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You're criticizing what you consider to be an oversimplification, and your criticism is itself based on an oversimplification. It seems you're implying that th
by bunderbunder 10y ago
You're criticizing what you consider to be an oversimplification, and your criticism is itself based on an oversimplification.
It seems you're implying that the argument being presented is basically just, "The world is getting warmer, aaaa!!!" There's much more to it than that. In fact, even the article you're criticizing provides a more nuanced justification than that, which opens you up to criticism for constructing a strawman argument. The real argument is, "Researchers have built detailed models to try and understand how the climate behaves, and sussed out many, if not all, the factors that influence global climate, and based on those models we can make certain worrying inferences about the current state of things and how we expect them to develop in the future."
Those models do a very good job of hindcasting global climate over the period for which we have good, detailed data. This period admittedly and unfortunately does not cover much of the Little Ice Age. In climate science, as everywhere else, the GIGO principle applies. But since we do still get non-garbage out when we put non-garbage in, that leaves us in a state where they seem to be our most reliable source of information. If you want to challenge them, it's not enough to point out various historical events that are primarily hard to explain due to lack of data. You need to be able to propose a better model.
Concrete example: Nobody threw Newton out the window just because, despite all the myriad places where his model worked stunningly well, there were a few things it couldn't explain. They waited until Einstein came up with a model that explained everything Newton's model could handle and more. And then they used that in some spots, but still mostly just stuck with Newton because the math is easier and accurate enough for almost any practical use. That's the way science works for physics, and that's the way it works for climatology, too.
- jjoonathan 10y agoYou'll see someone like this in every global warming discussion that happens with an educated audience. They'll put on all the plumage of reasonable dissent: "I don't think that the argument for AGW takes into account <pet theory>." In an audience of non-experts, they will go unanswered, and appear to have a point, until you spend an hour or two digging through the relevant IPCC reports and discover that not only has <pet theory> been investigated, it has been extensively investigated by dozens of labs across hundreds of studies using methodologies you never dreamed possible, along with 3 or 4 variants of the argument, all of which were quite thoroughly put to rest. If you confront them with this evidence, citing all the reports and papers, they'll just switch from <pet theory> to <pet theory 2>, possibly after firing off a final riposte defending <pet theory> that makes it abundantly clear they couldn't even be bothered to read the links you dug up, forcing you to ask yourself if you really want to do all that homework again. Fake-reasonable arguments are easy. Countering them is hard. If you don't discard them as a matter of policy (peer review or STFU), they will dominate the decision making process with 100% certainty.
- thesagan 10y agoA trap most of us will fall in to is to assume intents of the anonymous strangers with which we talk on these message boards. In serious academic-ish discussion, I think we should stick as closely to the topic at-hand and avoid pointing out patterns of argumentation where we're easily led into the abyss of us-vs-them and accusations of manipulation. (Manipulation might be rampant, but hard to objectively define anonymously.) The GP does some finger pointing ("you know that they are not being honest with you.") which might have detracted subsequent (and valid) questions that could be answered in a more pleasant sense by other HNers. We should set an example, if we're feeling superior.
- jjoonathan 10y ago> In serious academic-ish discussion, I think we should stick as closely to the topic at-hand and avoid... So does that mean you're willing to do the legwork to dig up the IPCC reports, chase down the studies they reference, and put together an academic-quality rebuttal? Or are you just asking for someone else to do it? In either case I offer my sincere gratitude to anyone willing to fight the weighted odds. It ain't gonna be me, though. Been there, done that. I've got a few hours of weekend left, and I aim to enjoy them.
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- thesagan 10y agoI'll rephrase: I'm asking for less speculation on the [malicious] intent of someone with whom one may disagree on HN. Poisons the discussion even worse.
- jjoonathan 10y agoIt's easy to hand-wring about conflict. It's hard to fight a dishonorable opponent honorably. You have the power to make this change. Not retroactively in this discussion, of course, but in the next. Spend the time to research the truth, the effort to write a scholarly reply, and there will be no need for responses like the one you saw me make.