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Comment by maukdaddy | Hacker News Reader

OK these anti-climate articles are getting really lame. This is a fucking opinion piece from one of the most conservative papers in the US.

Why do so many hackers/HN types seem to be skeptics? I would have thought of all people, hackers/entrepreneurs would be forward-thinking and realistic about what is happening to our environment!

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I used to be "forward-looking" and "realistic" about global warming. And by forward-looking and realistic, I just mean ignorant.

Here's how I knew that global warming was happening and caused by man: a friend told me the top scientists agreed it was true.

I will actually accept a lot of information based on scientific consensus. However, recently, I learned eminent scientists are lying to me (and their colleagues), so my whole basis for belief fell apart. Also, I started looking at some of the data and discussion, and there are plenty of reasons to doubt - sane, statistical reasons... not like 9-11 is an inside job type conjecture.

I am an Obama-loving, liberal, pro-recycling, bike-owner, but I am no longer convinced that climate change is human-created, and I'm not satisfied that carbon abatement is the one true path to salvation. I actually do tend to believe these things are likelier true than not, but I am no longer one of the faithful.

When top scientists start lying to us, "cleaning up" data, and warning of the apocryphal end of man, I start to wonder if these scientists aren't just the witch doctors of another era, with different vestments and potions. But then I think, nah... the WSJ is right. They aren't superstitious, they are just human, corrupt, and greedy.

Corruption and greedy are so banal.

I liked your analogy to witch doctors better. Where do we turn to understand the universe and frame our decisions? Science. And why do we vest science with such authority? We trust it. We trust the scientific process, we trust the Space Shuttle and our little iPods, which seem the very embodiment of science's revealed truths.

Enough with the scientific exceptionalism. There is only rigorous reasoning and solid evidence, and flawed reasoning. It's the same in any human endeavor, whether we're talking phds or plumbers.

Any time people start throwing around the words "science" and "scientists" a lot I get increasingly skeptical. They don't add much to any discussion that isn't centered on appeals to authority.

Because skepticism should be the natural state of being of any intelligent person.

Unwavering belief and fanaticism is inherently dangerous and stupid, yet unwavering belief and fanaticism is all global warming has had for the past decade. The fanaticism has clearly got to the point of doctoring evidence and attempting to sabotage critics. How long would it have been until we got to an asinine crusade against non-global warming believers . . . oh wait, that's already started amongst the GW scientists!

But on the other side the evidence selectivity and baseless opinion pieces fighting for mindshare are 100 times worse.

Of course it's healthy to be skeptical, but it really seems like most people writing about GW have an agenda. The politics of the issue are simply too charged for any objectivity to sneak in.

It's emotionally draining to wade through all the crap being spewed around (I'm not blameless!).

But in a "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" kind of way, I'm hopeful this mess spurs renewed efforts to (re)construct a healthier, scientific basis for objective analysis.

I hold scientists to higher standards of conduct. The "Other people behave badly!" defense doesn't sit well with me.

I'm not excusing their behavior. I'm just stating facts.

If I remember correctly, "Unwavering belief and fanaticism" also seem to be near the crux of the argument by the folks equating the global warming crisis as being another form of religion.

http://www.independentweekly.com.au/news/local/news/general/...

http://www.opposingviews.com/articles/opinion-global-warming...

If anything, we should be more skeptical than most. Lorenz pretty much founded modern chaos theory when he learned how ridiculously hard it was to simulate (and therefor predict) weather. The whole butterfly flapping in China thing isn't a cute little metaphor, it is a very real statement about how complicated weather truly is.

We might be able to make some observations about trends in the weather, but we don't have long enough baselines to really be able to tell what is going on.

I'm not saying that I think the whole anthropomorphic global warming thing is completely false, I'm just saying scientists who point to what is essentially noise in our woefully short record don't do a good job of convincing me.

I'm a fan of sustainability, and mining economies make me edgy. For that reason, I think a move away from fossil fuels is the obvious choice.

I'm also a fan of not screwing up the environment, but most of the green movement ends up as barely disguised anti-corporatism, with a fair amount of dead-horse beating.

most of the WSJ stuff on climate change is partisan garbage, but i would point out here that this author is actually someone with credentials.

Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940, Webster, Massachusetts) is an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 books and scientific papers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen

most of the WSJ stuff on climate change is partisan garbage, but i would point out here that this author is actually someone with credentials.

As the leaked emails have demonstrated, merely having credentials does not prevent your work from being partisan garbage.

i agree, which is why i only said he had credentials :)

i know nothing more about him than what wikipedia says, and having credentials does not make one ethical by default. i'm taking everything from either side of this issue with at least a grain of salt thanks to the politicization of the science.

It's not just any old lame opinion piece, though. Here is how the author is described by Case Western Reserve Professor Jonathan Adler:

"MIT’s Richard Lindzen is one of the world’s leading climate scientists. He is also a climate 'skeptic,' rejecting claims that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are likely to create a climate catastrophe. Above all others, he is the climate skeptic environmental activists most fear, as he has unimpeachable credentials. As a prominent climate scientist who believes global warming could cause an environmental catastrophe confided to me, Dr. Lindzen’s views are not easily dismissed, even if his views are somewhat outside the 'mainstream' of climate science. (Of course, we may have to reconsider what constitutes 'mainstream' climate science after the leak of e-mails and other documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.)"

   http://volokh.com/2009/12/01/mits-lindzen-on-climategate/

Because so many of the proposed solutions 1) will actually be worse for the environment, and 2) be massively expensive, and 3) will provide massive opportunities for rent-seeking and gov't corruption.

Even before the CRU leak, I suspected the science behind it was bad, because there was no transparency, skeptics were being marginalized, and discussion about the core issues behind it were forbidden. These are not the actions of concerned scientists trying to get the word out, these are the actions of political thugs angling for more power.

I think the majority of skepticism is rooted in folks smelling something fishy with this whole issue.

Skepticism is a good thing in general. It happens to be a bit unfounded in this case, but you wouldn't know it the way things are being presented.

Considering the credentials of the author and the arguments presented, I don't understand how you say the skepticism is unfounded, or even a "bit" unfounded.

There are several very well-credentialed members of the 9/11 Truth movement. Sure, their theories still fly in the face of overwhelming evidence and the great majority of experts in terrorism, building demolition, etc., but there they are.

I see a pretty strong parallel between 9/11 truthers and global warming deniers.

They are many of the same arguments we see everywhere else. Most of them are true-but-irrelevant (the 2% number given early in the article is essentially meaningless, as it's a percentage of one component of a derivative in a complex system). He's at least smart enough to leave out transparent falsehood.

The basic problem is that the Wall Street Journal is a newspaper. You can't address scientific questions in a newspaper. You just can't. It's a tightly-controlled broadcast medium, in which all arguments must be kept simple enough for the average reader to understand without being a professional in a related field. All three of those factors (control, broadcast, simplicity) actively work against science.

What scientists need to do is find ways to address these kinds of oversimplifications in ways that the average reader can understand. It's hard, yes, but someone's going to need to do it if the public discourse is ever going to get onto the right track.

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