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The Science Credibility Bubble
eldavojohn writes "The real fallout of climategate may have nothing to do with the credibility of climate change. Daniel Henninger thinks it's a bigger problem for the scientific community as a whole and he calls out the real problem as seen through the eyes of a lay person in an opinion piece for the WSJ. Henninger muses, 'I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them,' and carries on in that vein, saying, 'This has harsh implications for the credibility of science generally. Hard science, alongside medicine, was one of the few things left accorded automatic stature and respect by most untrained lay persons. But the average person reading accounts of the East Anglia emails will conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and "messy" as, say, gender studies.' While nothing interesting was found by most scientific journals, he explains that the attacks against scientists in these leaked e-mails for proposing opposite views will recall the reader to the persecution of Galileo. In doing so, it will make the lay person unsure of the credibility of all sciences without fully seeing proof of it, but assuming that infighting exists in them all. Is this a serious risk? Will people even begin to doubt the most rigorous sciences like Mathematics and Physics?"
Einstein questioned "valid" laws of science and look what it got him.
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
Climategate has absolutely nothing to do with being a lay person and has everything to do with data being FALSIFIED as well as peer reviews being FALSIFIED in the name of climate change theory.
Also, during the melee of all the fraud going on, good scientists had their names and careers sabotaged by the perpetrators in the scientific community.
To detract from these facts is to contribute to the ongoing fraud that is climate change.
What hit scientists is Rupert Murdoch's media machine, spewing out more anti-science garbage. Again, he has created the "news" by making such a big deal about this on Fox, then he has the WSJ comment about how important this "news" is. What hit scientists is willful ignorance, taken at face value by a public who forgets that the owner of these "news" organizations started out in the US running a supermarket tabloid, the "Star". He learned a lot about the public running that rag. It shows in his influence on the WSJ.
Join the IParty!
It's not just "stolen e-mails" (ooooh, felony!! Quick! Lock up the miscreants!! There's never an Inquisitor around when you need one...); these huckleberries actually cooked the code. The Warmers are fanatics, more narrow-minded than Creationists, more dangerous and better connected politically than the Scientologists, but fundamentally no different. It's the indulgence-granting, end-is-nighing, repent-or-burn Medieval Catholic Church all over again, except this time without the pleasant chanting and neat robes. And just like that Dark Age sect, the top-placed five percent know that the fix is in while the bottom 95 percent are motivated by faith, fear, and social vengeance.
Exactly.
It has been fairly obvious by observing the presentation of these findings that the political agenda is driving the data. The whole thing is just too illogical to take seriously.
For example, the AGW bunch is hard over to control CO2, however much non-cooperation that comes from the direction of India and China, negating the results of pouring far more money than anyone can afford to attain results that will be insufficient to the goal. Their own pronouncements (I remember something like a sub-1-degree improvement from the Kyoto treaty by the end of the century, where even the signers failed to achieve compliance) fueled credibility problems.
Adding to the credibility problems is the complete refusal to consider geoengineering approaches to the problem, some of which are quite inexpensive. The idea of a tipping point was foisted on the public, while the public reads in various news places about shooting sulphur into the atmoshphere to negate warming (which is unnecesssary at the moment, since we seem to be freezing our tails off if we're anywhere in the midwest...) The AGW proponents fail to consider or refute these approaches, which leaves the general public wondering what they're trying to pull.
The general public, a lot of them, believe that AGW is a fraud. Failure of the AGW crowd to address / embrace / refute geoengineering alternatives, while they press ahead with a singular goal of attacking CO2, which seems more effective at bankrupting the USA in particular than it does at reducing CO2, is extremely suspect to most anyone that gives it some thought.
Dude, you're an idiot. Nothing insightful here.
The simple fact is Americans are stupid. They would not believe you if you told them, "the paint is wet." They would still have to touch it. Americans do not trust science. They never had. So there is no fall from grace. This latest drama simply confirms their world view not to trust science.
You are part of that group.
Thing is, there is no conspiracy about man-made climate change. The data proves this. The questions are how fast is it happening and is it reversible. Unfortunately it does appear that it is happening at a faster pace than what was predicted.
But be all means, please tell us how "evil" scientists are and how saintly the "do nothing" crowd is.
It's not like being more energy efficient and finding renewable energy sources isn't profitable or worthwhile.
Exactly the point! For some reason, scratching almost any "environmental activist" one can find a worn-out Che Guevara T-shirt underneath. Why is it? Are the liberals noticeably more green-conscientious? No, they aren't...
It must be, then, that a substantial body of the Illiberal crowd sees "global warming" as a pre-text for destroying (or, at least, shackling) Capitalism. Indeed, regardless of whether the Global Warming (renamed recently to a less odious "Climate Change") is a) a threat and b) a man-made phenomenon, it is useful just because it can be used to hurt Capitalism...
This is well-illustrated by the modern version of Pascal's Wager. To restate Pascal's conclusion: even though the existence of Anthropogenic Global Warming cannot be determined through reason, a Progressive should wager as though AGW exists, because living life accordingly has everything to gain, and nothing to lose.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
My point isn't really the accuracy of the information, but that the information is sorted through and used by Politicians for their own whim. Hence why Al Gore uses 20 times the electricity in his home of the average American and it costs more than $30k for him to speak for an hour at a university.
Doubt is good. Healthy skepticism is a sign of maturity and intellectual involvement.
No no no, this is not skepticism, people are not just applying systematic doubt, these are very special cased beliefs.
You will notice that the people who think global warming is fake are the same people who insist vaccines cause autism and the same people who think evolution is "just a theory",
This is not skepticism, this is a culture.
But... the future refused to change.
What majority? The vast "majority of scientists" that is always quoted are the SOCIAL scientists.
Most couldn't calculate a linear regression to save their lives.
The so-called hard science folks know (as most hard science folks know) that water vapor is the primary determinant of IR absorption reflection and then methane and a distant distant place (1-2% if that) comes from CO2.
CO2 (all you goose-stomping morons out there who want to "limit" my emission -- you and what army?) is PLANT FOOD. Methane is naturally produced all over the planet and the SEA FLOOR. Water vapor -- good luck with that on a planet that is mostly covered with water! NONE of these are bad and have been in our environment since the beginning of life on Earth.
Oh, and it's legion the number of hard scientists that scream from the rooftops that this isn't an issue. Do the google searches.
After this email scandal, a lot of people would disagree with you.
How do you know that what a climatologist tells you actually means anything in the long run? That was more my point. They can only guess what it means, how can politicians be so sure of what it means?
You know why, it's because they have an agenda, and "Global Warming" is a means to an end, just like "Global Cooling" was just a few decades ago. New research comes in, and scientific opinion changes, but the agenda never does. Hell look at China, the biggest polluter in the world - they were able to sign the Kyoto Treaty with an exemption that meant they did not have to lift a finger to reduce their own greenhouse gass emissions; they got a pass. If anybody actually tries to do something about the problem, groups like GreenPeace block them. Look at the guys who were trying to sequester atmospheric carbon by ocean seeding to boost sealife populations (by boosting plankton levels - the base of the sea food chain). They were planning to do this in areas where sea life has dropped in recent years - you'd think GreenPeace would be on board, but they managed to get them blocked at every port.
Obviously, GreenPeace isn't filled with scientists, they are activists who use climate science as a gun to hold to the head of as many people as they can. They also happen to be very selective about which science they use and which they conveniently ignore.
Al Gore, mister I-never-read-the-emails-but-I-know-there-is-nothing-misleading-in-them is a prime example of people who use good science in ways good science was never meant to be used.
Since I doubt you are actually reading the research yourself (my apologies if you are), you're actually trusting one of these guys over what some random dude on /. says.
What's the fucking difference?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Doubt is good. Healthy skepticism is a sign of maturity and intellectual involvement.
Problem is that most skeptics will not put their money where their mouth is -- and actually participate in the scientific debate. Instead, we get a bunch of unsubstantiated and contradictory theories appearing on websites. Theories that have already been discredited, and circular references that often lead no where.
I believe in AGW, because I have spent the time to assess the evidence, and I have some understanding of scientific philosophy. If someone wants to turn me into a skeptic, then they will have to make an evidence based argument. No such argument exists, and I have looked long and hard. I have also challenged numerous skeptics to produce one. However, once the argument has been discredited, they all start talking about conspiracies. Somehow, I'm unreasonable because I cannot see this obvious "truth". And then there is the projections -- like calling science a religion. Am I of the church of science because I refuse to accept a conspiracy theory at face value, but rather, will only accept evidence based arguments about the issues?
Skeptics presumably talk about "healthy skepticism", because of the way it makes them feel. They are not talking about any intellectual application of healthy skepticism.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
A majority of people accept that an invisible friend is watching everything you do, and that there were rules handed down on from this supreme all-knowing invisible being that we must accept to gain entrance to a fairytale existence, after the only existence that has ever been proven to exist ends.
Yeah, I don't buy that either.
Weatherpeople have a vested interest in AGW. Their research is very speculative. This is pretty easy to understand, since their models can't predict anything that I have experience with (ie. the weather). So to scale models that don't work on a local scale to the global scale is pretty ballsy. Some of us engineering types get that.
Plus the holier than thou attitudes. Usually when you get that, its a religion not a science.
Al Gore driving his Cadillac around in his movie did it for me, as did the reports of the amounts of energy his house burns. Do as I say, you fscking peons, not as I, the exalted Promethean GOD, do.
And, CO2 is not the big absorber of energy, compared to things like water vapor. Don't take my word for it.
http://www.everythingweather.com/atmospheric-radiation/absorption.shtml
There is a hell of a lot more water vapor in the air than carbon dioxide (it condenses out all the time as fog and rain, ice and snow). The last 100 years could be the result of irrigation for crying out loud.
And don't forget sunspots, the only measured determiner of climate. Which, you know, makes sense because the sun is the source of all climate on earth except for volcanic/meteoric.
Add that up and I do not believe its time for most of us to party like its 1899. I ride a bike to work, 10 miles each way. I walk as much as possible, sleep with three blankets in the winter, use low power computers, drive a 8 year old fuel efficient car, and do everything I can to minimize my impact to the planet. That just makes sense. I would wager that most AGW believers do not have as small a carbon footprint as I do. But I don't drink the kool aid, sorry. It is pure hubris to believe that by buying a Prius I am going to save the fscking planet. And its wrong to impose your beliefs (which, at this point, is all they are) on others.
andy
Finally, global warming does stand up to skepticism. The data are no longer ambiguous -- global warming deniers are not practicing skepticism, they are simply asserting that their pre-determined philosophical standpoint is correct.
It always raises a huge red flag for me -- as it should for any honest debater -- when somebody miscategorizes those who are skeptical about the dogma promulgated by the priests of anthropogenic global warming (and the associated catechisms of carbon credits, cap'n'trade, etc) as "[cause unspecified] global warming 'deniers'". It's the kind of squirmy evasive argument that casts doubt on their whole position.
Global warming may very well be happening -- it has happened before, it will happen again. We're in the middle of an Interglacial, recovering from a time not that long ago (geologically) when ice covered much of North America to a depth of several thousand feet. Of course things are warming up. (Unless they're not -- so far in Colorado this has been one of the coldest Decembers on record, but that's merely an anecdote.)
The role of carbon dioxide in that warming is less clear, and the role of human-created carbon dioxide even less clear than that. That "anthropogenic global warming" (lovely catch-phrase, that, worthy of a Goebbels) is so near and dear to the hearts of those who, in the past, have advocated de-industrialization on other grounds, or who stand to make fortunes from "cap'n'trade", or who already make plenty of money jetting back and forth in their private, carbon-spewing jets to preach^W give talks to the masses (cough - Al Gore - cough), is no surprise, but the evidence for and theory behind AGW is far less established (even before they erased the data) than that for generic global warming.
The fact is that carbon dioxide is rather weak as greenhouse gases go. Methane and more significantly, water vapor are far more effective greenhouse gases than CO2. (There's a reason it can get freezing cold in the desert at night: no water vapor in the air to keep the heat in.) Just because -- according to some data sets -- atmospheric CO2 appears to correlate with temperature does not imply that particular causation. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that CO2 levels trail temperatures, that warming increases CO2 levels rather than the other way around. (Explained by thawing permafrost and the decreased solubility of gases in warmer water. The AGW priesthood acknowledge these effects but then scream "feedback cycle!" without quite explaining what that does for their models of climate history.)
Further and more, human contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rather a small fraction of said levels. Yes, we spew the stuff out by the ton load (and not just industrial societies -- even "primitive" societies use fire for cooking and heating and clearing land for agriculture), but nature spews the stuff out even faster. As it also does with methane and water vapor.
There's a question you have to ask yourself, actually several questions that lead into each other. Let's first of all just accept as given that global warming is happening, whatever the cause. First, is that a bad thing? Some people would argue that it isn't, but let's assume that it is, that global warming will have horrific results. So the question then is: what if the AGW priesthood is wrong? What if we spend billions or trillions of dollars on the infrastructure changes to cap carbon emissions (making a few new billionaires on the trading side, and bankrupting many, many more on the economic impact of those changes (and you though the current recession was bad) -- but if global warming is that bad, maybe it's worth it)). But what if they're wrong, and after spending all that money and making those massive changes, and reducing human CO2 emissions to nothing...the Earth still keeps warming up? We will no longer have the economic wherewithal to implement another solution (and there are engine
-- Alastair
You tried to be amusing, but failed, so I'll not keep you long ...
In the period 1950 till 2009, we've gone from 2.5 billion people to almost 7 billion ... what did you EXPECT to happen to global average temperature ?
Oh, this is the inverse Flying Spaghetti Monster pirates vs global warming theory.
No, it's the same bullshit numbers out of the hat that the GW crowd want us to believe !!
We almost tripled our population in 50 years, so why hasn't the temperature tripled ? Of course, this is nonsensical, you'd argue, the temperature of the earth is not effected SOLELY by humans, there are any number of much larger, more important effects.
But yet, according to the GW crowd, humans have caused this disaster by pumping CO2 into the atmosphere ? Forget water vapour, forget methane, forget solar flares and the solar cycles, forget everything else, yes for sure it's those bloody humans and their CO2 !
So which is it ? Either human output of CO2 is a major factor in global climate, in which case my "population tripling" assertion above should be correct ?
Or human output of CO2 is NOT a major factor in global climate, and any trivial adjustments we make won't make a damn of difference.
You cannot have it both ways, you choose, okay ?
And what about the fact that the Antarctic Ice is gaining more mass than it's losing each year?
If the average blue-collar idiot is so smart, why do they so embrace religion which is circular logic and conflict of interest at its very core?
They take a poor analogy and run with it, and when the extrapolated analogy does not match the science, these retards start screaming.
Blar.
Do you understand the difference between "weather" and "climate"?
Here's a good example of why a climate scientist might not want to engage everyone with a gripe. If you don't even have a basic vocabulary, how can you expect a scientist to answer your questions?
As far as I can tell, the climate scientists aren't saying "STFU" so much as saying "come back when you are prepared to understand simple concepts.
If the "skeptics" were acting in good faith instead of just trying to "even the score" there might be a little more patience.
I really hope the new threshold for science doesn't become "no Science is allowed unless you can explain it all to Glenn Beck's satisfaction".
You are welcome on my lawn.