Shouldn’t an EAS grad be smarter than this?
I got into a bit of a dust-up in an online conversation today, with someone claiming to be an atmospheric sciences graduate. Predictably, the discussion was about the Copenhagen conference, and quickly branched into a discussion of — you guessed it — the Climaquiddick/Climatequiddick/don’t call it Climategate emails.
She had this to say:
As a graduate student in Atmospheric Science at McGill University, I feel as if I need to set some things straight.
First of all, global warming is a terrible misnomer. Climate change is a much more accurate term. On a whole, the average surface temperature of the earth is rising, yes, but this does not mean the temperature is rising everywhere. The poles will see the greatest warming (due to ice-albedo positive feedbacks), whereas other areas won’t see any change, or may even cool. There will be severe droughts in some places, and flooding in others (not to mention the economic impacts of these events).
Secondly, the evidence for climate change is staggering (and yes, this is non-fabricated evidence). It is inconceivable to me that there are still people who try to deny that climate change is occurring, or believe it is a hoax. There is certainly no debate among the scientific community. So, please keep an open mind and check out the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports, which are indeed peer-reviewed, and which “hundreds of scientists look into the drafts to check the soundness of the scientific information.”… See More
The actions of these two scientists (which was admittedly improper) should NOT discredit decades worth of scientific evidence supporting climate change – evidence that was attained independently at hundreds of reputable institutions around the world.
For the skeptics still out there: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8376286.stm
To which I replied: “with all due respect you your academic credentials, might I point out that the IPCC is also tainted by the Climaquiddick emails, given that much of their reportage is based on the models and graphs produced by the people who were party to that correspondence?”
Other sundry observations:
1) Even the East Anglia researchers admit that over the last couple of decades, the average global temperature has actually been in decline…that was what they were trying to hide (“hide the decline” – Google it!) from us. Their source code is full of arbitrary modifications to data arrays in order to achieve this “hiding.”
2) Of course the evidence for climate change is staggering; I can look out my window and see it. I’m not being facetious either; the Earth’s climate is not, and never has been, static; it is CONSTANTLY CHANGING. You, as an EAS grad, should know this way better than me. And I don’t think anyone here is denying that fact.
What we are questioning — “denying” is a polemical and misleading term — is whether man’s role in that change is significant or not. East Anglia had to massively distort their dataset in order to demonstrate that this was so…yet we know from other research teams both that Earth’s temperature was once several degrees higher on average (Medieval Warm Period), and that atmospheric CO2 concentration has also been higher in the past. Unless the Knights Templar invaded Jerusalem in Cadillac Escalades, methinks there’s more to the truth of the matter than groups like the IPCC seem to be letting on.
3) Holy logical fallacies, Batman! Appeal to authority much?
OR: I’ll see your hundreds of scientists and raise you…what’s the count at? 18,000 dissenting scientists?
The scientific consensus was once that lemmings were not born, but in fact fell from the sky! That’s not to say that numbers and consensus are completely worthless…but it is to say that even consensus can be incorrect, and so can many people all at once.
4) It was also rather more than two scientists.
5) It would be nice to take you at your word that these Climaquidick emails do not discredit “decades worth of scientific evidence supporting climate change,” but it’s a right pity that said evidence was (as was recently revealed) discarded. All we have left now is highly suspect “value added” data.
ANY scientist worth his (or her) salt should CRINGE at such a concept, instead of blindly insisting that we should still accept the conclusions put forth based on said suspect evidence.
6) As to the subject of peer review, might I point out that the East Anglia emails also include evidence of attempts — successful attempts, in some cases — to bully legitimate, accredited scientific journals into not running articles critical of the idea of anthropogenic climate change? How can peer review even be trusted, when we now have evidence that this sort of thing is happening? It would seem that the “peer review” process has devolved into little more than a popularity contest; unless you listen to the music that the “cool kids” like, you can’t get in.
Of what value is peer review, anyhow, if your peers are conspiring against you, no matter how good a researcher you might be or how solid your evidence/analysis may be, because they disagree with you at a political level?
7) Is it skepticism the very definition of the nature of science? Think carefully before you apply popular labels, miss; a scientist should ALWAYS adopt an air of skepticism toward a hypothesis, a dataset of evidence, or a theory being tested.
Science is never really “settled,” you see; I know that, and I’m just a lousy engineer. I hope I don’t actually have to be explaining this to an actual sciences grad.
Steyniac 401th « Free Canuckistan! (December 11, 2009, 4:30 pm).
[...] READY TO POP A BLOOD VESSEL? What “hide the decline” really means; and “Shouldn’t an EAS grad be smarter than this?”; plus Looking at the East Anglia CRU source code …. [...]