The Skeptics Case - Global Warming

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

The Skeptics Case

The data presented here is impeccably sourced, very relevant, publicly available, and from our best instruments. Yet it never appears in the mainstream media — have you ever seen anything like any of the figures here in the mainstream media? That alone tells you that the "debate" is about politics and power, and not about science or truth.

Please read the link. Go ahead and read it critically. It presents the data and the argument very clearly and isn't a polemic.

I think the main point here is that there is sufficient grounds for there to be a debate/discussion on the issue in society, but that politics and the media are not allowing it. Just like the argument for free speech in general, if the argument on one side is so clear and convincing, then what's the harm in allowing the other side to point out the perceived flaws in it? But a seemingly large proportion of the proponents of global warming tend to just try to shut up the objections. This is probably coming much more from the political arena than from the scientific arena, but they do overlap.

Think about your own reaction to these challenges. How do you respond? Do you want to try and independently verify the claims in some manner or do you simply dismiss it and stick to your belief as it is right now? Then I suggest you think about whether you do this on other subjects too; is it your pattern or is this topic special?

Comments

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I think the main point here is that there is sufficient grounds for there to be a debate/discussion on the issue in society, but that politics and the media are not allowing it.

That is nonsense. The skeptics point of view, in various screed, is paraded around the media to the nth degree. It is in the scientific journal themselves that there is almost unanimous acceptance from the relevant researchers of anthropic global warming.

Real scientists use multiple data sources and multiple predictions and construct their argument from that multiplicity. For example, they've chosen lower air temperature as the temperature model of choice. Never mind that everyone else uses surface temperature, or even more often, land surface temperature, and with five-year averages.

I can't stand it when people like David Evans misuse science like this. But it's not the first time (http://www.desmogblog.com/who-is-rocket-scientist-david-evans) this grade-A tosser has done this, is it? (http://www.desmogblog.com/who-is-rocket-scientist-david-evans)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

The skeptics point of view, in various screed, is paraded around the media to the nth degree

That is nonsense. I have never seen any skeptical viewpoint on any mainstream media, whether tv or print.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Don't you have Murdoch media where you're from?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

There's Time magazine, USN&WR, USA Today, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, off the top of my head. Obviously I don't look at all of those all the time, so I certainly could have missed skeptic claims being presented, but I do often see AGW claims being presented, so the ratio is likely to be at least 100:1.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, 100:1 would be closer to what climatologists actually say, so that would be accurate. However, it is a lot more "balanced" (http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1978) than that.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Funny, I would say that that article is the unbalanced one and the news articles they studied sound pretty good. I certainly haven't seen that many like the ones they are showing, but that's encouraging that they were there.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I have a suggestion, which will raise the standard of your knowledge. Read peer-reviewed climate journals instead.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

If they're following the Wedge Strategy (as I suspect), they need not be in print or openly discussed. The skeptical views need only be quoted prominently by politicians and news heads as their source.

This way the source does not get eviscerated by those with the data and analytic chops to do so.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

I'm including that kind of presentation in my statement.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

You've never heard anti-AGW rants from Sen. James Inhofe? Anti-science rants from Bill "Tide goes in, tide goes out" O'Reilly? They're all over the place, and widely quoted.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Nope.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

I would consider it a problem to be using any one of those temperature models alone, actually. I don't think the "real scientists" are doing a better job at this in that respect.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I don't think the "real scientists" are doing a better job at this in that respect.

Why do you think that?

The author has picked, as I pointed out, one method of establishing temperature and one which is in contrast with those which are the scientific norm. Why is that?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

I would guess it's because he doesn't consider the ones used to be as accurate. I would tend to agree, although I'm not saying that the one he picked is more accurate either.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, let's do some science.

Land records is where we live. That's what we feel. For human beings, it's the most accurate.

Sea records tells a longer range record, because of thermal inertia of large bodies of water.

Atmospheric records tend to understate temperature increases due the feedback effect of water vapour.

Now here's one which should tell you a little about the author.. When he compares his graphs with Hansen et. al., do you think he used the same metric? What do you think he did?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

When he compares his graphs with Hansen et. al., do you think he used the same metric? What do you think he did?

I think he used the closest available data for the comparison. As he's not a climatologist, it's possible that it isn't the best data set, but that would take some investigating to see for sure. I did find one site that was a little critical of the UAH data set, but the explanation for why that is was a bit dense and I don't know if that's a widespread criticism that this person would have known about, so I certainly wouldn't say that there's any deliberate intent to use bad data or something.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I think he used the closest available data for the comparison.

No he didn't. Hansen's extrapolations are based on surface temperatures. The comparison was made with atmospheric temperatures, even though the former are readily available.

The guy has a awful political axe to grind. The choice was deliberate.

[onefatmusicnerd.livejournal.com]

So, um, what if some has a PhD in something else, but occasionally works on contracts modeling rocket flight? Is that a rocket scientist?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I'm doing a PhD in social theory and I sometimes model the gravitational effects of black holes for physicists post-docs. On other times I model the brains of adolescent schizophrenics. Sometimes I model perforin protiens

Does that make me an astrophysicist? A neurologist? A molecular biologist?

I'd say not...

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

We have a Renaissance man in our midst!

Kudos, Sir.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Eh, it's somewhat inevitable. Having a stiff bit of cardboard in politics, philosophy and sociology wasn't going to pay the mortgage (except for that stint with the parliament of Victoria). So I turned my hobby (computing) into a profession and ended up working on clustered supercomputers for scientists (and then promptly went on to do an MBA in Technology Management).

But because computer nerds often know how to run scientific applications better than the scientists themselves (after all, we had to install and optimise the damn things), I sometimes hand-hold them through the process of getting their data in the right format, composing the script to launch the job, setting walltime, reserved nodes and processors etc, and showing them how to display their data.

The interpretation of the results is entirely their work!

[onefatmusicnerd.livejournal.com]

"The interpretation of the results is entirely their work!"

Or they hire experimental statisticians. like me, to explain their co-efficients.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but are you a rocket scientist? :-P

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

It would certainly mean that the person would have experience in that field, and some insight into how modelling a system works. There is meta-knowledge that is not narrow field limited.