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.
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.
Honestly, if you are engaging in this, consider whether your side really is the right side to be on in the first place.
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.
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.
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.
What is that technique the fake-reasonable argument makers use? It's like a Gish gallop but slower. Maybe that's the best description of it.
I joke, but the whole point of the Gish Gallop is to rapid fire weak arguments. I don't think it exactly fits.
As an aside, does anyone know of a good source that categorizes and explains these modern underhanded argument techniques?
For a more askew look at the topic check out Derailing for Dummies :)
http://www.derailingfordummies.com
FWIW I think its important to be careful with these concepts. I often see a perfectly valid point though a poorly constructed argument blown out of the water by reference to these techniques. There's an awful lot of subtlety to this stuff which if misapplied can cause you to miss out on certain valuable points being made just because of how they're being made. Also important to remember that these "weapons" can also be abused by the hypothetical ne'er-do-wells to prevent novel contributions to discussion ...
You want to read about global warming from climate scientists, as your questions are easily answered. Peer reviewers are as vicious as in any other science: the concerns you raise here would be the least of their ammunition.
If I say global warming is caused by the decline in the population of pirates in the world, my conclusion may be correct but my reasoning is flawed. If people pressured you to believe in global warming on the basis of the pirate argument, you would be right to push back on that.
Having seen the pathetic state of literature review in the various engineering fields, I cannot expect it to be better in meteorological fields. No doubt there is a certain subset of effective and critical reviewers, but I expect dogma, exciting findings, and name recognition still rule the day.
The most the volume of politics in engineering where our work is not overtly political to those outside outfield is astounding. I don't buy that in a field with so many non-expert pressures applied the review process escapes unadulterated.
Of course scientists make mistakes. Of course there is dogma and politics. Of course this has an effect, and of course we should take this seriously - and scientists can and do take it seriously. For example, look up the "reproducibility crisis" - some of the harshest criticism of existing science is yet again made by practicing scientists. But this is different than armchair handwringing.
Moreover, there seems to be a knee-jerk reaction among non-experts to discredit this skepticism as being "anti-science" or being the work of climate-change "deniers." For example, see here[0]. The commenter laments that non-experts might suggest a criticism of peer-reviewed work without being an expert themselves on that criticism. He or she even accuses them of arguing in bad faith ("They'll put on all the plumage of reasonable dissent") and suggests that anyone who has not undergone the rigor of peer review is not qualified to have an opinion ("peer review or STFU"). I fear that if there were valid criticism to be heard, it would at best only fall on deaf ears.
The issue at hand has become political in the USA, whereas there's plenty of science outside. This is like the "teaching evolution" debate. Even within the US, what would the "political pressure" argument be? That the Democratic party is trying to make people believe in AGW just so they can get to power and raise taxes?
I'm not closed to this point of view, but it sure seems to be a rare case indeed.
If you look at it from the reverse perspective, climate scientists have been explaining /basic/ material and conclusions to deniers for decades now. If you want to criticize, I don't think there should be a peer-review barrier but you sure should at least be familiar with the body of work you're criticizing. Or else, how could you possibly contribute anything of substance? Go read the IPCC reports, or /something/. That's just common sense. A lot of criticism fails to meet that minimum bar, and also has usually been addressed beforehand.
I'm not a climate scientist, but right now I'm taking a graduate level class in databases and data systems. We're reading a lot of papers, some from academia and some from industry. But what I'm realizing is how lacking in nuance and content the discussions on even highly technical places like HN can be at times. Like when I see stuff like "NoSQL is bad for joins", it's like "really? on what system? under what conditions?". The ease with which laymen can assert conclusive-sounding statements on a whim is terrifying. The more you learn, the more you get the opposite instinct - to withhold judgement until something seems very clear. This destroys conversation dynamics when scientists are pitted against climate deniers. And a lot of times, I suspect that the arguments made fall in the "not even wrong" category. Then, the people who make the assertions aren't even willing to listen to the counterargument because it's "too technical". As if everything has a pithy one-liner response. In the end, this results in a massive amount of frustration on the part of the scientists, which leads us to the pickle we're in today.
Anyway, this discussion reminds me of the whole discussion in the 50s/60s about the health effects of smoking, and how it took forever for doctors and scientists to convince people that this was real. All the tobacco industry had to do was to criticize specific bits and pieces, discredit specific researchers, call things "inconclusive", and suddenly their criticism was as legitimate as a huge body of research. That's the dangerous bit here. Take a look: http://www.who.int/tobacco/media/en/TobaccoExplained.pdf
Meanwhile if Agile is proven to be terrible, it would be a huge boon for those writing about programming methodology as they could easily invent a new one and sell that.
So there is far more economic reason for almost every scientist involved to argue that global warming is definitely happening, while there is almost no economic reason for a computer scientist to argue it. So I don't think sheer quantity of papers in journals is necessarily a proof that global warming papers are any better than Agile papers in good journals.
EDIT: Instantly downvoted on posting! I've struck a nerve. That, to me, proves that people have a lot more to hide than they let on. I've certainly never been downvoted when discussing an Agile paper.
I was also thinking about the papers on Agile vs global warming, and the Agile papers generally read as far more balanced and generally go into much deeper detail than any global warming paper. So I think I'd personally trust the Agile papers more because they do at least have significant discussion on the negatives of the approach and generally cite negative studies themselves.
1. That's a bit like saying if powered aviation goes away tomorrow (as in, it is to be completely proven to be impossible), every single engineer at Boeing would be out of a job.
2. The incentive structure doesn't work that way. If you could show that global warming isn't real, yes, all the other climate scientists will lose their job, but you will be rich beyond your dreams. Every billion-dollar petro-business will shower you with praise and contracts. You will be hailed as a savior of mankind, saving a million jobs and preventing policy mistakes that would have cost many billion dollars. The stake has never been higher.
So who's brainwashing all those French, Japanese, Chinese climate researchers to conspire with NASA against their own interest?
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. If you were doing a study on whether powered aviation is going away tomorrow, 99% (well probably 100%) of Boeing engineers would tell you that it isn't. Obviously. But you cannot use that as a proof that powered aviation is not going away. Even if it was going away, that's just not how you prove it. See? If every single powered aviation engineer in the world peer reviewed a paper on powered aviation not going away, it's still not any better or any more proof of it. There is too much financial incentive. It's not a good argument.
Now how much more so in the case of climate science where you can't clearly see airplanes flying above your head?
> 2. The incentive structure doesn't work that way. If you could show that global warming isn't real, yes, all the other climate scientists will lose their job, but you will be rich beyond your dreams. Every billion-dollar petro-business will shower you with praise and contracts. You will be hailed as a savior of mankind, saving a million jobs and preventing policy mistakes that would have cost many billion dollars. The stake has never been higher.
There's a few scientists trying to show this. They even have some papers that have convinced many non-climate scientists, although all have massive flaws if you look closely. Regardless, no matter how good those papers were, do you really believe all climate scientists would just sit down and say 'oh well, it was a nice life while it lasted' ? If a paper was released that truly did refute all climate science, nearly every climate scientist would declare it false, probably without even reading it. They'd look for spelling mistakes in the paper and declare it false if they found one. They'd tear it apart and convince themselves it was false, because their lives would literally depend on it.
> So who's brainwashing all those French, Japanese, Chinese climate researchers to conspire with NASA against their own interest?
Do you think researchers work in silos devoted to their own country without using the work of others...? That's not really how it works imo. Besides, climate change is massively good news for China -- they're making a fortune off 'green' solutions. I just checked and France and Japan are also, although to a much lesser extent. So I don't think this works as proof either.
In the end, the only proper way to do this is with arguments based on merit, rather than perceived motivations of other people, because those perceptions are much more likely to be flawed than arguments based on merit.
For an example that would apply to computer science: "99% of computer scientists agree that computers are the future of mankind". I don't think you even need to do a study here, it's obvious that around 99% of computer scientists would believe that, because it's what their lives are built around. Climate change scientists' lives are built around the existence of climate change, and so obviously they'd have the same beliefs.
Where the value of a scientific paper comes in is within the discipline: how do a I best use this computer to accomplish something? How do I best cut down on the effects of carbon on the atmosphere? If I increase oxygen density, what will happen? Regardless of the answer to these questions, the people involved will be able to continue their lives. They're disconnected with economic reasons because no matter the answer to the question, there is more work for them. Economic reasons come in when the results of a study would directly threaten the livelihood of the scientist. In that case, we can't just assume that because all the scientists agree that it's automatically perfect.
> In the end, the only proper way to do this is with arguments based on merit, rather than perceived motivations of other people.
Correct! My point was more about how the Agile paper is disparaged. I have more reason to believe the results of an accredited and published Agile paper than I do a paper on the very reason an entire field of study exists.
My personal belief that climate change is real and a huge problem is irrelevant here: I still find the Agile paper to be more convincing. The only reason I believe in climate change is because I've checked the science myself to the best of my ability, and not because of the peer reviewed papers which I believe would say the same exact thing even if climate change does not exist. Hopefully that makes it clearer.
Can you name any historical outcome of science that did not align in some way with the financials? I cannot name a single scientist who ever researched himself out of a job. Yet that is what would happen to climate science researchers if they were able to prove climate change isn't real. It's unprecedented and I don't think using the historical track record of financially beneficial science is a good argument.
As for doing a good job -- sure, I try do a good job always. But that is entirely within the confines of my job. I'm not going to do a good job that would directly get me fired. Most people wouldn't. Most climate science researchers wouldn't.
Economic incentive is usually not the primary incentive, but in the case of climate science, there is a massive peer incentive to prove that climate change is an enormous risk. Saying something like "I don't think climate change matters" is going to get you snide comments from your peers and nobody is going to want to co-author papers with you. It's a big problem of science and exists in many other areas too. Politics matters.
That's very flawed reasoning: Do you think these scientists didn't have a job before?
> I was also thinking about the papers on Agile vs global warming, and the Agile papers generally read as far more balanced and generally go into much deeper detail than any global warming paper.
Where are you getting your global warming papers from?
A huge percentage of them didn't actually. Most of the current researchers into climate change have always worked as researchers in this field. You have to remember the field has been around since the 60s, but has rapidly begun to attract PHD students and others because of the vast amounts of grant money devoted to it in recent years.
> Where are you getting your global warming papers from?
Nature and Science. Where are you getting your Agile papers from?
I think you are very likely wrong about the causal link there: the way science organizations allocate money is that they decide what is important to study, so it should make sense that important fields are the ones that attract money and people. And there's a general scientific sense in which some fields are more important to the progress of science than others. But that's just how it should be, and less important fields should have less money. So you observe the expected behaviour (important fields get more research effort), but you think you're seeing a pathological behaviour instead. After all, what evidence would you accept that climate science deserves that particular level of funding?
However, I think there is a massive causal link there. If you're looking to do your PHD and your advisor tells you to research climate change because of all the grant money, that seems like a massive link to me. Then once you have your PHD on climate change, the obvious next step for funding is to do more research on climate change.
Although really what I was trying to get at originally is simply that multiple climate change scientists endorsing each other on the existence of climate change does not make their work any more convincing than just a single author in a good journal discussing Agile. It went on a major windy path, but hopefully you at least understand my point even if you disagree.
Same place as lrenaud.
I don't agree with the down vote applied to your post. However, the rhetorical device of claiming an opponent has ulterior motives is frowned upon on HN.
To deny the financial link here is purposeful blindness, in my opinion. If all of the studies showed that no climate change was occurring, and all of the studies were funded by oil companies, you'd no doubt be agreeing with me. Actually the studies that are funded by oil companies do show far less climate change, while those funded by the UN show the most. Coincidence? Not a chance.
> I don't agree with the down vote applied to your post. However, the rhetorical device of claiming an opponent has ulterior motives is frowned upon on HN.
Fair enough, but I literally got down voted 5 seconds after pressing submit. I've never seen that before, and I have a feeling I was downvoted by someone without even having my post read fully. It was more of a personal anecdote to myself that there's more here than meets the eye.
I've seen quite a few articles here on HN based off of NOAA and NASA studies regarding other interesting climate topics, such as variation in jet streams and ocean currents, changes in rainfall (especially California), and the development of storms. That's just my haphazard exposure, certainly not a definitive answer.
Are climate scientists so specialized that they can't pivot to another discipline within meteorology?
Do climate scientists even stay within the field more than other academics? I was under the impression that the vast majority of post-docs and PhD candidates perform laboratory work for a few years, fail to get tenure, and then work in private industry in a tangentially related field for much better compensation. Post-docs and PhD candidates are also notoriously underpaid. Wouldn't tenure follow from a groundbreaking study that disproved mainstream scientific belief, instead of boringly replicating existing findings?
Of course there is an economic link to everything. You still haven't established the link in a meaningful fashion. "I'm just asking questions" isn't good enough to present a convincing argument.
Here's a decent article on the economic effects on climate science research: http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/got-science/2015/got-scie... - This is in the opposite direction, but it shows how easily money is a factor. The fact still remains that there are unknown and undisclosed links to research that is paid to give a specific result.
As for climate scientists, yes they are fairly specialized. A PHD is always going to be specialized. And even more so, nearly all work for climate scientists is in research or in explaining climate change: https://www.indeed.com/q-Climate-Scientist-jobs.html
> Wouldn't tenure follow from a groundbreaking study that disproved mainstream scientific belief, instead of boringly replicating existing findings?
Not if even trying to research it would get you immediately fired. Stating you don't believe climate change exists inside a climate science department will almost instantly guarantee you will be axed. You're definitely not going to get funding to study it.
> Of course there is an economic link to everything. You still haven't established the link in a meaningful fashion. "I'm just asking questions" isn't good enough to present a convincing argument.
That we agree that there is an economic link, and that an economic link will influence outcomes, is literally all I'm saying.
But I don't think it's true that every scientist expressing a belief in anthropogenic global warming has a conflict of interest. Some number of them are tenured professors, for example. This is a good example of the value of the tenure system in academia.
As for the papers in Nature and Science, well, I haven't read them, but given the extreme politicization of the issue, it doesn't surprise me that the authors are tending to omit qualifications and caveats, since many people who want to dismiss the evidence would pick up on these -- as we're seeing in this very discussion.
Even a tenured professor still wants to be published in leading journals. Plus he gets a huge amount of credibility within his own university by being constantly published. Tenure definitely is a positive here, but it's not a get-out-of-jail free card by any means as there are a ton of incentives for him to stick to the climate change dogma regardless.
> As for the papers in Nature and Science, well, I haven't read them, but given the extreme politicization of the issue, it doesn't surprise me that the authors are tending to omit qualifications and caveats, since many people who want to dismiss the evidence would pick up on these -- as we're seeing in this very discussion.
Great point! I agree fully. But is it really useful? Now instead of people picking up on these qualifications and caveats to attack the argument, they're pointing out the caveats themselves and saying 'Haha! You ommitted this! You have something to hide!'. So the cure they're trying to use here seems worse than the disease. We put in these qualifications and caveats to protect our work. A good Agile paper would include the criticisms of Agile too -- not because they want to, but because it's important to understand the weak points. Obfuscating it doesn't help anyone in the long run, and it doesn't stop the same people attacking it anyway.
Or it proves you're making stupid arguments people can't be bothered engaging with.
Your mental model of how grants get distributed to scientists is incorrect.
I don't think there is actually a prior example of this ever happening as I don't know of any other field of study where everything is based off a single issue. And if that issue were false (yes yes, I know it isn't -- but if it was!) then the entire field would collapse. Something to think about.
Yeah, and I replied in kind. Apologies. FWIW, I played the grant game too, with a small amount of success before I jumped ship.
While you're right that climate change being proven wrong would cause a contraction in the field, I don't think this fact translates cleanly into incentives that could keep a collective lie afloat. Three reasons, if you'll pardon my bullets.
1. Whoever successfully spearheaded the change would be set for life in terms of reputation (and, more than likely, position + funding), so there's a prisoner's dilemma in favor of the truth coming out.
2. Individual studies often happen at a granularity where it's not clear whether or not they support "The Narrative" until long after they are complete. E.g. if a study's "deliverable" is to measure the blackbody radiation from Earth, the number only has relevance to the climate change argument once differenced against solar influx, inflow/outflow from heat reservoirs, nuclear heating from the core, etc.
3. The whole kerfuffle over heat storage in the deep ocean played out as one would expect if the process works, and didn't play out as one would expect if everyone were part of a coverup, intentional or otherwise. A ton of models broke, the literature generally admitted this was the case, and the cause was tracked down until its source and implications were understood.
If you then look at the contribution to climate from volcanic activity (CO2 and sulphates, in both directions), the fourth graph in the article ("Is It Volcanoes?"), the data show that 1880 did not have a significant negative temperature contribution from volcanic activity, and although 1884-5 did, so too did 1964-66, 1983, and 1992.
There is no consensus on the cause of the Little Ice Age; although volcanism is one possible cause, there are other possible causes both external (solar activity, orbital cycles) and anthrogenic (reafforestation following pandemic-induced population collapse in Europe and the Americas). If that last cause is indeed a contributing factor, it supports the anthrogenic climate change theory. Even if it is excluded, the removal or reversal of external factors is totally insufficient to explain observed warming in the last century.
I agree that it's frustrating when lay person proponents make arguments that don't hold up, and initially thought this article was doing that, but it's really just a snapshot into what's mentioned in the Methods section, which points to ModelE2 which is a physical simulation. It's being honest, just super brief.
As you said, by 1880 the world was recovering from Little Ice Age. That is, between 1880 and mid-20th century the world showed a natural tendency to become progressively warmer.
This natural warming reduces the contrast with what followed, and makes the graph look more like a smooth transition. As others commented, if you look farther back, natural temperature variations smooth out, and the "hockey stick" shape becomes unmistakable.
"How unlucky we would have been to see this data of the past, if a spike in temperatures had actually happened then" is P(data|hypothesis), the frequentist argument for or against a hypothesis. It's what a p-value is, but arguing what to call it is pointless anyway.
At the same time I wouldn't be surprised if there were climate scientists who chose to avoid these sorts of calculations.
Also, the p-value might tell you whether or not an event like this would literally be one of your samples, but its not whats going to tell you whether or not a reconstruction from these samples contains information about these events. Although I guess its not much of a distinction.
Heres where we disagree.
If you're right and all of them have overlooked it, you'll have material for a hell of a paper yourself: There's nothing more juicy than a paper that mathematically proves that a pile of accepted scientific literature is flawed.
Imagining possible flaws of a paper before reading it is so easy that it's hard to really strike gold (it is equally easy for the authors and reviewers). But it is also an enjoyable way to learn how those flaws have been taken care of.
And lets not pretend one or two papers that make bold claims hold much water.
I've been misled by popular media many times, so color me unsurprised that they might be selling some bullshit about this as well. (Not that they certainly are.)
The AGW papers I've read, though, are very solid, and more sophisticated than I expected.
NOAA researchers corrected for the "cold bias" from buoy measurements compared to measurements made in ship engine rooms.
My point isn't to deny the climate is changing but to call into question the quality of the data being used to create models and formulate policy. Each source of measurement has inherent bias and error -- that's the nature of scientific measurement -- especially measurements that often occur in the hulls of a ship. Who calibrates the measurement devices? Who calibrated them 50 years ago?
As in "I learned this model in a dark alley in Stalingrad, and I won't defend it in my paper"? Good luck trying to publish a paper if your model isn't well known and you don't explain it.
http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/abrupt-clim...
And at that time there were no 7 billion people and no world economy that would be affected.
Also, the temperatures that we can reach are going in the direction that can be higher than those recorded in the last 5 million years! If we "do something" we can stay at one or two degrees, not crossing that target. If we "don't do anything" it can be 4 (or even 6) degrees warming, 2 (or 4) degrees more than the maximum(!) in the last 5 million years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record#/media/File...
That's why there's so much worry.
As another commentor pointed out, this is a trivial fact known to all researchers in the field. If this was actually a devastating reply, then it would be pointed out in peer reviewed journals.
One of the more roundabout ways of calling someone a liar that I've seen.
"volcanos erupted causing a cold period that lasted from the 1600s to the late 1800s"
Correlation vs causation - while the volcanic winter phenomenon is well-known, there are those that propose that solar activity is the primary driver of climate on Earth:
https://www.amazon.com/Neglected-Sun-Precludes-Catastrophe-I...
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/08/12/winter-is...
Not to say that the greenhouse effect is not real, or that anthropogenic CO2 does not cause warming - just that the magnitude of the effect may well be greatly over-hyped.
EDIT:
To explicitly address the argument here:
It's not disingenuous to compare to 1880 because if you were to choose any date earlier, you would come to the same conclusion. (It's nice to start with 1880 where we have actual records because then you can avoid arguments about the method you used to make projections about past temperatures).
"When the people say ''the climate has changed before'' these are the kinds of changes they're talking about"
(that is, we posted the same link at roughly the same time)
Here's more on that theory -- with appropriate links to source material from the UN. https://www.reddit.com/r/climateskeptics/comments/441rl6/un_...
This is not dissimilar to the Eugenics debates in the early 20th century: it was 'settled science' advocated by thought leaders and politicians at the time -- some with noble intentions but ultimately the core of the issue was the elimination of so-called undesirables in society using 'science' as a rationale. Look at documents and speeches by Eugenics proponents at the time -- strangly similar to the "settled science" arguments one hears today. The purpose of the Eugenics movements was far different than the climate movement today -- but no less nefarious depending on the side of the issue you may fall.
I'm really amazed at how climate skeptics try their best to twist and distort reality to rationalize their comfortable but unsustainable lifestyle. Why not pull out Occam's razor and realize that 99% of all environmentalists are worried about the future of human life on this planet, because a lot of data is pointing in that direction, and are not involved in any nefarious global conspiracy theory?
This reads so clearly as a projection from climate deniers, heavily invested in protecting their stake in the current world economic model.
The huge problem is 1880 was one of the coldest years in history. That cold period was caused by volcanism, several volcanos erupted causing a cold period that lasted from the 1600s to the late 1800s. This period is known as the little ice age. The worst of this period was in 1816 which was known as the "year without a summer." The Earth has gradually been warming since then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
So when we track from the little ice age to now and say the world as gotten warmer and present this as unusual or surprising findings, you know that they are not being honest with you.
I'm not saying that climate change isn't happening, I'm not saying it isn't man made. All I'm pointing out here is that proponents of global warming aren't engaging with the facts in an honest and forthright way.