Here is the reason.
And I could be the King of France. So what? Your claim was that ice that has been frozen for 4000+ years is now melting. Not that it might melt in the future.
There’s never been the slightest thaw in Greenland for 100,000 years? Please give me a cite for this extraordinary claim.
I don’t think that the more extreme projections have been published in any scientific journals. I am in no way saying that there is no hyperbole in the public discourse. All I am saying is that the scientific consensus supports the theory. Nature won’t publish “ZOMG!!11! We’re doomed!” type articles. Non-peer reviewed publications sensationalize, scientific publications rationalize.
That is what my wife finds unrealistic about Star Trek. When they discover a new lifeform Bones and Spock aren’t cutting each others throats over who gets to publish first. Shit, you can pwn your peers with a new snail, fercryinoutloud. Describing an all-energy being is a guaranteed Nobel.
People who don’t know any scientists think they are just cuddly nerds and don’t know them as the hypercompetitive creatures they are. Not that kids in the Climate Studies Department are as bad as the kids in Music, who make rugby players seem nice, but if one of them thought he could prove that people had nothing to do with global warming there is nothing that could stop him from that, including the mythical people who only promote AGW to sell books or to keep down the working man. Unfortunately for the deniers, and the young PhDs trying for tenure, all those studies crap out.
The plural of “anecdote” being, of course, “data”.
My wife is a microbiologist. My brother-in-law is a nuclear physicist. My sister is a biologist. *
Through them, I know that any scientist would give his eye teeth and a major bodily organ of your choice to be the guy who makes a major, paradigm-shifting discovery, even if it contradicts established theories. Of course, it’d have to provable, and repeatable.
*[SUB]And then there’s me. I can only imagine I’m a huge disappointment.[/SUB]
A scholar in the humanities is not a scientist. Not to denigrate their work, but you are well into apples and oranges territory if you are extrapolating from your spouse’s experience to to that of a scientist.
I’m not sure what your point is. Are you saying that the situation in the Humanities is some strange aberration?
Because you’d be wrong. The fact is that it’s quite common for people who go against the popular, dominant viewpoint or practice to suffer significant negative consequences.
Sure, once the dust has settled. But it can often take a long time for the established theory to be discarded. In the mean time, suppose you are a researcher who finds a small piece of evidence which undermines the dominant view.
For example, suppose you learn that the oceans have not been warming for the last 5 years.
What will you do?
:shrug: I’m talking about human nature here. Scientists are human beings.
By the way, I am not conceding that the CAGW hypothesis is “established” in the sense that scientists generally accept it. Instead, it has achieved a certain level of political correctness.
Do we have to refute the same garbage over and over again in every single thread? The internal variability in the climate from one year to the next is roughly the same magnitude as the trend in the warming over a 10 year period (i.e., on the order of 0.2 C). Hence, over periods shorter than about 10 years or so, you can see lots of ups and downs. See here…and see here how the same features are seen in runs of the climate models so to make any claim that this goes against the theory is complete and utter crap.
I’d publish in a reputable peer review journal so everyone could discuss the implications. Something I’m sure Josh Willis will do, since he seems to be a good scientist.
Sadly, science isn’t made with headlines, and pointing out a single headline to debunk a theory has been an approach I have seen by John Coleman. The article isn’t all roses and sunshine either.
And as mentioned, last I checked, NPR isn’t peer reviewed. I’d like to see supporting information, and maybe at least a reference to where this information was published. I doubt that Josh Willis at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory went directly to NPR with his story.
But if that article highlights anything, it is that there are many unexpected and novel consequences to the current situation that require further study and research. From what I have seen of John Coleman, that is not a position he has been advocating.
Are you saying that your wife would suppress data if it contradicted known theories?
If their results are unverifiable, sure. If the conclusions are inescapable, however…
Do you know how much fame there is for the researcher who can prove that the standard theory is wrong? For something big, like AGW, that researcher would be turning jobs down for the rest of his life. He wouldn’t be fired, he wouldn’t lose his tenure, he wouldn’t be censored. He’d be famous.
There’s no huge global warming conspiracy. There’s no secret cabal of climatologists sitting in big round chairs, stroking white cats while they plot the demise of the global economy. You might be thinking of a James Bond movie.
Assuming that the article is correct, the point is that evidence against a popular hypothesis doesn’t necessarily take the form of a blockbuster smoking gun which destroys the hypothesis. It’s just as possible that the evidence is small, ambiguous, and puts an incremental dent in the dominant hypothesis.
It’s hard to give a precise answer to that question, since she doesn’t deal with data per se. However, it’s fair to say that she must always be careful to spin things so that her public statements and scholarship do not contradict the accepted PC dogma.
As a practical matter, there is a huge continuum between “unverifiable” and “inescapable.”
Of course not. Nor is there a secret cabal of religious leaders plotting to fool the world about heaven and hell.
Let’s not pretend that social pressure doesn’t drive social views and publications.
Who among us in the 35-45 age range can’t claim that they were taught that the new wave of women’s liberation would lead to things like all-women paving teams and such?
I declare emphatically that this is exactly what I was taught in public school. I actually became scared to use the word “woman” in many contexts, as it would betray my sexist agenda toward dividing the genders.
This now lives in the “Weird Things We Used to Belive” file, along with many social trends and fads.
What I want is a reason to compare the current conditions to any particular historical set of data. Really. I teach AP Environmental Studies (badly), and I want someone to tell my why I can’t compare our current conditions to the Ice Age and then claim that basically all of human history has taken place in a situation of Global Warming TM R C.
There is no comparison; as I pointed out, ice is melting more than it ever has in recorded history. The permafrost is melting, the Arctic ice cap is melting; we are looking at a scenario never seen by humans before.
And far from history all taking place in a “situation of Global Warming”, it’s taken place in a situation of global cooling. We are ( or were ) in an interglacial period of an Ice Age; an unusually cool period, not a warm one.
Please point to a recent thaw and show me evidence that it is unprecedented.
I’m still waiting for a cite re: Greenland.
If she were to find evidence that Shakespeare didn’t actually write A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she’d have to hide that evidence so as not to contradict “accepted PC dogma”?
Man, your wife’s job sucks.
Agreed. Just as there is a huge continuum between “not enough proof” and “humans can’t possibly cause global warming”.
So you’re equating the scientific method with religion? Well, there’s your problem right there.
No.
No.
Then how exactly is your wife being gagged by PC academic politics? Give us an example. Is she, for instance, being prevented from doing research some might perceive as racist? Or sexist? Or homophobic? What exactly is your wife prevented from researching through fear?