Comment by jb613 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jb613 | Hacker News Reader

Interesting counter-argument[1] suggests 1) data was cherry picked:

"The alarmistic claim originates from riding the positive phase of the inter-annual, decadal and multi-decadal oscillations typical of the sea levels over a cherry picked short time window of 10-15 years, neglecting what was measured before 1994 by another tide gauge in pretty much same location, and also neglecting what has been measured in the same tide gauge since 2009.

Short records do not permit to clear the trend of the inter-annual, decadal and multi-decadal oscillations [4-8]. In the Solomon Islands there is no tide gauge long enough to infer a proper trend. However, the information available permits to dismiss the alarmist claim of 7-10 mm yr-1 rate of rise."

2) statistically not enough data for trends in sea levels:

"Also including Honiara II, starting from December 1974 the rate of rise is +2.81 mm yr-1. The time window is now 42 years long, still insufficient, but certainly more reasonable. Considering 60-70 years of data are needed to start understanding a trend in sea levels, very likely these +2.81 mm yr-1 are still an overestimation of the relative rate of rise."

[1] https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/05/10/busted-claim-data-sho...

Are you really comfortable citing them?

Here's a discussion of the author of that post's prior work: https://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/making-up-stuff/

edit: fascinating how easy it is to be downvoted simply by pointing out the lack of credibility of AGW skeptics. On one hand, you have the overwhelming majority (97-74%) of professional scientist saying (respectively) that global warming is occuring or that it's man-made and provable with existing science. On the other hand, you have people with dubious credentials, poor ethics, and/or extraordinary conflicts of interest as paid fellow at Cato, Heartland, AEI, et al.

All of this is easily verified by simple use of a search engine. Since... just about nobody here is a professional climate researcher, I think all we can go on is the credibility of sources of information. It is not ad hominem to bring someone's motivation and prior record into consideration.

> On one hand, you have the overwhelming majority (97-74%) of professional scientist saying (respectively) that global warming is occuring or that it's man-made and provable with existing science.

To me there's a big difference between acknowledging that it's occurring and saying it is primarily caused by man. We know we've gone through these cycles in the past.

Actually, assuming your quote is correct, I find it a bit offensive that the "or" is typically presented as "and" in the mainstream narrative.

>overwhelming majority (97-74%) of professional scientist saying

I've never understood this argument. What does agreement of other scientists from unrelated fields have to do with the soundness of a scientific theory? It's a thinly-veiled appeal to authority that I think really weakens non-scientific peoples' perceptions about how science works.

>Since... just about nobody here is a professional climate researcher

And neither are the majority of professional scientists that agree. Every scientist I've worked with (computational physics) doesn't know anything about climate science and (probably rightly) assumes that the people in the field know what they are doing so they agree because they trust the process. However, the approval of scientists in unrelated fields is about a relevant as the approval of a politician. So just stick with facts about the research itself.

Additionally, there have been many times where "the overwhelming majority of scientists" have believed something that is incorrect. The thing that makes science special is that it is not a democracy. Theories are validated on their logic and evidence, not on whether or not they please a particular community of people.

tl;dr. Stop bringing up how many people agree with something. It's not scientifically relevant.

If most experts in a field believe X, you should believe X unless you have good reason otherwise.

Anyway, if that was the argument in isolation, you'd have a better point. There's also the matter of the rapid measured temperature increase in 20th century, glacial retreat, mass coral die-offs, historical records of Arctic sea ice, the body of published peer-reviewed work on it, among many other things.

And... I take particular offense to "it's not scientifically relevant." There is a big difference between interpreting information and practicing science. The author of the link previously published an article with basic errors in its science and his two coauthors partially disavowed the work. He is publishing on a non-peer reviewed site with a known bias.

And if you want get specific, read the provided "rebuttal" link. It basically amounts to "The 7-10 mm/yr claim is alarmist! If you look at this other tidal gauge, it's almost 10 mm/yr from 1995 onward, but it looks like it may have slowed to 5 mm/yr since then. Also, if you go back to 1974 - 20 before the uptrend starts - it's ony 3mm/yr!"

>If most experts in a field believe X, you should believe X unless you have good reason otherwise.

True, unless a person believes the whole field is bunk. e.g. numerology, technical analysis (looking for shapes in stock charts), faith healing, etc. Many smarter people I talk to (not typical hurr-durr Al Gore sucks types) that don't buy into the global warming story think that the climate is too complex for the current modeling to mean anything.

>Anyway, if that was the argument in isolation, you'd have a better point. There's also the matter of the rapid measured temperature increase in 20th century, glacial retreat, mass coral die-offs, historical records of Arctic sea ice, the body of published peer-reviewed work on it, among many other things.

I'm not disputing global warming. I was merely critiquing using popularity as a support for your argument. The real data is so much more powerful that adding that actually detracts from the evidence.

>And... I take particular offense to "it's not scientifically relevant." There is a big difference between interpreting information and practicing science.

A major theory has never won over critical-thinking people with the argument "it must be right because X group says so". It always comes down to actual proofs, experiments, and analysis that bring it into general acceptance. e.g. it's not scientifically relevant who believed in "spooky action at a distance" from quantum mechanics, it's only relevant that it was mathematically/physically sound and eventually shown in experiments.

>And if you want get specific, read the provided "rebuttal" link.

My comment is purely focused on using popularity amongst scientists as a tool for arguments. I am fine with showing that he/she is full of shit via logical/evidence-based rebuttals.

> True, unless a person believes the whole field is bunk. e.g. numerology, technical analysis (looking for shapes in stock charts), faith healing, etc.

Are you comparing climatology with those subjects?

From the perspective of a denialist, that's how they will essentially view the field. So you need to understand that and realize that arguments from authority are very weak in that regard.

>think that the climate is too complex for the current modeling to mean anything.

"We dont know enough, so we're sure we are correct and they are wrong" is about the dumbest reasoning I can think of, I'm sure those are really smart people you're talking to...

That's a bit of a strawman of their thinking. It's closer to, "we don't know enough, so we need to be very careful about creating policies that are economically destructive to entire industries (and subsequently industries that depend on those) that depend on cheap energy. It's not common for me to hear people claim that they are certain that the climate research is completely wrong, it's usually that the feel the evidence isn't strong enough to make such broad changes to how the world's economy functions.

It's a much easier perspective to understand when you realize how many of these peoples' lives are directly tied to oil/gas/aviation/etc. Assuming complete stupidity or malice on their part does very little to advance the argument or accomplish anything in general other than feeling good about yourself.

But it is relevant bringing as sources people that is not an expert in the field?

The articles I read claiming the 97% consensus are really bad science. One (Anderegg) was a questionnaire sent to scientists with three very generic questions. IIRC, a number of scientists didn't reply, and the 97% figure even comes from ignoring those who replied two the first two questions but not the third one.

The other (Cook et al. 2013) takes incredibly generic mentions of climate change in papers' abstracts to infer a consensus (stuff like: "co2, a major responsible if climate change, also plays an important role in (something completely different)." Turns out that a lot of times scientists mention climate change in their abstracts as pure click bait.

> "It is not ad hominem to bring someone's motivation and prior record into consideration."

I don't speak latin and don't use that expression often. Are you saying it's not ad hominem because the motive is considered as opposed to attacked? I ask because I had thought that it is ad hominem "to bring someone's motivation and prior record into consideration".

Here's the definition on Wikipedia: "a logical fallacy in which an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

I didn't read the link of this post, or the link in your comment, so hopefully I didn't miss something. I was just curious since I thought "ad hominem" describes what you were saying is not ad hominem.

An Ad Hominem attack is misdirection. It's saying the war in Iraq was good because some reporter who said it was bad is a dick. Ad Hominem attacks are Non Sequiturs. It is not an Ad Hominem attack to suggest a reporter might not a credible source because of their history of being a dick.

Bringing motivations or character into consideration is relevant to gauging the reliability of a cited witness. The consideration of their reputation is not an attack on the subject matter, it is bringing into question whether they should be considered a reliable witness.

Well, you are wrong. Ad Hominem means, "X is wrong because Y making that claim is a jerk".

I am saying "X is a claim in a highly technical field that most of us lack expertise in. Y making that claim has a made large factual errors in prior publications, and his claims run contrary to the vast majority of his peers."

Sorry if you miss the nuance in my point. People also have referred to this concept as "taking with a grain of salt" or "heuristics".

Now, outside of arguments over semantics, the link article is lousy and the interpretation over what the lousy article claims by the great-grandparent post are incorrect.

The TL;DR of the linked article is: "They should have used data from another sensor, too. Based on 5 months of overlap, I'm going to assume I can just adjust the other sensor's data and use them in a single trend. Even if you accept that, I'm going to use a linear regression in this new cherry picked range, after making a big point about the nonlinearity of the underlying data. Even minimizing it the most I can, it still shows a 40 year trend of 3 mm annual sea level increases."

> "Sorry if you miss the nuance in my point."

I interpreted your original comment similarly to your description in your reply, so I don't believe I missed nuance (unless I missed it twice). My comment and question were intended to clarify the meaning and usage of the expression "ad hominem", independent of this thread's topic and nuance in your comment. Like I mentioned, I don't use that expression often.

Are you saying Wikipedia's definition of ad hominem is wrong? It clearly says attacking a person's character or other attribute rather than the argument itself. A person's track record of mistakes is surely part of their character. A person's history agreement with others is too.

These really aren't compelling arguments. It's easy to call a crank a crank and dismiss him, but it's not easy to show why he's wrong. skeptics won't be satisfied with the personal attack that ignores the substance of the argument.

> edit: fascinating how easy it is to be downvoted simply by pointing out the lack of credibility of AGW skeptics.

I think you have it wrong.

Usually it seems far easier to get downvoted here if you are on the "sceptic" side.

That said in your case it might be because you go straight to attacking the credibility of the source without saying anything about the accusation of blatant cherry picking of data.

Some commenters try to point out that those 97% of scientists that you refer to are a result of a pretty interesting way to do surveys and statistics.

And it only takes one Galileo to observe that the sun doesn't rotate around the earth.

It is annoying to have to refute every claim instead of wrapping them in a "denier" blanket statement and rubber stamp with "97% of scientists disagree" (for extremely fuzzy values of 97)

Edit: I work in solar and have previously worked in recycling. I am a sceptic possibly about to become a believer but what I perceive as arrogant PC rubber stamping of anyone who asks questions is really annoying to me.

nobody suggested ad hominem - you did. However, the underlying tactic that ad hominem attacks are used for is misdirection - and since you brought up ad hominem, I'll point out you did not bother to dispute the actual arguments the counter article made. Specifically - the data was cherry picked, and that there simply is not enough data to draw a reasonable conclusion.

IMHO, dropping tidal gauges mid-data, ignoring annual, tidal, and multi-decadal trends are things that should not be so easily dismissed.

WUWT as a source?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com