Slashdot Mirror
Expert Wants to Decertify Global Warming Skeptics
Penguinisto writes "Apparently in the Senate, at least one scientist wants to put a permanent stop to any arguments over Global Warming. The Weather Channel's most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming."
No scientific discussion can be made without questioning theories. Censorship is no solution.
But what if they are right? Sure it seems unlikely, but if we ban offering an opposing opinions we trap ourselves. Besides shouldn't we be focusing on censoring intelligent design first? (note to stupid people: I am not serious about censoring intelligent design advocated). Oh yeah, and what about the Bill of Rights. It's so annoying sometimes.
Philosophy.
The idea of doing this is just as ridiculous as Bush forcing all scientific papers produced by scientists employed by the government to go through political censors before being.
But, the linked to article is a horribly biased hatchet job that contains such gems as:
This is a ridiculous and disingenuous assertion, especially given the well documented policies of the Bush administration to do everything they can to supress research that doesn't support their view.
I find that entire site rather apalling. And the fact that it appears to be the website for a Senate committee concerned with the environment makes the blatant and obviously one-sided bias all the more awful.
But, the focus of this Slashdot article is on the person calling for decertification. And, as awfully disingenuous and biased as that site is, they have the guy dead to rights. That is not a reasonable thing to do. Calling for censorship of honest opinions is not something anybody of any political stripe should be doing and severely lowers the credibility of the person who asks that it be done.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I cringe at behavior like this.
Why not just expose who the source of funding is for these critics, or who they're affiliated with? Quite often that's just as devastating, and it's far less chilling as far as free speech is concerned.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
The blog cited is in such extreme form that I wonder how much truth there is in the story. It looks like someone has set up this Heidi Cullen as a straw person to claim massive discrimination against anti-Global warming advocates. The blog gets more and more extreme as it goes on until Godwin's Law is invoked. I wonder what Cullen really said, in what context.
Pining for the fjords
The fact is, theories about global warming are just that, Theories. So when people start teaching manmade global warming as fact - they are in the wrong. It's not fact. Skeptics of manmade global warming are merely saying, "You can't promote manmade global warming as fact."
That's the issue here.
whoa whoa whoa, if anyone should be scolded its this guy. While I truly believe the evidence points towards man made global climate change it would be dumb o make skeptics into outcasts. This is science not religion, we shouldn't be excommunicating scientists, at best we should drown out "bad" research with more "good research". its the same argument of censorship of bad speech versus offering more good speech
Censorship is no solution.
Censorship is a solution, just not one you use in a free society. People define thoughtcrimes to make their jobs easier because it doesn't force them to debate items in question (from Holocaust denial to questioning state history to global warming).
It is alarming how many people object to diversity in thought. I do not understand where they think they have derived the right to force everyone to think the same way they do.
I'm fully convinced by the arguments and evidence for climate change, but it is important to understand that a single abnormal year doesn't provide credible evidence. There are fluctuations in temperature every year. You have to look at the bigger picture.
Regarding silencing those who still think climate change is a myth: Ignorance flourishes when debate is stifled. This is one reason why we have religious extremists, and why seemingly ordinary people join their numbers. As a general rule, if religion is taught in schools at all, it is taught very badly. (Here in the UK most schools do have religious education classes, but my opinion of them is that they could be done a lot better.) This leaves people ill-equipped to make informed decisions later in life about whether they are being told the truth or lies about a particular religion.
The same argument could be applied to climate change and science in general. Teach people how to think, question, and evaluate ideas, and they will start to make better decisions.
It's very simple.
1) Greenhouse gases create a greenhouse effect. What this means is that if you have a lot of C02 in the air, it will trap the heat, creating higher temperatures in the area. Our sister planet, Venus, has a runaway greenhouse gas problem. There are so many greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, that the planet keeps getting warmer and warmer. This in turn, creates more greenhouse gases. The place isn't very hospitable.
2) People create a lot of greenhouse gases, and pump them directly into the atmosphere. This comes by way of car exhaust, factory air pollution, power plants, and a host of other things. Automobile pollution is probably the single biggest cause though.
3) This has been going on for a very long time. Accordingly, the Earth has shown a HUGE spike in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.
To deny that this is going on is quite insane.
It's obviously wrong to stop anyone contributing to any side on the Global Climate Change debate but just because Weatherfolk aren't allowed to do forecasts on TV doesn't mean they can't contribute papers on the subject and join in the debate.
The aim here seems to be to stop Weather presenters pretending that Global Climate Change isn't happening, the consequence weather presenters putting forward this point of view is that the viewing public will most likely believe them rather than all the "boffins predicting climate chaos" with the result that the public may have a very skewed view of what the current real scientific thinking on the matter is.
If weather presenters claimed that rain was in fact Gods tears and this had been scientifically proven then you'd expect him or her to lose their job or at least be removed to doing something where they are not in contact with the public and this is similar to what seems to be going on here.
That pushes some of us towards more skepticism. I'm not a climatologist or anything like it so I've had little success with my own research. There's a lot of scientists that say it's a man made phenomena and its' dire, but then consensus means nothing and many of them are basing their research off of things that are not that empirically valid, overstating their conclusions, or both. Regardless, it's just something I can't disambiguate*. I have just said "screw it" and continue to support conservation for it's own sake (use less, have more).
However one thing that really makes me skeptical is the religious zeal with which it is pushed. In most science it seems to be that when you have a theory you know is right and plenty of proof, you've no need to shout down your skeptics. You welcome the skepticism, and welcome the chance to show it's wrong. After all, that's how we prove theories, is by thinking of every possible way they could be false and testing that. The more times the tests don't come out false, the more sure we are the theory is right. That's the whole doctrine of falsifiability and it's the cornerstone of modern empiricism.
But that's not how it goes with GW. If you are a skeptic you are shouted down as an idiot, an industry shill, someone not to be listened to, and now even threatened with stripping them of rank. It looks like a religious inquisition, not like science. That makes me worried. The reason religions do that is because there's NOT proof so it is dangerous to them when people start claiming something other than what they believe. That kind of attitude has absolutely no place in science.
More than any of the actual skeptical papers, this makes me wonder about the GW argument. If your position is so tenuous that it must be defended with ad hominem attacks and threats, I have to wonder about how correct it really can be.
* Please note: Don't bother posting some diatribe trying to convince me on GW. I've read plenty of papers, plenty of arguments by people who do it for a living. It's very unlikely you'd find something to change my mind, at least given the normal pro-GW post I see on Slashdot.
"Posted by Marc Morano"
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Great. Now explain why the same thing is happening on Mars, Triton, and Pluto.
Go ahead, I'll wait.
I love you babe. But seriously, have a sandwich or something; body fat above 2% is a good thing, you know?
So who the hell wrote that article? The knee-jerk totally uninformed spew driven by complete ignorance which shows up in my son's high school newspaper is less sensationalist and pejorative (as well as more fact-based) than that crap. Based purely on the language used I'd have to rate its veracity at just below OJ's intent to find the real killer.
Is this really what it's come to? Quote people out of context, paraphrase them in a manner which completely changes the actual meaning of what they said, all to drive an agenda which seems to consist entirely of a desire to make yourself seem important by disagreeing with people who actually have triple digit IQs... it's true, isn't it? We have to avoid learning about ourselves by studying chimpanzees not because it's an offense against God, but because we look so bad by comparison.
I so seriously fear for this country.
I was incensed when I heard that a 24 year old political appointee was altering Nasa publications on the big bang.
I was incensed when global warming was dismissed as even a possible cause for climate change.
But any researcher or rational thinker should be equally as incensed at this attempt to arbitrarily close off an avenue of inquiry - it's the same tactic, only in the opposite direction, and it stinks just as much.
Seeking to politically silence ANY side of a scientific issue is a slippery slope. The above-mentioned examples are probably repulsive to most slashdotters. De-certifying climatologists would simply be turnabout - and equally as invalid as when the tactic was employed by the existing anti-science administration. Should we seek to eliminate a theory completely because it's not our theory? No. If we want to be sure that we're moving forward with a solid theoretical foundation, each theory must be tested and discarded based on merit and evidence alone. While the circumstantial evidence for global warming is strong, there will be a time in the future when we can either prove or disprove it. Should the improbable happen and human-influenced global warming be disproved, do we want to be seen as the proverbial church that silenced Galileo?
Science requires it. We have to accept that you can't prove a theory true in the same was things can be proved in mathematics. There's not a one step, now this is true and we know that, kind of thing. The way it works is scientific theories must be falsifiable, that is a proposition which is able to be proven false. If they aren't they are a hypothesis at best and just aren't scientific theories. That's why creationism isn't a theory, there's no way to falsify it.
Thus the very essence of doing science is entertaining ways your theory could be wrong, even if you don't believe them. If someone gives an alternate theory for your observations, you need to test it. You have to try and prove your theory false. That's how good science is done. You entertain all the ways you can come up with that your theory could be wrong.
10 to 1 the guy is trying to protect his own grant money by drying up grants to people with competing projects. It's an international game that hasn't changed from the time of Louis Pasteur who had to defend against entrenched interests in the 1850's.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
And yet that, sir, is a theory that explains observable phenomena. Theories are the basis of science, and one of the principles of science is that theories are also questionable and sometimes fallible. For many years, it was held that the theory of the Sun and all other objects revolved around the Earth was also infallible and it took someone challenging it and being excommunicated to fall.
b edard.html
The truth is that we don't know. The system of climate on this planet is massively complex, and reacting to it with simplistic attitudes will result in knee-jerk reactions that will probably, in the grand scheme of things, have very little effect on the overall outcome. Several truths that we can debate, though, are in your points.
Point 2 - "Automobile pollution is probably the single biggest cause though." Says who? This is a matter of debate, as industry and power plants pump more than a little into the atmosphere. Further, CO2 - which is a greenhouse gas - is largely produced by Mother Nature herself through the process of life. It's something like 29:1 in favor of Mother Nature pumping it out. Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas, and there's a lot of that in the air. Human effects are arguably minimal.
http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/2502/patrick-
Note page 2 of this article, in which the numbers are discussed - and references are provided.
Point 3 - "This has been going on for a very long time." Again, climatology is a trending process. Humanity has only had the power to emit pollution on any scale for around 200 years, give or take, while the planet is several billions of years old.
So, sorry, but I'm a skeptic about people who think that 1mpg or a recycled plastic bag will save the planet. Call me a fatalist, but I think the planet will outlive you, me, and probably our species just fine without any misguided reactions at all.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
1) It's not necessarily a vicious circle. Lots of people think that global warming will lead to faster/worse ice ages. Lots of other people say those people are crazy. Earth != Venus.
l l_Images/image161.gif
2) We also create a lot of other gasses. And affect the environment in 1000 other ways. Some of them destroy greenhouse gasses and other lead directly to global cooling.
3) Part I: No it hasn't, we've only been producing noticeable amounts for a couple hundred years. Part II: No it hasn't. That's not a huge spike, and the Industrial Revolution was meaninglessly recent on a geological timescale. Earth has seen average temps higher than now, and those were *good* times. The Sahara was lush and inhabitable. Greenland was farmable. It was different, not better or worse. Ice ages are what we should be concerned with. Ice ages suck.
Temps over the last 160,000 years (long live global warming!):
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/PageMi
To think that you know what is actually happening is quite insane.
1) Greenhouse gases create a greenhouse effect. What this means is that if you have a lot of C02 in the air, it will trap the heat, creating higher temperatures in the area.
Theoretically, yes. Just as pouring a glass of water into a swimming pool will theoretically raise the water level.
I have yet to see any evidence that our tiny levels of CO2 (we are still somewhere around 0.3% total, compared to the 90% back when life appeared) are going to make any measurable difference.
Our sister planet, Venus, has a runaway greenhouse gas problem. There are so many greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, that the planet keeps getting warmer and warmer. This in turn, creates more greenhouse gases. The place isn't very hospitable.
They tried that one years ago. Noone took them seriously back then, and noone does now. The problem with that argument is that it fails to account for Venus being closer to the sun. When you sit on the electric heater, CO2 is not the reason your ass gets hot.
2) People create a lot of greenhouse gases, and pump them directly into the atmosphere. This comes by way of car exhaust, factory air pollution, power plants, and a host of other things. Automobile pollution is probably the single biggest cause though.
Agreed, we to create a lot (on a human scale, not on planetary scale) of CO2, and should cut down where we can. But still no evidence that we are changing anything.
3) This has been going on for a very long time. Accordingly, the Earth has shown a HUGE spike in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.
Not only that, but average temperature has been going up since the last ice age. Maybe that's why the ice melted in the first place? Also, average temperature goes up after every ice age, and goes down before every ice age. Just like it goes up during spring, and down during autumn, just over thousands of years.
My argument basically boils down to: Global warmin exists. The planet has gotten warmer for thousands of years. We do produce lots of CO2, and it can theoretically increase the temperature. We just haven't seen any evidence at all, that the CO2 we create is enough to make a difference.
It's still the wrong way, because it's one more step towards blurring the distinction between science and bullshit in the minds of Jack Sixpack and Jane Housewife.
You can't say that proper science and skepticism should be limited to an ivory tower clique of chosen ones, and everyone else should just get dogma, because:
1. Even those scientists got there from being Joe Schoolkid and Cecilia Nerdygirl who liked to discover how things really worked, and apply critical thinking the quick fairy-tale explanations their parents gave them to "why is the sky blue?" or "what _is_ the rainbow?" The more you dumb society down and teach more people to not use their brains, the less of a recruiting pool you have for that chosen ones gang. If you actually managed to get everyone to stop using their brains, stop questioning the dogma, discourage everyone from being skeptics or debating anything unless they're a cardinal (or whatever other badge of "ok, now you can discuss the dogma" badge), and persecute everyone who dares step out of line, etc, well, you can already know how much scientific progress that produced in the middle ages.
2. Because those scientists will need funding and other support from the likes of Tom CEO, Dick Marketeer and Harry Journalist. Once you taught _those_ and their customers/readers/etc that science is just about enforcing a dogma, what's to stay in the way of them just funding pseudo-science by PR. Not that it doesn't already happen, but going that way full time is not an improvement.
If anything I'd remind more that you _can't_ do science by PR, or in the words of Feynman, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." Teaching more people that science is just about who gets to set the official dogma, is just as step towards more thinking "fuck you, I have the money, so I'll set my own dogma by PR." And more down the pyramid accepting it, because if they're going to accept one dogma unthinkingly anyway, hey, they might as well go for the one with more marketting behind it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Since you're the one pushing this theory why don't you explain first of all how you have determined that these planets and moons have been experiencing climactic warming events and secondly what your explanation for this is ?
Excuse my language, but what the fuck is that?
I have been working in the scientific community my whole professional life, and I have never heard of a "certified scientist" before. There are various academic degrees and awards you can have (like Ph.D or Nobel prize), and there are positions you can hold (like associate professor). You don't lose the first, and losing the second means you get fired. No "certification". And you don't need either to be considered a scientist by the community.
If you want to establish a pecking order among scientists, you look at how many publications he has, the rating of the journals the publications appear in, and how many other scientist quote your results.
And you don't have to agree with the consensus to be considered a scientist, take Fred Hoyle for example. He never accepted Big Bang, and had various controversial opinions on other areas as well, he won his last major scientific award in 1997, four years before his death.
We are in an i-n-t-e-r-g-l-a-c-i-a-l period. Which direction do you want temperatures to go? DOWN? No, you don't. Really. You don't want the next ice age to start. Trust me on this. Temperatures were this high in the Holicene period (actually higher) and mankind wasn't doing anything. Enjoy global warming while it lasts. You didn't do it, you can't stop it, you don't want to stop it, and if you are alive when it goes away you'll be trying to bring it back. Or, maybe you'll still be trolling on Slashdot....
Science isn't about Definitive Truth, devoid of all possible error, but about finding the best mental model we have to explain the data we have. That would be global warming. Do I think "critics" should be silenced? No, though I wish that people would recognize that a particular political movement is behind global warming "skepticism," just as the same movement is behind "skepticism" over the old age of the earth or evolution.
Penn & Teller are great when it comes to con men, but on other subjects they fail it. Hard. They were wrong about glass recycling. They were wrong about second-hand smoke, using as their sole sources of information a "think tank" run by a woman whose reports echo whatever her tobacco and oil companies want them to as well as to a court case which was vacated by a higher court. They were also as wrong about global warming as Michael Crichton in his horrible passion play, State of Confusion which was wrong, wrong, wrong.
This doesn't mean that anyone challenging a popularly held idea or even accepted theory should be silenced. Far from it. Science needs theories questioned. However, when the questions are being raised by shills in order to confuse and are based in fallacy and reference already disproven works, that's when such "scientists" should have their credentials stripped.
How nice! A modern secular Inquisition. Isn't progress wonderful?
"Your source explicitly excludes popular media,"
So your saying that if Lindsay Lohen says that Global Warming is not real then that counters scientific studies that say it's happening?
If todays popular media can't be used to counter todays scientific studies, then how does 1970's popular media counter todays scientific studies?
Is global warming not real because Brigitte Bardot said so in the 1970s???
Let me remind you that this topic isn't about reminding Tom, Dick and Harry that their coffeetable (or slashdot) discussion isn't proper science, up to academic standards. It's about an idea as stupid as outright de-certifying anyone who dares think otherwise.
Pray tell, once that is achieved, _what_ value do peer reviews serve any more? Once you've decreed that the only peers are those who have complete faith in the dogma and know it's not their place to question it, peer-review becomes little more than a self-perpetuating system to ensure that future work toes the party line too.
"Peer review" just doesn't work in a closed dogmatic system. Remember Galileo being "reviewed" by the true believers of the Aristotelian system. Did they really prove him wrong or contributed anything to the progress of science.
_All_ that science is about at any level is accomodating a multitude of views, including that your pet theory might be false. Everything is and should be judged only by their experimental data and error bar. And if you think you've found new data, a better theory, or whatever, that invalidates it, please do say so. We'll judge your hypothesis too by the same standards.
Science is not religion, it's not about authority figures telling you what to believe and what's punishable heresy. That's the domain of religion. Science is just a _method_.
And this guy proposing to basically introduce heresy and excommunication in science (if you dare question the dogma, we'll de-certify you) is contrary to that whole method. It just shows that it's he who has no fucking clue what science is all about. Maybe someone should start by de-certifying him.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The line you boldfaced: "If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval." basically says:
"A Meteorologist should be knowledgeable about the evidence about climate change. It's his subject after all. If he isn't, he's incompetent and should be de-certified."
Well, that's something I agree with.
The fact that we are witnessing Climate Change in itself is pretty uncontroversial. What is controversial is to what extent this climate change we are witnessing was caused by man (specifically our carbon dioxide output as opposed tp e.g. an upwards cycle in the sun's energy output) and to what extent we can hope to halt or reverse climate change by reducing our carbon dioxide output.
Nowhere do I read anything about a proposed decertification of meteorologists who argue against climate change being caused by man. What I do read is a proposal to decertify people who call themselves Meteorologists and haven't kept up to date with evidence on climate change.
That's why I'm so certain that the issue of silencing opponents hasn't surfaced. Cullen's blog talks about de-certifying people who pose as experts but who are incompetent in their claimed area of expertise because they haven't kept up with the literature.
The link comes from the minoirity in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
In other words, Sen. James Inhofe who's support comes from the coal and oil lobby. He as written some amazingly lapdogish stuff and this could be more of the same. Comments further down appear to bebunk what he's saying here. Better check those out before being stirred to outrage as he intends.
The Weather Channel's most prominent man-made global warming evangelist is
advocating that broadcast meteorologists be excommunicated for heresy if
they express skepticism about the gospel of man-made catastrophic global warming.
They're all sorts of religions on the planet and only few deal with spiritual matters.
When it comes down to the climate we are still running probabilities and it is known that the sun-spot cycle has a considerable effect as well as various gases. Some cools the climate down others makes it warmer.
The current winter is (at least here in northern Europe so far) the warmest and wettest for a long time, but last winter was a rather cold one. What we actually are missing is reliable detailed weather data for the last million years, which we would need if we are to make a detailed prognosis. Unfortunately we don't have that so we will need to go for the second best alternative by doing estimations of trends of various curves.
Some analysis even estimates that if it weren't for the greenhouse gas emissions that we have today we would have had a new ice age. If that's the truth or not - hard to tell but it's an interesting thought.
So many factors are involved that it's not easy, and there is a difference between short-time trends, long-time trends and threshold switches. For example the El Niño is a typical threshold switch effect with considerable results in weather change.
By all means, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't cut down our emissions - of course we should, even it it's only for the reason that we are working on finite resources of uranium, oil and coal.
So in the end - let meteorologists have different views, this will keep the general public alert. A single-headed view will just cause disinterest in a question. Or maybe that's what the actual idea is? Let the general public be so disinterested in a question so that the question will self-die.
"Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.", quote claimed to be by Mark Twain. - This is still true.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Yes, it is very simple.
1) Without global warming, the earth would be a big ball of ice. I don't like icy balls; life, in general, doesn't. Whether or not the earth, on average, will warm a few degrees over the next 100 or so years isn't cause for panic.
2) People make greenhouse gasses. True dat. And because of this we will be seeing milder winters, longer growing seasons, and increased vegetation in areas that were inhospitable back when we were freezing our asses off.
3) Huge is relative. An inch is huge when you're talking about pecker size.
You're doing it wrong--http://youredoingitwrong.mee.nu
"They held the chancellorship (under Figl) and majority in Parliament until the "Socialist revolution" under Kreisky in 1970."
And the socialists didn't repeal it? So much for free speech.
"We have a lot of problems right now, especially in Vienna, because so many Turkish people are coming and certain far-right parties are using it as the new scapegoat to gain support. The last thing Austria needs is some douche like David Irving fanning the flames. "
Perhaps the proper solution might be to restrict the amount of turks entering the country. Only an idiot would see jailing people for expressing a point of view as the solution. Anyway , what the f*ck have turks got to do with Jews? Please tell us.... Or is it that ANY right wing view should be suppressed?
Idiot.
You know, in an argument, "I'm right, shut up" is not a valid postulate. In fact, in arguments, the more standoffish, brash, and assertive the person is in pushing their point with little or no evidence to back it up, the more often they are found to be completely in the wrong.
Seriously people, threatening to strip someone of their credentials if they disagree with you is the last act of a desperate man. The truth is, the global warming zealots know they don't have a leg to stand on, and the only thing they will actually come out and claim evidence for is that the earth is warming (which it is, due at least in part to a ~7W/m^2 increase in solar flux density that correlates very well with recent increases in global surface temperature). They still cannot produce any proof that global warming is a man-made problem. For a while there, I actually started to believe the hype, but the more and more outlandish the eco-movement has become, the less and less credibility they have earned.
DISCLAIMER (and I need to put this here because I know the global warming zealots are going to put words in my mouth): This post and the contents herein are not to be construed as an argument against sound environmental policy, clean air, clean water, nor as an argument for SUVs, burning down rain forests, funding terrorists by buying their oil, or clubbing baby seals. Furthermore, no one who drives a car may post any arguments about fossil fuels in response to this post, because the poster lives a mostly fossil-fuel-free lifestyle. The poster rides a bike to work, pays extra for 100% wind electricity, and uses B100 bioheating oil in his furnace, all at terrific expense to stay as much within the carbon cycle as possible.
Ah yes there can be no argument that the leftest have won in the United States, force bloggers to register and now attempting to ban the expression of opposing view points...
If you didn't vote Libertarian then you are getting what you deserve.
back in the 80s that were yelling about an ice age is on the way? What about the assertion that we havent seen teperatures like this SINCE... um Since? that means it happened before? what caused the Ice age, and the medieval warm period? are we warming up? probbably, though the people in Malibu may disagree at the moment. Is it man made? doubtful. Scientists are OFTEN wrong, and silenceing those that they do not agree with is not the answer, a scientists job is to PROVE them wrong.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
This sounds like a government organization is telling me what to think. I don't like it one bit. This "weatherman" is expressing communist views and trying to assert his "truth" over mine. The true meaing of this article is not too discuss global warming but to discuss people loss of free thinking and speach. Shame!
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
Seriously, this is middle age thinking. Skepticism, even if it's politically motivated (and I'm not syaing it all is in this issue), is a good thing for science. Skepticism is what makes science work in the long run.
Ok... This isn't quite the same because our scientific knowledge is much greater but...
Remember back in the day... Everybody thought the world was flat? And a few people disagreed and where "frowned" upon?
We know infinitely more about science, but doesn't our understanding of climate models still lack? I'm just saying...
My final opinion though, before people think I'm a witch or something: We are causing harm, we need to back off. Even if it isn't our fault, we should follow our understanding. Maybe at a later date will we truly understand, or we may be right now.(Which I hope we are)
No scientist worthy of the name would suggest any such thing. To stifle debate and dissension of opinion is the realm of religion, not science.
>That's exactly the solution the neo-Nazis--the people who are saying Irving should come here--support
And whats wrong with immigration limits? Most countries in the world have it FYI.
>But I think the main reason it hasn't been repealed is simply because of the symbolic effect i
You either believe in free speech or you don't. If you pick and choose what you'll allow its called censorship.
This is ridiculous. Silence the debate?!?! Skepticism leads to debate, and ultimately leads to innovation and truth. Case: The world is flat. No it is not. Rabble Rabble. A journey is made to prove it. Truth is known.
Case: The heavenly bodies revolve around the earth. Really?! I think not! Rabble Rabble. Innovations are made; telescopes, physics....And guess what happens? The truth: That the heavenly bodies revolve around the sun.
These scientists are just an example of a problem with the scientific community being over run by zealots, as in religious zealots. Difference? I think not.
1. If you shut up every scientist who disagreed with conventional wisdom we would still be learning about the Ptolemaic solar system; we wouldn't know about these crazy forces that keep making things fall on our heads; and smelly grad students wouldn't be able to buy that picture of Einstein with his tongue sticking out; and possibly the worst Stephen Hawking wouldn't have that awesome mac voice that I use on my voice mail so people think I'm smart. You never know when some "crazy" guy who is a black sheep in his discipline will come up with the next mind blowing episode of nova.
/. have a dedicated global warming section yet? There always so many stories on the subject and so many people respond to them that global warming could easily make its own section.
2. Why doesn't
lose != loose
If you want me to say "I trust you", I get to decide what's gibberish.
If I want you to say "I trust you", you get to decide what's gibberish.
And, logically, if anybody wants AMS to say "we trust you", clearly AMS gets to decide what's gibberish.
The only possible room for confusion is who, within AMS, gets to make this decision on their behalf - but that's an internal organisational issue for AMS. And it's hardly a unique problem. Any organisation needs to appoint people with the authority to make certain decisions on the organisation's behalf. That's not really rocket (or, as it were, climate) science.
May we live long and die out
There's plenty of debate about specific details in climate science, but "the Earth is warming" and "it's mostly because of us" are indeed the consensus; the debate has moved on, to what will happen in the future. Could it have anything to do with opposing theories being squelched and the presenters labeled as cranks? If they had good arguments, they'd be published. Opposing theories are found everywhere in science, it's just that they're the good theories. Let's face facts, that's exactly what they're trying to do in this case on a very formal level. Let's face facts, nobody has proposed anything of the kind. The original blogger merely said that certified broadcast meteorologists have a professional obligation to be informed about climate science. She didn't advocate removing their certification. And even if she did, that has squat to do with "squelching opposing theories". Certification just means you get to be a TV weatherperson, it has nothing to do with whether your can publish in scientific journals. Is that why so many others in this "community" are allowed to run wild screaming "the sky is falling" while anthropogenic global warming is still just a theory? Is anthropogenic global warming "just a theory" like evolution and the Big Bang?
Everything in science is a "theory". Some theories have enough evidence in their favor that they are regarded as established. AGW is one of them.