everything else in science). Also, it is still an open question (AFAIK) whether it holds at very small distances. Climate research is not physics. The number of variables and the complexity of the system is of such magnitude that I am pretty sure there will plenty of room for scientific discussion for years and years to come.
waterlesscloud 17y ago
Are there really 10s of thousands of scientists doing climate work? What is your source for that? It seems like a high number.
- waterlesscloud 17y ago
  Answering my own question, there may in fact be 10s of thousands of "climate scientists", for a very broad definition of climate scientist. http://rabett.blogspot.com/2006/11/how-many-climate-scientists-are-there.html http://rabett.blogspot.com/2006/11/how-many-climate-scientis... Interesting to note though, how low the number is for scientists actually working on climate change.
  - hga 17y ago
    See my comment on the WSJ's enumeration of over 5 billion annually spend on this area; I know it was 1 billion not too many years ago. 100,000 per scientist if there's 50,000 of them; play around with the numbers, but "10s of thousands" feeding at this trough is not unreasonable. There's a reason why my university's president and department's head are big boosters of AGW/CC, even though the former is a biologist and the latter a chemist.

pg 17y ago

Your comment has even less evidence or analysis than the comments you're complaining about. It's just an angry assertion. It's ok for people to who are not experts in a subject to explore it. If you feel they're on the wrong track, help them by giving them information.

antonovka2 17y ago
There's an over-abundance of information. All that's left for HN is angry, emotional quibbling by those who lack the basic qualifications to evaluate the data and science, even if they were interested in actually doing so.
- Panoramix 17y ago
  The comments I've read so far present interesting POV's backed up by data and observations. I don't see how that qualifies as "angry emotional quibbling". I don't see the problem with discussing science either. Newton's law of gravitation has been around fot 322 years, and it has been shown to be just a very good approximation (like everything else in science). Also, it is still an open question (AFAIK) whether it holds at very small distances. Climate research is not physics. The number of variables and the complexity of the system is of such magnitude that I am pretty sure there will plenty of room for scientific discussion for years and years to come.

waterlesscloud 17y ago

Are there really 10s of thousands of scientists doing climate work? What is your source for that? It seems like a high number.

waterlesscloud 17y ago
Answering my own question, there may in fact be 10s of thousands of "climate scientists", for a very broad definition of climate scientist. http://rabett.blogspot.com/2006/11/how-many-climate-scientists-are-there.html http://rabett.blogspot.com/2006/11/how-many-climate-scientis... Interesting to note though, how low the number is for scientists actually working on climate change.
- hga 17y ago
  See my comment on the WSJ's enumeration of over 5 billion annually spend on this area; I know it was 1 billion not too many years ago. 100,000 per scientist if there's 50,000 of them; play around with the numbers, but "10s of thousands" feeding at this trough is not unreasonable. There's a reason why my university's president and department's head are big boosters of AGW/CC, even though the former is a biologist and the latter a chemist.