4 ms·

With basically any argument, the skeptical position should be your default one. The person presenting the argument should be the one charged with convincing you

With basically any argument, the skeptical position should be your default one. The person presenting the argument should be the one charged with convincing you of their point. It doesn't work the other way around. So, the fact that there are raving hordes of neo-religious freaks claiming that climate change science is bunk does not mean that those supporting the assertion that we are doing irreparable harm to our planet are absolved of all responsibility to actually prove that.

Locke1689 17y ago
There's a difference between reasonable and unreasonable skepticism. A couple years ago there was a big debate about climate change on the xkcd forum. Fortunately, there was someone with some experience in the field itself. There is always a question of what the scientific opinion is on climate change. He answers that question pretty well in this post http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15290&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=global+warming&start=40#p406833 http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15290&st=...
guelo 17y ago
OK, I understand that opinion here leans towards the skeptic crowd, and I used the word 'fucking' in my comment so maybe that's why I was downvoted so harshly. But why upvote this comment so much? It doesn't make any sense. The "person presenting the argument" are the scientists that have published hundreds of peer reviewed papers on global warming science. Apparently they're not doing a good enough job of convincing some people, but they're not trying to get people to blindly agree with them, their doing science! What more are they supposed to do to prove it?
- jacoblyles 17y ago
  In light of recent events, I find a blanket appeal to "peer reviewed literature" unsatisfying.
  - demallien 17y ago
    Really? Are you referring to the recently leaked emails from the CRU? Because, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, emails aren't peer-reviewed literature. Also, the nice thing about the peer-reviewed literature is that it is published. Anybody can read it and point out inherent flaws. Indeed, if you can identify a serious problem in a paper, and back your discovery with facts, you'll have no problem getting your counter-point published. There are literally tens of thousands of examples of precisely this happening available for your perusal, in the peer-reviewed literature! It's not like major polluters, such as oil companies, don't have the bankroll to fund scientists to demonstrate that the claims about climate change are false. Their continued silence is like the dog that didn't bark in Conan-Doyle's "Silver Blaze"
    - fauigerzigerk 17y ago
      The emails showed that a group of very influencial scientists were going to great lengths to prevent critical review and access to data. I am unable to judge the impact of that kind of obstruction on their actual scientific argument. It could well be that the significance of the so called climategate is way overblown. But it's definately not confidence inspiring behaviour by scientists who have so much to gain from a global warming panic.
      - demallien 17y ago
        Again, maybe I have misunderstood, but I'm under the impression that nearly all of the data in question is publicly available elsewhere (from original sources, as the CRU hasn't generated that much data itself, it relies on organisations the world over to pass their data on). A figure of about 2% has been cited for data that wasn't available elsewhere, but I am not aware of the validity of this figure - we'll have to await the results of the current review to know the real figure. Furthermore, the current claim is that that remaining undisclosed data is not undisclosed for nefarious purposes, but simply because it is data collected by commercial entities that have not granted the CRU the right to redistribute the data. That's another thing for which we will have to wait for the review to know the real story. As for preventing critical review, I am unaware of any such activity. Do you have a citation?
- ghshephard 17y ago
  "scientists that have published hundreds of peer reviewed papers" - As anyone who has tried to get their grant money will tell you, most of those papers are institutionally funded, creating selection bias for the results. Those scientists in the community who put forth a hypothesis challenging AGW are ostracized, and, in some cases, actively targeted for their beliefs - the recent email archive revelations show a fairly consistent thread with regards to that. Environmental Science has become (and perhaps always has been) politicized. It's not the pure world like relativity, or quantum/particle physics, where there is a passionate desire (and even support, and funding) to find something that might contradict established beliefs/theories. I suspect there is actually a hierarchy of science beliefs that looks like: Political Environmental Science Less Political Evolutionary Science Apolitical Particle Physics (Apologies to the 2% of HN that questions genomes/fossil records. :-) Used to be you could trust scientists to be pure - alas no more.
  - guelo 17y ago
    So one email from over 10 years ago from one scientist without the full context of what was going on and all of environmental science is discredited? For ever? Who is really being political here? Luckily, science will not stop because you say it should.
    - ghshephard 17y ago
      You are missing my point - if anything, I am almost a pure-play scientific hypothesis/experiment/observations/results fanatic. I cringe every time I hear scientific naysayer attack the institution of science. But, with that said, I am much more skeptical about environmental science than I would be about topics that are somewhat less politicized, such as Eötvös torsion balance experiments - and even _they_ turned out to have suspect results in hindsight. And it wasn't the email regarding the "hiding" of data I was referring to - it was the several _hundred_ where the various scientists discussed how to discredit or otherwise shut down those who stood in opposition to the popular environmental theories. I'm all for setting up the experiment and letting the results speak for themselves.
- Gupie 17y ago
  It is impossible to prove that climate change will occur and is man made. The only way to do that would be to do the experiment: find a planet, pump lots of C02 into its atmosphere and measure the result. Of course you would have to do this a number of times with different planets using some as controls. However science can estimate from small scale experiments and theoretical calculations a probability that global warming is man-made and its likely effects. Even if the probability of a catastrophe is small, say 5%, it is still worth spending a small percent of GDP to prevent or to ameliorate it. It's like if you own a house you would be an idiot not to spend good money on fire insurance even though the probability of your house burning down is very small.
kw_ 17y ago
I'm skeptical that it's possible for six billion people to make fast and measurable changes in atmospheric composition and land use without endangering the hydrology of the planet, and creating hard-to-predict ripples on the food and water supply. As such, I advocate policies that attempt to reduce the rate of these changes when possible, until those changes are quite well understood. I don't worry about "Earth" at all. I worry about food and water security, as well as the enormous waste of resources that will occur if the hydrology of a continent undergoes rapid change and leaves cities, farms and other infrastructure placed inappropriately for the changed climate. I view this as a conservative and skeptical position. I find it confusing, and somewhat offensive, that I'm asked by those who advocate unfettered change to prove that their change is deadly, when in most other cases, the person advocating mass change is instead asked to prove that it's safe. It seems particularly problematic, because I'm not advocating a complete halt to the change, but rather a decrease in the derivative of the rate of change.
blueben 17y ago
I tell you I have a knife in my pocket. If you don't admit that I have a knife in my pocket, I will kill you. If you admit I have a knife in my pocket and give me your wallet, I might spare you. There is strong evidence to suggest that there is a knife in my pocket, but some evidence which may suggest there is no knife. Are you skeptical by default that there is a knife in my pocket? Can you afford that skepticism?

Locke1689 17y ago

There's a difference between reasonable and unreasonable skepticism. A couple years ago there was a big debate about climate change on the xkcd forum. Fortunately, there was someone with some experience in the field itself. There is always a question of what the scientific opinion is on climate change. He answers that question pretty well in this post http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15290&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=global+warming&start=40#p406833 http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15290&st=...

guelo 17y ago

OK, I understand that opinion here leans towards the skeptic crowd, and I used the word 'fucking' in my comment so maybe that's why I was downvoted so harshly. But why upvote this comment so much? It doesn't make any sense. The "person presenting the argument" are the scientists that have published hundreds of peer reviewed papers on global warming science. Apparently they're not doing a good enough job of convincing some people, but they're not trying to get people to blindly agree with them, their doing science! What more are they supposed to do to prove it?

jacoblyles 17y ago
In light of recent events, I find a blanket appeal to "peer reviewed literature" unsatisfying.
- demallien 17y ago
  Really? Are you referring to the recently leaked emails from the CRU? Because, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, emails aren't peer-reviewed literature. Also, the nice thing about the peer-reviewed literature is that it is published. Anybody can read it and point out inherent flaws. Indeed, if you can identify a serious problem in a paper, and back your discovery with facts, you'll have no problem getting your counter-point published. There are literally tens of thousands of examples of precisely this happening available for your perusal, in the peer-reviewed literature! It's not like major polluters, such as oil companies, don't have the bankroll to fund scientists to demonstrate that the claims about climate change are false. Their continued silence is like the dog that didn't bark in Conan-Doyle's "Silver Blaze"
  - fauigerzigerk 17y ago
    The emails showed that a group of very influencial scientists were going to great lengths to prevent critical review and access to data. I am unable to judge the impact of that kind of obstruction on their actual scientific argument. It could well be that the significance of the so called climategate is way overblown. But it's definately not confidence inspiring behaviour by scientists who have so much to gain from a global warming panic.
    - demallien 17y ago
      Again, maybe I have misunderstood, but I'm under the impression that nearly all of the data in question is publicly available elsewhere (from original sources, as the CRU hasn't generated that much data itself, it relies on organisations the world over to pass their data on). A figure of about 2% has been cited for data that wasn't available elsewhere, but I am not aware of the validity of this figure - we'll have to await the results of the current review to know the real figure. Furthermore, the current claim is that that remaining undisclosed data is not undisclosed for nefarious purposes, but simply because it is data collected by commercial entities that have not granted the CRU the right to redistribute the data. That's another thing for which we will have to wait for the review to know the real story. As for preventing critical review, I am unaware of any such activity. Do you have a citation?
ghshephard 17y ago
"scientists that have published hundreds of peer reviewed papers" - As anyone who has tried to get their grant money will tell you, most of those papers are institutionally funded, creating selection bias for the results. Those scientists in the community who put forth a hypothesis challenging AGW are ostracized, and, in some cases, actively targeted for their beliefs - the recent email archive revelations show a fairly consistent thread with regards to that. Environmental Science has become (and perhaps always has been) politicized. It's not the pure world like relativity, or quantum/particle physics, where there is a passionate desire (and even support, and funding) to find something that might contradict established beliefs/theories. I suspect there is actually a hierarchy of science beliefs that looks like: Political Environmental Science Less Political Evolutionary Science Apolitical Particle Physics (Apologies to the 2% of HN that questions genomes/fossil records. :-) Used to be you could trust scientists to be pure - alas no more.
- guelo 17y ago
  So one email from over 10 years ago from one scientist without the full context of what was going on and all of environmental science is discredited? For ever? Who is really being political here? Luckily, science will not stop because you say it should.
  - ghshephard 17y ago
    You are missing my point - if anything, I am almost a pure-play scientific hypothesis/experiment/observations/results fanatic. I cringe every time I hear scientific naysayer attack the institution of science. But, with that said, I am much more skeptical about environmental science than I would be about topics that are somewhat less politicized, such as Eötvös torsion balance experiments - and even _they_ turned out to have suspect results in hindsight. And it wasn't the email regarding the "hiding" of data I was referring to - it was the several _hundred_ where the various scientists discussed how to discredit or otherwise shut down those who stood in opposition to the popular environmental theories. I'm all for setting up the experiment and letting the results speak for themselves.
Gupie 17y ago
It is impossible to prove that climate change will occur and is man made. The only way to do that would be to do the experiment: find a planet, pump lots of C02 into its atmosphere and measure the result. Of course you would have to do this a number of times with different planets using some as controls. However science can estimate from small scale experiments and theoretical calculations a probability that global warming is man-made and its likely effects. Even if the probability of a catastrophe is small, say 5%, it is still worth spending a small percent of GDP to prevent or to ameliorate it. It's like if you own a house you would be an idiot not to spend good money on fire insurance even though the probability of your house burning down is very small.

kw_ 17y ago

I'm skeptical that it's possible for six billion people to make fast and measurable changes in atmospheric composition and land use without endangering the hydrology of the planet, and creating hard-to-predict ripples on the food and water supply. As such, I advocate policies that attempt to reduce the rate of these changes when possible, until those changes are quite well understood. I don't worry about "Earth" at all. I worry about food and water security, as well as the enormous waste of resources that will occur if the hydrology of a continent undergoes rapid change and leaves cities, farms and other infrastructure placed inappropriately for the changed climate. I view this as a conservative and skeptical position. I find it confusing, and somewhat offensive, that I'm asked by those who advocate unfettered change to prove that their change is deadly, when in most other cases, the person advocating mass change is instead asked to prove that it's safe. It seems particularly problematic, because I'm not advocating a complete halt to the change, but rather a decrease in the derivative of the rate of change.

blueben 17y ago

I tell you I have a knife in my pocket. If you don't admit that I have a knife in my pocket, I will kill you. If you admit I have a knife in my pocket and give me your wallet, I might spare you. There is strong evidence to suggest that there is a knife in my pocket, but some evidence which may suggest there is no knife. Are you skeptical by default that there is a knife in my pocket? Can you afford that skepticism?