You quoted puddleglum using the term “global warming” half-a-dozen times, and then replied by – repeatedly using the term “climate change”. Which brings me to this:
But puddleglum isn’t “saying there is no climate change” – sure as no “climate change” lie would be exposed if the climate changes, regardless of whether the globe warms. You’re talking past each other.
I am not claiming that this has been done in climate science but that it is possible to happen because the OP claimed that consensus about wrong conclusions is impossible. I know that it is possible because it has happened in psychology and economics which are the two fields I know most about.
The way paradigms are created is that the early research points one way and someone with a theory that explains it is elevated to a position of prestige. From that point on they then defend their theory against all comers because any attack on the theory is an attack on their prestige. The way science is supposed to work is that the paradigm only lasts as long as the supporting evidence, the way it actually works is that it lasts until the opposing evidence is so strong that it can no longer be denied. Coming up with a new paradigm is obviously a strong incentive for scientists but it takes someone who can stand up to the establishment and most of us are not mavericks.
There is lots of money in global warming promotion, AlGore’s huge mansion was not built with the money from his dad’s antique store. Enron was going to make huge amounts selling carbon offsets, Solyandra was goint to make huge amounts selling solar panels, “Sustainability” initiative spending is supposed to be 60 $ billion in two years. That might not be oil company money but it ain’t hay.
As for why climate scientist don’t pick a real problem like malaria to work on, I don’t think their skills are highly transferrable.
But this gets back to the point I was making about the whole thing being pre-planned. Al Gore didn’t set out to make up climate change in order that he would be able to use it to collect a Nobel Prize a couple decades later. Don’t let the tail wag the dog. Scientists didn’t report climate change in order for businessmen to sell products. Businessmen sell products in response to scientists reporting climate change. If the scientists had discovered something else, businessmen would have figured out economic opportunities from that discovery instead.
The article has “… slightly less likely …” Just change “slightly” to “much” and Rune’s claim is sensical. 
Such distortion reminds me of another recent SDMB debate: “Did FDR help or hinder recovery from the Great Depression?” A poll of academics found for “help” but with a little data massaging (discard historians as left-leaning, and lump neutrals with “hinder”) a right-wing blog was able to reverse the poll’s meaning.
Was the part when FDR
the part that “helped?” or “hindered?”. I get a little mixed up on that from time to time.
Good thing those academics cleared it up for me. I suppose all those things “helped”, then.
puddleglum, I hear what you are saying but it does not explain groups like the Defense Science Board, a purely military group of scientists that will not get financial gain by recognizing climate change. They, as far as I can see, have no dog in this fight, yet they still recognize climate change as a huge threat for United States National Security. Even Bush’s Director of National Intelligence recognized climate change and appreciated it security implications.
I can only conclude that you think these scientists and our intelligence services are inept; they are not smart enough to evaluate the data. Either this, or maybe they are too scared and morally bankrupt enough not to stand up the the academic crowd when they are reporting to their bosses at the pentagon. Is my conclusion correct?
I apologize if I hijacked the thread. I think reading “slightly” and pretending to see “much” is a prime example of how debates get confused. The FDR debate was relevant only as another example of that.
But, since Fighting Ignorance is always our goal:
Helped (though rationalists might find a less vituperative phrasing than yours). This has been discussed in recent threads, and is agreed by most economists outside the lunatic fringe.
From that link, their first recommendation is “developing a robust climate information system”: “Currently, no coherent, integrated climate information system capable of generating reliable, sustained, and actionable climate data and projections exists.” (Their remaining recommendations involve (a) water security, and (b) roles of the national security community, guidance and DOD organization, and combatant command roles.)
“There remain many uncertainties in basic climate process understanding that present barriers to specifying an optimal, sustained information system with confidence,” they write; I’m inclined to agree with them; they also mention that “the uncertainties about continued changes and populations’ abilities to adjust to those changes have led this report to a hedge strategy that recognizes the wide range of potential scenarios about the scope and rate of change. It focuses on climate related actions that will be beneficial to national and international security, regardless of the rate of climate change. This report places particularly strong emphasis on the need for programs and activities that provide better and more credible information to decision makers.”
I’m generally in favor of said Hedge Strategy and said Particular Emphasis, and – as they explicitly lack actionable climate data and projections – this is no exception.
This first sentence is enough to show the general cluelessness of this post. Do you think that referees work at journals? Do you think that referees profit from either giving a paper a good grade or a bad one? Are you accusing journal editors - from the beginning - of selectively picking reviewers or of throwing away bad reviews or good reviews? If so, I’d like to see some evidence. Otherwise, you sound like the creationists who cry about their bullshit papers not getting accepted.
Al Gore had his mansion before his movie. His father was a senator, remember, and fairly rich I think.
Even if there was no global warming, don’t you think there would be the same push for solar cells? The pitches I’ve heard were all about saving money versus fossil fuel, not primarily about reducing carbon emissions. Or are fuel prices a conspiracy of the environmentalists also?
Sorry, but the experiment and the test for this item does include several years before the 50’s and up to today, so we already have several decades showing the warming trend. Asking to wait for more years is indeed moving the goal posts as it was pointed out several times before to you.
You’re mistakenly describing the exact opposite of my position: I’m not asking to wait more years to confirm it, I’m saying we’d need to wait more years to falsify it. Moving the goalposts is your specialty, not mine.
I’ll let you explain it to yourself.
Pro tip: you are still trying to avoid the fact that it has already been tested, give it up.
I of course agree that it has already been tested. Don’t you agree that further testing may falsify it? You once offered a forward-looking test; you then moved the goalposts to a completely different forward-looking test; you then moved the goalposts to yet another forward-looking test; why the heck do you keep proposing those tests, if not because you and I agree that further testing may falsify it?
Wasn’t your latest proposed test that the temperature will rise by at least a tenth of a degree per decade? We’d need to wait more years to falsify that.
Useless pap as established on many previous discussions.
As mentioned already, that falsification is as probable as un-boiling an egg, in the end it is silly to wait longer to falsify it.
For those as curious as I was, the abstract purports that
In other words, the salient finding is that higher levels of scientific literacy appear to cement those opinions to which someone is already predisposed. Which makes a certain amount of sense; I suspect that laypersons who feel most strongly about climate change, one way or the other, are the ones with the most gumption toward autodidacticism.
Although the authors do find that climate change skeptics have slightly higher scientific literacy, it’s really very slight, at least if I’m reading the relevant table correctly. One standard deviation increase in literacy implies a 3 - 4% standard deviation reduction in the perceived risk of climate change, which isn’t significant at the 0.05 level in the richer models. And it wouldn’t necessarily mean that climate skeptics are smarter — it could merely be that those with the lowest literacy tend to freak out disproportionately.
In any case the effect is dwarfed by the socio-political variables.
That seems to include the recent example of 2 scientists that resigned in a huff because their organization of physicists came with a very certain official position that humans are changing the climate, I can say that many other scientists already explained why their huffiness was uncalled for (they were not experts on sciences applied to the issue also) and therefore one can see what the problem is for the ones that are smart but ignore the evidence.
They **should **know better.
NM-wrong thread.
Just for the record, I was NOT comparing AGW skeptics to Einstein. I was actually going for a joke there, but it seems to have derailed the thread somewhat, so figured I’d come in to clarify my throw away line there.
[QUOTE=Stelios]
Einstein didn’t overturn Newtonian physics, he improved upon it. What the AGW skeptics are suggesting is that either (a) the earth is not warming, or (b) the earth is warming, but that carbon emissions have nothing to do with it. In either case they are arguing directly counter to the strong prevailing currents of established, peer-reviewed evidence. I find it difficult to understand how they could hold such a position without considering the bulk of evidence supporting AGW to be not just wrong, but fraudulent.
[/QUOTE]
At the time it was pretty radical stuff, and was definitely seen as a departure from the writ as handed down by Newton. Again, I’m not comparing his achievements to those of the AGW skeptics. All I’m saying there is that science works by constant re-evaluation and re-examination of theories. Constant testing. And that in the past, traditional theories have been overturned as new data comes to light or new experiments or theories are put forth and tested. Evolution might have been a better example, but then I couldn’t have used the Einstein joke.
Do I think that the current level of AGW skepticism is on par? Nope, not from what I’ve seen. But the basic premise of skeptics challenging theories is the basis of science and the scientific method, so overall it’s a GOOD thing to challenge theories like this, not to say ‘well, it’s good enough, guess we know it all now and don’t need to keep looking’. Science doesn’t work that way.
And in turn, I agree with you here as well. I’ll just say that not all ‘deniers’ are CT nutters who think that all of the scientists are in collaboration to do whatever the CT is supposed to be doing (take us back to living in caves or something I guess). The way science works you are always going to have some fringe folks who are real, honest to the gods scientist types who are challenging a widely accepted theory, not because they think there is a vast conspiracy but because they think they are right…or because there is a hell of a lot of prestige for the person who DOES come up with something new that eventually gets widely accepted. Or at least gets on The Discovery Channel quasi-science shows. 
Also, you have folks with vested interests (i.e. they are being paid by someone) to nitpick and even make stuff up to discount a theory as politically volatile as this one. A lot of ‘deniers’, IMHO, fall into this category. They are doing what vested interest ‘scientist’ types did about cigarettes…or even Evolution. Heck, they are still doing it in some of these cases.
And that’s fine. The truth will win out in the end, IMHO, and eventually the denier types will discredit themselves to all but the fringe. To a certain degree we are where the folks proposing Evolutionary theory were during the Scopes Monkey Trial.
Anyway, to all the rest who took exception to my Einstein reference, it was just an example…and one I chose for a specific reason. I DO think that it’s not a stretch that Einstein overturned the reigning Newtonian physics and put it on it’s head. That doesn’t mean that it completely invalidated Newtonian physics. And I don’t believe that the current AGW folks are in the same league. But I did think it was an amusing joke, so…
-XT
Skeptics are always saying that there has been no recent warming, which can’t be further from the truth. Just because 2011 was cooler than 1998 doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been any warming over that period:
Koch-Funded Study Finds Recent Warming “On the High End”
The 1998 meme is also largely based on the HADCRU dataset, which is well out of line with the others, showing the least warming not just in the past decade but over the whole record (FWIW, BEST also shows that the urban heat island effect and station errors are insignificant on a global scale). The fact that 2011 was the warmest La Nina year on record also shows that warming has continued regardless of yearly fluctuations.