# Global Warming Facts? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 2, 2007, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236 "2007-10-02T06:10:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/21 "2007-10-03T22:08:44Z")
[QUOTE=Kimstu] But you’re quite right that Galileo’s views on heliocentrism were not a “fringe” or tiny-minority viewpoint among those of his contemporaries that we’d now call “scientists”. Most professional astronomical researchers of Galileo’s day either subscribed to the heliocentric hypothesis themselves, or at least took it very seriously as a possibly valid theory. [/quote] Could you give me some cites for that? I’d be curious to see how people felt about heliocentrism back then. > [@](#): > > Galileo definitely does not qualify as a lone “skeptic” being suppressed by an entrenched scientific establishment. Do you think that such situations have ever arisen? ---
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/22 "2007-10-03T22:51:02Z")
[QUOTE=sqweels] No, because he was the only scientist worthy of the name at the time. [/QUOTE] He _was_ THE true Scotsman. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/23 "2007-10-03T22:52:51Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Could you give me some cites for that? I’d be curious to see how people felt about heliocentrism back then. [/QUOTE] The actual point of my comment was that the number of folks who subscribe to a theory does not in and of itself mean that the theory is valid or invalid. That’s all. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/24 "2007-10-03T23:00:04Z")
> [@brazil84](#): > > > [@Kimstu](#): > > > > But you’re quite right that Galileo’s views on heliocentrism were not a “fringe” or tiny-minority viewpoint among those of his contemporaries that we’d now call “scientists”. Most professional astronomical researchers of Galileo’s day either subscribed to the heliocentric hypothesis themselves, or at least took it very seriously as a possibly valid theory. > > Could you give me some cites for that? I’d be curious to see how people felt about heliocentrism back then. Sure. You’ll have to excuse my quoting a printed rather than online source; as a historian of pre-modern science, I’m more familiar with what’s in my own library than with what’s available and trustworthy on the web when it comes to this field. From _The Copernican Revolution_ by Thomas S. Kuhn (best known for his seminal work _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_, Harvard University Press, 1957: > [@](#): > > [p. 209] [Tycho] Brahe’s work indicates that after [the publication of Copernicus’ work in] 1543 even the opponents of Copernicanism, at least the ablest and most honest ones, could scarcely help promoting major reforms in astronomy and cosmology. Whether or not they agreed with Copernicus, he had changed their field. […] > > [p. 220] Coming when it did, Galileo’s astronomical work contributed primarily to a mopping-up operation, conducted after the victory was clearly in sight. […] > > [p. 224] After 1609 the main psychological force of the Ptolemaic system was its conservatism. […] It was very nearly as easy to make the full transition to Copernicanism as to adjust to the requisite new version of Ptolemy, and many of those who took the observations seriously did make the full transition. These new converts may also have been impelled by another consideration: the Copernicans, or at least the cosmologically more radical ones, had anticipated the sort of universe that the telescope was disclosing. > [@brazil84](#): > > > [@Kimstu](#): > > > > Galileo definitely does not qualify as a lone “skeptic” being suppressed by an entrenched scientific establishment. > > Do you think that such situations have ever arisen? Sure, but AFAICT, at least in modern science they have tended to be a pretty unstable equilibrium. The “entrenched scientific establishment”, though it certainly exists and certainly does sometimes resist valid new ideas, is nonetheless very permeable to them, and usually can’t keep them out (even if it tries to) for more than a few years at most. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of an example within about the last century where a substantial or overwhelming majority of world-wide practitioners of a particular scientific discipline agreed in provisionally adopting and substantially developing an invalid or unjustified hypothesis while professionally repressing skeptics who criticized it, and kept following this false trail for as long as twenty years or more. That is pretty much what the climate skeptics are claiming that mainstream climate science researchers have been doing. I think such a situation would really be quite exceptional in modern science, and I would need to see some pretty conclusive evidence to believe that those claims are correct. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/25 "2007-10-03T23:00:18Z")
[QUOTE=PatriotX] The actual point of my comment was that the number of folks who subscribe to a theory does not in and of itself mean that the theory is valid or invalid. That’s all. [/QUOTE] I understand, but it would be interesting to know if situations have arisen in the past where the scientific consensus (whatever that means) was dead wrong. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/26 "2007-10-03T23:16:41Z")
[QUOTE=Kimstu] Sure. You’ll have to excuse my quoting a printed rather than online source; as a historian of pre-modern science, I’m more familiar with what’s in my own library than with what’s available and trustworthy on the web when it comes to this field. [/quote] Thank you. > [@](#): > > Sure, but AFAICT, at least in modern science they have tended to be a pretty unstable equilibrium. The “entrenched scientific establishment”, though it certainly exists and certainly does sometimes resist valid new ideas, is nonetheless very permeable to them, and usually can’t keep them out (even if it tries to) for more than a few years at most. Here’s a quote from Michael Crichton. While I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s exaggerating, he does make it seem as though the consensus can be wrong for quite a while: > [@](#): > > In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth . One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compelling evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent “skeptics” around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women. Would you care to comment on his point? > [@](#): > > That is pretty much what the climate skeptics are claiming that mainstream climate science researchers have been doing. In your opinion, when was the first year in which there was a conensus that AGW is real? ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/27 "2007-10-04T00:49:14Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Would you care to comment on his point? [/QUOTE] Crichton is abusing the word “consensus”. One can argue quite a bit about why Semmelweis (to use the correct spelling) failed to convince people about his ideas. Thus in _The Doctors’ Plague_ (Norton, 2003), Sherwin Nuland argues in some detail that the failure was largely Semmelweis’s fault: he misplayed the personal politics, his point didn’t seem either particularly original or clear, he was tardy in publishing his data, etc. It’s also not the case that Semmelweis found no allies - contrary to the usual myth, there was a significant minority of doctors, particularly in his immediate circle in Vienna, who were at least somewhat sympathetic to his suggestions. However, the more fundamental point is there’s a difference between pretty much everybody rejecting one person’s ideas and that situation usefully being described as a “consensus” in the positive sense of the word. Why? _Other than the, in practice, largely incidental property of disagreeing with Semmelweis, the purported “consensus” had virtually nothing in common_. They didn’t have a prevailing shared hypothesis about why puerperal fever occured. In other words, they disagreed as much amongst themselves as they did with Semmelweis. Semmelweis wasn’t attacking a consensus. He was failing to convince a whole range of doctors who all had largely idiosyncratic - though undoubtedly often conservative and, in hindsight, wrong - reasons for believing differently. ---
**Author:** ![Otara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a88e4f/32.png) [@Otara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otara)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/28 "2007-10-04T00:49:19Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Thank you. Would you care to comment on his point? QUOTE] I dont quite understand his point. There have been times when the consensus has been wrong for centuries obviously, in that we learn new things, that correct previous positions, and sometimes minority positions dont gain sway for quite some time, even when correct. Is he saying we should ignore the consensus then? And if so what would we replace that with? Noones arguing peer review is a perfect process, simply that a better one hasnt really been developed yet. Focussing on the times its been wrong kind of ignores the many other times when its been correct. Otara ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/29 "2007-10-04T01:08:07Z")
[QUOTE=bonzer] Semmelweis wasn’t attacking a consensus. He was failing to convince a whole range of doctors who all had largely idiosyncratic - though undoubtedly often conservative and, in hindsight, wrong - reasons for believing differently. [/QUOTE] Here’s what it says in the Wikipedia article on Semmelweis: > [@](#): > > His observations went against the current scientific opinion of the time, which blamed diseases (among other quite odd causes) on an imbalance of the basic “four humours” in the body, a theory known as dyscrasia. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/30 "2007-10-04T01:09:17Z")
[QUOTE=Otara] Is he saying we should ignore the consensus then? And if so what would we replace that with? [/quote] I imagine he would say that we should look at the actual science. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/31 "2007-10-04T01:31:34Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Here’s what it says in the Wikipedia article on Semmelweis: [/QUOTE] While I can readily believe that it still cropped up in the quack medicine - Roy Porter mentions a couple of 18th century English examples in his excellent _Quacks_ (1989; Tempus, 2003) - and popular culture of the day, I’m seriously not convinced that any major European medical school was exclusively, or even seriously, teaching humoral theory in the 1840s. Its influence arguably still lingered, but that’s not the same. Unless you can come up with a better cite, chalk that up as an example of Wikipedia sometimes being shite. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/32 "2007-10-04T01:46:06Z")
[QUOTE=human\_extinction] 1. There is a lag between the graph of increasing temperature and the graph of increasing CO2 - that is: CO2 is a consequence of heat and not the other way around. [/quote] As **Blake** and **intention** have pointed out, we actually know that it goes both ways. It is true that our current “experiment” is different from the previous ones in that in this one we are increasing the CO2 levels rapidly by ourselves. During the previous times, it is understood that orbital oscillations (see [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles)) are the triggers for warming and cooling periods and that the CO2 levels then change presumably due to release or absorption of CO2 from the oceans (and possibly some land sources and sinks too). [And, note that the time scale over which this happens is much more slowly than the rate at which we are increasing CO2 today. In fact, the lag time of ~800 years corresponds to roughly a time it takes to mix deep ocean waters up to the surface.] However, it is also known that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that causes a radiative forcing of about 3.7 W/m^2 for each doubling of CO2 levels. The best estimates are that CO2 accounts for something like 1/3 of the warming during an glacial-interglacial cycle. Note that we can, [as James Hansen has done](http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh2.html), estimate all the known major contributions to radiative forcing going from the ice age to interglacial and compare that to the temperature rise and thus get an estimate of the climate sensitivity…that is, how much warming occurs due to a given radiative forcing. This estimate gives about 3 C of warming for a doubling of CO2, in agreement with estimates from climate models. (Admittedly, there are decent-sized error bars on both estimates…but in order to, say, cut this estimate in half, it would be necessary to revise down the estimate of the warming out of an ice age or revise up the estimate of the forcings such that the ratio of the two decreased by a factor of 2, which seems pretty unlikely.) > [@](#): > > 1. The guy who originally measured C02 increase on a Hawaii island (near a volcano - sorry I forgot his name) never cleaned the sensors so the data showed a slow build-up of CO2. If your professor believes this then frankly he is just whacked. The measurements of CO2 levels are now made [at several stations around the world](http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/tseries.php?type=mr). (And, the ice cores provide records going back further in time.) There is no doubt whatsoever that we are causing (almost all of) the current rise in CO2 levels! > [@](#): > > 1. The hockey stick graph of increasing CO2 and temperatures looks like it will top out if the graph is made proportional (not crushed horizontally). I’m not sure what this means. What is true is that it is not correct to simply superimpose the graphs of CO2 and temperature going back through the last several ice age - interglacial cycles in order to predict what temperature a certain CO2 level will correspond to. This is because, as I noted, CO2 was responsible for only part of the warming from the ice age to the interglacials. Also, temperature depends approximately logarithmically on CO2 level, not linearly. > [@](#): > > 1. This is a natural heating period which is “likely” followed by a consequential cooling. (The global climate “tipping point” is one that will lead to cooling rather than more heat.) Well, I don’t really know how to respond to this claim except to say that it seems rather unlikely in light of the strong evidence that the current warming (since the middle of the twentieth century) is not natural. > [@](#): > > 1. The melting glaciers will bring the inter-oceanic conveyor belt to a halt thus drastically cooling the planet. (Other cooling theories like: current global warming -\> creation of condensation (at poles) -\> snowfall -\> glaciers reform.) First of all, the idea that the inter-oceanic conveyer belt is likely to halt at least over the next century is now considered to be quite unlikely although it may slow down somewhat. Second of all, this would not drastically cool the planet as a whole. It would only cool certain areas and the current thinking is that it would not cool them as much as was once thought. > [@](#): > > I’m mostly interested in information that will somewhat definitively show whether the recent heating (~100years) is anthropogenic (human induced), or natural. Unfortunately, although many non-scientists want to see a definitive “smoking gun”, the fact is that science seldom works this way. What we have is a wide array of evidence that points to it being anthropogenic (which you can read by delving into the full IPCC reports) and little or no evidence that it is natural (despite the fact that there are powerful interests who would like to show that it is natural). This is why not only has the IPCC concluded that AGW is real, but this conclusion has been supported by a variety of other important scientific organizations. For example, see this recent statement by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the analogous bodies in 10 other major countries. The NAS is specifically chartered to advise the U.S. government on scientific issues that have policy implications. You can find similar statements by the councils of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union. Furthermore, even many of those who have a strong motivation to fight the AGW hypothesis have given up in the face of the growing scientific evidence. For example, companies such as [BP](http://www.bp.com/subsection.do?categoryId=9015577&contentId=7031715) and Ford were once part of the Global Climate Coalition, an industry group whose purpose was to raise doubts about the science of AGW. Now that group has fallen apart and companies like BP, Shell, and Ford have accepted the basic science of AGW. And, even many power companies in the U.S. have started to call for the government to set caps on CO2 emissions. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/33 "2007-10-04T01:57:40Z")
[QUOTE=Blake] Not really. OTOH the “Hockey stick” has been seriously [calle dinto question by the latest science](http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html). [/quote] First of all, your link is hardly an unbiased credible source. If you want to look at a balanced discussion of the “hockey stick”, see the [NAS report on temperature reconstructions](http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676). (Note that you can read the whole thing online.) > [@](#): > > See previous threads or wait for **Intention** to show up. Amongst other thinsg the IPCC accepted the Mann hockey stick without quesioing its validity. Once again the supporters will say that this is just a single error that doesn’t change the overall result. The skeptics will say that if the process allows these sorts of errors ot creep in so regularly (and these are just the ones we are able to catch) it simply isn’t trustworthy. On the basis of the “hockey stick”, the IPCC in its third assessment report made two statements about temperatures, one regarding the temperature in the last 20th century being the highest in a millenium and another regarding the rate of rise in temperature over the 20th century being the highest of any century over this period. Both of these statements were categorized as “likely”, which in IPCC lingo means they are estimated to have a greater than 66% probability of being correct (but less than 90%, which would qualify them for the category “very likely”). Neither of these statements has been shown to be wrong and, in fact, one of the two has been re-affirmed as likely in the IPCC’s most recent (fourth) assessment. I hardly think that qualifies as any major sort of error. In fact, if all of the IPCC’s statements that they rank as “likely” turn out to be correct then they could be accused of vastly overestimating uncertainties! > [@](#): > > Change the assumptions and you can get totally opposing answers from equally valid science. Cite? ---
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/34 "2007-10-04T02:18:04Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] I understand, but it would be interesting to know if situations have arisen in the past where the scientific consensus (whatever that means) was dead wrong. [/QUOTE] The ether maybe? ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/35 "2007-10-04T02:22:44Z")
Thanks for your posts, **intention** , as you well know by now, I have a different view that I will elaborate on in response to your post. [QUOTE=intention] My own feeling is that at this point, we should confine ourselves to two groups of actions: “No-regrets” actions, and cleaning up the science. We simply do not have enough information to do anything else. No-regrets actions are those which are of value whether or not warming is a problem. The “Three-R’s” are first, which are reduce, re-use, and recycle. Can’t go wrong with that. [/quote] The problem with such a “no regrets” approach is it really should be called the “no regrets for ExxonMobil and Western Fuels Association” approach since it is really based on looking at only actions that even they wouldn’t oppose (and doesn’t commit to actions that even many other fossil fuel and power companies now support!!). In fact, it is an approach that will lead to major regrets unless the vast majority of the scientific community turns out to be wrong. In other words, it is betting the farm on a long-shot. That is why the National Academy of Sciences and the other academies in their joint statement say: > [@](#): > > The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions. > > Action taken now to reduce significantly the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will lessen the magnitude and rate of climate change. As the United > Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) recognises, a lack of full scientific certainty about some aspects of climate change is not a reason for delaying an immediate response that will, at a reasonable cost, prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. In fact, most scientists, far from thinking that the remaining uncertainties justify inaction, would argue that they more strongly justify action. We are essentially performing an uncontrolled experiment on the only planet we have and, while there are still some significant uncertainties about what all the consequences will be, we do know enough to know that the perturbation we are making is significant and we are perturbing a climate system that the paleoclimate record has shown is “an angry beast” (to borrow a phrase). > [@intention](#): > > As just one of a host of examples, we don’t even know how much the surface data says the planet has warmed. The trends of the two main surface temperature datasets (GISS and HadCRUT3) are statistically significantly different (p\<0.05). This is surprising, since they are based on the same global network of temperature stations. Which one is right? Well, we don’t know. The fact is that, while they may be statistically different (which is not at all surprising given the real issues the **intention** himself pointed out regarding data quality and how you assimilate it), they are in good agreement on the basic trends. I.e., it is a difference that really doesn’t amount to more than a hill of beans. And, unfortunately, this is a strategy of the “skeptic” crowd to make such mountains out of molehills because the product they are selling is uncertainty, just as the tobacco industry was a few decades ago. (There are in fact at least a few folks active in the skepticism on climate change who were active with the tobacco industry previous to this.) What most people don’t realize is that in science there is never absolute certainty. In fact, [here](http://www.amazon.com/Uncertain-Science-World/dp/0521619106/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-4775981-0832857?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191463861&sr=8-1) is a good book on the subject that helps to explode the myths around science that allow those who oppose scientific conclusions in a certain field to make it seem like the science in this field is somehow different…and more uncertain…than the rest of science. > [@](#): > > PS - even the supporters of Kyoto admit that, in the unlikely event that the people who signed on to it fulfilled their quotas, it would only make a difference of 0.06° - 0.1° in fifty years. This is too small to even measure. Capping CO2 is a destructive fantasy designed to let people feel good, and to enrich Al Gore’s company. It will make no difference. If CO2 is a problem, which is an open question, CO2 caps and taxes are not the answer. How can a treaty that regulates emissions over a 5 year period (2008-2012) make a significant difference by itself? After all, even if we stopped emitting CO2 completely for 5 years and then went back to our previous ways, we would just delay the warming by about 5 years. This is a straw man. The purpose of Kyoto or other cap-and-trade or carbon tax approaches is to set us on a new path and to put a cost on using our atmosphere as a free dumping ground for CO2. Once you put a cost on something, market forces will push the necessary technological innovations that have to occur. The thing about markets is that they are really shitty at solving problems that are hidden from them and, without a direct cost associated with emitting CO2 into the atmosphere, the problem is hidden from the market. The fact is that we are going to have to eventually invest in the innovations to get beyond fossil fuels simply because they are a finite resource. The only question is whether we do this before we cause significant damage to our environment or after. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/36 "2007-10-04T02:28:45Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] I imagine he would say that we should look at the actual science. [/QUOTE] Who should look at the actual science? Are **you** qualified to evaluate it? The people who are qualified to evaluate it and have come to the same conclusion, you dismiss as somehow being biased, no matter how well-qualified and reputable. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/37 "2007-10-04T02:41:35Z")
> [@brazil84](#): > > Would you care to comment on his point? I’m a little bit puzzled by it, because he seems to be contradicting himself. He speaks of “the consensus”, but then asserts: > [@Michael Crichton](#): > > There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Which seems to imply that there **wasn’t** in fact a “consensus” opinion on the issue. (I’m also a little puzzled by Crichton’s apparent conflation of doctors and scientists. While doctors often do important work in the cause of science, I think there’s no question that the vast majority of practicing doctors are not scientific researchers, nor were they back in the 19th century. So I’m not sure we can use the history of medical practice to draw reliable conclusions about the phenomenon of “consensus” among scientific researchers.) Either way, however, it doesn’t affect the point I was making. Certainly there have been mistaken scientific views in the past, and certainly at some points in the past mistaken scientific views have been dominant, or even (almost) unanimous, even among professional groups more or less corresponding to what we now call “scientists”. But what I was saying is that I can think of of no instance **within about the past century** in which \*\* a substantial or overwhelming majority of the world’s practitioners of a particular scientific discipline\*\* joined ranks to support an unjustified hypothesis and **successfully repressed legitimate scientific criticism** for a period of **more than twenty years**. That is, we’re not just talking about a scientific position possibly being wrong here. Sure, the AGW hypothesis could possibly be wrong, just as any other scientific hypothesis possibly could. But many AGW skeptics seem to be claiming much more than that. They appear to be claiming that the AGW hypothesis is not only possibly wrong, but that it’s somehow illegitimate as a consensus opinion. They seem to think that the AGW hypothesis has survived and flourished primarily because of scientific fraud, dishonesty, lack of transparency, and institutional and professional repression of opposing views. And that seems to me like a pretty extraordinary claim. After all, the AGW hypothesis has gained ground to a huge extent over the past two or three decades, attaining increasing levels of scientific support and credibility over a wide range of scientific disciplines. Sure, it might still be wrong—that’s always possible with any scientific theory—but it still appears to be by far the best and most productive hypothesis that we’ve got on this issue. But many skeptics seem to be arguing that the AGW hypothesis is not just wrong but actually bad science, irresponsible science that never deserved to become the mainstream position. In other words, they are alleging a massive institutional and procedural breakdown of global scientific practice that AFAICT is absolutely unprecedented over at least the past century. The level and extent of bias, dishonesty, fraud, self-interest, institutional corruption, and just plain bad faith that they have to postulate among thousands of members of the research community all over the world in order to explain this is simply too immense to be plausible, IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/38 "2007-10-04T10:44:34Z")
[QUOTE=jshore] Who should look at the actual science? Are **you** qualified to evaluate it? [/quote] Absolutely. Who do you think is qualified to evaluate the actual science? ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/39 "2007-10-04T10:47:48Z")
[QUOTE=Kimstu] The level and extent of bias, dishonesty, fraud, self-interest, institutional corruption, and just plain bad faith that they have to postulate among thousands of members of the research community all over the world in order to explain this is simply too immense to be plausible, IMHO. [/QUOTE] I’m not sure I agree, but before we get into it, please answer my earlier question: In your opinion, when was the first year in which there was a conensus that AGW is real? ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2007, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236/40 "2007-10-04T15:44:23Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Absolutely. Who do you think is qualified to evaluate the actual science? [/QUOTE] The scientists in the field. It is interesting that you feel more qualified than I do to evaluate something that you seem to know much less about. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-facts/421236.md?page=3)