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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?"
Otzi the Iceman says that a little global warming is welcome after 5000 years. It's almost as warm now, as when he was battling for his life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi_the_Iceman
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The argument from incredulity is often applied to science by the layperson. You don't need an opponent or a debate to use a logical fallacy. The fact that the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case had to happen proves that people question science regardless of it's validity.
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." ~Friedrich Nietzsche
Didn't we see the same bloviation from the mainstream media when cold fusion went from the energy source of the future to a byword for scientific fraud? It seems to me if the reputation of hard science could survive out and out fraud like that, it will probably survive the climate change "fraud".
Science is empirical, math is not. Scientific hypotheses are inductively tested, mathematical hypotheses are deductively proven. (And mathematical "induction" is still deductive in that the premises subsume the conclusion.)
Science shouldn't be "accorded automatic stature and respect" any more than politics should. There's no reason to trust a scientist any more than you'd trust your barber.
The problem isn't that people aren't automatically believing science, it's almost the exact opposite: people are automatically doubting science. And that's quite another thing entirely.
When I was a kid, I used to genuinely believe that humans were on a path to greater wisdom, more profound discourse, and perfect knowledge.
Lately, I just see a bunch of power-hungry assholes doing their utmost to discredit intelligent thought and dumb-down the world around them, so they can continue on an unimpeded path toward greater assholism.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Will people even begin to doubt the most rigorous sciences like Mathematics and Physics
The answer is no. The good thing about science is that it is open source. For mathematics, you can go through all of the proofs from your text books. For physics you would need a bit of gear to reproduce some of the experiments, but again, that is just a question of money and interest.
The basic point is that the scientific method don't expect you to accept anything without proof. If you can falsify any of the theories by experiment, people will pay attention to you, regardless of politics.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
For whatever reason, a lot of people act as if scientists don't have their own preconceived notions on how things should be, or are predisposed to a certain political agenda. The tag line is that scientists are only interested in the truth, as if scientists as a class are immune to any sort of corruption, and that consensus on an issue is the same thing as fact. Forget the fact that there's an incentive to support certain findings because that will lead to greater funding...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
The lay public has been mistrusting science for quite a while now. Witness the disbelief in findings regarding the lack of connection between autism and vaccines, brain cancer and cellphones and climate change.
/. all the time - cue all the rants about how nobody gets funding unless they parrot the party line about global warming and how doctors who support vaccinations are just puppets of Big Pharma.
We're already well into the era when people doubt the motives and findings of scientists. You can see it here on
Problem is, people really believe that they can become experts on extremely complicated topics and weigh the evidence for themselves. I'm not saying we need to have blind trust in authority, but sometimes you've got to recognize that someone who studied climatology for X years might actually know a thing or two that you can't pick up from reading a blog.
Einstein was qualified.
Who could have possibly predicted that accepting hundreds of billions of dollars from governments over the last couple of decades could have somehow politicized Science?
-Peter
If people are afraid to question what we now consider laws in physics, mathematics, etc, then there will never be breakthroughs in learning.
I mean, there are extremes, and people shouldn't be disbelieving scientists just because they're scientists, but at the same time, we shouldn't always take things at face value just because Bill Nye the Science Guy says so. There is a happy medium...
I work in a field closely associated with climatology (satellite remote sensing), and I work with climatologists. And I agree with the article on one point: We really do not understand how big a deal this 'climategate' is.
The worst bits in that email dump are petty squabbles between researchers and critics. That's standard -- often critics are dishonest people who are attacking the science in order to advance a political agenda, and that is very frustrating to someone who wants to do honest science. Yes, tempers flare in private emails. Scientists are human. If people are going to lose faith in science because scientists are human...then we as a race are doomed, in my opinion.
As for the results of the CSU climate research, they're not in any doubt. Every criticism of them has been answered, and there are other studies that agree with the CSU results. So attack the scientists for being human if you must, but the science is sound and must be heeded.
I really do not understand why this has blown up into such a conflagration. Anyone who gives up on science because of this trifling matter is welcome to go back to the dark ages and live their short, wholesome, science-free life.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
The scientific method says you follow the data wherever it leads you, not start out with a preconceived notion of what the results should be then throw out data that doesn't fit your preconceived notions and try to squelch any opposing opinions. I see this more as an object lesson in how NOT to do science. They obviously had an agenda, and they threw out raw data, keeping only their "massaged" data. All of which makes their conclusions suspect, even if they are correct. If you want to do good science that makes a difference, DON'T do shit that way! By doing so, they have hurt the very agenda they were trying to advance.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You might want to read up on Pons and Fleischmann some more. It certainly was not "out and out fraud".
Newtonian Mechanics are valid, just not as accurate as Relativity. Relativity is, in essence, a more accurate version of Newtonian Mechanics. It refines it, but the basic conclusions are very similar, save for extreme circumstances. Though relativity is more accurate, it's much more complicated, so most people will calculate things with N.M. It works fine at human-experienced scales, speeds and distances. Creationism is entirely different from evolution. It in no way refines the idea for more accuracy, it just throws the whole damn concept out the window and says "We know, and we're right because we said so." And it should be noted that Einstein, unlike the evolution-deniers, backed up his claims with math, logic and science, rather than just anecdotal evidence. Fact checking when you are an informed person or scientist is one thing, saying something is wrong because you don't get it and some old book told you it's wrong is entirely another, invalid, way of thinking.
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." ~Friedrich Nietzsche
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
- Bertrand Russel
As evidence of the validity of Russel's insight, consider the people who are cocksure enough to assume it is they who are the doubters. They will even quarrel amongst each other about which of them is the intelligent, when in reality they are all idiots.
Oh, I'm sorry. I guess that we can't really thank science for medicine, computers, airplanes, the food on our table. I guess that one murderous programmer working on an open source file system means all of Linux is shit, too. And you know what? I got taken for a ride buying speculative real estate in Florida. I guess this means that you can't make money in real estate, that the whole thing's a rotten idea. Incidentally, I threw out the bath water. Where'd the baby go?
I'll buy that argument once religious whackadoodles promise to renounce their faith because of televangelists and pedo-priests.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
"And in doing so 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?"
No, having doubt and skepticism is called being scientific. I couldn't begin to count the number of times I've seen complaints that "lay" people aren't scientifically critical enough. Maybe if people actually questioned what "scientists" tell them, fewer would fall victim to the bottomless sea of unproven alternative medical treatments.
And infighting does exists in all sciences, at least if it's an active field.
Climate Science is a STUDY, much like Social Studies, Political "Science", and most (but not all) fields of Psychology. You cannot experiment on Climate on the timeframes or scales these "scientists" are suggesting. You cannot produce a hypothesis, alter variables, and confirm or deny your ideas.
... both points of view have been apparent for nearly a hundred years. Politicians and marketers just grab hold of whichever evidence they want to promote their own agenda. Sure it's possible, which is exactly why it's such a powerful weapon in the social manipulator's arsenal ... just like 9/11 denier's evidence is just plausible enough to make people believe it ... or how creationists can bend scientific discoveries just enough to gain a following.
Climate Studies, as it should be called, consists entirely of observation and computer modelling - a form of mathematics which is also not a science, but an art or "language".
In 1975, American Scientist, Nature, and New York Times were publishing story after story about the imminent New Ice Age that would plunge the world into subfreezing temperatures for the next 100 years. Suddenly, 20 years later and Global Warming is all we can talk about? I don't understand. No, I do understand
Sure we might be warming, just as much as we might have been cooling in the 70s. But what does it matter? We need renewable energy regardless of what the environment is doing.
"You've never worked in the real world... they expect RESULTS!" -- Dr. Peter Venkman
Therefore, the "tolerance stackup", a polite word for 'fudging data' will lean in the direction of the benefactor.
If this statement is not the truth, it is certainly the perception. Convince the masses that the scientists are not supporting the suppositions of the sponsors and maybe they will trust the science again. Start by convincing me.
Couldn't be that there's just so much to know and study that we can't help but specialize?
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Will people even begin to doubt the most rigorous sciences like Mathematics and Physics?
Some people already doubt science in general, to limit it to just math and physics belies the current trend of refusing to accept what science, in all its forms, tells us.
Men on the moon? Nope, can't be done because of . WTC towers collapsed because of structural damage compounded by extreme temperatures? Nope, it was a government plot because . Vaccines help prevent acquisition of serious diseases? Nope, doesn't work because . Evolution? It's impossible because .
There will always be those who will find any excuse to deny the scientific evidence. That doesn't mean one shouldn't question the evidence or how it's gathered. Rather, instead of saying, "See! They used the word 'hide' so they must be falsifying the data!", one should look at the entire context of quotes and information to see what is meant.
Science, in all its forms, is one of those areas where there will always be discussion about something, but once someone, or some group, comes up with an explanation, their data and processes can be checked by others to see if those people get the same results. If not, go back and see what the differences were. If still failure, back to square one.
I am reminded of the one CSI episode* where after doing all the evidence gathering, interviewing suspects and finally finding the body, the only conclusion was that the girl, upon trying to retrieve her waste can from a garbage bin, had been partially crushed between the bin and the wall when a vehicle came by and accidentally clipped the bin.
The parents were sure their daughter was murdered and planned on hiring their own investigator to find out who killed her. Grissom remarks, "Mrs. Rycoff there is no one guilty of this."
"Because you say so?"
"Because the evidence says so."
*The episode is called Chaos Theory and is one of my all-time favorite CSI shows. Right up there with Fur and Loathing (the plushy and furry convention episode).
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Hundreds of billions??? You have the wrong side. 20 Billion dollars over 30 years for the entire world. Compared with 37Bn dollars given as subsidies to fossil fuel and nuclear power industry *EACH* *YEAR* by the *US* ALONE* and I think you find the finger points a different direction.
How many people would want a piece of THAT action?
Much more.
This has always been a problem and there has probably never been a time when politics and/or religion did not have inappropriate influence over scientific research.
Some (lay) people see science as a religion in and of itself having its own agenda. This is a failure in the sense that since attempts to deal with understanding the most absolute reality possible and tries to be impartial to any particular point of view. (Let's not get into the politics within science itself, I know it exists, but let's stick with idealism for a moment while I make my point.) In politics and religion, there is a propensity to believe "if you're not with us, you are against us" sort of ideas and so when data that is unfavorable to their position emerges, they tend to respond to it as if it were an enemy rather than a new facet of reality. (Fighting an enemy is one thing. Fighting reality is another!)
All science is to be doubted and disputed. This is part of how things work. However, lay people see a doubting of science as a problem of trust or faith because they know of no other context in which to process falsified or incorrect scientific data. While it was a tremendous disservice to the whole scientific community to have "climategate" surface, it is not as big of a problem within the community as it is outside of the community.
It would be really nice if people were able to acquire the simple understanding of what science is and is not and how it should be treated. The public knows that the weatherman is not always accurate but must always be depended upon nevertheless. The public knows that the weatherman does not control the weather and only reports his observations and renders predictions based on those observations. The public, in general understands and appreciates this correctly and fully. What the public needs to do, then, is expand this understanding to ALL of science and not just meteorology.
When there are people that espouse creationism, and that vaccines cause autism, it's obvious a lot of lay people didn't respect science before. How different can it be now?
Somewhere in hell, Jenny McCarthy, and William Dembski are going at it like rabbits. Their offspring will be the ultimate creature of evil.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
The Wall Street Journal is part of Rupert Murdoch media empire. That's a first point to note.
Secondly, with a title like 'Climategate: Science Is Dying", one can surmise that the object of this article is not an objective reflection over the topic, but just to lay a bit more confusion at the opening of the Copenhagen summit.
And if there is any analogy with Watergate, it is that both stories are about spies breaking in places.
It is true that science is under attack, like it has been in the past when scientists discoveries unsettled vested interests. We are more awed by science for the way it won over organized ignorance, not less.
Einstein questioned "valid" laws of science and look what it got him.
Indeed I shall - it got him a series of logical arguments with which to dispute the wisdom of the time. Gradually, through debate and observation and experimentation, more and more people realised he had made a series of logical points that disproved the old ways of doing things.
Let us compare this to the argument from incredulity - the equivalent would have been Einstein saying, "But I don't understand it! How does it work? No, look, see, the feather and the hammer land at different times! Ha! Scientists are dumb!" in which case I doubt he would have quite the same status in the history books.
Be smart, help people!
ORLY?
OK, I'll feed the troll. What's your "clear and unambiguous experimental and observational falsification" of Big Bang cosmology?
"The sum of all knowledge does not imply the knowledge of all sums" Kurt Gödel (paraphrased)
The best way to restore healthy debate on climate change science is to open source everything...the data, the source code for the computer models, and the methodology for how the data is collected: specific locations of data collection (is it a rural area, a parking lot in a city, on a school roof, in direct sunlight or in the shade), date and time of day (noon, midnight, 5pm), weather conditions at the time it is collected (sunny, raining, under a snow drift), age of the equipment (mercury thermometer installed in 1953 or digital sensor device). All of these factors would influence a simple temperature reading. Heck there are probably dozens of other factors that I am not considering.
Since our government is PAYING for so much of this research it should be no problem to PUBLISH all of these details and let everyone debate from a common framework. However, I believe our government has an agenda and therefore won't ever take such a logical approach.
While we are at it, let's do the same thing for how inflation, unemployment, public health statistics, education metrics, and poverty rates are calculated.
The WSJ article understates the problem. The Climategate emails reveal that the partisan scientists have undermined the peer review process itself. It can only be made right be re-peer-reviewing all climate papers re-submitted in the past 20 years. Some rejected should not have been and some accepted should not have been.
One can't help be reminded that while peer-review is the right hand, grant-review is the left. If the peer review is undermined then so isn't the awards of money.
Climate debate aside, we need to invent news ways to do review of papers and grants that is not totally dependent on self-policing of scientists. Any suggestions?
The more science is viewed with skepticism the better the science will be in my opinion.
Fair enough, but sometimes you have to make a decision now, based on what you know now. If you allow your "skepticism" to turn into "I'll make decisions based on the theory that is most personally convenient to me, even if the current evidence, while not conclusive, weighs against it" then you are not just being skeptical, you're being foolish.
Every serious scientific review that has looked at the evidence carefully (and at the raw data and at the analysis procedures, etc.) has concluded that the balance of evidence strongly supports AGW and strongly supports action now to curb emissions.
It is possible that in ten years time the balance of evidence will shift (or even tomorrow) but for the decisions we have to make today, that is irrelevant.
We tried that with the state lottery system. It turns out that most people can't understand statistics, and if they could, we wouldn't be able to afford the schools that don't teach it.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
...we can conclude that everyone who questions science is right and scientists are always wrong?
The Flat Earth Society will be very happy to hear this. So will the vast herds of quacks who pester scientists with ridiculous claims (and they are legion, I assure you).
Climategate only proves that the conservolibertarians are capable of manufacturing controversies out of nothing. There is no difference between "Climategate" and the "War on Christmas" or the supposed conspiracy run by "Darwinist evilutionists".
Doubt is good. Healthy skepticism is a sign of maturity and intellectual involvement.
Healthy skepticism is good when the skeptic understands the underlying ideas that go into the subject matter. If they don't understand the basics of, say, scientific theory, they aren't intellectually involved in the first place. That's a relevant issue with many lay people.
It's amazing the poster can claim with a stright face "nothing interesting" was found, when the top Slashot post in the very article he links to has a very long debate covering the source code that was released.
One very "interesting" item from that is this code:
;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
(...)
;
; APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,x)
densall=densall+yearlyadj
Which to me, is pretty damning stuff. Yes if you look currently that recalculation is not used (in that module anyway) but that code should NEVER have been typed and is a giant red flag something weird is going on. Yes I mock up sample data in my own code, but never have I taken real data and applied varying magic constants across the dataset. At the very least you'd expect to see a source for these amazing numbers quoted in the code - the only information we have is that it is "a correction for the decline" which is the heart of what worries people about the emails too.
Furthermore, the use of this is commented out NOW. But when exactly was it commented out? What datasets were published when this code was running? You can't say "look it does nothing now" because at some time it was doing something. And that is the heart of the problem, without data or the code visible no-one can know. So all the output they have produced is simply not science, even if parts of it happen to be accurate - because we have no way to independently discern what is fact and what is manipulated speculation.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Some of us have noticed this about cosmology for a long, long time now. Global warming is just a trendier issue so it gets noticed first, that's all.
“Certain results of observational cosmology cast critical doubt on the foundations of standard cosmology but leave most cosmologists untroubled. Alternative cosmological models that differ from the Big Bang have been published and defended by heterodox scientists; however, most cosmologists do not heed these. This may be because standard theory is correct and all other ideas and criticisms are incorrect, but it is also to a great extent due to sociological phenomena such as the ‘snowball effect’ or ‘groupthink’. We might wonder whether cosmology, the study of the Universe as a whole, is a science like other branches of physics or just a dominant ideology.”
—Martin Lopez-Corredoira, astrophysicist.
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=bqx15w21
Some of you more knee-jerk types would also benefit from this article because some of you use some really weak arguments.
As far as climate change goes, I think I would go with the consensus of the scientists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Scientific_consensus
Key bits:
But no doubt this post will follow with reams of people telling us why these opinions are suspect.
An interesting thing that has been happening with the vaccine debate is that the very people who are most expert on the field are prevented from weighing in on the issue, as in "well, we can't believe Dr. X, he published a Nature paper on immunology so clearly he is biased and can't be trusted".
See Halton Arp's observations of the redshifts and angular correlations of quasars. Since he started this work, it has been corroborated by a vast body of additional observations. A good overview is given in his book "Seeing Red".
The essence of it is this: according to the Big Bang model, red shift is cosmogenic, and quasars should be, on account of the vast distance implied by their red shift, distributed isotropically. Turns out that quasars are, in terms of angular separation, correlated with "foreground" galaxies to an extent that is so far away from any possible chance statistical fluctuation resulting from an intrinsically isotropic distribution that the quasars have to be causally correlated, and hence their redshift is not of cosmogenic origin.
A might be expected, he has been treated as a heretic, was denied further observation time, and now lives in effective exile.
That's not true, please check your sources again. Some pop sci pieces on the subject appeared, but no serious scientist ever claimed that a new Ice Age was imminent.
You can read about the history of the 1970s global cooling scare on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
Here's Newsweek talking about its own coverage of the issue, and quoting William Connolley:
From http://www.newsweek.com/id/72481
And finally here's Connolley himself:
From http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage
"We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads. But to find the truth, we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact..." "If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones." Then again he spoke for rather than against global warming. But he makes a damn good point. Everyone is demanding that the world be gullible and people who (healthily) doubt things are apparently terrible individuals. This is not what science is about.
That would be a truly welcome change.
"[This] will make the lay person unsure of the credibility of ALL sciences without fully seeing proof of it..."
Tada, that's how science is SUPPOSE to work. Don't blindly follow anyone including scientists without quantitative and reproducible proof. Science isn't a religion, it's a fact. YOU ARE ENCOURAGED, NAY REQUIRED TO QUESTION SCIENCE in order for it to prosper.
On a secondary note the same thing applies to government.. but that is a different rant.
I can not believe that someone on this forum, FOR NERDS, would make such a huge mistake on the REAL stuff that matters.
"You've never worked in the real world... they expect RESULTS!" -- RAY STANTZ TO Dr. Peter Venkman
As a Slashdot reader, you should know better...You might as well have misquoted a Python line, sheesh
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
I'll see your two words and raise you one: "... and Al Gore"
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Climategate only proves that the conservolibertarians are capable of manufacturing controversies out of nothing. There is no difference between "Climategate" and the "War on Christmas" or the supposed conspiracy run by "Darwinist evilutionists".
There is a difference, actually. There are a few (very few) respectable scientists who aren't convinced by the data, or at least argue that the results will be milder than the majority are predicting. They aren't big names, and they're not the ones going to the newspapers, but they're out there. I was in a class with one of them, although I can't remember his name, a few years ago. His take was essentially this:
1) We know the climate is changing,
2) We know humanity is releasing greenhouse gases,
3) We also know that the climate has cycled through hot and cold periods as far back as we can find data.
The three points are almost certainly connected, and we may or may not have a perfectly clear understanding of how. The important thing is that the greenhouse gases are mostly also bad for other reasons, so we ought to start limiting their production. Eventually we may be able to prove that they are or are not driving climate change.
People concerned about the policy proposals currently being put forward have focused way too much energy on questioning the scientific findings of current and recent warming. It's so unnecessary because scientists understand, and will readily admit, that there is much greater uncertainty when the models are run forward to predict future decades.
The models can be tuned and validated against historical data, then different forcings backed out to assign relative significance. This is where you get statements like (paraphrasing) "70% of recent warming has been due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, with 90% confidence." Some estimate of confidence is possible because of the validation against historical empirical data and climate reconstructions. Independent lines of inquiry can reinforce each others' findings. This is solid science, and where the "climategate" PR stunt falls down. The e-mails provide good fodder for insinuation, but no answer to the quantitative agreement seen in independent lines of study.
But when we run the models forward, there is not yet any empirical confirmation. Distinct models, using distinct data sets, can be seen to agree to some degree--but how much of that reflects reality, and how much reflects common assumptions? Every forward-looking run must assume some set of future values for human activity and natural processes, including ones that are parameterized (like cloud formation) that might advance beyond currently validated bounds. The uncertainty grows when the models are asked to bring their predictions down to local conditions--the distinction between predicting global average climate, and predicting long-term local weather. Will Kansas get hotter or colder, wetter or drier? There is quite a bit of uncertainty in such predictions--again, as working scientists clearly understand.
Layering on the biological response to these uncertain predictions creates even more uncertain predictions. One recent study at Woods Hole seemed to indicate that some animals might respond to ocean acidification by growing thicker shells. I'm not taking that one study as gospel, but it is worth considering that we do not fully understand biological systems and how they will respond to changing climate conditions.
Finally we get to the societal and economic layer, which sits, at least partially, atop uncertain biological predictions. Global warming may causes shifts in where certain crops can be grown--these changes will exact a cost on human society. Will they also confer a benefit? It's not scientific heresy to think that changes to climate can produce benefits as well as costs--although perhaps not to the same subset of the population. We may have to invest substantially in new areas and ways of farming, in new transportation routes. It's not inconceivable that the end result could be greater efficiencies and healthier produce. And of course there is also substantial error (to say the least) in multi-decade economic models.
The greatest threat is probably sea level rise. Wealthy nations might make the decision to invest in mitigation, rather than prevention. It is possible to raise or move cities, and to build barriers to keep out the sea. Such decisions are policy, but must be informed by the best scientific understanding we have--but that understanding must include understanding of uncertainty.
But instead what we see is a concentrated dose of PR and ignorance, attempting to raise doubts about scientifc conclusions about climate change that are well-supported (like whether human emissions can change the climate). You see people trying to simultaneously point out problematic sitings of temperature stations, and demonize working scientists for adjusting temperature data to minimize the error due to such siting. You see people repeatedly gesturing toward the sun, when numerous direct measurements indicate flat or declining insolation over the recent decades. They come off looking stupid, and smart people dismiss them.
It's a shame because lost in the battle ove
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
You're assuming that everyone who has an opinion about this will actually be informed, will take the time to look through those proofs, reproduce those experiments, etc.
Read this.
In particular, look at that graph. Are you frightened yet?
Evolution is one of the crowing triumphs of modern science. It has more evidence than any other theory I know of, from many branches of science -- the "tree of life" is repeated, exactly, in genetics, in the fossil record, in the geologic record, everywhere we care to look for it. It informs pretty much all of modern medicine and biology, and it is a humbling look at our origins and our true status with respect to other life on the planet. It is beautiful, important, and solidly supported by fact.
Even the Catholic Church has officially embraced evolution, and the big bang theory, as truth.
And a third of Americans reject evolution outright. These aren't people who just aren't sure -- they say it is definitely false.
Want to guess why?
Because they feel it threatens their religion. Because if evolution is true, the Earth (and certainly the Universe) cannot be six thousand years old, and they must accept that they are descended from apes -- or that, by any honest classification, humans are still a species of ape. Because they cannot accept the fact that at least some part of that religion is a fairy tale, or at least a metaphor.
The problem is, in order to reject evolution, they find they have to doubt just about every legitimate scientist who has an opinion on the subject, and keep themselves willfully ignorant. Furthermore, in order to believe the earth is six thousand years old, they pretty nearly have to stick their fingers in their ear and go "la la la la" in order to avoid pretty much every branch of science that has anything to say about the subject.
That is, if they are right, even the most basic grade-school cosmology must be wrong -- there are objects more than six thousand light years away from us. Geology must also be wrong -- not merely carbon-dating (which is already quite rigorous), but the kind of time scales modern geology suggests. And of course, modern medicine must be wrong -- our understanding of things like antibiotics relies on evolution to work.
And yet, they will feel qualified to address these issues, to challenge real scientists with such arguments as, "That's microevolution. Show me one 'kind' turning into another, and I'll believe it." When this fails to get them anywhere, they again close their eyes, ears, and minds, and ultimately turn to the very simplistic, reassuring, and ultimately wrong words of Ken Ham: "Who should you believe -- God or the scientists?"
The problem here is not just the validity of evolution. It is that in order to believe what the creationist wants to believe, they have to reject huge chunks of modern science. In order to continue to be relevant, they have consistently attempted to get their strange ideas taught in school -- not just as a philosophy, or a class in its own right, but as part of science.
And it's not just america -- 22% of Canadians are creationists. Something like a third of Americans are.
So, the short answer is, yes, laypeople absolutely will doubt whatever they feel they have a problem with. If they doubt evolution, cosmology, Einsteinian relativity, geology, archeology, paleontology, etc, just so they can believe a certain way, it's certainly not a stretch that they would doubt anything that conflicts with their actual (polluting, wasteful) lifestyle.
And unfortunately, even when 99.9% of scientists agree on something, it doesn't help if they can't convince the public -- because laypeople are also voters.
We need another Carl Sagan.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Real skepticism provides criteria by which it can be satisfied. Unchanging skepticism in the face of evidence is not scientific.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/understanding_climategates_hid.html
Owned.
so you're saying that global warming is so complex and hard to understand that scientists who are used to doing real science need some sort of special scientific method to analyze the global warming data? only enlightened bought and paid for "scientists" are capable of reading the "proper" answers from the holy data? the climate changes over time. always has always SHOULD. it's not my fault and i don't want to pay for something natural and necessary. i especially don't want to handy cap humanity because of a bunch of whack jobs who think the sky is falling.
Einstein was completely unknown and did not even have a doctorate when he published his 1905 papers on special relativity, brownian motion, and the photoelectric effect.
And it was many years before his theories were generally accepted, especially by some of the older physicists.
It's difficult to overcome scientific dogma at any time. To get his doctorate, Einstein had to write an unimportant, very forgettable paper which didn't challenge any of his professors' preconceptions.
Not all scientists (a) are American (b) have fixed party-political views or allegiance (c) use the word "liberal" like you do above or associate it with the same concepts, etc, etc, etc.
Just as a data point, Mrs Thatcher (UK Prime Minister 1979 to 1990) was a chemist and apparently was brought up a strict Methodist. Where does that appear in your world map?
My point being: scientists are not a homogenised entity, distributed along a small number of dimensions. There is an awful lot of variety amongst the humans that practise science. Generalisations are generally misleading.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
But how do you explain all this to your average Sarah Palin follower? That's the scientists' conundrum here.
An effective way to start is to not insult them. Maybe rather than thinking that a college level education is what is needed, why don't you try and describe it in a manner that anybody at an 8th grade level could grasp? You might get a more welcome and understanding response than by being an elitist prick.
Change this later.
Education? Hah! Grandparent is obviously referring to Einstein's distinguished position as a patent clerk as his qualification to question known physics you ignorant clod!
I can link too:
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/12/climategate_was_data_faked.php
My link is better than yours! It does not rely on group think and manipulated data! Thhpt!
If they so drastically manipulated data from Australia, what else have they done... this is why access to raw data is so vital, and why things that are based on raw data we cannot see simply cannot be trusted (especially given the penchant from the emails we have seen to shut out people going off-message).
Thanks for giving me an opportunity to shed even more light on the disturbing revelations from the data and code (which matter far more than the emails).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just curious, based on your argument, how are you qualified to say who is and is not qualified to have a valid opinion on AGW/ACC?
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's amazing the poster can claim with a stright [sic] face "nothing interesting" was found ...
Why don't you read what I wrote?
While nothing interesting was found by most scientific journals
And I linked to one of many journals that--shock of all shocks--didn't publish anything regarding the leak. I didn't say anything about what you, me, Slashdot or blogs found in those leaks. Instead I tried to relay that the general consensus seemed to be, from what I read, that there was nothing to get excited about. The journals might be wrong but I was just trying to tell you what I noticed from them after the leak.
You did a really good job of quoting me out of context. You did an even better job of quoting source code out of context. I'm also pretty certain you probably got that from another site.
Which to me, is pretty damning stuff.
What can I say? We're all entitled to our own opinions. Write a paper on this and submit it to the journal of Nature. See what happens.
Furthermore, the use of this is commented out NOW.
It's pretty damning but it's commented out. If you read the comments of the Slashdot article I linked, you'll see that this source code isn't automatically accepted as the word of god and is actually under heavy debate. But why bother? You've clearly already judged me as having some political agenda by submitting stories to Slashdot. I probably can already be identified as a liberal since I'm posting here, right?
So all the output they have produced is simply not science
I'm supposed to believe you but I'm not supposed to believe the scientific journal of Nature? When digesting second or third hand information, I'll go with the latter, thank you.
My work here is dung.
What's "wrong" supposed to mean? We also know that neither GR nor QM can simultaneous be correct explanations of the Universe, because of their mutual incompatibility, but that doesn't make them "wrong".
The Universe has some rules it plays by. We still don't know what they are, we may not ever. The best we ever do is to model those rules. Each model is "correct" within a particular range of validity. GR is correct at large length scales. QM is correct at small. Newton is correct at gamma approximately equal to 1. And so on...
Perhaps it may surprise you to know that reputable scientists also use Special Relativity *a lot*, despite being replaced by GR, or that we use different models (point, parton, and valence quark) of the proton depending on what regime we're in.
OK, why don't *you* give it a shot?
Please explain the misapplication of the derivative operation in a manner that an 8th-grader could grasp.
And better yet, why don't you actually try to *convince* some people who reject climate science with this explanation?
Get back to me with your results.
Climatology is a mixed bag: part chemistry, part model-building and, now, part politics. Watts, Mann et al. are engaged in the latter two. They build questionable mathematical models from cherry-picked data to push a political agenda. The problem with model-building is that it does not result in a p-value for a controlled experiment with reproducible data which tests a defeasible hypothesis, i.e. it is not science. The molecular effect of CO2 on the atmosphere is confirmed science. The buffering effect of oceanic CO2 is unconfirmed science. The effect of industrialization on past temperature is 50% science. A 10-year prediction of global warming is 10% science. A 100-year prediction of global warming is 100% fantasy. The damage of climategate is not that it calls into question science as a whole, but that it is confused with science in the first place.
Other research centers also collect similar data, and some have open-sourced their algorithms.
And yes, their conclusions are similar to those of the CRU. That's what the GP means by saying that criticisms have been answered.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
If an 8th grader could grasp it it wouldn't take years of education and research expereience to do. Or to quote Feynman, "Listen, buddy, if I could tell you in a minute what I did, it wouldn't be worth the Nobel Prize". Any explanation on that level can be countered by someone with an equally plausible sounding but wrong explanation on a similar level.
Actually doing a full, detailed assessment of the validity of evidence would take an experienced scientist from a different field a *long* time to read through all the relevant publications, learn the material and arrive at his own conclusion.
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...
Your argument is that environmentalists are dirty socialist hippies, therefore environmentalists want to destroy capitalism. Talk about taking absurdist A=A arguments far too far...
There are plenty of serious capitalists on board with environmentalism, who correctly believe that AGW is a fact, and wish to do something about it. It is inherently a collective action problem, just like any other (law contract and property law, for instance). This has implications.
Simply blindly asserting that only dirty fucking hippies who idolize socialist killers does not make it so, any more than attempting to shackle AGW to a silly thought experiment (while slyly imputing a religious belief to the hippies) reduces risk mitigation analysis in the face of uncertainty to a blind leap of faith.
Not only is your factometer hopelessly crushed by the weight of your ideology, but also our logic and rhetorical skills suck.
I forget what 8 was for.
And I linked to one of many journals that--shock of all shocks--didn't publish anything regarding the leak. I didn't say anything about what you, me, Slashdot or blogs found in those leaks. Instead I tried to relay that the general consensus seemed to be, from what I read, that there was nothing to get excited about. The journals might be wrong but I was just trying to tell you what I noticed from them after the leak.
They might be right and they might be wrong, but it should also be pointed out that these journals are caught up in the middle of it all.
These journals are telling the world that the manipulation of their peer review process is nothing to get excited about.
"His name was James Damore."
Bullshit.
I am perfectly qualified, and so is anyone else who is able to think critically, admittedly a shrinking demographic.
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
We, chemical scum view the world through a narrow slit in our burka. We see a tiny tiny part of the spectrum of the electromagnetic radiation and we see sizes within a few orders of magnitude of our body sizes. Noone has ever seen an oxygen atom with their own eyes that resulted in any conscious recognition, without a scientific equipment to facilitate the viewing. The evidence for oxygen, or the evidence against aether is no less direct than the evidence for global warming and AGW and the theory that explains it, the evidence for oxygen is just more accessible, easier to understand and has more showy demonstrations. The case for oxygen also doesn't have people receiving large amounts of money to deny the evidence no matter what.
You will never be able to predict weather over long timescales (more than a few weeks). Weather is not climate. When you're doing physics, you're not calculating the trajectory, energy content of atoms that compose a gas in a volume of space, instead you're dealing with statistical averaging and assumptions about the closed system, in terms of pressure, volume and temperature.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Well, she's at least as qualified as Al Gore...
The Bush administration pushed scientists into being quiet or not reporting scientific conclusions. That does represent a real loss in credibility to the scientific community as many scientists complied with the Bush party line.
The other part of the problem is that people are tricked into disbelief in science when they are manipulated by phonies who try to generate a position for themselves by claiming that science is challenging traditional beliefs that are outside of scientific research. For example Darwinism does not imply that atheism is a correct belief system. But many back woods preachers rant that Darwinism and atheism are one and the same thing. Somehow it escapes these peoples' grasp that God could use evolution in creating the world as we know it.
It would help if skeptics actually scrutinised the theory in a scientific way -- instead of making up conspiracy theories, and attacking the motives of those involved. The fact that no-one has been able to dismiss AGW in a proper scientific debate is what is important to me.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Waht seems to be going on right now is that we are breaking into two distinct groups of people, those who want to do something about how we treat the planet, and those who do not. The among the one's who do want to do something about it, there are those who want to tax westernized nations until their economies match the pace of the rest of the "developing" (ie 3rd world economies) world. Unfortunately they are compelled by greed for the power to flip the off-switch on the general public, while they and their friends enjoy the utmost comfort, and opulence our modern society can provide. They hate hard science because it doesn't scare the public enough, so they fudge the numbers the scientists give them.
Then there are those who make their opulence and comfort from doing things the way we have been doing them since the beginning of the industrial revolution. They have no desire to change (except to make more money for the same or less), and see no reason they should be forced to.. They see no wrong in drilling every oil deposit, falling every tree, raping the bounty of the seas, and building on anything flat enough to support a human structure. they think they can do this in perpetuity without ill effect, and hate hard science because it tells them that they can't.
Then there is the general public, left without the knowledge of science, they are taught to hate science because they don't understand it, and are being lied to by people whose interests conflict with the data given.
-Oz
Another way to look at it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVC0FcSRxL8
Don't blindly follow anyone including scientists without quantitative and reproducible proof.
I would believe that if skeptics actually argued their case scientifically. Instead we get a bunch of conspiracy theories and attacks on scientists' motives. Nobody has made a scientific refutation of AGW, and that is what is important to me.
If you were objective, then you would offer an objective criteria to assuage your guilt, and then study the science.
Science is about more than being incredulous. Any idiot can say they don't believe something.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
two words - Sarah Palin. .
how exactly is she *qualified* in *any* respect to comment on this?
How exactly are you *qualified* in *any* respect to comment on this?
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
I'm not sure if it was your intention, but your response seems to indicate that you think Al Gore is as equally un-qualified to speak about climate change as Palin. For the record, Gore at least studied in a climatology lab while at Harvard.
There's also a lot of money to be made by saying that global warming is not a man-made phenomena, too. I'm not an economist, so I couldn't tell you for sure where more of the money is, but given that global warming deniers are arguing from the status quo, I'd say that there's more money in denying global warming.
Yes, as the GP pointed out, science is supposed to work by critical analysis. The problem is this: the general public is too dumb. They don't understand logic. They don't understand basic statistical methods. Heck, most of them can't even form a cogent argument using facts they do know. But modern civilization requires that public policy be determined by the facts, and sometimes, those facts are complicated. You need an education in science to understand them.
So what do we do? Obviously, the right solution is education, but that takes time. When you have urgent issues that the public must act on, you run a public campaign, i.e., propaganda. Sometimes this is a good thing. Sometimes it is not. Successful public policy has depended on an implicit trust the public has in the experts. I don't think that the public will ever stop looking to experts-- but a big worry here is that they start thinking that the local minister or the blowhard on the radio is the expert, and not the scientist who has spent a lifetime studying the thing. That would have major repercussions for our quality of life.
I should point out that the term "scare tactic" is itself a bit of propaganda. If the guy who's calling a global warming campaign a "scare tactic" is a lobbyist for an oil company, guess what-- you've been duped. When you hear that term, think about who's saying it.
I'm a scientist, and my father was before me. Between the two of us, we've encounted an innumerable number of total boobs who call themselves "scientists."
We scientists like to go on and on about how stupid lay people are regarding science. And it's true. They are stupid about science.
But scientsts are people too and just as often just as stupid about science. You see, we're humans, we make mistakes, and we're motivated by our political views and our desire to further our careers. There really is no such thing as an objective scientist, and the main thing that keeps the whole community in line is peer review, and that works because every scientists wants to bury his competitors. Other scientists compete for grant money, and your main weapons are getting on review committees and poking holes in other people's articles. The articles that get published are the ones that are better science but also the ones that offend the politics and agendas of the fewest reviewers. Scientists also want to more favorably review their friends' works, and even in double-blind reviews, they figure who is who.
The ideal scientist tries to disprove his own work. The real scientist does just enough of this to try to ensure his work gets published. Hell, we even use the review process to vet our work just as much as we try to do it ourselves. When submitting a journal paper, the main question isn't "is this good science, novel and interesting" but "have I worded it cleverly enough to trick the reviewers into thinking it doesn't offend their biases." In the world of "science", the primary motivating factors are publishing, publishing, and publishing. Oh, and money -- to fund the research you need to do in order to publish.
Conferences REALLY show you what it's all about. Yes, there are very interesting presentation sessions. We people who enjoy science go to these and learn something. But what's really telling is what happens BETWEEN sessions. Do scientists go to lunch and talk about science? A little. But mostly, the socializing is all about getting noticed and meeting the big-wigs in your field. Oh, and grant money. Most of us struggle to get the once-in-a-lifetime NSF grant, while the REALLY big guys have money coming out their ears. If they like you, they'll recommend you and give you some of their cast-offs.
Don't kid yourselves, people. This isn't some utopia of god-like minds creating the future here. Most scientists are just average people who just happened to end up in that career and are clever enough to climb the right ladders and end up in the good-old-boys-club.
Am I surprised at all that the global warming people look really bad right now? No. Not at all. They weren't careful enough, made very human mistakes, and didn't do transparent-enough science.
Frankly, the scientific community NEEDS this kind of bubble-burst. For far too long, scientists (and physicians too) have enjoyed the same status that the priesthood once had, and we've come to rest on our laurels. For too long, we've expected laypeople to just "believe our conclusions, because it's too complicated for you to understand it," which is the exact same thing that caused the Catholic church to fall from the power they once had. Scientists, like priests, are our mediators between us and God, except this time, God is an equally nebulous thing called "Science".
Just like the priests used to perform sermons in Latin long past the point where anyone understood, scientists obfuscate their knowledge in jargon that few even in their own fields understand. (Some reviewers are even intimitidated into giving a good review by thinking they're not smart enough to get what you wrote.) Yes, there is most certainly a time and a place for using semantically dense terminology, equations, and the like. But scientists also have a duty to their paritioners to teach the science that they have discovered. There are a few scientists out there who take it upon themselves to help laypeople to understand, by writing
He is nothing more than a marketing man for carbon credit trading. He is the chairman for Generation Investment Management, partnered up with the former CEO of Goldman Sacks.
How convenient.
Anthropogenic Global warming believers don't want anyone to drive SUVs without feeling bad about it, so they cherrypick data that supports their already determined philosophical standpoint.
There, fixed that for you in accord with what actually happened. It was the the High Priests of AGW who conveniently lost the data they were asked to release -- i.e., cherrypicked it.
-- Alastair
As you ask so kindly, I will.
Most of astrophysics and climate science, about half of physics, and a small part of chemistry is bunk. Biology is not so much bunk as well as very incomplete.
How do you define the threshold of "most" science?
Science is being practiced within the interpretative context of accepted theories. When such a theory has been falsified, the whole edifice of scientific endeavor built on top of it should be discarded. I am basically looking at what fraction of a particular scientific field is built on top of falsified theory and thereby judge whether it is somewhat or mostly bunk.
In principle, I view science as the collection of knowledge derived using the scientific method. Science in the Popperian sense, that is. However, in my post I was referring to science as the practice that has emerged: a sadly human endeavor influenced by agendas, funding, strife, and belief that even so poses as the ultimate authority on truth because of its supposed founding in the scientific method.
For a falsification of Big Bang cosmology, see Halton Arp's work. For one of the many different falsifications of relativity theory, see Dayton Miller's work, a good overview of which can be found here http://www.orgonelab.org/miller.htm For a falsification of the fossil oil genesis theory, look no further than the many deep oil wells the Russians have taken into production. To read up on the proper theory, see here. The list goes on...
the basic conclusions are very similar, save for extreme circumstances. {Newtonian Mechanics} works fine at human-experienced scales, speeds and distances.
It's fun you mention Einstein's and Darwin's theory in the same post, because they share some other characteristics :
They are hard to prove experimentally in a lab (due to energy, mass or time constrains), and we have to rely on observing-the-universe-as-a-lab to find the necessary data to prove/disprove them.
Although some human-made experiments can be designed to test some manifestation of Einstein's theories, like the distortion of time and GPS sattelites, we just don't have the technology yet to create some high energy or high mass effects like gravitational lenses and have to rely on observing them in the universe around instead of experimentally recreating them.
Same happens with Evolution : some kind of speciation has been reproduced in laboratory, or has been man-caused in industrial countries. Nonetheless we can't currently "evolve an eye in a lab"(due to obvious problems of time scale and necessary space). For lots of larger-scale models, instead, we have to rely on what we learn from our planet trough fossils records. (Fossil and planet Earth are to evolution, what telescopes and the universe is to extreme-range physics).
Curiously though, Creationist are only complaining that "Evolution can't be tested" and are only pushing for Intelligent Design. None of them is pushing for Intelligent Falling although the same argument could be used for Physics~ And although IF is similarly valid (read: silly) as ID~
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
No, one picture certainly does NOT tell it all. I noticed you conveniently avoided linking to the explanation, http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html
In a nutshell, the difference is due to bias corrections accounting for changing time of observation, thermometer type, station moves, etc. The specific adjustments are shown in http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_pg.gif and the corresponding algorithms are described in the webpage above. There are published papers for these adjustment procedures, and you can go read them (and by "read them" I mean the slogging through the methods section, not skimming the abstract) if you like, but somehow I doubt you will.
Corrections to raw data are made all the time. Yes, you can introduce more error during this process than you remove. Depending on what specifically you are doing and how you're doing it, there may be statistical means of checking for that.
It's people like you who make me, as a scientist, cringe, because I have to consider every possible way any figure or text I create could be taken out of context. People seem to have this expectation that science should be easy, and that if something requires background to understand, we're being deceptive. No, we're not. Science is hard work, and if you're going to criticize intelligently, you have to understand the methods.
But your average person doesn't care enough to study it in enough detail to really grasp it. Simplified explanations are fine, and rather easier to grasp than for climate science than for quantum electrodynamics. The trouble is that the FUD brigade can throw enough misinformation around that people don't know what to believe, and they're not qualified or inclined to study it in depth for themselves. Neither am I, and I care about the issue more than the average person and at least have a scientific background. So most people go off trust, and casting doubt on that is a very effective tactic, and I think that's what we're seeing here.
I don't think that scientists have pushed the emotional angle. I don't remember seeing any anyway, though I'd welcome being corrected. That's mostly the preserve of the environmental groups.
> two words - Sarah Palin.
And we thought BDS was bad enough. The mention of Mrs. Palin's name seems to instantly polarize any conversation, so why bring her into this thread, already a certainty to become a veritable flamefest?
But since you did, lets do examine her ideas on the merits instead of ad hominim attacks on her. Seems she is saying pretty much what I have been saying here on /. for years. That the science and politics of GW and especially AGW have blurred into a horrid muddle such that even the raw data (where it hasn't been destroyed) isn't trustworthy. Therefore basing multi-trillion dollar reordering of the world's economy on it is stupid. Therefore The Won trying to ram a New Deal on Carbon down our thoats by hook (Copenhagan) or crook (EPA) isn't even on the same planet with science, it is ideology, pure and simple.
> Because of some possible (and if so quite serious) data shenanigans, Obama should boycott
> the talks entirely to send a message. i.e. Quit.
Yes. Because the reaction has been to attack the messengers, bury the whole matter and proceed on the same predetermined course. By going Obama is declaring for that faction. No other spin is possible. The only exception would be if he went and used the occasion to put his speaking skills into the service of Science by utterly flaying the whole perverted exercise, which we both know won't happen.
Global warming MAY be happening (but probably hasn't for a decade now..), AGW even MIGHT be the major cause. But with even the raw sensor data in serious doubt (ask Google about the recent review of the raw data in Darwin or the rerun of the New Zealand long term trend data from their raw data. The rot extends far beyond EAU's CRU now.) and the main actors proven by their own words to be activists instead of scientists who can say? And that is the point, nobody who hasn't got a few years to dig into data has no rational basis to decide. The experts are tainted on both sides by trillions of dollars of incentives, political/religious beliefs and the raw data is suspect. So on the one hand we might all be Doomed! yet the only proposed solution to the possibility is 100% certain to produce ruin. So the rational person looks for option #3 and says, so just how much would mitigation cost should we do nothing and the Warmers prove to be right?
If you are going to cry wolf on such a biblical scale as the AGW theory does, you really should make every attempt to be open and above reproach. If the warmers had truly believed the science was settled they should have put together a datadump worthy of the claims. Put the full raw data, the adjustments with detailed explanations for each out along with the complete fully commented source to the models used to process it that gave the results that lead them to their frightening theory of doom. Let everyone fully examine the whole thing to the best of their abilities. That would have settled the science.
Instead they let Al Gore ride in and turn the whole thing into a crappy PowerPoint, then into a movie and finally ride it to become the Nobel Goracle with a hundred million dollar personal forture riding on a pet theory that just happened (amazing coincidence, Trust Me!) to require the exact same policies his ilk had been pushing since Karl Marx defiled the Earth with his presence.
Or take James Hansen. He is going around saying anyone who "Denies" his theory should be tried for crimes against The Earth. Were he just another crackpot pundit he could be safely ignored. Look at MSNBC's raings, we are pretty good at ignoring crackpots. The problem isn't even that Hansen wears the robes of a High Priest of Science!, hell he has the NASA patch on his robes, in the ranks of Science! that is better than a cardinal's hat. No, the problem is that the rest of the priesthood hasn't taken any action against him.
When a heretic priest comes busting into yer temple demanding everyone adopt a new set of beliefs the established church
Democrat delenda est
Interesting thing about the NASA Data. Check this graph from NASA
This shows that virtually all of the warming seems to come from their "corrections".
Seems this would have a difficult time passing the smell test.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
IF Vikings farmed on Greenland that might mean that Greenland was warmer back then. Local warming is not indicative of global warming. The so called medieval warm period is _discounted_ from global climate studies because it was an effect that held true only for Europe. Other parts of the world have shown no warming back then.
Global warming means the warming of the global average temperature.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
ignorance indeed:
(1) Greenland used to be green....
Actually it didn't, it was called GREENLand to lure people there...marketing in action. Or perhaps a translation error.
(2) Medieval Warm Period
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/medieval-warm-period-mwp/
2000 year temp graph
(3) Rome used to import ENGLISH wine
correlation vs causation
(4) Astronomers have been pointing out *forever* that Major and Minor Ice Ages are dependent on the precession and nutation of the Earth's orbit.
I don't dispute this. However, there is *no* proof of this causing the *rate* at which we are seeing change today. Something else is effecting the system that wasn't around previously...like us.
(5) http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf where proxy data shows the global warming folks are seriously out to lunch
The Heartland Institute? seriously? they are such a blatant shill for Big Oil and Big Business it's not funny.
The recent disclosures that some scientists may not have followed accepted processes for handling data (ignored more complete data sets for smaller data sets that better supported their ideas etc.) are serious things to investigate and rightly should be investigated. I don't know of any climate change proponents who disagree with that.
It doesn't, however, change the other *vast* accumulated data that show a very marked divergence from historical norms at rates not seen previously.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
If you pay me tons of money, I will certify you so that your opinion will be valid too. I can also teach you how to audit your thetans and tell you about Xenu...
That's about the size of it, pal.
"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything."
Not correct.
Yes, in fact, it makes at least one of them, and as I recall the nature of the problem probably both, wrong.
It doesn't mean they aren't the best available models within certain domains, which is what science is about more than "right" and "wrong". Recognizing wrong, though, is important to science, too: that some model is wrong is an indicator that there is a place where it may be productive to search for a better model, and what is known about how the model is wrong gives you a place to start looking.
As an engineer, calling climate studies a "hard science" seems like a stretch to me. It does generally follow a mathematical-model-based scientific method, but those models are extremely complicated/poor compared to the models of basic physics. There is a big distinction within "hard science" that needs to be made.
No, you have it very wrong, and the GP was absolutely correct. We have theories of nature that predict the existence of oxygen, and how it should behave. If someone doubts these theories, we can invent thousands of predictions and experiments to show how the real world conforms to our understanding. These are direct tests, even if oxygen itself is not directly observable.
Give me a direct test for the existence of anthropogenic global warming.
No, most of this data has been available for years, although RealClimate assembled this convenient index in part as a response to claims that scientists were withholding data that were leveled in association with the recent data theft from CRU.
There has long been plenty of raw and corrected climate data, as well as climate models with source code, more than enough for any interested investigator to replicate major conclusions of climate researchers.
Most of the interest in raw data seems to be politically motivated and to be directed toward finding pretexts to level accusations against climate researchers in order to create the illusion of doubt about the science. The groups that scream most loudly about unreleased data never seem to do much with the great bulk of data that is available. One popular strategy seems to be to demand raw data from somebody who does not actually own it, and then cry "conspiracy" when they try to explain that unreleased raw data must be requested from the actual owner. For example CRU was bombarded with "freedom of information" demands for raw data that was not generated by them and that actually belonged to national meteorological services.
http://www.google.com/search?q=An+Inconvenient+Truth+inaccuracies
Yes. Some of the science was valid. But some of the facts presented as true were blatantly designed to mislead.
My point is, one either supports the scientific method or one does not. There are no grey areas. Either its science, or its propaganda. It cannot be both. 'An Inconvenient Truth' is propaganda masquerading as science, which is actually what this forum topic is about.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
It's absurd that one can be considered "educated" in the western world without having a basic understanding of century old (or older) scientific principles (evolution, relativity, calculus...). It is not "too hard" to learn these things. If you have a college degree, you should be as familiar with basic science as you are with writing essays.
If the average lay person has as much understanding of modern science as they do something like modern economics (we all know China holds our debt, and why), then an attitude of skepticism toward scientists is actually desirable. Without that basic understanding, how are we to communicate?! How do you express something like climate change to a populace which doesn't know 19th century thermodynamics? On what basis can they trust or criticize you? I don't trust people saying things that sound like nonsense. A sometimes "nonsense" people turn out to actually be lawyers, but not knowing their basic terminology I can't tell the difference between a charlatan and the real thing, so I can't really trust any of them. I imagine that's how most people see scientists.
All we're left with is politics and sound bytes, which does not lead to a helpful discussion.
If you are going to cry wolf on such a biblical scale as the AGW theory does, you really should make every attempt to be open and above reproach.
You can't because it's been brewing for some decades, with newer models and hard facts (like antarctic cores) trickling in slowly. At a certain point you are able to say that you have enough data to conclude, but if you wait until you have perfect data, it'll be FAR TOO LATE. We need to act now.
Put the full raw data, the adjustments with detailed explanations
That's exabytes of data and tens of thousands of publications and it's already out there for who wants it. What are opponents (who can't even understand basic statistics) going to do with it that scientists haven't already done anyway, except nitpick that there's a comma missing in a sentence and therefore the whole thing must be wrong like they did in this email fiasco ?!?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
My favorite "data-based" proof of AGW skeptics is the "now that I've found the data sources finally I've done a simple graph of temperature vs. CO2 in excel which disproves AGW." The subtext to such comments is essentially that an outside analyst who only knows numbers (and not the field, or how the data were collected, or anything else other than computers and very basic statistics) is doing a correct analysis of the data whereas people who do understand the provenance of such data must be either hiding such findings as a community, or too incompetent to do a basic graph in excel. Furthermore such simple exercises ignore techniques like multiple linear regression (among others) which can account for the influence of multiple variables at the same time.
Knowing the method of data collection is crucial to correct analysis. In my previous life as an astronomer, we would typically image objects by taking four pictures: 1) an on wavelength on target image, 2) an on wavelength off target image, 3) an off wavelength on target image, and 4) an off wavelength off target image. Proper data reduction meant that you first found intensity on band due to the target (diff12): image 1)- image 2, then the blackbody offset for being on target (diff34): image 3) - image 4), and then the true intensity of the object in that wavelength diff12-diff34. It helps if you draw a picture. It also helps if you know what blackbody radiation is, the bandwidth of your filter, and a hundred other small things that you won't see if you are just presented with a cache of images. The point being that there are usually good reasons for collecting the data in a certain manner, and if you don't know what these are, you probably won't be able to reduce it correctly.
Does that mean that if you don't have an advanced degree in physics or climatology you shouldn't be able to come to the table and express your opinion? No. But many of the AGW skeptics seem unwilling to listen to the reasoning and experience of those who have been in the game for a while. It's almost as if I felt that my prior experience with a .22 rifle qualified me to tell General Petraeus how to run operations having not ever been on the ground in the Middle East. I am able to differentiate my opinion about the war from my ability to prosecute it. In the same way AWG critics need to understand that while they may bring some fresh ideas to the table, it is likely that much of their reasoning has already been rigorously examined and discarded by people with far more experience than them.
I don't really get this though. I can see why you'd want an SUV even if it's bad for the environment. They're comfortable, they hold a lot of stuff, they're cool looking, they're great off-road compared to a Prius. What I don't get is, why would AGW supporters care if you're driving a HMMWV if they don't feel that the theory is valid?
It sounds like you're saying their position is: "I hate SUVs. I must find a way to make people stop driving them. I must fudge my data to make it look like SUVs are bad". My question is, why do you think they care about people driving SUVs in the first place?
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
Typical. Ask a skeptic to produce something, and you get wild conspiracy theories.
Who are these "plenty of scientists", or were you just speaking without having thought this through.
If conspiracy is all you got, then that's is a pretty lame bet you're making on our childrens' future.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
What's really funny is that 20-30 years ago the earth was apparently cooling for all the man-made reasons it is warming now.
You know, I can't remember there being a massive consensus across the vast majority of climate scientists 20-30 years ago saying that the earth going through global cooling. No, there were a handful who came up with that theory and you know what, that theory has been shown to not be accurate.
Personally, I'll go with the general consensus and the multiple independent data sets that indicate that global warming is happening and is caused by man. When I look at who supports the AGW theory and who is against it, I know which ones I would choose to trust more.
Also consider that we don't get a second chance. The earth isn't a lab that we can reset if our "experiment" doesn't work. We had better err on the side of caution. Sure the world won't end, climate change won't wipe out the human race, but if it does continue the way it looks like it's going, then millions upon millions of people are going to die - though probably not you and me in the developed nations. Trillions of dollars worth of damage is going to be done to our infrastructure.
There was a big stink when the hole in the Ozone Layer over Antarctica was huge, but nobody said a word when it shrunk back up and nearly disappeard. I'll bet most people think it's just getting bigger.
This is just another area where climate scientists got it wrong, changed their mind about the whole thing, and the rest of the world just pretends nothing changed.
You are aware that scientists worked out the CFCs were the cause of the Ozone hole and that the nations of world got together and did something about it - the Montreal Protocol. When we stopped pumping CFCs into the atmosphere the ozone hole began to repair itself - just like the scientists predicted!
Or acid rain messed up the growth of your trees in the area. Or the lack of salmon runs have cut the nutrient input to the forests (yes, bears eating spawned salmon have been a major source of nutrients for the trees. Or???
Your example listed one thermometer. But what if there are hundreds of thermometers. Thermocouples, mercury, made by multiple manufactures, distributed over a wide area. What if there is satellite temperature data? What if multiple other temperature proxies all synced up with the instrumental temperature readings? What if all of those different sources of data all pointed to a single temperature trend. And then a single temperature proxy such as tree-ring measurements disagreed with those temperatures. And only over a limited area and a limited time. It seems reasonable to hypothesize that something weird is happening to the trees.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
All true, but note that it did not prevent him from researching, getting published, and being recognized as the interesting physicist he was. The system worked. Those of you who are assisting in tearing down the system in your "useful idiot" mouthing of "Four legs good, two legs bad" will make sure that it never works again.
That is all.
> At a certain point you are able to say that you have enough data to conclude, but
> if you wait until you have perfect data, it'll be FAR TOO LATE.
Of course you do realise you are expounding the exact same "precautionary principle" that is the heart of Henninger's WSJ article that is the topic of discussion.
What you propose would be an acceptable use of Science! if all of the Doom & Gloom(tm) came with well marked error bars. It doesn't. You never see the Goracle pronounce "If we do nothing there is a 38% chance of a runaway meltdown of the Greenland glaciers." It is always stated as a certainty of DOOM! if we don't act now! (Operators are standing by!) The fact of the matter is we don't have enough data to state much of anything with certainty on the GW topic, it is all swarming clouds of probability, and you are entirely correct that we almost certainly won't have time to acquire enough data to get even 90% certainty before it would be too late.. if we credit the more gloomy modeled scenarios enough to take them seriously. So no, it isn't settled that "We need to act now." if by act you mean follow the Goracle over the cliff with Cap & Trade, etc. We should be having a rational conversation about risks vs reward, cost/benefit, etc.
We can't guard against every risk, we have to make decisions. I can promise you that the Earth WILL be smacked by another asteroid/comet/etc sooner or later. Should we reorder our society to devote every available resource to building a defense? No. It is a question of probability and our current efforts to catalog the minor bodies in the solar system is probably the right response for now. With only a little knowledge of science and some imagination one can think up a hundred or more equally horrible possible scenarios we could avert if we spent Sagans of dollars on solutions for. But we live in a world with a limit to available resources so we have to pick our fights with Nature.
Personally, on GW I'd argue that reducing our reliance on fossil fuels makes so much sense on so many grounds (economic, political, military, ecological, etc.) we should be making every reasonable effort. Should we reorder our society in ways almost certain to bring us to ruin? No, that would be a solution worse than the problem. So if ya want a tax on imported oil to stabilize the price at levels high enough to encourage alternatives and promote domestic production I'd support it. An major push to get new nuke plants online to replace the coal we are currently burning to make most of our electricity? Count me in.
Democrat delenda est
Correction: The case for oxygen also doesn't have people receiving large amounts of money to confirm or deny the evidence no matter what. If you believe the money is only going to people who don't believe in global warming, I have a bridge to sell you. Even the big oil companies now are playing the global warming card. They play both sides of the political spectrum, and always will. They know global warming can give them huge subsidies to develop alternative energy sources (with much of the money going to the pockets of the company). They also know that the government's response to global warming will likely be largely written by the big energy companies. This will enable them to limit exploration (who wants to do that anyhow, it's expensive and doesn't have immediate payouts) while creating artificial shortages in the market. This will result in higher prices for all of us, while the big energy companies get even larger profits, as they aren't paying to extract that expensive oil anymore. Of course distortions will exist overseas from governments not employing these measures, but largely, the big oil companies are likely to make a killing through the global warming issue. The real people who would suffer are the average joes (who now pay more for energy), companies in other fields (who pay more for energy), and in particular new people or businesses that would have come up to challenge the mega corporations dominance. You can be assured that the mega corporations will be able to release carbon at or near the levels they always have, however a new competitor will have a much harder time getting the permits to do this, and may not have the money to do it. Sounds like business as usual with mega corporations stepping in to stop competition wherever it can. Phil
There is a difference between what that the bigCs claim or predict and what you are predicting.
Yes, I'd bet with you on all of your predictions, but try this:
Will it rain more or less in England this year than last?
Will it be colder in Moscow this Feb than last Feb.?
Will Ca. have more or less fires this summer than last?
We can extend that to more rain in the next 5 years than the last 5? etc.
The problem is, the bigCs can't even get that right, and when they do notice that they haven't got it right, they try to hide it.
Honest, climate change happens. It has been observed in every form of historical record that we can access and interpret. What's missing from the historical record is "why?".
Today, many bigCs have come out and said "Man is why" and Man we have to change it. Let's assume that they do have it right(and are not hiding the fact that they have it wrong) and temps will climb over the next few centuries. Many, including myself have asked "Who says this climate change is bad?" Man is a tropical creature. It is getting warmer, why not welcome it?
Many bigCs and the politicians that back them demand that exorbitant amounts of resources be spent in an effort to try and combat climate change. Why? What exactly is to be gained from all of this expense? At the moment we cannot even combat a tornado(all we can do is try and duck) and they propose that we take on Nature on a planetary scale?!??! It's ridiculous.
Face it, the climate will change whether we want it to or not. It's natural. Live with it.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I don't care what it contains ... you asked for a list of peer reviewed papers, I gave you a list of 450 with the general theme of skepticism. If it contains some non-skeptical papers, fine, unlike you I am open to accept I am wrong on the merits of the material, not by trying to impugn the messenger.
I took a cursory look at the very first paper, which contains not only 4 pages of citations to referenced works, but also a correction addendum at the bottom. Now please tell me, if the author was neither accepting criticism nor addressing those criticisms, then why would he issue a correction to his own work ?
You know, this is *exactly* what a skeptic in any field has to deal with.
Your initial statement some posts ago was
"Nobody has made a scientific refutation of AGW, and that is what is important to me."
Then when someone challenges that statement you add in extra conditions about what *you* consider to be a valid paper, and then make that a pre-condition (well, 3 preconditions actually) of success for the skeptic to retain a valid point.
Then on supply of a list of 450 with a pretty unambiguous title describing the contents of the list, you spiel off two names as if they were college buddies in an attempt to sound more knowledgeable than the common plebs, and manage to debunk the whole list as 450 skeptic rantings without further ado.
Now I could go through each of the 450 papers, crossreferencing the 40 odd citations in each one, then checking on Citeseer or some such academic repository to see if any were *still* valid or if all 16000 were nothing more than a product of the "big oil companies" PR departments, but I shall gracefully decline.
There will be no convincing you as you have decided you are right, the science is irrefutable when done by "the right kind of scientists", and everyone else is either wrong or a crank.
Goodnight (or should that be good morning).
No, actually, CRU was sent FOI requests for a listing of what data they included in their analysis and after a lot of resistance and trying to not reply to anything (documented in the emails), finally decided they could get away with just saying that the data is available from the original sources and thus they didn't think they had to provide anything. When it's very clear in the request discussion that what was actually being asked for was the information on what specific parts of the publicly available data they used.
It's impossible to try and recreate their model and their results without knowing which data it's based on. Just saying, "All the data is available somewhere, but we won't tell you which parts of it we actually used" doesn't respond to what is a legitimate request from someone trying to fairly reproduce their results.
If someone said, "We did a study of car crash frequency" it's completely reasonable to ask "What regions and data sets did you use in your study?" and not be told, "It's all crash data available online, but we won't tell you which parts we actually used in our study".
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Why would anybody try to recreate their analysis exactly? That's a complete waste of time. When you recreate somebody else's analysis, you are likely to end up simply recreating their errors. A more scientific approach is to do your own independent analysis using the available data. There is certainly plenty available. If the conclusions are at all robust, they should not depend on the fine details of exactly which data was used.
Actually any layman with concerns is qualified to question science. ,industry and religion.
Science, if truly based on fact should have no trouble defending itself.
Rabid apologists are part of the problem, that only increase laymens distrust due to centuries of propaganda from government
60 some MB of expose should be addressed in public seriously and not poo- pooed by apologists with a personal stake. When the evidence is this damning in a laymans eyes, some pretty forthright talk from investigation by more neutral parties is definitely in order.
This fiasco is really a good thing and iconic infallibility being accorded to the liberal wing of science studying climate is in bad need of 10ccs of reality.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!