The Climate Change Hoax

Just for fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZS__ICbwyc&feature=player_embedded

 

There you go again, asserting, and probably believing, that you need to be a scientists to understand what the AGW people are asserting. YOU DON'T!

Anyone who will take a little time to read up on the details can understand it. With a lot less time than you have taken to find 'dirt' on anyone that disagrees with you, you could have educated yourself on the issue to the point of having EARNED a right to an informed opinion.

Most people that have done this are surprised at how very thin and uncertain the case for AGW actually is, despite all the 'hand waving' and shrill tone from it supporters.


"We must act NOW!!!"

Gee, where have we heard THAT before?

Jimbo

 

Excerpted from the above:

"I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period. "

Michael Crighton


Jimbo

 

How large a number? Frankly, I don't think you have any real idea. I don't have any idea myself, but from my knowledge of how research works (I spent many years doing research) I know that the number of people who actually study any subfield like this tends to be small --on the order of a few hundred. And the people who actually do work in the subfield even smaller --on the order of a few dozen. There may be thousands of scientists willing to sign on to the consensus but I seriously doubt that most of them have any business making an independent judgment on it.

That's how you are caricaturing their motivations. This doesn't have to be an evil conspiracy to fool the world. I have said repeatedly that I expect most of the scientists in the conspiracy are true believers in the alarmist position. I believe it is a fairly rare person who would actually be willing to participate in a hoax of this nature. But you insist on only considering the most outrageous, unbelievable description of what those scientists are doing and then you dismiss it because it is so outrageous and unbelievable.

That is what's called "dismissing all evidence". You don't have any logical reason to think that all of the counter evidence that you have been given is "cherry-picking, quibbling and nibbling around the edges". You haven't investigated enough to conclude this. It is an assumption that you make in order to justify the fact that you are simply dismissing counter evidence without considering it.

I agree that some of the argument you have faced here has been over the top. But conflicting evidence doesn't have to be "established, settled fact" in order to create reasonable reasonable doubt. All the skeptics have to show is that there is conflicting data that has some reasonable plausibility. Not certain. Not "settled fact", just enough to cause doubt.

Remember that it is the alarmists who are are making positive assertions here. The skeptics are just skeptical of those assertions. In order to be an alarmist, you have to positively assert (1) that the climate is actually getting warmer, (2) that it is unusually warm already, (3) that rising CO2 levels are a cause rather than an effect of this warming, (4) that human generated CO2 is a significant factor in the atmospheric levels of CO2, (5) that warming is a bad thing. Every one of these positive assertions is based on an argument of questionable soundness from data of questionable validity (I mean "questionable" here in the sense that a reasonable person can question it). Every single one of these positive assertions must be believed with very high confidence in order to justify alarmism.

Note that the probability of all of these assertions being true at once is the product of each of them being true individually. If you assign a 90% confidence level to each individual statement (which is absurdly high, given the nature of the evidence) then the probability that they are all true is only about 60%.

You haven't read an analysis of the emails from anyone who wasn't trying to defend them, have you? If you had, you would know that I am not only not over-stating things, I am arguably understating them.

On the contrary this is very much outside the norm of scientific endeavor. It is shockingly outside the norm. If I had ever seen any evidence of those sorts of things, I would have blown the whistle (or I like to think that I would; if the guilty party were a friend of mine or on my dissertation committee then it would have taken a lot of courage) and I would have expected the people involved to face serious consequences. If they did all of the things in the emails and did it over a long term as these emails show, I would expect them to lose tenure and get kicked out of the research community permanently. Good grief. Fabricating evidence? Tenured professors have lost their jobs for doing that just one time, much less making a career out of it.

The point is that, although you are right that it is a bit absurd to believe in a worldwide hoax by thousands of scientists, the skeptical position does not rely on this belief. Since the skeptical position does not rely on the existence of a worldwide hoax by thousands of scientists, the fact that such a hoax is implausible is not an argument against the skeptics. The fact that some skeptics believe in such a conspiracy is also not an argument against the skeptical position.

You have a fellow alarmist on this thread who thinks that the evil oil companies are deliberately destroying the world just so that they can be rich when the final disaster comes. I don't view the existence of this wacky theory as an argument against alarmism.

For the skeptical position to be true there doesn't have to be a hoax. There doesn't really have to be a conspiracy either, just a bunch of scientists letting their pride, their fear or their politics disable their critical faculties (a well-known phenomenon in science BTW). True, the skeptics have always claimed that there was a conspiracy to keep them from publishing, but they could have been right on the climate science even if no such conspiracy had existed. I think many of them were taken by surprise that there was also a conspiracy to actually massage the data and one to actually hide results.

You did imply this by saying that you thought the behavior shown in the emails was no big deal. I now realize that you are probably unaware of what exactly is in the emails and so you didn't realize what you were saying. But if so, the misunderstanding is not my fault.

That was beneath you, Troy. I know that you have been severely provoked by some others on this discussion but I have tried very hard to be rational and fair.

I think you missed my point. This alleged 97% consensus is in part based on the work of people who were so emotionally committed to their thesis that they were willing to engage in unethical practices to persuade people. Given that you now know this about those papers, logically, you should throw them out of consideration. How that would effect the consensus is unknown, but it is wishful thinking to assume that it would have no effect at all.

 

Another really telling excerpt from the Michael Crighton essay:

"The 1995 IPCC draft report said, "Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced." It also said, "No study to date has positively attributed all or part of observed climate changes to anthropogenic causes." Those statements were removed, and in their place appeared: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on climate." "

Jimbo

 

I do hope they read it.

 

Ther only people creating "socialist" utopia are the capitalists. Not to be able to recognise THAT simple fact is to be delusional.

And that makes redundant everything a delusional one says.

A socialist cannot possibly aim for utopia because a socialist is a person leaning towards the science, not religion/dogma/"moral" ideologies for inellectual stimulus and inspiration.

Accusing socialists of making changes that inept capitalists are really making is blame shifting sense of guilt pressing the buttons.

 

That takes the raspberry award , for all time .

EXAMPLE : DNA . The building code / blueprint of life.

ESTABLISHED CONSENSUS.

BASED ENTIRELY ON SCIENCE. DISCOVERED ONLY BY SCIENCE , AND NOTHING BUT SCIENCE. PERIOD.

 

If it's (BASED ON) consensus, it isn't science. Does that make it easier for you to comprehend? The writer of that which you are attempting to find cracks was pointing out that consensus is irrelevant. READ IT.

 

I comprehend perfectly well.

The statement that " consensus is irrelevant " is , in itself , Meaningless .

Science and consensus are NOT NECESSARILY MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE .

USUALLY THE OPPOSITE IS , IN FACT , THE CASE.

Does THAT make it easier for YOU to comprehend ?????

 

I agree 100% with your first statement above. Keep in mind that these two groups are now going to go to bed together like never before, and the worst characteristics of each will become embedded in the resulting system.


Jimbo

 

Climb off of Jim Henson's hand - it's apparently clouding your thot.
Then, go back and read what I posted from Michael Crichten, Elmo.

 

Consensus once threw Galileo into prison and thought the sun circled the earth. Consensus believes AL Gore. It is a matter of indoctrination. Free yourselves from consensus and learn to think for yourselves and use the logical powers of thought God has given you.

 

Are you mixing Kopernicus with Galileo, believed Galileo managed to ease himself away from the prison... ("These works to be printed when I'm dead...")..

And Kopernicus had seen the work of another fellow scientist, but he ended up as firewood....

But consensus among scientists....: Most of them agree that Darwin's evolution theorema is mostly correct, but you'll not have any problem with finding scientists that disagree to parts of Darwin's works.

The statement "Darwin was right" will then have a somewhere in 90% region crowd of scientists to agree to that again... The logical powers of thought that God has given me, will not be able to alter that fact....

 

This new post at JoNova puts a lot of basics in perspective.........


http://joannenova.com.au/