I’m just wondering who the scientists (in a field that gives them some bearing on climate change) are who are still very skeptical of anthropogenic climate change?
Here’s a list, but according to most people on this board, all these PhD’s are idiots.
Open your mind. The debate is not over.
(Now watch how this post is attacked, not with facts, but with name calling!)
"100 Scientists’ letter to the United Nations on Global Warming
The following letter was sent to Ban Ki-moon,
Secretary-General of the United Nations on the UN Climate conference in Bali:
Dec. 13, 2007
Dear Mr. Secretary-General,
Re: UN climate conference taking the World in entirely the wrong direction
It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables. We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. While we understand the evidence that has led them to view CO2 emissions as harmful, the IPCC’s conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. On top of which, because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.
The IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers are the most widely read IPCC reports amongst politicians and non-scientists and are the basis for most climate change policy formulation. Yet these Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line by government representatives. The great majority of IPCC contributors and reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the preparation of these documents. The summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts.
Contrary to the impression left by the IPCC Summary reports:
*
Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.
*
The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.
*
Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today's computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.
In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is “settled,” significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But because IPCC working groups were generally instructed (see IPCC Working Group Schedule) to consider work published only through May, 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated.
The UN climate conference in Bali has been planned to take the world along a path of severe CO2 restrictions, ignoring the lessons apparent from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, the chaotic nature of the European CO2 trading market, and the ineffectiveness of other costly initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Balanced cost/benefit analyses provide no support for the introduction of global measures to cap and reduce energy consumption for the purpose of restricting CO2 emissions. Furthermore, it is irrational to apply the “precautionary principle” because many scientists recognize that both climatic coolings and warmings are realistic possibilities over the medium-term future.
The current UN focus on “fighting climate change,” as illustrated in the Nov. 27 UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report, is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity’s real and pressing problems.
Yours faithfully,
Don Aitkin, PhD, Professor, social scientist, retired vice-chancellor and president, University of Canberra, Australia
William J.R. Alexander, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Civil and Biosystems Engineering, University of Pretoria, South Africa; Member, UN Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, 1994-2000
Bjarne Andresen, PhD, physicist, Professor, The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Geoff L. Austin, PhD, FNZIP, FRSNZ, Professor, Dept. of Physics, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Timothy F. Ball, PhD, environmental consultant, former climatology professor, University of Winnipeg
Ernst-Georg Beck, Dipl. Biol., Biologist, Merian-Schule Freiburg, Germany
Sonja A. Boehmer-Christiansen, PhD, Reader, Dept. of Geography, Hull University, U.K.; Editor, Energy & Environment journal
Chris C. Borel, PhD, remote sensing scientist, U.S.
Reid A. Bryson, PhD, DSc, DEngr, UNE P. Global 500 Laureate; Senior Scientist, Center for Climatic Research; Emeritus Professor of Meteorology, of Geography, and of Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin
Dan Carruthers, M.Sc., wildlife biology consultant specializing in animal ecology in Arctic and Subarctic regions, Alberta
R.M. Carter, PhD, Professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia
Ian D. Clark, PhD, Professor, isotope hydrogeology and paleoclimatology, Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
Richard S. Courtney, PhD, climate and atmospheric science consultant, IPCC expert reviewer, U.K.
Willem de Lange, PhD, Dept. of Earth and Ocean Sciences, School of Science and Engineering, Waikato University, New Zealand
David Deming, PhD (Geophysics), Associate Professor, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Oklahoma
Freeman J. Dyson, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, N.J.
Don J. Easterbrook, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Geology, Western Washington University
Lance Endersbee, Emeritus Professor, former dean of Engineering and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Monasy University, Australia
Hans Erren, Doctorandus, geophysicist and climate specialist, Sittard, The Netherlands
Robert H. Essenhigh, PhD, E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conversion, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, The Ohio State University
Christopher Essex, PhD, Professor of Applied Mathematics and Associate Director of the Program in Theoretical Physics, University of Western Ontario
David Evans, PhD, mathematician, carbon accountant, computer and electrical engineer and head of ‘Science Speak,’ Australia
William Evans, PhD, editor, American Midland Naturalist; Dept. of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame
Stewart Franks, PhD, Professor, Hydroclimatologist, University of Newcastle, Australia
R. W. Gauldie, PhD, Research Professor, Hawai’i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, School of Ocean Earth Sciences and Technology, University of Hawai’i at Manoa
Lee C. Gerhard, PhD, Senior Scientist Emeritus, University of Kansas; former director and state geologist, Kansas Geological Survey
Gerhard Gerlich, Professor for Mathematical and Theoretical Physics, Institut für Mathematische Physik der TU Braunschweig, Germany
Albrecht Glatzle, PhD, sc.agr., Agro-Biologist and Gerente ejecutivo, INTTAS, Paraguay
Fred Goldberg, PhD, Adjunct Professor, Royal Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Stockholm, Sweden
Vincent Gray, PhD, expert reviewer for the IPCC and author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of ‘Climate Change 2001, Wellington, New Zealand
William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University and Head of the Tropical Meteorology Project
Howard Hayden, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Connecticut
Louis Hissink MSc, M.A.I.G., editor, AIG News, and consulting geologist, Perth, Western Australia
Craig D. Idso, PhD, Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Arizona
Sherwood B. Idso, PhD, President, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, AZ, USA
Andrei Illarionov, PhD, Senior Fellow, Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity; founder and director of the Institute of Economic Analysis
Zbigniew Jaworowski, PhD, physicist, Chairman - Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection, Warsaw, Poland
Jon Jenkins, PhD, MD, computer modelling - virology, NSW, Australia
Wibjorn Karlen, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden
Olavi Kärner, Ph.D., Research Associate, Dept. of Atmospheric Physics, Institute of Astrophysics and Atmospheric Physics, Toravere, Estonia
Joel M. Kauffman, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia
David Kear, PhD, FRSNZ, CMG, geologist, former Director-General of NZ Dept. of Scientific & Industrial Research, New Zealand
Madhav Khandekar, PhD, former research scientist, Environment Canada; editor, Climate Research (2003-05); editorial board member, Natural Hazards; IPCC expert reviewer 2007
William Kininmonth M.Sc., M.Admin., former head of Australia’s National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological organization’s Commission for Climatology Jan J.H. Kop, MSc Ceng FICE (Civil Engineer Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers), Emeritus Prof. of Public Health Engineering, Technical University Delft, The Netherlands
Prof. R.W.J. Kouffeld, Emeritus Professor, Energy Conversion, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Salomon Kroonenberg, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Geotechnology, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Hans H.J. Labohm, PhD, economist, former advisor to the executive board, Clingendael Institute (The Netherlands Institute of International Relations), The Netherlands
The Rt. Hon. Lord Lawson of Blaby, economist; Chairman of the Central Europe Trust; former Chancellor of the Exchequer, U.K.
Douglas Leahey, PhD, meteorologist and air-quality consultant, Calgary
David R. Legates, PhD, Director, Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware
Marcel Leroux, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Climatology, University of Lyon, France; former director of Laboratory of Climatology, Risks and Environment, CNRS
Bryan Leyland, International Climate Science Coalition, consultant and power engineer, Auckland, New Zealand
William Lindqvist, PhD, independent consulting geologist, Calif.
Richard S. Lindzen, PhD, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A.J. Tom van Loon, PhD, Professor of Geology (Quaternary Geology), Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland; former President of the European Association of Science Editors
Anthony R. Lupo, PhD, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Science, Dept. of Soil, Environmental, and Atmospheric Science, University of Missouri-Columbia
Richard Mackey, PhD, Statistician, Australia
Horst Malberg, PhD, Professor for Meteorology and Climatology, Institut für Meteorologie, Berlin, Germany
John Maunder, PhD, Climatologist, former President of the Commission for Climatology of the World Meteorological Organization (89-97), New Zealand
Alister McFarquhar, PhD, international economy, Downing College, Cambridge, U.K.
Ross McKitrick, PhD, Associate Professor, Dept. of Economics, University of Guelph
John McLean, PhD, climate data analyst, computer scientist, Australia
Owen McShane, PhD, economist, head of the International Climate Science Coalition; Director, Centre for Resource Management Studies, New Zealand
Fred Michel, PhD, Director, Institute of Environmental Sciences and Associate Professor of Earth Sciences, Carleton University
Frank Milne, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Economics, Queen’s University
Asmunn Moene, PhD, former head of the Forecasting Centre, Meteorological Institute, Norway
Alan Moran, PhD, Energy Economist, Director of the IPA’s Deregulation Unit, Australia
Nils-Axel Morner, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Stockholm University, Sweden
Lubos Motl, PhD, Physicist, former Harvard string theorist, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
John Nicol, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Physics, James Cook University, Australia
David Nowell, M.Sc., Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, former chairman of the NATO Meteorological Group, Ottawa
James J. O’Brien, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Meteorology and Oceanography, Florida State University
Cliff Ollier, PhD, Professor Emeritus (Geology), Research Fellow, University of Western Australia
Garth W. Paltridge, PhD, atmospheric physicist, Emeritus Professor and former Director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies, University of Tasmania, Australia
R. Timothy Patterson, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences (paleoclimatology), Carleton University
Al Pekarek, PhD, Associate Professor of Geology, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Dept., St. Cloud State University, Minnesota
Ian Plimer, PhD, Professor of Geology, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide and Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia
Brian Pratt, PhD, Professor of Geology, Sedimentology, University of Saskatchewan
Harry N.A. Priem, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Planetary Geology and Isotope Geophysics, Utrecht University; former director of the Netherlands Institute for Isotope Geosciences
Alex Robson, PhD, Economics, Australian National University Colonel F.P.M. Rombouts, Branch Chief - Safety, Quality and Environment, Royal Netherland Air Force
R.G. Roper, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology
Arthur Rorsch, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Molecular Genetics, Leiden University, The Netherlands
Rob Scagel, M.Sc., forest microclimate specialist, principal consultant, Pacific Phytometric Consultants, B.C.
Tom V. Segalstad, PhD, (Geology/Geochemistry), Head of the Geological Museum and Associate Professor of Resource and Environmental Geology, University of Oslo, Norway
Gary D. Sharp, PhD, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study, Salinas, CA
S. Fred Singer, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia and former director Weather Satellite Service
L. Graham Smith, PhD, Associate Professor, Dept. of Geography, University of Western Ontario
Roy W. Spencer, PhD, climatologist, Principal Research Scientist, Earth System Science Center, The University of Alabama, Huntsville
Peter Stilbs, TeknD, Professor of Physical Chemistry, Research Leader, School of Chemical Science and Engineering, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), Stockholm, Sweden
Hendrik Tennekes, PhD, former director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
Dick Thoenes, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Chemical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Brian G Valentine, PhD, PE (Chem.), Technology Manager - Industrial Energy Efficiency, Adjunct Associate Professor of Engineering Science, University of Maryland at College Park; Dept of Energy, Washington, DC
Gerrit J. van der Lingen, PhD, geologist and paleoclimatologist, climate change consultant, Geoscience Research and Investigations, New Zealand
Len Walker, PhD, Power Engineering, Australia
Edward J. Wegman, PhD, Department of Computational and Data Sciences, George Mason University, Virginia
Stephan Wilksch, PhD, Professor for Innovation and Technology Management, Production Management and Logistics, University of Technolgy and Economics Berlin, Germany
Boris Winterhalter, PhD, senior marine researcher (retired), Geological Survey of Finland, former professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, Finland
David E. Wojick, PhD, P.Eng., energy consultant, Virginia
Raphael Wust, PhD, Lecturer, Marine Geology/Sedimentology, James Cook University, Australia
A. Zichichi, PhD, President of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva, Switzerland; Emeritus Professor of Advanced Physics, University of Bologna, Italy"
The OP asked for people whose fields have some actual connection to studying climate. Why should anyone listen to an economist, a geographer, or a string theorist on this subject?
Also, from what was posted, it doesn’t seem to be explicitly saying that anthropogenic climate change isn’t happening. Mostly, it seems to say that attempting to change it is futile and damaging to the economy. I see that as a reasonable position.
I suppose there is always a first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_global_warming_consensus
More (or the same) people, with a bit more information about each one.
I will however note that something like 70-80% of climate-related scientists, when polled, stated that the IPCC was a decently accurate overview of the current understanding of things.
I’ll also note there are something like 150,000 climate scientists working in the US, and probably that number is at least doubled when you include Europe and Australia. Collecting 100 climate scientists from around the world isn’t a large feat. You really need a random poll of climate scientists to get an indication of where they stand on things.
The IPCC report does contain wide margins of error, and it specifically says where they’re really just making a shot in the dark best guess. And even if the science is accurate, the economic costs and the climactic costs are pretty questionable.
Charges of conspiracy, however, really don’t hold up when you’re looking at the number of people involved, and consider that most of them are gainfully employed and on any other day of the week are researching the effects of gnat burps on ocean currents, the climate during the dinosaur age, or any other possible climate issue that isn’t global warming, and they’re using the same equipment and methods to study those as they do to study global warming.
Cite.
Seriously, do have any evidence that >51% of these scientists are not in any way receiving income or research funding from doing climate change research?
But they couldn’t even do that. Most of the scientists in the post #2 are not working in climate-related fields, as specified by the OP. I count 15 that have “climat” in their qualifications.
Ian Plimer, Australian geologist. And I wouldn’t dismiss the views of an economist out of hand; reversing carbon levels, or just holding them steady, may literally not be worth the cost. A wrecked economy won’t fix anything, and the developing world has no concept of the “eco-guilt” that motivates middle-class Green types.
I’m not even remotely a scientist. I remember being lectured to by a housemate some years ago, an environmental activist with a background in engineering, that environmental scientists have a right and a duty to exaggerate and even outright lie to jolt the public into being more aware of environmental dangers. (The group that employed him as a canvasser eventually fired him for being too shrill.) So if I express some skepticism, please understand that I might be motivated by something other than willful ignorance.
I suppose we could listen to Al Gore. He is well qualified to tell us peons how to live with his BA in Government. This is his only educational degree yet we are supposed to listen to him about climate change?
Just think if we all lived in a home like Al Gore’s.
Al Gore isn’t on the IPCC list is he? As far as I know nobody has cited Al Gore as a scientificly credible source. He is a politician that supports the scientific view that AGW is a problem that we can solve, thats all.
Quoth Blake:
Who claimed that? Of course scientists expect to get paid for the work they do, just like anyone else.
Quoth Krokodil:
I might trust an economist on that question, but that’s not the question under discussion here. The question under discussion here is whether anthropogenic climate change is real, not what we should do about it.
Quoth Mangosteen:
I wasn’t aware that Al Gore was under discussion here, but you’re right, he’s not a climatologist, either. That’s why his message is to tell people to listen to the folks who actually are climatologists.
[Moderating]
This is GQ. Let’s not hijack this thread further. Your first post was unresponsive to the OP, in that a large majority of the scientists you listed had nothing to do with studying climate. Let’s not drag in politicians as well.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
A hundred and fifty thousand climate scientists in the US? Are you shitting me? That is almost unfathomable. When we’ve got stuff like cancer killing us, we’ve got 150,000 scientists working on the climate?
Good grief.
Sage Rat did when he said that there can be no conspiracy because the people involved would have ajob even if they didn’t take part in this. If there i no evidence for such a claim then it hardly belongs in GQ.
Yep, and if the work the do is researching AGW they get paid due to a perception by the funders that AGW is worth paying to have investigated. Which is diametrically opposite to what Sage Rat said.
Actually, the questions are who are the skeptics, and which ones are (by virtue of their education and profession) worth listening to?
~40% of atmospheric scientists are employed by the US government. (PDF) And so far as I can tell, those are regular employees, or at least this page makes zero mention of research grants. Based on this page, it looks like in general research funding generally equates to research done at universities, which means that the 41.3% employed by businesses are regular ol’ employees. 40% + 41.3% is more than 50%.
Similar data on environmental scientists here. Now this one does specifically say that consulting jobs, university work, and government workers “often” have to apply for research grants. Looking at the actual breakdown (PDF), consultants comprise 21% of the total, government 43%, and university work 6%. Let’s say that all university workers are grant workers, and that 50% of the others have to apply for grants as well, so that’s a total of 38% that need to be a bit choosy of their studies. Now, going back to the Wikipedia page on research funding, it says that in general, research funding seems to lead to about 15.5% of its scientists to feel the need to “modify” their output. Assuming that number to be doubled in the climate sciences, then we can assume that 31% of our 38% are modifying data. So that’s only 12% of the total. Now let’s go back and assume that 80% of government and consulting workers are bound to research grants or some form of equivalent, then we have 57% of all environmental scientists at risk. Again assuming a doubled rate of influence on output, then we’re still only looking at 18% of all scientists modifying their output.
Going through geoscientists, it looks like they’re also “frequently” required to apply for funding. The breakdown (PDF) shows that 25% of them are in the mining industry in non-research jobs, so we’ll discount them from our discussion. 16% are consultants, 5% are university workers, and 18% are government workers. Subtracting the 25% that are in the mining industry, those values increase to 21%, 7%, and 24%. Using our worst case scenario again, 80% of government and consultants are reliant on grants (36% of the total) and 100% of university workers are, for a total of 43%. And then 31% of those are modifying their output for a total of 13%.
I assume that this same general pattern will remain if you look at any other areas of study. On average, perhaps ~50% are receiving possibly toxic grants, but even at worst you’re only going to see something around 15% of all climate scientists who would be acting upon that influence. And of those ~50%, about half are going to be government workers, and the other half is going to be corporate workers (university research appears to be a minority), which should mean that half are likely going to be prodded towards the side of Big Business. Big Business isn’t precisely known as the greatest fan of AGW theories.
Now, I also said that the same equipment is being used. For example, the General Circulation Model at GISS is used for teams that are doing research on:
- Anthropogenic climate change (of any sort)
- To collect weather satellite radiance measurements and to analyze them to infer the global distribution of clouds, their properties, and their diurnal, seasonal and interannual variations. The resulting datasets and analysis products are being used to study the role of clouds in climate , both their effects on radiative energy exchanges and their role in the global water cycle.
- Paleoclimate research (for instance, the reconstructing the climate during the days of the dinos)
- El Nino events and their repurcussions
- Agricultural/Marine Ecosystem Interactions
Perhaps not gnat farts, but apparently people trust the output of these systems enough to use them in other research.
Are you for real? Are you seriously saying that this is not an important issue? That it is not worth spending time and money and brainpower on?
Whichever side of this “debate” is right it is a vastly more important issue than cancer (although cancer research gets vastly more funds and manpower poured into it than climate research). If major climate change happens it will kill vastly greater numbers of people,and at a much younger age, than cancer ever will, and it will impoverish many more. On the other hand, if misguided (or even not misguided, but just botched) efforts to forestall climate change lead to an international economic collapse, that to can be expected to kill many more than cancer would ever have got and impoverish many many more.
We need a whole lot more than a mere 150,000 people working on this issue. Maybe we should be diverting a few resources away from cancer research (trying to find something that might give a few more old and rich people a few more years of life - for the most part cancer is just the disease that gets you because you haven’t already died of something else) into something that might actually be able to save many millions from going to an early grave.
[I am not really against cancer research, by the way, but it does annoy me when people use it as a sneering excuse stigmatizing all other forms of intellectual effort as worthless.]
Yes, and? You’ve just noted that these bodies receive most of the research funding. So the scientists are either receiving income or research funding from doing climate change research.
I think you’re missing the point. I work for a university, it pays my wages, but indirectly that’s through funding that I bring in. Moreover my equipment, techs and so forth are all paid for through my private funding pool. If I can pull in more funding my job is more secure and I’m able to produce better results, get published in higher impact journals and advance my career. If I can pull in funding through emphasising the threat of AGW (which I do on every application) that gives me a massive incentive to endorse AGW.
The idea that there can’t be conspiracy because scientists aren’t working 24/7 on AGW makes no sense at all to anybody with experience of the workings of actual research institutions. I can honestly say I haven’t seen a funding proposal done in the last 10 years that hasn’t referred to the threat of AGW, mine included.
I’d like to think that the obvious conflict of interest hasn’t actually compromised the integrity of the scientists involved, but to suggest that there is no conflict of interest because the scientists have “day jobs” doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
How do you know what these scientists are studying? The vast majority of individuals on the list could be researching climate change in one way or another.
Sounds like your own opinion of climate change is getting in the way of your moderating.
Most of them, per your own list, are not indicated as being in a field directly related to climate science. Some don’t even appear to be scientists, at least according to the position described in the list. One would assume that, in signing such a letter, they would list their expertise relative to the subject. Since a few have, one may assume that the many who have not don’t have much direct expertise. I would note that geologists and economists are highly over-represented on the list compared to actual climate scientists. If you don’t know what the actual field of study of the scientists in the list is, when it mostly appears not to be related to climate, you shouldn’t be leaping in to post it as the first response in GQ.
Nope. This is GQ, and I want to see this thread remain as factual as possible. Frankly, I’m sick and tired of every question related to global climate change turning into an exchange of polemics and having to be sent to Great Debates. By irrelevantly dragging in Al Gore, your appear to be trying to turn this thread political. If you want to address the politics, start a thread in GD.
This goes for everyone. Let’s stick to the science and the scientists involved, and not get involved in side issues.
ETA: If you want to criticize my moderation, start a thread in ATMB. Don’t pursue this here.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator