The Climate Change Climate Change: The number of skeptics is swelling | Hacker News Reader

The Climate Change Climate Change: The number of skeptics is swelling

online.wsj.com

12 pointszurla26 comments

This article is useless and skewed. Im from Australia and the senator in question is a known skeptic who benefits from promoting those interests who would have most to loose in a carbon constrained economy. "Skeptics" continue to benefit from saying oh its not happening. A senator taking a (likley) free trip to the US for a conference against climate change, big news!

You might find this more informative: http://wakeupfreakout.org/film/tipping.html

At least you have some facts to check. The wsj article is mere hyperbole.

For less bias in the news you read check out newscred.com (no affiliation).

From the article: "The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02."

I'm all for cleaning up emissions, but I'm for it because I like the atmosphere to be clean. Fear tactics are what's been driving "green-[A-Za-z]" for a long time and I think it's important to reexamine and do it for the right reasons.

'Since 2001' is just 8 years. Climatologists will generally agree that 30 years is the minimum time to consider when talking about global climate change, because of the natural rhythms and fluctuations year to year.

Saying that the last 8 years disproves climate change is like saying that last week was warmer than the week before and therefore we're heading into summer and not into winter.

However, there's probably not too much harm being done in waiting another 10 years before we take this more seriously. 10 years from now if we're having record heatwaves again everywhere, I expect most skeptics will start coming around.

and temperature over the short term is a bad reason to change opinions. skepticism SHOULD be growing because the climate change advocates are using cherry picked statistics and bullying.

Some remarks:

1) the fact that the senator in question benefits from denying global warming does not mean that the global warming pseudo-science is true. Politicians can never be trusted. Period. And you seem to have fallen under the spell of the ad hominem fallacy.

2) Not all skeptics are the same. My skepticism stems from the fact that I do have a solid education in the sciences (unlike the average citizen), not from the fact that I stand to gain from denying global warming.

3) Last but not least: "most to loose" should be "most to lose". Generally speaking, people with a proper sense of spelling are taken more seriously than those who lack it. Maybe I am being pedantic, but if I were reading your CV and you made spelling errors like this, I would think twice before hiring you. This is an observation, not an attack.

i don't know that any news corp outlet has reported anything to support the notion of climate change.

and to be clear, i'm not commenting on the issue itself, just the unbalanced coverage from this specific source.

Some would argue that "facts" should be argued on their own merits, regardless of source. But spin and interpretation are incredibly important, and a partial source cannot be taken as a provider of impartial facts.

Not only is this a dupe, it's a dupe from this morning.

Today the house passed the most important environmental bill in the nation's history, and that gets zero upvotes in favor of this. Really?

Why do these global warming skeptic articles keep popping up here? Global warming is certainly OT, and skeptics' theories are not really any more interesting than any other conspiracy theories.

Intellectually dishonest conspiracy theories at that. As much as some people here hate the 9-11 truthers, at least the mainstream ones aren't making up facts or using quotes out of context.

Freeman Dyson is a skeptic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTSxubKfTBU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k69HUuyI5Mk

Do you have the audacity to call him a conspiracy theorist? He's only one of the greatest scientists of the 20th Century. What kind of track record do you have to belittle Dyson? Seriously.

The point I am trying to make: not at skeptics are born equal. Some are ignorant fools. But others are well-educated and well-trained in the Natural Sciences. Your simplistic view that all skeptics are conspiracy theorists is ideology. You looked at no data. You did not check the assumptions. You did not create any of the climate computer models. You probably did not read any papers on the topic. So, your beliefs stem from where exactly!? This is not an attack. It is an honest question.

BTW, they don't call it Global Warming anymore. It's now called Climate Change. You see, since the climate is a dynamical system that is continuously changing, the name "Climate Change" per se has absolutely zero information.

> BTW, they don't call it Global Warming anymore. It's now called Climate Change. You see, since the climate is a dynamical system that is continuously changing, the name "Climate Change" per se has absolutely zero information.

It only has zero information if you give it a massively uncharitable and ignorant reading. A climate per se describes a long term pattern of weather in a region. If that pattern changes, by definition, the climate has changed. Hence, "climate change".

Systems, or "dynamical systems" (whatever that means), are privy to two levels of change: one occurs within the system, the other defines the system. In other words, a system's state may change to another state, or the system may change into another system. Got it?

For starters, I don't like your tone. This is HN, not reddit. Got it?

I stand by my assertion. "Climate Change" is a redundancy. The climate has always been changing. If you reduce the entire complexity of the global climate system to 1 bit, you're not doing any good Science. It's not whether it's changing or not, it's how it is changing. This makes a world of difference.

The laws of Physics haven't changed. What may change is the inputs: solar radiation, C02 and methane emissions from the biosphere, C02 emissions by humans, etc. Since we don't really know the inputs with good precision, and since we can't measure them reliably either, jumping to conclusions based on computer models is ludicrous.

The problem with computer models is that we lack sufficient knowledge on the initial conditions. We would need a whole lot more measurements to be able to come up with reliable computer simulations. Unfortunately, measuring is expensive, while simulating is cheap. Trying to solve the fluid and heat dynamics PDEs on a global scale with incomplete info on initial conditions is not Science, it's voodoo magic.

I repeat: the rules of the game haven't changed. The laws of Physics are still the same. Focus on measuring the inputs that drive the dynamical system, rather than make apocalyptical predictions based on bad computer models.

Appeal to authority. Please try again, I'm curious.

It's not an appeal to authority, it's an appeal to good ideas. Dyson's points are valid. If you dismiss them without even thinking deeply about them, you're pretty much doing what the Inquisition did to Galileo.

Moreover, Dyson's points are based on good Science. He focuses on measurements and data, which are hard evidence. Dyson does not appeal to emotion or fear.

You said "Do you have the audacity to call him a conspiracy theorist? He's only one of the greatest scientists of the 20th Century. What kind of track record do you have to belittle Dyson?"

That is an explicit appeal to authority.

Fair enough. You have a point.

But then, only in a fantasy world do people not appeal to authority. Someone who has a track record is always more reliable than someone who lacks it. And, to be honest, this is a good thing.

From the video you linked to:

"The public thinks you have to wait until global warming is proved before you do something, but that's completely ridiculous."

The only thing from this video that suggests Dyson is a skeptic is the title.

You missed the point. This article explains things in greater detail:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html

"Conspiracy theory" is an interesting phrase. It doesn't have a meaning so much as a purpose: to shut someone up by ostracizing them and/or to shut the minds of third parties (a signal that most people reflexively obey). It's a conformist move that has a tinge of violence about it, if a phrase can be called violent.

Personally, as soon as I hear someone labeled a "conspiracy theorist" I immediately sympathize with them, though of course that doesn't make their views true.

Edit: replaced "belittling" with "ostracizing" as explained below.

"Conspiracy theory" has a very simple meaning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory) and no derision at all. You might take it as belittling but it's not. The term "conformist" on the other hand fits your description perfectly.

Come to think of it, "belittle" doesn't exactly capture what I meant, which is to mark someone as outside the zone of proper discourse. I will change the comment.

No derision at all

That's obviously not true. If it were, people would use the phrase to describe their own views sometimes.

Because any place that involves technological discussions attracts a number of self-styled "objectivists" and libertarians who can't cotton to the idea that collective selfless behavior is needed to solve any problem.

I would dare to say that there's much, much more than ideology here. There's an awful lot of propaganda on Global Warming. The facts that are presented are, in a way, manipulated to scare the masses. For me it's more than ideology, it's a matter of principle. I would like to see good, honest and open scientific debate on this topic, and that seems to be impossible. Anyone who questions the validity of the global warming predictions is labeled as a crackpot. This is very dangerous. This kind of dogmatic view is rather similar to the Inquisition.

If everybody had studied the global climate in detail and had arrived at the same conclusions, then the fact that everybody thinks the same way would not be dangerous. After all, everybody thinks the Earth is approximately ellipsoidal, and everybody can measure it. However, very few people have studied the climate in detail, and due to this herd movement, any scientist who questions the predictions the most pessimistic arrive to is attacked. This is unacceptable.

Conspiracy? Do you mean any 'theory which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful Machiavellian conspirators'? This would indeed be a weird way of describing the arguments and data put forward by a significant number of authoritative scientists of the calibre for instance of MIT's Richard Lindzen. The arguments against global warming hysteria are out in the open for all to examine, discuss and refute if they will. I mentioned Lindzen so here's a recent contribution.

http://portaldata.colgate.edu/imagegallerywww/3503/ImageGall...?

This is conspiratorial?

It does not matter that the number of skeptics is swelling. It would not matter either if the number of warmists were swelling. Science is about observation, experimentation. Science is not about consensus. The truth does not care about what the ignorant masses think.

It does not matter either if the number of skeptic scientists is swelling. What matters is the opinion of the scientists who have studied the global climate. The opinion of the experts is the only one that matters. And since the experts may be wrong, their opinion should be viewed as an opinion, not as an absolute truth.

Moreover, I want to stress something important. This is not a game of "us versus them". The truth does not care for such petty human weaknesses. The climate is an extremely difficult problem, and anyone who's too sure of his / her views is probably not a real expert. And scientists should have the freedom to speak what they think, without fearing being attacked by the gullible masses.

I finish with a quote by Robert Oppenheimer:

"There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any asssertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors."

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