12 ms·

To #1, I'm hardly a denier, but anytime I see everyone jump on a bandwagon, and start to see smugness (not referring to you), I wonder how much objectivity stil

by DougN7 11y ago

To #1, I'm hardly a denier, but anytime I see everyone jump on a bandwagon, and start to see smugness (not referring to you), I wonder how much objectivity still exists. IMHO we probably are warming the world with all of our machines, but the history of science is full of cases where it didn't know as much as it claimed, so let's keep some humility in the discussion and admit we still don't infact know everything for certain.

zwily 11y ago
I'm in your boat. I wish more people were in that boat.
- digitalengineer 11y ago
  It's getting crowded in here. We sure aren't doing this earth any favors, but I have my doubts to weather our machines are making this planet a warmer place. Everything moves in cycles.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    > Everything moves in cycles. Positive feedback loop systems tend to move in cycles, only each cycle has a greater amplitude than the previous one.
    - kabouseng 11y ago
      No positive feedback tends to catastrophically run away. Feedback with control elements can oscillate uncontrollably. For your comment to ring true it would mean that some control mechanism is present, I don't believe that to be the case unless you think humanity is that control element, i.e. drastically reduce our CO2 output at the top of the cycle and then increase it again at the bottom of the cycle.
      - digitalengineer 11y ago
        I feel there is another source to our earth's temperature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File:Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File:Carbon...
sd8f9iu 11y ago
But that is not what the problem is. In any scientific discipline, we never know anything for certain. Climate deniers are not saying, "we still don't know some things about climate change." They are denying the basic facts of climate change because they are ignorant or self-serving, or both. To not point this out and address it with equal fervor – especially given what's at stake – is just as much a slight to climate science. By all means, in the scientific field, maintain humility and approach each result with skepticism. But #1 is more a political problem than a scientific one. The nation's (and world's) response to climate change is vastly insufficient. As educated individuals in a high-tech field, we have a duty to call a spade a spade, and sometimes preemptively calling the opposition's bullshit is a means to this end.
- gaius 11y ago
  A "denier" is anyone who disagrees with Al Gore and Bono. Count me in.
DCKing 11y ago
That is an attractive position to take. It seems there are two extremes, and the truth should be in the middle somewhere. However, it seems to me you don't quite appreciate how strong the case for the general picture of climate change really is. The evidence for it is so vast, coming from so many different sources, that it is really quite indisputable. That doesn't imply at all that the picture of it is complete, or that we know exactly how it works. This finding doesn't diminish the strength of other forms of evidence at all. It merely adds to our understanding of the details of climate change and the development of new insights on the details of climate change. Climate change theory isn't some young and untested field of science. People have been trying to disprove (that's what science is! that's what this study is doing!) climate change hypotheses for decades now, and what is left today is a proper scientific theory. Just because a lot of debate happens on the veracity of climate change findings doesn't mean that the proper thing to do is to take a 'nuanced' position. Not if it is not aligned with experimental evidence. It might feel counterintuitive to do in a political discussion - which is what climate change has sadly become - but when the discussion is about what's true, one should always look for the answers that are intellectually honest instead of those that are politically acceptable or 'balanced'. > the history of science is full of cases where it didn't know as much as it claimed, I don't think this is true at all. Name one such scientific consensus that was, like climate change, the result of different sources of experimental evidence, that turned out to completely wrong.
- source99 11y ago
  The theory that people will be healthier by decreasing fat and increasing carbs has led to our current obesity epidemic. I would classify the science performed that got us to this point as fulfilling your requiremen.
  - npunt 11y ago
    Nutrition is an especially crude science with nothing approaching scientific theory, and a lot of disagreement. FDA recommendations like the food pyramid that recommend altering fats/carbs are the result of political consensus as much as science, and there are many counter-examples to the idea of high carbs / low fats in the diets of different peoples of the world.
gaius 11y ago
"Denier" is a loaded word, meant deliberately to evoke "Holocaust denier". I prefer skeptic. Because if you're not a skeptic, you're not a scientist.
- powera 11y ago
  Wait, really? I would have guessed it referred to Galileo
- ageofwant 11y ago
  "Denier" is an appropriate label if no amount of evidence will be able to convince the "sceptic". A scientist should be able to change his mind based on the evidence. Deniers are unable to do this.
  - gaius 11y ago
    Well we have more ice forming and still the label "denier" is being bandied about. Maybe there are fanatics on both sides?
    - mikeash 11y ago
      There are fanatics both for and against flat Earth theory, but that doesn't make the two sides equal nor imply the truth is somewhere in the middle.
    - ageofwant 11y ago
      Of course there will be more ice, why would more moisture in the air lead to less ice ? I don't think you understand the models you are questioning. Maybe spend more time studying what they actually mean ? Also, while you're at it, have a look at the "Argument to Moderation" logical fallacy.
asgard1024 11y ago
> we probably are warming the world with all of our machines Probably very little compared to GH gases contribution, see here: http://skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm http://skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm There is a lot of energy coming to the Earth in the form of sunlight. We could power world economy with it many times over.
- ageofwant 11y ago
  And a lot leaving via infra-red radiation, unless of course you trap it somehow.
- valm- 11y ago
  Note that the greenhouse gases you mention are generated so we can run our machines.
  - asgard1024 11y ago
    I am not sure I follow - this is what AGW theory is saying, that humans cause global warming by running civilization on carbon fuels. I just wanted to address possibly wrong belief of GP that waste heat can be the primary cause of GW.
- saalweachter 11y ago
  It is relatively little, but it's actually something like 6%. The rate of change of the Earth's heat content is something like 250TW (on average); humans are currently using/generating around 16TW of energy. For comparison, the Earth's fiery core is about 45TW of radioactive decay and sunlight hitting Earth is about 173PW. Of course, we've historically increased our energy use by around 5% per year, so if that trend held (which you should expect about as much as any other exponential trend holding...), in about 50 years waste heat would begin outweighing greenhouse gasses.
mikeash 11y ago
The smugness I see almost always comes from the skeptic/denier crowd, who just love to talk about how stupid people who believe in global warming are and how obvious it is that the whole thing is a hoax because of the global warming hiatus, or volcanoes, or because it snowed on Tuesday, or whatever. If objectivity is lacking, it is lacking almost exclusively because certain right-wing groups took a scientific issue, turned it into a political issue, and set their politics to oppose the science. Certainly, there exist fanatic, non-objective people on both sides. But they're not exactly common, and it gets tedious to see comments like yours in every discussion about this issue, and almost always directed at the reasonable people who actually look at the facts, and not at the the people who think climate change isn't science, who think that increased ice mass must be evidence against global warming regardless of the reason for it, or who think global temperatures stopped rising in 1998.
- merpnderp 11y ago
  We have different experiences. I usually see the skeptic crowd talking about the science and the believer crowd talking about how fanatical the skeptics are. But you seem a reasonable person. Maybe you could help me understand the last 20 years of the UAH 6.0 data and the RSS data which matches it within +-.2C?
  - mikeash 11y ago
    I'm not terribly familiar with these things, but they look like fairly straightforward temperature data. What is there to understand?
    - merpnderp 11y ago
      Between the two of them, they are the entirety of the satellite global atmospheric temperature data sets. If you run a linear regression on the TLT (total lower tropospheric) data from 1997 to current, you'll get a zero trend. If you allow for their level of confidence, you get a zero trend from 1994. These are two separate organizations, who's data (with UAH's 6.0 update) is within .2C of each other. UAH is University of Alabama in Huntsville in partnership with NASA. RSS is a private atmospheric research company. Both their data sets start in 1979. Without discounting their data, what theory of anthropogenic global warming accounts for this length of no warming during the period where 1/3rd of all man made CO2 was released into the atmosphere? I'm extremely curious and have had no luck getting an answer anywhere. The data is easy to find, but I can link it if you want to run it yourself. The UAH 6.0 data is still in Beta, but NASA started accounting for loss of orbit and are working on an updated record.

by DougN7 11y ago

zwily 11y ago

I'm in your boat. I wish more people were in that boat.

digitalengineer 11y ago
It's getting crowded in here. We sure aren't doing this earth any favors, but I have my doubts to weather our machines are making this planet a warmer place. Everything moves in cycles.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > Everything moves in cycles. Positive feedback loop systems tend to move in cycles, only each cycle has a greater amplitude than the previous one.
  - kabouseng 11y ago
    No positive feedback tends to catastrophically run away. Feedback with control elements can oscillate uncontrollably. For your comment to ring true it would mean that some control mechanism is present, I don't believe that to be the case unless you think humanity is that control element, i.e. drastically reduce our CO2 output at the top of the cycle and then increase it again at the bottom of the cycle.
    - digitalengineer 11y ago
      I feel there is another source to our earth's temperature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File:Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File:Carbon...

sd8f9iu 11y ago

But that is not what the problem is. In any scientific discipline, we never know anything for certain. Climate deniers are not saying, "we still don't know some things about climate change." They are denying the basic facts of climate change because they are ignorant or self-serving, or both. To not point this out and address it with equal fervor – especially given what's at stake – is just as much a slight to climate science. By all means, in the scientific field, maintain humility and approach each result with skepticism. But #1 is more a political problem than a scientific one. The nation's (and world's) response to climate change is vastly insufficient. As educated individuals in a high-tech field, we have a duty to call a spade a spade, and sometimes preemptively calling the opposition's bullshit is a means to this end.

gaius 11y ago
A "denier" is anyone who disagrees with Al Gore and Bono. Count me in.

DCKing 11y ago

That is an attractive position to take. It seems there are two extremes, and the truth should be in the middle somewhere. However, it seems to me you don't quite appreciate how strong the case for the general picture of climate change really is. The evidence for it is so vast, coming from so many different sources, that it is really quite indisputable. That doesn't imply at all that the picture of it is complete, or that we know exactly how it works. This finding doesn't diminish the strength of other forms of evidence at all. It merely adds to our understanding of the details of climate change and the development of new insights on the details of climate change. Climate change theory isn't some young and untested field of science. People have been trying to disprove (that's what science is! that's what this study is doing!) climate change hypotheses for decades now, and what is left today is a proper scientific theory. Just because a lot of debate happens on the veracity of climate change findings doesn't mean that the proper thing to do is to take a 'nuanced' position. Not if it is not aligned with experimental evidence. It might feel counterintuitive to do in a political discussion - which is what climate change has sadly become - but when the discussion is about what's true, one should always look for the answers that are intellectually honest instead of those that are politically acceptable or 'balanced'. > the history of science is full of cases where it didn't know as much as it claimed, I don't think this is true at all. Name one such scientific consensus that was, like climate change, the result of different sources of experimental evidence, that turned out to completely wrong.

source99 11y ago
The theory that people will be healthier by decreasing fat and increasing carbs has led to our current obesity epidemic. I would classify the science performed that got us to this point as fulfilling your requiremen.
- npunt 11y ago
  Nutrition is an especially crude science with nothing approaching scientific theory, and a lot of disagreement. FDA recommendations like the food pyramid that recommend altering fats/carbs are the result of political consensus as much as science, and there are many counter-examples to the idea of high carbs / low fats in the diets of different peoples of the world.

gaius 11y ago

"Denier" is a loaded word, meant deliberately to evoke "Holocaust denier". I prefer skeptic. Because if you're not a skeptic, you're not a scientist.

powera 11y ago
Wait, really? I would have guessed it referred to Galileo
ageofwant 11y ago
"Denier" is an appropriate label if no amount of evidence will be able to convince the "sceptic". A scientist should be able to change his mind based on the evidence. Deniers are unable to do this.
- gaius 11y ago
  Well we have more ice forming and still the label "denier" is being bandied about. Maybe there are fanatics on both sides?
  - mikeash 11y ago
    There are fanatics both for and against flat Earth theory, but that doesn't make the two sides equal nor imply the truth is somewhere in the middle.
  - ageofwant 11y ago
    Of course there will be more ice, why would more moisture in the air lead to less ice ? I don't think you understand the models you are questioning. Maybe spend more time studying what they actually mean ? Also, while you're at it, have a look at the "Argument to Moderation" logical fallacy.

asgard1024 11y ago

> we probably are warming the world with all of our machines Probably very little compared to GH gases contribution, see here: http://skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm http://skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm There is a lot of energy coming to the Earth in the form of sunlight. We could power world economy with it many times over.

ageofwant 11y ago
And a lot leaving via infra-red radiation, unless of course you trap it somehow.
valm- 11y ago
Note that the greenhouse gases you mention are generated so we can run our machines.
- asgard1024 11y ago
  I am not sure I follow - this is what AGW theory is saying, that humans cause global warming by running civilization on carbon fuels. I just wanted to address possibly wrong belief of GP that waste heat can be the primary cause of GW.
saalweachter 11y ago
It is relatively little, but it's actually something like 6%. The rate of change of the Earth's heat content is something like 250TW (on average); humans are currently using/generating around 16TW of energy. For comparison, the Earth's fiery core is about 45TW of radioactive decay and sunlight hitting Earth is about 173PW. Of course, we've historically increased our energy use by around 5% per year, so if that trend held (which you should expect about as much as any other exponential trend holding...), in about 50 years waste heat would begin outweighing greenhouse gasses.

mikeash 11y ago

The smugness I see almost always comes from the skeptic/denier crowd, who just love to talk about how stupid people who believe in global warming are and how obvious it is that the whole thing is a hoax because of the global warming hiatus, or volcanoes, or because it snowed on Tuesday, or whatever. If objectivity is lacking, it is lacking almost exclusively because certain right-wing groups took a scientific issue, turned it into a political issue, and set their politics to oppose the science. Certainly, there exist fanatic, non-objective people on both sides. But they're not exactly common, and it gets tedious to see comments like yours in every discussion about this issue, and almost always directed at the reasonable people who actually look at the facts, and not at the the people who think climate change isn't science, who think that increased ice mass must be evidence against global warming regardless of the reason for it, or who think global temperatures stopped rising in 1998.

merpnderp 11y ago
We have different experiences. I usually see the skeptic crowd talking about the science and the believer crowd talking about how fanatical the skeptics are. But you seem a reasonable person. Maybe you could help me understand the last 20 years of the UAH 6.0 data and the RSS data which matches it within +-.2C?
- mikeash 11y ago
  I'm not terribly familiar with these things, but they look like fairly straightforward temperature data. What is there to understand?
  - merpnderp 11y ago
    Between the two of them, they are the entirety of the satellite global atmospheric temperature data sets. If you run a linear regression on the TLT (total lower tropospheric) data from 1997 to current, you'll get a zero trend. If you allow for their level of confidence, you get a zero trend from 1994. These are two separate organizations, who's data (with UAH's 6.0 update) is within .2C of each other. UAH is University of Alabama in Huntsville in partnership with NASA. RSS is a private atmospheric research company. Both their data sets start in 1979. Without discounting their data, what theory of anthropogenic global warming accounts for this length of no warming during the period where 1/3rd of all man made CO2 was released into the atmosphere? I'm extremely curious and have had no luck getting an answer anywhere. The data is easy to find, but I can link it if you want to run it yourself. The UAH 6.0 data is still in Beta, but NASA started accounting for loss of orbit and are working on an updated record.