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Comment by crazy1van | Hacker News Reader

> It would be a clear science argument if there weren't groups that are very motivated (money, power) to misdirect the public by making "doubts" for their own gains, as the article clearly illustrates.

Definitely. There are groups willing to spend a lot of money to spread doubt about global warming. And, there are groups willing spend a lot of money to spread fear about global warming.

> There is a practical scientific consensus that the current global warming is real and caused by the human activity.

Consensus suggests correctness, but it isn't a guarantee. Once there was a consensus the sun rotated around the earth and that was dis-proven by a guy with a telescope and good record keeping. Granted we've come a long way in science, but we're also analyzing far more complex systems.

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Once there was a consensus the sun rotated around the earth and that was dis-proven by a guy with a telescope and good record keeping.

There was a recent article in Scientific American about this (unfortunately, subscription required).

Given the size of the image of a star seen thru a telescope, either the size or the distance can be calculated from the other by elementary geometry. Because of diffraction from the wave nature of light -- which wasn't understood back then -- these calculations said that if the stars were the same size as the sun they couldn't be much farther away than the farthest planets. Which would be close enough to see annual parallax if the earth really did move around the sun.

And so because of this and a couple other reasons, Copernicus had to resort to proof-by-theology since the available evidence appeared to disagree with his position.

I read through this a while back and it is an interesting exploration of the whole Geocentric/Heliocentric dust-up (or smackdown as they call it):

http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...

Have you actually read the article? It looks you haven't. It's about the deniers who obviously trolled everybody at the expense of the taxpayer's money not bringing any scientific improvement at all.

They brought about a great scientific improvement. At NIWA's site you can now see detailed accounting of the methodology behind the adjustments:

http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-re...

That was put together in December 2010. Before that, they'd been handled in an ad-hoc manner. Some of the adjustments detailed in the literature, some no doubt scrawled on a piece of paper on some professor's desk or sitting in some fortran code on a 5 1/2 floppy. The thing about climate science is that it is done by academics, and if you've ever been in academia you'll know what I mean... If they want us to turn the modern economy inside-out, it is fair enough to ask for a little more rigour.

As far as I understand, the deniers didn't do it. They just trolled enough to force the additional analysis by the real scientists. The result?

"NIWA's 'seven-station' series has been re-analysed, and independently peer-reviewed, and the result confirms a NZ-wide warming trend."

Practically the same result, nothing that confirms the wishes of deniers.

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