[jacquesm]

The scientific consensus is more than clear, doing your own "research" isn't going to make a difference except to engage with the people that are already happy to ignore science. If anything you'd have to begin to wonder in what ways airports are going to be different from global averages and I can think of a whole pile of reasons why the two would diverge (such as the presence of a large chunk of asphalt or concrete nearby).

https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

For someone who worked at NASA and has a whole pile of claims to his name I would expect a far better researched piece of work. Thermometers placed randomly with a certain goal (to provide temperature data to pilots) and read out by people on irregular times during the day are a rotten source to extract climate change data from anyway.

[starkd]

It's comments like this that serve as a reminder of how we can't have valuable discussions about a topic of importance without it degenerating into name-calling and allegations of disloyalty to "science". Too many have become so fearful of climate change they are no long in the realm of a scientific discussion. They are worshipping a religion. The author of the article made a good faith effort to simply look at the data.

FWIW, the author Michael Crichton encountered much the same phenomenon in his novel "State of Fear" for which he was castigated for doing the same thing. Just looking at the data.

[butterNaN]

Comments like these are a _part_ of the discussion, though? They provide rebuttal of the methods used in the article. Why do you want to shut _them_ down?

If one wants to redo all the scientific research that has led to the consensus about Climate Change again, they can do so over and over again.

But in 2022, most of us are past the 'discussion' phase. We really, really, need to be in _Action_ phase. The discussions have been had for decades now - I implore you to find a new argument - almost every objection to climate change has multiple scientific papers published.

[starkd]

He belittled the blog post as not worthy by attacking his credibility. Without knowing anything about him. Science is not about consensus, it is founded on skepticism.

Worship your idol at your own pleasure, but don't call it science.

[tehsauce]

I’d say opposite! He pointed out flaws in the argument and then suggested that his arguments weren’t up to the standard that people with his credentials usually keep!

[jml7c5]

> The author of the article made a good faith effort to simply look at the data.

Given some of their commentary, I'm not sure it can be claimed they were making a good-faith effort. There is a clear agenda to their analysis.

[tehsauce]

Yes! I don’t know why anyone commenting on his clear bias are being downvoted.

[reidjs]

Michael Crichton isn’t a scientist, though, why should we care about or even acknowledge his opinion on global warming as if there is some scientific merit to it?

[adamrezich]

you completely missed the point of what the parent comment was saying. parent comment did not say "what Michael Crichton wrote about climate change in 'State of Fear' is the Truth." in fact, in a way your comment demonstrates the very phenomenon parent comment was referring to. it might be helpful to read it again a bit more carefully.

[misslibby]

Nobody is a scientist, it is all just people.

[jdlshore]

It may all be people, but some of those people have spent an inordinate amount of time learning the current state of the art in a particular field, and contributed new information to help advance the state of the art in (mostly microscopic) ways. We call those people “scientists.”

(People without that monomaniacal background and focus still write about science, but they’re prone to making basic errors. We call them “journalists.”)

[starkd]

True. But they still need to come out of their labs and talk to normal people by persuading them. Their scientific perch doesn't give them the right to be a dicatator. We are still free to reject their conclusions. That is our right.

[jdlshore]

That’s kind of a non-sequitor, isn’t it? Scientists aren’t being dictators. But climate scientists specifically are raising alarms, with an unprecedented level of consensus. We ignore those alarms at our peril.

Climate science is full of well-meaning laypeople rehashing basic facts, and doing so poorly. I’m not a climate scientist, and I don’t know the details, but I know enough to know that figuring out historical temperatures is a whole branch of science with massive amounts of work and research behind it. This amateur comes along with a naïve data collection methodology and gets some results that casts doubt on one of the fundamental facts of climate science—that the world is getting warmer.

At this point, he could have stopped and said, “this data is completely out of line with the established science. Maybe there’s something I don’t understand.” Perhaps do a literature search to find out how data is collected and confounding factors are addressed.

Or he could throw his crap data up “without comment,” implying that he’s found some secret. Pfeh. Lazy and irresponsible. At the bare minimum, he could have shown a little intellectual courage and asked what he was missing, and why his data was at odds with the scientific consensus.

The scientific community encounters these sorts of well-meaning amateurs all the time, particularly in physics. They combine ignorance and enthusiasm into an unending firehose of time-wasting ideas. They’re called “crackpots.”

[starkd]

Oh, please. He was capable of conveying complex topics in a way most people can understand. Not just as a novelist, but his past education in medicine and many different fields. He was truly a renaissance man, if that has any meaning today. Not saying he's always right, but he is just as capable as anyone else to weigh in. Science does not thrive when its confined to just a group of experts talking to each other.

[golergka]

You're not criticising any of the author's methods or findings, only the fact that she dared to do her own research. Therefore, your argument would be just as valid or invalid regardless of her research substance. Therefore, it's only valid if you make an assumption that no private person can do any relevant and good research on climate science whatsoever.

If it's not the case, and you allow for a possibility that a private person could do useful data analysis, you would have to prove why her analysis isn't that.

[ekianjo]

> has a whole pile of claims to his name I would expect a far better researched piece of work.

they did much more work than the random person who believes evrything they see on TV. that should be saluted, not derided.

[jacquesm]

It's the quality of the work that is problematic. I'm not of the participation prize generation.

[ekianjo]

Doing raw data visualization and being very careful about not making conclusive comments seems like a proper way to step in the subject without pretending to know more than anyone else. Also he didnt cherry pick what would have been the most convenient ones to make a point.

Compare that with typical media science reporting which is often much worse and misleading at best when not grossly wrong.

Quality work starts with data exploration and data mining. I see this article as an invitation to check the actual data thats available, if anything.

[jacquesm]

> I see this article as an invitation to check the actual data thats available

It isn't. The only thing it does is stir the pot and give the climate change deniers another straw to try to cling to.

[happyopossum]

Do you have any specific concerns with this work (other than that the results appear to upset you)?

[itsoktocry]

The number of people here saying "I know it's warmer because I feel it!" is funny, and perfectly demonstrates why these discussions are futile, even among so-called "smart people".

[misslibby]

Don't you think it is weird that people who try to do their own research end up in the "happy to ignore science" camp, as you put it? I don't think they "ignore science", they just realize it is a lot more complicated and messy than the narrative of the scientific consensus wants us to believe.

[mikkergp]

We rely on a scientific consensus _because_ it's complicated and messy. The fact that climate change is complicated and messy is a given. Every talk on climate change starts out with it's super complicated and…, but then people get mad that it's not simple, try to make it simple themselves and get mad when other criticize them for trying to explain it in 3 pages. Then all of a sudden they don't believe in science.

Also, the IPCC put out a like 1000 page report, it's not like this information is being hidden.

[misslibby]

I did not get the impression that "it's complicated" is the usual way to introduce it. The usual way is to claim billions of scientists allegedly agree and it is supposedly settled science.

"Also, the IPCC put out a like 1000 page report, it's not like this information is being hidden."

Yeah that is actually more fishy than convincing. They should be able to present it in a digestible manner. A 1000 page report is just spam, created with billions of funding. It is also not all hard science afaik, it is a lot of bla bla "this and that will become an issue because of climate change", difficult to find the meat.

[mikkergp]

You should cure cancer.

[misslibby]

I am not the one making grandiose claims about curability of cancer.

Have you ever even looked at the IPCC report?

[mensetmanusman]

The nice thing about airport thermometers is that they can be life-saving, so you would expect very good data.

[uniqueuid]

Excellent point, and to add a bit:

Scientific consensus does not mean the average of all opinions (i.e. "scientists on average believe in 2 degrees warming"), nor does it mean the average of all possible values of opinions ("there are people that believe in 2 degrees, and there are people that believe in 0 degrees"). These heuristics are wrong.

It's a summary that needs to include reputation, credibility, trajectory of findings and a lot of structural knowledge of how the field has evolved over time. All of these are not things that an outsider can easily know to even look for.

[misslibby]

You are merely constructing an idealized authoritarian elite of scientists whom nobody can question because allegedly their craft is too complicated for mere mortals.

Sorry, but no.

A lot of people have an academic education, for example, and are capable of reading scientific papers. You have to be able to make a solid point that other people can verify. The last couple of years have already shown that institutions are also of little use.

Don't confuse science with scientific institutions.

[uniqueuid]

Sorry, but I disagree, and my point is even simpler.

Take the evolution of temperature measurements through proxies (although that is not my field). If at some point it becomes known that some method of measurement is biased, then that implies a re-evaluation of past research.

Every time such adjustments happen, there is a meta-learning regarding the pace of adjustments and the severity, and also regarding which people andinstitutions prefer to stick to "old" or perhaps more conservative interpretations in some sense.

When you try to summarize the scientific consensus, you need to do so by literature because (1) the composition of the field is always changing to some degree and (2) you will never get all scientists to tell you their opinion at the same point in time.

But when you do this - summarize the literature - it is crucially important to adjust for historic biases, drift in methods adoption and interpretation and so on.

And this is just the measurements part: There is also the problem of predatory journals etc etc. - all of these can skew the "consensus" if you don't account for them.

So I'm pretty convinced that your argument of a pure, "individually verifiable" science is desirable, but has never existed and never will.

[misslibby]

"And this is just the measurements part: There is also the problem of predatory journals etc etc. - all of these can skew the "consensus" if you don't account for them."

But doesn't this very sentence from you imply that there is no such consensus as you claim? Apparently there are lots of publications that disagree, so where do you get your consensus from?

" the composition of the field is always changing to some degree and (2) you will never get all scientists to tell you their opinion at the same point in time"

That is why I don't care about a "consensus" - science is not a democracy. I care about verifiable facts, and open discussion.

"So I'm pretty convinced that your argument of a pure, "individually verifiable" science is desirable, but has never existed and never will."

I am not saying that science should output 100% true facts only. Everything only has probabilities. I am saying that scientific output should be verifiable by other people. Scientific facts are not determined in a democratic way, they already exist and are only being discovered.

[jacquesm]

> Everything only has probabilities.

But that does not mean that when there are two possible outcomes that these carry equal weight: the evidence for human influenced climate is so vast and so well researched that it would take an absolute miracle to displace it at this point.

> I am saying that scientific output should be verifiable by other people.

It is. Reproducibility and peer review are part and parcel of science and it is always done by other people than the ones involved in the original research.

But to you 'other people' may include people that have not studied the subject matter and that are not capable of following the arguments. Those people will end up having to pick a side, just like you have done, you are on the side of the 0.1% versus the 99.9%, likely because that decision works better for you in some way or other. But that does not make you a scientist any more than it makes me one. And I'll throw my lot in with the 99.9%, not because it makes my life any easier but simply because that makes good sense.

[misslibby]

" the evidence for human influenced climate is so vast and so well researched that it would take an absolute miracle to displace it at this point."

Even now there are various scenarios, not a single consensus. And I rather doubt that you personally have verified the climate science, so what makes you so sure?

Btw it is not about humans influencing climate (of course they do), but about the doomsday scenarios.

"Reproducibility and peer review are part and parcel of science and it is always done by other people than the ones involved in the original research."

Peer review is not a a guarantee for good science, it was invented for the government grant system. Sorry if people call on the peer review system, to me it just shows they are delusional about the workings of the science systems in most places.

"But to you 'other people' may include people that have not studied the subject matter and that are not capable of following the arguments"

Everybody can study the subject matter, that is the thing. It is you who claims only certain people of your choosing are capable of doing so.

"And I'll throw my lot in with the 99.9%, not because it makes my life any easier but simply because that makes good sense."

Do you even know what the 99.9% say? You can check how that number was derived - it was people evaluating abstracts and judging whether those papers agree that humans affect climate. It doesn't say everybody agrees on the doomsday scenarios.

[YarickR2]

Wife caught cheating screams on the top of her lungs "Are you going to trust your lovely wife or your lying eyes ?"