The Limits To Skepticism

jamie found a long and painstaking piece up at The Economist asking and provisionally answering the question: "Does the spirit of scientific scepticism really require that I remain forever open-minded to denialist humbug until it's shown to be wrong?" The author, who is not named, spent several hours picking apart the arguments of one Willis Eschenbach, AGW denialist, who on Dec. 8 published what he called the "smoking gun" — it was supposed to prove that the adjustments climate scientists make to historical temperature records are arbitrary to the point of intentional manipulation. The conclusion: "[H]ere's my solution to this problem: this is why we have peer review. Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand. So for the time being, my response to any and all further 'smoking gun' claims begins with: show me the peer-reviewed journal article demonstrating the error here. Otherwise, you're a crank and this is not a story. And then I'll probably go ahead and try to investigate the claim and write a blog post about it, because that's my job. Oh, and by the way: October was the hottest month on record in Darwin, Australia."

Comments

Re:gone

[EQ]

I am thoroughly convinced [in other words you refuse to think about it at all lest you come into doubt - tell me again who is the one with the closed mind?] that no amount of evidence at this point can convince the Warmerists.

Calling them Scientists is a bastardization of what science is actually about. It's like calling holocaust deniers "holocaust skeptics" [Ah dragging out the bigoted ad hominem, how predictably irrational of you to demonize your opponent instead of addressing the arguments]. It's correct in a purely technical sense, but it's a slap in the face to Scientific organizations around the world. True science is supposed to be grounded in open data, open analysis and reason, not personal bias and misinformation.

There, FTFY in light of the CRU emails, their stacking of the deck for editorial bias in what is allowed to be published in journals, their refusal to produce the data and algorithms and share them with critics in their field as well as those outside the field and their politicization of what is obviously a very important issue into a vehicle for massive forced political collectivism the likes of which the world hasn't seen since Mao. There is plenty of room to disagree that any significant climate change is caused by humans, or can be remedied by humans. UNless youre; as politically and economically ties to a statist solution that is forced on peopel despite the lack of conclusive evidence that the problem is real and that the solutions proposed will be effective; both of which are open to reasonable doubt -- the latter even more so than than former (although the continued rise in CO2 and the cooling of the last decade bring into question the AGW-CO2 hypothesis' validity).

the Human-caused GW side is making extraordinary claims and demanding extraordinary actions that threaten individual liberty, social justice and the quality of life on a global scale. I suggest you remember a quote by Carl Sagan (and held by many real skeptics): Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.. So far the proof offered hasn't done too well in normal scrutiny, much less reached a level of being "extraordinary" in any real expect that of a vehicle for political collectivism.

Re:like trying to offer proof to a Birther

[angel'o'sphere]

Medieval Warm period?

Even so, simple historical knowledge should convince you AGW can't be true. Greenland used to be GREEN with vegetation. It is presently covered in ice. What does that tell you? England, during the Roman Empire, was a major exporter of WINE.

What do have medieval warm periods to do with climate change? Human made even?

How can you write such bullshit and not se your self that you are so wrong? England right now is also again a booming wine country!!! You know what? It became tis the last 20 YEAR. Never in earth history a climate change happened during such a short period of time.

The medieval micro warm period was a natural one ... and because of that you believe the current one is natural as well? Hello??? On what basis? In medieval times when it was warm. (less warm then now ... you don't even seem to understand that ice in greenland needs a few 1000 years to build up and a few 1000 years to melt ... normally) However in medieval times we had a warm period that 100% for certain was not caused by CO2 produced by humans. So how can you compare a not CO2 based and not human based warm period with a CO2 based on, human made one which we have now? How can you draw conclusions from a natural phenomena to an artificial one? How can you be so stupid? No not ignorant ("ignorant" means, you don't know basic stuff, probably not your fault) But stupid (stupid means, with the stuff you know, no matter how less it is, why do you come to such braindead conclusions?

The rest you wrote about water clouds, water vapour, sun activity and your ice core probe claims is just so utter nonsense I don't have the nerves to enlighten you ....
angel'o'sphere

Arrogant NONSENSE

[omb]

This is utter nonsense, Climate data, unlike say Quantum string theory, does not require more than school mathematics and some (scientific) and other common sense.

The data, and lack of it, and the unreliability of proxies eg tree rings and ice cores is clear. The effects of poor experimental methods on modern data and the fact that, even then, recent data does not, in a statistically significant sense, support a warming hypothesis is obvious. If you plot, say, the last 10 years data it fits a slowly DECLINING line, not a Hockey Stick.

The mathematical models used by Climatologists have never been demonstrated to work, and almost always demonstrably fail, exactly as Chaos theory predicts, ie instability of the solutions of differential manifolds with respect to small variations of initial conditions.

UK climate scientists have been at this for fifty years, especially at the Met Office and have NEVER got it to work.

You need no PhD to conclude that AGW is populist un-scientific Bullshit, and is no more than a media scare story eg Flu Pandemic. It is also a symptom of the group-think here to label opponents as "deniers".