Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

But the people who argue with climatologists largely don't argue that the world isn't warming up, so that's irrelevant. They're mostly interested in whether the modelling is accurate (because if it's not there's no real problem; all concerning scenarios rely on modelled feedback loops), in how much of it is created by humans, in how expensive reduction is vs mitigation and so on.

There are people who argue that there have been pauses in that increase, but they're citing official temperature datasets from climatologists to show that. Usually satellite or weather balloon data because the surface temperature dataset has diverged from it, largely due to continual 'remodelling'.

"Or ask why we keep on beating heat records in the last decade."

We keep being told records are being broken but this is often on close inspection not really legit. Old data gets ignored, or datasets get altered such that years that supposedly broke records later get re-declared as not being record breaking after the fact so the same record can then be broken for a second time by the same temperature, or the record breaking temperatures turn out to be taken by weather stations at airports i.e. where they're being blasted by jet exhaust and hot tarmac.

If you actually go engage with the people criticizing the IPCC, which includes a fair number of climatologists, it's that kind of detail oriented thing you'll see being discussed. And these are important points. It's meaningless to talk about temperature records being broken if climatologists edit the historical record every few years, creating warming trends where previously none were visible.




The same people used to completely deny it, they only pivoted lately to bargaining and it's really transparent.

The IPCC scenarios don't really rely on feedback loops, because we don't know enough about them. They are rarely taken into account, while even the mildest plausible scenarios based on projected human activity project at least a 2°C change, which can't be stable. We underestimate feedback loops, and we might also get human activity wrong, but even if we don't you still get a planet that's just barely habitable.

The warming trend is not created by IPCC fudging past temperature data. This is a climate change denier talking point, but it's a lie. Land and ocean temperatures have been adjusted separately to account for the changes in the measurement methods. Localized sources were compared to their neighbours in order to be able to account for changes in the instruments, urbanization and so on. High-accuracy sensors are used to create a reference network of perfectly sited stations. Roughly half of the stations reduced the warming, half increased it. Deniers like to cherry-pick the stations to make a point. The biggest adjustment by far was because of earlier ships. They used to throw a bucket overboard, pull it up slowly and measure the temperature of the water with a thermometer, without accounting for the air temperature. Ships later switched to measuring temperatures through engine room intakes. These days we have a global network of automatic buoys. None of this increased the warming trend, the adjustments actually reduced it. Mostly only data from before 1940 had to be adjusted. Studies continue to use raw data along it's interpretations, but the necessity of an adjusted interpretation is constantly shown.


Which people are you talking about, specifically? I'm not saying you're wrong - there are so many people who disagree with one or more aspects of climate dogma that certainly there will be some out there who have changed their views over time. But you keep making precise claims about the views of abstractions, not real people.

IPCC feedback loops - they definitely do assume these. Look at any graph of temperature over time, or sea levels over time. Increases are small, slow and linear. Project them forward and even in 100 years you've got nothing of any concern. That's why the doomsday scenarios are always based on hypothesised feedback loops like melting glaciers, explosive release of methane from the ocean floor and so on. These things haven't actually been seen, they are hypothetical and supposed to kick in with higher temperatures.

The warming trend is created by the sort of adjustments you talk about. You don't have to take my word for it. Read this:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.17700

"An apparent pause in global warming might have been a temporary mirage, according to recent analysis. Global average temperatures have continued to rise throughout the first part of the twenty-first century, researchers report on 5 June in Science. That finding, which contradicts the 2013 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is based on an update of the global temperature records maintained by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The previous version of the NOAA data set had showed less warming during the first decade of the millennium."

So they were reporting a pause in temperature increases, which is by the way still readily visible in other non-surface datasets like satellites and weather balloons. It was even reported in IPCC 2013. And then, one day, they edited the data, released a new version and poof. The pause was gone. In fact, they claim it had never happened at all! If they were really just tweaking a few stations up and a few stations down with no impact, that Nature article shouldn't be possible, should it? And how can a rational person have confidence in the predictions of a group of people who for many years reported one trend in global data and then one day decides, oops, actually, everything we said was wrong. It's not rational to treat the predictions of these people as reliable when even their measurements aren't - by their own telling.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: