Climatology is a science and thus must be held to the rigors of all science, that of review, scrutiny, transparency of data and objective analysis. What the current exposure does not do, is disprove the theory that human activity is leading to a significant impact of the balance of green house gases and thus alterations in planet ecosystems. What it does do is bring into question the validity of the scientific data presented sofar. More importantly it questions the urgency with which some have pressured for rectification and It has strongly damaged the process of evaluation of these remedies for efficacy, safety, and collateral impact on other aspects of ecology.
If Climategate and all the recent IPCC problems doesn't qualify...then exactly what do you consider to be a 'legit problem'?
Sand, you cease to present a strong debate when your responses are poorly dismissive. If you wish to achieve progress and contribute to the conversation your position cannot be so blatantly contrary. I hope that your intent is to have a conversation, not to simply argue. I would hate for you to come to the conclusion that your role was without effect.
Sand, you cease to present a strong debate when your responses are poorly dismissive. If you wish to achieve progress and contribute to the conversation your position cannot be so blatantly contrary. I hope that your intent is to have a conversation, not to simply argue. I would hate for you to come to the conclusion that your role was without effect.
You want a substantive response to your point? I believe your point was that the scientific data presented so far is questionable. John Christy, the skeptic scientist who the OP's article discusses, was interviewed about "Climategate." He says that nothing in the e-mails calls into question any modern climate data, that only the medieval temperature data is questionable. He thinks the medieval data is important because if it turns out that it was warmer in medieval times it suggests that the current warming we are experiencing might be more from natural causes. That is your skeptic's view of what data is and isn't questionable, and it's about as good as it gets for the doubters.
- wolf
Gaps fail.
As I stated, the current controversy does not disprove the GCG theory, what it does is places doubt on whether the data so far was transparent. The data manipulation may have been solid and with strong mathematical reason but it appears to the general public to be nothing more than a fudge factor designed to make the results consistant with the researchers preconcieved expectations. The suppression of discent is difficult to quantify, we may simply be dealing with a lone disgruntled researcher that failed to get his data published possibly for legitimate reasons but the emails suggest that there was a collusion between peer-reviewers to exclude discenting views. The long and the short of it is that an unacceptable degree of bias has been introduced to the system, much of which is probably subconscious. The drive for funding has always biased the research we do, but this seems to be a particularly overt and systematic neglect of objectivity.
Again this does not prove that GCG is a hoax, but neither can this loss of the scientific method be ignored.
If all these trees amount to a forest, what is bound to happen is that you will see a mass migration of the scientific community over to the skeptic side, with only a hardcore block of the politically motivated sticking to their guns. When that happens, then we'll all know it's a forest.
The problem with the trees is you lose perspective on the size of the forest. There are thousands upon thousands of scientific papers written on issues relating to climate change. There are hundreds of comments made by scientists to journalists every year. It is a very active area of science that gets a fair amount of press exposure. It's easy to find a retracted paper here, a quote out of context there (where near 95% certainly becomes "no warming", or even a fudged piece of data. These kinds of events are absorbed into the mix of the scientific community, and when they constitute a truly meaningful pattern, then the consensus will shift. Some elements might be slow to move because of bias, but inevitably the shift will occur.
We here aren't generally qualified to know whether there is a true pattern or not. These look suspiciously like isolated, anecdotal talking points to me, but then I could be totally wrong. Time will tell.
- wolf
The migration has begun...the spin machine is broken now.
If all these trees amount to a forest, what is bound to happen is that you will see a mass migration of the scientific community over to the skeptic side, with only a hardcore block of the politically motivated sticking to their guns. When that happens, then we'll all know it's a forest.
The problem with the trees is you lose perspective on the size of the forest. There are thousands upon thousands of scientific papers written on issues relating to climate change. There are hundreds of comments made by scientists to journalists every year. It is a very active area of science that gets a fair amount of press exposure. It's easy to find a retracted paper here, a quote out of context there (where near 95% certainly becomes "no warming"), or even a fudged piece of data. These kinds of events are absorbed into the mix of the scientific community, and when they constitute a truly meaningful pattern, then the consensus will shift. Some elements might be slow to move because of bias, but inevitably the shift will occur.
We here aren't generally qualified to know whether there is a true pattern or not. These look suspiciously like isolated, anecdotal talking points to me, but then I could be totally wrong. Time will tell.
- wolf
Forever, it seems, Deniers have been declaring GW/CC Dead. It's still here and still progressing, much faster than predicted(surprisingly that fact is also a Denier talking point, go figure :\). So forgive my short answers, they are merely cutting to the chase of the matter.
That's odd...didn't Phil Jones recently admit that for the past 15 years there has been no statistically significant warming. Please get your story straight.
In climatology, the vast majority of scientists are employed by government or academia - but I repeat myself. The "skeptics" side offers no reason to increase funding for climatology and related studies and some reasons to decrease funding. As we have seen repeatedly over the last year, scientists are certainly no more politically unbiased or more honest than is the general public, so the smart money is betting that the majority of climate scientists will continue to support the side that promises greater funding and job security. Also, the pro-CAGW scientists, administrators, and politicians have repeatedly shown a willingness to punish those who stray off the reservation, providing yet another reason to keep any doubts to oneself. In this economy, damned few scientists are going to buck the prevailing wisdom unless there is a sea change not only in the science, but also in the people controlling funding and jobs within climatology and related fields.
Snip
Sadly, he's right, and you're wrong. I'll deal with the analogies later, but what werepossum says is true. There is so much money, credibility, national policy, and reputation riding on the outcome of this scientific debate that scientists are being forced to forgo accuracy and surety of their results in favour of the things that get the money streaming in; quick, sensationalist results taken possibly out of context, with no other evidence backing it up, and perhaps even using dodgy methodology and analysis. It happens, and climatology isn't the first field where this is prevalent too. The reason people think that pharmacologists have a great conspiracy against the public for the interests of earning money is because for the large part, they do. Many companies forgo innovation, research, and in general, helping their fellow man for the opportunity of making a quick buck, which means producing more medicines to sell to the West and less of antivirals and malaria drugs for the developing world.Most Holocaust historians are Jewish, they say. And many others work in countries where it is illegal to deny the Holocaust and doing so will get them fired from academic posts, they say. Furthermore, they say, Israel has reaped enormous benefits from the Holocaust by using it to propangandize and curry foreign aid and other assistance. In the face of all that systemic bias, why should we believe the consensus of historians? Why is the Holocaust not a hoax?
Don't much like the parallel implied in that answer? Here's another glib answer, in the tit-for-tat school: oil companies have pumped huge coin into right wing think tanks who promote the views of skeptics, and publish biased articles about the state of the science, which articles find their way into skeptics websites, and get repeated on discussion forums like this one.
We can have "bias wars" all day and we'll never get anywhere. Theories of bias are cheap and very easy to come by. In the end, I'm going to stick with the expert consensus, and I will change my view when the expert consensus changes.
- wolf
Most Holocaust historians are Jewish, they say. And many others work in countries where it is illegal to deny the Holocaust and doing so will get them fired from academic posts, they say. Furthermore, they say, Israel has reaped enormous benefits from the Holocaust by using it to propangandize and curry foreign aid and other assistance. In the face of all that systemic bias, why should we believe the consensus of historians? Why is the Holocaust not a hoax?
Don't much like the parallel implied in that answer? Here's another glib answer, in the tit-for-tat school: oil companies have pumped huge coin into right wing think tanks who promote the views of skeptics, and publish biased articles about the state of the science, which articles find their way into skeptics websites, and get repeated on discussion forums like this one.
We can have "bias wars" all day and we'll never get anywhere. Theories of bias are cheap and very easy to come by. In the end, I'm going to stick with the expert consensus, and I will change my view when the expert consensus changes.
- wolf
Now for the analogies. The first one is not a great analogy because we have solid evidence that the holocaust indeed did occur; eyewitness accounts, confessions, written records, footage, etc. This puts the occurrence of the Holocaust beyond reasonable doubt. However, you can dispute it all if you want. Whereas in the case of climate change, we have no solid evidence that what is happening is happening at all, let alone any evidence showing that the change is largely man-made. Thus there is a lot of room for wishy-washy science and bad logic and rigged experiments and sensationalist claims in articles.
As for the second one, wtf are you talking about?
Damn commondreamer, but your editting skills suck! But it's pretty much what the skeptics are talking about. Especially considering this is the data from the scientists themselves.
Actually, while he doesn't do it often, those two examples were pure strawman examples. You addressed the first example before I did, because we have physical solid proof it happened. Photographs, videos, eye witness testimony and other things that can not be denied. Comparing the Holocaust deniers to Global Warming skeptics is really bad. The fact that some of the "evidence" dealing with GW has proven to be skewed and bad is why there are skeptics. There was no photoshop back in the day to fake photos and videos of the Holocaust like scientists today can now easily fake "climate" data or ignore relevant data such as historical periods found in their data for warming and cooling trends of the planet from ice core samples.
As for the second strawman example.... Yes there are going to be opponents of global warming, such as big oil, who are also going to make public their own messed up and skewed "finding" in order to push their agenda. Just because they do it, does it make it right for the other side? This seems to be what you are alluding to in your second argument.
That whole post of yours wolfs was really really bad.
Someone retracting One Paper amongst many on the same subject simply is not a "pervasive problem". Sorry.
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[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]It has been said that our current 'global warming is "unprecedented"[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]Let's get some perspective from NOAA ice core data[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]The 'Hockey Stick' as seen from Greenland and Antarctic ice cores[/SIZE][SIZE=+1]Greenlandic ice cores show a 'Hockey Stick' uptick, similar to Mann's hockey stick represented in Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth'[/SIZE][SIZE=+1]The 'Hockey Stick; is still present, but dwarfed by 'Medieval Warming Period'[/SIZE][SIZE=+1]The 'Medieval Warming Period' is dwarfed by a warming period about 1200 B.C.[/SIZE][SIZE=+1]The warming experience now is significantly less than most temperatures going back 10,000 years according to ice core data.[/SIZE][SIZE=+1]You can even see an Ice Age that gripped the planet between -12000 and -9000 B.C. The temperatures are a serious deviation from the warmth that's gripped the Earth for the past 10,000 years.[/SIZE][SIZE=+1]If you want to talk about an era of global warming, look no further than what happened 10,000 years ago. We're in a prolonged warm period.[/SIZE][SIZE=+1]As you can see, the temperature spikes between half a million years ago and the present are a rarity, with the earth being cooler over that period of time. That we're in a abnormally long warm period should be seen as a boon, not something to combat.
Sorry if this did not fit so well
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