Rather than get hung up on the horns of a dilemma...seek truth in the tension of the paradox.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
A dialogue in Scholars and Rogues
Carl Brannen,
January 29, 2012 at 2:22 pm :
Hi Albatross. When I was paid to study this subject I wasn’t
allowed to get all my data from websites that were openly pursuing a
political point of view. I had to go back to the original research and I
absolutely had to fully understand both sides of the issues.
Since our company was involved in green energy, I guess I could have
looked at only the CAGW sources of information. My job would have been a
lot easier but it wouldn’t have felt right to me, as an engineer. I was
fortunate in that my boss accepted my conclusions. He also found them
convincing. I guess there are a lot of people who don’t have that
freedom.
The first difficulty people have with learning the truth about a
highly emotional and politically charged subject like this is that they
bring their preconceptions to the analysis of the information. There is
then a strong tendency to pay close attention to evidence that supports
your belief while heavily discounting evidence on the other side. I
can’t explain how to overcome this bias; what I try to do is to
understand the issue completely from the side that I am naturally
opposite to.
So the situation now has become fractured. The CAGW viewpoint is
common in general science and the media. CAGW supporters control most of
the journals that publish ecology related articles. They defend their
ideas with peer review in these journals. At the same time, the
geologists, who take a much longer view of the climate (and have less
faith in politically motivated modeling), publish anti-CAGW articles.
That’s the political situation in the sciences at the moment. So to
see the peer-reviewed anti-CAGW articles, you will have to read papers
that are published outside the CAGW controlled literature. Sadly, you
will have to explore more than “skepticalscience.com” and
“realclimate.org”.
This is not a journey that I can walk for you. You will have to do
the analysis yourself. I could point out some articles for you but I
doubt you’ll read them. But the tide is definitely turning in that
anti-CAGW articles are now being published on neutral ground. Oh, what
the heck. Here’s a recent article from the prestigious journal Science,
“Climate Sensitivity Estimated from Temperature Reconstructions of the
Last Glacial Maximum” by Schmittner, Urban, Shakun, Mahowald, Clark,
Bartlein, Mix and Rosell-Melé: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6061/1385.abstract I’m at a university and so I’m not sure if this is behind a paywall so here’s another link for the same article: http://www.princeton.edu/~nurban/pubs/lgm-cs-uvic.pdf
Picking up a diatribe from Roland Doucet: .....
Thousands of the best, most educated scientists on the planet agree to
the tune of 97% that the global temperature is going up (simple
measurement!), that it's because increased CO2 in the atmosphere from
burning fossil fuels, and that the increased temperature causes climate
change, including an increase in extreme weather events—again, simple
measurement and counting! Give it up and embrace integrity.
29 minutes ago ·
Owen AbreyTouche
Roland, I posted other scientists with verifiable credentials, most of
which had at least Phds and One was ScD. I let the experts do the
talking. Eventually it will become apparent to you that there is a
profound difference between one side that produces data, and the other
who only *say* they do. Nasa makes a devastating announcement to the
AGW theory and no one says anything, Cern published data with a great
angst because they know climate science has been hi-jacked by people who
get a little hysterical whenever there is science that confounds their
theory. The real deniers of science are not those that oppose AGW, they
are the ones who pump out hysteria, fudge their numbers, and proudly
declare the how wonderful the emperor looks wearing his invisible
clothes. The real deniers are the ones who use personal insult and mob
mentality to force their way. They are the ones who are intolerant of
the question. There could be dialogue on this if science were not so
politicized. I think both opinions have studies worth looking at. But
this is the new Catholic religion that even Galileo dare not question.
Since our company was involved in green energy, I guess I could have looked at only the CAGW sources of information. My job would have been a lot easier but it wouldn’t have felt right to me, as an engineer. I was fortunate in that my boss accepted my conclusions. He also found them convincing. I guess there are a lot of people who don’t have that freedom.
The first difficulty people have with learning the truth about a highly emotional and politically charged subject like this is that they bring their preconceptions to the analysis of the information. There is then a strong tendency to pay close attention to evidence that supports your belief while heavily discounting evidence on the other side. I can’t explain how to overcome this bias; what I try to do is to understand the issue completely from the side that I am naturally opposite to.
So the situation now has become fractured. The CAGW viewpoint is common in general science and the media. CAGW supporters control most of the journals that publish ecology related articles. They defend their ideas with peer review in these journals. At the same time, the geologists, who take a much longer view of the climate (and have less faith in politically motivated modeling), publish anti-CAGW articles.
That’s the political situation in the sciences at the moment. So to see the peer-reviewed anti-CAGW articles, you will have to read papers that are published outside the CAGW controlled literature. Sadly, you will have to explore more than “skepticalscience.com” and “realclimate.org”.
This is not a journey that I can walk for you. You will have to do the analysis yourself. I could point out some articles for you but I doubt you’ll read them. But the tide is definitely turning in that anti-CAGW articles are now being published on neutral ground. Oh, what the heck. Here’s a recent article from the prestigious journal Science, “Climate Sensitivity Estimated from Temperature Reconstructions of the Last Glacial Maximum” by Schmittner, Urban, Shakun, Mahowald, Clark, Bartlein, Mix and Rosell-Melé: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6061/1385.abstract I’m at a university and so I’m not sure if this is behind a paywall so here’s another link for the same article: http://www.princeton.edu/~nurban/pubs/lgm-cs-uvic.pdf
Picking up a diatribe from Roland Doucet: .....
Thousands of the best, most educated scientists on the planet agree to the tune of 97% that the global temperature is going up (simple measurement!), that it's because increased CO2 in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, and that the increased temperature causes climate change, including an increase in extreme weather events—again, simple measurement and counting! Give it up and embrace integrity.