3 ms·

It's pretty telling that all you've linked to are news stories with zero direct quotes about underwater highways or an "ice free arctic" and very little context

It's pretty telling that all you've linked to are news stories with zero direct quotes about underwater highways or an "ice free arctic" and very little context to the alleged claims. The point being made, that many people have been largely misinformed about the science and what it predicts by media that misrepresented those things, still stands. The good news though is that even if James Hansen did run around telling everyone wild theories (and some argue that many of his predictions have held up remarkably well https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jun/25/30-years-later-deniers-are-still-lying-about-hansens-amazing-global-warming-prediction https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...) we don't have to depend on anyone's comments to the press, there is actual research being reviewed, modeled, and reassessed constantly that just doesn't get the attention alarmist news stories or interviews by authors trying to cash in on climate fear will generate. That isn't to say that scientists don't get things wrong. Some scientists are just plain bad at their job, some scientists get paid to falsify data and bury results unfavorable to the person signing their paychecks, and some just make mistakes, and those are all things we should be working to minimize, but I'd be shocked if our best understanding of the impacts of our changing climate hadn't changed several times over the last 35 years. Scientists getting things wrong isn't some gotcha that proves science is broken, it shows that science is working. Getting things wrongs is just one step of the process. All science does is provide the tools to give us the best understanding of something we can get with the information we have at the time. The more we learn, the more data we have, the more our understanding will change and evolve. People don't like uncertainty and some might wish science was all about dictating indisputable truths that cannot be wrong or questioned, but that's never been what science does or what it's for.

revelio 4y ago
>> Scientists getting things wrong isn't some gotcha that proves science is broken, it shows that science is working. See this is the attitude that causes people to give up in disgust: If scientists make correct predictions, that's science working! If scientists make wrong predictions, that's also science working! Literally no matter what they do or what happens, they cannot lose. >> People don't like uncertainty People are fine with scientific understanding being uncertain. They are not fine with being told by scientists that The Science is so certain it's undisputable, that the only people who disagree are paid to do so, that the world should undergo massive changes on the back of this 100% certain science and then when their predictions are all invalidated it's "hey, being wrong is all just part of the process, if you don't understand that you don't understand science!". If scientists make a confident prediction and then turn out to have been woefully misjudging their own competence, it is correct and right that their reputations are trashed and they should get defunded. But that doesn't happen. Instead we get the Believe Science brigade who insist that all those bad predictions never happened, if they did happen it wasn't a problem and anyone saying otherwise needs to be suppressed. And BTW both quotes come with literally an entire article of context, and Hansen wrote a whole article for the Guardian in which he makes the same predictions about Arctic ice. So please don't try to claim he never said these things. He's on record as doing so, many times in many contexts.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > Literally no matter what they do or what happens, they cannot lose. Well... yeah, because either way we learn something! When predictions work out, it strengths a theory, but getting some new piece of data that shatters a current theory and changes how we look at something forever is way more exciting. Science just isn't about winners and losers. > They are not fine with being told by scientists that The Science is so certain it's undisputable, No scientist ever says this. In fact, they're more likely to say "Please prove me wrong!" > that the only people who disagree are paid to do so They don't say that either, but let's face it, people getting paid to lie and spread misinformation is a big problem. Scientists disagree with each other all the time and that's totally fine! It's desirable even! Here's the catch though, if you want dispute science and be taken seriously, you have to be able to back that up with evidence. Blindly questioning or disagreeing for no reason or for purely emotional or ideological reasons is worthless. You can always fight science with science, but somebody has to be able to check your math, review your methods, and reproduce your results. If your data or your work is weaker, it's not going change many minds. > that the world should undergo massive changes on the back of this 100% certain science Again, science isn't going to be 100% certain about anything, but realistically, based on what information we have, it can still be pretty damn sure about things. It's only logical to take advantage of the best understanding we have and to let it guide our choices and our policy. "Ignore what we know is most likely correct" is just a bad strategy. > If scientists make a confident prediction and then turn out to have been woefully misjudging their own competence, it is correct and right that their reputations are trashed and they should get defunded. If a scientist continuously makes careless mistakes, then I'd say it should tarnish their reputation and that funding should to go to better qualified researchers, but predictions can turn out to be wrong without there being any mistakes at all and without misjudgements about competence too. Testing our understanding of how we think things work is a critical part of the process, and by necessity sometimes those tests fail and those failures further shape and refine our understanding leading to new tests. Getting something wrong doesn't make a scientist a failure, and we're supposed to have guardrails in place to help prevent and catch avoidable errors. We should have people performing meaningful peer-review, and there should be many eyes on important research, with many people replicating studies to confirm results, and others trying to poke holes in those theories wherever they can. Right now, we absolutely aren't doing enough of that. There's a lot of problems with how science is being done and how it's funded, but again, if something has become widely accepted and you want to dispute it, you'd better come with data and be ready to accept that disproving someone's theory isn't going to turn into a witch hunt. Even if you are successful at proving that a popular theory is wrong, people are just going to adjust their models, update the text books, and use it as an example of science working as intended, because that's literally a case of science working as intended. I do wish we did more about cases of actual fraud though.

revelio 4y ago

>> Scientists getting things wrong isn't some gotcha that proves science is broken, it shows that science is working. See this is the attitude that causes people to give up in disgust: If scientists make correct predictions, that's science working! If scientists make wrong predictions, that's also science working! Literally no matter what they do or what happens, they cannot lose. >> People don't like uncertainty People are fine with scientific understanding being uncertain. They are not fine with being told by scientists that The Science is so certain it's undisputable, that the only people who disagree are paid to do so, that the world should undergo massive changes on the back of this 100% certain science and then when their predictions are all invalidated it's "hey, being wrong is all just part of the process, if you don't understand that you don't understand science!". If scientists make a confident prediction and then turn out to have been woefully misjudging their own competence, it is correct and right that their reputations are trashed and they should get defunded. But that doesn't happen. Instead we get the Believe Science brigade who insist that all those bad predictions never happened, if they did happen it wasn't a problem and anyone saying otherwise needs to be suppressed. And BTW both quotes come with literally an entire article of context, and Hansen wrote a whole article for the Guardian in which he makes the same predictions about Arctic ice. So please don't try to claim he never said these things. He's on record as doing so, many times in many contexts.

autoexec 4y ago
> Literally no matter what they do or what happens, they cannot lose. Well... yeah, because either way we learn something! When predictions work out, it strengths a theory, but getting some new piece of data that shatters a current theory and changes how we look at something forever is way more exciting. Science just isn't about winners and losers. > They are not fine with being told by scientists that The Science is so certain it's undisputable, No scientist ever says this. In fact, they're more likely to say "Please prove me wrong!" > that the only people who disagree are paid to do so They don't say that either, but let's face it, people getting paid to lie and spread misinformation is a big problem. Scientists disagree with each other all the time and that's totally fine! It's desirable even! Here's the catch though, if you want dispute science and be taken seriously, you have to be able to back that up with evidence. Blindly questioning or disagreeing for no reason or for purely emotional or ideological reasons is worthless. You can always fight science with science, but somebody has to be able to check your math, review your methods, and reproduce your results. If your data or your work is weaker, it's not going change many minds. > that the world should undergo massive changes on the back of this 100% certain science Again, science isn't going to be 100% certain about anything, but realistically, based on what information we have, it can still be pretty damn sure about things. It's only logical to take advantage of the best understanding we have and to let it guide our choices and our policy. "Ignore what we know is most likely correct" is just a bad strategy. > If scientists make a confident prediction and then turn out to have been woefully misjudging their own competence, it is correct and right that their reputations are trashed and they should get defunded. If a scientist continuously makes careless mistakes, then I'd say it should tarnish their reputation and that funding should to go to better qualified researchers, but predictions can turn out to be wrong without there being any mistakes at all and without misjudgements about competence too. Testing our understanding of how we think things work is a critical part of the process, and by necessity sometimes those tests fail and those failures further shape and refine our understanding leading to new tests. Getting something wrong doesn't make a scientist a failure, and we're supposed to have guardrails in place to help prevent and catch avoidable errors. We should have people performing meaningful peer-review, and there should be many eyes on important research, with many people replicating studies to confirm results, and others trying to poke holes in those theories wherever they can. Right now, we absolutely aren't doing enough of that. There's a lot of problems with how science is being done and how it's funded, but again, if something has become widely accepted and you want to dispute it, you'd better come with data and be ready to accept that disproving someone's theory isn't going to turn into a witch hunt. Even if you are successful at proving that a popular theory is wrong, people are just going to adjust their models, update the text books, and use it as an example of science working as intended, because that's literally a case of science working as intended. I do wish we did more about cases of actual fraud though.