I’ve been keeping busy in China – currently in Yangling for the huge China Agricultural Fair (over 300,000 people at the opening ceremony). I’ve giving a talk on climate change to the participants tomorrow.
So not much time for BraveNewClimate until I get back to Australia. But to keep readers interested, I thought I’d share an interesting opinion piece I read a while back by George Marshall. It was actually written a few years ago, but is still highly relevant today. Jim Hansen reflected on the same problem in his paper ‘Scientific reticence and sea level rise‘. Some things, it seems, have changed little since 2006.
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Do (most) scientists really believe in global warming?
George Marshall
This is not a facetious question or skeptic propaganda. I would never dispute that the scientific community is in full agreement that climate change is real, human induced, and significant.
However, ‘believe’ is a powerful and specific word. When we talk of the things we ‘believe’ in we give them a value and an emotional context. We know many things, but it is our beliefs that provide a frame for our decisions and direct our behaviour.
So, to come back to the question- do scientists really believe in climate change? My observation is that many do not. In the course of my work (I am a director of a climate change charity) I often attend scientific briefings and have met many professional climate scientists and have noted the following consistent traits of scientific presentations:
It’s serious, but don’t panic. Gavin Schmidt has written a long review for the excellent Real Climate site on the IPPR report I reviewed in the last posting. Schmidt argues that the IPPR authors missed a “huge missing category” of denial, the ‘it’s serious (and interesting) but don’t panic’ repertoire which, he says, ‘is the language most often heard at scientific conferences’.
Schmidt cites as an example a letter to the Independent from Dr Thomas Crowley from the Division of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke University, North Carolina. Dr Crowley calls on environmentalists to stop ‘castigating others and raising wild alarms’ and ’sit down at the negotiating table with industry and conservative politicians and do some good old-fashioned “horse trading”.
The role for scientists is informing the debate. Back in 2000 my friend and colleague Mark Lynas asked a simple but highly relevant question at a public meeting addressed by Professor Mike Hulme, the head of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research. “If, as you have argued, the Amazon may burn down adding a further 3 degrees to global climate, that’s curtains for all of us, isn’t it?” This is exactly the kind of question one is never supposed to ask, and Hulme responded energetically to deflate it. “I do not think it is appropriate or useful for us to bang our drum about this- we need to use this information to generate a dialogue about our future options”. He didn’t answer the question because, dialogue or no dialogue, Mark was right. It is curtains, and scientists are remarkably unwilling to ever say this even when the conclusion could be solidly supported by their own data.
Reluctance to draw out actual human impacts. I recently attended a public presentation by a leading scientist about sea level rise. He was a good speaker and became extremely exercised about the variables- the differences between models and the uncertainties concerning the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet. But he was not prepared to talk at all about what these sea level rises actually mean- the loss of most of Bangladesh, Egypt, Florida, the Netherlands and most major cities- or any of the social and political schisms that would result from these impacts. His emotional engagement was with the model. I find this abstraction of the issue is extremely common in scientific presentations.
There are many uncertainties. How many times have I heard scientists say this? Scientists are quite right to be very wary of drawing firm conclusions from uncertain models. However, even as those models have become more and more reliable, and the actual evidence of climate change has become ever stronger, scientists continue to undermine their work by their abiding reluctance to speak with confidence. This has been a gift to professional contrarians who denounce the facts on the media with absolute and persuasive certainty.
I am not qualified to comment. A friend of mine- a social scientist by training- was working in the offices of the British Antarctic Survey and noticed that scientists made no attempt to put together their different and very specialised areas of research to form a single picture. She believes that this is a deliberate psychological strategy. By looking at only one small part of the problem, scientists can avoid facing the overall catastrophic conclusions and can hide behind their specialism.
I believe that many scientists adopt elaborate denial strategies to protect themselves from the extreme seriousness of climate change. They intellectualise the issue and deliberately avoid facing its implications. They define emotional engagement as ‘political’ and irresponsible and castigate those, fellow scientists included, who express fear or despair, or seek to communicate the real urgency to the general public.
Finally, scientists are prone to leave climate change at work and live like everyone else the rest of the time. Whenever I have the chance I ask climate scientists if they still fly for their holidays. Most are surprised that I even ask the question. One admitted to me in the pub after a heated public meeting that he flies three times a year to the Alps and even south America for skiing holidays. He said that his job was very hard and stressful and that he needs the break.
In anticipation of the potential response of scientists I want to say this. Climate change is no ordinary problem. Your own work makes it abundantly clear that it threatens our survival. Under the circumstances it is vital that you clearly and honestly communicate the threat- indeed it is ethically irresponsible for you not to do so. It is entirely appropriate for you to express concern, anger and fear to your colleagues and the general public.
And to those scientists who are already doing this- I take off my hat to you. We desperately need your knowledge and guidance.
[Postscript 9th November 2006. There was an amazingly vitriolic correspondence following this posting from people involved in the scientific institutions I mentioned. Sadly, because this was not directed to the site I don’t think that I can share it. What I can share is an article by Mike Hulme published today on the BBC website.
In it Professor Hulme refers to this blog when he says ‘I have found myself increasingly chastised by climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on climate change have not satisfied their thirst for environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric’. There is some personal stuff here.
However the article also supports many of the concerns I raised in the posting. Hulme criticises the use of the terms ‘catastrophic’, “chaotic”, “irreversible”, “rapid”, tipping point, and irreversible in connection with climate change. He argues that ‘the language of catastrophe is not the language of science’ and that it ‘hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science’.
However, even as a non scientist, it is clear to me that this is not true. Of course we could argue the toss about what exactly constitutes a ‘catastrophe’ but it seems to me that its dictionary meaning (an event of extraordinary magnitude and misfortune) is perfectly applied and is very well supported by the science, and, as the Stern review established, the economics too. Hulme is not tolerant of catastrophism even when coming from his peers who he accuses of ‘ softening -up the G8 Gleneagles summit through a frenzied week of “climate change is worse than we thought” news reporting and group-think.’
As I tried to argue in the article, the separation of the scientific data from the moral and emotional response to the impacts is a form of dissonance. Read his article and see what you think]
Brave New Climate 
38 replies on “Do most scientists really believe in global warming?”
Scientists, like everybody else, know that it isn’t their little emission
contributions that will fry the planet. Which is of course true. Scientists
are such a tiny minority that even if they did all eschew beef, powered flight
and air-conditioning, it wouldn’t make any difference. Likewise Australia,
another small group and every small cohesive group on the planet.
Which is why climate change needs to become a moral issue. Even though I
beat the drum about red meat on this blog from time to time as a major
contributor to climate change, I don’t eat meat of any description for
moral reasons. Of course MY decision not to eat meat won’t cause a reduction
in slaughtering numbers, and a thousand of like minded people won’t cause
a closure of abattoirs. We do what we do, not because it will be
effective (we’d like it to be, of course), but because it is the right
thing to do. Climate change needs to become an ethical issue. That will
be tough.
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I and article this week on the ABC news online talkinf about the state of the River Murray http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/11/07/2413824.htm, The article suggested that suggested that for every degree the temperature goes up there is a 15 per cent reduction in water actually making it into the Murray Darling.
If we follow the logic through, at 6 degrees of global warming by 2100 on the A1FI Fossil fuel behaviour scenario we effectively lose 90% of year 2000 flows.
We see lots of referencing the the River Murray Sustainable Yeilds project that uses 1 degree warming by 2030 as a suggested basis for planning, but we don’t see the scenarios explained for 6 degrees at 2100.
I find it interesting that we are not really hearing about what such a future would do to human settlements agriculture and the extent of desertification this would bring. I guess that this is the same type of problem. We are not really hearing loudly enough that the A1FI path we are taking is unadaptable and must result in the significant shrinkage of human settlements and destruction of well being.
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Neither the IPCC nor the Garnaut Report take much account of the implications of the recent history of the Earth’s climate. They continue to think in terms of linear processes, use the term “CO2 stabilization” and “climate stabilization”, and ignore looming tipping points.
Many climate scientists shun publicity. The experience inherent in preparing recent climate statement by 40 leading Australian environmental scientists indicates many/most of even the best informed scientists are public-shy and media-shy.
To be active, even on an issue of life and death, means becoming controversial, being labelled as an “ACTIVIST” (shock, horror). I know of people whose career suffered as a consequence.
Everyone will jump when sea level rises another 50 cm or 1 metre, though at this stage it will be too late.
Homo sapiens learns the hard way.
At least those scientists who have taken a stand, such as James Hansen and Tim Flannery, will have a clear conscience …
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Perhaps the sheer daunting enormousness of climate change can cause even scientists to pause and for some to fall back to the same orthodoxy – that nothing people can do can change the climate – that underlies most denialism. I’d like to think that they mostly won’t revert to the false “sceptic” position; wanting AGW proved to their satisfaction whilst retaining an unfounded belief in that orthodoxy until then. But to fail to make the effort to look to the evidence – just talking scepticism and not practicing it – and also failing to reject that unscientific orthodoxy is undefensible in a scientist.
Meanwhile I think there is a lot scientists can do and should do. I have visions of the Editor’s mailbag at the Australian filled with letters of correction, calling for retractions at every denialist article – from heads of science faculties and research departments, written on their letterheads. This is what ought to be happening, but I see no evidence it is.
I’m not sure hard headed denialism in the mainstream media would stand so firmly in the face of real efforts to see the scientifically incorrect debunked as a matter of course, by leading professionals. This wouldn’t even cross over into the realm of “interfering” in political policy.
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First off, not all scientists believe or think global warming is real. In fact, there is not real evidence that CO2 has anything to do with our recent temperature changes. The IPCC CO2 vs temperature graph is a lie as CO2 is known for a fact to have been 470 ppm back in the 1940’s (it’s 380 ppm now) and the temperature dropped during that period. Obviously CO2 cannot drive the global temperatures. Other long term data sets confirm this.
Records in the short and long term clearly show that temperature changes first and CO2 follows. Furthermore, the PDO/NAO ocean systems are much more powerful than the IPCC is willing to admit, and solar activity over the last 50 years has been higher than in the last 8,000! We have been cooling since 1998, and cooling more rapidly recently as NASA announced that the PDO had flipped to its cooling cycle and the recent solar cycle is very late starting.
The link is clear that solar activity is a huge factor in our climate. The only parameter which is in lock step with global temperatures is solar activity and, in particular, the period of the solar sunspot cycles. Our recent cycles have been getting longer = cooling.
The reason the politicians want the cause of any climate change to be human-caused is that they then can charge us to fix it. If it is the sun or the ocean decadal oscillations, then they cannot push for massive and costly programs designed to move lots of money. So far, in Europe, carbon credits have done nothing to decrease CO2 emissions; a few people are getting very wealthy (including Gore, he’s cashing in with his own carbon credit company), and the governments are not getting much of the funds. It’s a joke.
Making a scientific decisions a moral issue is criminal and Gjrussel should be ashamed for suggesting that we make huge future-changing policy decisions based on lies and junk science and call it moral.
The reason they call it climate change is that we are not warming anymore. The scientifically unfounded assumption that the planet will warm regardless of natural cycles is wrong.
CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. in fact, a greenhouse gas as described in global warming is impossible. There is just much too little of it, even is it was effective as such. The major effect that CO2 has occurred with the first 20 ppm and at 380 ppm, its effect is virtually exhausted. Doubling CO2 MIGHT warm the planet by 0.01 deg C, a negligible amount.
In fact, decreasing CO2 has already been done. During the Depression CO2 production decreased 30% almost overnight and the global temperature rise and CO2 rise at the time did not waver even a little. NO effect at all.
BY the way, methane is also at much too small levels to have any real effect, again, if it could act as a greenhouse gas.
A greenhouse has a roof. Our atmosphere does not. Water vapor as part of the water cycle is part of a global and massive heat engine which carries heat to the the upper atmosphere where heat is released by condensation and lost to space. This heat engine and its reality is completely and totally denied by the IPCC and the global warming alarmists.
But, doubling CO2 would increase our food supply by 30-50% and with the world population continuing to increase we need this boost in food production. In fact, with our current cooling we need the boost also as plants will grow more slowly in cooler times and we still need the food. It is immoral to decrease CO2 emissions.
The ice caps are not melting, the polar bears are fine except where they are overpopulating their environment and driven away their natural food, sea level is doing virtually nothing, and forest fires are increasing due to gross human management and environmentalist interference.
Fight climate change all you want, but the climate will be changing always anyhow. But, to assume climate change is all about global warming makes you a scientifically ignorant individual who needs to read the real science, not the political spin with the political agenda.
Think about your morals, they are way off base.
With all due respect,
Capt. Higley
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Charles Higley @ 5
Think about your morals – THEY are way off base.What are your connections and affiliations?
All your nonsense has been rebutted over and over again, here and at other respected climate science sites – see column on the left.
Once again – have you published in peer review journals? Where are you references to same?
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Hi Charles Higley.
Having made a solid attempt to educate myself in these matters, I’m confident in saying that your contribution is a lot of illogical and ill-informed nonsense. I am not a climate scientist but neither are you, obviously.
What you have to say is quite clearly contrary to well-established (and long-established) principles of physics and inconsistent with both the paleoclimate data and a host of rigorously constructed models of the global climate (based on real physics and empirical data rather than assumptions, as you incorrectly claim).
However I am prepared to suspend my judgement until I’ve seen your calculations.
I wait with bated breath.
I’m sure I won’t be the only visitor to this site who will be intrigued when you explain why, if neither carbon dioxide nor methane has a significant greenhouse effect, most of the Earth’s surface is not covered by a sheet of ice hundreds of metres thick.
I’ll also be pleased when you reassure us that, contrary to the evidence of the part of your rant concerning the depression, you really do know the difference between production of carbon dioxide and the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. (Hint: when you put some into the atmosphere this year it’s pretty much still all there next year. That’s why the warming we’ve caused is locked in.)
Some sign that you have even a clue about such basic concepts would lend some much-needed credence to your claim to have overturned many decades of accumulated scientific knowledge and exposed the scientific community as a vast army of cynical fraudsters.
I’d also be pleased to know the source of your claim that carbon dioxide was at a concentration of 470 ppm in the 1940s.
All the research I have seen concludes it rose above 300 around the middle of the 20th century and, at just over 380 ppm, is currently as high as it has been for at least 800,000 years and very likely for millions of years.
Having lowered the tone by claiming the science is “lies” and labelling people as “criminal” because they point out the moral implications ignoring climate change, etc etc, I’m sure you won’t be upset when I say you probably couldn’t bring yourself to acknowledge a scientific fact if it trotted up and started humping your leg.
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Re Captain Higgley’s viewpoint.
Here lies the essence of why humans are paralysed against protecting their future. We have a debate and argument that is far removed from scientific foundation as soon as claims are made from un refrenced sources and scientifically discredited sources. This ten results in inadequate policy and failure to act.
Captain Higgley, Please go back and provide the referencing to the scientific research that informs your viewpoint so that we may participate debate with some basic integrity.
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MIchaelW @ 8
I think we may wait in vain for Capt Higley’s list of peer-reviewed papers on climate change, or any other academic subject.
I invited him, on 12th Nov, to supply these details. I am still waiting! Hope you can elicit a response ;-)
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Captain Higley is just another believer in the unfounded opinion that what people do doesn’t change the climate (or won’t change it much), but won’t apply “scepticism” to that unscientific assumption. There is no “default” truth when it comes to human impacts on atmosphere and climate; we have what science is telling us or we have ignorance.
It takes high level of expertise to truly apply scepticism in this and not have it become an endless “don’t know” and “not convinced”, neither of which are good enough when the consequneces of past decisions made in ignorance are revealled to have serious downsides – and when the science shows that inaction and delay will make them worse.
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There are those who have, at the time, denied the CFC-ozone depletion connection, tobbaco-lung cancer connection, HIV-AIDS connection, who forever search for gaps in evolution theory, accuse scientists of conspiracies, indeed doubt the basis of the scientific method.
On the other hand, since even those who profess to accept the now-irrefutable reality of runaway climate change (including our PM, the Minister for Climate Change, the Minister for the environment, the Garnaut Review) have to date failed to come forward with effective urgent action to stem the inexorable rise of CO2 — now at 2.2 ppm/year — sometimes it is hard not to envy those are able to have their head in the sand, at least for the moment ?
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Perhaps we can all agree that we live in a round and bounded {not flat and limitless} planetary home, one which is rapidly filling up with people and peoples’ products, including millions upon millions of gas guzzlers, other polluting machines and thousands upon thousands of smokestack factories. This is to simply say, absolute global human population numbers are projected to reach 9+ billion people and the leviathan-like global economy is expected to grow in a near-exponential way by many trillions of dollars in the next 42 years…..provided we keep choosing to keep doing what we are doing now.
Please consider the following proposal as an alternative to what appears to be a soon to become unsustainable business-as-usual course of action. This idea for change results from the realization that we have to protect both the Earth’s ecology and the human community’s manmade economy.
First, the Earth and its environs are to be spared further wanton dissipation and reckless degradation; and second, the global economy needs to be rescued from becoming patently unsustainable in the relatively small, evidently finite and noticeably frangible world we are blessed to inhabit.
What could be accomplished if the human family determined to provide “stewardship incentives” to people who choose to protect the Earth and its environs, the same kind of incentives that are now routinely handed out in huge annual payouts to people who are supposed to be growing the global economy….. something the economic powerbrokers are clearly not doing now?
Please note that billions of dollars are being proposed in financial bailouts for companies building unsustainable products and factories and that year-end bonuses are being directed to “wonder boys” in investment houses and banks who have been uneconomically growing humanity’s global economy by collusively creating dodgy financial instruments (e.g., credit default swaps) and fraudulent business models (e.g., Ponzi schemes). These self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe have ignored requirements of practical reality and turned a great economic system into a paltry gambling casino, making themselves the primary beneficiaries of pseudo-business activities along the way. In the light of such avaricious risk-taking and conspicuous hoarding behavior, they can no longer be called by any name other than “thieves of the highest order”.
Perhaps reasonable and sensible people can agree that the greed of arrogant, self-serving tycoons and bankstas no longer is to be condoned, much less extolled as somehow good, and that the preservation of Earth and its environs needs to given some immediate attention in terms of funding substantial stewardship incentives equal in size to the financial rewards now directed to the economic powerbrokers.
By redirecting wealth, my generation of elders can begin to put the global economy on a sustainable, more reality-based foundation as well as to more reasonably and sensibly fulfill our responsibilities as good enough stewards of the Earth.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
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A call to arms!
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which of course will be crowded out by Inhofe’s (sp?) new report about 750 scientists dissenting… http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2158072e-802a-23ad-45f0-274616db87e6 and of course the front page has some seemingly pretty credible names.
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Go to
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmentalnews/latest/inhofe-global-warming-deniers-47011101
and
http://www.greenfyre.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/mene-mene-tekel-u-pharsim-verse-1/
for another view of Inhofe’s supposed truthful report.
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OOPS
should have been
http://www.greenfyre.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/mene-mene-tekel-u-pharsin-verse-1/
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Thanks for the mention, but at this point this:
is a better link for the collected debunkings of Inhofe.
It looks like when all is said and done his count will be the same 39 cranks as it ever was, plus maybe a couple more.
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[…] scientistsWhat Bob Carter and Andrew Bolt fail to graspDr David Evans: born-again ‘alarmist’?Do most scientists really believe in global warming?Olduvai theory – crackpot idea or dawning reality?Renewable energy cannot sustain an energy […]
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Fabulous article. Thank you Barry for putting this up.
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One major reason scientists would tend to believe in global warming, is that science is almost entirely state-funded, and global warming provides a golden reason to expand the role of the state.
Even with the best will in the world, the state’s vested interests will out, and the climatologists and peer-reviewers on its payroll can be expected to show a systemic bias in favour of alarmism over open-mindedness, driven by the state’s selection criteria for its grants. The net effect is that only one side of the debate gets real funding.
Another reinforcing bias is that scientists whose pitch is on behalf of an urgent and serious problem they says needs solving, can be expected to get more money than those who come along with less scary issues.
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BJF Cricklewood, re: systematic bias of alarmism due to state funding — quit with the stupid conspiracy theories. If you’ve not got something sensible to contribute here, then lurk, or go vent your delusions elsewhere. If you wish to contribute constructively, like most people on these boards (whether I happen to agree with them or not), then you are welcome.
Regarding your comment: “It seems to me it is this : if pipeline heat is significant, so is AGW; and if it isn’t, nor is AGW”
We’ve had +0.74C global warming in the last 100 years and about 90 ppm CO2 rise. That’s +0.0082C/ppm. A doubling of CO2 on pre-industrial by mid-century would be +280ppm. Based on no further acceleration of temperature rise and nothing in the pipeline, this would imply a warming of +2.3C. So your statement is patently false, even if there was no aerosol masking or ocean inertia.
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this is just a test
( a Preview button would be nice )
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Barry:
There is no need to posit conspiracy to see the political bias inherent in political funding. You just need to be realistic about what effect holding the climatology purse strings would tend to have, particularly as regards conclusions relating to the state’s role.
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(#23) “political bias in political funding”. I guess that explains why all those researchers in Australia and the US (for example) over the past decade have found results in keeping with the climate change denialist views
of the Governments paying all their research bills … oops … that didn’t happen did it, I wonder why not?
Governments and industry can influence many researchers from time to time in various ways, and they can buy smart advertisers and spin doctors ad libitum, but they have never, globally, been able to dictate research findings.
P.S. Hell, even Meat and Livestock Australia (and the rest of the global meat industry) can’t dictate global research results. Despite blanket advertising about the benefits of red meat and even serious undue influence with NHMRC official documents, MLA haven’t made the slightest dent in the findings of the global research community who have been painstakingly crossing all the i’s and dotting the t’s about exactly how red meat causes bowel cancer.
Apologies to Abe Lincoln: you can buy all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can’t buy all the people all of the time.
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(#24) : Yes, the very existence of sceptics does support your Lincoln point. Note, though, that what has actually been bought in this particular case, is : virtually all professional climatology people, for all of the time.
This, I am saying, results in a (heavy) bias in findings; I am not suggesting this provides a 100% compliance or unanimity. I agree there will probably still always be at least a few dissidents in the fold at any one time.
The crucial difference in your meat example above, is that not all the researchers had the same source of funds or agenda.
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(#25) You missed the point of the Lincoln quote. The substantive agreement of so many scientist can’t be bought or engineered. Think about what happened after the 1998 Mann hockey stick. Skeptics raised issues. These issues weren’t summarily dismissed, but a bunch of teams “repeated” the work in a bunch of different ways, — different proxies, different stats methods, etc. and all got much the same thing. By the 2007 IPCC report their were 11 such replications. That agreemnet wasn’t a result of funding sources, it occurred for the same reason that if 20 people measure the probability distribution of heights in a population of people, they all find the same distribution (with slightly different parameters), because THAT’S JUST THE WAY IT IS.
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(#26) This understandable hope that science is objective, collapses under conditions of single-source funding, political or otherwise. Since AGW gives the state a reason to advance its interests, its paid lackeys who advance the AGW idea, are in the same category as the paid lackeys of tobacco companies who told us there was no cancer link in smoking.
In both cases it’s not a question of telling individuals in advance what conclusions to come up with, but rather the overall process by which scientists are selected for purchase in the first place, on the basis of their outlook and approach. How much weight you attach to those defenders of Mann, should take into account that they were bought by the same institution that bought Mann in the first place.
As regards THAT’S JUST THE WAY IT IS, facts do not speak for themselves. There remains the issue of the selection of facts, particularly the possible omission of inconvenient ones.
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Since AGW gives the state a reason to advance its interests, its paid lackeys who advance the AGW idea, are in the same category as the paid lackeys of tobacco companies who told us there was no cancer link in smoking.
BJFC: Now you’re just getting hysterical. Enough already. Stick to the science or stick to the silence. I’ve been ohhh so patient. This is your last warning…
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(#27) The tobacco companies spent bucket loads on buying lackeys to confuse matters but there is only so far you can bend results without looking silly. The replications of Mann’s work (not really replications because they generally used different approaches) had different funding bodies in different countries. The substantive agreement in results really would have taken a large international conspiracy. Probably organised by the same people who hide all the extraterrestrial corpses who fall from the sky.
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I’m a little more patient with conspiracy theorists than Barry, but I’m out of patience also … bye bye BFJ.
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As I keep telling you… [Ed: As I keep telling you, enough already on this belaboured and discredited point]
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Barry, I disagree with you 100%. You are projecting, imagining or creating an image of insecurities onto these scientists in order to support your definitive view that global warming exists and will lead us to eventual catastrophy. If conclusions are to be drawn based on expert opinions then the opinions of experts are to be listened to very carefully. You completely lost credibility with me when you wrote…..scientist Hulmes argues”‘the language of catastrophe is not the language of science’ and that it ‘hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science’….your reply…”However, even as a non scientist, it is clear to me that this is not true.”
Exactly why is this statement not true. What exactly are the details, scientific or otherwise that disproves this. What are the value-laden assumptions that Hulmes referred to in making his points? You dared not elaborate because your point of view is based on your need to convince others that Glimate Change is a certain event that will lead to Catastrophy and will oppose anything that chatises that view and water it down. I believe your article here should be called “Barry’s inconvient BS” as it wasted my time.
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*shakes head* I didn’t write the article, “Chase”, George Marshall did.
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This is what I believe; “Science is being influenced and misused by politics.”
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Jane, on January 15th, 2010 at 3.51 — However, there is no evidence whatsoever for your belief.
But don’t let that stop you, please.
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It seems that people have a God complex. The world is not going to end in 2012, the rapture is not coming in your lifetime, and we are not going to destroy the world. The thought that we “will”……. unless people start doing something about it justs seems like something to talk about…. not anything substantial. It seems that people always think their generation is “IT”. “IT’S” the one where everything happens, or they have the control. People are always talking about how everything is going to happen in the next 20 years or 50 years or whatever. I’m sure every generation of people thought that the end of the world was going to come in their lifetime. But it didn’t.
It’s very difficult to believe proponents of global warming when there are so many varying opinions. I believe that if global warming were certain truth….then we wouldn’t have so many arguments about whether it existed- we would have moved onto the argument of what to do about it.
Besides, what with all the other “real” problems that plague our society (such as divorce and splitting of family, materialism, etc…) maybe we shouldn’t get too worked up about it. I mean, if our ability to make relationships lasts relies on how much time we spend on the cellphone or on social networking sites, who cares about “green”. It isn’t really saving anybody. What’s the point of preserving something if that something “stinks” to high hell. The only reason I’m talking about our social agendas (out of all the other problems in the world) is because I was noticing how people just try to tear each other down so much in these blogs.
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Look, stop trying to give some HUGE explaination and explain word by word trying to sound smart. ITS SIMPLE. The world is changing and its our fault and you may say oh thats normal but you should watch the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth’ and make those ‘bright’ scientist see that WE ARE causing global warming. You are utterly stupid if you dont think the world is warmer. In Miami today its going to feel like 100 degrees F , and its not summer yet, open your darn eyes.
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(Comment deleted)
MODERATOR
BNC no longer posts or discusses denialist positions on the scientific consensus of AGW/CC. Solutions to the problem are now the focus of this blog and that includes population. You will find several posts, on that subject, on BNC.
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