[mturmon]

Thirded. The posting of climate-related stories on HN brings out a lot of un-informed skepticism. The resulting back-and-forth tends to crowd out everything else.

In many of these cases, it's clear that the commenters have done no background reading, and have no climate science background. Their comments thus consist of simple armchair speculation (your "lowest of the low-hanging fruit").

In these comments, I have found people with strong opinions on the lack of seriousness of climate science, who have no idea we have gravimetric measurements of ice sheet mass. This is a dataset going back almost 20 years that has revolutionized geoscience. HN commenters have expressed strong opinions about melting ice, with no knowledge of this data and what it means.

I have found people who think that climate science consists of having a stable of models each with a host of knobs, and the research method is to turn the knobs or choose new models until the results look dramatic enough to publish.

The gap between the firmness of these claims and the knowledge to back it up just boggles the mind.

The most basic step people could take to fix this is to read the executive summary of the IPCC AR5 report, or (even better/easier) the executive summary of the NCA (https://science2017.globalchange.gov). This report was specifically written by people who really know this stuff, for people like us.

[mistermann]

Serious question: based on what I've written, do you believe I am one of the people you describe?

[mturmon]

Your comment is an example of the "middlebrow dismissal" [1] and overdone and uninformed skepticism that is prevalent on HN climate threads.

There's no indication that the authors are cherry-picking their models but the comments above are assuming this (without reading the original paper to get a sense of the care of the analysis). It's really easy to find supposed gotchas in this way - basically any analytic step can be questioned.

If you live in the Bay Area, AGU is next week at Moscone Center. It's the biggest one-stop-shop in the world for geoscience research. Maybe it's worth paying a one-day admission fee to see some of this in person?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5072224

[mistermann]

> Your comment is an example of the "middlebrow dismissal"

--> It's a word coined by pg that's sort of a term-of-art for the depressing tendency of the top HN comment to be something which pooh-poohs the company/topic/idea in the submission, doesn't add anything to the discussion, but (crucially) is worded convincingly enough to not just end up on the bottom of the thread.

--> e.g. "Lol that suckz because Google can steal ur passwerdz!" would not end up at the top of the thread. We wouldn't be terribly worried if someone actually said "Wait, I just audited NativeClient and it turns out you can achieve arbitrary code execution. Maybe you should avoid this software." The danger zone is comments which sound like the second but, on reflection, only tell you about as much as the first.

I love the first reply:

"Ironically the concept of a "middlebrow dismissal" seems to me to enable what it condemns--e.g. HN'ers can now just post "hey that's a middlebrow dismissal" instead of a detailed statement of why a particular response falls short. Basically I think pg made it worse by giving it a catchy name."

- something which pooh-poohs the company/topic/idea in the submission [Invalid]

- doesn't add anything to the discussion [Invalid]

- We wouldn't be terribly worried if someone actually said "Wait, I just audited NativeClient and it turns out you can achieve arbitrary code execution. Maybe you should avoid this software." [If you'd have read more closely, and less tribally, perhaps you might have noticed something along these lines]

> There's no indication that the authors are cherry-picking their models

My comment wasn't that they are cherry picking their models, it was that it is (as worded) not entirely clear that they are not. I also explained why this is may be harmful.

> but the comments above are assuming this

Mine weren't assuming anything.

> basically any analytic step can be questioned

Perhaps. But survivorship bias isn't a conspiracy theory.

> If you live in the Bay Area, AGU is next week at Moscone Center. It's the biggest one-stop-shop in the world for geoscience research. Maybe it's worth paying a one-day admission fee to see some of this in person?

I'm satisfied enough with the science to support doing something about climate change. My interest in this conversation is the apparent unwillingness of similarly minded people to consider weaknesses in their persuasion campaign. How do you foresee getting past the current impasse we find ourselves in?

[mturmon]

I think you want to argue with people on the internet. Not playing.

[mistermann]

In other words, no disagreement allowed.

Why don't you demolish me with your science and facts? Does that question even register?

[hcknwscommenter]

You were demolished.