I don't think the current situation in climate science shows that "science is broken". I think it shows that climate scientists have been too quick to claim the credibility of Science when their work does not measure up to that standard. (Climate science is certainly not the only field that does this: much of what passes for "scientific research" in the social sciences doesn't meet the standard either.) That's not to say we shouldn't be trying to figure out how the climate works; it's saying that you don't claim the mantle of Science until you can back it up.

What the fuck are you talking about?

Observations and models are repeated and challenged far more in climate science than most other fields. It is a good example of science working exactly as it should. I'm not sure where you think climate science has gone astray but considering how expensive and difficult controlled experiments in climate science are, I think climate science does an amazingly good job.

To clarify: yes, there are lots of bad papers in climate science (see Sturgeon's Law) but science does not require every paper to be accurate (in fact, you need a few extremist ideas to try to shake things up). Science requires rigorous retesting of theories to narrow the target and climate science is one field where that's happening all the time. Climate science's continuous observations does a pretty good job at sidelining inaccurate papers within a couple years (a quick turnaround all things considered).

Climate science's problem is non scientists misrepresenting, misinterpreting and misunderstanding. The science itself is exactly what you'd want for every scientific field.

You're kidding, right? Please show your work. [Edit: I saw your correction, and have adjusted my quote above, but my response is still the same: please show your work.]

science does not require every paper to be accurate (in fact, you need a few extremist ideas to try to shake things up).

I quite agree, and I wasn't trying to claim that all, or even most, papers published in other fields are accurate.

Climate science's problem is non scientists misrepresenting, misinterpreting and misunderstanding. The science itself is exactly what you'd want for every scientific field.

I disagree, but I doubt we're going to resolve the question here.

That may be an overstatement; see the Standard Model of physics.

Climate science even got a physics prof from Berzerkely (who was convinced that only physicists knew how to do science right) who went in with an anti-climatology bias, and was funded by the Koch brother, and he replicated climatology results in the "BEST" study -- to the point where journals like Nature turned down publishing the BEST study because it was not new information and only confirming already well known scientific facts. So a Koch-backed study has actually determined that climate science really is science. That's like the Catholic church in the 1600s funding someone to investigate Galileo and publishing that it looks like the Earth goes around the Sun after all...

Reference, please?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-...

http://berkeleyearth.org/

I note two things on a first read-through:

(1) The project confirmed the data on temperature trends, but the error bar sizes are only reasonable back to about 1860; further back than that, the error bars get quite large. This is glossed over in the statements of findings: for example, the summary of findings (http://berkeleyearth.org/summary-of-findings) says: "Global land temperatures have increased by 1.5 degrees C over the past 250 years", but the error bars in 1750 are about +/- 1.5 C. You can't conclude anything reliably when the error bars are as large as the signal you think you see in the data.

(I also note, btw, that this conclusion is mis-stated in the NYT op-ed by Muller: it says "Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years". Neither of those statements are consistent with the summary of findings page on the project site, which claims, and shows, 1.5 C rise over the past 250 years, as above, and less than 1 C rise over the past 50 years.)

(2) The project looked at statistics on temperature trends to test whether the "urban heat island" effect might have biased the conclusions; since they saw the same trends when looking at rural areas only, they concluded that it didn't. But that isn't the only criticism Anthony Watts made of the individual station data: he claimed that the locations of many individual thermometers, urban and rural, were poorly chosen (the classic case is one that was placed in the hot air exhaust stream of an air conditioning unit). The Berkeley project did not go and eyeball individual stations, as Watts did, so they had no way of assessing this effect.

http://www.scitechnol.com/2327-4581/2327-4581-1-107.php

They used Watts own siting data and showed that both poor and good sites showed the same temperature trend over time.

The data back to 1860 are also sufficient to establish the current warming trend and through other analysis (e.g. Meehl, et al's work) to establish the climate sensitivity. Climate science as a discipline does not hinge on knowing exactly how warm it was 250 years ago within +/- 0.5C.

The data back to 1860 are also sufficient to establish the current warming trend

Only if you assume that there are no significant cyclic effects on longer time scales.

Climate science as a discipline does not hinge on knowing exactly how warm it was 250 years ago within +/- 0.5C.

It does if you're claiming, as the IPCC does based on the input of climate scientists, that temperatures now are warmer than they have been in at least several thousand years.

There's no postulated mechanism for how this could be the case - where is the extra energy or heat retention coming from and managing to come into play so suddenly since the 1970s?

Whereas, if one accounts for anthropogenic CO2, it explains it superbly.

I'm implying no such thing. Consider an analogy: I look at the temperature trend from February through May and conclude that I have enough data to show a significant warming trend. I therefore predict that by November, the planet will be dangerously overheated.

Obviously I have ignored a cyclic effect on a longer timescale. Is it "highly exponential" as you describe?

long periods of no warming, and then sudden periods of rapid warming

This is not what the data shows; at least, not if you look at all the data, not just a few selected temperature reconstructions that are questionable (at best) anyway. The data in full, looking at a number of different fields, shows a cycle with a period of about 800 to 1000 years; the last iteration of the cycle consisted of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, and we are nearing the next maximum of the cycle now.

This is not to say that human activities (of which CO2 emissions are only one component: why is it that nobody talks about land use?) have had no effect on the climate. (Arguably, humans terraforming the planet has been a significant factor in keeping another Ice Age from starting.) But if you're using the wrong baseline, it's tough to separate the human effects from the other effects.

That's what anthropogenic climate change is - since the only effect that suitably explains warming is increased eCO2 in the atmosphere.

Absent (effective)CO2 increases, you can't explain the warming trend. There shouldn't be one as pronounced.

If you're going to say "well what if there's a long cycle" - then well, what is it exactly? Where is all this additional heat retention in the atmosphere coming from? There are no multi-decadal phenomena on Earth which can explain the temperature record.

EDIT: The data for example, does not show a 1000 year cycle. You're inferring there's a cycle, by doing what you accuse others of - pointing to a graph, and declaring that because it looks "roughly" cyclical it is.

I understand that that is the "official" view of climate science, but that doesn't mean it's right. I don't think we're going to resolve that sort of dispute here, but if your only argument is from authority--"climate science says so"--then that's not enough for me. I don't think climate science as a field has exercised sufficient care to be just taken at their word.

If you're going to say "well what if there's a long cycle" - then well, what is it exactly?

Nobody knows for sure; we don't understand how the climate works well enough for that. But the fact that we don't have a theory that explains the cycle doesn't mean there isn't one.

Where is all this additional heat retention in the atmosphere coming from?

Actually, the amount of heat being retained in the atmosphere is miniscule on a planetary scale. The significant heat sink is the oceans. You have to be careful distinguishing between heat and temperature.

As for where it's coming from, as above, we don't understand all the causal factors at work; the fact that we have studied one intensively (CO2) does not mean that one must be the only significant one. (The IPCC report itself lists a number of significant causal factors as having a "low" level of scientific understanding.)

The data for example, does not show a 1000 year cycle.

Whose data? I understand that the "Hockey Stick" does not show a 1000 year cycle, but the "Hockey Stick" is not data; it's a (questionable at best) reconstruction of temperatures from data. We do not have direct temperature data from 1000 years ago, and as far as indirect data, there is plenty to indicate that there was indeed a Medieval Warm Period and a Little Ice Age, as I said.

We know about cyclical effects on longer time scales like Milankovich cycles, we understand solar variation and volcanic effects. We know about the Younger Dryas and Daansgard-Oeschger cycles. We know about shorter term oscillations like the AMO and PDO.

You apparently know nothing of any of this, and have never heard of Muller's BEST study even though it was splattered all over the New York Times a few years back. Yet, you feel competent enough to make statements about how climatology isn't a real science.

We also know about something called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I didn't say climatology wasn't a real science. I said it's not an accurate enough science to justify making policy decisions with huge consequences. Plenty of other real sciences are in the same state; that's to be expected, since it's a phase every real science has to go through in order to become accurate enough.

b) You expect us to believe that you have developed substantive critiques of a 3-year research project in 24 minutes of reading. (the delta between our post timestamps)

c) IMO whatever credibility you might have had to debate the science in detail is forfeited by your un-ironic reliance on the blog of a retired TV weather guy. EDIT: this is wrong, I confused you with another poster in this thread who had previously linked to the Watts blog. My apologies.

I don't expect you to "believe" anything. I expect you to look at the items I pointed out and see what you think of them. If you don't agree with them, feel free to give specific reasons why not.

your un-ironic reliance on the blog of a retired TV weather guy.

I didn't bring Watts into it; the Berkeley project did. I was merely commenting on something that Watts had emphasized but I didn't see mention of in the first set of links (lamontcg gave another link that does deal with that specific issue, I'll take a look at it).

You need to do some research first. The fact that you had never heard of the BEST study indicates that you don't know the most superficial details about climate science and this debate (and ones that were splattered across the New York Times). I'm not going to do the work to educate you. I expect YOU to do research before you demand me to produce a 250-paper annotated bibliography of climate science and its justification. Come back when you can explain the radiative physics behind CO2 being a greenhouse gas and how it can be shown in a table-top experiment, and when you know what Milankovich cycles are. Explain what caused the last Ice Age to end, be prepared to discuss the PETM. Explain the theories behind the warming that led up to the Eocene optimum 49 million years ago and the subsequent cooling after that. Climate science is more than just arguing about anthropogenic global warming. If you want a place to start, go here:

http://www.amazon.com/Earths-Climate-William-F-Ruddiman/dp/0...

Then start hacking away at these:

http://www.amazon.com/Paleoclimatology-International-Geophys... http://www.amazon.com/Principles-of-Planetary-Climate-ebook/...

Try getting off the Internet and exposing yourself to some actual science and not arguments about science.

I entirely agree; but to the extent that climate science is being used to justify policy decisions with huge consequences, it is about anthropogenic global warming, since that's what the political debate is about.

c) is wrong; I mistook you for someone else in the discussion. I noted so in an edit.

For the rest, I think lamontcg put it better than I could have.

I just saw the edit, thanks for clarifying.

Also, what's with the capitalising of Science like it's some kind of club or organisation? "Science" is not a proper noun - making it one is facilitating dogma.

Yes, that's true; I shouldn't have singled out social sciences.

what's with the capitalising of Science like it's some kind of club or organisation?

It's meant to convey the fact that climate scientists basically tell politicians "look, Science says you have to do X, Y, Z or we're doomed". They are claiming that their results are good enough to drive policy choices that have huge consequences, and politicians believe it because it's Science--they see it as the same as if astronomers came to them and said "look, we've calculated that asteroid A is going to hit the Earth unless we do X, Y, and Z; we've checked the numbers every which way and there's no other option." But climate science as a field is simply not accurate enough to justify that.

It discusses the very phenomenon that research grants go to increasingly bigger groups that can be trusted to deliver. And also string theory research itself which did get a ton of grant money during the 1990's even though the results never had impact outside the bubble itself.

Edit, some searching helped me find it: Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics

If you agree with every fact in the article, why would you look for a hidden agenda?

Your comment makes you seem a bit paranoid.

The main criticism in the article seems to be that, in much of current scientific practice, the self-correction doesn't happen immediately. Well, it would be helpful to know: (1) how does current state of self-correction compare to different times in the past, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago?, (2) what happens over the long term to papers that aren't refuted immediately but which later turn out to be obviously wrong? do they hang around and have a negative impact on progress of science? I'm sure there are more questions.

Another strangeness in the article: The article begins by touting a concern over a 1998 "priming" study. In the third paragraph, the article states that there have been nine (9!) subsequent studies that have failed to replicate the 1998 study's result. Is that not an example of the scientific self-correction working quite well? The article complains, "Either the original research is flawed (as the replicators claim) or the replications are (as many of the original researchers on priming contend). Either way, something is awry." Yes, something is awry. But it's hard to see how it's the scientific method/process itself, which seems to be doing exactly what it's supposed to: calling the 1998 paper into question. (Is the main concern here just that more bad or questionable science is being published than in the past? I'm sure that's true, but there are also many more studies being published in this era and it seems not surprising that overall quality would decline.)

Like some others at HN, I get concerned when I see pieces like this that the science-haters will latch on to and use to discredit the scientific method itself. The article itself _should not_ be taken that way, by anyone who understands science. But there are many who don't understand science, who are anti-science, etc.

Wrong. This is not the main criticism of the article. It is not a problem if self-correction doesn't happen immediately. It is, however, a problem if the rate of self-correction is not fast enough to compensate for the ratio of 'horrifyingly wrong' to 'generally correct' papers.

Ideally, you'd like to see the original study being discredited before the point where 9 separate studies have exposed serious problems with it (and it's not clear that it's been discredited yet). Papers continue to pick up citations even after they've been formally retracted; that's also not a good example of self-correction working well even though the retraction process is supposed to be self-correction. Correction hasn't happened until people stop believing in problematic papers.

Something they can point to to rebuke scientific studies because they don't believe the scientific study is valid.

I too didn't understand the point of this article. Nor how it showed that science is not self-correcting. To me it just talked about some issues with scientific research but didn't support it's headline at all. I've never heard anyone claim that science was self-correcting in the short term, these things take decades and sometimes even centuries to self-correct.

And honestly that's ok. Science is all about having the best answer we can have, not the right answer. It's impossible to know we are right beyond the shadow of a doubt. We need to scrutinize how we research and improve our methods as we figure out how to but that doesn't mean science has some major issue. That's jut how it works and how it has historically worked as far as I know.

But it may be a stretch to say this is someone trying to discredit global warming.

Science isn't broken. People claim what they see, sometimes they are wrong, sometimes they are right. But eventually we find out the truth.

Maybe they're advocating for something specific here (it's honestly unclear), but given that the Economist almost never writes anything of substance about science, and given their political bias, it isn't at all paranoid to wonder if this article has a subtext. It's called "being an intelligent consumer of media".

Also, just two weeks ago, they published a "leader" (primary article expressing the editorial position of the paper) that was very critical of climate change deniers.

[1] http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21587224-all-means-que...

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/09/ipcc-climate-...

To put it in the language you seem to prefer, Bill O'Reilly thinks the Economist leans left. I disagree with Mr. O'Reilly's employers and will not send them traffic, but support for this claim is easily googled.

ETA: The link above is more flip than I'd like. Try this:

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21587224-all-means-que...

That said, I think the piece is puzzling, not that I'm sure it's a right-wing hatchet job on science.

Another issue that's problematic is that when you look at the archaeological evidence, the earth has actually been through several heating/cooling cycles. I mean, the last glacial period was fairly recent, we know the earth is warmer now, and we strongly suspect it was warmer before the glacial period.

Furthermore, no proper experiment is possible to explain why the earth is warming at the current rate, if the rate is natural or caused by humans, etc...

Questioning the human causes of climate change doesn't automatically lead to creationism, it's simply a rational question to ask.

Putting it another way, environmentalists defend that we can't change anything about the environment to such an absolute extreme, that I smell religious-like zealotry.

Fortunately, the solution is a couple of decades away, through electric transportation, coupled with solar/wind renewables. No CO2 but also no "pristine Earth" nonsense.

The questions you ask are legitimate.

HN has no particular attraction for fundamentalist Christians.

For the record, I'm pretty anti-corporation, but for different reasons. I feel that given the problems people face in their individual lives, communities, and even in broader society, and the earth as a whole it comes down to, what can we change easily today, what can we change with a minimal impact tomorrow, and what directions can we take to accomplish a given set of goals farther into the future.

First, what are the negative impacts of global warming? Can these be addressed in a more localized level? If they need to be addressed globally, how can that be prioritized and accomplished?

Second, have the issues and solutions been prioritized by impact:cost analysis?

Third, given impact:cost analysis and prioritization, are there smaller steps that could have a larger impact:cost ration that can improve a problem in the near term that could have a higher priority?

It may seem really insensitive to take a step back and look at things objectively.. but the "OMG, my grandkids won't ever see real trees!!!" approach is just as polarizing and ineffective as a whole as the religious nutters.

Totally OT as it is, what are you getting at here?

[1] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/14/90-climate-model-proje...

[2] http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2157446...

Criticising models is not the same as claiming that anthropogenic global warming is false. Indeed, Nate Silver makes the point that climatologists are their own greatest critics -- they collectively know the limits of their models better than almost everyone else.

So I'm not really sure why he's in your comment. If you've read what he writes, then you'll need to be building counterarguments to much of what he wrote on the topic; "models have problems" is just part of it.

Cherry picking two measurements of temperature data does not make for a convincing rebuttal against the overwhelming independent lines of evidence summarized in (among other places), the IPCC reports.

http://climateaudit.org/2013/10/08/fixing-the-facts-2/

The figure that was removed shows that measured temperatures are falling outside a 95% confidence interval from the multi-model mean.

This does not mean the climate will not warm, that C02 is not the major factor (or at least a major factor), but it does mean the models that are used for 100 year projections have failed after after 15 years and are running too hot.

It should be cause for celebration. The highest warming scenarios are considerably less likely.

This also does not mean that an emissions tax and spending on R&D on low emissions energy sources is unwise. But it should be factored into cost benefit analysis of climate change response.

Ultimately response to climate change is a public policy problem and is not just based on scientific data and projections.

Really, the response boils down to one question, how much is each of us willing to pay per year to respond? $10, $100, $1000, $10000?

But seriously: you're cherry picking one set of mean global temperature data, to dispute one graph in one IPCC report, for one line of evidence (of many). And your argument isn't rigorous or statistical -- some guy hand-drew some lines over the graphs, and asserts that it doesn't fit the data, even though the observed data lands pretty cleanly in the range of the models. And even if the models are off here, it doesn't invalidate the hypothesis of AGW. You can't win, even if you make a good argument here.

The reason nobody but climate denialists read these arguments is because they're pedantic and facile, not because there's a vast scientific conspiracy against you.

Furthermore, global climate models are tools for a particular kind of research, not the basis for the theory of global warming--which predates electronic computers by about 40 years.

Evolutionary theory cannot reliably predict complex outcomes either. For example, despite the relative biological simplicity of a flu virus, scientists struggle to predict the strain(s) that will be most virulent each year. But I never see posts on HN holding this failure up as proof that evolution is not believable.

> [...] we provide a number of illustrative examples and highlight key mechanisms that give rise to nonlinear behavior, address scale and methodological issues, suggest a robust alternative to prediction that is based on using integrated assessments within the framework of vulnerability studies and, lastly, recommend a number of research priorities and the establishment of education programs in Earth Systems Science.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B:CLIM.0000037493.8...

No. I promise you, there are scientists who literally cannot bring themselves to believe that any of the papers are crap, who buy into the Science as authority dogma. There are also scientists who do not have a depth of knowledge in any field, much less their own.

Why would a rational person criticize the assumption that climate changes?

That said, criticising assumptions is perfectly rational.

Tell that to the large group of anti-vaccine zealots.