Purdue woke on climate change?

[bwframe]

 

[Leadeye]

Climate change is about making money, it reminds me of one of those religious scam tv shows.

 

[Mikey1911]

Climate change is about making money, it reminds me of one of those religious scam tv shows.

"Climate Change" is a (pseudo) religion, and people like Kerry, Gore, Greta, et. al. are the self-anointed/self appointed "College of Climate Cardinals". They have the power to condemn doubters for the "heresy" of "questioning the science" just like the Inquisition used to do.

 

[Pepi]

My Dad always called these idiots the 'THEY SAY' group. They sit around and play on their computers and wait for government research hand-outs for the crap they make up.

 

[Ingomike]

If you could get thousands of dollars for singing a song for the requestor, you wouldn’t?

The US government pays good to those who sing the songs she wants to hear…

 

[bwframe]

My Dad always called these idiots the 'THEY SAY' group. They sit around and play on their computers and wait for government research hand-outs for the crap they make up.

Where does a "climate scientist" get their paycheck from?

 

[Pepi]

If you could get thousands of dollars for singing a song for the requestor, you wouldn’t?

The US government pays good to those who sing the songs she wants to hear…

Yeah .. That's what they say

 

[Pepi]

Where does a "climate scientist" get their paycheck from?

They say you and I do

 

[Keith_Indy]

Dukes – whose team focused on climate change impacts on agriculture in North America – said in Indiana, and across the Midwest, warming has been slower compared with other parts of the world, but has led to wetter on average springs and drier falls.

“We sort of paradoxically have to be prepared for both wetter conditions and drier conditions,” he said. “More rain when we don’t want it and less water in the soil when we need it.”

Dukes said preparing for the coming changes in climate will be key.

“There is a lot of things we can do to sort of make sure we’re acknowledging we’re not living in the climate of the past and we’ll soon be living in a climate that is different than the one we’re in now,” he said.

Forecasting improvements and some mitigation steps are things I can back.

So far, the computer models are mostly junk; for instance, they don't have enough knowledge to model how clouds impact the climate.

More reservoirs to buffer the rain cycle for instance. Drought and heat tolerant crops.

We shouldn't put our heads in the sand and discount that nothing is changing. But, we as humans can "improvise, overcome and adapt."

Bjorn Lomborg

Dr. Bjorn Lomborg researches the smartest ways to do good. With his think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus, he has worked with hundreds of the world’s top economists and seven Nobel Laureates to find and promote the most effective solutions to the world’s greatest challenges, from disease and...

www.lomborg.com

I imagine this would be a good debate to watch, will get to it when I have time.

 

[BigRed]

Where does purdue get its funding?

 

[hooky]

Climate change has been going on since the beginning of time. Much more recently than that, grifters figured out a grift for it.

 

[JEBland]

This is not an official stance of the university. This is a statement made by a researcher at the university - it's strange to be upset at a climate scientist for making comments about the climate. If you disagree with his work, I look forward to your review of his recent publications.

The world's climate (temperature and precipitation patterns averaged over some window in time) is changing both globally and locally, that's not disputed even by "climate contrarian" Steve Koonin who came to discuss these issues at he university (with letters and protestors against him "denying" climate change): https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/rel...-champions-of-climate-science,-democracy.html (Fun fact, I asked him a question during the Q&A, but a physics professor asked a way better question at the dinner afterwards. I still think that he phrases things in a vague way that allows him to handwave issues as being cherry-picked - I won't conjecture as to whether or not that vagueness on purpose.)

Taking, say, recent history, the climate has changed in the last century - that's a readily accepted fact from the data. There are two known causes (this is kinda trivial, but true):

1. Humans have influenced that.
2. Non-humans (Natural cycles) have influenced that.

What's to debate is by how much 1 and 2 play a role and what humans can do (and how effective will those be) to alleviate/adjust to the impact of changing climate. 1 is a non-zero effect: We're the only species on the planet that mines coals, drives cars, uses solar panels, heck, uses plates for food.


My main question is, what do you disagree with? That article only makes a couple assertions on behalf of the researcher. Which do you disagree with (and what's your data to back that up)? Having a knee-jerk reaction to all things "woke" is also a religious stance (strongly held belief without empirical basis). I don't have a problem with religion, but we should be honest with ourselves. Are we really going to pretend that humans have no role the changing climate? I'm not all doom-and-gloom about it, but if we're just getting set into denialism, then we're just deluding ourselves by deriding climate scientists as a community.


P.S. Denialism is totally a word. I don't need your red line, computer.

 

[bwframe]

This is not an official stance of the university. This is a statement made by a researcher at the university - it's strange to be upset at a climate scientist for making comments about the climate. If you disagree with his work, I look forward to your review of his recent publications.

The world's climate (temperature and precipitation patterns averaged over some window in time) is changing both globally and locally, that's not disputed even by "climate contrarian" Steve Koonin who came to discuss these issues at he university (with letters and protestors against him "denying" climate change): https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/rel...-champions-of-climate-science,-democracy.html (Fun fact, I asked him a question during the Q&A, but a physics professor asked a way better question at the dinner afterwards. I still think that he phrases things in a vague way that allows him to handwave issues as being cherry-picked - I won't conjecture as to whether or not that vagueness on purpose.)

Taking, say, recent history, the climate has changed in the last century - that's a readily accepted fact from the data. There are two known causes (this is kinda trivial, but true):

1. Humans have influenced that.
2. Non-humans (Natural cycles) have influenced that.

What's to debate is by how much 1 and 2 play a role and what humans can do (and how effective will those be) to alleviate/adjust to the impact of changing climate. 1 is a non-zero effect: We're the only species on the planet that mines coals, drives cars, uses solar panels, heck, uses plates for food.


My main question is, what do you disagree with? That article only makes a couple assertions on behalf of the researcher. Which do you disagree with (and what's your data to back that up)? Having a knee-jerk reaction to all things "woke" is also a religious stance (strongly held belief without empirical basis). I don't have a problem with religion, but we should be honest with ourselves. Are we really going to pretend that humans have no role the changing climate? I'm not all doom-and-gloom about it, but if we're just getting set into denialism, then we're just deluding ourselves by deriding climate scientists as a community.


P.S. Denialism is totally a word. I don't need your red line, computer.

You seem to be an authority? Can you please answer the question from above?

Where does a "climate scientist" get their paycheck from?

To follow that one up;

Is the climate scientist the same as the government scientists that we have seen so much in the news as of late?

Fauci, Walensky, whichever "scientist" determined that the mask mandate would end, just in time for to the State of the Union speech?

Is the science different in Canada, than it is the USA?



.

 

[JEBland]

You seem to be an authority? Can you please answer the question from above?

I mean, I'm not a climate scientist, but if we want to challenge their science as junk science, it basically has to be from a scientific perspective.
(If the argument is that all science is junk, I don't think I have time to personally debunk all of that for every person.)

[Quote within: Where does a "climate scientist" get their paycheck from? ]

Depends on the scientist, right? Some are in academia, some in industry, some in nationally funded labs. For that guy mentioned in that article, pretty much all his money comes from the university. The Purdue Exponent publishes professor salaries yearly - public university, salary is public information (including mine ). Professors are more motivated by a love of the field/philosophy than some backdoor salary, there's more money to be made in industry. Industry has their own motivations for the results, and there is also a feedback problem in philosophy/training - like drinking 8 cups of water /day, which is something I just don't believe (I'm a pretty hard skeptic of nutrition studies, not gonna lie).

To follow that one up;

Is the climate scientist the same as the government scientists that we have seen so much in the news as of late?

Fauci, Walensky, whichever "scientist" determined that the mask mandate would end, just in time for to the State of the Union speech?

Almost never the position. There are (tens of?) thousands of climate scientists, very few hold anything resembling that position of authority. Most certainly the people to be angry at are those who are appointing authoritarian ***holes who talk out of both sides of their mouth and admit to lying to the public.

Is the science different in Canada, than it is the USA?

Depends how we're defining the term science, but broadstrokes, they're the same. We have this weird duality in the use of the term "science." One is the set of broadly accepted interpretations of a set of data (including that data's reliability), then second is the process of science - there are different methods/philosophies of doing science, but overall the procedure is largely the same internationally. None of this is to say that a particular scientist from one place or another will agree with another, or even agree with the otherwise largely accepted set of data. For this topic, we know (within comfortable standards of certainty) that temperature is changing and globally increasing slowly. If you want a discussion by a guy who a number of people at Purdue rallied against, I would recommend the Koonin lecture:


Even he concedes the basic trends of the data. The question isn't if the climate is changing (it is), or if humans play a role (we do), the main question is how much, what we can do, the effectiveness of those actions, and what can be improved in our efforts.

[Second fun fact about that talk, they wanted to screen the questions ahead of time, so asked us to submit our questions in advance. This angered me, so I told them the truth in a rather blunt fashion, I'd ask a question based on the lecture and not on his reputation or an article. This on the fly method is why my question sounds so shaky compared to those who prepared in advance.]

I'm not at all claiming that there isn't a "political" nature the interpretation of the data.

Scientists are not immune to the tribalism within their fields and there are certainly historical examples of abuses of authority on small scales (who really discovered something /deserves the credit within a single lab is the smallest scale and one where there's several historical examples) and large scales (if you don't beleive what the gov / large authority is telling you, then you're anti-science). In terms of public image of the community, there's the problem of having to circle the wagons against the crackpots which gives an outside perspective of unity.

We like to pretend otherwise but the scientific community is made up of people, so politics is not truly separated. Add this into identity politics and its analog inside of non-political discussions, and we do have some things that we need to check ourselves on. One big issue with the structure is that there's not enough encouragement in the scientific community on repetition of results (I don't know what that positive feedback structure should be, but it doesn't exist now, and I'm leaving academia once I graduate so it ain't my problem). Eventually, those kinks get worked out in the wash, but it's not always a pretty process, and we literally will never know when we're done with perfect certainty.



Edited to put the *** in ***holes. Interpret however you'd like.

 

[KLB]

So far, the computer models are mostly junk; for instance, they don't have enough knowledge to model how clouds impact the climate.

This is one of my biggest problems with the whole subject. Our current weather models can't predict what the high temperature is going to be within 24 hours to a couple of degree accuracy. Yet they want us to believe that their models of the global climate, which is infinitely more complex than local weather, are accurate when discussing a couple of degrees.

 

[ancjr]

Elevate man to the role of God and he can change the weather.

 

[indyartisan]

Enjoyed the climate change today.

 

[phylodog]

Currently, the ag programs at Purdue are pretty safe from wokeness, I can unfortunately confirm that the electronic/computer engineering program is not.

 

[bwframe]

I mean, I'm not a climate scientist, but if we want to challenge their science as junk science, it basically has to be from a scientific perspective.
(If the argument is that all science is junk, I don't think I have time to personally debunk all of that for every person.)


Depends on the scientist, right? Some are in academia, some in industry, some in nationally funded labs. For that guy mentioned in that article, pretty much all his money comes from the university. The Purdue Exponent publishes professor salaries yearly - public university, salary is public information (including mine ). Professors are more motivated by a love of the field/philosophy than some backdoor salary, there's more money to be made in industry. Industry has their own motivations for the results, and there is also a feedback problem in philosophy/training - like drinking 8 cups of water /day, which is something I just don't believe (I'm a pretty hard skeptic of nutrition studies, not gonna lie).


Almost never the position. There are (tens of?) thousands of climate scientists, very few hold anything resembling that position of authority. Most certainly the people to be angry at are those who are appointing authoritarian assholes who talk out of both sides of their mouth and admit to lying to the public.


Depends how we're defining the term science, but broadstrokes, they're the same. We have this weird duality in the use of the term "science." One is the set of broadly accepted interpretations of a set of data (including that data's reliability), then second is the process of science - there are different methods/philosophies of doing science, but overall the procedure is largely the same internationally. None of this is to say that a particular scientist from one place or another will agree with another, or even agree with the otherwise largely accepted set of data. For this topic, we know (within comfortable standards of certainty) that temperature is changing and globally increasing slowly. If you want a discussion by a guy who a number of people at Purdue rallied against, I would recommend the Koonin lecture:


Even he concedes the basic trends of the data. The question isn't if the climate is changing (it is), or if humans play a role (we do), the main question is how much, what we can do, the effectiveness of those actions, and what can be improved in our efforts.

[Second fun fact about that talk, they wanted to screen the questions ahead of time, so asked us to submit our questions in advance. This angered me, so I told them the truth in a rather blunt fashion, I'd ask a question based on the lecture and not on his reputation or an article. This on the fly method is why my question sounds so shaky compared to those who prepared in advance.]

I'm not at all claiming that there isn't a "political" nature the interpretation of the data.

Scientists are not immune to the tribalism within their fields and there are certainly historical examples of abuses of authority on small scales (who really discovered something /deserves the credit within a single lab is the smallest scale and one where there's several historical examples) and large scales (if you don't beleive what the gov / large authority is telling you, then you're anti-science). In terms of public image of the community, there's the problem of having to circle the wagons against the crackpots which gives an outside perspective of unity.

We like to pretend otherwise but the scientific community is made up of people, so politics is not truly separated. Add this into identity politics and its analog inside of non-political discussions, and we do have some things that we need to check ourselves on. One big issue with the structure is that there's not enough encouragement in the scientific community on repetition of results (I don't know what that positive feedback structure should be, but it doesn't exist now, and I'm leaving academia once I graduate so it ain't my problem). Eventually, those kinks get worked out in the wash, but it's not always a pretty process, and we literally will never know when we're done with perfect certainty.

Thank you for the response!

Enlightening.


.

 

[Twangbanger]

...For that guy mentioned in that article, pretty much all his money comes from the university. The Purdue Exponent publishes professor salaries yearly - public university, salary is public information (including mine ). Professors are more motivated by a love of the field/philosophy than some backdoor salary, there's more money to be made in industry. Industry has their own motivations for the results, and there is also a feedback problem in philosophy/training - like drinking 8 cups of water /day, which is something I just don't believe (I'm a pretty hard skeptic of nutrition studies, not gonna lie)...

No issue with your other stuff, but I do want to nitpick the idea that somehow academics as a group are less prone to money-influence. I've heard variations of this argument before; "If we were motivated by money, we'd go to private industry and make _real_ bucks, but since we chose a less-lucrative occupation, we shouldn't be suspected of that motivation."

Different people are good at different things, and can be content with differing amounts of money. But within their chosen field, everybody wants more. No monetary class of worker isn't capable of tailoring their output to get more of it. A panhandler may lack the skills or temperament to be a derivatives trader, but he still knows he does better at panhandling when he "looks the part."

It appears to me that if you love doing research, you want more money so you can do more of what you love...and at some level, every researcher understands that high p-values isn't going to get you more of what you love.

As to the general topic, when it comes to climate science, I believe the climate is changing, but I'm not terribly impressed by fields which consist of comparing data sets, seeing a difference, then apportioning that difference to different causes without the ability to run experiments at different levels or replicate results...then expect the rest of the world to change large-scale policy affecting how people live their lives, as a result. That type of "science" needs to pass a pretty high bar to forcibly change how I live my life, and for me, "consensus" is not good enough. I can't run "my own experiment" to challenge those results with "my own data," because what we're talking about isn't based on experiment to begin with. It's looking at the same set of data, with different assumptions and analytical tools, and coming up with different results. Pretty soon, the thinking person starts to get the idea that what you're really dealing with is "opinions," and like certain body parts, everybody has one.