GW Skeptics vs Scientific Concensus

[Breakable]

http://s3.amazonaws.com/infobeautiful/climate_skeptics_960.gif

[Phil’s Dad]

This comes across as a Scientific Concensus response to GW Skeptics.

Try this http://climatedebatedaily.com/ to get both sides of the story.

By the way there is nothing “Scientific” about “Consensus”

Scientific Consensus said the world was flat for a very long time.

Scientific Consensus said the Universe went round the Earth

Scientific Consensus said… (add your own)

[mchargue]

Note the CRU ‘leaked’ emails, and the non-reception by the main stream media.

[Breakable]

Well not every myth about scientific consensus is right either. It also depends how you define scientific consensus. I don’t think I could define it before scientific method (pragmatic) was born in 1877. And while the consensus is usually wrong in some way, improvements can be be made by investigating those areas and filling in the gaps. For example I don’t consider Einsteins relativity model to be a revolution of Newtonian physics, because Newtonian physics is still used in most areas.

Regarding the CRU leaked emails, I don’t actually see myself what is there so incriminating about them? Of course I clearly see that scientist did not check every email against the PR and Law departments, but this seems like normal communication, and I have no doubt that my own outbox (as a software developer) is even more incriminating.

[Breakable]

PS:Tnx for the link.

[Breakable]

Scientific Consensus vs Consensus
http://makewealthhistory.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/climate-change-consensus.jpg

[Augustine]

Scientists do not work with consensus. Scientists do research, create a hypothesis, test to verify their hypothesis, work to eliminate alternate explanations to their hypothesis, and then they publish their data and methodology so that others can look at what they have done and reproduce it. This last step is quite important as the goal of science is to find and disseminate new knowledge to other people.

Looking at the CRU code snippets I can say in my professional opinion that they have the quality of a second semester undergraduate computer programmer. If I wrote code that was that sloppy I would be fired and probably my boss would perform a post mortem on our hiring practices. The code is a hodge podge of various subroutines with next to no organization and irrelevant documentation. The data sets that the code operate on seem to be in a similar poor condition. What this means is that if asked, the researchers at CRU probably could not reproduce their findings as the code is a mess and they don’t seem to know which data set they should run against.

I think that this debacle is a real black eye for science. I also think that this shows the real need for transparency when researchers are working on problems of this scope (problems of the “lets rearrange our economies” scope). Researchers should have to publicly explain their methodologies (publicly, not through peer review), researchers should use commercial software libraries or open libraries (things that are known to work), and researchers should make their own code publicly available. Real scientists and researchers should not fear skeptics- one of the advantages of science is that it survives in the face of skeptics.

[Phil’s Dad]

Augustine wrote: Scientists do not work with consensus…one of the advantages of science is that it survives in the face of skeptics.

I would say rather that it thrives on scepticism.

It would be interesting to compile a list of iconic skeptics.

I would suggest;

Heraclitus
Galileo
Copernicus
Vesalius
Darwin
Einstein
Lerner

[mchargue]

Spot on, Newbie and Old Timer. Spot on.

It was depressing to read through code snippets that showed outright manipulation of the data, all in the name of ‘homogenizing’ it. Also insightful was the read of the documentation that read as a lamentation of the data set, the code base, and the manipulations that were applied to produce the desired results.

Sadly, while all of science will take a hit if it does not clean its house out, politically-safe AGW will likely trundle on. Sadly, there’s just too much money at stake to allow truth, or common sense, to win out.

Unless scientists of all stripes speak out against this, they will all be treated with the same (justified) derision.

Pat

[Breakable]

While I would not say that science is driven by consensus, I think it is important to have some baseline to begin with, on which you can verify, criticize and improve. If you had for example a 100 equally supported competing theories instead of one widely accepted one it would be much harder to work out the truth, because not one scientist would be able to study them all in his lifetime.
There is a list of all the superseded theories here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_scientific_theories
its interesting to see how they evolved.
Regarding the code or data analysis that is done by GW scientists I would not be surprised to learn that it was sloppy work, because they are not specialists in this area. It would be better if such work was left to the professionals – software engineers and data analysts, but that of course requires a different level of funding. Still sloppy work is better than no work IMHO, because you can criticize, improve and work out the issues.

[Rezwan]

Science is messy. Not instantaneous and certain. With GW, many of the issues go well beyond science, and it’s not about the science at all, but the politics, values, perceived threats.

Maybe, instead of thinking about consensus, we can look at this as a prisoner’s dilemma-type situation.

Start with the layman prisoner who has no intention of wading through all the data and come to a reasoned conclusion. So here’s the prisoner, trapped with some shrill, nasty guards (people who argue about GW: GW cop and GW denialist (GWD) cop).

They’re each offering some kind of deal.

So, you can take GW’s deal, and GW is right. Or take GW’s deal, but GWD was right.
Or go with GWD but he’s wrong, or go with GWD and he’s right.

What’s really at stake in each of these scenarios?

I doubt it’s possible to come to a consensus about that, either, or to even envision the scenarios. There are so many variables. Laws may be passed, substitutions made. Or not. And also, both cops may be “wrong” in many other unforseen ways, or eclipsed by other concerns, like an internet meltdown. And for all the fear of GW laws crippling the economy – how does that compare to the impact of the housing bubble and other wall street fiascos? I think we can cripple ourselves just fine in so many other ways.

Put another way, say you’re a born-again Christian. But then you find out, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Jesus was just a guy, not the son of God, and so your entire faith is unfounded. (This is, of course, not true. Jesus lives, folks! Or not – this is not the forum to argue the matter)

The question here has nothing to do with whether or not church doctrine (or any specific offshoot) is correct.

The question is only – how would you live your life differently if you believed x instead of y.

If you ask most people this, they wouldn’t live much differently, because their values are still the same and they chose that doctrine because it resonated with their values.

The arguments about specific doctrines are mostly smoke. But for some reason easier to talk about than values.

[Aeronaut]

Right on target with the prisoner’s dilemma, Rezwan. The reason that doctrines are so much easier to ‘discuss’ is that they’re a LOT easier to modify than core values. If people really wanted to change their values, there would be no market for dieting or quit smoking products.

So what are these cops going to do when Detroit figures out how to build 20M FFs/year and carbon emissions become a quaint non-issue?

[Rezwan]

Aeronaut wrote: So what are these cops going to do when Detroit figures out how to build 20M FFs/year and carbon emissions become a quaint non-issue?

This isn’t going to resolve anything for both sets of cops. Arguments are about positions, rather than needs. The GW folks will be relieved because FF plants will reduce emissions and allay their fears. But they will not concede that they had been wrong about those fears.

The GWDs who have been saying there is no problem to begin with, won’t be able to show that there was no problem – since to show that, you’d have to just let the status quo continue well past when the dire consequences predicted by GW folk would take place. So they will continue to assert that there was never any problem.

A working fusion reactor won’t prove anything in that argument either way. As such, the argument itself is effectively irrelevant to fusion.

Except…that brings up another issue: GW fears (right or wrong, who am I to judge) are very useful for the fusion community. It makes more strategic sense to leverage such fears to increase fusion funding, rather than dismiss them. Historically, fusion funding rises and falls with these sorts of panics. Weapons races, OPEC oil embargo, and now global warming.

It’s not about consensus, folks, it’s about coalition building (out of cantankerous people who tend to repel each other) for the purpose of directing the stream of pork to things you value.

Stay on mission, folks.

[Rezwan]

Rezwan wrote: Except…that brings up another issue: GW fears (right or wrong, who am I to judge) are very useful for the fusion community. It makes more strategic sense to leverage such fears to increase fusion funding, rather than dismiss them. Historically, fusion funding rises and falls with these sorts of panics. Weapons races, OPEC oil embargo, and now global warming.

It’s not about consensus, folks, it’s about coalition building (out of cantankerous people who tend to repel each other) for the purpose of directing the stream of pork to things you value.

Stay on mission, folks.

Not just GW fears, GWD fears are also useful.

We can leverage GW fears to increase fusion funding because GW-ers want emissions down. Likewise, we can leverage GWD-ers fears of GW-er success and cap and trade and other such regulatory horrors to increase fusion funding.

As long as people are going to run around being shrill and fearful, we may as well leverage them to our advantage. I mean that with all due respect since I don’t have the time to personally evaluate the data in any scientific manner and don’t know which fear is most warranted.

[Phil’s Dad]

Rezwan wrote:
We can leverage GW fears to increase fusion funding because GW-ers want emissions down. Likewise, we can leverage GWD-ers fears of GW-er success and cap and trade and other such regulatory horrors to increase fusion funding.

As long as people are going to run around being shrill and fearful, we may as well leverage them to our advantage.

You are speaking my language maallem. I shall be honoured to learn politics from you.

Just one modification – GWD do not fear GW-er success so much as fear the downside of their attempts to achieve it. For example restrictions in continued growth in energy availability and all that comes from it. (Which fear can also be leveraged)

By GW-er success I take it you mean reductions in world temperatures as a result of lower CO2 levels. Many a GWD would drop the D if there was any – any – sign of GW-er success.

sale no mobārak

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