Why Climate Deniers Have No Scientific Credibility

http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/11/15/why-climate-deniers-have-no-credibility-science-one-pie-chart

by stephth • 14 years ago

20 26 14 years ago

temphn• 14 years ago

This is an actual email:

http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=5718

  From: Phil Jones
  To: "Michael E. Mann"
  Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
  Date: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004

  ...

  I can't see either of these papers being in the next 
  IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I [Phil Jones] will 
  keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what 
  the peer-review literature is !

  ...

  Cheers
  Phil

  Prof. Phil Jones
  Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0)REDACTED
  School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0)REDACTED
  University of East Anglia

MaysonL2• 14 years ago

to fill in the ...

The other paper by MM is just garbage - as you knew. De Freitas again. Pielke is also losing all credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn as well - frequently as I see it. I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report.

cpleppert• 14 years ago

....and they were included anyway

guelo2• 14 years ago

Doesn't mean global warming isn't happening.

raverbashing• 14 years ago

Appeal to authority anyone? Or maybe Appeal to the people?

If you want a better chart for climate change, the hockey stick should do (or better ones of climate data if you have, of course)

But all this is saying is "our team is bigger than the other team". Peer review? Great, who are the peers? Oh the same people that are in favor of climate change theories? Interesting...

MaysonL2• 14 years ago

climate change at this point is a fact, not a theory. We can debate what's causing it, but not that it's happening. Biological, physical, meteorological data all point to global warming.

maratd2• 14 years ago

> climate change at this point is a fact, not a theory.

No, not at this point. It has always been established and believed. We live on a planet with a dynamic climate that changes and shifts month to month, year to year, decade to decade, millennium to millennium, and has cycles that extend even beyond that.

> We can debate what's causing it, but not that it's happening.

We have no idea what's causing it, why it's happening (or why it happened), not even close to it. It's that complex.

> Biological, physical, meteorological data all point to global warming.

No, they do not. They point to climate change. Some places are getting warmer. Some cooler. Some are static. Again, complex.

ghshephard4• 14 years ago

Yes, it is an appeal to authority. When one want a verdict on the mechanisms of Gravity, should we not appeal to physicists? When we are interested in Cancer, should not we look to oncologists? So, when we need to find out about our climate, it is to climatologists that we look.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

The two factors — legitimate expertise and expert consensus — can be incorporated to the structure of the statistical syllogism, in which case, the argument from authority can be structured thus: [2]

  X holds that A is true.
  X is a legitimate expert on the subject matter.
  The consensus of subject-matter experts agrees with X.
  Therefore, there exists a presumption that A is true.

spindritf• 14 years ago

> should we not appeal to physicists?

No, we should not because there is no reason to believe that laws of physics are in any way dependent on physicists. Science is based on theories producing verifiable predictions, not "votes" cast through articles.

Yes, if you need to get something done, you hire people with relevant knowledge, skills and experience. But scientific theories should be completely inter-subjective and work the same for everyone.

slowpoke• 14 years ago

I don't think you understand how science works.

steve19• 14 years ago

Uh, I have not met anyone who denies climate.

As for people who deny climate change, I have found they generally question the effect humans have had on the climate and/or the extent to which we can alter the climate if we wanted and/or how much the climate has changed relative to other periods in recent and ancient history and/or the extent that unchecked climate change will have on the earth/humankind.

guelo2• 14 years ago

All of them are so high minded? Tons of people say global warming is not happening and it is a liberal conspiracy to take over our lives and destroy our freedoms and 'murica fuck yea and blah blah blah.

abrown28• 14 years ago

probably wouldn't say that if the liberals weren't using it as an excuse to take over more of our lives and destroy our freedoms.

Alaskan005• 14 years ago

This is dumb. I thought he was going to show a chart that showed that humans are responsible for it, not that most scientists agree. A few centuries ago they just asked the Pope, simpler process.:)

They are two types of deniers: we have the earth is not warming type, "Look it snowed in Colorado, we're warming uh?" and two those that say it's a natural process and point to the charts where earth went through cycles on it's own over the millions of years.

(Personally I buy the CO2 layer that act as a sheet acts on us during the night.)

jk4930• 14 years ago

And how many of those articles are true climate research and not from the bandwagon around? The whole crowd that does mitigation and adaption research aren't climate scientists but geologists, hydrologists, even social scientists. And it's often seen as necessary to get your topic X through is to frame it under "X under effects of climate change" or so. I did this once in 2005 when I published a paper on epidemiology and included some references to effects of climate change because the WHO promoted it at this time.

bmmayer1• 14 years ago

The credibility of dissenters has nothing to do with the size of their group, especially in matters of science. If there is one heretic among 20,000 in the orthodoxy, and that heretic has better evidence, then the heretic is more credible. Not that I doubt the confidence of a 20,000 strong wall of scientists, but I won't discount the credibility of dissenters just because there are fewer of them. That's intellectually dishonest.

fleitz• 14 years ago

Funny how peer reviewed journals by a vast majority who support global warming exclude opinions to the contrary, especially when the peers in those journals are willing to redefine what peer review means to keep papers they don't like out.

It's really too bad the industrial revolution didn't start 200 years earlier.

lukifer• 14 years ago

Fact? Theory? Pfft. Science is a pipeline: a distillation process. Half-assed conjecture goes in one end, and a mostly-reliable consensus comes out the other.

But for the pipeline to work, no conjecture should be dismissed without consideration, and no consensus should ever be immune from entering the pipeline yet again for re-examination.

Is climate change happening? Definitely. Is human activity a major cause? Undoubtedly. But that doesn't mean that skeptics and dissenters should be vilified and excluded a priori, even if they're deluded, purchased, or flat-out wrong.

The leap we should be taking is thinking probabilistically: we may lack the ability to model the climate with perfect accuracy, but given that the data we do have indicates that climate change is extremely likely to be human-related, what can we do to act on that likelihood while we continue to refine the science, including the dissenters in that process?

rpm4321• 14 years ago

I think where people get into trouble in this whole debate is by taking one of two binary positions: Climate Change is a fraud, or Climate Change will turn Earth into a Martian hellscape within a century. Both are absurd, and are simply for either PR or negotiating purposes and shouldn't be taken seriously.

It seems to me that the most sensible solution would actually be out of the libertarian playbook: an ironclad 50-year tax holiday on all revenue generated from both the production of carbon-neutral energy and the manufacture of clean energy generating equipment.

You would get a massive investment in clean energy R&D, especially by those who can afford it like Big Oil and OPEC, without the potentially massive drag on the economy that carbon caps or tax schemes would create.

I think this seemingly obvious solution is ignored because free market solutions are anathema to the left, and because the right could give a rat's ass.

iterationx• 14 years ago

People who call their ideological adversaries "Deniers" have no credibility. Feel free to persuade the community with science and not propaganda.

NeonDark• 14 years ago

"In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough.

Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way."

Why Climate Deniers Have No Scientific Credibility

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