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Comment by NotYourLawyer | Hacker News Reader

>If the C3S dataset only currently starts in 1979, how can you then provide temperatures relating to the pre-industrial era?

>In order to relate global mean temperature derived from the C3S dataset (ERA5) to the pre-industrial era, we use the estimate that the 1981-2010 reference period is approximately 0.69°C and that the 1991-2020 reference period is approximately 0.88°C warmer than the period 1850-1900, the time period typically referred to as the pre-industrial level for temperatures by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

>Note that these estimates were updated during Autumn 2021, due to new findings published in AR6 WGI report “Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis”. See more here under “Reference periods and anomalies”.

I’m sure this is all fine and valid, but they really need to work on their messaging. To a skeptic, this is gonna sound a lot like “oh yeah we pretty much just made the numbers up.”

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Honestly, at this point I'm beyond caring much what stuff sounds like "to a skeptic". The past 15 or so years have proven to me that "skeptics" can believe whatever TF they want, all logic and and reason be damned, as long as there is a snazzy YouTube video pointing out how it's all a CoNSp1RacY by the Secret Global Elite.

I'm done with trying to convince people who have made it extremely adamant that they aren't willing to be convinced.

Sure, there are some people who are not persuadable no matter what. But there are other people who are not crazy but who see stuff like this and have legitimate doubts.

I’d like to know more about the legitimate doubts. I haven’t heard a solid argument yet. Of the arguments I’ve heard though, the speaker had had low scientific literacy and misunderstandings of the scientific process and the data. They were perturbed by media, mainly. So, I’d like to hear someone serious address the issue.

You don't need a solid argument to have doubts, you need to hear a solid argument (or more accurately, several of them over some period of time) not to have doubts, and even then you should be checking and doubting your own assumptions.

Not everyone is a scientist or an engineer. You don't have to be an idiot to read the above statements and have your main takeaway be "they don't know for sure so they guessed" and it's completely reasonable to still have doubts based on that.

So, you’re saying the models that have been used and refined over decades have been wildly inaccurate? It’d be interesting to me to see that analysis. Maybe it’ll change my mind.

I didn't say that at all, clearly you're the one operating in bad faith now.

This is the stuff I'm talking about. I make a deduction, and you respond with a defensive statement and change the subject. I'm just looking for evidence of what you're implicitly claiming. Are the models accurate or not?

Anyway, probably just the inherent difficulty of trying to have a conversation online.

Sure, we only built gigantonormous infrastructures to measure about everything on every cm of this planet, 10s of thousands of highly qualified experts from all over the world work on this full time and have been saying the same thing for decades, but “there are people” who have “““legitimate doubts”””. Sure.

I’m talking specifically about the data from before that infrastructure existed.

This is a cop-out.

Obviously clearer is better, but do you think a scientific body should be expected to go out of its way to convey information in a way that would be difficult for bad-faith actors to willfully misinterpret? Because I don't.

"Bad faith actor" is different from someone who is simply unfamiliar with the material, uneducated, or skeptical for good faith reasons.

Bad faith actors will act in bad faith, we all know that. But yes, you should go out of your way as a scientific body to explain your conclusions to good faith skeptics and people who want to understand your material. And I think that bar goes higher the more bad faith actors you have in your field.

Doing perfect is the enemy of doing good.

> To a skeptic

You mean denier. We're way past skepticism, the overwhelming evidence shows climate change is real.

We are at the "well duh cigarettes do in fact harm your health" stage of climate debate.

funny you should mention that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt

I can't back it up because it was a televised congressional committee hearing and I don't remember the name of the scientist but he said that his data he had been studying and working with that was published in the 1940's was different from the data that is now published for that same time period. He made no accusations he just said his data showed no signs of global warming. So, I guess as a skeptic, yes this does make me think they are making it all up.

As someone who has lived in South Texas my whole life and seen summers go from uncomfortably hot when I was a child to now dangerous to life, I have to say that my data leads me to believe that we're doomed. I do wish I could believe what you believe though; much like I wish there was a god in heaven who loves and protects me - it seems to really help people get through the day, but I seem to be incapable of believing it myself.

You don't think techniques have improved since the 1940s?

Of course the data would be different with 60-70 years of improved collection techniques, analysis tools, and theoretical knowledge about the climate.

This does not sound at all like good fortune will shine on current data, though?

Only if you assume the same mistakes are being made for the current data and the lessons from the past are not used.

I'd expect that our current temperature measurements are much, much more accurate than in the early 1900s, so while I'd expect them to be tweaked, not by much.

But this whole debate is pretty much a smokescreen. Sure, there are definitely error bars around temperature records of the past and estimates for the future. But one thing I have never seen be in question is the sheer amount of CO2 we have put into the atmosphere: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/... .

The atmosphere now contains 50% more CO2 than pre-industrial times. The oceans are now 30% more acidic. These are gargantuan amounts. Sure, the global climate is incredibly complex, and how the climate reacts in different places in the world (e.g. ocean currents, ice cover, sea levels, temperatures, atmospheric humidity, storm intensity, etc.) is the hard work of some very smart people in climate science. But it's preposterous to me that we think we could raise the main global greenhouse gas by 50% and increase ocean acidity by 30% and not see some major impacts.

So while I think it's important to "worry about the details", only if done in good faith. Nitpicking around whether temperatures have rising 1.1 vs. 1.2 degrees, and using that as "evidence" that global warming isn't a problem or isn't worth doing something about, is what is so ridiculous in the face of avalanches of other data that we are seriously affecting the global climate.

What are you skeptic of? There is so much misleading denialism of what is now ao blindingly obvious to any casual reasonable observer, that I propose you apply you skepticism with a bit a cui bono.

polotics says "...what is now ao(sic) blindingly obvious to any casual reasonable observer..."

Hmmm, "any casual reasonable observer" - that would be a scientist perhaps, and "casual reasonable observation" would be "science"?

Hello Giardini. Oh wow I typed "ao" instead of "so"... the earth is saved! "casual reasonable observer" being science indeed, check out the IPCC report, it's a super hot read I heard. Or you can publish your own and send it for peer review. I think you have no valid argument to put forward to explain how you are being a sceptic, but hey if you think you do, and if you think you are actually a sceptic, then please carry on I'm all ears.

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