To present (even a poster) at a conference like AGU, you have to submit an abstract and it must be accepted by a committee of other scientists. It's not a paper, but still counts as a form of review and publication.

Edit to acknowledge: obviously a lot of work gets done informally during conferences as well.

But it's in the service of publishable research, is it not? I don't think many scientists are going to say, "I'm changing my research program based on something I read on Hacker News yesterday." There's a bar for serious consideration.