[WilliamLP]

It's kind of amusing to see these guys froth at the mouth at the prospect of scouring through millions of lines of text to find a couple of scientists with less than absolutely pure motivations and research methods. When the witch-hunt succeeds, it of course invalidates everything we leftist propagandists try to convince the people that we know!!

It's exactly parallel to creationists taking some instance of one scientist mistaking some fossil early in the century and milking that for decades to disprove evolution.

[mattmaroon]

I'm just flagging it all and suggesting everyone else do the same. I don't know how global warming skepticism got so popular here, but it's at best way off-topic and at worst trolling.

[chasingsparks]

I think you would have to explicitly define climate change skeptic. That term leads to confusion. The set of people who do not believe there is any evidence for climate warming are strawdogs -- they are simply wrong.

However, there are other groups that are conflated with the straw dog group.

Examples:

There are people who claim climate models are wrong, as they have lost all predictive ability over the past ten years. They are correct that these models have proven to be bad models; they are incorrect in assuming, as bad models, this necessarily means temperature will not be as high. It is also possible that the temperature could be higher than forecast. It may refute their estimations, but not offering a better model weakens their argument.

There are others who claim that not only is the evidence overwhelmingly in favor of global warming, but anthropogenic warming. However, they claim that the costs of adopting "do anything to stop this" measures are ill-advised. The costs would be too high, they don't take into account any benefits, and they completely discount the emergence of new technologies.

Skepticism is a good thing. When someone practices bad science by massaging data, it's bad science, regardless of what side of line they are on. Personally, I roughly fit the mold of my second example. I think global warming is obviously true; sun cycle theories are wholly inadequate; anthropogenic makes the most sense; and spending hundreds of billions on existing technologies for reducing emissions is a foolhardy plan.

[CWuestefeld]

Another POV that should be considered:

Even if those fearing climate change are correct, the poor quality of the models shows they're right for the wrong reasons. And since they don't really understand what's happening, then any proposal to "fix" the problem might work, or might itself be disastrous. We don't know.

It should be completely clear that Al Gore's "precautionary principle" is bunk. And I'd claim that this whole thing is too important to use the Earth as a laboratory, to "do something -- ANYTHING -- to fix this".

[DanielBMarkham]

What? Weren't you here for the Ron Paul epidemic of 2008?

I'd agree with you except 1) it's a story about server hacking, 2) it's a story about not only politics but science, and 3) there's been a long-term trend of posting climate articles on HN

I get tired of being sucked into the political side of the debate -- no winners there -- but dang it, climate change science is a really fascinating topic from a purely intellectual standpoint. The Earth is not just a black body, and various carbon-based molecular absorption spectra is not the do-all, end-all metric that pop science writers say it is. CA programming has a default behavior of producing runaway models, as Wolfram so aptly points out in NKS. Lots of cool and tech-weenie stuff in here. (But also lots of emotion, so I concede that it ticks a lot of folks off. But 100% "Erlang Innards" is probably not going to happen any time soon)

[youngian]

I agree - it would be nice to be able to talk about these things in a healthy academic environment. Sadly, I think that's quite impossible at this point (at least in the U.S.).

These scientists were out of line, but I can understand how they ended up there. The "drill baby drill" crowd pounces on every bit of academic debate and builds a little strawman to agree with them. "I think your model is flawed" becomes "global warming doesn't exist," and "what about the impact of the xxx effect" becomes "global warming doesn't exist" and "we're missing some data for this period" becomes "global warming doesn't exist."

If every bit of your research gets twisted and misreported like this, it's easy to see why you would start talking about how to hide data and skew the facts to leave no room for doubt. Presenting a flawless, united, impenetrable front would seem like the only way to make any real progress. Not saying what they did was right, but the motivation is there.

[bokonist]

Would you advocate flagging all posts about global warming, period? Or just about skepticism? Would you advocate flagging all posts about science, or just scientific matters that are controversial?

[gloob]

Would you advocate flagging all posts about global warming, period? Or just about skepticism?

All of them.

Would you advocate flagging all posts about science, or just scientific matters that are controversial?

Neither. Just the ones that are political.

[nkurz]

Have you indeed concluded that all posts about global warming are 'political' rather than 'scientific'? Possibly true for the majority of such articles, but it would be nice if there was somewhere that the small remainder could be discussed in a scientific but non-political manner.

[mattmaroon]

Its a hard line to draw on global warming because most of what's written about it (probably on both sides of the aisle) is politically-motivated pseudo-science at best. You can argue about whether Al Gore is right or wrong, demon or savior, but his involvement has undeniably tied the debate in with our typical right vs. left political dogfight. It's sad and alarming to see science caught up in such squabbling, but it has happened and taints the whole conversation.

Science in general does not cause flame wars and would usually fit within HN's guidelines. A surprisingly large number of people consider themselves qualified to have opinions on global warming because they read about it on a blog. That isn't true of physics.

If this particular article were more about how the servers were hacked, in some new, novel way, I'd be more inclined to give it a pass, but its not. It's basically trolling via intentional sample bias.

[bokonist]

The issue is so heated because so much is at stake. The reason laymen have to weigh in on their opinions, is that ultimately, it is our tax dollars that will be spent and our way of life that will be altered. So at the end of the day, we have to decide, do we trust the scientists enough to spend $x hundreds of billions of dollars.

Most issues that a) have a lot at stake and b) are non-obvious are going to generate a lot heated controversy. But it seems to me those are precisely the issues that need to be talked about in a forum with a lot of intelligent people ( Hacker News).

[mattmaroon]

When Wal-Mart needs to make a big decision they don't ask the door greeters for their thoughts. Door greeters know nothing of running a giant corporation (at least most of them). The results certainly have major impacts on the door greeters' livelihoods, but they're not qualified to make decisions like who should be the COO, or should the stock split 2:1, or how many stores they should open in China next year.

It's much the same with science. If you let the hoi polloi decide what we should do about the global warming issue (or lack thereof) you're going to get a result not based on science or economics, but based on whether more people believe Hollywood actors or radio talk show hosts, neither of whom know the slightest thing about it either.

As a concerned tax-payer that is exactly what I'd like to avoid. All of that is, of course, way off-topic, which is ironic in a thread where I initially exclaimed that these sorts of posts are off-topic :)

[bokonist]

Wal-mart is a joint stock corporation. The chain of decision making goes: line employees < middle management < executives < board < shareholders. So on the big decisions, executives, the board, and for really big decisions, the shareholders must vote.

The United States is essentially a giant property management company, run as a consumer co-op. The chain of decision making is: civil service (including NSF funded climate researchers) < Congress < voters.

So as voters we actually do need to research and understand the big issues, just as a shareholder needs to research the companies they invest in.

Of course, perhaps the U.S. should not be run as a consumer co-op (aka democracy). I am sympathetic with that view, but that is really a whole other discussion. But for now it is, so people do have to take an interest in the issues.

It would be nice if we could just delegate these issues to a class of experts. But how we do know if these experts are on the right track? At some point we must do at least some verification ourselves. There is no other option.

I am not an expert in climate science. But I do know quite a bit about politics and government. In college I began to major in political science. But I found that the researchers in political science were incredibly off base. Their research was wrong, irrelevant, and used models that couldn't properly work.

Thus I do not have a strong, baseline trust in academia. My experience in political science shows me that systematic error can flourish among "scientists". These leaked emails illustrate the climate "scientists" are not scientists seeking truth wherever it may lead, but are advocates with an institutional agenda.

So we have climate scientists who are smart, but who should be treated with the same amount as trust as the prosecutor lawyer in a criminal case. We have the hoi polloi who are ignorant. That leaves us, smart, thoughtful people, who have to make the best judgments we can.

[radu_floricica]

If you treat it reddit-like, then yes. But it still is a pretty interesting mix of how to do (or not to do) science when a lot of politics is involved.

[jacquesm]

It's only a few accounts that post almost all climate change 'skeptic' posts here.

[robotrout]

You're amused, I'm happy. Looks like good times for all.

This is unmodified, untampered data from climate scientists. Do you know how rare that is! Now you do. Of course we're excited!