You can login if you already have an account or register by clicking the button below.
Registering is free and all you need is a username and password. We never ask you for your e-mail.
My father-in-law told me that there is literally a global conspiracy to "adjust" weather station readings so that they conform to the global warming narrative.
[+]3987392?1 point5 points6 points
ago
(edited ago)
[–]3987392?1 point
5 points
6 points
(+6|-1)
ago
(edited ago)
People like that must lack imaginations, because I've never heard them foresee the following obvious problem: if there was a global conspiracy to present one weather narrative over another, think about how many well-intentioned researchers and normal people would publish seemingly innocuous data that inadvertently exposes the truth.
A zoologist studying the food availability for a specific type of finch in the Galapagos innocently publishes a paper showing that a dieoff of heat-sensitive krill is decreasing the finches' population, and some marine biologist five years later compiles 20,000 measurements from an automated oceanographic buoy and makes a causal link to increasing water temperatures. Imagine the sheer omniscience that would be required for a conspirator to make all this up; he'd have to control the lives and seemingly trivial publications of hundreds of thousands of researchers, interns, doctoral students, and people whose entire careers are tied to publishing accurate and sound studies. Just how powerful do conspiracy theorists think the puppet-masters are?
Scientists continually publish information that turns out only provides further evidence backing up anthropogenic global warming, even though they were only concerned with their own tiny corner of science. It's like a surgeon recording the locations of his Cholera patients as a matter of bureaucratic routine, and then someone coming along and realizing that it's actually a piece of evidence supporting germ theory. The surgeon didn't realize that he was actually producing the coordinates of a heat map centered around a local well, and similarly today's scientists are collecting data that nearly universally backs up the anthropogenic global warming theory.
The people who believe there's significant scientific debate over whether or not man-made global warming is occurring are simply ignorant of the scope of what's been observed and the meaning of the term "independently verifiable."
As a scientist who's work touches on climate's influence on the landscape and natural hazards, I thank you for this and the parent comment! This was the perfect bedtime reading; both funny and gratifying. This was essentially the same argument I used to win over my skeptic father-in-law. Very well put Rabbi. Cheers!
view the rest of the comments →
[–] tame 1 point 3 points 4 points (+4|-1) ago
My father-in-law told me that there is literally a global conspiracy to "adjust" weather station readings so that they conform to the global warming narrative.
I wish I were making this up.
[–] 3987392? 1 point 5 points 6 points (+6|-1) ago (edited ago)
People like that must lack imaginations, because I've never heard them foresee the following obvious problem: if there was a global conspiracy to present one weather narrative over another, think about how many well-intentioned researchers and normal people would publish seemingly innocuous data that inadvertently exposes the truth.
A zoologist studying the food availability for a specific type of finch in the Galapagos innocently publishes a paper showing that a dieoff of heat-sensitive krill is decreasing the finches' population, and some marine biologist five years later compiles 20,000 measurements from an automated oceanographic buoy and makes a causal link to increasing water temperatures. Imagine the sheer omniscience that would be required for a conspirator to make all this up; he'd have to control the lives and seemingly trivial publications of hundreds of thousands of researchers, interns, doctoral students, and people whose entire careers are tied to publishing accurate and sound studies. Just how powerful do conspiracy theorists think the puppet-masters are?
Scientists continually publish information that turns out only provides further evidence backing up anthropogenic global warming, even though they were only concerned with their own tiny corner of science. It's like a surgeon recording the locations of his Cholera patients as a matter of bureaucratic routine, and then someone coming along and realizing that it's actually a piece of evidence supporting germ theory. The surgeon didn't realize that he was actually producing the coordinates of a heat map centered around a local well, and similarly today's scientists are collecting data that nearly universally backs up the anthropogenic global warming theory.
The people who believe there's significant scientific debate over whether or not man-made global warming is occurring are simply ignorant of the scope of what's been observed and the meaning of the term "independently verifiable."
[–] ModerateMoFo 1 point 3 points 4 points (+4|-1) ago
As a scientist who's work touches on climate's influence on the landscape and natural hazards, I thank you for this and the parent comment! This was the perfect bedtime reading; both funny and gratifying. This was essentially the same argument I used to win over my skeptic father-in-law. Very well put Rabbi. Cheers!
[–] HoocOtt 1 point 1 point 2 points (+2|-1) ago
I don't know about global conspiracy but he is right about the adjustments:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif