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US Scientists Scramble To Protect Research On Climate Change (cnn.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader ClickOnThis quotes CNN:
Some scientists and academics are embarking on a frenzied mission to archive reams of scientific data on climate change, energized by a concern that a Trump administration could seek to wipe government websites of hard-earned research... The chief concern: publicly available climate change data and research found on government websites would be wiped clean or made otherwise inaccessible to the public. Some worry the information could only be retrieved with a taxing Freedom of Information Act request.
One associate professor at the University of Texas tells CNN, "There is a very short window for when the new administration will come in and that's why there's a lot of anxiety. There's a lot of information to save."
One associate professor at the University of Texas tells CNN, "There is a very short window for when the new administration will come in and that's why there's a lot of anxiety. There's a lot of information to save."
The true measure of scientific fact is how well it survives the opposition trying to disprove it. Given that the opposition to climate change has given up on producing data disproving that the Earth is getting warmer on aggregate and instead resorted to attacking it politically, I would say it's doing pretty well as scientific theories go.
Nah, it's an intractable problem because there is only one earth. Better to burn all the research to the ground and call it a day. Strangely enough trump petitioned scottland for variances to account for rising sea levels on his golf course there. But he wouldn't say one thing and believe/do another would he?
there's tons of raw data out there. I see folks on /. periodically doing their armchair analysis of some of it. And anyway, if they were just holding on to the data because they were nefarious scientists (probably just sucking on that sweet sweet grant money) than why would they care if it got preserved? If they were never going to give it up anyway what difference does it make if it's saved?
See, this is one of those things I always thought was funny. You've got a bunch of folks with PHds, usually with a heavy emphasis on math and statistics, but the implication I get again and again from folks is that they're somehow trying to cheat us all for the mountains of grant money.
These folks are in ridiculously high demand in the private sector. They command salaries 2-3x the public sector at the drop of a hat (and if they go to Wallstreet 5-10x). I'm not saying there won't be the occasional bad apple or just plain wrong person, but really, if they were out for personal gain they have much, much better alternatives and they're smart enough to know what they are.
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Also, it's a fine time to put our money where our mouths are, as donations are being matched (presumably out of the same concern):
Dear Internet Archive Patrons:
You’ve come to the Internet Archive in search of knowledge, to find Web pages you would have lost. Now we need your help in return. Will you help sustain this non-profit library built on trust? We have a huge mission: to give everyone access to all knowledge, forever. For free. The Internet Archive has only 150 staff but runs the #250 website in the world. Your privacy is very important to us, so we don’t collect your personal information. We don’t accept ads. But we still need to pay for servers, staff and rent. That’s where you can help us. Right now a generous supporter will match your donation 1-for-1. So you can double your impact! If you find our site useful, please give what you can today. Thank you.
Guess I'm chipping in again...
http://archive.org/
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
ExxonMobil already did some comprehensive, high quality research on climate change in the 1970s. They discovered AGW but decided to bury their research and go about a campaign to discredit anyone who made similar findings. Or perhaps you haven't been following the news lately?
If you want to see the oppositions disproval, then you Need to fund their research equally, just like the researchers received the massive funding for their work who actually started off with assumption that greenhouse-gas-caused climate change exists and is caused by humans.
The ones who assume work doesn't prove the foundation of their research is true though, they just further developed the theory, which doesn't receive adequate funding for critical truth analysis.
LOL. For any scientist, disproving an established theory is a dream come true. This is the stuff to make careers. And it's not as if people haven't tried. Former climate sceptic Richard Muller got funded by the Koch brothers, and, with his team, did a completely independent reconstruction of the temperature record of the last. Of course, he came up with essentially the same results NASA, NOAA, and the HadCRUT team had previously found, and, as a good scientist, changed his position in response to the data.
Of course, we don't fund science by desired result, but by the importance of the questions asked and the plausibility that progress towards an answer can be made. Assuming equal quality of grant applications, if 97% of working scientist hold one broad position, you would expect 97% of funding to go to this group. And, from what I have seen of so-called "sceptic" science, "equal quality" would be a long stretch...
Stephan
Widespread "Consensus" is not the measure of scientific fact; if it were, we'd all still believe that the Earth is flat, etc.
Let's put this idiotic meme to bed once and for all.
(1) There has never been a scientific consensus that the Earth was flat.
The consensus among natural philosophers since the time of Aristotle (4th century BC) has been that the Earth is spherical. In the third century BC Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth as 252,000 stadia, which works out to 39,838 km. The modern figure for the circumference of the Earth is 40,030 km. Since Eratosthenes was dealing in round numbers, he had an accurate figure that is merely less precise than the modern figure. The Portuguese had a more accurate figure for the size of the Earth, which is why they rejected Columbus's expedition which was based on an estimate that was 1/3 too small.
In medieval universities astronomy was one of the "liberal arts", and the standard texts considered the Earth spherical. The "flat earth" notion was only widely held by the ignorant.
(2) Scientific consensus is not about eternal truth, it is about who currently bears the burden of proof.
Science is unique in that it admits, even depends upon crackpot ideas, but it imposes a high burden of proof on them. On the other hand it imposes a low burden of proof on ideas that have a long history of standing up to scrutiny.
This is discrimination, but it's not unfair discrimination. It's a system that allows those crackpot ideas a shot at becoming a new scientific consensus, without burdening everyone else with endless recapitulation of the evidence for things that currently enjoy the support of overwhelming evidence.
When evidence supports a change in the scientific consensus, it changes very rapidly. Take the Heliocentric theory. Copernicus's model had a number of shortcomings, but after the work of Tycho Brahe and Kepler it rapidly gained support among professional astronomers. The main opposition to heliocentrism was political -- not actually religious. The Pope was a Renaissance humanist and an admirer of Galileo; but he had a problem with the Spanish cardinals and couldn't afford to appear "soft on heresy". It's a familiar problem to us today.
3) The existence of scientific dissent does not somehow make an idea more credible.
Dissent, even crackpottery, is not only inevitable, it is an important feature of science that even crackpots are allowed to participate. It doesn't matter what you believe, it matters what you can prove. So if your critieria of evidence is scientific unanimity, you won't get it on just about any topic. Not even conservation of momentum. Everything is open to debate. Even "real" debate.
This means that if you take the "some scientists disagree" route you can go scientist shopping for whatever position you want. Science would have no value whatsoever if we used it that way. You can of course cite dissident scientists if you want of course, but their dissent in itself isn't proof of anything. You have to drill down to why they believe what they believe and why you believe that is correct. People who rely on the scientific consensus within a field need only rely upon the fact that it *is* the scientific consensus.
This reflects the same asymmetrical burden of proof that happens within science. One side is making an extraordinary (in scientific terms) claim and needs equally compelling evidence. The other is making a non-controversial claim.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Are you saying some greater purpose is being served by not releasing all data and methodology on climate change?
I'm saying that the greater purpose of bringing up this different topic was to draw attention away from this claim:
Someone asked for an example of this peer-reviewed scientific work and all we got was an off-topic rant about seeing the raw temperature data. That was not the example that was requested which would prove the original assertion. I believe that the only reason why this irrelevant and sudden change of subject was posted here was because the alternative would be to admit that deniers aren't producing anything remotely like science. The original statement was a lie, and this business of climate model source code is just your attempt to distract us from the original question.
It is the usual denier tactic of rapidly switching to the next bullet point on their favorite denier website the moment anyone picks a hole in their crazy theories, or indeed actually answers their question. I have no doubt that if I posted a link to the raw data that you think is so important that you would quickly jump to the next prepackaged denier post.
May I suggest for the next leap in the discussion that we haven't see the old "they have fogotten about about the sun" line for a while. It's a shame that you can't point to 1998 anymore to "prove" that the climate is actually getting colder; that was always a good one. Don't you think that being a denier would be so much easier if it just would stop getting hotter?
But disproving an establish theory is real science, and real science has no place in this debate! All we need is Al Gore.
97%? You must mean 97% of a cherry picked group of 74 people, quite a few of whom lack actual backgrounds in climate or meteorological science.
Well, there are several sources for the ca. 97%, but they seem to have been too conservative (in the non-political sense of the term). The latest analysis among actually publishing scientists (by James Powell) finds "above 99.99%", or what he calls "virtual unanimity". The fact that several studies with different methodologies all find support in the high 95+% is a nice example of consilience, and that usually is takes as very strong evidence for a fact.
Of course an alternative explanation is that all the scientists, all the editors, and all the scientific organisations are conspiring to keep THE TRUTH from us, with only a small number of heroic conservative think tanks and fossil fuel companies desperately trying to defend it. You take your pick...
Stephan
Actually China looks a lot more effective than the US at combating climate change long term. In the US it all depends on whether big oil has bought the government of the day. China makes all the solar pv cells for the world and has an actual plan.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
China? What a great example. It's a country that has curbed the rise in CO2 emissions far more than the USA over the past 2 years. And I mean who do they think they are with being number 20 in the list of countries in emissions per capita. The USA is far better at ... well fuck we are number 7... Actually per capita we emit 3 times as much as China and 9 times as much as India.
Yeah those bloody developing nations ruining the world. Damn them right?
Idiot.
That's what the deniers say. They keep on wheeling out economists to deny the arguments of actual scientists.
It has been more than a century since the El-Nino/La-Nina cycle was identified by climate scientists. When Scott went on an expedition to Antarctica just over a century ago he took some climate scientists with him.
You have been conned by very expensive PR so it's not your fault, but it is somewhat pathetic.