Slashdot Mirror
Most Science Studies Tainted by Sloppy Analysis
mlimber writes "The Wall Street Journal has a sobering piece describing the research of medical scholar John Ioannidis, who showed that in many peer-reviewed research papers 'most published research findings are wrong.' The article continues: 'These flawed findings, for the most part, stem not from fraud or formal misconduct, but from more mundane misbehavior: miscalculation, poor study design or self-serving data analysis. [...] To root out mistakes, scientists rely on each other to be vigilant. Even so, findings too rarely are checked by others or independently replicated. Retractions, while more common, are still relatively infrequent. Findings that have been refuted can linger in the scientific literature for years to be cited unwittingly by other researchers, compounding the errors.'"
But it means the the correlation between CO2 and global temperature on Gore's graph is caused by the absorption of CO2 into the ocean. That means that you can't use the correlation to estimate the temperature rise that would be caused by increased atmospheric CO2 levels.
"Global warming theories aren't based on correlations, they're based on fundamental principles of science."
Yes, but global warming predictions are based on correlations. The fundamental principles of science tell us that since CO2 effectively insulates the planet, increasing the concentration of CO2 will increase the surface temperature of the earth. But the earth is such a complicated and vast system that global temperatures can not be modeled based on fundamental principles alone. So we know it will go up, but we don't know how much.
If the current temperatures are a result of CO2 concentration (and they don't really correlate very well) then we don't have much to worry about. Ocean levels may rise 3 feet over the next 100 years, but people will be able to move out of the way, or adapt in other ways. Rivers under the influence of glaciers will experience more flooding, but those rives can be damed and mediated (doing so would increase agricultural output as well). The temperature increase itself will do little to make the earth less habitable to humans, and there's always air conditioning if we need it. On the other hand, devastating the world's economy in order to reduce (not eliminate) growth in CO2 production will cause millions to die, and everyone else to live at a significantly reduced quality of life. And it will do little or nothing to stem the continued build up of CO2 in the atmosphere.