[lifeformed]

Saying something is biased might be a fallacy in a debate, but not in statistics. In a complex topic, where the data is fuzzy and misrepresentation is easy to do and harder to detect, you must consider biases in your sources.

An alien can look at this "debate" and make a rational decision without even knowing what the debate is about. The world's scientists study X and overwhelmingly agree: X is going to wreak havoc on the world within a few decades. In response, the humans who make extraordinary amounts of money off of X (and won't be alive in a few decades), pay large sums of money to a few people who say: X isn't that bad.

So an alien examines this situation and thinks: "Hmm... should I believe the overwhelming majority of rationalists, or the few people with financial incentives to be contrarians?" The alien concludes: "Since there are two sides to the debate, that means each side is exactly 50% likely to be right. The answer must be unknowable, and therefore they shouldn't make any decision on it and just maintain the status quo (making the contrarians the victors)." Just kidding. The alien says, "Wow, if this species is stumped on this one, I'll just come back later and harvest their newly melted water and filter all their corpses out."

[leetcrew]

I'm certainly convinced at this point that climate change is a real thing that we should be concerned about, but that's only because I have (to the best of my ability as a cs person) critically examined the position taken by the climate scientists.

no one is immune to bias and misaligned incentives, especially on contentious political issues, and especially in fields where your entire job depends on government funding. in general, I am quite skeptical of academics.

[lifeformed]

I'm not saying we should accept it all unquestioningly, but I feel like that ship has sailed a long time ago. As a society, we should be taking action yesterday, not still asking if it's real or not. The only reason why we are still doing it is because of malicious high-influence individuals holding everyone back, trying to squeeze every last drop out of society.

Scientists and academics indeed have their own biases, but when you look at the big picture of the distribution of peoples' motivations, very clear patterns emerge that scream out: there is a lot of bad-faith, deliberate disinformation out there, and we need to take that into account. As rational people, it's tempting to just take arguments at face value and focus on the information. But this is all taking place in a larger context where psychology and game theory play a role. Impartiality is exploitable - tying up people's judgement is just a victory for the status quo.

[magduf]

Maybe, but if the alien wants water, the easier path is to just go to Europa, which has more water than Earth, plus a lower gravity well. We have no way of stopping them from harvesting resources from anywhere in this star system.

[kevinskii]

This is not an accurate characterization of the debate. "The world's scientists" are in fact a small cadre of self-described climatologists whose academic careers depend on this being a real issue.

If you want to be skeptical of the skeptics, fine. We all should be. But the notion that the bias is one-sided is silly.

[antod]

> "The world's scientists" are in fact a small cadre of self-described climatologists whose academic careers depend on this being a real issue.

Really? I think a lot of countries have scientific agencies whose job it is to as accurately as possible monitor and predict the climate because those countries economies (eg especially important for planning in agricultural economies) depend on it. If they had scientists that could show it was a non issue, those governments would be all over that. And after all those scientists would still need to be employed predicting the natural climate cycles anyway.

The world would fall at the feet of scientists that could scientifically refute this. That would be the hugest money making opportunity for any climate scientist, and instant fame. To contend that whatever secret international cabal in favour of promoting climate change can outcompete the fossil fuel industry for resources is frankly nutty. If these academics are as corruptible as you seem to claim, why would they choose the low reward side of the debate?

You seem to be trying to inject some false "balance" to this.

[lifeformed]

Climate change science isn't the result of a small cabal of academics, it's a vast interdisciplinary study involving all fields.

Bias isn't a binary proposition: it's not that since both sides have some bias, they should be equally distrusted. It's that one side has 0.02 bias and the other side has 0.6 bias, so weigh accordingly.

[kevinskii]

Study of the history and effects of climate change is indeed a vast interdisciplinary science. But the study of cause is much more narrowly focused.

Of those scientists who have backgrounds that would qualify them to contribute in this particular area, the consensus is not at all clear. But the ones who seem most concerned about rapid AGW appear to be those with skin in the game.

[rfinney]

what the heck ... (my karma in this thread is like the stock market today) ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

[axiometry]

Are you serious? The "alien" here is just a metaphor to convey a basic concept. It couldn't even be used as an authority if we wanted it to be-- it's completely made up!