[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]

They are not all "crackpots". Many environmentalists have come forward stressing the importance of walking back some of the verge-of-catastrophe alarms that have been pulled. (Shellenberger, Bjorn Lomborg, and one former Obama administration advisor, to name a few). They are not saying its a non-problem, but they are saying it's completely manageable without destroying civilisation by hiking the cost of energy.

These alarms bells have been pulled repeatedly over the past 50 years. Calls for imminent catastrophe in just 10 years if nothing is done. That was 20 years ago. At some point, you have to wonder just who is profiting off of your fears while flying around in their private jets. That should tell you something.

[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.