8 ms·

This is actually an excellent illustration of how organizational incentives seep into data. Imagine you have a historical temperature series record. You have

by kapitza 10y ago

This is actually an excellent illustration of how organizational incentives seep into data. Imagine you have a historical temperature series record. You have an bureaucratic incentive to find and justify an argument as to why past temperatures should be adjusted downward, making the curve of global warming look steeper. You have no bureaucratic incentive to look for the opposite. The result is that, overall, modern corrections adjust past temperatures downward -- what we'd expect if these biases exist. But this doesn't mean any specific correction is based on "fabricated" research. It's probably perfectly valid. It's just that downward corrections are more attractive to research, because they produce research that has a social impact that the field finds desirable. (Edit: here's a picture of the net adjustments: https://judithcurry.com/2014/07/07/understanding-adjustments-to-temperature-data/ https://judithcurry.com/2014/07/07/understanding-adjustments...)

cpncrunch 10y ago
A lot of it depends on the integrity of the researchers, and I would suspect NOAA scientists have more integrity than the average "bureaucrat".
- djsumdog 10y ago
  You wouldn't expect regular human beings to be subject to confirmation bias? Scientist are people and have opinions. No matter how logical we think we are, all of us have bias. In fact a good scientists is always willing to doubt his or her axioms. Doubt is the pillar of new discoveries and innovation: http://khanism.org/science/doubt/ http://khanism.org/science/doubt/
  - jackmott 10y ago
    The researchers picked by the Koch brothers (Berkely Earth Science) get the same results for temperature reconstructions guys. This stuff is real. You don't even have to do adjustments to get essentially the same trend, you can verify this with excel, all by yourself.
  - cpncrunch 10y ago
    >You wouldn't expect regular human beings to be subject to confirmation bias? Strawman. Nobody mentioned confirmation bias. We are talking about "bureaucratic incentive", i.e. fudging results to please your boss.
- kapitza 10y ago
  You don't need dishonest researchers to see this effect. You just need researchers who care, personally and/or professionally, about the impact of their work. I'm sure Mr. Spock is a professor somewhere. If you talk to real working scientists, you'll find very few Spocks. Also, there are not a lot of Victorian gentleman-scientists; they all need to be funded...
  - cpncrunch 10y ago
    Sure, but my point is that some scientists are more trustworthy than others, just like some newspapers are more trustworthy.
    - monkmartinez 10y ago
      Eh, the idea of "trust" gets into non-quantifiable territory very quickly. Further, your analogy with newspapers is, quite frankly, not good. I would say that generally speaking, if a newspaper consistently confirms one's biases it is more likely to be deemed "trustworthy" and vice-versa with "non-trustworthy" newspapers.
      - cpncrunch 10y ago
        No thats simply not true. Is a random personal blog as trustworthy as the globe and mail?
- monkmartinez 10y ago
  Why? Just a feeling? Like most things the truth probably lies somewhere in the "middle."
  - cpncrunch 10y ago
    The same reason I think that the Globe and Mail or CTV is more reliable than some random ranting blog site.
  - woodchuck64 10y ago
    In very few things the truth lies somewhere in the "middle". You either have rigorous treatment of evidence combined with methodological design to reduce or eliminate human bias, i.e. sciences, or you have what someone believes based on uncontrolled emotional bias.
    - monkmartinez 10y ago
      Ok... according to woodchuck64, We live in the land of PURE unbiased science! There are ZERO reasons to lean on or massage data one way or another. Funding just comes in, no matter the conclusions.
      - woodchuck64 10y ago
        > Ok... according to woodchuck64, We live in the land of PURE unbiased science! There are ZERO reasons to lean on or massage data one way or another. Funding just comes in, no matter the conclusions. I didn't say we live in a land of pure unbiased science. However, you can be certain that those insisting that science is biased are basing their conclusions on vastly more biased sources of information than science itself. In one thread, we have a climate science denier who obviously gets moral and emotional comfort from a right-wing political point of view; in another, a creationist who gets moral and emotional comfort from Conservative Christianity. They don't seem to realize that to criticize science effectively, you can only approach from a position with less human bias than practiced science, not more.
cfmcdonald 10y ago
This graph shows the opposite of what you claim, NOAA adjusted temperatures are higher than the raw data for 1880-1940: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/feb/08/no-climate-conspiracy-noaa-temperature-adjustments-bring-data-closer-to-pristine https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...
- arctictern 10y ago
  Um, even if you subscribe to agw, shouldn't we be at least a little bit skeptical of estimates of ocean temperature before WWII? I mean that article has a chart of global temperatures going back to 1850. How the frog do they know what global average ocean temperatures were 35 years before the automobile was invented? So I think that the guy mentioned in the article, Peter Thorne, is the main person responsible for assertions about ocean surface temperatures pre-WWII. I read one of his older papers (I'm having trouble finding it right now), where he describes how he estimates the ocean surface temperatures from way back then. You have to admire his confidence/optimism in making those estimates, but to me the paper was not completely distinguishable from an Onion[1] article. Apparently back then seafaring ships used to measure ocean temperature[2] by lowering a bucket tied to a rope over the side, pulling it back up and then sticking a thermometer in the bucket (full of ocean water). Iirc, the water in the bucket could have cooled or heated by up to something like 5 degrees by the time a temperature reading was taken. He then proceeds to estimate(/guess) the amount of cooling/heating by factoring in the average elevation of a ship's deck (as a function of date) and how long it would take an average person to pull the bucket back onto the deck. He also factors in things like the typical material a bucket would be made of (also as a function of date). To me, he seems to give off a vibe of being really proud of his "rube-goldbergian" estimates, but personally, I'm not as confident as he (and apparently everybody else) is in those estimates. And since ships only traversed a small portion of the oceans in those days (the trade routes, generally), there is a lot of extrapolation involved. And assumptions about the correspondence of ocean temperatures and nearby land temperature readings. Imo, the accuracy, or lack thereof, of pre-WWII ocean surface temperature estimates is not super relevant to the task of constructing predictive climate models. But it does seem to me to be perhaps an indication of an insufficiency of healthy self-skepticism in the climate science community. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion [2] This is actually because Benjamin Franklin did it and discovered the Gulf Stream, which is pretty cool.
conistonwater 10y ago
This is a pretty weak argument, because (a) arguments from scientific validity always trump arguments from incentives, (b) you seem to assume that the incentives you list are all the incentives there are. Do note, for example, that scientists also face the incentive to do good science that can stand up to the scrutiny of their peers. It's not enough to point out that the science has some impact and call it a day (after all, almost all good science has impact). For this to be an "illustration", as you put it, you'd have to first demonstrate that what they did was scientifically dubious, then conclude that they must have done the dubious thing because of incentives. You can't just point at the sign of the adjustment and invoke incentives. I'd say you'd be much more convincing if you raised actual scientific issues, instead of making vague assertions about their incentives.
- kapitza 10y ago
  I think you're missing the point. The negative adjustments of past temperatures are neither the work of one scientist, nor even one scientific organization. Let's say for simplicity that they're the result of ten entirely separate confirmed hypotheses about systematic errors in old data. Each of these was produced by an honest researcher who followed the scientific method: formulate a hypothesis, test it, etc. Let's say their technical work is perfect. All the hypotheses are correct. But all ten researchers, faced with the choice of what hypothesis to formulate and/or investigate, naturally chose high-impact hypotheses -- ones that, if confirmed, adjust past temperatures downward. We would naturally expect historical errors in temperature measurements to be evenly distributed. Like errors in cheap thermometers. If they are evenly distributed, we would expect there to be ten other such hypotheses, involving upward corrections in past measurements, which were not studied because of their low impact if confirmed. This hypothesis explains the data that we ourselves see: that past temperatures are continuously being lowered as the data evolves. And it requires no one to be a bad, incompetent, or dishonest researcher.
  - cfmcdonald 10y ago
    But your whole premise is false. From the OP: "And to upend the inevitable backlash that news will receive (spoiler alert), using all the raw data without performing any analysis would actually produce the appearance of more warming since the start of records in the late 1800s."
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
rconti 10y ago
The article said all of the adjustments to historical data adjusted those temperatures UP, which is the exact opposite of what you're claiming is incentivized.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  The poster is hoping to AstroTurf the discussion preemptively, it seems.
adamsea 10y ago
Your words sound rational on paper, kind of like a person who looks attractive in low light ...
pavlov 10y ago
Why assume that climate scientists find global warming desirable? Most scientists don't wish to see their unique research subject destroyed. It's like claiming that mass extinctions of species are probably not happening, biologists are just biased and want to make their field look more important... The argument is absurd when applied to biology, but somehow climate science is considered "crooked" it seems.
mannykannot 10y ago
> This is actually an excellent illustration of how organizational incentives seep into data. Where is the supporting evidence of organizational incentives actually seeping into the data, as opposed to a meaningless correlation? Without such evidence, you don't have an illustration of it, you have just another conspiracy theory.
magicalist 10y ago
What a terrible top comment. Classic middle brow dismissal, no reading the article or responding to any substantive point required. > The result is that, overall, modern corrections adjust past temperatures downward -- what we'd expect if these biases exist. Yes, yes, just like "I didn't kill that person" is exactly what we'd expect a murderer to say. Also all the non-murderers, sure, but we're looking for a murderer and here's this person saying just what they'd say! You've prevented zero evidence. Your argument is entirely postulation. We're in FSM/Russell's teapot territory here; with no evidence your made-up theory is as likely as any other postulate. Maybe it was twice as cold but researchers have rounded up as the numbers seemed too preposterous! Maybe the numbers went complex in the 1800s but none of our proxies are set up to measure imaginary temperatures!
- mturmon 10y ago
  Thanks for this. I've grown tired of discussions with these HN armchair skeptics, who typically have no publications in the area and a shallow science background relative to the complexity of the issues they raise. As you say, there is no way to refute the claims advanced by the comment. It's just an abstract argument about forces and tendencies. The scientific motivations leading to this calibration to eliminate systematic effects have a lot more internal checks than the comment acknowledges.
  - madaxe_again 10y ago
    This is sadly the general vein of HN, and of all online communities - no matter what you try, September comes. I used to come to HN to learn things. Now I come here to try to defend any worldview other than "TV said so". The only thing I'm really learning is that the technocratic class cannot be trusted with questions of nuance, politics, or morality. There's an example from history in the early Soviet Union, and the effects of technocratic management on their economy - and in a later regime I won't name how my great uncle found himself shipped to Stalingrad. "Siegfried, we are not here to discuss whether we should be using forced labour, we are here to discuss how to use it." He was a hydrological engineer, they had him designing power plants that could be installed by unskilled forced labour. He objected, got sent to Stalingrad, and escaped with his life because he got hepatitis and was airlifted out under a dead man's name. The vast majority just complied because it was an interesting problem and "not their place" to pass judgment, or think. I digress, but I do worry about where this "discourse" is headed, and i had honestly deluded myself into thinking we could be better.
bsder 10y ago
> You have no bureaucratic incentive to look for the opposite. Totally false. Data which proves the opposite of the general consensus and is scientifically defensible would be of massive impact. Your name would be everywhere AND every climate change denier would be trumpeting your results. You would be famous AND well-funded for life. The problem is that you WILL come under heavy scrutiny, so your data, methods, and conclusions better be beyond reproach. Everyone who has attempted to defend the opposite of the consensus, so far, has collapsed when challenged.
- adrr 10y ago
  You don't work for NOAA as a scientist to become famous and rich. These are passion jobs. You get it from both sides. Publish something conservatives don't like, get hauled in front of congress to testify. Publish something environmentalist don't like get called a shill for the oil industry. Every side will twists your words and take statements out of context. Its pretty shitty how we treat our scientists.
  - vixen99 10y ago
    Rotten! And sometimes your 'good news' won't even make it to the headlines in certain publications as in the following. "NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center indicate that as of today, the total count for 2016 of US tornadoes are fewest in a calendar year since record-keeping began in 1954."
- arctictern 10y ago
  If only that were true. If you remember a few years ago, an experiment seemed to (incidentally) show particles travelling faster than the speed of light [1], which would have been an exception to Einstein's well established theory. The researchers, did not assert that their observation was valid, but instead were asking the wider community to help them find the flaw in their experiment. But just the remote possibility that there might be the obscurest of exceptions to the theory set the physics world abuzz. Had the observation been confirmed, the researchers would indeed be famous. But in contrast, for example, studies have now effectively discredited the widespread and long-standing belief in the effectiveness of mammograms [2]. Are the authors of those studies rich and/or famous? Have we as a society redirected resources from executing and encouraging mammograms to potentially more effective solutions? Not really, I would say. So why the discrepancy? A number of reasons I'm sure, but imo the biggest factor is probably RTP (repeatably testable predictions). Fields of science where it's easy to make and test predictions tend to be very different (in quality) from fields where it is difficult/expensive/impossible to test predictions. Guess which category climate science falls into? The (not-yet-testable) long term predictions of the climate scientists may turn out to be right, but the shorter term testable ones have an unimpressive track record [3]. Genuine question: Does anyone here have confidence in the common agw claims based on their direct analysis of the data/science (rather than their analysis of the credibility of the parties)? If so, could you give a brief explanation? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_ano... [2] http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g366 http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g366 [3] http://www.stat.washington.edu/peter/statclim/fyfeetal.pdf http://www.stat.washington.edu/peter/statclim/fyfeetal.pdf
snowwrestler 10y ago
There is no actual substance to this argument. It's just taking a couple simple facts and applying some logic and imagination. Anyone can do it--no subject matter expertise required. Which probably explains why this sort of argument is popular in HN and other online forums. It's fun to think about, but not very informing or insightful.
nitwit005 10y ago
If we exclude the criticism of your peers who will likely question your conclusions, it's probably better to be a climate change denier. A subgroup of people will hail you as a hero, it seems to dramatically increase your odds of being invited to speak in congress, and your budget is less likely to vanish under a conservative government.
nl 10y ago
I'm going to reply to the top comment here, rather than everywhere else in this thread. This comment is complete nonsense. Or rather, it is the perfect example of the type of comment that is impossible to argue against because it is specifically designed to be never wrong. Instead of trying to argue (for example) that one shouldn't adjust for things like changing the time temperature is measured from the morning to the afternoon, the argument is that "there is an incentive". It's clearly useless to argue against this. One could make the point that there is always large amounts of funding available for anyone to go against the climate change consensus, but then we'd end up arguing details of funding models etc which would (in the main) be completely ignored. You'll note that there is the concession But this doesn't mean any specific correction is based on "fabricated" research. It's probably perfectly valid. - but you'll also note that the author goes on arguing motivation points, and saying things like "it requires statistical wizardry" and questioning ice core data etc. This is such an attractive technique for arguing on forums. It's just about impossible to stop, and much more damaging than "fake news" IMHO.
- mannykannot 10y ago
  This is an excellent analysis of a bogus argument, and demonstrates the proper way to deal with its ilk. When an 'argument' is constructed from innuendo, when it nominally concedes its failings where they butt against inconvenient truths, but then continues as if it had not, then there is little point in arguing against it with the facts - that is how you conduct a dialog with people who are honest in their opinions. Instead, the best response to this sort of thing is to expose the inconsistent, fallacious and possibly deceitful form of the argument itself.
inimino 10y ago
I read your comment both and after reading the article. Before, it seemed like a reasonable issue to raise. After, it seems like you either didn't read the article or just responded to a completely unrelated fantasy of your own making. > This is actually an excellent illustration of how organizational incentives seep into data. For that claim to be anything other than bullshit, you would need to show that they actually have seeped in. Instead, what you showed is a creative hypothesis about how that might happen, supported by no evidence, and with a glaring hole. The glaring hole in your hypothesis is that there is intense skepticism of climate change and the incentive structure you imagine simply doesn't exist. What you've written is a nice way to cast doubt on the data, which is a bit unfortunate given where the science and the politics actually stand.

by kapitza 10y ago

cpncrunch 10y ago

A lot of it depends on the integrity of the researchers, and I would suspect NOAA scientists have more integrity than the average "bureaucrat".

djsumdog 10y ago
You wouldn't expect regular human beings to be subject to confirmation bias? Scientist are people and have opinions. No matter how logical we think we are, all of us have bias. In fact a good scientists is always willing to doubt his or her axioms. Doubt is the pillar of new discoveries and innovation: http://khanism.org/science/doubt/ http://khanism.org/science/doubt/
- jackmott 10y ago
  The researchers picked by the Koch brothers (Berkely Earth Science) get the same results for temperature reconstructions guys. This stuff is real. You don't even have to do adjustments to get essentially the same trend, you can verify this with excel, all by yourself.
- cpncrunch 10y ago
  >You wouldn't expect regular human beings to be subject to confirmation bias? Strawman. Nobody mentioned confirmation bias. We are talking about "bureaucratic incentive", i.e. fudging results to please your boss.
kapitza 10y ago
You don't need dishonest researchers to see this effect. You just need researchers who care, personally and/or professionally, about the impact of their work. I'm sure Mr. Spock is a professor somewhere. If you talk to real working scientists, you'll find very few Spocks. Also, there are not a lot of Victorian gentleman-scientists; they all need to be funded...
- cpncrunch 10y ago
  Sure, but my point is that some scientists are more trustworthy than others, just like some newspapers are more trustworthy.
  - monkmartinez 10y ago
    Eh, the idea of "trust" gets into non-quantifiable territory very quickly. Further, your analogy with newspapers is, quite frankly, not good. I would say that generally speaking, if a newspaper consistently confirms one's biases it is more likely to be deemed "trustworthy" and vice-versa with "non-trustworthy" newspapers.
    - cpncrunch 10y ago
      No thats simply not true. Is a random personal blog as trustworthy as the globe and mail?
monkmartinez 10y ago
Why? Just a feeling? Like most things the truth probably lies somewhere in the "middle."
- cpncrunch 10y ago
  The same reason I think that the Globe and Mail or CTV is more reliable than some random ranting blog site.
- woodchuck64 10y ago
  In very few things the truth lies somewhere in the "middle". You either have rigorous treatment of evidence combined with methodological design to reduce or eliminate human bias, i.e. sciences, or you have what someone believes based on uncontrolled emotional bias.
  - monkmartinez 10y ago
    Ok... according to woodchuck64, We live in the land of PURE unbiased science! There are ZERO reasons to lean on or massage data one way or another. Funding just comes in, no matter the conclusions.
    - woodchuck64 10y ago
      > Ok... according to woodchuck64, We live in the land of PURE unbiased science! There are ZERO reasons to lean on or massage data one way or another. Funding just comes in, no matter the conclusions. I didn't say we live in a land of pure unbiased science. However, you can be certain that those insisting that science is biased are basing their conclusions on vastly more biased sources of information than science itself. In one thread, we have a climate science denier who obviously gets moral and emotional comfort from a right-wing political point of view; in another, a creationist who gets moral and emotional comfort from Conservative Christianity. They don't seem to realize that to criticize science effectively, you can only approach from a position with less human bias than practiced science, not more.

cfmcdonald 10y ago

This graph shows the opposite of what you claim, NOAA adjusted temperatures are higher than the raw data for 1880-1940: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/feb/08/no-climate-conspiracy-noaa-temperature-adjustments-bring-data-closer-to-pristine https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...

arctictern 10y ago
Um, even if you subscribe to agw, shouldn't we be at least a little bit skeptical of estimates of ocean temperature before WWII? I mean that article has a chart of global temperatures going back to 1850. How the frog do they know what global average ocean temperatures were 35 years before the automobile was invented? So I think that the guy mentioned in the article, Peter Thorne, is the main person responsible for assertions about ocean surface temperatures pre-WWII. I read one of his older papers (I'm having trouble finding it right now), where he describes how he estimates the ocean surface temperatures from way back then. You have to admire his confidence/optimism in making those estimates, but to me the paper was not completely distinguishable from an Onion[1] article. Apparently back then seafaring ships used to measure ocean temperature[2] by lowering a bucket tied to a rope over the side, pulling it back up and then sticking a thermometer in the bucket (full of ocean water). Iirc, the water in the bucket could have cooled or heated by up to something like 5 degrees by the time a temperature reading was taken. He then proceeds to estimate(/guess) the amount of cooling/heating by factoring in the average elevation of a ship's deck (as a function of date) and how long it would take an average person to pull the bucket back onto the deck. He also factors in things like the typical material a bucket would be made of (also as a function of date). To me, he seems to give off a vibe of being really proud of his "rube-goldbergian" estimates, but personally, I'm not as confident as he (and apparently everybody else) is in those estimates. And since ships only traversed a small portion of the oceans in those days (the trade routes, generally), there is a lot of extrapolation involved. And assumptions about the correspondence of ocean temperatures and nearby land temperature readings. Imo, the accuracy, or lack thereof, of pre-WWII ocean surface temperature estimates is not super relevant to the task of constructing predictive climate models. But it does seem to me to be perhaps an indication of an insufficiency of healthy self-skepticism in the climate science community. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion [2] This is actually because Benjamin Franklin did it and discovered the Gulf Stream, which is pretty cool.

conistonwater 10y ago

This is a pretty weak argument, because (a) arguments from scientific validity always trump arguments from incentives, (b) you seem to assume that the incentives you list are all the incentives there are. Do note, for example, that scientists also face the incentive to do good science that can stand up to the scrutiny of their peers. It's not enough to point out that the science has some impact and call it a day (after all, almost all good science has impact). For this to be an "illustration", as you put it, you'd have to first demonstrate that what they did was scientifically dubious, then conclude that they must have done the dubious thing because of incentives. You can't just point at the sign of the adjustment and invoke incentives. I'd say you'd be much more convincing if you raised actual scientific issues, instead of making vague assertions about their incentives.

kapitza 10y ago
I think you're missing the point. The negative adjustments of past temperatures are neither the work of one scientist, nor even one scientific organization. Let's say for simplicity that they're the result of ten entirely separate confirmed hypotheses about systematic errors in old data. Each of these was produced by an honest researcher who followed the scientific method: formulate a hypothesis, test it, etc. Let's say their technical work is perfect. All the hypotheses are correct. But all ten researchers, faced with the choice of what hypothesis to formulate and/or investigate, naturally chose high-impact hypotheses -- ones that, if confirmed, adjust past temperatures downward. We would naturally expect historical errors in temperature measurements to be evenly distributed. Like errors in cheap thermometers. If they are evenly distributed, we would expect there to be ten other such hypotheses, involving upward corrections in past measurements, which were not studied because of their low impact if confirmed. This hypothesis explains the data that we ourselves see: that past temperatures are continuously being lowered as the data evolves. And it requires no one to be a bad, incompetent, or dishonest researcher.
- cfmcdonald 10y ago
  But your whole premise is false. From the OP: "And to upend the inevitable backlash that news will receive (spoiler alert), using all the raw data without performing any analysis would actually produce the appearance of more warming since the start of records in the late 1800s."

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

rconti 10y ago

The article said all of the adjustments to historical data adjusted those temperatures UP, which is the exact opposite of what you're claiming is incentivized.

KirinDave 10y ago
The poster is hoping to AstroTurf the discussion preemptively, it seems.

adamsea 10y ago

Your words sound rational on paper, kind of like a person who looks attractive in low light ...

pavlov 10y ago

Why assume that climate scientists find global warming desirable? Most scientists don't wish to see their unique research subject destroyed. It's like claiming that mass extinctions of species are probably not happening, biologists are just biased and want to make their field look more important... The argument is absurd when applied to biology, but somehow climate science is considered "crooked" it seems.

mannykannot 10y ago

> This is actually an excellent illustration of how organizational incentives seep into data. Where is the supporting evidence of organizational incentives actually seeping into the data, as opposed to a meaningless correlation? Without such evidence, you don't have an illustration of it, you have just another conspiracy theory.

magicalist 10y ago

What a terrible top comment. Classic middle brow dismissal, no reading the article or responding to any substantive point required. > The result is that, overall, modern corrections adjust past temperatures downward -- what we'd expect if these biases exist. Yes, yes, just like "I didn't kill that person" is exactly what we'd expect a murderer to say. Also all the non-murderers, sure, but we're looking for a murderer and here's this person saying just what they'd say! You've prevented zero evidence. Your argument is entirely postulation. We're in FSM/Russell's teapot territory here; with no evidence your made-up theory is as likely as any other postulate. Maybe it was twice as cold but researchers have rounded up as the numbers seemed too preposterous! Maybe the numbers went complex in the 1800s but none of our proxies are set up to measure imaginary temperatures!

mturmon 10y ago
Thanks for this. I've grown tired of discussions with these HN armchair skeptics, who typically have no publications in the area and a shallow science background relative to the complexity of the issues they raise. As you say, there is no way to refute the claims advanced by the comment. It's just an abstract argument about forces and tendencies. The scientific motivations leading to this calibration to eliminate systematic effects have a lot more internal checks than the comment acknowledges.
- madaxe_again 10y ago
  This is sadly the general vein of HN, and of all online communities - no matter what you try, September comes. I used to come to HN to learn things. Now I come here to try to defend any worldview other than "TV said so". The only thing I'm really learning is that the technocratic class cannot be trusted with questions of nuance, politics, or morality. There's an example from history in the early Soviet Union, and the effects of technocratic management on their economy - and in a later regime I won't name how my great uncle found himself shipped to Stalingrad. "Siegfried, we are not here to discuss whether we should be using forced labour, we are here to discuss how to use it." He was a hydrological engineer, they had him designing power plants that could be installed by unskilled forced labour. He objected, got sent to Stalingrad, and escaped with his life because he got hepatitis and was airlifted out under a dead man's name. The vast majority just complied because it was an interesting problem and "not their place" to pass judgment, or think. I digress, but I do worry about where this "discourse" is headed, and i had honestly deluded myself into thinking we could be better.

bsder 10y ago

> You have no bureaucratic incentive to look for the opposite. Totally false. Data which proves the opposite of the general consensus and is scientifically defensible would be of massive impact. Your name would be everywhere AND every climate change denier would be trumpeting your results. You would be famous AND well-funded for life. The problem is that you WILL come under heavy scrutiny, so your data, methods, and conclusions better be beyond reproach. Everyone who has attempted to defend the opposite of the consensus, so far, has collapsed when challenged.

adrr 10y ago
You don't work for NOAA as a scientist to become famous and rich. These are passion jobs. You get it from both sides. Publish something conservatives don't like, get hauled in front of congress to testify. Publish something environmentalist don't like get called a shill for the oil industry. Every side will twists your words and take statements out of context. Its pretty shitty how we treat our scientists.
- vixen99 10y ago
  Rotten! And sometimes your 'good news' won't even make it to the headlines in certain publications as in the following. "NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center indicate that as of today, the total count for 2016 of US tornadoes are fewest in a calendar year since record-keeping began in 1954."
arctictern 10y ago
If only that were true. If you remember a few years ago, an experiment seemed to (incidentally) show particles travelling faster than the speed of light [1], which would have been an exception to Einstein's well established theory. The researchers, did not assert that their observation was valid, but instead were asking the wider community to help them find the flaw in their experiment. But just the remote possibility that there might be the obscurest of exceptions to the theory set the physics world abuzz. Had the observation been confirmed, the researchers would indeed be famous. But in contrast, for example, studies have now effectively discredited the widespread and long-standing belief in the effectiveness of mammograms [2]. Are the authors of those studies rich and/or famous? Have we as a society redirected resources from executing and encouraging mammograms to potentially more effective solutions? Not really, I would say. So why the discrepancy? A number of reasons I'm sure, but imo the biggest factor is probably RTP (repeatably testable predictions). Fields of science where it's easy to make and test predictions tend to be very different (in quality) from fields where it is difficult/expensive/impossible to test predictions. Guess which category climate science falls into? The (not-yet-testable) long term predictions of the climate scientists may turn out to be right, but the shorter term testable ones have an unimpressive track record [3]. Genuine question: Does anyone here have confidence in the common agw claims based on their direct analysis of the data/science (rather than their analysis of the credibility of the parties)? If so, could you give a brief explanation? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_ano... [2] http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g366 http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g366 [3] http://www.stat.washington.edu/peter/statclim/fyfeetal.pdf http://www.stat.washington.edu/peter/statclim/fyfeetal.pdf

snowwrestler 10y ago

There is no actual substance to this argument. It's just taking a couple simple facts and applying some logic and imagination. Anyone can do it--no subject matter expertise required. Which probably explains why this sort of argument is popular in HN and other online forums. It's fun to think about, but not very informing or insightful.

nitwit005 10y ago

If we exclude the criticism of your peers who will likely question your conclusions, it's probably better to be a climate change denier. A subgroup of people will hail you as a hero, it seems to dramatically increase your odds of being invited to speak in congress, and your budget is less likely to vanish under a conservative government.

nl 10y ago

I'm going to reply to the top comment here, rather than everywhere else in this thread. This comment is complete nonsense. Or rather, it is the perfect example of the type of comment that is impossible to argue against because it is specifically designed to be never wrong. Instead of trying to argue (for example) that one shouldn't adjust for things like changing the time temperature is measured from the morning to the afternoon, the argument is that "there is an incentive". It's clearly useless to argue against this. One could make the point that there is always large amounts of funding available for anyone to go against the climate change consensus, but then we'd end up arguing details of funding models etc which would (in the main) be completely ignored. You'll note that there is the concession But this doesn't mean any specific correction is based on "fabricated" research. It's probably perfectly valid. - but you'll also note that the author goes on arguing motivation points, and saying things like "it requires statistical wizardry" and questioning ice core data etc. This is such an attractive technique for arguing on forums. It's just about impossible to stop, and much more damaging than "fake news" IMHO.

mannykannot 10y ago
This is an excellent analysis of a bogus argument, and demonstrates the proper way to deal with its ilk. When an 'argument' is constructed from innuendo, when it nominally concedes its failings where they butt against inconvenient truths, but then continues as if it had not, then there is little point in arguing against it with the facts - that is how you conduct a dialog with people who are honest in their opinions. Instead, the best response to this sort of thing is to expose the inconsistent, fallacious and possibly deceitful form of the argument itself.

inimino 10y ago

I read your comment both and after reading the article. Before, it seemed like a reasonable issue to raise. After, it seems like you either didn't read the article or just responded to a completely unrelated fantasy of your own making. > This is actually an excellent illustration of how organizational incentives seep into data. For that claim to be anything other than bullshit, you would need to show that they actually have seeped in. Instead, what you showed is a creative hypothesis about how that might happen, supported by no evidence, and with a glaring hole. The glaring hole in your hypothesis is that there is intense skepticism of climate change and the incentive structure you imagine simply doesn't exist. What you've written is a nice way to cast doubt on the data, which is a bit unfortunate given where the science and the politics actually stand.