Comment by lucumo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lucumo | Hacker News Reader

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Article lacks sources for its claims.

> Patrick J. Michaels is a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know.

Yeah, figures. Want a grindstone for that axe?

Edit: Quote from Wikipedia[1] about the author:

"Climate scientist Tom Wigley, [21] a lead author of parts of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is quoted in Ross Gelbspan's book The Heat is On[22]: "Michaels' statements on [the subject of computer models] are a catalog of misrepresentation and misinterpretation… Many of the supposedly factual statements made in Michaels' testimony are either inaccurate or are seriously misleading."[23]

Peter Gleick, a conservation analyst and president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute, said: "Pat Michaels is not one of the nation's leading researchers on climate change. On the contrary, he is one of a very small minority of nay-sayers who continue to dispute the facts and science about climate change in the face of compelling, overwhelming, and growing evidence."[24]"

Yeah, I'll take a pass on taking this article at face value.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Michaels

You don't trust him, because he agrees with the view he expresses in that article?

This is easy to settle. He says the data don't exist. You apparently say the smart default is to assume that they do. So find the data, and that's the end of it. Right?

Your edit is pretty hilarious: he can't be right, because he's part of Cato and has published stuff arguing against climate change! Look, somebody at the Pacific Institute ("Research for People and the Planet") has published something saying so!

You might be right, but your argument is basically "Galileo is wrong, because he's a heretic. The Pope even said so. Is Galileo a Pope? I. Thought. Not."

The article comes across spectacularly lazy which bodes ill for the veracity of its contents.

Just look @ how our "researcher" (ahem) "researches" the only known-to-him example of raw data being given out:

- supposedly "Peter Webster" has (a subset of) the "raw data"

- no other "researchers" aside from the data originators have the "raw data" (at least insofar as is known to Michaels as revealed in this article)

- supposedly Michaels is interested in obtaining the "raw data"

Is there any evidence in the article that, you know, Michaels tried calling Webster up and asking for the "raw data"? The kind of thing you'd do if you were, you know, seriously interested in getting your hands on this data?

Not really:

- there's no explicit mention of (attempting to) get in touch with Webster

- there's a half-hearted attempt to strew fear and doubt based on the fact that Webster's findings (about hurricane and warming correlation) are apparently at variance with what others have found, but it's half-hearted b/c:

-- it doesn't examine whether the different findings are due to methodological differences or due to "raw data" differences (only the latter of which implicates the "raw data" as perhaps suspect)

-- as per usual it's not like Michaels tried calling Webster and being like: "do you think your results are different b/c the data has been mangled?"

So just with respect to Michael's actions with Webster there's a rather transparent pattern of some mix of incuriousness or laziness.

Which (quite apart from any think-tank connections) is why he ought to come across as not all that credible: he's lazy or incompetent or both.

I mean really: say you were to read an article wherein the author:

- is supposedly searching for some holy grail

- identifies a source that has it

- makes no mention of trying to get it from that source

...would that not raise a red flag as to the author's sincerity and/or general competence? Would you be more or less likely to take his other claims at face value after seeing that?

Eh, no. I don't trust him because he's written anti-climate change before and doesn't give any sources for his claim that the data is basically fraudulent.

Seems to me he's just searching for arguments to discard the scientific consensus and not trying to further the debate at all.

"that the data is basically fraudulent."

Where's the claim the data is fraudulent?

The claim is the data is missing. This is not the same. The presumption that it did exist is the reasonable conclusion, however, for it to be scientifically useful, people need to be able examine the data from the beginning. Correction techniques are routine applied to data across a wide variety of sciences, but are themselves something legitimately subject to scientific examination due to their intrinsic danger.

For all you know, the corrected data underestimates warming due to use of bad correction methods! How would you prove this, though? The data is missing.

Here's a very important point: This isn't about global warming or the skepticism thereof. This is a story about scientific malfeasance. Going to town defending people who can't produce their data, in accordance with the basic scientific principle of reproducibility, is an enormous flashing warning sign that you are deciding positions based on politics and not science. The scientific principle is clear: The data should be readily available for others to examine, full stop. That examiners may challenge it is a feature of the scientific process, not a bug!

There's really no room for debate on this, unless you are willing to admit up front that science is not a relevant consideration to your position, in which case, yeah, sure, go nuts defending the guys who won't produce their data. But you should be aware you've left science behind.

Am I personally a skeptic? Yes. But this isn't why, nor do I consider this evidence of my position. It is just plain scientific malfeasance of the kind that can pop up anywhere; since it's hardly the only piece of evidence in any direction, it's not really a story about this one piece of evidence. But it's critical to root this stuff out, call it out, and address it head on, for the same reasons it's important to call out the corruption of any other process. You can't tolerate this stuff, or it gets worse. I would by the first to criticize anyone who published one of the (many) scientific publications that bolster my personal beliefs if they refused to share data with "critics". This is basic science.

You have hit upon a key distinction, unfortunately the author is intentionally muddling these two issues of 1)scientific data is missing or being withheld and 2) global warming or the skepticism thereof.

"the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared" "If there are no data, there’s no science."

There are plenty of mundane explainations for why scientists aren't providing data to people like Warwick Hughes. Perhaps Jones thought Hughes was a crank. Perhaps assembling the data was a lot of work and Jones didn't feel like going through all that work for someone he thought was just trying to raise trouble. Perhaps there were legal issues to providing the data publicly (as the article notes) that hadn't been resolved yet.

Of course Jones was wrong, all scientists should make every effort to provide data to anyone and everyone who wants it, even people they think are 'cranks'. In fact, Jones' reluctance to provide data to climate skeptics only fuels the fire of skepticism. But for the author to argue that this single act casts any serious doubt on the science of global warming is giving this incident far more importance than it deserves.

"Seems to me he's just searching for arguments to discard the scientific consensus and not trying to further the debate at all."

A frightening, ignorant statement. If this subject wasn't so political then "searching for arguments to discard the scientific debate" would be considered exciting, interesting and daring, not "shut the fuck up, we figured it out already".

Hasn't science been wrong about everything at one time or another? for luminiferous aether, for eugenics, against evolution, against continental plate drift, etc

I'm surprised and a little bothered by the responses here, especially yours.

Assuming that the subject here was, say, evolution, would you respond the same? Would you be saying, "Well, we should consider it exciting, interesting, and daring when someone says that there's not actually any factual basis for evolution"?

The other commenters are correct in their critique of this. Michaels isn't offering evidence contrary to most scientists' understanding of climatology. That would be exciting, daring, and interesting. Merely attempting to discredit climate research by saying that they're missing data that they once had is ... well, it's thin at the least, and it doesn't further the debate at all.

The whole "science has been wrong before" angle has been answered very well by lots of scientists. The answer basically boils down to, "Yes, but it's usually wrong in a continuous cycle of refinement, not wrong in a 180-degree direction kind of way".

It is extremely wasteful to have to keep answering the same questions over and over in scientific contexts, especially when those are brought by people who aren't familiar with the field, and especially when their questions basically amount to, "You haven't answered all my questions the way I wanted you to, and you might be wrong."

If you -- or Michaels -- wants some credence in the scientific community, then you have to do some actual research, you have to have some actual data, and you have to get it peer-reviewed.

That's how it works.

This brings up the interesting question of "how is this different from denying evolution"? The relevant question is, I think: if the theory turns out to be wrong, how hard is it to explain the data?

If the theory of evolution turns out to be wrong, there's a huge stack of data which we're going to have a very hard time explaining sensibly, including DNA evidence, observations of short-term evolution in certain living things, and the entire goddamn fossil record. Apart from "God put it all there deliberately to test us" there's no way to come up with an alternative explanation.

If the hypothesis that human CO2 emissions have a significant effect on the climate turns out to be wrong, then... well, the only actual data we need to come up with an alternative explanation for is a hundred-year modest overall warming trend (for which we can all easily think up a few alternative explanations). Everything else is just theoretical predictions.

"The whole "science has been wrong before" angle has been answered very well by lots of scientists. The answer basically boils down to, "Yes, but it's usually wrong in a continuous cycle of refinement, not wrong in a 180-degree direction kind of way"."

Well I'm talking about scientific revolutions, which are 180's

"If you -- or Michaels -- wants some credence in the scientific community, then you have to do some actual research, you have to have some actual data, and you have to get it peer-reviewed."

This happens all the time, but you don't hear about it, because they are against the scientific consensus.

Also, funding is 1000 times higher for pro-warming than against. If you want funding to study the blue-footed-boobie get in line, but if you want to study the effects of global warming on the blue-footed-boobie they throw money at you.

That's how it works.

> > "If you -- or Michaels -- wants some credence in the scientific community, then you have to do some actual research, you have to have some actual data, and you have to get it peer-reviewed."

> This happens all the time, but you don't hear about it, because they are against the scientific consensus

Supporting evidence please? Please give some examples that "happen all the time" but "we haven't heard about".

Frankly, you sound like a conspiracy nutter. Please provide some counter-examples to support your case.

I'm not going to play that game. If I gave you a list of papers to counter man made global warming, you'd say "they are sponsored by big oil" or "those scientists are shunned by the scientific community".

How about this, I think the burden of evidence should be for proving man made global warming. Has it been done? No, it hasn't, despite all the "consensus" noise. Buried under all the "concensus" you'll simply find computer models. Computer models that don't even agree with each other, of impossibly complicated systems.

That wasn't the most fortunate way to put it, but I thought the part about furthering the debate would have clarified the previous part. I'll try again:

"Seems to me he's just searching for sticks to hit people with, instead of doing new research and redoing others research to confirm or reject previous conclusions."

Yes, being sceptical is valuable. But not when it's just scepticism. Do some research. Test your hypotheses. Test theirs. Test them again. Test them differently. All of that helps further the debate. It gives us better facts, more facts, a more complete picture of the real world. It helps, it's good.

But saying "you missed a spot" is useless. The science may not be perfect, but then science rarely is perfect anyway. At the end of the day we're looking for the facts, not the perfect experiment.

Want better science? Make it. Forward a new hypothesis. Test it. Let other people test it. And over time we, humanity, will figure out which theory supports the facts better.

That's science. Some 1000-word op-ed article without any citations is not.

> I don't trust him because he's written anti-climate change before

So, you are saying you will only trust him if his views match yours?

No, please stop cherry-picking my statements. I made a sentence consisting of two parts. Leaving out a key part is dishonest.

What I said was:

> Eh, no. I don't trust him because he's written anti-climate change before and doesn't give any sources for his claim that the data is basically fraudulent.

He's clearly a sceptic and that's his right. But I'll give you several points to consider:

a) The author has written a book (several even) where he disagrees with the international consensus about climate change. I'd wager a bet that they aren't all about how the data is missing. So either he's out looking for ways to disprove the theories (which is good) and finding a lot or he's just searching for stuff to hit people with, instead of trying to do serious science. I'm inclined to believe the latter, since the former would mean that a few hundred climatologists from around the world are blatantly ignoring clear evidence and the latter would only mean someone with political motives (or being stupid, corrupt or something like it, or any combination of said things).

b) He has written extensively about how climate change isn't true, but is only now trying to review the data of people that have found climate change to be happening. That's odd.

c) Yes, it makes a difference if he has written anti-climate change before. If he had written pro-climate change before and is now coming to the conclusion that the data can't be checked, his claims are a lot easier to believe because political motives can be ruled out.

It's the same when a climate change sceptic would review the data and find that it supports the conclusions. That would mean that it convinced a sceptic. That's a higher bar to pass than convincing a tree-hugger.

d) The title of the mentioned book is "Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know". "They don't want you to know"? He's apparently implying that there's a conspiracy to make people believe climate change exists. That does not give me a whole lot of confidence in his intellect or intentions.

All that makes me distrust the author. Which is fine, I don't need to trust the author to believe facts he reports, as long as there are sources. But he didn't supply any.

So I'm left with an article written by somebody I cannot trust to be intellectually honest about the climate debate and that doesn't contain sources. The only conclusion I can come to is that I cannot trust the "facts" reported in it.

> No, please stop cherry-picking my statements. I made a sentence consisting of two parts. Leaving out a key part is dishonest.

No, I split the sentence in two and showed one of the two parts is wrong. You should have left it out.

You essentially made an ad hominem argument, and I pointed it out.

I do understand the point that when you can not verify the argument, you verify the person.

Which is what you did, but you did it wrong. You compared his beliefs to yours, and since they didn't match you don't trust him.

You can verify the person if you want, but not by comparing his opinions to yours.

> You can verify the person if you want, but not by comparing his opinions to yours.

Which isn't what I did. At no point have I given my opinion. My opinion has not changed between my two posts, nor has my point. The last post was an elaboration of the first. If you find no issue with the second, then there is none with the first (other than too brief, apparently).

I do not trust the author of an anti-climate change article because he has a pre-existing opinion against climate change AND doesn't cite any sources. If either would have been the opposite, I would have had a different opinion, because then there would be no motive to fudge the truth. Both parts of the statement are important and relevant.

I think the problem is that others are telling him that doubting the scientific consensus is how science, academia, and the world should be. Quite contrary, science has improved and expanded beyond what it was 100 years ago simply because everyone doubts and challenges the norm.

Now, I've never seen scientific data to prove that climate change is real (besides it being hotter in Florida in my opinion). I'm not a scientist and I don't actively search for such data.

Well if you have consensus then there is nothing to debate (and hence nothing to further) unless you have an argument against the consensus.

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