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Comment by pierrefar | Hacker News Reader

There is plenty of room for debate if the skeptics stop polarizing and politicizing the debate.

Also, if anyone in this debate can be counted on to change their mind, it's the scientists: we do it all the time when shown evidence to the contrary of the current belief. I sincerely doubt that your average skeptic walking into this debate is actually willing to change their mind if shown evidence. Their mind is already made up and it won't change.

So yes, plenty of room for debate, but it needs the right mentality.

BTW, I once convinced a very creationist skeptic that evolution just might be correct in like 3 hours. How? He was willing to listen and see that there just might be an alternative explanation to the things he's seeing. He was willing to accept a different point of view and my job was to present my case. Luckily I did OK.

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There is plenty of room for debate if the skeptics stop polarizing and politicizing the debate.

You're suggesting that the global warming folks would be willing to avoid politicizing? If it weren't for the policy prescriptions and other political fallout, the skeptics mostly wouldn't even care. I'm sure the vast majority of the skeptics would be willing, even eager, to drop all potential politics from the debate, but the whole reason it's important (from the viewpoint of such a skeptic!) is that it's now more about politics than science.

Absolutely it's more about politics than science. What I don't understand is that why politics got so injected so fiercely into the debate. Because of all the anti-climate change efforts, the climate change case actually got better as scientists did what they do best: they found more evidence to settle the points of contention raised by the skeptics.

Are the skeptics listening to this new evidence objectively? All I hear from them is "Ah yes, that may be so, but...".

Politics got injected because a lot of money is being spent on climate change research, clean energy, carbon credits, etc. Kyoto was all politics. A lot of money stands to be made or lost on climate change issues. You think Al Gore is doing what he is doing for free?

It is extremely easy to see how politics got injected into the debate.

There was a move from "these are our findings" to "lets try and stop global warming". The second step requires government action. Hence, politics. If the climate change scientists had stayed in the "lets refine our findings" area then it would never be political. As soon as you say "lets get the government to do something about this", it is political.

There will always be people who question why you should expand government. And it is up to the people trying to expand the government to clearly show WHY we need to.

What are you expecting? Some people show up with their computer models and say LOOK, WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING, and no one would object? No one would look at it critically? If the science was so indisputable then the bill would be passed, just like the Clean Air and Clean Water acts were when they showed real science on pollutants.

You have a lot more faith than I do in the scientific literacy of our political system. Before climate change became such a current issue, there was serious controversy about whether or not we should teach schoolchildren about evolution.

What I don't understand is that why politics got so injected so fiercely into the debate.

Because it was perceived as an unassailable reason for more lawmaking and regulation, which is what politicians do, even (hypothetically) politicians with the purest motives.

Are the skeptics listening to this new evidence objectively? All I hear from them is "Ah yes, that may be so, but...".

I think most skeptics have moved from "what global warming?" to the more defensible "there's been global warming, but less than at other times in the historical and (especially) geological past, and starting well before the 20th century CO2 output increases, so the cause is unlikely to be primarily human industry".

This is a position, however, which is hard to generate soundbites for, so they've taken a massive hit in the public perception department, as it's hard to argue their position at less than essay length, and book length is better.

I think you've made the mistake of only spending time with the intelligent skeptics. I regretfully inform you they are far from the majority.

I don't see how you can make the claim that the "climate change case actually got better". Are you familiar with the busting of the hockey stick, for example? A lot of AGW models are utterly dependent on that piece of fiction. Yet despite it being revealed to be a fabrication based on a tiny subset of cherry picked data, nobody in the AGW community seems to care, nor have they spent the time to reformulate their models that were dependent on that data.

I think you've cherry-picked that belief. The discussion I have seen has convinced me that the "hockey-stick busted" thing is a red herring.

You're right: science should restrict itself to saying things like "the continued release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is likely to cause an aggregate increase in global temperatures, which will cause a host of largely unpredictable consequences, probably including rising sea levels and changes in ocean currents. Reducing the release of greenhouse gases will reduce these consequences." And so forth.

Politics only come in when people don't want the climate to change. Which is another way of saying that science only gets politicized when it discovers something with the potential of requiring political action.

Wait you're accusing the skeptics of politicizing the debate? It's the climate change promoters (many of whom are scientists) who have been saying that the sky is falling and that we need to cut our emissions now through massive government intervention. I don't know how that isn't politicizing the debate.

So when doctors say "we need to vaccinate all our kids through massive government intervention", that's OK?

This kind of strikes me as absurd:

A: It seems like releasing greenhouse gases has detrimental effects on the climate. We should find a way of releasing fewer greenhouse gases.

B: Nothing you say is true, and you're politicizing the debate. It will require massive government intervention to release fewer greenhouse gases!

A: Okay. But if we don't reduce greenhouse gases, these things are going to happen.

B: You're politicizing the debate!

You're missing the point and co-mingling different parts of the debate. There is a scientific debate about whether or not AGW is happening and the degree to which it may be happening. There are secondary debates about the degree to which the effects of AGW may be harmful to Earth's ecosystem and to human civilization and whether or not and to what degree we should take steps toward avoidance or remediation of those effects.

It is critically important that the 1st debate not be influenced by the others, yet today that's not the case at all.

Climatology is an incredibly young science. It is still struggling with problems of collecting data and its theories are still immature. There is no consensus in climate modelling, there is a cacophony of competing climate models, each with their own assumptions and fudge factors, none of which have proven reliable in predicting past climate with any degree of accuracy. But this is fine, this is how science works, theories and models are tested by data, reformulated, and retested until ultimately a theory that can make predictions which prove to be backed up by data wins the day.

And yet, despite this lack of consensus in climate modelling, there is remarkable consensus among the climatology community regarding AGW. Yet neither the quality of the data nor the models backs up such a consensus. And people who express skepticism about AGW (to any degree) are frequently compared to holocaust deniers or anti-evolutionists (those exact comparisons have been made in this very comment thread).

This is what is meant by "politicizing the debate". When one cannot engage in the legitimate scientific debate without being shouted down as an unbeliever who hates the Earth or the human race.

The reason people who express skepticism about AGW are compared to creationists is because they make the exact same kinds of arguments creationists make--unquantified claims about "there isn't enough evidence" mixed with misrepresenting whatever evidence does exist and loudly complaining that they're being shut out of the scientific discussion. Hell, they're even represented by the same political party in the United States.

There is currently no sound scientific argument against the theory of natural selection that is backed up by even a shred of data. However, there are sound scientific arguments against the theory of anthropogenic global warming, and there are many scientists in the field who have put forward alternate theories.

With evolution the "there isn't enough evidence" argument is a side-show by creationists to pretend that the mountain of really very good evidence is somehow less than perfect (hint, no amount of evidence would be enough). With climatology the "there isn't enough evidence" argument is really a very solid scientific critique. We have very little data on historical climate, especially at high CO2 levels. Even the best modern data we have (from satellites and weather stations) covers only a small time frame and still requires a lot of fiddly processing to ensure its accuracy (there are still legitimate debates on what the global average temperature of the Earth was in, say, 1995, for example). The remainder of the data comes via proxy sources and tends to be incomplete or spotty. And the climate models we have today are very immature, all of them contain one or several semi-arbitrary "fudge factors" that must be determined empirically in order for them to have any accuracy. Considering that the input and output data used to calibrate these models and determine these fudge factors is in an entirely different regime than the projected climate for the remainder of the 21st century, criticisms of these models is entirely justified.

When a creationist makes an argument against the validity of evolution (even if it's "there isn't enough evidence") the correct response is "no, there's enough evidence, here's the evidence we have, and here's how it fits the theory, and here's why we have extremely high confidence in this theory". When a "global warming skeptic" says "there isn't enough evidence" the correct response is "there's more than enough evidence, let me show you the evidence and why the evidence backs a particular climate model that predicts AGW".

It is NOT "you don't know what you're talking about, we don't need to show you anything, now shut up and go away" nor is it to compare them to a young-Earth creationist. Those are ways of shutting down honest debate and they are poisonous to science.

Regarding politicizing the debate, riddle me this: which side usually asks to see more data and more transparency?

And which side accuses the others of being greedy corporate shills while comparing them to creationists and holocaust deniers?

Creationists and holocaust deniers, incidentally, usually hide behind "asking to see more data and more transparency". You're mischaracterizing. Skepticism is fine on its own, but the thing about the skeptic's game is that you can keep playing it forever no matter how much evidence is on the other side. At some point it's not about skepticism anymore, it's about obstruction and obfuscation.

Here's my concession to the skeptic: let's pin a 25% credence on the risk of severe changes in sea level. I'm willing to give the skeptic 3/4 odds that I'm wrong. Now let's look at a map of human population distribution by elevation and calculate the cost of displacing all of those people. And let's look at the other long term costs and benefits from leaving our energy usage unchanged, and build our policies from there.

Incidentally, while it's marginally true that climate researchers have certain incentives and motivations of their own, it's also very, very true that there is a lot of established money which has a lot to lose if we do anything about the climate.

I've never once heard a creationist demand that the human genome project release their data onto the internet, or that they release species taxonomic data. (I can't comment on holocaust deniers since I've never encountered any.)

If you read some of the hacked emails, you realize that's exactly what McIntyre (of climate audit) was doing, and that's what the people at the research center were fighting against.

Creationists are chronically unsatisfied with the evidence that exists, regularly demand to see evidence of more transitional species (even when transitional species are discovered), and take every mistaken conjecture about the specific shape of past evolution as damning evidence against the theory itself.

This is because creationists don't believe in evolution. So they try to get scientists to run around, and do a lot of work to come up with evidence that doesn't yet exist (though the existing evidence is more than adequate).

This is in stark contrast to the debate in climatology, where scientists would like data to be publicized so that they may verify the results. The first is Zeno's paradox in evolution ("here's a fossil of an intermediate species between the X and Y species", "that's nice, now show me a fossil intermediate between this one and Y", ad infinitum), the second is just plain science 101 ("we spotted a new supernova in Canopus last night", "oh really, can I see the data?").

Climate skeptics used to say, "there's no evidence global warming is happening." Then they said, "there's no evidence global warming is caused by anthropogenic CO2". Then they said, "there's no evidence global warming is going to be a bad thing." Continuing to move the goalposts and trying to get scientists to run around is a tactic in both arenas.

But aren't the goal posts already way over on the football field 40 miles away? I mean, it's not like any of these conditions are new or somehow they're being made up. There are a series of things -- each of which has to be necessary and sufficient -- in order for the argument to take drastic action to hold water. This has always been the case, and this will always be the case. This is the nature of convincing anybody that drastic action must be taken -- about anything.

We just choose to talk about one goalpost or the other. It's not like people are making up extra requirements of proof simply to make it harder on the other side. The only reason folks talk about each of these goalposts one at a time is just to make the conversation easier on everybody.

So yes, if you get through the "man can change the environment" hoop, which I believe, you have about a dozen other hoops to jump through, some of which I find much less plausible than others, before you get to the "we must do something now!" This is just the structure of the argument -- debating style or political trickery has little to do with it (in my mind)

Considering that taking drastic action in order to cut back CO2 production is only justified if all 3 things are true, each of those 3 goal posts are incredibly valid.

Where are the skeptics trying to get the government to pass a bill stopping climate change research? Skeptics have no goals politically other than to STOP the legislation put forward by people politicizing climate change research.

You're asking people to simultaneously:

-believe that continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause rising sea levels, displacing hundreds of millions of people, as well as causing less predictable consequences we will be ill-prepared to respond to, but also

-not want to actually do anything to prevent it.

It's a self-contradictory argument. You're better off just convincing people that part 1 isn't true.

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