Actually, I think the people in the list are relevant to the letter, since it is in part economic. What the letter isn’t, is a denial that man made CO[sub]2[/sub] is causing a warmer global climate. In fact it clearly states that they understand that the evidence has led the IPCC to the conclusion that CO[sub]2[/sub] is harmful. Mostly, they seem to be saying that radical changes to our economic policies are not justified by the report since they may not be effective or necessary.
It certainly is true that scientists tend to exaggerate the importance of their research in order to obtain funding. It’s, unfortunately, a necessary evil for scientific research since John Q. Public doesn’t want to know that they are funding long tedious projects that often have little use directly obvious to themselves. It is also true that a certain groupthink can become dominant even in academic arenas. Bucking the system requires more proof than going with the flow.
On the otherhand, AGW is an exceptional topic in that everything they do is being contested by outsiders. I doubt there has been a subject so thouroughly scoured for errors by every sort of expert out there including climatologists. There is nothing worse for ones academic career than to be discovered deliberately biasing results. We had a case of that in chemistry a few years ago, and the guy was a laughingstock (I wish I could remember his name, the fraud was extraordinary).
There are also plenty of sources for funding other than federal grants. If the fossil fuel industry were so concerned about bias, they could simply match funding. There are plenty of researchers already getting funding from the fossil fuel industry in chemistry. Of course, some people would suggest that people getting funding from the fossil fuel industry were biased. Turnabout is fair play, but if the researchers were getting matching funding from both sources perhaps some fairness could be obtained.
You do realize that there’s a difference between a scientist getting some of his funding from working on climate-change research, and getting every last cent of his funding from climate-change research? Almost everyone working on climate change is getting paid for their climate change research. And almost all of them also get paid for other projects, so even if they weren’t doing climate change research, they’d still have a job.
I suppose for the same reason that folks think they should listen to the IPCC, which contains hosts of non-climate scientists. For Working Group I (the science part) the breakdown for the US/UK contingent was:
Working Group I - (303 from the USA or UK)
[INDENT]215 climate science (assumption for all authors associated with 2 key climate institutes in each country)
24 atmospheric physics
27 geophysics or geology
4 statistics
8 mathematics/physics
8 engineering
2 biology/ecology
1 history of science
1 computer science
1 economy
1 agronomy
1 lawyer who claims to also be skilled in oceanography
8 unknown [/INDENT]
Please note the 27 scientists with degrees in geophysics or geology, the economist, the agronomist, and the rest. So first you have to explain why the IPCC values the opinion of these people whose opinions you advise us to ignore …
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see geophysics, geology, and ecology as impertinent when you’re talking about how a change in climate might effect the earth. Certainly much more pertinent than a geographer and a string theorist.
To answer the OP, some Americans who are (sort of) opposed to the concensus are:
Roy Spencer, University of Alabama-Huntsville (Meteorology)
William Gray, Colorado State University (Meteorology)
Richard Lindzen, MIT (Meteorology)
In my opinion, Lindzen is a professional skeptic who pretty much doesn’t believe anything witout proof. Gray doesn’t trust models at all. He was around for the beginning of computer modelling when the data was scarce and the models untested, and they produced some bad forecasts, and he still doesn’t trust them. Spencer is a creationist.
They are all legit climate researchers, however.
Gosh, foolish me, I thought that people like Lindzen who didn’t believe things without having adequate supporting evidence were called “scientists”, not “skeptics” …
And not only is Spencer a creationist, but get this. A huge number of legitimate climate scientists believe in an invisible space god who got a woman pregnant around the year zero and then stood by and let his kid be tortured and murdered … there’s no accounting for weird beliefs some people hold with absolutely no evidence at all to support them.
Note sure what that has to do with climate science, however …
PS - the climate models are still untested … not sure what your point was there.
gitfiddle, if Working Group I had to do with “how a change in climate might effect [sic] the earth”, you’d be 100% correct. But WG I has nothing to do with that. Here’s the subjects covered by each Working Group:
WG I The Physical Science Basis
WG II Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
WG III Mitigation of Climate Change
Note that WG I has nothing to do with how a change might affect the earth, that’s covered exclusively by WG II. That’s why I gave the breakdown of the WG I authors, not the WG II or WG III authors …
Wouldn’t one want geologists and geophysicists if he is going to talk about volcanoes, glacial movements, and paleoclimate? Atmospheric physicists if you’re going to talk about changing wind patterns? Just looking through WG1’s powerpoint, it seems pretty standard that about 90% of the scientists be from fields in earth sciences, with most of the rest being in the physical sciences.
I’m not sure why that’s not relevant.
There’s a difference between evidence and proof. Holding out until you get adequate supporting evidence is good, but there’s plenty of adequate supporting evidence now. If you hold out for proof, though, you’ll be waiting a very long time indeed, because there’s no such thing in science.
And when one refers to “creationists”, one generally means “young Earth creationists”, a view which is wholly incompatible with science.
gitfiddle, I don’t want to hijack this thread, but I must point out that there is very little evidence for CO2 driven AGW, only computer model results.
And believing (without a single scrap of evidence) in invisible space gods who impregnate earth women is totally compatible with science? Perhaps on your planet, but not on mine.
Finally, Sage Rat, you say:
This is a typical claim of the AGW adherents, in that the number is only out by an order of magnitude or so, which seems to be the standard of accuracy in climate science these days.
You claim that a large number of climate scientists believe this, but without a single scrap of evidence.
Em…it’s not a claim. That’s the number I got from adding up the stats on the Bureau of Labor Statistics page.
That’s not to say that all or even most of these people are working on studying global warming. Probably only a minority is at any given time. Though, also likely, the people who are doing such research is probably cycled about through a random subsection of the total based on availability and scheduling and so forth.
The only evidence for anything whatsoever in science is model results. The only thing that sets computer models apart from other models is that computers allow models to become more sophisticated. But not all of the evidence for AGW has anything at all to do with computers: One doesn’t need a computer to measure the infrared opacity of carbon dioxide, or to measure the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a function of time, or to add up the amount produced by human activity, or to find the historical correlation between CO[sub]2[/sub] levels and temperature from ice cores or the like.
And so I’d rather base my understanding of the situation on statistics and surveys than on your experiential data of one. I realize that it’s difficult to disassociate yourself with your own experience, but the numbers just don’t jive with your description.
The people who read instrumentation are largely full-time employees at the weather service or NASA. The people who analyze that data are one third regular employees at NASA or the EPA or wherever, one-third are grant-based researchers receiving funding from the government, the other one-third are grant-based researchers receiving funding from businesses. Presuming that the grant-based researchers are particularly effected by the need to game their results, they’re most likely still minority fraction of the total who do modify their output, and they’re going to be matched by an equal number of people on the opposite side of the fence.
Again, that might not be your personal experience, but so far as I can tell, that seems to be a general overview of the real, citable numbers.
The only evidence for anything whatsoever in science is model results???!?!?!!
Clearly, you don’t understand this “science” thing at all.
The only evidence for anything whatsoever in science is … well … evidence. Observations. Data. Measurements of the real world. You know, stuff like lengths and widths and weights and times and temperatures and pressures and the like. Things we can actually see and feel and touch and measure in some manner.
This, of course, is different from model results, whether they are computer models or simpler models.
Your example, of the historical correlation between CO[sub]2[/sub] levels and temperature from ice cores, is a good example of an observation (evidence) as opposed to a model result. Unfortunately for your argument, it shows the temperature controlling the CO[sub]2[/sub] and not the other way 'round, but heck, no use letting observations get in the way of model results …
Yes, for instance E=MC^2 is a mathematical model of the expected results of the conversion of mass to energy. F=G((m1*m2)/r^2) is Newton’s mathematical model of the expected attraction of two masses via gravitational force.
A model is a mathematical construct that behaves like a real world system to the best of our ability to test it. For chaotic systems, the model requires a bit more complex methods than basic arithmetic, unfortunately.
Sage Rat, thanks for the reply. You are quite correct that Newton’s Law is a model. To test it, we need what I have been discussing … evidence. Please get clear about the difference between the two. As I have said many times, model results (whether computer model or otherwise) are not evidence.
A model (computer model or mathematical model) does not provide evidence of anything. Only evidence (e.g. data, measurements, observations) can do that … which is why they call it evidence, I suppose.
We test model results against evidence … except in computer science, where model results are regarded by AGW worshippers as* being *evidence.
They are not.
The evidence for a thing comes when it jives with model results. The “thing” in question is a hypothesis. The model is a mathematical construction of the hypothesis. When the hypothesis matches the real world to the utmost of our ability to test it, the model is accepted.
In science, a working model is what matters. If you can’t create one, you can have all the evidence in the world, and it doesn’t amount to anything. There was millions of years of apples (or other fruit) falling out of trees, but not a one was proof of gravity. It was when there was a model that matched reality that something was (ostensibly) proven.
[Moderating]
I think this thread is veering out from the topic of the OP, that is, the identity of the main global warming skeptics, and becoming a debate on global warming itself. Given the fact that we have had many hundreds of pages of discussion on this subject in GD, I think this thread should remain focused on the narrow subject of the OP. If this becomes another debate on global warming, I am probably going to lock it rather than move it. Anyone interested in rehashing the subject once again is welcome to start yet another thread in GD.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator