AGW Alarmists should not fly first class

Great Debates
141

Your citation says nothing about Crichtons view of “consensus”, which is what I quoted.

[QUOTE=Kimstu]
I don’t think you can reasonably expect to pre-empt criticism just by complaining about critics. The point of the criticism is that there just aren’t that many reputable scientists out there who reject the hypothesis of anthropogenic climate change, and many of those who do are not specialists in climate science. In particular, this list of 700 “scientists” (compiled by the notorious hardcore climate-change-denier Senator Jim Inhofe) is quite suspect as an indicator of serious scientific opinion.
[/quote]

Like I said, cue the ad hominem attacks. I don’t care if Inhofe is a serial murderer, that’s an ad hominem attack. Typical of AGW supporters.

[QUOTE=Kimstu]
If you expect Inhofe’s list of climate-change deniers to be taken seriously because 700 is a pretty big number, then you should naturally expect the views of the far larger number of scientists who hold the opposing mainstream position to outweigh them.
[/QUOTE]

Fine. Break out your list of quotations from 1400 climate scientists who do believe in AGW, and we’ll compare lists. Until then, I’ve provided a list and you haven’t. Don’t bother saying “The American Physical Society” or the like, as their statements are not made by the members. As such, they only represent a few people.

I await your list of quotations from those who agree, put your money where your mouth is. Bring on your list, and let’s see who is on it.

PS - Someone with a PhD in meteorology, or who is an atmospheric physicist, is a climate scientist in my book, so you can include them. As I pointed out, if you use Lobohan’s criteria above, you would dismiss the IPCC conclusions out of hand, as most of their scientists are not “climate scientists” by his definition. Lobohan dismisses geologists out of hand, for example, despite the obvious connection between climate science and geology.

142

I must say, some of these actual listings in the Inhofe report are pretty funny. At the risk of being accused by intention of committing ad hominem attacks (which seems to be intention’s term for “debunking”), may I present:

Oh, I see: he’s an economist who is concerned about the potential for abuse of government power in climate-change policy, so that makes him one of “over 700 scientists (!) who say there is no consensus” on the science of climate change, even though he admits to having no expertise on the subject. Well, all right then. Anybody who could fail to be convinced by that must just be a fanatical AGW true believer.

Spreadsheet analyzing the expertise and relevant experience of each of the listed “scientists”.

143

You have moved the goalposts. As far as I can tell in the first 37 listed in Inhofe’s drivel there are three climate scientists. Do me a favor and count up how many actual climate scientists there are in that rubbish and we’ll talk, kay?

Sure, there can be. But if he’s a guy that looks for oil in Texas he probably isn’t up to speed on climate science. Just like the perfectly skilled chef at Outback Steakhouse probably can’t transfer over to a Benihana without some cross training.

IPCC:

Okay, now show me a list of half as many climate scientists working in the field who disagree.

Again, you are choosing to accept unscientific drivel in the far minority because it sounds right to you.

144

Heh.

Woah, thanks for that. I’m gonna save this for the next time Intention brings up this silliness.

145

So? If the late Michael Crichton was not a credible source on climate science, then why should I care what he thought about scientific consensus on climate science?

It seems fairly pathetic to insist on quoting as an authority on a scientific debate someone whose ideas on science have been clearly exposed as fundamentally erroneous, and then to respond to that objection by saying “Well, but I’m only quoting his views on the topic of consensus in the abstract!”

For goodness’ sake, can’t you find someone with a little more credibility as a scientific authority to serve as your virtual spokesman on the topic of scientific consensus? Or are you just so enamored of the way Crichton whales on the “alien believers” that you can’t resist continuing to cite him as your source of anti-consensus rhetoric?

Um, no. As I suspected, you evidently don’t understand what “ad hominem” means. “Ad hominem” critiques attempt to discredit an opponent’s position on a particular topic based on some characteristic(s) unrelated to that topic.

So if Inhofe were indeed a serial murderer, and I said “Inhofe is not a reliable authority on the topic of climate change because he’s a serial murderer”, that would indeed be an ad hominem attack. Being a serial murderer does not necessarily prevent one from understanding climate science.

But when I say “Inhofe is not a reliable authority on the topic of climate change because he’s a notorious hardcore climate-change denier”, that’s not an ad hominem attack, because that characteristic is not unrelated to the topic. Inhofe is an extremist ideologue with a huge axe to grind on the subject of AGW, and yes, that does impair his credibility as a reliable source of information about it.

Oh, so you’re willing to make it an argument from authority based on numbers? If you’re outnumbered 2 to 1 in cited authorities, then you lose?

Well, that simplifies things, as there are a lot more than 1400 climate scientist authors of peer-reviewed research articles supporting the AGW hypothesis out there, and I’ve got citation index access. I’ll be back.

(Oh, by the way, even if we agree to include geologists and Ph.D. meteorologists and atmospheric physicists in our lists of authorities on climate scientists, I think you still have to weed out your economists and TV weathermen, so you’ll still be a fair few shy of 700.)

146

**Kimsu **already pointed at the “quality” of the researchers in the list of Inhofe.

Climate Progress takes a look at the main points brought forth by the discredited petition/dissent/list:

http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/11/inhofe-morano-recycles-long-debunked-denier-talking-points-will-the-media-be-fooled-again/

147

I’m willing to entertain the notion that Sen Inhofe is a reasonable and rational man, with the most honest of intentions. But there are puzzling questions, if we are to entertain that notion and not shove it out the door, down into the street and under a bus…

We are presented with his thundering barrage of testimony, we are given to understand that these are scientists worthy of consideration, they are experts in their fields, their testimony may be taken to be conclusive.

Why then the obvious “duds”, people who cannot be reasonably described so? Why would a man of Sen Inhofe’s sterling character include such “duds” unless to dishonestly “pad” a signature count? A negligent, fumbling staffer, perhaps? Then why not rush to correct?

And if a man’s character flaws can be offered as evidence relative to his opinions and arguments, is anyone going to offer us Sen Inhofe as a model of honesty, integrity, and reason? And if it can be proved that he is not, may we then assume than this thesis of his “debunking” GW is so much claptrap, balderdash, and tommyrot? Sir.

148

Moved the goalposts? I specifically said:

[QUOTE=intention]
PPS - For those who will predictably respond that some on the list are e.g. geologists, please note that the IPCC’s scientist list contains geologists as well. Why? Because climate science is one of the broadest scientific disciplines known. It involves physics, chemistry, biology, meteorology, solar science, geology, oceanography, cosmology, glaciology, computer science, statistics, economics, cryology, astronomy, and other disciplines as well. If you have complaints about that, tell the IPCC.
[/QUOTE]

If you think that Dr. Joanne Simpson, “the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called ‘among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years’” is unqualified because she is a meteorologist, email her and tell her so. Let me know how that goes, 'kay?

How many IPCC scientists would make your list? Gavin Schmidt is not a climate scientist, he’s a computer modeler with a PhD in applied mathematics. Michael Mann of hockeystick fame has a PhD in geology, the field you love to hate, so he’s out. Rasmus Benestad has a PhD in physics, so he’s out. Caspar Amman has a PhD in geosciences, sorry, no good. Raymond Bradley has a PhD in geosciences. Who are they? They run, and are the main contributors and authors, at the RealClimate blog, so by your inane criteria their opinions are worth nothing. Not a climate scientist in the lot.

Do you see how stupid your criteria are? By your criteria, RealClimate doesn’t have a single climate scientist among the main men, so we can safely ignore their opinion.

William Connelley who is the climate nazi at Wikipedia has a PhD in numerical analysis, he’s out. Lonnie Thompson of ice core fame (famous for alarm and not archiving his data) is another hated geologist. Malcolm Hughes, who wrote the hockeystick paper with Mann and Bradley, has a PhD in Ecology. Finally, James Hansen has a PhD in physics … not a climate scientist among them, by your standards.

So tell me, Lobohan, which climate scientists are you talking about, since by your criteria James Hansen is not a climate scientist?

149

“Climate nazi”? Oh, dear. Come to think of it, “alarmist” isn’t so bad, really…

150

Yeah, you’re 100% right, that was out of line. He should be called the “Climate Censor”.

151

More on the “consensus” of the IPCC:

152

I’m talking about scientist that work on climate issues. Not weathermen. Not particle physicists. Not geologists that hunt oil or do work assessing land for construction.

Climate scientists. Scientists who work on climate research. Many disciplines. Your list is a joke and your credibility is utterly spent. Sticking by Inhofe’s list is laughable. And what about my thousands of IPCC people?

You are beveling in a conspiracy theory. Sorry.

153

As for Dr. Joanne Simpson:

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:0gv4Qg0lqSoJ:faculty.gordon.edu/ns/by/dorothy_boorse/documents/Globalclimateminorityreport.doc+Dr.+Joanne+Simpson+misquoted&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

154

With all due respects to both sides of the, “My scientists are better than your scientists” debate, you’re all engaging in pretty unscientific argumentation.

Science isn’t a popularity contest. There are plenty examples from the history of science where the overwhelming majority of scientists happened to be wrong. This especially happens when a new theory comes along which challenges a widely held orthodoxy.

The science should stand on its own. And here’s where the problem comes in - the reason you can find so many eminent scientists on both sides of the question is that the science in this case is not clear cut. I think all climatologists and earth science types would admit that our understanding of climate and of the earth’s long-term response to changes in climate are incomplete. There’s no experiment we can run which will categorically tell us whether the earth will be a certain temperature 50 years from now, even within very wide margins of error. We don’t have two Earths, so we can’t run controlled experiments. All we can do is mine historical data and try to piece together cause and effect, and build models which we hope will predict future events.

In a way, it’s a lot like the study of history. We have evidence that the rise of philosophy X caused result Y. We can speculate what might have happened in Hitler had been killed in WWI, or if Napolean had decided Moscow was too cold for his liking and had stayed home. But in the end, human events are chaotic and unpredictable, and lessons from the past are filled with many confounding variables and factors that no longer exist, so extrapolating them into the future is dicey.

And yet, that doesn’t stop us from drawing certain reasonable conclusions, such as believing that Hitlers are generally bad for the planet and human freedom is generally a productive force. But there’s enough wiggle room that you can still find people on all sides of every political debate.

I don’t mean to downplay the actual science involved in climate study - I believe there’s plenty of it, and that it points to a future that will likely be warmer with man’s CO2 emissions than it would be without them. It’s just that there’s enough wiggle room in the data and the models, and enough confounding variables and randomness in climate change, that there’s room for equally good scientists to still disagree about what’s going on.

My personal position is that yes, there is clearly a greenhouse mechanism for C02, and all else being equal, a planet with more CO2 in the atmosphere will be hotter than one with less CO2. From that standpoint, man-made global warming is occurring.

The question is whether all else is equal. If we had two identical earths, and we pumped a few trillion kg of CO2 into one of them, what would happen over the next 50 years? Would we still have two identical earths, except one is hotter than the other? Or would the injection of CO2 kick of changes that would bring back an equilibrium? Maybe they’d be identical again, except one would have more C02 locked up in the ocean floor from increased algae blooms and sequestration. Or perhaps the earth with more CO2 would go through a cycle of increased vegetation growth, which would over time wind up sequestered as fossil fuel. Maybe it would take a million years to sequester the CO2, or maybe it would be done in 20.

I think these are where the big unknowns are. What’s the earth’s response going to be to the increased CO2? What feedback mechanisms does the Earth employ, and how long do they take?

In my opinion, the farther you get from the basic science of CO2 causing warming, the shakier the science gets. There’s an awful lot about long-term climate that’s still a mystery, with major new discoveries being made all the time.

155

Quite so, Lobohan.

Heh, even I figured out a long time ago that deniers are depending on conspiracy sites for their talking points.

156

:rolleyes:

Thats is the point where you lost me, check the cites, one side has almost all the eminent scientists on their side, the other side…

Heck, deniers even have to misquote or ignore that many of the eminent scientists that they consider to be on their side, are complaining that they are appearing in the “denier” lists; many of those researchers have mentioned that they have requested to be taken out from those denier lists.

157

There aren’t eminent climate scientists on the anti global warming side. That’s what the discussion is about.

Might I suggest you get some advanced degree that lets you work in the field of climate science and get some peer-reviewed work published and then maybe your opinion will carry a bit more weight?

158

No argument here. But when people refuse to argue the science, and instead just seem interested in justifying their own contrarian views on climate change by nitpicking their opponents’ lifestyle choices or waving around lists of “scientific authorities” including economists, creationists, and TV weatherpeople, the science inevitably drifts to the back burner.

And the real kicker: What should we do while we’re figuring these things out?

The majority of climate scientists seem to agree on a basic “precautionary principle” approach: namely, that the predicted problems are almost certainly real and most likely significant, and therefore we should take some fairly major action to slow/reduce GHG emissions, to be on the safe side. This attitude seems to be growing in popularity and influence, and a number of people are not at all happy about that.

159

If you bevel a conspiracy theory, is it still edgy?

160

Oh, a wiseguy huh? [/curly]