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Comment by svara | Hacker News Reader

The "X% of scientists agree" point is of course not a scientific argument, and I understand how it could be taken the wrong way, either as an appeal to authority or as a cheap regurgitation of canned talking points.

But go ahead and read the full discussion here. I think a lack of patience with the dishonest discussion tactics used by poorly informed people arguing against the scientific state of the art is totally understandable. On an emotional level I can totally understand why you would like to just say "shut up and listen to 97% of the scientists".

I've been told repeatedly in this discussion section to listen properly to people holding alternative points of view, instead of just assuming that they're uninformed. Yet as soon as you dig, the "scientific arguments" evaporate. For a beautiful example of this, see the comment I just wrote at <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21820189>.

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> The "X% of scientists agree" point is of course not a scientific argument

But it's presented as such. Is this, and similar examples, a "big deal"?

Another way of asking that is: is trust a big deal? And the answer is: we do not know - but guessing at such things doesn't seem like a terribly prudent strategy when the stakes are this high.

> and I understand how it could be taken the wrong way

Can, and is, regularly....and as a representation of the degree of ignorance of those who "don't buy into" (or so it is perceived) climate change. "97% percent of scientists agree, but these denier idiots think they're smarter than 97% of scientists!!! lolololllll".

The problem is, that 97% meme isn't factual. I'm not sure how many "deniers" actually know it isn't, but I know it isn't, and the complete lack of concern for actual facts (as opposed to factoids) by the pro camp in this debate kind of disgusts me, and leaves me with an illogical urge for non-cooperative-behavior. I wonder if I'm the only one that feels this way. I also wonder if I'm the only one that thinks about the significance of how people's feelings affects their behavior, because it sure seems that way.

> I think a lack of patience with the dishonest discussion tactics used by poorly informed people arguing against the scientific state of the art is totally understandable.

I wonder though, how often "dishonest discussion tactics used by poorly informed people..." is actually a less-than-entirely accurate characterization of what's really going on. I've been accused of all sorts of horrible beliefs and intentions, all without a shred of supporting evidence in my actual words. People are arguing with their imagination of me, not the actual me. I point this out, and no one cares. Their interest evaporates. Never underestimate the power of the imagination within the human mind, or the unwillingness of it to allow self-inspection.

> Yet as soon as you dig, the "scientific arguments" evaporate.

Agreed, sometimes if not usually, this is indeed the case. However, this phenomenon sometimes works in the other direction as well, you being a pleasant exception obviously.

"is trust a big deal? And the answer is: we do not know"

Trust is a very big deal. The biggest deal. As long as you are not a specialist on climate science yourself, all you can do is trust. That is true for all scientific endeavors. We pick people we trust and more or less believe in their stance on things.

> Trust is a very big deal. The biggest deal.

100% agree. And yet, observe the lack of concern in the "pro" camp (some of it on display here) where there is clear evidence for reasonable lack of trust.

I'm not asking that you adopt my beliefs, but if you stop and think about this discrete (lack of concern over at least partially justified distrust) point, does it not seem to be potentially a big deal as well (in that it might actually be driving human behavior)?

> As long as you are not a specialist on climate science yourself, all you can do is trust.

I disagree. Just two of many alternative actions:

- do your own research, to try to get a feel for how trustworthy the message is (for example, are there any clear mistruths being peddled)

- do not assume the message is necessarily correct, and repeat it as if it is absolute fact. History has taught us this lesson.

> We pick people we trust and more or less believe in their stance on things.

Some people do, others do not.

Considering a political consensus needs to be reached, it seems to me that it might be worthwhile expending some additional mental horsepower on the lower level details of why we seem to be incapable of achieving this, rather than just guessing at why people won't get on board. It's rather disappointing that this notion seems to be considered dumb in a normally rational community such as HN, and that it does seem to be considered dumb among the intelligent is to me an extremely interesting and counter-intuitive phenomenon in itself, that also may warrant some investigation.

"Yet as soon as you dig, the "scientific arguments" evaporate. For a beautiful example of this, see the comment I just wrote at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21820189 . "

The opposing side has just the same experience with the arguments and papers from your side - there are many articles and papers questioning and criticizing papers from the doomsday side. You are just cherry picking and practicing confirmation bias (see, another paper refuted, so my side must be right). In fact the "95% of scientists agree" is just such an example - if you look into it, the number becomes very questionable. And once people see one of your arguments is shoddy, why should they give your other arguments the benefit of the doubt?

And your answer, as well as the comment you were replying to: it might as well all just be gibberish, for someone who isn't a climate scientist.

And in the end your refutation boils down to "we know that CO2 traps heat and warms the earth" - which is presumably true, but people don't seem to agree on the extent of it. And other factors seem to affect it, too.

Why do you even believe the "CO2 traps heat" thing? I tend to believe it, too. But that is because I was taught it does back in high school, 35 years ago. Maybe it actually was bullshit already back then, but as a teenager, I didn't know that what teachers said could be questioned.

I don't think any of us has done an actual experiment trapping heat with CO2...

> there are many articles and papers questioning and criticizing papers from the doomsday side

Name a few please.

> Why do you even believe the "CO2 traps heat" thing?

Same reason why we believe radiation is bad for people. Nobody of us has done any actual experiments on splitting atoms. But some people do. They published the results. They can be verified and reproduced. It's called science.

"Name a few please."

I already mentioned the Cook paper that gave us the "97% consensus" number.

(Edit: for completeness sake, here is an article debunking the number. I haven't read it and don't know if it has any merit, it is just the first Google result. https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/02/debunking_the_9... - the point stands, though, that you can find articles refuting pretty much anything you want, these days).

Other than that, I didn't keep track, and I only encounter such discussions randomly every now and then.

I would wager a guess, that you could find a counter reaction for most important climate science papers. Just google for them.

"But some people do. They published the results. They can be verified and reproduced. It's called science. "

In principle, yes, but your idea of science is highly idealized. In reality, most things are not as established and as verified as you believe them to be. Politics, egos, all sorts of things play a part. If you look back in history, there are many cases where people believed wrong things until their main representatives died, for example.

Also one problem with climate science is presumably that you can not simply do experiments to verify its claims. That might a huge part of the problem.

Again it mostly boils down to trust - trusting the scientists who do the verifying, trusting the institutions who employ and endorse the scientists.

What you and climate doomsayers don't seem to understand is that a lot of people don't trust the institutions anymore. And rightfully so.

I suspect a lot of the rage is actually about this: people who can't stand the thought that the institutions they trust can't be trusted, so fighting any challenges to their world view with tooth and nails.

And people who feel betrayed by the institutions they used to trust.

That doesn't mean all science is false. But it makes it harder to find the truth.

Yes, part of it boils down to trust. Another part of it boils down to common sense. You could argue that common sense is: "Human behavior too insignificant to have any impact". Or you could argue that common sense is: "If you take too many shits in your environment, they'll come and bite you back sooner or later." I actually think the latter is more reasonable. It's quite tangible.

Do you even realize how exchangeable your last 4 paragraphs are? See:

What you and climate change deniers don't seem to understand is that a lot of people don't trust the institutions anymore. And rightfully so.

And people who feel betrayed by the institutions they used to trust [so they pick obscure papers, obscure individuals and claim that they are right and climate change is not a real thing, or at least not caused by humans].

> But it makes it harder to find the truth.

For sure, but as an individual, you don't need to find the absolute truth. There is a very simple idea in protecting the environment: If you try to be resourceful and protect your environment, it probably has more benefits than exploiting the environment and polluting it. It simply doesn't matter whether climate science is right or not. Reducing pollution is always something worth fighting for, no matter if it has any effects on the global climate.

I'm actually on your side with the "actions have consequences" logic. That still doesn't imply the consequences are "extinction of the human race".

I'm also all for handling in ecologically responsible and sustainable ways.

However, what is being proposed is adoption of unproven technology on a massive scale, at an enormous price. That is where the logic falls apart. Many times before, it has turned out that such forced technology changes were actually damaging to the environment.

If the new technology was actually better, in most cases it would be adopted without government pressure.

The extremism is the problem.

Who claims "extinction of the human race"? I don’t think this is what is claimed by serious scientists.

> However, what is being proposed is adoption of unproven technology on a massive scale, at an enormous price.

Which one are you talking about? The simulator website that this HN thread links to actually names taxes/subsidies and renewable energies that are already around as the most effective levers to keep temperature below 2 degrees Celsius.

> If the new technology was actually better, in most cases it would be adopted without government pressure.

Doesn’t explain why existing technology is still subsidized and renewable energy is not. Doesn’t explain why meat production and livestock factories are subsidized, or at least not taxed more. Eating less meat is one lever. Achievable by taxes. No side effects, no unproven technologies.

For example, in Germany, meat is taxed at 7%. Why? Why not 19%? This has nothing to do with being extreme. It’s a reasonable thing to implement.

So, please name the extreme things that you are afraid of.

> The opposing side has just the same experience with the arguments and papers from your side - there are many articles and papers questioning and criticizing papers from the doomsday side. You are just cherry picking and practicing confirmation bias

I was doing the literal opposite of cherry-picking, I was digging into the arguments as they were presented to me. So far nothing has held up. If you can give me an argument with a proper source I'll happily look into that as well.

> In fact the "95% of scientists agree" is just such an example - if you look into it, the number becomes very questionable.

A very poor example on many levels. 1) This statement is fundamentally irrelevant to the (scientific) discussion, because it does not contain a scientific argument. It could be 0%, it could be a 100%, that wouldn't change the validity of any of the scientific arguments presented. Truth isn't measured in mass appeal. 2) Yet, for someone who isn't well informed about a field, putting some trust in the subject matter experts is an OK strategy, and the point that a consensus broadly exists in climate science is correct, and there is support for the precise number of 97%. [0]

> And your answer, as well as the comment you were replying to: it might as well all just be gibberish, for someone who isn't a climate scientist.

High energy particle physics is mostly gibberish to me, yet I don't go around lecturing people on how it's all wrong.

But your point is also wrong: I am not a climate scientist, and the whole discussion can be followed with a bit of high school physics, chemistry and biology, plus Wikipedia to fill in the gaps. Your next point shows that you were unwilling to put in that effort, but it isn't actually that hard ...

> And in the end your refutation boils down to "we know that CO2 traps heat and warms the earth"

It absolutely does not, I was addressing a very specific point about how historic CO2 levels are measured.

> Why do you even believe the "CO2 traps heat" thing?

Because you too can do things like look up the absorption spectrum for CO2 [1] or even do an experiment like [2] yourself.

[0] https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect#/media/File:...

[2] https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/10.1119/1.1987255

>> In fact the "95% of scientists agree" is just such an example - if you look into it, the number becomes very questionable. And once people see one of your arguments is shoddy, why should they give your other arguments the benefit of the doubt?

> In fact the "95% of scientists agree" is just such an example - if you look into it, the number becomes very questionable. <-------------

> A very poor example on many levels.

I'd like to draw your attention to something. Notice how you've dropped a key idea that @adventskalender pointed out: "And once people see one of your arguments is shoddy, why should they give your other arguments the benefit of the doubt?"

I think this type of behavior is interesting, common, and potentially consequential.

> 1) This statement is fundamentally irrelevant to the (scientific) discussion, because it does not contain a scientific argument.

And yet, it is commonly repeated on a regular basis in the "scientific" discussion, despite not being technically true.

> It could be 0%, it could be a 100%, that wouldn't change the validity of any of the scientific arguments presented.

It changes the rhetorical/persuasive value of it though.

> Truth isn't measured in mass appeal.

Perception of truth is.

> the point that a consensus broadly exists in climate science is correct

Then say that, rather then falsely report the statistically tortured "97%".

> and there is support for the precise number of 97%. [0]

I see only more rhetorical support for the number, not mathematical support. Not that it matters really, just sayin'.

> But your point is also wrong: I am not a climate scientist, and the whole discussion can be followed with a bit of high school physics, chemistry and biology, plus Wikipedia to fill in the gaps. Your next point shows that you were unwilling to put in that effort, but it isn't actually that hard ...

It may not be hard to "follow it", but what does that expression mean, and what does it not mean. I'm fairly certain it doesn't mean understood at a level sufficient to form epistemically sound conclusions. Again, high marks for persuasiveness, but I don't find this line of reasoning convincing. But that's me.

To be clear: I say this not in dispute of the actual science of climate change, the axe I am grinding is related to the nature of the conversation around it. I am hoping some people might become more willing to consider the possible detrimental consequences of the way this topic is discussed.

I feel like I have to address this "97% of scientists" point now, since this is coming up again and again.

I did not do this so far because it's ultimately beside the point. Climate science studies the climate, and not climate scientists, and I don't find the exact percentage of climate scientists agreeing or disagreeing with something at all interesting or relevant. Worse, harping on about that point makes it sound as if this was ultimately about some sort of popularity contest.

Well this is not a popularity contest, it's a scientific issue where there is a well-known method for making progress: You present logical arguments and counter-arguments, based on facts from credible sources (or original experiments). That's the only thing I'm interested in, and the he said / she said style of arguing that may get you points on reddit and twitter is super boring to me.

I've tried to make this point in various ways already, but it seems to be, possibly willfully, misunderstood, so I'm going to actually comment in detail on "refutations" of the Cook et al. 2013 paper [1].

The criticisms that I could find in the discussion section are that

1. paper abstracts are manually interpreted

2. there might be selection bias

3. while scientists might agree, they might disagree on the degree to which warming is occuring or to which it is a problem

Regarding 1.: Partly correct, misleading. Manual interpretation is a perfectly fine way to deal with natural language data. However, Cook et al. did not rely on this method alone. They also asked authors to self-assess. They compare their manual abstract rating to the self-assessment, and find the self-assessment to lead to substantially less "No position" ratings and more "Endorsment" ratings, while barely changing the "Reject" ratings.

Regarding 2.: Obviously correct. This is a potential issue in any empirical sociological study. In this case, however, the issue is limited, since 1) the total pool of climate scientists is limited, 2) the sample of papers (11944) and of scientists asked to self-assess (8547 asked, 1200 responses) is high and 3) the result is consistent with that of other similar studies [2].

Regarding 3.: While I agree that this would be more interesting than just distinguishing between rejection / endorsment / no position, it simply wasn't the question that Cook et al. were looking at.

Importantly, none of these points are particularly insightful, yet they were presented as if they constituted some sort of hidden knowledge uncovering a vast conspiracy. Points 1 and 2 are discussed by Cook et al. in their Discussion section, right there in the original paper. Point 3 isn't discussed because it's outside the scope of the paper.

So sure, you can now go and say "they used a sampling strategy, so there is the potential issue of sampling bias" and that is technically the truth. It is also incredibly disingenuous, since every single scientific work ever published has limitations. These limitations are understood and discussed by the scientific community. As long as no major flaw is found that invalidates the findings, the result stands.

This is just how science works. What else are you asking for? A mandatory self-assessment by every climate scientist in the world? Taking a sample and reporting statistics on the sample (while discussing any potential limitations to your sampling strategy) is the correct way to do it. It is therefore totally fine to say that 97% of scientists agree with artificial global warming, based on the study by Cook et al.

Depending on how exactly you ask the question, who you ask, and when you ask, you may get other results than 97% (Cook et al. have reviewed this in detail in [2]). That is not a contradiction, it is totally expected.

[1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024...

[2] This is reviewed in Cook et al. 2016, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/04...

> I feel like I have to address this "97% of scientists" point now, since this is coming up again and again.

It does come up again and again - in this conversation, but also in mainstream and social media, as a representation of the overwhelming consensus of scientific agreement, which may plausibly affect the opinions of average citizens.

Considering this, I think it's fair to questions whether the "97% of scientists" claim is actually true, or whether it may be the result of some fancy footwork.

> I did not do this so far because it's ultimately beside the point.

Beside "a" point, but beside "the" point? Depends on the topic of discussion I suppose. In this thread, we have a prior comment:

> In fact the "95% of scientists agree" is just such an example - if you look into it, the number becomes very questionable.

So no, it isn't actually "beside the point".

> Climate science studies the climate, and not climate scientists, and I don't find the exact percentage of climate scientists agreeing or disagreeing with something at all interesting or relevant.

Me neither, but I doubt the same applies to the general public, and I know it doesn't apply to large numbers of people on social media (where I see the statistic quoted as some sort of proof, regularly), and I also know it doesn't matter to actual deniers, conspiracy theorists, and right wing media talking heads (Fox news, bloggers, YouTube celebrities, T_D members, etc) who will look for any weakness in your game and exploit it to it's maximum potential. Don't underestimate this last group - meme magic is real.

> Well this is not a popularity contest

Public support of climate change initiatives is very much a popularity contest, of sorts. The public discussion certainly doesn't consist of qualified discussion of the science.

> it's a scientific issue where there is a well-known method for making progress: You present logical arguments and counter-arguments, based on facts from credible sources (or original experiments). That's the only thing I'm interested in, and the he said / she said style of arguing that may get you points on reddit and twitter is super boring to me.

Your relative interest is interesting, but beside the point. The topic of this sub-thread is very clearly about trustworthiness of claims, so please stop complaining about the topic. If you are not interested, please don't reply.

> This is just how science works. What else are you asking for?

I wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts on the perspective below, with respect to whether it is truthful or necessary to describe the actual facts below incorrectly, as: "97% of scientists agree...", especially considering scientists numbers weren't included in the initial report.

(Note that I put a few qualifying comments below the stats part, you might want to skim those before starting a reply. Also note that we're obviously talking past each other at this point to a large degree, and I fully appreciate that this criticism is ~ridiculous to some degree (I'm not a complete idiot), but as I willingly concede that, might you willingly concede that there very much is a propaganda war going on in parallel to the actual science? Whether you personally care about that is orthogonal to the fact of its existence.)

--------------------

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024...

> We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors' self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.

Popular claim: 97% of scientists agree with the consensus on anthropogenic global warming.

Actual Facts:

Within the subset of climate change abstracts that mention the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming':

66.4% of abstracts expressed no opinion on AGW

32.6% of abstracts endorsed AGW

0.7% of abstracts rejected AGW

0.3% of abstracts were uncertain

Within the subset of these abstracts that expressed an opinion on AGW, 97.2% endorsed AGW

Percentage of scientists who endorse AGW: NOT STATED

Percentage of scientists who have expressed an opinion on AGW, who endorse AGW: NOT STATED

--------------------

Please note, my question is not in any way about whether this anomaly should be considered a reasonable and valid debunking of AGW science itself (it isn't, of course), it is strictly about the truthfulness (or propaganda, depending on how one's boat floats) aspect of it.

Also note that I have no idea if this is article is based on the most up to data, or if a newer study is available that fixes the shortcomings below. If there is, fantastic, perhaps I'll read it. But again, this is not my complaint: my complaint is the "97% of scientists...." memes that were deployed into the public arena of perception. I do not like this approach for several reasons, one of which is it is susceptible to justified attack by deniers and conspiracy theorists.

Because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, abstracts expressing no position can not be included in the 97% number. Finding many abstracts that fall into this category is expected and does not detract from the 97% finding, because there are so many aspects of climate science that you can study that have no direct bearing on the question of whether anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real or not.

You phrase it as ...

> Within the subset of these abstracts that expressed an opinion on AGW, 97.2% endorsed AGW

... which is a misleading way of framing this, because opinion does not play a role in this. Expressing an opinion in a scientific abstract would be highly frowned upon. The question is whether the abstract contains information relevant to the question of whether AGW is happening or not. These are the only abstracts that you want to consider when the question is whether the science agrees or disagrees with AGW.

Your point that going from "97% of abstracts" to "97% of scientists" is not strictly correct is fine (and this is not done in the Cook et al. paper), but this simplification in the media is not worrying to me at all, since you'd expect those to be very highly correlated.

> might you willingly concede that there very much is a propaganda war going on in parallel to the actual science?

Well, based on this comments section that seems rather self-evident. The scientists, however, are not fighting a propaganda war. That's a political or media phenomenon. Everything written in this comments section so far for me has reinforced the picture that this "war" is very one sided, since the anti-science arguments either just disappear or boil down to inconsequential pedantry as soon as you shine some light on them.

(NOTE: This discussion is getting a bit long in the tooth, I'm happy to argue indefinitely because this topic happens to be my hobby horse, but I'm more than happy to declare a truce of sorts so you can gracefully exit and get on with more interesting things. I very much thank you for arguing though, I've found it helpful in clarifying my thinking on some items.)

> Because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, abstracts expressing no position can not be included in the 97% number.

This seems reasonable, but once again you're overlooking the actual claim that's being made: "97% of climate scientists...."

Now of course, from a pure scientific perspective, it's a moot point, and our entire argument is a waste of time. But this particular discussion, and the comprehensive issue of climate change itself, is not purely a scientific issue.

> You phrase it as ...

>> Within the subset of these abstracts that expressed an opinion on AGW, 97.2% endorsed AGW

> ... which is a misleading way of framing this, because opinion does not play a role in this.

At first glance, this seems rather surreal. I am stating it accurately (this wording more accurately resembles what was actually studied), but your mind perceives this more accurate statement as "a misleading way of framing this". So what's going on here?

Well, there are (at least) two differences here that I can see:

- we are using two different verbs: stating, and framing

- we are evaluating the truthiness of the different ways of stating it from (at least) two different/composite perspectives: I am looking at it from the perspectives of pedantic accuracy (how closely the description of the study matches the actual study) and with respect to vulnerability to propagandic exploitation (full disclosure: I imagine there's some motivated reasoning going on), whereas you are looking at it more from the perspective of ~"what is the most concise way these results can be stated in order to communicate the scientific facts"

So if we look at it this way, it seems to me we're both right. I don't disagree with your framing, as it relates to the science only, and I suspect (based on your prior comments) that you don't disagree with my framing, but only as it relates to pedantic accuracy of describing what the study actually did, with the intention of minimizing the attack surface to propagandists. (Do I suspect correctly?)

> but this simplification in the media is not worrying to me at all, since you'd expect those to be very highly correlated

> The scientists, however, are not fighting a propaganda war. That's a political or media phenomenon. Everything written in this comments section so far for me has reinforced the picture that this "war" is very one sided, since the anti-science arguments either just disappear or boil down to inconsequential pedantry as soon as you shine some light on them.

And here is where I wish you could try (I don't think you are) to understand what I am trying to get through to you: your focus on only the pure science aspect of the issue, and your side "winning" that war in the online culture war, is detrimental to your cause. You can have the science and technical solutions all figured out (and it is, well enough), but if you are unable to assemble adequate public consensus & support, the entire initiative may fail, not unlike a typical IT project with strong technical people but terrible analysts and project managers. If the topic of the original article was running successful IT projects, I can't imagine what I am saying right now (bad management team >> strong technical team) would receive noteworthy resistance on HN, because we've all seen it many times. But change the topic to something in the culture war category, and people's thinking changes.

>> ... which is a misleading way of framing this, because opinion does not play a role in this.

>At first glance, this seems rather surreal. I am stating it accurately

You may have slightly misunderstood what I was trying to say here, I was referring only to your use of "no opinion" versus the paper's "no position." It's not a hugely important point so I'm only going to comment on the following ...

> You can have the science and technical solutions all figured out (and it is, well enough), but if you are unable to assemble adequate public consensus & support, the entire initiative may fail, [...]

If this was all you'd been saying, we'd be in full agreement. I agree there's room for improvement in popular science reporting. I disagree that there is anything majorly wrong with it, though. [0] If you have any specific recommendations for improvements that could be interesting.

However, I feel you are holding popular science journalism to an unrealistic standard here - a standard that is applied to no other subject.

If journalists were forced to use the highly technical, precise and nuanced language of peer-reviewed scientific publications in their popular reporting, that just wouldn't work for the vast majority of their readers. It would leave the field wide open to dishonest sound-bite style reporting by people unconstrained by truth. Therefore, simplifications are to some degree necessary, as long as they don't deform the underlying science. People are still free to dig deeper into the literature if they are that interested, just as we've been doing here. I don't think that's too much to ask - or, put differently, if this is too much to ask, then the problem is a much deeper one: a lack of critical thinking, a lack of curiosity, a pathological preoccupation with just the most superficial aspects of a topic.

Or, putting this a bit more practically: I feel like I have done a fine job of showing why quoting the 97% number is not particularly misleading. What form could this argument take that would fit in less than a couple of paragraphs? Because there aren't very many places outside of HN where that would fly...

[0] I don't know if this applies to places where people people mostly argue in meme format. It may not, but that would be a general cultural problem and not one of scientists and / or science journalists.

> I disagree that there is anything majorly wrong with it, though.

From each of the two distinct perspectives I mentioned?

> However, I feel you are holding popular science journalism to an unrealistic standard here - a standard that is applied to no other subject.

Telling the truth? Although you have a fair point, hardly anyone bothers themself with the truth nowadays.

Personally, if I was a scientist, I'd get a bit upset with the media misrepresenting things I say, especially if I believed there was chance that it could cause harm. But then, I seem to be about the only person concerned about throwing fat pitches to anti-AGW propagandists, so maybe I'm wrong.

> Or, putting this a bit more practically: I feel like I have done a fine job of showing why quoting the 97% number is not particularly misleading.

You also did a fine job at completely overlooking the two perspectives part I pointed out, that explained fairly precisely what my concern was.

Just as an experiment, I am going to copy paste that part in here to see if you will ignore it again. While this is disrespectful, I've performed this experiment many times on reddit and people will continue to pretend they don't see a point being made. Sometimes I even add over the top bolding and all sorts of other nonsense to make the spectacle as absurd as possible, to see to what lengths people will go.

But I digress.....here is the point I am curious whether you are able to address:

(HOWEVER: I already said in my prior comment for you to feel free to not respond, so I will not consider a lack of response to this comment as any kind of an internet victory. That said, I really would like to hear your response, because I'm not joking, I really do consider this perspective important, and if you truly find it (the propagandic exploitation angle) utterly unconcerning, I would very much like to know that.)

My prior point, on multiple perspectives:

-----------------------------

So what's going on here?

Well, there are (at least) two differences here that I can see:

- we are using two different verbs: stating, and framing

- we are evaluating the truthiness of the different ways of stating it from (at least) two different/composite perspectives: I am looking at it from the perspectives of pedantic accuracy (how closely the description of the study matches the actual study) and with respect to vulnerability to propagandic exploitation (full disclosure: I imagine there's some motivated reasoning going on), whereas you are looking at it more from the perspective of ~"what is the most concise way these results can be stated in order to communicate the scientific facts"

So if we look at it this way, it seems to me we're both right. I don't disagree with your framing, as it relates to the science only, and I suspect (based on your prior comments) that you don't disagree with my framing, but only as it relates to pedantic accuracy of describing what the study actually did, with the intention of minimizing the attack surface to propagandists. (Do I suspect correctly?)

"I was doing the literal opposite of cherry-picking, I was digging into the arguments as they were presented to me. So far nothing has held up. If you can give me an argument with a proper source I'll happily look into that as well."

Again, that is exactly how your opponents feel.

" there is support for the precise number of 97%. [0]"

You are merely appealing to authority. I already told you why I think the number is questionable, yet you keep at it. All your reference tells me is that the NASA is not an honest player in the debate and can't be trusted. Since I already looked into the papers that produced the consensus numbers, yet NASA chooses to use the numbers anyway. Since I have to assume NASA has the capacity to understand those papers, I have to assume they choose to selectively quote them out of political motivation. So they don't count as honest scientists anymore. (Honest Scientist = people who are dedicated to finding the truth, not just in validating their beliefs).

And it very much contains a scientific argument, by proxy - since we can only trust the scientists, not verify their claims, if you claim the scientists support your arguments, you are making the claim that your arguments are backed by science. It is very relevant.

It may also be one of the most cited claims in the whole debate.

"High energy particle physics is mostly gibberish to me, yet I don't go around lecturing people on how it's all wrong."

But you also don't go around and educate people on particle physics. There are no stakes for most of us (unless you count the cost in tax payer money for building particle accelerators). Not the same with CO2.

"> And in the end your refutation boils down to "we know that CO2 traps heat and warms the earth"

It absolutely does not, I was addressing a very specific point about how historic CO2 levels are measured."

Yes you did, all you said is "we know how CO2 works", "we know" was your entire argument:

"Importantly, of course, none of this is really that relevant to the discussion of anthropogenic global warming, since we know that we are putting CO2 into the atmosphere, and that CO2 in the atmosphere traps heat."

"the whole discussion can be followed with a bit of high school physics, chemistry and biology, plus Wikipedia to fill in the gaps. Your next point shows that you were unwilling to put in that effort, but it isn't actually that hard"

Oh so you claim the authority of a climate scientist now, because it is oh such a simple subject? You took some high school physics, Wikipedia, and now you are an expert on climate?

I don't think anybody doubts that CO2 can trap heat in principle. But going from that to a doomsday scenario is a little bit more complex.

This comment is so intellectually dishonest that I have to conclude that you're trolling. I don't want to continue polluting this comments section with a detailed response.

If you are genuinely interested in discussing this, I'm leaving my e-mail in my profile for a while.

"intellectually dishonest" - seriously, what the fuck?

You give no reason why you think so, and I don't see why I should have to disprove your belief.

(edit: presumably you refer to the lines where I say you claim to be an expert on climate science now? Maybe the rhetoric was a bit harsh. But that was only a part of the whole comment. And I stand by the point, that nobody can claim to be an expert just by reading some Wikipedia and highschool books. The issue is that most arguments boil down to appeals to authority.)

> This comment is so intellectually dishonest that I have to conclude that you're trolling.

This seems like an evasive rhetorical technique.

How about this idea, to try to reestablish a productive conversation, choose the weakest (most intellectually dishonest) point, and criticize it?

If you are unwilling to do that, please explain why (keeping in mind your reference to intellectual honesty).

Pointing out that 95% (or more) climate scientists say that climate change is happening is not appeal to authority, but appeal to expertise. The former is a logical fallacy. The latter is not.

> Pointing out that 95% (or more) climate scientists say that climate change is happening is not appeal to authority, but appeal to expertise.

If the statistic was actually true it would.

Not sure if there's a formal logical fallacy to refer to this situation, but I think it would be useful to have one.

What do you mean? Authority is a synonym on expertise, in that context. You claim certain people or institutions have the expertise on the subject to make the right call, so you appeal to their authority on the subject.

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