[TriinT]

Funny, but the data I had told a rather different story. Gonna look for the URLs to back it up and I will be right back.

"None of it sways you" -> please spare me of your attacks. They don't add anything to the discussion and they only weaken your point.

[mlinsey]

Why are your attacks on Krugman more constructive than the GP's attacks on you? Because Krugman isn't posting here?

[TriinT]

Because Krugman is intellectually dishonest and because he's a public figure. His opinions shape the thoughts of the population. Nobody reads my opinions. Thank goodness I am no public figure.

If you're going to address the public, you should be honest. Krugman is an economist. He constantly sells half-baked, hand-waving arguments as absolute truths. And this is not because he's a "liberal". The same happens with all the "conservative" economists who also write dishonest articles.

Economics is hard. Very hard. An "expert" who tells the public he does not know will be frowned upon. But that's the point: experts don't know everything, and should not claim to know more than they do.

Greenspan himself wrote that when he ran the Fed sometimes they were completely "lost" and made decisions based more on gut-feeling than solid economic theory. Greenspan is pretty much retired now, so he can afford to be frank. Krugman still has a career, so he can't afford that.

[bokonist]

Public figures are almost never intellectually honest, because in order to get to their position they usually have to align politically with either the Left or the Right. Facts and arguments are not methods for discovering truth but weapons for assaulting the other team.

At Hacker News we hold everyone to a higher standard. We are not trying to influence policy but to seek truth. We do not want the site to degenerate into the NYTimes or Wall St. journal editorial page.

[DanielBMarkham]

An "expert" who tells the public he does not know will be frowned upon. But that's the point: experts don't know everything, and should not claim to know more than they do.

This is the tension in science. You take all of that schooling, and for what? To admit you're as stumped as everybody else?

I mean seriously, when is the last time you saw a science show where they basically said "Beats me"? Instead it's all upbeat and glossed over.

The way we sell science and actual state of science are two completely different things.

[TriinT]

Science shows are entertainment, mostly. Their goal is to promote Science, and I think they do their job well.

I have had the priviledge of working with some truly top-notch scientists. A common trait among them is how honest they were on the limitations of their knowledge. They were not afraid to say they were wrong, or that they didn't know.

This was in their academic environment. I don't know if they would be that honest when addressing the public. The average person would probably not be able to understand how's it possible that an illustrious professor has spent his entire career studying elementary particles and is still baffled by them. That is due to the fact that the average person does not know what deep knowledge is, and does not need to know.

[quoderat]

If my point is correct, and the evidence, facts and data all align with it, then anything else I say is irrelevant.

That's the problem, though -- people make these decisions based on emotions, vested interests, or what they wish were so, rather than the real evidence. If global warming/climate change is harmful to capitalist greed (and I don't think all capitalism is greed, or vice versa), then it prima facie must be incorrect, in some folks' view.

Not saying you are guilty of that, but so very many are.

[TriinT]

Suppose the weather is indeed changing. It does not matter whether this is caused by man or not. And one does not need to wait to have irrefutable evidence to start acting.

People build computer models to simulate the weather. The physics is not the problem. The initial conditions and the assumptions are the problem. The atmosphere is vast. We can measure temperature and other stuff mostly at the Earth's surface. Some people are now building UAVs to fly around and collect measurements which will be used to increase the accuracy of the climate models. One problem: the climate is a chaotic system, i.e., it's highly sensitive to disturbances on initial conditions. Another problem: the models neglect the biosphere. Most carbon is in the biosphere, not in the atmosphere. Computer model says temperatures are going to increase 9 degrees Celsius. People panic. Wait. Does anyone know how to model the dynamics of the biosphere?! Short answer: no. It's a complicated problem. You can forecast CO2 emissions from industry, but no one has a clue how the biosphere will react to abrupt temperature variations.

One caveat: there are cycles. The Sun has cycles. The Earth also has cycles. The temperature in the middle ages was known to be a few degrees higher. Was it also due to CO2 emissions from the industry? Definitely not.

There was a time when there was no ice on the Arctic. There was also a time when most coastal areas we have today were underwater. There's no reason why that can't happen again, for sure.

An important issue: what does "global warming" even mean? Are the minimum / median / average / maximum temperatures increasing? Or is the variance increasing? Does this happen everywhere. What I read was that the cold, high-latitude regions were getting "warmer" (whatever that means), while the tropical regions were pretty much the same. This is too much complexity to be sold to the masses. The masses want entertainment, not information.

OK, suppose that temperature will increase by 9 degrees or so. Sea levels will rise and threaten us all. The U.S. can try to regulate emissions to counter this, but will the Chinese do the same? This is Game Theory 101. Moreover, what will people in the U.S. and Europe say:

"Sorry you Chinese, Indians and Brazilians. We destroyed the planet, and now we won't allow you to develop because of that. If you want to keep your houses warm in the winter and power your industry, we will accuse you of treason."

Last but not least: is regulation the best solution? What is the problem with global warming exactly? Rising sea levels? Increased CO2 concentration is good for the plants because they grow faster. I say, build a pipeline from the Arctic to the Sahara to pump fresh water into local agriculture. If the Israelis can grow tomatoes in the Negev desert, I don't see why the North Africans can't do the same.

The problem with regulation is that it won't work on a global scale. A politician would rather compromise the planet than tell his own people that they have to starve and freeze to reduce emissions. This is much more than capitalist greed. This is about human rights: people should have the right to consume energy to increase their standard of living.

Science is one thing. Policy is another. Let us keep them separate. Studying the climate should be decoupled from politics as much as possible.

[dantheman]

Don't forget chaos theory and rounding errors. Chaos theory was initially discovered when by running a weather simulation with the same inputs and recieving different outputs due to floating point rounding errors.