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Scientists Search For Clues to Antarctic Climate

Posted by michael on from the cold-hard-science dept.

Andrevan writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that a group of US scientists has finished a journey to the southernmost point of Antarctica. The team traversed 775 miles. They hope to reveal information on global warming and precipitation trends that began at the end of the Ice Age. According to Dr. Paul Mayewski, the expedition's leader, analysis should be finished in the next year or two."

4 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. Hooray for scientific method by Wonko42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I love how the scientific method has mutated into "we're hoping to find such and such, so we're going to look very hard until we do". With that methodology, you'll always find something that supports your theory.

    1. Re:Hooray for scientific method by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Please explain how you think that relates to this story. They have already have lots of records of climate change. There isn't any dispute about that except among some talk radio whores.

      This project looks at the climate record across a large strech of Antarctica to see is greater detail what really happened. There's no political adgenda with that, but you sound like you have one.

      It bugs me that every time someone tries to studies climate change they get called a tree hugger. Global warming is a proven fact. We need to study it more to find out why it is happening and what it will do. It's good for tree huggers as well as chemical plants to know what's comming next!

    2. Re:Hooray for scientific method by alienmole · · Score: 3, Insightful
      You're misunderstanding the scientific method. If you come up with a hypothesis, by whatever means, one of the things you then have to do is look for evidence to support that hypothesis. Otherwise, no new theories could ever arise.

      Separately from that, you also need to try to falsify your hypothesis - look for evidence that contradicts it. To a large extent, this is often left to the peer-review process, since those involved in finding evidence for a hypothesis may not in fact be the best people to falsify it - which is the point you were picking up on.

      However, that's normal - scientists are human, too. I don't know if you develop software, but it's similar to the situation with software developers - you write some code, which you can think of as the embodiment of a hypothesis about how to solve some set of problems. You try to test it as best you can, but other testers or users are still likely to find bugs that you missed - in other words, your "hypothesis" (the software) was wrong in some respect.

      One reason this happens is that during development, you tend to try harder to provide input that will make the software work, than make it fail. Only once it's working reasonably well, does it make sense to try to make it fail - before that, it's too fragile. A similar process often occurs in science - theories don't always spring fully-formed from a scientist's mind.

  2. Re:Climate Change or Change of Climate by h4x0r-3l337 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    ...I think global warming falls into the same category, trendy pseudo-science.

    Global warming is undeniably real. What's a matter of debate is whether humanity contributes significantly to it, or if it's just part of the normal cycle.