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Your labeling everyone as denialist certainly does you disservice, if what you after is real and substantive debate. I submitted this study http://news.ycombin

by yannis 17y ago

Your labeling everyone as denialist certainly does you disservice, if what you after is real and substantive debate. I submitted this study http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1124236 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1124236 yesterday and which did not attract much attention, being a weekend. The Study by Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts provides 111 pages of counter arguments to the Climate Change hypothesis. I got interested in the Climate debate because as a Mechanical Engineer with a PhD, having specialized in Thermodynamics and Fluid Mechanics found it extremely difficult to accept that one could model the Atmosphere's heat balance to the point of accuracy required for such a debate. Consider a column of air in the atmosphere, the bottom end is at say a temperature of 14 deg C and the top end probably at -60 deg C, add different gases, plus water vapor - which in itself is a greenhouse gas, introduce more CO2 and other pollutants, account for the variability of the Sun's output and try and predict the surface temperature (a vaguely defined term in itself) and you will become skeptical. Even simpler thermal analyses for example that of a building's internal temperature cannot be performed to the required accuracy. I am also skeptical of the way the Carbon trade is being developed, but that is another story. I can be a skeptic on the Climate debate and an environmentalist on many other issues. These are issues that touch all of us and do belong to HN.

nfnaaron 17y ago
I did see that post, started to skim it, but was uncomfortable with their tone. Page 4 Item 11: "systematic hyping." I realize you can't lay out your entire case by page 4, but I would have felt more comfortable with an indication of the basis for this term and that it will be proven to be systematic hyping. Page 5: "Recent revelations from the Climategate emails, originating from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed how all the data centers, most notably NOAA and NASA, conspired in the manipulation of global temperature records to suggest that temperatures in the 20th century rose faster than, in reality, they actually did." "Conspired" is possibly accurate, but a little jarring, especially when applied to "my" NASA; they gave us Tang, after all. A more specific reference or reminder, rather than a footnote to an entire report, would have been good here to soften the blow to someone who watched the Apollo 11 landing in my pajamas on my knees 18 inches from the TV. Page 5: "Around 1990, NOAA began weeding out more than three-quarters of the climate measuring stations around the world. They may have been working under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It can be shown that they systematically and purposefully, country by country, removed higher-latitude, higher-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler." "They may have been working under the auspices ..." Were they? Weren't they? Some indication of why, beyond assumption, the authors think so would have been good, or a statement that this will be revealed later in the document. "It can be shown that they systematically and purposefully ..." Then show it, or refer me to later in the document where you fulfill the promise that "it can be shown." "Purposefully" is also something that I need to have either proven, or a reference to where you're going to prove it or have seen it proved. I only intended to skim the document, but by the time I got here I felt a little uncomfortable at what I perceived as wild-eyedness. Everything I object to here may well be true, and may be proved later in the document, but without any indication that proof would be forthcoming it started to sound like so much hand waving. Speaking as a robust skeptic.

by yannis 17y ago

nfnaaron 17y ago

I did see that post, started to skim it, but was uncomfortable with their tone. Page 4 Item 11: "systematic hyping." I realize you can't lay out your entire case by page 4, but I would have felt more comfortable with an indication of the basis for this term and that it will be proven to be systematic hyping. Page 5: "Recent revelations from the Climategate emails, originating from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed how all the data centers, most notably NOAA and NASA, conspired in the manipulation of global temperature records to suggest that temperatures in the 20th century rose faster than, in reality, they actually did." "Conspired" is possibly accurate, but a little jarring, especially when applied to "my" NASA; they gave us Tang, after all. A more specific reference or reminder, rather than a footnote to an entire report, would have been good here to soften the blow to someone who watched the Apollo 11 landing in my pajamas on my knees 18 inches from the TV. Page 5: "Around 1990, NOAA began weeding out more than three-quarters of the climate measuring stations around the world. They may have been working under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It can be shown that they systematically and purposefully, country by country, removed higher-latitude, higher-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler." "They may have been working under the auspices ..." Were they? Weren't they? Some indication of why, beyond assumption, the authors think so would have been good, or a statement that this will be revealed later in the document. "It can be shown that they systematically and purposefully ..." Then show it, or refer me to later in the document where you fulfill the promise that "it can be shown." "Purposefully" is also something that I need to have either proven, or a reference to where you're going to prove it or have seen it proved. I only intended to skim the document, but by the time I got here I felt a little uncomfortable at what I perceived as wild-eyedness. Everything I object to here may well be true, and may be proved later in the document, but without any indication that proof would be forthcoming it started to sound like so much hand waving. Speaking as a robust skeptic.