5 ms·

I'm so glad to see you bring this up. In my graduate physics training, I was taught to be extremely cautious about statistical significance, error propagation,

I'm so glad to see you bring this up. In my graduate physics training, I was taught to be extremely cautious about statistical significance, error propagation, and error bars. I remain skeptical of our conclusions about AGW, not because I have a political view on the subject, but because I'm skeptical that our temperature measurements from 120 years ago have a precision of less than 1 degree C. But I (sincerely) assume that the climate scientists working in this space have compensated for this lack of precision in their conclusions. Right?

llamataboot 7y ago
nah, pretty sure you're the first person to think of that one!
tasty_freeze 7y ago
Hyperskepticism run wild. You, an outsider, doubt the science because you think that the people who have specialized in the field and have spent their careers collecting data are not as smart as you and have overlooked the quality of their data sets. I'll go farther and say nobody better understands the limits of their data sets than the people who work with them.
- btakita2 7y ago
  Dr. Valentina Zharkova & Dr. Henrik Svensmark refute this fallacy. Dr. Svensmark lost his institutional funding when he found & published experimental evidence & a model that cosmic radiation seeds clouds. This highlights the monetary & career incentive to hold a certain position. Any deviation from that position will result in a loss of funding. Dr. Svensmark is now independently funded. Here is one of his presentations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg3MqdBX0_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg3MqdBX0_k
- lostmymind66 7y ago
  I think my problem with the whole thing is how politicized AGW has become. There are supporters saying 'temperature is not climate when it comes to disproving climate change, yet try to use the same argument when proving that it exists. Many supported laws for trying to reduce emissions are nothing more than wealth transfer schemes used by one group to take power from another. I also would like to know how so many experts in their field missed the fact that they were using incorrect data sets for so many years. Google 'climate gate'. Nobody talks about it anymore, but it was a serious enough problem that hundreds of universities had to come out with retractions/explanations. If you are a scientist that doesn't support the current narrative about climate change, you will have a difficult time getting funding and your career will most likely be over the second you submit anything for review. I've noticed that scientists that do have contrary theories are either retired or plain on retiring..for this very reason. If scientists are going to be the authority now, what about things like the definition of sex/gender? Is it only an authority when it suits our political needs? I don't deny that climate change is happening. There is just too much noise to really know the actual truth about the extent of the damage and what we can do to prevent it.
  - peterashford 7y ago
    Dunning Kruger
  - snowwrestler 7y ago
    > Eight committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged throughout the investigations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_c...
  - photojosh 7y ago
    > There are supporters saying 'temperature is not climate when it comes to disproving climate change, yet try to use the same argument when proving that it exists. Everywhere I've seen both these arguments used, the attempted-disprovers are using something like "worst snowstorm ever in X location means it can't be getting warmer", whereas the supporters are talking about the average temperature of the whole planet, and how the increase in energy in the system is causing extreme weather, both hot and cold. tl;dr– local temperature vs average temperature: not the same argument. If you have counter-examples, I'd welcome them.
  - tasty_freeze 7y ago
    I was away for a few days so I didn't respond to your comment immediately. Yes, AGW has become a political football. The fact that Al Gore is a democrat and popularized the issue has probably hurt the issue more than anything. But politics is beside the point. What does the science say? The peer-reviewed stuff where they publish there data and methodology? You say you don't deny that climate change is happening, yet everything you point to are talking points of deniers. Climate gate was a non-scandal. Yes, data collection is a messy and expensive business, and a lot of reconciling of various data sets has to be done. Yes, one of the people doing that work found a "trick" to figure out how the unannotated data set could be interpreted to explain why the paper which was associated with that data set arrived at the conclusion it did. That doesn't mean they were tricking the public. Then you go off on a tangent about scientists and gender issues, which makes me think that you are really trying to address some wider point than that of climate change denial. You conclude with the same FUD that the smoking lobby used -- sure there are lots of studies that seem to indicate that smoking causes cancer, but you know there are some studies (paid for by the tobacco industry) that show it isn't a problem, so geez, it seems like we don't know enough yet to do anything about it. I thoroughly reject that stance. Businesses of all kinds have to make decisions based on incomplete and even contradictory data every day; we put people in jail for life or even kill them based on evidence which is not 100.00000% proven. Why, when it comes to climate change, are some people holding out for a mathematical proof or something? Why shouldn't we proceed based on the best available information? Why should the claims of climatologists, with thousands of man-years of research and published data be insufficient, yet a nay-sayer can say without any proof that addressing climate change would be disastrous to the economy?
- Veen 7y ago
  I'm curious if you extend that attitude of "outsiders should believe what we tell them" to other fields? Nutrition science or social psychology, perhaps. What about the humanities? I'm not convinced that a well-educated observer from outside of a field must be incapable of spotting flaws in the reasoning of professionals or the evidence they use to support it.
jpeloquin 7y ago
Precision thermometry is an old science. Fahrenheit obtained a precision less than 1 °C using a mercury-in-glass thermometer in 1714. Platinum resistance thermometers were developed around 1900. These technologies are still used today. Furthermore, accuracy greater than the precision of an individual measurement may be obtained by averaging multiple measurements. All the tools needed to accurately track temperature existed 120 years ago. For what reasons do you believe that meteorologists did not use the tools available to them?

llamataboot 7y ago

nah, pretty sure you're the first person to think of that one!

tasty_freeze 7y ago

Hyperskepticism run wild. You, an outsider, doubt the science because you think that the people who have specialized in the field and have spent their careers collecting data are not as smart as you and have overlooked the quality of their data sets. I'll go farther and say nobody better understands the limits of their data sets than the people who work with them.

btakita2 7y ago
Dr. Valentina Zharkova & Dr. Henrik Svensmark refute this fallacy. Dr. Svensmark lost his institutional funding when he found & published experimental evidence & a model that cosmic radiation seeds clouds. This highlights the monetary & career incentive to hold a certain position. Any deviation from that position will result in a loss of funding. Dr. Svensmark is now independently funded. Here is one of his presentations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg3MqdBX0_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg3MqdBX0_k
lostmymind66 7y ago
I think my problem with the whole thing is how politicized AGW has become. There are supporters saying 'temperature is not climate when it comes to disproving climate change, yet try to use the same argument when proving that it exists. Many supported laws for trying to reduce emissions are nothing more than wealth transfer schemes used by one group to take power from another. I also would like to know how so many experts in their field missed the fact that they were using incorrect data sets for so many years. Google 'climate gate'. Nobody talks about it anymore, but it was a serious enough problem that hundreds of universities had to come out with retractions/explanations. If you are a scientist that doesn't support the current narrative about climate change, you will have a difficult time getting funding and your career will most likely be over the second you submit anything for review. I've noticed that scientists that do have contrary theories are either retired or plain on retiring..for this very reason. If scientists are going to be the authority now, what about things like the definition of sex/gender? Is it only an authority when it suits our political needs? I don't deny that climate change is happening. There is just too much noise to really know the actual truth about the extent of the damage and what we can do to prevent it.
- peterashford 7y ago
  Dunning Kruger
- snowwrestler 7y ago
  > Eight committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged throughout the investigations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_c...
- photojosh 7y ago
  > There are supporters saying 'temperature is not climate when it comes to disproving climate change, yet try to use the same argument when proving that it exists. Everywhere I've seen both these arguments used, the attempted-disprovers are using something like "worst snowstorm ever in X location means it can't be getting warmer", whereas the supporters are talking about the average temperature of the whole planet, and how the increase in energy in the system is causing extreme weather, both hot and cold. tl;dr– local temperature vs average temperature: not the same argument. If you have counter-examples, I'd welcome them.
- tasty_freeze 7y ago
  I was away for a few days so I didn't respond to your comment immediately. Yes, AGW has become a political football. The fact that Al Gore is a democrat and popularized the issue has probably hurt the issue more than anything. But politics is beside the point. What does the science say? The peer-reviewed stuff where they publish there data and methodology? You say you don't deny that climate change is happening, yet everything you point to are talking points of deniers. Climate gate was a non-scandal. Yes, data collection is a messy and expensive business, and a lot of reconciling of various data sets has to be done. Yes, one of the people doing that work found a "trick" to figure out how the unannotated data set could be interpreted to explain why the paper which was associated with that data set arrived at the conclusion it did. That doesn't mean they were tricking the public. Then you go off on a tangent about scientists and gender issues, which makes me think that you are really trying to address some wider point than that of climate change denial. You conclude with the same FUD that the smoking lobby used -- sure there are lots of studies that seem to indicate that smoking causes cancer, but you know there are some studies (paid for by the tobacco industry) that show it isn't a problem, so geez, it seems like we don't know enough yet to do anything about it. I thoroughly reject that stance. Businesses of all kinds have to make decisions based on incomplete and even contradictory data every day; we put people in jail for life or even kill them based on evidence which is not 100.00000% proven. Why, when it comes to climate change, are some people holding out for a mathematical proof or something? Why shouldn't we proceed based on the best available information? Why should the claims of climatologists, with thousands of man-years of research and published data be insufficient, yet a nay-sayer can say without any proof that addressing climate change would be disastrous to the economy?
Veen 7y ago
I'm curious if you extend that attitude of "outsiders should believe what we tell them" to other fields? Nutrition science or social psychology, perhaps. What about the humanities? I'm not convinced that a well-educated observer from outside of a field must be incapable of spotting flaws in the reasoning of professionals or the evidence they use to support it.

jpeloquin 7y ago

Precision thermometry is an old science. Fahrenheit obtained a precision less than 1 °C using a mercury-in-glass thermometer in 1714. Platinum resistance thermometers were developed around 1900. These technologies are still used today. Furthermore, accuracy greater than the precision of an individual measurement may be obtained by averaging multiple measurements. All the tools needed to accurately track temperature existed 120 years ago. For what reasons do you believe that meteorologists did not use the tools available to them?