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Comment by eximius | Hacker News Reader

Science is hard. Scientists are people. People make mistakes. Not trusting 'Science' because scientists produced a good model that wasn't perfect is a stupid regression.

And, frankly, if you're going to produce a model that simulates something that is measuring risk (i.e., global warming), then I'd much prefer you leave out features that would understate the risk. Give me an upper bound on risk so we can see how bad it could get. If the worst isn't worth worrying about, well, then that missing feature didn't really matter. If it is worth worrying about, we can improve the model.

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Nobody is demanding science be perfect, scientific knowledge is gained and revised through inductive leaps based on new evidence, hence it by definition can never be considered perfect.

What is reasonable to demand, and in fact fundamental to the institution of science itself, is that scientists operate with the humility necessary for a discipline that is fundamentally open to new evidence and revised theories.

Instead what we are treated with (from climate science in particular) is “Science”, supposedly ordained as hard truth by an infallible “peer review”, and we are told we may not question the data itself, nor the statistical models, not even the draconian government interference into our lives conveniently suggested by the government sponsored “Science”, lest we be castigated as knuckle dragging “science deniers” with some secretive motivation to defend the fossil fuel industry or some other conspiratorial accusation based on zero evidence.

To be fair, the IPCC reports were (I haven't read the latest one yet) broken into the Science and Political parts.

The Science part was full of error bars and "probably" and "estimated". Generally good science being done by people trying to discover the truth, though there was a noticeable hesitance about publishing any implication that the models might be wrong.

The Political part was full of certainty and unambiguous calls to action in the face of overwhelming evidence that the world was going to hell in a decade.

The media only ever reported on the Political part. The Science part was worth reading to get some perspective.

I don't know what you are talking about. The actual scientific papers are extremely clear on their results and how reliable their results are. Otherwise they get rejected by peer review. Obviously when those results are translated by the media, they are simplified and exaggerated. Which is how the media treats science as much as it treats politics, economics and every other story.

Moreover, climate science is in the hard science phase of maturity now. Which means that its unlikely that new data or new theories will results in major changes to what we think will happen. In other words, new data and new theories will only make minor course corrections to what we predict about the future. Earth's climate is still headed towards catastrophic changes due to human activity and anyone sane should be willing to bet their live savings on this.

" Not trusting 'Science' because scientists produced a good model that wasn't perfect is a stupid regression."

Um. Well. I'm glad you said that. It's not any more stupid than ignoring data sources and producing model after model that only aimed to confirmed the prevailing narrative. "See we were right" but failing to list the caveats - as ALL data has - is negligence. With that said, I'm not going to bother with your second paragraph. It's absurd.

Science's #1 job is to ask "What did we miss?" Failure to intentionally not do so - so that hard becomes easy, my peers remain esteemed, my career nudges upward - isn't only stupid, it's lazy and actually violates the definition of Science. You just can't act like a hobbyist and demand the respect of a scientist. That's unreasonable, at best.

Yes. I think it's perfectly fine not to trust someone who deceived me, is lazy and is unapologetic on both accounts. As good Science already tells us: Trust is earned.

Negligence or ill intent. Producing a study that proves the narrative will secure future funding for further climate change studies.

Perhaps we could plant Azolla in some big enclosed water bodies like the Black Sea?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event

Azolla is a freshwater fern. Wouldn't growth in saltwater.

Azolla uses only the upper two cm of the water but takes all the light and 'kills' the 99,9999% of the water volume for other purposes. Would be like painting a building with a glowing paint and then stop people to enter and use the whole building so they do not damage the paint layer.

If we block the light we are excluding the effect of 5m of algae for example, killing the fishes that need this algae as larvae and also messing with the oxigen interchange in the water. Is not the perfect solution that we need

No. The magnitude of such an omission is absurd.

If I were to model the solar system and leave out the sun, it would be laughable and I would quickly find myself out of funding.

Scientists are generally people who don't understand what "science" is, or its history; who then freely invoke the word when they aren't talking about anything remotely related to experimental trials or testable matters. They just assume that if they're doing it, and it says scientist on their door, it must be science. That's not an ordinary error, it's a form of rank incompetence the academy has fomented for decades; often resulting in the satanic inverse of empirical science. (See Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead 2005)

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