

Ask HN: Have you changed your mind about global warming? - IsaacSchlueter

With the recent hullabaloo over the CRU hacking, and the additional information that has come up, has your opinion about global warming changed?  Were you skeptical before and now convinced, or were you convinced before and now skeptical?  What exactly changed your mind?<p>People can get very inflamed about this question, which is a shame, because science shouldn't be about dogma.  I'm really not asking this question to pick a fight.  Myself, I've gone back and forth with my opinions on anthropogenic climate change over the last 10 years or so.  You hear about how the data is complete garbage, then find out that the person making the claims is a creationist on the payroll of an oil company with a mail-order college degree, and it goes back and forth.<p>I'm asking because I have a lot of respect for this community's ability to parse and analyze flaky/politicized data, and frankly, I've been busy and haven't had time to really look at the recent developments.
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brc
Well, for me, I flip flop as the issue goes along. I was a long time non-
believer but started to sway when the whole 'scientific consensus' line was
thrown around. I figured, 'well, if they all say it's true'.

Since then I'm more a non-believer in the AGW line as presented by the IPCC
and some of it's main champions. This is not the same as being a person who
doesn't believe in GW at all, far from it. I just find the predictions and
catastrophe claims a bit rich and too much like fear mongering, in the same
category as 'reds under the bed', 'WMD' and 'Terror Alerts' and who knows how
many other scare campaings have been pumped up, held aloft and then quietly
deflated over time. The whole thing has taken on a religious quality.

For the record, here's my problems with the current theories: 1\. The
predictions are all the result of computer models. As a programmer myself, I
know how hard it is to have faith in the results of a program processing large
amounts of data when there is no real way to check it. The release of the code
from CRU has firmed this belief up considerably. It's clear these guys are not
software geniuses. 2\. While I have no complaint with the concept of carbon
dioxide as a warming agent, we don't know enough about the concentrations
needed to increase. Is the relationship linear, exponential, or subject to
diminishing returns. 3\. The AGW proponents often talk of runaway warming or
positive feedback. How do we know there is no negative feedback? What if
warming increases evaporation and cloud cover, and lowers temperatures over
time? You've only got to spend a week in England to realise cloud cover can
really affect temperatures. Remember all that fear mongering over a Nuclear
winter? 4\. Is it really known if warming is net negative for humans? Would
the conversion of currently frozen lands into productive pasture outweigh loss
of some farming land? Most of the change involved in Climate Change is seen as
a negative, but all change involves wins for some and losses for others. 5\.
Are we talking about true Global Warming or just Arctic Warming? Because the
old timers around where I live will tell you it was a lot hotter in the '30s
and '40s than it is now.

I'm not pretending I have the answers. I just think there are more questions
than answers, and that some of the facts and data thrown around are subject to
wide prediction ranges, yet we always hear worst case scenarios.

Finally, my firm belief over the last 10 years has become that functioning
economies are the most important factor of human life quality. You've only got
to travel to a country with a non-functioning economy to see how bad life can
get. With moribund economies, you get increases in crime, disease, death and
an end to innovation. Only the strong and performing economies can afford the
changes to lower polluting and sustainable energy sources. Printed money
paying for uneconomic projects and empty promises aren't the way forwards,
innovation and new ideas are. There should be more focus on the reward side
(cash, prestige, positions) for those who come up with the answers rather than
punishment (taxes, industry penalties, outright bans) for those continuing to
use current technologies. You just can't tax or force people into prosperity -
they have to take action themselves by rationaly deciding the better way
forwards.

So, to answer the original question : the CRU leaks have pushed me further
into skepticism when you see how far the grab for power and money has seeped
into the whole thing, and how low the quality of the data is that these
predictions and decisions is based on. Nobody, not the scientists, politicians
or do-gooders are immune from the draw of power, money and the chance to
rewrite society in their own plan.

[edit:just wanted to add one more thing. I don't like how you can be genuinely
skeptical, and want to see more evidence, but you are immediately labelled a
'denier' and lumped in with the global-conspiracy theory people, creationists
and other assorted non-thinkers. It's this in-or-out attitude that makes me
uneasy. If you've got a genuinely true theory, then you should let people
agree with you as they see the evidence and decide for themselves.]

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cpr
I've long been a skeptic of AGW, because of the tie-in between the one-world-
government/population control people and this particular "OMG the world's
ending unless we all scale back immediately!" set of folks. I like my science
to be less ideologically-driven from the start.

Also I think the science has not shown that we're drastically affecting the
earth's normal cycles, which can be drastic & on on a very short time frame
themselves (witness the mini-ice ages of 400-500 years ago, and also witness
medieval warming (which this particular set of folks tried to suppress but
were corrected about)).

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bdfh42
Let's start with the basics. Climate change is inevitable - it has always been
a continuous process and always will be. Looking back at the past one might
well assume that the world will be ice bound again or that the world will be
(again) a warm watery place. So the question is not really about climate
change per se but our part in the process. The evidence supporting the
proposition that climate change is currently driven by the actions of mankind
is all bound up in computer models. As an (ex?) computer modeller I have
doubts about our ability to model something as complex as a climate.

My general view is that in 100 years or so it will be warmer than now
(following the long term trends of that last couple of thousand years) or it
will be cooler than now - if the next ice age has started. It almost certainly
will not be the same as now - and (generally) that has always been true.

The science is hamstrung by a lack of good data and the influence of politics.
We should be looking for more and better data - and crunching that - not
getting involved in belief systems and their inevitably poor resulting
decisions.

~~~
huherto
So, in case we are indeed changing it. Are we changing it for the better? At
least where I live, the weather seems to be better now than 5 or 6 years ago.

