So basically an ad with no apparent evidence behind it is enough to send the usual suspects off on another round of the “la la la I am not listening” spin.
I have not a moment of doubt that this is a fictitious, or at best, extremely misleading bit of puffery for this book. When the guy who probably wrote the announcement is the most prominently quoted in the announcement, doesn’t that give you even a moment’s pause about the veracity of the announcement?
If they or anyone else want to come forth with the evidence, then there will be something to talk about. Until then it appears to simply be another case of those in denial of global warming being willfully ignorant of science (although apparently holding science in positive regard when it suits them).
First of all, a consensus doesn’t mean unanimity. There are probably thousands of papers published every year on some aspect of climate science and you are indeed going to find several of these that disagree with the prevailing consensus. However, they are a small fraction percentage-wise. In many cases, they are also published in second- or third-rate or interdisciplinary journals where it is easier to get things past the refereeing process.
Second of all, when these arguments have come up before (see here and here for the most recent time before this), it has been found that the classification of the studies as disagreeing with the consensus is very generous…to outright fraudulent. And, one already sees phrases used in the press release here that suggest they are maneuvering to do the same. For example, they say:
Already, they have stated the “consensus” position in a dubious way since most climate scientists would agree that solar irradiance was probably the dominant factor in the climate until around the middle of 20th century. The statement in the latest IPCC report summary for policymakers addressing the anthropogenic contribution to historical warming reads: “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” They also say: “It is very unlikely that climate changes of at least the seven centuries prior to 1950 were due to variability generated within the climate system alone. A significant fraction of the reconstructed Northern Hemisphere inter-decadal temperature variability over those centuries is very likely attributable to volcanic eruptions and changes in solar irradiance, and it is likely that anthropogenic forcing contributed to the early 20th century warming evident in these records.”
(The press release later claims that “about 70 percent of the earth’s post-1850 warming came before 1940, and thus was probably not caused by human-emitted greenhouse gases. The net post-1940 warming totals only a tiny 0.2 degrees C.” I have no idea where they are getting these numbers from since they don’t jive with the two most commonly considered global temperature reconstructions here and here even though they have cherry-picked a start date of 1940 to allow them to make the strongest statement possible.)
Well, one has to distinguish different claims. Papers that are published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature are generally dealt with seriously. However, arguments that are made in the popular press that have already been thoroughly debunked in the peer-reviewed literature (or haven’t appeared there at all) are sometimes not dealt with quite so charitably because scientists do get sick of having to debunk the same things over and over again. Along these lines, here is the take of the climate scientists at RealClimate on the “Unstoppable Global Warming” book by Singer and Avery.
It is also important to remember that once a theory has gained credence in a scientific field, it has done so because there are lots of different lines of evidence supporting it. Thus, it is true that scientists will not immediately abandon a theory because of one piece of evidence that doesn’t seem to be in line with it, nor should they…because then we wouldn’t have any scientific theories for anything.
At any given time, there are always puzzling discrepancies between experimental data and theory (or between different sets of data) within a field and those tend to attract a lot of scientific interest until they are resolved one way or the other. An example of that in climate science was the apparent conundrum posed by the fact that when scientists first analyzed the satellite record of temperatures in the lower troposphere that has been available since 1979, they found the trend was actually that there had been cooling…at the same time that the surface temperature data showed warming. Over the years, as the satellite trend has gotten long but, more importantly, as other scientists have pointed out corrections that need to be made in the satellite record (to account for things such as the decay in the satellite’s orbit over time), this discrepancy has been resolved (at least on a global scale…there is still some discrepancy in the tropics). See here for details.
(1) Maybe I am just ignorant on these two examples you cite but I thought the idea of ulcers being due to a bacteria was pretty new. Has it really been around for almost 100 years? [It also turns out to be a somewhat complicated story because while the bacteria seems to be necessary to produce the ulcers, it does not seem to be sufficient in that people can have the bacteria and still not have the ulcers. In fact, half of those over 60 have it. See here.] Here is a bit of history on the discovery that implies that it took like 11 years to go from the discovery of the specific bacteria to enough acceptance that the National Institutes of Health agreed:
(2) Thirty years for prions? Again, that sounds a bit long for me but I am speaking from ignorance here and am certainly happy to be corrected. This website says prions were first discovered in 1982. And, I believe I saw a lecture on them at the Centennial Meeting of the American Physical Society in 1999, by which time (at least in my impression) the hypothesis was pretty generally, if still not completely universally, accepted.
(3) It is worth noting that the AGW hypothesis itself took a long time to win favor in the scientific community. Arrhenius did the first calculations of what a doubling of CO2 due to fossil fuel burning might do to the global temperature in like 1903 or something like that and the ideas of CO2 trapping radiation go back to something like the 1870s. For a long time, the hypothesis languished in large part because most scientists thought that all the CO2 we were emitting by burning fossil fuels would be absorbed by the oceans. It wasn’t until the late 1950s when the first accurate measurements of CO2 levels were made that it was seen that they were in fact steadily rising. A good historical account of the whole story is given here.
(4) Most scientists in the field would tell you that far from being a theory that the scientists are hanging onto long after there have been serious problems found with it, in fact the evidence for the AGW theory has been accumulating rapidly over the last one or two decades. When Jim Hansen testified that he thought we were already detecting warming due to AGW back in 1988, many…if not most…scientists were skeptical (some believed it would in fact emerge over time but they were doubtful that it was detectable yet). Now, 20 years later, there are only a small minority who seriously doubt it.
Never saw that coming, no sir! Maybe you should answer the question by answering the question.
In other threads on this subject you have implied that researchers are witholding modeling code in order to avoid scrutiny, and now you have elaborated on that claim by saying that climate scientists will include “spin, exaggeration, or bias” to produce conclusions that support the dominant theory in order to get funding. This is falsifying data.
Let me ask you a direct question: Is it your belief that climate scientists are deliberately spinning, exaggerating, and generating biased conclusions in order to get funding? Yes or no?
Let me answer your question with another question:
Suppose one of these scientists has published his (or her) findings in a peer-reviewed journal in their field. The other has gone straight to the press, to spread the news of his (or her) findings.
Based on this information, which scientist do you think has the more scientifically valid conclusion?
LilShieste
Sure. One possible reason for discrepancies between the two scientists’ findings would be “error”. This is where the peer-review process really shines.
And because of this simple fact, I’d feel much more confident in standing behind the scientist with the peer-reviewed, published results, than the other.
LilShieste
Another possibility is that the two scientists made different judgments. For example, scientist A may have decided that tree ring data from tree species A is unreliable and should be given very little weight. Scientist B may have decided that historical accounts of when the cherry trees blossomed in Tokyo is highly significant.
The point is that there is plenty of room for judgment. If a scientist’s judgment later turns out to be wrong, it doesn’t mean that he or she is falsifying data.
So you are confident that the peer-review process rejects most papers with serious errors? Personally I’m skeptical but I don’t know enough about peer review to say at this point.
And when these scientists submit their papers to their peer-reviewed journals, they will very likely receive comments that address these oversights.
Of course not. But if a scientist makes an incorrect judgment, and refuses to heed any criticisms of their conclusions, then I would say things are venturing in that direction.
Do you understand that the peer-review process is generally not a simple “pass/fail” deal? The submitted paper will be returned to the scientist(s), riddled with comments, corrections, and questions. If the comments/corrections/etc. are severe enough, then the paper won’t be accepted. If they’re fairly minor, they still need to be addressed before the paper is accepted (i.e., they’re re-reviewed).
Of course the peer-review process is not perfect. But it’s by far one of the best things you can have for this type of setup.
LilShieste
Who are these ‘usual suspects’? Are you talking about on this board or the AGW skeptics in general?
While I don’t know enough about this whole global warming thingy from a very technical perspective my opinion is that intention and jshore have done very good jobs in the past of holding up their ends of the arguments, though from different sides. I don’t think intention was creating a strawman…but you’d probably need to read his comments in context to judge for yourself.
While I’ve pretty much come around to the whole AGW side I know enough to understand that I really DON’T know enough. The subject is too complex for a someone like me to do more than read through the general stuff and then take it on faith that the majority of scientists are correct in the models they are using and their interpretation of those models.
I DO know that the OP has a flawed understanding of how science and the scientific method actually works…as well as a flawed concept of how much effect things like funding and popularity would skew that majority opinion.
I completely share your opinions on intention’s (and jshore’s) contributions to the AGW threads. But the quote, as used by brazil84, is a strawman. The implication is that since we don’t know everything there is to know about climate change, we can’t possibly draw any conclusions at all. I don’t know what intention’s original intent was with that statement, but that’s how it’s been used in this thread.
I agree with everything you said in this post.
LilShieste
