UN climate science body condemns report leak
rtcc.org
rtcc.org
In fact wouldn't it be fair that they are to check their report into a public subversion repository as it is being written?
Yes, but that's not happening here. They've not released all the data with explanations of how thing were measured, caveats, and context.
> While I understand that it is politically inconvenient for the scientists, that shouldn't really be what decides what the public gets access to (especially since this is a tax-payer founded study).
You're making it sound like this will never be released. It's not like they'd hide it if the data showed things weren't as bad as expected, in which case a leaked report would be important. This is a leak equivalent to grabbing a corner from the notes on someones desk and then turning it into a news story. This is in no way a report about leaked information that should be public, it will be public. It has nothing to do with "it's my taxes", it'll all be made public. What they want to do first is have it reviewed and checked before slapping their name on it and saying "we're confident in the data and the analysis".
What happens if there's a problem with the way this data was captured, which means there's a particular correlation with something else that must be accounted for before it makes sense? What if there are conclusions that aren't supported by the data, which could be found in review and amended?
> In fact wouldn't it be fair that they are to check their report into a public subversion repository as it is being written?
Fair? Why? Unless you're acting as a reviewer there's no reason to see the paper before it's in its final form. In fact, knowing how bad we are at thinking things are true even when shown to be false, seeing anything that people aren't really quite sure about is an extremely bad idea.
If they were to shelve the whole report, then yes, a leak would be interesting. Otherwise it's a massive waste of time, which can seriously harm the credibility of the final paper.
edit: I'm not implying that it is wrong to be skeptical, I'm saying that the poster's alignment is obviously that of a skeptic because it's a common tactic for this particular brand of skeptic to suggest that politics is at play in the mind of scientists. If anyone agrees that politics makes good science then that statement is not a platitude.
my criticism of the OP is that this IS a political discussion not a scientific one, anyway, so his comment is moot.
Identify where I was trolling please.
i think many people need to be reminded that whenever we talk of "consensus" we talk of politics and not science.
That's a red herring. It's a common tactic for those who disagree with a prevailing scientific idea to dismissively chide scientists as playing politics, as if the scientific consensus emerged from political donations instead of from conclusions based on data. Consensus does not imply unanimity or even that the data is correct, but it's only in climate science that we see people actively fight the broad conclusions of the scientific community as a whole.
The rest of your conspiracy crap has no place here. You are hung-up on a subpopulation that is likely not even on HN.
Where in any of my responses have I said anything about a conspiracy? It seems as if you're the one who is hung up on an ideology you're trying to inject into my argument.
Anywhere policy decisions are made, it is practical to vote on alternatives. This is where the "consensus" is justified.
Try not to interpret this as trolling but, I don't disagree with this statement. What is your point here?
as if the scientific consensus emerged from political donations...
...it's only in climate science that we see people actively fight
the broad conclusions of the scientific community as a whole.I suppose there's a thin line between "trite platitude" and "observant insight". (Which one is this?)
Assume there is a political conspiracy to increase their power and create new taxes and that they are using global warming to get to this.
If so we would see a lot of reports, worried politicians and worried scientists (which we would also see if it was real) what we wouldn't see are solutions that aren't politically feasable (say banning cars) but maybe necessary if we are to prevent the climate change and we wouldn't see solutions that don't try to clamor peoples freedom (say putting up mirrors in the ocean to send some of the suns rays back out into space) but might work (IANACS so I don't know if it works).
So far what I have seen matches with what I would then expect.
People often claim that the skeptics are merely stuges paid by the oil companies - but what does that make of those scientists who are paid by the government? This isn't even talked about.
Basically my guess is that the movement significant amounts of money entered the scene science became impossible. Scientists won't share their data because there are grants and money and jobs at stake, they are willing to use underhand tatics to prevent dissenters from publishing (because there are jobs and grants and careers at stake).
> and we wouldn't see solutions that don't try to clamor peoples freedom (say putting up mirrors in the ocean to send some of the suns rays back out into space) but might work (IANACS so I don't know if it works).
Actually, solar mirrors or similar space structures have been proposed. The main reason they aren't part of the dominant current recommendations is that they are very high-risk, in terms of engineering, compared to the existing short- and long-term mitigation recommendations, and also that many of the existing mitigations mitigate other risks that share common causes with AGW but which solar mirrors don't.
Maybe we'll get lucky, and climate change will be a mere inconvenience. I'd rather not take that chance, especially when there are so many other reasons to diversify from finite carbon energy sources. Meanwhile, I trust the scientific community to do what they do best, and keep digging deeper, whatever the answer may be.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/09/aliens-cause-global-wa...
I've spent way too much time on WUWT. There is very little discussion of science or statistics. It mainly focuses on politics, individuals (Mann, Gore, etc.) and nitpicking over insignificant errors.
Within a few hours topics will range from: climate change isn't happening to it is happening but it's not caused by humans to it's us but it will be beneficial and back again.
Users are banned and occasionally dox'd for contrarian comments on that site, so if you're concerned about 'insulating the brain from inconvenient argument', you shouldn't support WUWT.
> Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
... because there's no significant "skeptic" communities for relativity or geocentrism. Nobody has any vested interest in claiming those theories are false. Theoretical physicists and astronomers aren't constantly asked to defend their positions against fallacious argument after argument, nor have they to fight against a minor but very influential political minority which is on faith completely against them. No Secretary of Interior ever said: "If the troubles from theoretical physicists and geocentrists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used." If you can't see even that, there's no point in arguing.
And then the completely bullshit tangent about how the Nuclear Winter equation is just as goofy as the Drake equation, which just is... just... facepalm. Quick, Crichton, tell me the probability that life on a planet evolves to intelligence. Since, you know, you just argued that it's as well understood and measurable as the reflectivity of dust.
In regards to its line, that scientific knowledge is being perverted by politics... you know that psychological projection thing, when someone sees in others what they can't bear to see in themselves? I'm not usually someone that whips The Freud out that quickly but, damn, Crichton is really in contest for some psychoanalyzing. I mean, he's just argued that climate scientists are wrong, on purely political terms. Literally, he doesn't like the politics they do. Mind numbing.
Oh, but they want to be making policy, not science.
As an aside: I get the feeling from your comment that you might not be aware that Michael Crichton is dead.
How would you take it if people told you: "You're such an alarmist. Shut up, and keep working on your models"
And if scientists shouldn't speak up, who is left in public discourse?
The data is very scary. Seeing the conditions of the distant past makes me not want to repeat them. Before a scientist, I am a human being.
Parent - seriously, what do you want us to do? Sit back, take more data, calculate more models, write some papers that only other scientists read? You, everyone, pays us for doing this, and it's our responsibility to make you listen.
(Now, I'm quite young. My professors seem to have given up, one even said so. I sincerely hope it's not as bad as it looks.)
You can warn and warn all you like, but if people don't listen, it's because they're free people who have made their own decisions through the political process. The answer is not to scream louder. They heard you, and don't care.
Want to end the debate on global warming? Make it moot. Turn your research into great products and technologies that reduce carbon emissions and are simultaneously what people want.
It's already happening: People are starting to want a Tesla S because it's considered by many to be the best car ever made. They're actually getting customers who don't give a rats ass about the environment, and that's exactly what you're going to need if you really want to save the world.
We don't debate gravity through the political process. We can discuss how to tackle climate change, but that itself is not debatable.
And if they defend it, it's because it's under attack. The industry FUD would have many believe that it's the scientists that have a vested interest.
We don't debate global warming through the political process, nor should we. We debate what we might want to do about global warming through the political process. Your comment indicates you don't see the difference, and that's exactly what I'm worried about.
You're not granted political power simply for being right. Imagine if a new consensus was reached amongst economists that the minimum wage is bad for the economy, and were granted the power to eliminate it. I don't think too many here would be happy about that.
In my experience, all the critics of the science want NO action taken, except more science and R&D. Or even in Canada, the shuttering of scientific projects that could be inconvenient.
A scientist is also a citizen - I don't see where you give away whatever marginal power you have as a member of the public. Everyone can push for the things they value, it's a democracy.
The data points at the sea rising - flat islands without money for dykes will disappear. Models consistently predict changing precipitation patterns - which is ok if you have money to migitate the changes.
I don't want to dismiss your whole comment, you do have a point. I'll happily pay money in subsidies to create a solar industry which can then be copied by everyone. However, as you also say, it's not enough to solve this with science and technology. If we were still in the middle of the last century, it maybe would. It's a political problem now which has to be solved with politics by politicians and citizens, and not by scientists. And as I said in another comment, every citizen has the right to push for his believes to be taken into account.
Even though he was getting a shit wage, he still had to endure those who thought it was people like him, rather than the Exxon and Shells of this world, that had a vested interest.
[1] http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/29...
I do believe though that global warming feeds into their belief that industry, growth and capitalism are somehow evil and confirms their pre-existing prejudices.
That said, you're right about confirming pre-existing prejudices; in that sense, every ideology or belief is a conspiracy. Climate scientists are not immune to this phenomenon, but the act of science is to proactively try to correct for these kinds of biases, with the added constraint of having to "show your work". While mainstream science can get it wrong, 95+% consensus is very hard to achieve due to either ideology or external influence, especially worldwide. Those scientists might be wrong, but they're not all duping us as part of some plot.
I don't think they are duping us, but a mixture of pre-existing biases combined with enormous funding certainly helps to create the idea of a consensus.
If there's a corruptive element to climate change policy, it's a cash grab from green energy companies. After 2000, the Democrats know that the green voters won't dare vote third party again (sadly), so don't care about appeasing them beyond gestures.
>Before we tackle that, we’re too close to an astounding point for me to leave it unspoken. At that 2.3% growth rate, we would be using energy at a rate corresponding to the total solar input striking Earth in a little over 400 years. We would consume something comparable to the entire sun in 1400 years from now.
It's also questionable to equate growth in economic well-being with growth in energy use. They have certainly been related for a long time, but advances in materials, miniaturization, automation, and other engineering will make the environmentalists' goal of stabilizing per-capita energy use feasible.
Well I see people using current events to feed into pre-existing prejudices and biases here on HN all the time, so now I find it harder to criticize liberals and conservatives for doing the same.
We should remember to gently remind them to check their biases.
Having said that, it's particularly annoying to have those biases pointed out while people ignore the strong biases caused by people being paid to obfuscate the information around climate change.
Maybe it is just a hard-wired human response to disruption of a society by outside influences.
I don't trust the climate science community. I trusted them a lot more before Climate Gate. That's when I realized that climate science has become deeply, deeply politicized. One email from Phil Jones to McIntyre reads "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?". Why indeed Mr. Jones, would you want to share data with a skeptic? This is science after all, and science is nothing less than a method for supporting correct conclusions, and the "correct" conclusion is global warming.
Recent deviations of world temperature trends from climate models are only increasing my skepticism of the whole enterprise[4]. But I am alarmed to be going down such a path. If Global Warming were found out to be wrong, we would have to completely reevaluate how we come up with truth in society. That would be evidence of a massive misstep in our civilization.
[1] http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/06/yamal-foi-sheds-new-light...
[2] http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/23/steigs-bladeless-hockey-s...
[3] http://www.therightplanet.com/2011/11/phil-jones-for-your-ey...
[4] http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2157446...
Climate research is used as a reason to create tons of new government bodies, including international rules about what countries can do (Kyoto), intergovernment tax-schemes that are insanely corrupt (see European Co-limit trading, which had to be shot down due to fraud), taxes on gasoline and limits on what kinds of light bulbs I can use (which makes sense from a corporation standpoint, but if you really wanted to do something about the carbon emmisions you would care about my total emissions and not treat light separately).
You have small solutions like wind-mills and solar panels and greener cars that are supposed to prevent a cataclysmic disaster.
And you may claim that you trust the scientific community, but frankly if you also claim that oil money corrupts the scientists then so should government money - and indeed it appears that it does as each time something like this is leaked (and really if we are doing science what should there be to leak? it is supposed to be open to all) a lot of scientists gets really angry. It almost sounds like they are trying to cover up something.
Then you have the East Angelia leak (again that word leak, there shouldn't be anything to leak in science) in which the scientists talked about abusing the publishing process to prevent a paper they didn't want to be published from being published. That is the one that did me in, as I am not a climate scientist so I can only evaluate the truth based on what I see the scientists do, but even I know that if you don't like a paper and can simply point out where it is wrong then you do that. It is only when you can't point out an issue that you have to do back handed deals (and you are playing politics, not doing science).
And lets not get into the way those of us who are skeptical of climate change gets shot down when we voice our points they are almost never refuted we are simply told that we are various stodges for the oil companies, misinformed, etc.
How is a layman to interpret this science? Heck, how are reasonably smart people who are not climatologists to interpret it? How are time-starved politicians who are responsible for the related policy to interpret it?
Read it until 1) you reach a part with a reference and follow and read the reference or 2) if no reference, google the part that confuses you.
No one ever follows the references. It's a shame. The body of a piece of work is just a small contribution of a larger body which is the referenced works.
You trust the people telling you what's what, and you analyze your standards and expectations of what can happen and plan accordingly. How do you plan against something you know next-to-nothing about, or you know so little that you can barely grasp the enormity of preparing for "global warming"? That's a great question, and it'll involve plans whose scope lies well beyond what you'll be doing tonight, tomorrow, next week, or 20 years from now -- it'll involve plans that include everybody and what we'll be doing tonight, tomorrow, next week, or 20 years from now.
"everyone else" is at a disadvantage because they probably have less of that intellectual curiosity, and less time to devote it to studying things which may not interest them at all.
The "we're all gonna die" faction gets four orders of magnitude more funding each year than the global warming skeptic faction. Oil company spending on climate science propaganda consists of a few $million here or these, and the best skeptics don't even take any of their money. The best ones are unpaid amateurs (like Steve McIntyre) or they achieved a position in academia decades ago before belief in global warming became required to advance. I suggest you read some skeptics like Steve[1] and see if you think he is as evil as Phil Jones thinks he is[2].
Moreover, the environmentalists control the institutions which create public opinion - namely the media and the universities. I'm guessing this is how your opinion was formed[3]. It's remarkable how utterly dominant cultural forces can see themselves as underdogs.
[1] http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/06/yamal-foi-sheds-new-light...
[2] http://www.therightplanet.com/2011/11/phil-jones-for-your-ey...
[3] http://anomalyuk.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-modern-structure.h...
Further, the fact that you referred to people who believe the climate change theory as the "we're all gonna die" faction tells me squarely which camp you're in, and I'd thank you to avoid further such sneaky pre-framing of the argument if you wish for me to take your claims seriously.
I don't know that the global warming hypothesis is untrue. But I do know that our current process is not a method designed to find truth. Scientific data should be open to all humanity, and not hidden for the sake of advancing political agendas.
[1] "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
[2] "The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone."
Understanding the basic theory is not that hard--certain gases in the atmosphere trap heat; we're adding more gases so we expect more heat to get trapped; and we've confirmed that by measuring rising temps. An afternoon on Wikipedia can fill in a lot of the details.
The question of belief might be more difficult, but I think it comes down to understanding that the scientific process works largely the same across disciplines. Black holes, quantum tunnelling, and retroviruses are at least as fantastic as a warming Earth. Do you believe scientists on those subjects? So why not on the physics of the Earth's climate?
Science is not really a buffet; I think one should either accept that it works, as a process, or don't. Picking and choosing is dangerous--because what is your criteria?
Of course individual scientists can be wrong, but how do we know that? Because other scientists proved it. So it always has to come back to scientific proof. Not op-eds and blogs.
This does beg a question... Does science deserve a higher standard of opacity for publicly funded research than our government overall? My sense is "let the process work to separate the signal from the noise" but I'd like to hear what others say.
But regardless of the level of openness, it's quite possible for Science to be wrong, badly wrong, for years. Check out the story of Dr Moniz, for example: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/19...
I hear you on science being wrong. One of the best things about science is there is a self-correcting mechanism, though it takes a while. As one physics professor said, "A change in paradigm doesn't wait for the old masters to retire, it waits until they die."
I think the issue in this case is that you can't take a graph from such a paper, or from a draft report, and interpret it in the absence of its context. This is a complex topic and there is a reason why they get the experts in a room to argue it out.
In particular, lay people tend to be myopic. With every piece of information, they tend not to ask, "is this true?"' or "does this fit with other related physics and phenomena I know in depth?" They just cut right to the end, and ask, "does this favor or disfavor my prior conceptions about climate change?"
To make a crude analogy, lay people tend to treat this like sports and not like science. So, that's why you let the process work and look at the final result. Unless you're a domain expert, you won't know how to interpret the arguments that lead up to the result.
I know several contributors to the AR5 research, and slightly know a couple of people in the IPCC working group.