>That matters of complexity are too distant from any one individual to have direct exposure to
In the case of climate change it is actually possible to self-inform yourself about some of the key aspects of climate change. Raw data is freely available (noaa and others), and some simple scripts can answer questions like "are the claimed warming trends real or artifacts of bias due to adjustments or other factors".
This was part of my path into figuring out who to trust, and it did take a while. Not everyone is going to have the time or inclination, and this is only 1 of a few dozen important political issues to understand!
By the way my conclusion was that yes, global warming is absolutely a real thing, and absolutely caused by human activities.
> "Raw data is freely available (noaa and others)"
But still - this is a matter of whether one chooses to trust NOAA and others. His point isn't really even about climate change. It's about debating the merits of any position, and what sources of information you trust to reinforce your position.
> this is a matter of whether one chooses to trust NOAA and others
I should mention that this is fairly easy to verify, at least with part of the data. For land temperatures one of the big sources they use is meteorological data gathered at airports (METAR). You know, the same data that pilots use to calculate take off and landing distances, altimeter settings, etc. So a concerned citizen could compare this these data sets and verify part of the NOAA data. Faking this data, at the airports, would cause disasters, unless you had this major conspiracy where you fixed the pilots instruments or every pilot was aware of this faking and used the real numbers. But both seem really silly since GA pilots need this information too, and frequently do hand calculations.
I certainty think the verify part is essential in phrase "trust, but verify". I just want it to be clear that one can trivially verify one of the large components of the data set.
Ok, but what are we verifying, the pre-adjusted numbers, or the post-adjusted numbers? And is there a document a reasonably intelligent layman can refer to to get the complete story behind how various measurements have been adjusted?
For fun, sometimes I try to find someone who can explain to me where the "97% of scientists support the man-made global warming theory" statistic came from, and I'm pretty sure I found the original source, but the problem is, it doesn't say 97% of scientists support it, or that 97% of papers support it. Now, if The Informed would just be up front and admit that "ok, that particular claim is a bit imprecise to be quite honest, here's the actual story....." this would be perfectly fine with me. But when instead both official authors and any advocate I've encountered online instead doubles down on the misstatement, or refuses to answer perfectly straightforward questions but instead attacks me and starts calling me names.....well, my spider senses go off a bit.
And then I read things like:
"The US right, for decades now but accelerating in recent years, rejects mainstream institutions: not just science but academia, journalism, and government. It has devolved into thoroughly tribal epistemology: what is good for us is true."
....and the logical side of my brain says "well yes, that is certainly true for a lot of conservatives, but certainly not all" and then I start to notice a pattern where very few pro-AGW-thoery people seem to be able to resist saying things that are not true, when lying is absolutely not necessary in any way, and I think to myself, this whole situation seems a bit suspicious.
So, partially because I'm genuinely skeptical, partially because I have quite a number of issues with the current political climate and state of discourse, and partially to return just a small portion of the cntiness I've experienced from online know-it-alls, I'm going to set my launch chair just on the other side of the "denier" line, because "fck me? Well fck you too!"
Besides, the economic prospects in the future for my kids doesn't look so bright and no one seems to give two shts about that, so maybe I'm not overly motivated to care about your interests either.
> Ok, but what are we verifying, the pre-adjusted numbers, or the post-adjusted numbers?
You would compare the raw data (pre). You should also look at the models people use to adjust and ask yourself "does this make sense?" I should mention that the raw data suggests significantly more warming than is actually happening (which is why I've never understood the raw data argumet). This is because most ways we measure are actually artificially warm. There's a good layman's discussion here [1]. I'll mention that article gives lots of links to follow and is one of the first things I give technical people that are interested in learning more about the basics. It will give you a world to google and terms to search.
> pretty sure I found the original source, but the problem is, it doesn't say 97% of scientists support it, or that 97% of papers support it.
This is true, but I think you also misunderstand what it means. IIRC it also included papers from arxiv and other preprint services, which aren't peer reviewed. There are other studies that have done surveys on opinion breakdowns between different types of scientists. You still see an overwhelming trend (I believe >97%) among climate scientists that support it.
> And then I read things like: "The US right, for decades...
Leave politics out of science. Well at least as much as you can. Stop reading these things, they aren't relevant or useful. Different parts of academia have different problems, and they don't apply to all parts.
> So, partially because I'm genuinely skeptical...
GOOD. PLEASE BE SKEPTICAL. As a scientist I will NEVER discourage someone from being skeptical. But you also need to do more than just say "I'm skeptical", that is being a conspiracy theorist (in the bad way). A real skeptic looks into the claims made. That's what being skeptical is. So I encourage you to look at the data. I encourage you to actually talk to scientists that directly work on this research (as opposed to me). Most scientists are extremely happy to talk about their work, unless you're being mean to them.
If you are really skeptical please at minimum read [1]. Better, go through the other links as well.
> You should also look at the models people use to adjust and ask yourself "does this make sense?"
I don't remember specific details anymore, but any time I've tried to wade into details I'm not able to make much sense of anything. Now, if the science is unavoidably complicated, so be it, but often times it is most definitely not, and correct or not, I am left with the impression that clarity is deliberately not the goal. To be clear, I'm not expecting scientific papers to be written for the layman, but I've yet to come across anything approachable for a reasonably intelligent and mathematically capable skeptic.
> This is true, but I think you also misunderstand what it means.
I'm pretty sure I understand exactly what it means, my complaint is that almost none of the self-proclaimed internet experts on the subject don't, and when you point it out to them, they lie. Worse, the 97% statistic was "double checked" and "recalculated" using some very fancy footwork (arbitrary discarding of a portion of authors) such that coincidentally, they landed precisely on the 97% even though they used a completely different calculation. Perhaps I am misunderstanding (and have pleaded with numerous experts to correct me), but until then my current belief is that whoever wrote that was cooking the books.
....I'm not sure how to go about explaining to someone how that sows distrust. To me it seems obvious, I am literally as bewildered about my "opponents" belief in this extremely limited scope.
Of course, this may appear irrelevant to the larger actual question whether or not AGW is primarily man-made, but it speaks directly to the question of trust, which it's nice to see some people actually realize is that matters. Almost no one has actually read any of this science, so any of those folks who expresses ~"oh my god, it's sooooo obvious, you're such a science denier" is quite frankly lying out their bum. Once again. And again, how this could sow distrust in the mind of a skeptic is completely oblivious to those who have drank the koolaid.
The popular sentiment is that advocates are asking for understanding of the science, but based on the way they're asking for it, it seems more like they're asking for obedience, which to me is a feeling I've had a lot lately on a number of issues.
> Leave politics out of science. Well at least as much as you can. Stop reading these things, they aren't relevant or useful.
I don't disagree, but I would extend the same advice to the "leaders" of this movement, and ask that they find a way to reign in their rabidly enthusiastic but uninformed supporters, in many cases it alienates those of us still on the fence. "GOOD. PLEASE BE SKEPTICAL." is a sentiment I rarely hear expressed sincerely. Sure, everyone says it, until you ask a question and don't accept it being brushed away with a non-answer, and the knives come out shortly after.
> A real skeptic looks into the claims made. That's what being skeptical is. So I encourage you to look at the data.
For sure, I've just never found anything approachable. Which again seems suspicious to me. Think of the millinions of man-hours and dollars that have been poured into this initiative, yet is there a well-known and approachable website I can turn to to educate myself? If the true motive is to inform people on the facts, such they will willingly support the necessary financial sacrifices, wouldn't it make sense to have such a resource? Whereas, if the actual approach taken is incessant news, TV, and internet articles that repeat the same set of 10 talking points.....once again I get suspicious.
Many thanks for an actually sincere reply, I will read the links you provided.
For me it tends to be easier to take a historical view of a scientific topic, exploring what was known at a given time, and particularly focusing on controversies. AGW is widely accepted now, but has been extremely controversial, and was actually entirely discredited for some fifty years after the first published paper on the topic. The reasons for this should probably be extremely popular among skeptics. The Discovery of Global Warming [0] is a hyperlinked and well-cited ebook which describes the climate research of the last century or so.
In the 19th Century the prevailing view of climate was that it was static or cyclical, with cold years balancing out warm ones. This began to be challenged by growing evidence for past ice ages, and various theories of climate change proposed mechanisms by which these might occur. At around the same time, people began playing around with carbon dioxide, carbonated water, and carbonic acid, and noticed that many human activities produced large amounts of CO2. In the mid-1860s Tyndall measured the heat characteristics of various atmospheric gases (you can probably reproduce his experiments relatively easily, if you like). A few decades later in 1896 Arrhenius suggested that halving the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere could produce temperatures cold enough for an Ice Age, but he also provided figures for a doubling of atmospheric carbon. His value for climate sensitivity is a bit on the high side of today's range, but still agrees pretty well despite his unsophisticated climate model.
However, Arrhenius was refuted in 1901 by Knut Ångström, who pointed out that 1) the absorption spectrum of water and CO2 overlap, and the atmosphere is essentially completely saturated with H2O, so carbon dioxide probably isn't having any additional effect, 2) the atmosphere is completely opaque to CO2 at lower concentrations than currently exist, so additional CO2 should have no effect, and 3) that the oceans are an unimaginably capacious carbon sink, and can absorb all the carbon that humans could even think about liberating, and then some. The CO2 theory of climate change was mostly forgotten for about half a century.
In that time, we began to explore the upper atmosphere, as well as the circulation of the oceans. Other experiments shed doubt on the cyclical nature of climate, pointing out that (e.g.) small changes in albedo could reflect sunlight, leading to cooler temperatures, and so on, in a self-reinforcing cycle. The idea of a cyclical climate took a long time to die, and one of my private amusements was reading through a 1950 textbook on atmospheric science. It described the climatic zones of the world as if the annual rainfalls and prevailing winds were graven in stone, and explicitly assigned a small role to CO2. By that time, however, the scientific view was already beginning to change.
In 1949 Callendar published an article titled Can Carbon Dioxide Influence Climate?, which laid out a renewed case for the importance of CO2. The absorption spectra of water vapor and carbon dioxide do not completely overlap, he argued, and although in theory the oceans can absorb a nearly-infinite amount of CO2, the rate of mixing of the upper and lower oceans is very low, and so the oceans provide much less of a buffer in the short term. He also pointed out that the stratosphere was almost devoid of H2O, and that small increases in the composition of the outer atmosphere could have a disproportionately large effect. More generally we can say that increasing the partial pressure of CO2 increases the extent of the CO2-rich layer, raising the effective top-of-atmosphere.
There were a number of unknowns at this point. It was not known for sure whether solar output was constant, or whether the global concentration of carbon was increasing, or whether the influence of carbon dioxide would be outstripped by the influence of particulates or other polluting gases. Solar observations since then suggest that solar output is constant to within .1 percent. The potential cooling effect of particulates and aerosols was the topic of active debate until the mid-1970s, and I'm told that some periodicals published lurid extrapolations of this research. Measuring the global concentration of CO2 was something of a challenge, but it was eventually met in 1958-61 by one Charles Keeling, who established a global baseline for CO2 concentrations, showed a large seasonal variation in the same, and finally showed that the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere were indeed increasing as predicted.
Since then we have seen steadily rising atmospheric concentrations and global temperatures. Better atmospheric modeling and stricter pollution controls reduced the potential threat of cooling. Another potential avenue of escape was offered by the complexities of H2O interactions. By itself, CO2 is not all that much of a concern. The no-feedback forcing per doubling is calculated at ~3.7 W/m^2, which is generally held to be about equivalent to 1 degree of warming per doubling. And if that were all we could expect, we probably would be talking about ocean acidification instead of global warming. However, water vapor is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, and there's quite a bit of water lying around most everywhere here, and the atmosphere can hold exponentially more water the warmer it becomes, so a naive calculation would suggest an unbounded positive feedback loop. Fortunately this is not observed. The interactions of water in its various states are quite complex, so at this point we essentially had to leave the laboratory and try to study the Earth as a system.
That part is hard. Warmer tropical currents could shut down the Gulf Stream, which would probably result in Europe freezing solid, and ironically provide the impetus for a new Ice Age. (opinion) The strongest skeptical argument presented recently would probably be Lindzen's Iris hypothesis, which suggests that increased cloud coverage could offset rising temperatures. Unfortunately the balance of evidence suggests otherwise. "Something lurking in the H2O feedback" is at this point about all that would save us, and any potential mitigating effect would generally have to be both large in magnitude, to counteract the H2O feedback, and also presumably small enough not to have been noticed. Without getting spectacularly hand-wavy with physics, one might also posit some unknown interaction in the upper atmosphere which would conveniently transfer large amounts of heat into space. The oceans are pretty much ruled out, the optical properties of CO2 are beyond dispute, and hoping for an exception to the laws of thermodynamics is probably a tad optimistic.
The linked ebook should provide adequate citations for all of the above, and the research papers should all be freely available online. Do please respond if you have any further questions, or if you would like any assistance in finding citations. Also, while I have read a fair amount on this subject, I am a layman, not a climate scientist, and the above being somewhat extemporaneous, I would also be appreciative of any chance to correct any mischaracterizations.
> any time I've tried to wade into details I'm not able to make much sense of anything. Now, if the science is unavoidably complicated, so be it, but ...
It is no secret that scientists are bad at communicating with the public. Like any group we speak our own language. And that even goes for specific fields of study. There is no way you can read a paper casually. Even if you are an expert in the field you will not gain much by a casual read. But remember, all these papers list the authors' emails. DO NOT be afraid to email them. You can write something like "Hey Dr. X, I'm interested in learning about climate change. I don't understand this section of your paper (demonstrate some knowledge and effort) and I was wondering if you had the time to explain it to me in more detail or had some further reading that would help me." You'd be surprised at how far that will go. You're not guaranteed a response, but there's a pretty good chance you'll get one.
> 97% even though they used a completely different calculation
I've seen a range, but I'd pay little attention to this stuff. It isn't that important what the exact number is. You can verify that "an overwhelming majority" agree.
> Almost no one has actually read any of this science, so any of those folks who expresses ~"oh my god, it's sooooo obvious, you're such a science denier" is quite frankly lying out their bum.
Not going to argue with you there. There are a lot of armchair scientists that are pretty arrogant. It annoys me too (especially when they argue against things in my field -___-). But it isn't worth much effort when they are on the factual side. Correcting someone usually comes off as "your entire premise is wrong", which I hate, but is a reason people don't bother. But for someone genuinely interested (which it seems you are, and why I'm spending time on this), scientists tend to be happy to talk. We're all nerds after all, and nerds like to nerd out. Just have to show interest.
> but I would extend the same advice to the "leaders" of this movement
I'd argue that it is reactionary. That we didn't put it there, but since it is there we have to deal with it.
> "GOOD. PLEASE BE SKEPTICAL." is a sentiment I rarely hear expressed sincerely.
I hope you do not think I am acting that way. I think you're also more likely to see knives from the armchair types. I often say they sit in an armchair with a baseball bat. A little dramatic, but aren't most analogies? At least good for a laugh.
> Think of the millinions of man-hours and dollars that have been poured into this initiative, yet is there a well-known and approachable website I can turn to to educate myself?
There are plenty on the basics (PBS Eons is great for historical stuff. Cosmos discusses climate. And there are many others intended for the layman), but there tends to be (in most subjects) a lack of middle ground. And I admit this sucks. The best thing to do is ask an expert (I am not one in climate). Find a couple professors and shoot them an email. I'm serious. You will get much more out of that than what I can provide you. You will get best responses to specific questions and demonstrating that you have done some initial research (careful to be showing genuine interest and not bragging or arrogance). Best is short and simple. Or if you have a technical question about a paper they wrote, get technical (be careful with this if you lack the prereq knowledge though). But at some point you will have to trust. You can't know everything, but hopefully you can see that there is no conspiracy and everyone is doing their best efforts. I can honestly say I don't know a person or know a person who knows a person who intentionally misrepresented data, and the scientific community isn't that big. We're just nerds, we like to learn, and we are definitely not in it for the money (I mean have you seen a scientist's salary?!)
Feel free to ask more questions, once you have read at least that one article, and I can try to help. I will again repeat that I am not an expert in the field so my responses will be limited but who knows, maybe another HN user will chime in and add more than I can. I know there are some climate experts here and would love some of that intermediate level work and things I can add to my bookmark collection. All I can do is help you get started and hopefully make you think scientists aren't a bunch of pompous assholes or promoting any conspiracy (we're not good liars).
One of the biggest objections from (science-literate) people who reject climate change is precisely this - that 'methodology corrections' applied to NOAA data create a warming trend in underlying data that lacks it. The trust question applies at every level down to "the guy who goes out and looks at the thermometer".
Appeals to "you can run the data yourself" honestly feel like they're missing the point. Pretty much everything we know has some element of faith to it - some of it we can't verify directly, and almost all of it we won't verify, because that task is impossibly large.
Hell, I can't prove that China exists without relying on trust in others. Which is not exactly an academic question when you meet people who say things like "North Korea isn't repressive, that's just a lie our capitalist government tells us". It's not a hopeless case, you can try to push claims to the point where falseness would require a completely implausible conspiracy, but it's worth remembering that "just look at the data!" usually amounts to a call of "just trust these voices!"
Your example of self-enrichment is perfectly fine for people with a good education, but it's insufficient at 'democracy scale' where elections are decided by voters who cannot do anything beyond trusting the people who are informing their decisions.
I mean, using this definition, you could be 'self-informed' about ANY topic - as long as you have the skills, time, and desire to fully immerse yourself in the subject.
And, as you point out, it is literally impossible to do this for every subject - even if we all had infinite aptitude to study and understand all subjects, we don't have the infinite time it would take to do that. Plus, this is an extreme waste of our resources; we specialize for a reason.
We need trust, and you can only spot check that trust every now and then for things that you actually know.
I don't think this is good advice. An amateur investigation of a complex topic is probably worse than trusting an expert who may or may not be trustworthy. You don't know what you don't know. Sure, you grabbed (what you think is) raw data. But what if the trend or timescale was too small? What if you asked the wrong question? What if the data was artificially adjusted, or should have been but wasn't? (As NOAA has been caught doing.) You don't know these things, i.e. what is/isn't important. Now you're certain of your results, which may be completely wrong. To me, this is the SV/nerd version of an uninformed ideologue. ("Research fast and break things!") Maybe it's better to expend that effort identifying whether your go-to experts are really trustworthy, instead.
>Raw data is freely available (noaa and others), and some simple scripts can answer questions like "are the claimed warming trends real or artifacts of bias due to adjustments or other factors".
That can only tell you whether the trend is present in the raw data or only occured after some processing of the data.
Don't confuse raw sensor data with reality and adjustments with artifacts.
I can use a tire gauge that reads high, but that doesn't make my flat tire an artifact of data adjustment.
What you say is true, but there are some other aspects of trust at play here. Locally, I observe City Warming of up to 30 degrees each day.
Verifying that "global warming is a real _problem_ and human activities are _net negative to the human experience_" is not as easy as you are suggesting, because I need to model more than temperature over time. Also need some idea of the accuracy of the raw data.
The group of people who trust that global warming is a problem correlate pretty highly with the group of people who want to shut down big chucks of our cheap energy production system and replace it with something expensive. To put people in charge who think that is acceptable is a huge leap of trust.
It is very easy to see why doomsayers are not treated as credible. We've seen a huge number of them, mostly they have been wrong and so far the cheap energy solution has been wildly luxurious and successful.
In the case of climate change it is actually possible to self-inform yourself about some of the key aspects of climate change. Raw data is freely available (noaa and others), and some simple scripts can answer questions like "are the claimed warming trends real or artifacts of bias due to adjustments or other factors".
This was part of my path into figuring out who to trust, and it did take a while. Not everyone is going to have the time or inclination, and this is only 1 of a few dozen important political issues to understand!
By the way my conclusion was that yes, global warming is absolutely a real thing, and absolutely caused by human activities.