It's fascinating to see how supposedly objective institutions are invested in selling environmentalist panic. The greens have certainly won the PR battle.
Considering was called Greenland by the Vikings who also named Nova Scotia "Vinland" because grape vines grew there, would it be more likely to you that some alarmist scientists would defends their jobs and salaries by giving overperssimistic claims, and that the rest would have to follow the game or become irrelevant in the publish-or-perish world?
Just like a lemon market, except driven by fear?
I remember reading somewhere (Richard Feymann maybe?) about the initial mass or charge of some particle, an electron maybe, being far away from the truth and leading to a suppression of the publication of any "dissident" results - including a much better estimate that followed.
The scientific process took care of that by publishing revised estimates, just slightly lower and lower, until the number reached the initially conflicting estimation, but this took some time.
I do not claim to have any opinion on climate change - except to notice that a side is giving alarmist claims, which can not be disproved, or when they can and are, which are adjusted by an ad-hoc theory. From global freezing in the 70s to global warming, and now "climate change". And that the other side is giving different results and seems to be more cautious in its process, because it is facing an uphill battle like anyone who would have published a significantly lower mass.
That does not win merit points with what I know about epistemology.
Unlike oil company executives, zero climate scientist salaries depend on global warming being true. That's just not how or why academic researchers get paid. They push the "agenda" because that's the model the data supports.
> zero climate scientist salaries depend on global warming being true. That's just not how or why academic researchers get paid. They push the "agenda" because that's the model the data supports.
The ClimateGate e-mails show otherwise. They show the warmist mafia conspiring to spike publication of contrary research.
If you can't get published, you don't get very far in academia.
And then there's the whole "I won't share my data because they'll use it to try to prove me wrong" thing.
The only conspiracy I do see in that write-up consists of sensationalist self-proclaimed experts, scientifically illiterate pundits and talking heads providing an illusion of controversy where none exists so that people like you tune in to their message and generate ad revenues and fat bonus pay-checks.
Honestly which do you believe is more likely - a vast global conspiracy of climatologists are swindling the public, people who have to publish models and/or data to support their claims, with all it taking is one honest scientist to expose them as frauds (withholding data as you point out does happen, but this affects the support their claims receive)... or a bunch of charismatic talking heads with zero science education or interest are hyping things up because they know, as an absolute and incontrovertible fact, that doing so generates revenue, votes, etc. from the conspiracy crowd?
I doubt all scientists are honest, but the proportion of scientists that are honest vs. the proportion of talking heads that are honest makes it pretty obvious where to look for a real conspiracy. It takes one scientist to expose a fraud definitively, but no amount of evidence seems to persuade a talking head to shut up as long as there's enough conspiracy theorists paying their salary and their master's profits.
Just out of curiousity, guy: can you actually describe the "ad-hoc theory"? How it works, what are the big factors, what are the spots that working climate scientists want to shore up?
Just to make sure you've given it some thought and aren't just repeating things you've heard off of blogs and Fox News.
They are very much ad hoc. At worst they could be considered glorified curve-fitting solutions with a large number of free parameters, like epicycles. At best they are an incredibly incomplete and flawed way to model the global climate.
Consider, many very fundamental aspects of climate modeling are typically just approximated using an empirically derived "fudge factor". For example, the interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere and the transfer of heat between them, that's not derived from an extensive analysis from first principles, it's typically merely parameterized. The same goes for clouds which have poorly understood effects in climate science (combining both cooling and insulating aspects). And it's even true for the impact of CO2 concentrations as well.
The idea that we have a robust, from first principles understanding of climate science is patently ridiculous. Now, that doesn't discount the possibility that we understand climate well enough to make strong, well founded predictions about it. We should always be extremely careful to understand the limitations and assumptions of our models, because failing to do so is a recipe for being surprised when the real world deviates with your imperfect simulation of it.
That nicely fits leftist preconceptions, but it's 100% bullshit. The biggest anti-climate change organization I know of (and the worst quality), Heartland, gets about $4 million/year from corporations. On the other hand, climate change research funding from the US governmeny alone runs about $2 billion/year, which is partially dependent on keeping up the panic and alarm.
The most influential Climate Change skeptic, Steve McIntyre, lives on savings, a pension, an blog tips.
Your worldview is so factually wrong, it could hardly be worse.
This is not about politics, this is about science, and the science is clearly telling us we are having a significant impact on the earth's climate, and we must act with increasing urgency. The assertion that this is a leftist preconception is nonsense. People across the political spectrum understand the science - there are climate scientists who are part of the 95% scientific consensus who are also to the right politically.
The scientific consensus on global warming is beyond dispute, but like the Tobacco wars of yesteryear, industry will not go down without a well-funded fight (which is exactly what that illustration captures).
You imply in your rebuttal that climate change scientists are engaged in a conspiracy to increase funding. As I said further up the thread, it's as absurd as the '9/11 was an inside job' conspiracy favoured by what you would call 'leftists'.
Lets call the 'global warming conspiracy' what it is: a half-baked fringe conspiracy theory favoured by people who believe the 'skeptic' points endlessly promoted by industry (and continually debunked by actual scientists).
> "science is clearly telling us ... we must act with increasing urgency"
Forgive me for this meta-detour, but:
Science tells us that the climate is changing in ways that most of humanity would consider harmful. Science tells us that carbon emissions are one of the major drivers of those changes. Science tells us what we can expect to happen if we take certain courses of action. But science doesn't tell us what we "must" do or what course of action we "must" take; science only tells us "is".
"Must" is necessarily a matter of ethics, philosophy, politics, or religion. Science doesn't tell us what course of action is better or worse, only what the expected outcomes are. Things-other-than-science are how we determine what we mean by "better" or "worse" (for an extreme example, consider that some people want humanity to go extinct; their idea of "better" and my idea of "better" do not remotely resemble each other.)
You're certainly correct, but brevity of the writer and intelligence of the reader means I don't have to be explicit about every point, just as if I were to write that a cockpit altitude alarm is telling a pilot he must act with increasing urgency to pull a plane up from a perilous dive.
I could be explicit, and say that the alarm itself is just a combination of electrical circuitry and detectors that change behaviour due to input thresholds, and that the alarm does not particularly care whether the plane crashes or not, but I trust that the reader understands what I'm saying when I say the alarm is telling the pilot he must pull up.
In the case of a cockpit altitude alarm, "pull up from a perilous dive" may not be the appropriate response; "lower your nose and throttle up to build airspeed and get out of a perilous stall" may instead be called for. Additionally, pilots will universally agree that it is worth taking certain actions in order to avoid crashing. Thus, the use of shorthand in that situation is fairly reasonable.
When it comes to declaring what science tells us we "must" do, the picture is far less clear. One reason to be explicit about the difference between "is" and "must" is that even intelligent readers and writers sometimes hold mistaken beliefs here. Another reason is that, even among those in total agreement about the science and in total agreement about certain predictions, there is still disagreement about whether various tradeoffs are "worth" the cost. At that point, science is simply the wrong tool to tell us what we "must" do.
It's been pointed out to you that there is no 'well funded fight', except that plenty of government money is available to people who are looking for the 'right' answers.
You can argue on whatever other point you might like, but the fact is they mythical 'big oil' funding has been debunked many times over. Even the oil companies themselves fund more activities by strongly alarmist climate change people than they do for scientists who are skeptical of the catastrophic man-made climate change theories.
This scratching around for evidence is so manic it led to Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute committing identify theft and fraud to try and conjure up some evil plan from the Heartland institute. As it was the money he found wouldn't cover the canapes bill at an UNEP conference.
As pointed out, one of the most influential people in proxy temperature reconstructions is Steve McIntyre, who is retired and self funded, and does it out of a desire to make sure things are correct.
It's time to drop the 'half baked fringe conspiracy theory' that 'big oil' are somehow funding some sort of disinformation campaign.
It's also time to drop the '95% of climate scientists' meme, because it is the result of an unscientific online poll with a dismal response rate - the '95%' was 75 out of 77 scientists who self-identified as climate scientists taken from a poll of 10,250, of which there was 3,000 responses.
> climate change scientists are engaged in a conspiracy to increase funding
Conspiracy is the wrong word, but I don't know a single person who relies on funding to be interested in having it decreased. The simple truth is that funding should be blind, so that the researcher has no idea of who is paying for it. This applies to all disciplines, not just climate related.
In one corner, we have lawyers, lobbyists, and political groups whose sole mission is to cast fear, uncertainty, and doubt over claims of anthropogenic climate change. Every day they prevent action on CO2 emissions is another X $million made.
In the other corner we have people whose entire professional life is predicated on being right and carefully and systematically proving each other wrong. People who have repeatedly explained the basic physical mechanism by which CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas, and shown that (and how) it accumulates in the atmosphere.
You seem to prefer trusting the lawyers, lobbyists, and political groups over the people whose entire culture is based in reasoned argument, systematic research, precision, accuracy, and integrity. I don't know why any reasonable person would do this.
"except that plenty of government money is available to people who are looking for the 'right' answers."
From the outset, you've flagged that you subscribe to the 'global warming conspiracy'. That a global conspiracy of scientists are co-ordinating a disinformation campaign to justify and increase funding. I mean, seriously, it's just absurd.
Although I think that sentence of yours brings the absurdity to new heights. Because why on earth would a government want scientists to give 'right' answers which have massive economic and social implications, and not in a good way? Your mental model of this issue really does not seem well thought out.
Your refutation of the scientific consensus on this topic is bizarre (you seem to think that the consensus is based on an 'unscientific online poll'!) Here's what the consensus actually looks like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_c...
I certainly agree with you that funding on any research should be blind, but the practicality of that in many situations means it's an idealistic position.
Alternatively one might conclude that websites from across the spectrum use linkbaity headlines to drive traffic. Even my daily newspaper screams it's headline at me in all caps, the horror!
