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>The data should speak for itself Are you serious ? Not only is there multiple way to interpret same data (after all there are so many competing models to expl

>The data should speak for itself Are you serious ? Not only is there multiple way to interpret same data (after all there are so many competing models to explain it) and at best you can debate confidence intervals and models - it's far beyond non-experts expecting them to review the data directly is ridiculous - the only way they can work with experts is based on trust and credibility.

acqq 11y ago
Wrong. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to repeat most of the basic calculations which give similar results.
- moonchrome 11y ago
  Who cares if I can run a formula/program that tells me Y from X if I can't understand/trust the program/formula ? If you think that stuff like economics/climatology/etc. has the same level of rigor and validation applied to it as established and verified theories from hard science then boy do I have some bad news for you (struggling for SD 2 as ideal vs SD 5 for eg.).
  - acqq 11y ago
    I see you don't want to trust even yourself in actually learning the formulas and the basic principles of physics behind them, but that's how it is. Physics works. Humans produce immense amounts of CO2, CO2 in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the planet. It's as simple as that. Reading other people's mails won't refute the physics. And no, other factors aren't the answer: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/ http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wor...
    - moonchrome 11y ago
      >Humans produce immense amounts of CO2, CO2 in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the planet. It's as simple as that. CO2 is a green house gas - good job mr. high-school physicist - now show me the temperature projections along with human CO2 production graphs and estimated impacts and error margins and past model prediction performances vs measured data. You know the actual things that matter for policy implications. See that's where things go beyond high school.
      - acqq 11y ago
        There they are, they are agreed by the scientists of the whole world, so again no need to worry about the e-mails of one country's organization: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/index.shtml http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/index.shtml There are other countries among those who took part in making the reports who would be more than eager to point on anything that's wrong there. And nobody did find anything significant against.
        moonchrome 11y ago
        >There are other countries among those who took part in making the reports who would be more than eager to point on anything that's wrong there. And nobody did find anything significant against. Wait - but you didn't verify it your self ? After all : >You don't have to be a rocket scientist to repeat most of the basic calculations which give similar results. Or does it all boil down to trust and your original argument is nonsense.
        acqq 11y ago
        Why does it matter what I have personally done or not done? Science works. E-mails are irrelevant. That's what we're discussing. If you claim that science doesn't work, you can prove that, but you have to know the science, or nobody will believe your claim. The major problem you'd have in order to prove that the current findings are wrong is that even the simplest formulas are against you. So you'd have to accept 99% of the existing results at the end and then to discover something completely new that amazingly nobody discovered up to now but that makes bigger influence on the results than everything known up to now. Good luck with that, as the data already add up now, as you can see in these graphs on the Bloomberg.
    - thaumasiotes 11y ago
      Physics works, but that's because physicists don't even try to address large-scale phenomena like weather. Sufficient application of physics will let you know who's going to win the Super Bowl. And yet, nobody can do that.
      - acqq 11y ago
        But we don't ask who's going to win the Super Bowl. It's that we know that if we let 100 people in one isolated room to watch Super Bowl the room will be always warmer as long as people actually live in it and are allowed to eat (life also involves more heat from the food, assume we add them food all the time). The doubters claim that it doesn't have to happen. It does. We can calculate how much warmer approximately even if we can't be 100% sure for every minute, on the average the curve will match. It's the same with the Earth. It's as isolated as the isolated room would be -- we know exactly how much heat can dissipate and how much must contribute to the increase of the temperature for the room, and we have quite good estimates for Earth too (less heat dissipates to the space when CO2 increases, and the Sun shines the heat nevertheless - we can nicely calculate even the contributions of the changes in orbit and some clever scientist did that even before the computers were available, it took years of calculations by hand then but it was done). We can be wrong for some particular year, but the direction and the average increase match. The room is of course simpler than the Earth. Imagine having some water pumps, some fans and some chunks of ice in the room. You know the formulas for the water and ice but you have more to calculate for short term effects. But you still know there will be less ice as the time goes by and more water. And still always a bit warmer.
fineman 11y ago
"Work with experts" the way you already work with accountants, lawyers, etc. Hire two and have one check the other. And no, it's not unreasonable to expect a non-technical person to review the data or the methods either. Many people don't want to put the time in to try but it's well within the reach of any high-school grad.
- moonchrome 11y ago
  >Hire two and have one check the other. Not if you don't trust the field. It's like saying if you don't like your numerology readings hire a different numerologist and compare the results. Not saying I agree with the view but science is a lot less convincing when when you can't setup repeatable experiments. >And no, it's not unreasonable to expect a non-technical person to review the data or the methods either. You're going to review PHD level work that ran weather simulations on supercomputers and compiled various data sources with highschool level knowledge in your spare time ? Perhaps you could do a security audit of OpenSSL if you have some free time on your hands - I'm sure people will even pay you if you manage to find security issues and you' be doing the community a big favor. Maybe we should hire some highschool grads to do it - start a kickstarter campaign and I'll pitch in.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    > It's like saying if you don't like your numerology readings hire a different numerologist and compare the results. To be fair, this is excellent advice, much better than "your numerologist knows what he's talking about, and you'd better follow his recommendations". No real reason to compare the results afterwards, though.
  - fineman 11y ago
    Fwiw, not trusting climate science is like not trusting geological sciences. But sure, if you don't trust someone from the 'warming' camp, get a 'status-quo' camp person to check their work. And as for numerologists - try looking for another person skilled in your actual problem, relationships, work, etc... When a mathematician checks their work they do so by a different method, not just repeating the same steps to reach the same potentially flawed answer.

acqq 11y ago

Wrong. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to repeat most of the basic calculations which give similar results.

moonchrome 11y ago
Who cares if I can run a formula/program that tells me Y from X if I can't understand/trust the program/formula ? If you think that stuff like economics/climatology/etc. has the same level of rigor and validation applied to it as established and verified theories from hard science then boy do I have some bad news for you (struggling for SD 2 as ideal vs SD 5 for eg.).
- acqq 11y ago
  I see you don't want to trust even yourself in actually learning the formulas and the basic principles of physics behind them, but that's how it is. Physics works. Humans produce immense amounts of CO2, CO2 in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the planet. It's as simple as that. Reading other people's mails won't refute the physics. And no, other factors aren't the answer: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/ http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wor...
  - moonchrome 11y ago
    >Humans produce immense amounts of CO2, CO2 in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the planet. It's as simple as that. CO2 is a green house gas - good job mr. high-school physicist - now show me the temperature projections along with human CO2 production graphs and estimated impacts and error margins and past model prediction performances vs measured data. You know the actual things that matter for policy implications. See that's where things go beyond high school.
    - acqq 11y ago
      There they are, they are agreed by the scientists of the whole world, so again no need to worry about the e-mails of one country's organization: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/index.shtml http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/index.shtml There are other countries among those who took part in making the reports who would be more than eager to point on anything that's wrong there. And nobody did find anything significant against.
      - moonchrome 11y ago
        >There are other countries among those who took part in making the reports who would be more than eager to point on anything that's wrong there. And nobody did find anything significant against. Wait - but you didn't verify it your self ? After all : >You don't have to be a rocket scientist to repeat most of the basic calculations which give similar results. Or does it all boil down to trust and your original argument is nonsense.
        acqq 11y ago
        Why does it matter what I have personally done or not done? Science works. E-mails are irrelevant. That's what we're discussing. If you claim that science doesn't work, you can prove that, but you have to know the science, or nobody will believe your claim. The major problem you'd have in order to prove that the current findings are wrong is that even the simplest formulas are against you. So you'd have to accept 99% of the existing results at the end and then to discover something completely new that amazingly nobody discovered up to now but that makes bigger influence on the results than everything known up to now. Good luck with that, as the data already add up now, as you can see in these graphs on the Bloomberg.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    Physics works, but that's because physicists don't even try to address large-scale phenomena like weather. Sufficient application of physics will let you know who's going to win the Super Bowl. And yet, nobody can do that.
    - acqq 11y ago
      But we don't ask who's going to win the Super Bowl. It's that we know that if we let 100 people in one isolated room to watch Super Bowl the room will be always warmer as long as people actually live in it and are allowed to eat (life also involves more heat from the food, assume we add them food all the time). The doubters claim that it doesn't have to happen. It does. We can calculate how much warmer approximately even if we can't be 100% sure for every minute, on the average the curve will match. It's the same with the Earth. It's as isolated as the isolated room would be -- we know exactly how much heat can dissipate and how much must contribute to the increase of the temperature for the room, and we have quite good estimates for Earth too (less heat dissipates to the space when CO2 increases, and the Sun shines the heat nevertheless - we can nicely calculate even the contributions of the changes in orbit and some clever scientist did that even before the computers were available, it took years of calculations by hand then but it was done). We can be wrong for some particular year, but the direction and the average increase match. The room is of course simpler than the Earth. Imagine having some water pumps, some fans and some chunks of ice in the room. You know the formulas for the water and ice but you have more to calculate for short term effects. But you still know there will be less ice as the time goes by and more water. And still always a bit warmer.

fineman 11y ago

"Work with experts" the way you already work with accountants, lawyers, etc. Hire two and have one check the other. And no, it's not unreasonable to expect a non-technical person to review the data or the methods either. Many people don't want to put the time in to try but it's well within the reach of any high-school grad.

moonchrome 11y ago
>Hire two and have one check the other. Not if you don't trust the field. It's like saying if you don't like your numerology readings hire a different numerologist and compare the results. Not saying I agree with the view but science is a lot less convincing when when you can't setup repeatable experiments. >And no, it's not unreasonable to expect a non-technical person to review the data or the methods either. You're going to review PHD level work that ran weather simulations on supercomputers and compiled various data sources with highschool level knowledge in your spare time ? Perhaps you could do a security audit of OpenSSL if you have some free time on your hands - I'm sure people will even pay you if you manage to find security issues and you' be doing the community a big favor. Maybe we should hire some highschool grads to do it - start a kickstarter campaign and I'll pitch in.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > It's like saying if you don't like your numerology readings hire a different numerologist and compare the results. To be fair, this is excellent advice, much better than "your numerologist knows what he's talking about, and you'd better follow his recommendations". No real reason to compare the results afterwards, though.
- fineman 11y ago
  Fwiw, not trusting climate science is like not trusting geological sciences. But sure, if you don't trust someone from the 'warming' camp, get a 'status-quo' camp person to check their work. And as for numerologists - try looking for another person skilled in your actual problem, relationships, work, etc... When a mathematician checks their work they do so by a different method, not just repeating the same steps to reach the same potentially flawed answer.