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Just because a perspective is different it doesn't mean that it's the truth, or should be treated equally importantly for the sake of some kind of balance. Cli

Just because a perspective is different it doesn't mean that it's the truth, or should be treated equally importantly for the sake of some kind of balance. Climate change denial is a good example, because it's not the truth, and it's not important. It doesn't have it's own scientific literature, nobody ever tries to prove it, it's contrarianism at best, propaganda at worst. And yet the media tends to give it an equal amount of screen time, which makes the public believe in it's legitimacy. This might be shocking to the HN audience, but contrarianism by itself is not enough to discover the truth.

consp 4y ago
There is a nice visual example of this made by John Oliver on his show to illustrate this to a more understandable level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuGCJJUGsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuGCJJUGsg
flooow 4y ago
Thank you for semi-articulately saying my argument back to me.
- Comevius 4y ago
  No offense, but in my experience semi-articulate wins the day. I bet you a beer nobody knows what "media omertà" means. Even Google can't define it, but it references a book called A Climate Vocabulary of the Future that defines it as the media silence on climate change.
origin_path 4y ago
It sounds like you never actually spent any time reading anything by people who dispute popular narratives on climate change. If you did you'd know that nothing you just said is true. They frequently prove the points they're making, often via reference to climatologist's own papers, and it's not mere contrarianism but rather is pointing out places in which their science either isn't reliable or is being misrepresented. Look at it this way. In the past few days HN has had a bunch of submissions on the news that a major paper in Alzheimer's research appears to be entirely fraudulent. It was noticed by outside "deniers", not any scientists within the field itself, and the science based on it went 16 years and received hundreds of millions of dollars in NIH funding. All based on some dodgy Photoshops, or so it appears. When people argue with climatology and (often) absurd media claims that aren't even well connected to published science to begin with, they're usually arguing about actual, concrete problems with what scientists are doing. To believe that it's all mere contrarianism and propaganda is the sort of naive "Believe The Science!"-ism that has trashed trust in public health in the past two years, and worse, created a culture in which researchers think that they can get away with anything.
- jfim 4y ago
  There are simple observations that even non climatologists can do that show the climate warming up. For example, here's a look at the glaciers in glacier national park: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/glacier-repeat-photos.htm https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/glacier-repeat-photos.... Or one can ask why the shipping routes in Northern Canada would start becoming passable if the climate isn't warming up. Or ask why we keep on beating heat records in the last decade.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    But the people who argue with climatologists largely don't argue that the world isn't warming up, so that's irrelevant. They're mostly interested in whether the modelling is accurate (because if it's not there's no real problem; all concerning scenarios rely on modelled feedback loops), in how much of it is created by humans, in how expensive reduction is vs mitigation and so on. There are people who argue that there have been pauses in that increase, but they're citing official temperature datasets from climatologists to show that. Usually satellite or weather balloon data because the surface temperature dataset has diverged from it, largely due to continual 'remodelling'. "Or ask why we keep on beating heat records in the last decade." We keep being told records are being broken but this is often on close inspection not really legit. Old data gets ignored, or datasets get altered such that years that supposedly broke records later get re-declared as not being record breaking after the fact so the same record can then be broken for a second time by the same temperature, or the record breaking temperatures turn out to be taken by weather stations at airports i.e. where they're being blasted by jet exhaust and hot tarmac. If you actually go engage with the people criticizing the IPCC, which includes a fair number of climatologists, it's that kind of detail oriented thing you'll see being discussed. And these are important points. It's meaningless to talk about temperature records being broken if climatologists edit the historical record every few years, creating warming trends where previously none were visible.
    - Comevius 4y ago
      The same people used to completely deny it, they only pivoted lately to bargaining and it's really transparent. The IPCC scenarios don't really rely on feedback loops, because we don't know enough about them. They are rarely taken into account, while even the mildest plausible scenarios based on projected human activity project at least a 2°C change, which can't be stable. We underestimate feedback loops, and we might also get human activity wrong, but even if we don't you still get a planet that's just barely habitable. The warming trend is not created by IPCC fudging past temperature data. This is a climate change denier talking point, but it's a lie. Land and ocean temperatures have been adjusted separately to account for the changes in the measurement methods. Localized sources were compared to their neighbours in order to be able to account for changes in the instruments, urbanization and so on. High-accuracy sensors are used to create a reference network of perfectly sited stations. Roughly half of the stations reduced the warming, half increased it. Deniers like to cherry-pick the stations to make a point. The biggest adjustment by far was because of earlier ships. They used to throw a bucket overboard, pull it up slowly and measure the temperature of the water with a thermometer, without accounting for the air temperature. Ships later switched to measuring temperatures through engine room intakes. These days we have a global network of automatic buoys. None of this increased the warming trend, the adjustments actually reduced it. Mostly only data from before 1940 had to be adjusted. Studies continue to use raw data along it's interpretations, but the necessity of an adjusted interpretation is constantly shown.

consp 4y ago

There is a nice visual example of this made by John Oliver on his show to illustrate this to a more understandable level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuGCJJUGsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuGCJJUGsg

flooow 4y ago

Thank you for semi-articulately saying my argument back to me.

Comevius 4y ago
No offense, but in my experience semi-articulate wins the day. I bet you a beer nobody knows what "media omertà" means. Even Google can't define it, but it references a book called A Climate Vocabulary of the Future that defines it as the media silence on climate change.

origin_path 4y ago

It sounds like you never actually spent any time reading anything by people who dispute popular narratives on climate change. If you did you'd know that nothing you just said is true. They frequently prove the points they're making, often via reference to climatologist's own papers, and it's not mere contrarianism but rather is pointing out places in which their science either isn't reliable or is being misrepresented. Look at it this way. In the past few days HN has had a bunch of submissions on the news that a major paper in Alzheimer's research appears to be entirely fraudulent. It was noticed by outside "deniers", not any scientists within the field itself, and the science based on it went 16 years and received hundreds of millions of dollars in NIH funding. All based on some dodgy Photoshops, or so it appears. When people argue with climatology and (often) absurd media claims that aren't even well connected to published science to begin with, they're usually arguing about actual, concrete problems with what scientists are doing. To believe that it's all mere contrarianism and propaganda is the sort of naive "Believe The Science!"-ism that has trashed trust in public health in the past two years, and worse, created a culture in which researchers think that they can get away with anything.

jfim 4y ago
There are simple observations that even non climatologists can do that show the climate warming up. For example, here's a look at the glaciers in glacier national park: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/glacier-repeat-photos.htm https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/glacier-repeat-photos.... Or one can ask why the shipping routes in Northern Canada would start becoming passable if the climate isn't warming up. Or ask why we keep on beating heat records in the last decade.
- origin_path 4y ago
  But the people who argue with climatologists largely don't argue that the world isn't warming up, so that's irrelevant. They're mostly interested in whether the modelling is accurate (because if it's not there's no real problem; all concerning scenarios rely on modelled feedback loops), in how much of it is created by humans, in how expensive reduction is vs mitigation and so on. There are people who argue that there have been pauses in that increase, but they're citing official temperature datasets from climatologists to show that. Usually satellite or weather balloon data because the surface temperature dataset has diverged from it, largely due to continual 'remodelling'. "Or ask why we keep on beating heat records in the last decade." We keep being told records are being broken but this is often on close inspection not really legit. Old data gets ignored, or datasets get altered such that years that supposedly broke records later get re-declared as not being record breaking after the fact so the same record can then be broken for a second time by the same temperature, or the record breaking temperatures turn out to be taken by weather stations at airports i.e. where they're being blasted by jet exhaust and hot tarmac. If you actually go engage with the people criticizing the IPCC, which includes a fair number of climatologists, it's that kind of detail oriented thing you'll see being discussed. And these are important points. It's meaningless to talk about temperature records being broken if climatologists edit the historical record every few years, creating warming trends where previously none were visible.
  - Comevius 4y ago
    The same people used to completely deny it, they only pivoted lately to bargaining and it's really transparent. The IPCC scenarios don't really rely on feedback loops, because we don't know enough about them. They are rarely taken into account, while even the mildest plausible scenarios based on projected human activity project at least a 2°C change, which can't be stable. We underestimate feedback loops, and we might also get human activity wrong, but even if we don't you still get a planet that's just barely habitable. The warming trend is not created by IPCC fudging past temperature data. This is a climate change denier talking point, but it's a lie. Land and ocean temperatures have been adjusted separately to account for the changes in the measurement methods. Localized sources were compared to their neighbours in order to be able to account for changes in the instruments, urbanization and so on. High-accuracy sensors are used to create a reference network of perfectly sited stations. Roughly half of the stations reduced the warming, half increased it. Deniers like to cherry-pick the stations to make a point. The biggest adjustment by far was because of earlier ships. They used to throw a bucket overboard, pull it up slowly and measure the temperature of the water with a thermometer, without accounting for the air temperature. Ships later switched to measuring temperatures through engine room intakes. These days we have a global network of automatic buoys. None of this increased the warming trend, the adjustments actually reduced it. Mostly only data from before 1940 had to be adjusted. Studies continue to use raw data along it's interpretations, but the necessity of an adjusted interpretation is constantly shown.