[wthseriously]

I'm just wondering how this article got pushed to the HN front page? If this were an article with substantial evidence against global warming such as the many articles and arguments provided in Crichton's State of Fear, would it be posted here? No. And that's my problem with this. The fact is that if we were actually capable of understanding what was causing global climate change, we would be able to predict the weather, and... we can't. We should instead be focusing on how we utilize our resources. That is something we can actually do something about. But don't try to provide statistical evidence of global warming just to "raise awareness" and prove that you are right. You'll never be able to do it. Focus on something that has a purpose. Tell people to go watch Medicine Man again, and maybe Sean Connery can convince them to stop cutting down rainforests. Do something freaking useful for once.

[anotherthrow]

>if we were actually capable of understanding what was causing global climate change, we would be able to predict the weather

This conditional is (obviously) false. Given your argument seems to rely on it, your argument is not sound.

[wthseriously]

Good catch. "Predict the weather more than 10 days in advance", I should have said.

Prove to me what is causing global climate change. My point is that we cannot even predict the weather more than 10 days in advance, and even that is not totally reliable. Once we get to the point where we can reliably predict weather for years and years (say- more than a few thousand), then we can determine if we actually have substantial climate change, and maybe by then we'll know what really causes it. At this point, we are still guessing. We're using educated guesses, but they are based on possible coincidence.

[anotherthrow]

>"Predict the weather more than 10 days in advance", I should have said.

That's false too. Predicting climate doesn't require predicting the weather. Compare: suppose you have a slightly biased coin - maybe 0.75 chance heads, 0.25 tails. I certainly can't predict the next throw, or the throw ten out - and without a hell of a lot more knowledge I'll never be able to. But I can be extremely good predicting the heads/tails ratio for sequences of throws in the future.

>Prove to me what is causing global climate change.

No, I can't do that, as I'm not an expert and this is a very complicated area. I suspect that nor are you. In such a situation, it's rational for us to defer to the body of expert opinion (although there are extremely interesting issues in decision theory and philosophy about how one should do so). Expert opinion is pretty unanimous about what is likely causing climate change, and there are no serious reasons to suppose bias. So let's defer to them.

[nirvana]

>Expert opinion is pretty unanimous about what is likely causing climate change

Actually it isn't. I submit that most scientists do not believe in AGW. Want me to prove it? I can't. I submit that most glaciers are expanding, rather than retreating. Want me to prove it? I can't, and for the same reason.

There are an uncounted number of glaciers out there. Nobody has even counted them-- I meant that literally-- certainly nobody is doing a survey of a statistically significant number (a number we don't know because nobody has counted them, glaciers are really common) to determine whether they are expanding or contracting.

However, it is very common to hear from AGW proponents that glaciers are shrinking. Why? Because every chance they get, proponents of AGW, who are politicians, highlight glaciers shrinking. "There are no more snows of kilimanjaro" being a very famous example.

Same thing with scientists. Do you have a census of scientists? Have you surveyed them all? Can you provide me a statistically significant sample of the scientists who have looked into AGW and given a scientific argument on it one way or the other?

You can't. What you're doing here is repeating a political claim. A political claim that has the very convenient feature of excluding from any debate the very possibility of science.

Thus every AGW debate ends up being about politics and not science, because once someone tries to introduce some science, they are immediately shut down by AGW supporters asserting that all the scientists are unanimous.

Have you ever met a scientist? Find two scientists married to each other and they're not unanimous about anything. Hell, find an honest scientist by himself, and he isn't unanimous.

Ask 12 scientists for their theories on something and you'll get 18 theories.

The idea that scientific opinion is unanimous about AGW is really quite absurd, if you think about it.

FWIW, I can disprove AGW really easily. Mars is getting hotter. The IR absorption of CO2 is lower than water vapor. CO2 is a tiny fraction of the atmosphere. The planet is actually getting cooler since the solar maximum on the short end (despite CO2 going up) but getting warmer since the last ice age-- as it has always done. Mainstream perception of AGW is that there's some CO2 level that will result in runaway temperature increases-- this is historically false, as CO2 has, in the past, been vastly higher than it is today without any runaway effect. Pluto and Mars have been getting warmer exactly during the time of the rise in popularity of the AGW theory, they have no cars on them. (its the sun that is driving it.)

Did you know that the earth started out with a CO2 atmosphere with very little oxygen? The rise of algeal and plant life started converting that CO2 to oxygen and terraformed the planet into the oxygen atmosphere we have now.

BTW, CO2 tends to rise as the temperature rises, but unlike the graphs Al Gore showed in his movie (Which had been offset in time for "dramatic effect", this rise actually happens after the temperature increases.)

All of the above are basic scientific facts, many are not in dispute, though you can find lots of AGW propaganda sites "debunking" these "denier myths". (if AGW is so scientific, why the need to call people names?) I've followed hundreds of links to these blogs over the years, the vast majority assert they are "myths" and don't defend the assertion, a lot of them make up magical excuses (the most amusing was the claim that the effects of human created CO2 are different from naturally occurring CO2) ... and the ones that cite actual "peer reviewed research" almost always misrepresent it, or flat out lie about what the papers actually say.

They're pretty much completely relying on people giving up their hands and not doing any research and "believing the experts".

>there are no serious reasons to suppose bias.

Of course there are. The advocates of AGW are not scientists but politicians. And what are they pushing legislatively? The ability to control CO2. Since CO2 is produced by everything from beer and bread making to the very act of breathing, the power to control CO2 is the power over everybody. They have a vested interest in this control. The IPCC is a wing of the UN, the UN has been lobbying for years for the power to institute a global tax. A global tax on CO2 would go a long way towards making the UN a global government, which is what they want. Al Gore-- the primary spokesman for the movement in the USA-- is not a scientist, but does own a carbon credits trading firm and stands to make billions if Cap & Trade passes.

There have been numerous incidents of scientists being coerced into publishing results only if they conform to the AGW hypothesis. APL started refusing to publish any letters that questioned the issue-- tantamount to a rejection of science itself. And naturally, government funding goes to labs to prove AGW, not to objectively research the question.

I've worked in a national lab, including on a controversial question, and been thru the peer review process. The idea that there's no bias is silly. Even in non-controversial things, there's always bias. Peer review is often about not stepping on the toes of someone whose long held theory is undermined by your results.

Science involves bias at every level all the time.

[nirvana]

Downvotes with no comments. Proof positive that Hacker News is not a place where intelligent discussion can take place.

The votes only reflect how closely one adheres to the partisan political correctness of people who come to HN.

And HN is full of people who are not to well educated on a variety of subjects, but think they are experts.

[ktizo]

This article has very very little to do with climate change and a lot more to do with local climate, or weather, as it is talking about the temperature of North America, which is not the global climate.

As for claiming that understanding of a variable at one scale requires the prediction of other variables at smaller scales in the same system, consider signal to noise.

What this article is saying is that the US is very hot, early in the year. Somewhere else might be very cold right now. Or it might not, this article does not say either way.