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NASA says Antarctica has been gaining ice:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-o...

Ice loss from antarctica not a large contributor to the small sea level rises around the world


"In a study spanning two decades, a team of researchers led by Colorado State University found declining numbers of..."

20 years, is but a blink of an eye. It takes us back to 1997 only. What was the longer term trend ? How would they know if we started in a local maximum, or how often populations rebound ?

I complain that we barely have enough arctic and antarctic satellite samples and we have those from 1979.

So any decline of anything is linked to climate change automatically ?? That doesn't follow at all.


Your comment history shows a rather singular affliction for climate change submissions, along with a very common dismissal.


Attack the argument not the person making the argument. I believe that climate change is a major problem and we need to take steps to mitigate it, I also agree with the gp that the media is using a lot of crap logic and crap science to try and fight the good fight but in the end it's only going to give cover to climate sceptics.


Except there's no argument to attack. They never offer any argument or solution and instead seek to spread basic fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD). It's most certainly valid to attack the person when that person has shown a pattern of action that is not based on anything substantive.


You are correct about my opinion. I have an opinion like everyone else and that does not invalidate my argument.

My opinion is informed by facts such as:

This study is only 20 years of a multicentury phenomena, how do we know what is the "appropriate" amount of nematodes ? Is less than 20 years ago a bad thing or a complete irrelevance ?


A Journalist telling us not to trust people. That is quite rich


An anonymous Internet commenter telling us not to trust journalists. That is quite rich.


Not realy I have always been told that beware of talking to hacks


It got hotter until 1998 and plateaued until today 2017+, occasionally setting small new highs (0.1C when margin for error is 0.4C).

That was already accepted and should not be trumpetted as further "proof".


"lets out data when it suits"

that is rich coming from a journalist.


It is common in many fields for a small group to produce 'agreed text', that other parties then sign off on

* PR pieces ( http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html )

* Legislation ( http://www.linklaters.com/Insights/Publication1005Newsletter... )

* Standards Body text ( say Oracle for OpenJDK, MS for Mono ) ( https://www.taylorwessing.com/globaldatahub/nisd-draft-text-... )

The NY Times itself will accept Associated Press articles ( say on an Afghan Election result ) and mostly just clone the words 1-to-1.


Maybe that's okay in PR and legislation.

But not in science.


Sorry to hear about anyone losing jobs.

The NOAA has been suspected of doctoring the record[1], of all varieties including the satellites once they got control of them[2]. there will be more insider stories of how some conspired to fake AGW data [3]

so I think it likely that the revisions and corrections will be challenged soon and we will see that the revisions had no factual basis. Many will resign, probably jumping before pushed. The cuts are unfortunately prejudging the outcome.

[1] https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/11/21/noa...

[2] https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/rss-satellite-tem...

[3] https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/02/12/boo...


From the first link:

"Note how a huge swathe of South America has been labelled as “record warmest”. And what is this based on? In fact, there is virtually no temperature data available at all for that particular area, including nearly all of Brazil. The so-called record temperatures in Brazil and neighbouring countries are pure fabrication."

That seems like a pretty bold charge, how does someone who knows nothing about this tell who's telling the truth? Anyone care to weigh in?

EDIT: Seems you're downvoted to grey already, hopefully someone can still add some commentary.


I recently read a very convincing (to me at least) debunking of that first link, but unfortunately I'm not able to find it right now. But from memory:

The claim is that the temperature data in the first map is made up because some of its data isn't present in the second map (just look at Africa, South America, and the oceans). HOWEVER:

The first map shows a combination of two data sets. The second map only shows one of the data sets used in the first map. Not surprisingly, this means that the second map has less data.

The two graphs are also covering different time periods. The second graph covers a smaller time period, so presumably that lets them be more specific about where the temperatures are recorded. The ERSST data in the first graph goes back more than 100 years, so they don't have quite the same precision and consistency in terms of where the measurements came from. The bigger grid squares in the first map reflect that some of the data is interpolated as weather stations moved from city to city, new weather stations start coming into play halfway through the dataset, etc.

EDIT: Apparently the debunking I read was on Stackoverflow of all places. I must've fallen down that rabbit hole while looking up something totally unrelated. Here's the link: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/37119/did-noaa-p...


From the stackoverflow comments its clear that theoretical models have been proposed to infer the temperature on land from the ocean database.

the main concern is that the models are pure junk science.

so saying "our models say it is so" is precisely the problem


Are there any specific concerns with the methodology? I didn't see any mention of that in the first link.


that was just one of many many charges of tampering[1].

honestly this cristicism of the NOAA, NASA is pretty unwelcome by most HN people, so im not proposing everyone accept this immediately.

but the facts are out there and slowly if what i am saying is correct ( time will tell ) the the tampering will start being rolled back.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11367272/Climategate-the-...


Here is an analysis from a data-driven organization dedicated to listing, understanding and reducing biases in science records. They have covered the National Climate Data Center data (which apparently GISS uses).

http://berkeleyearth.org/understanding-adjustments-temperatu...

Edit: this discussion does focus on the U.S. network, where some of the articles you listed referred to data from Africa and South America, but assumedly the corrective techniques are similar.


So now we have complete polarisation.

Left leaning people will not accept any science generated under a Right leaning government

and as we already know Right leaning people find it hard to trust the science coming from a Left leaning government.


Eh, no. This isn't about not accepting scientific output under a Republican president – science was well received under Bush, as I recall, and will continue to be under Trump.

This is about the fear of losing scientific data that has already been produced.


On the surface it is about preventing deletion.

But the subtext is that any 'discoveries' or 'corrections' will be rejected out of hand.

The prime ones being the recent corrections to the land temperature record that cooled the 1930s and 1940s and heated 2009 onwards yielding a steady linear increase graphic.

When those corrections are placed under the microscope and likely reversed, what will the reaction be ? Scientific shills of the Republicans are making up Alternative Facts... here is our precious archived dataset that true believers can reference.


No, this is complete FUD, and disingenuous at best. What people who care are worried about is a repeat of what happened in Canada under the Harper government where the data was simply not available at all.

[edit] the difference is that it's not the administration or even the EPA that is putting it's reputation on the line if the data was manipulated, but the individual scientists themselves. No one with any sense believes that a scientist is going to fall on their sword and ruin their career just to make up some BS talking point that Trump can run with.


(forced to use a side account to comment on this)

You have to look at it from the Trump teams point of view. They honestly don't see that the 'free speech' argument holds water. They see it as abuse of a public position to spread falsehoods.

Basically EPA employees in the Trump Team's view are perpetuating climate alarmism ( again in the TT view ).

So they are stopping that.

Just flip it around just for a second. I'll choose an equivalent that would cause liberals to shut down the twitter of an official.

Imagine a Department of Health official was tweeting photos of aborted foetuses and keeping a tally "350 aborted this month. #whatawaste".

There would be calls to stop that official speaking out.


Yes, but there's a difference. Abortion is in many ways an issue of personal conscience, rather than a simple scientific determination.

Climate change on the other hand, isn't controversial in reality. It's been made controversial because some people have an interesting way of deciding what is true or false.

There seems to be a certain mindset that treats wishful thinking as equivalent in power to empirical evidence. So they start with what they want to be true, and work backwards from there. For example: "It's inconvenient for my business interests if climate change is true. Therefore it must be false."

Some people even work themselves all the way to: "... and therefore climate change is a conspiracy invented by jealous scientists to screw over successful capitalists like me".


thats why my dreamt up example included just factual statements "350 this month".

doesnt make it better though, does it ?


That argument holds for everything. It is the full relativism: there is not good or bad, there is not true or falsehood, there are just opinions.

That reasoning is flawed, as true facts exists and there are ways to get to that facts like the scientific method. And morality exists, not every action is just relative.

The last part is that oil industry has paid big to silence science about climate change. "Conflict of interest" is another big point against Trump teams "point of view".


Look, I'm not American, but why would they foresake a state because of the state's predominant Voting habits?

1 in 3 voted Republican, are they going to be thrown to the wolves because of the other 2 ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

I know Chris Christie is implicated in blocking traffic in New Jersey, but punishing a state is a whole different league.


The way US voting works, each state gets a bunch of electoral college votes, and these determine the presidency. If over 50% of the population of a state votes for a candidate, all their electoral college votes are designated for that candidate.

If one party has no realistic way of reaching that 50% margin, then any concessions they offer would be useless as far as getting their candidate into the presidency.


We also have this in the US: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering

(Drawing voting districts to make them advantageous to one party or the other depending on who gets to draw the lines)

We really need to move to popular vote instead of all these games.


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