News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:U.S. has its wettest 12 months on record again by viraptor on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @07:35PM (#20397854)
Statistics is a part of science. It's perfectly valid to use scientific methods to arrive at: this is the current trend, this increase started at year X, given all we know right now, there's a tiny chance that this increase is not caused by this specific change. From there we can extrapolate future changes with some likelihood brackets. Then feel free to discuss the brackets, the methodology, etc. but you can't really dispute this as a scientific method.

This is literally how current drug research (well, validation) works. It would be great if we could model the entire body-drug interaction, but in the meantime the statistics we have are the best thing we have available.

Re:U.S. has its wettest 12 months on record again by ThomPete on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @10:42PM (#20398781)
Statistics is part of science but that doesent make it science just as little as math or a feather and a bowlingball does.

Science is a process with some disciplines allowing us to be very precise and others not so much.

Climate science is a very imprecise type of science with so much uncertainty that all we can do is offer ranges of output based on ranges of initial conditions, we dont even know which conditions are correct and we dont know what we are missing. Even the data we put into the models are highly debatable, and then we havent even added the fact that 125 years is not some objective way to measure naural vs human made influence.

But sure as usual just downvote all you want, that doesent make computer models or statistics any more science.

Re:U.S. has its wettest 12 months on record again by hutzlibu on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @03:12AM (#20399802)
"But sure as usual just downvote all you want, that doesent make computer models or statistics any more science."

As usual. Ignorance, while feeling self righteous. But out of curiosity, have you actually studied some science, that you can make such bold claims, that computer models and statistics have nothing todo with science?

But maybe a different way: you really believe that all what humanity does, has no influence on the climate?

Or in other words, what part of the greenhouse effect, does not make sense to you?

Re:U.S. has its wettest 12 months on record again by ThomPete on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @07:41AM (#20400981)
I have studied how the computer models work yes. And i know what the difference between what is speculated and what is demonstrated and what is demonstrated in a lab under controlled circumstances and then what can be demonstrated in a non linear chaotic system like the climate.

There is nothing about the greenhouse effect that doesent make sense to me, the problem i have is with claims about what computer modeling can be used for.

Re:U.S. has its wettest 12 months on record again by hutzlibu on Thursday July 11, 2019 @04:15AM (#20409945)
"problem i have is with claims about what computer modeling can be used for. "

Ok, we agree on that. But so far I only heird weird claims from the media, activist and politician side. The actual scientists do point out the limitations of their models. But still, if the overwhelming majority of the involved scientists say all their models and data does indeed point to human made climate change and warming ... then maybe there is something to it?

Re:U.S. has its wettest 12 months on record again by ThomPete on Sunday July 14, 2019 @12:59PM (#20434438)
Their data don't point to that, they are interpreting the data as if it does which there isn't any scientific evidence to support. Only speculation (it could be other things like the sun, natural variation and so many other things which they haven't been able to rule out)