>The reason I'm skeptical about the hypothesis "burning fossil fuels is likely to cause significant and disastrous climate change in the future" is that it's all based on simulations which can't be tested against experiment
I'm skeptical that this is your true reason. Many, if not most, fields of science are built in areas where it's hard to run a true physical simulation of the model. For example, take machine learning, where nearly every method is developed without novel collection of new data, but is run entirely on data that has previously been collected and been analyzed over and over again.
If you run simulations, you should already know ways to test them without collecting new raw data, particularly if you have a large corpus of data from the real system.
What's your true reason? Is it that you just think that humans can't impact the climate?
It's always good to throw out a nasty insinuation.
> Is it that you just think that humans can't impact the climate?
How about fact that none of the proposed "solutions" actually address the supposed problem, but instead just give control over to a bunch of folks who were demanding that kind of control long before anyone thought of AGW?
Then there's the rent-seeking.
Then there's the fact that almost none of these people act like it's a serious problem. They want me to pay, but their only change is to line up to collect a check.
You see, this is often the true reason that someone is "skeptical." It's not a problem with the science itself, but potential implications if one were to accept the science.
Edit: just to be clear, I'm not saying that this is hugh3's reason, I don't know what that is. I just know that his stated reason is pretty plainly false by the usual standards of engineers and scientists, it's a common enough reason, and when I discuss this with engineers the true underlying reason for skepticism are precisely the sentiments that anamax presented.
> It's not a problem with the science itself, but potential implications if one were to accept the science.
Actually, it's skepticism about "the science" as well. I'm pointing out that AGW advocates don't care about the science, that they're just looking for an excuse to do what they want to do.
Every time I've pushed, I've found holes, overreaching, etc, in the science. AGW advocates don't care - they just jump to another "data point".
When someone says "X proves Y", you then prove not X and their position doesn't change, it's pretty safe to assume that they're shilling for Y and that reasons don't matter.
> Which of course is largely the case with the AGW detractors, too.
Maybe, but AGW detractors and advocates are not mirror images even though both groups put on their pants one leg at a time.
For example, the AGW detractors don't want to restrict my choices, impose taxes on me, etc. The AGW detractors are largely weath creators while the AGW advocates are largely rent-seekers. The AGW detractors have never said that AGW advocates should be jailed for taking their position. And so on.
In my opinion, depriving you of the freedom to live in a non-ruined environment is a much more fundamental lack of freedom than the choices you are talking about being restricted. And the wealth "creators" you talk about seem a lot more like "cost externalizers" than "wealth creators" to me.
The AGW advocates also haven't called AGW detractors "jihadists" for taking their position. And so on.
There are ideologues who don't know the science on both sides. But attempting to include the scientists who have reached a conclusion based on scientific results among them helps no one. Taking a position based on actual data is not an ideological statement, regardless if whether there are other people for whom it is.
> In my opinion, depriving you of the freedom to live in a non-ruined environment is a much more fundamental lack of freedom than the choices you are talking about being restricted.
You're assuming that the restrictions will make a difference between ruined and non-ruined. I disagree.
I have good company. Even the AGW advocates pushing the restrictions admit that the proposed restrictions won't have that effect.
Even if you believe in AGW, why do you support restrictions that do nothing to address it? More to the point, shouldn't you actually oppose such restrictions because they cost money that might be used to fight AGW?
Yes, I'm serious. Look at what the folks pushing the restrictions have predicted about the effects of said restrictions. They've predicted no benefit.[1] If you're assuming that those predictions are wrong, why?
> But attempting to include the scientists who have reached a conclusion based on scientific results among them helps no one.
Which scientists are you referring to?
Note that most of the "scientists" who have weighed in actually haven't looked at data.
[1] Yes, those advocates have also predicted that AGW will have huge costs. My point is that the proposed restrictions won't reduce those costs.
I've done research in speech recognition, a branch of machine learning, and analyzing the same data over and over again is the classic blunder. It is called "testing on the training data" and it over-estimates accuracy to an uncontrollable degree.
People do try to avoid this by splitting their corpus into two, training on one half and testing on the other half, which works the first few times. Pretty soon though you have tuned your methods to get good results on the second half of the corpus and it is used up as a source of new data for an independent assessment of accuracy. There is a technique called "jack knifing" that sometimes helps a little.
If the Vapnik–Chervonenkis dimension of your model is low enough then success on the training data does guarantee success on fresh test data. This never works in practice. Getting decent results always requires lots of tunable parameters and your VC dimension ends up way too high. Machine learning only works, to the extent that it works at all, because many of your parameters only affect part of your model. You have an effective VC dimension much lower than the parameter count indicates, so you do get some generalisation, but if you want to know you have to gather fresh test data.
If you are doing research in machine learning you have to have a rolling program of data collection so that you can do genuine forecast testing. Hindcasting, that is to say "testing on the training data" is only really useful for finding bugs in your software. You should always be able to get good hindcast accuracy by dialing up the model dimension. If you cannot, you will never get good forecast accuracy. If you can get good hindcast accuracy that basically means that your software has passed one kind of bug test. You don't know your forecast accuracy until you gather fresh data.
There is a human side to this. Doing research in machine learning is a ordeal of perpetual disappointment. Your research runs ahead of data collection. So you measure your hindcast accuracy. It is great. You have broken through. Then fresh data comes and you measure your forecast accuracy. Terrible disappointment. Science is hard!
I don't think you're lying, but I do think that there's a different reason you are skeptical that is deeper and probably harder to express.
"You can't rerun the climate" is a common enough sentiment, but when I hear that from technical people and probe them the same way, most will admit that it's not a logical reason to distrust scientific reasoning, and will come up with some other reason.
Never tried it online though, so maybe I come across like too much of a jerk without vocal tones.
Skepticism is a good thing. Where would we be without it? The earth would still be flat. Why does he have to have some alternative motive for being skeptical? Skepticism is the basis of real science - trying to prove a hypothesis wrong to make sure that it is bullet proof. If it cannot be proven one way or the other, then it is not a fact, it is just a hypothesis.
The danger is when skepticism becomes a positive force that has specific ideas it holds dear, like Man-made Climate Change being a myth or the fact that the world is entirely material. Then it ceases to be skepticism and becomes just another ideology trying to protect itself against the others.
I'm skeptical that this is your true reason. Many, if not most, fields of science are built in areas where it's hard to run a true physical simulation of the model. For example, take machine learning, where nearly every method is developed without novel collection of new data, but is run entirely on data that has previously been collected and been analyzed over and over again.
If you run simulations, you should already know ways to test them without collecting new raw data, particularly if you have a large corpus of data from the real system.
What's your true reason? Is it that you just think that humans can't impact the climate?