Embarrassing Questions On Global Warming | Hacker News Reader

Embarrassing Questions On Global Warming

tamino.wordpress.com

17 pointsquoderat13 comments

A nice use of data visualizations to get the point across (repeatedly). It's easy to cherry-pick the data and graph-type to demonstrate your point on one graph-- but to show the same trend on a number of different graph types, with a number of different data sources, over a variety of different periods-- well, that's harder to argue with.

I gave up after the 3rd paragraph. So much anger. It just sets the reader up to expect that the rest of the article will be biased.

Why write an article this way? If the data is really on your side, just present it.

I think that saying that the author will be biased towards a view of man-made global warming is a bit like saying someone will be biased against the world being flat or that the sun rotates around the earth.

Except that the world has been experimentally (and later observed to be) proven to be round, and we have experimentally (and later observed to be) rotating around the sun. There are no experiments proving global warming, and no observations that match the predictive models well. So it is just a theory. Theories have been wrong many times before. It may be right, but comparing it to rock solid facts like those is simply ignorant of the state of the science. It is probably right, but we don't know that for sure.

"So it is just a theory."

As in Theory of Evolution, or Theory of Gravity? I think you meant "hypothesis" or "conjecture".

I don't want to put words in your mouth; I'm frustrated by the widely varying possible meanings of the word "theory" that makes some discussion more confusing than need be.

I don't call it the theory of gravity, I call it the Law of Gravity. Or the Newtonian Laws of Physics.

A theory, in the general sense of the word, is an analytic structure designed to explain a set of observations.

A Law is a generalization that describes recurring facts or events in nature

Laws are predicated on reproducible experiments. An idea is a theory before the experimental evidence is amassed and confirmed.

I think it's pretty natural to be angry when so many people are so cluelessly inveighing against something both so harmful and so scientifically obvious.

Be careful not to let emotion enter in to issues like this. And be especially careful before using terms like "scientifically obvious". Scary things lie at the end of that road:

http://www.crichton-official.com/essay-stateoffear-whypoliti...

I would give that thought a lot more credence if you'd linked to a scientist, rather than Michael Crichton in the height of disingenuousness (on his part).

Scary things lie at the end of that road if they are unsupported by the evidence. Unfortunately, all the evidence points to anthropogenic climate change.

And the anger is always against the same culprits: Westerners who don't want their standard of living destroyed.

Why not get angry at China, India, and Africa, all of whose people aren't going to spend 5 seconds worrying about "global warming" when it means never becoming modernized? The answer is straightforward: China, India, and Africa are not political opponents of global warming fetishists.

If you're interested in winning, you will destroy your opponents' arguments. But if you're interested in the truth, you will fix their arguments for them to the best of your ability, and then set out to update your position accordingly.

To make an impression on me, don't go looking for easily dismantled arguments. Pick your most formidable intellectual opponents. Try arguing successfully against the best available brand of "denialism" (what a word!) - the blog Climate Audit. For example, explain to me this: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5902 .

Yesterday I read this report written by the Environmental Protection Agency http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/DOC062509-004.pdf. In 98 pages they basically show that the science IS NOT conclusive. It may well be C02, it may not. Having worked with the EPA before, they find pretty much every excuse to ban or regulate something so when they say it is NOT doing what others say, I listen.

Interestingly one of the main factors they contribute to their differing results from the IPCC report is that the IPCC report closed its paper submission windows in early 2006 even though it was published in 2007, so the work is 3 years out of date. This paper was written in the last 2 months and cites dozens of papers over the last 3 years that contradict the IPCC's "findings".

Anybody know who Tamino is? Specifically, I was curious if he has some scientific background.

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