Moonbeam sez,
I think it's the numbers that define credibility in scientific opinion. it is a numbers game. Science is all about peer review and data that other scientist can duplicate. Science is all about consensus, what the most scientists think is the most likely interpretation of the data. It is not about truth. Consensus can change. But it's what it is now that matters.
Though I do not particularly subscribe to this concept, I refer you back to some of my original commentary that the tide of opinion, the new consensus if you will, is actually shifting in a myriad of ways away from the old consensus that you are defending.
Are you falling into the trap of being a true believer, rather than the skeptic that is demanded by the scientific method? Do you only watch MSNBC, do you only listen to that comfortable agreement among your peers in San Francisco, do you do anything to challenge your beliefs and your belief systems? It is very hard to do, I know, but when you move to a higher level of enlightenment it is truly a wondrous thing.
You might consider that there are four methods for the settlement of doubt, graded by their success in achieving a
sound fixation of belief:
1. The method of tenacity ? persisting in that which one is inclined to think.
2. The method of authority ? conformity to a source of ready-made beliefs.
3. The method of congruity or the a priori or the dilettante or "what is agreeable to reason" ? leading to argumentation that finally gets nowhere.
4. The scientific method ? whereby inquiry actually
tests itself and criticizes, corrects, and improves itself.
I would not be so quick to dismiss that
scientific inquiry can offer amazing breakthroughs and often, very often, corrects itself in dramatic ways. The history of the 20th century is rife with examples of this, as is all of human history.
Let me not get off topic, I wanted to challenge your predisposition toward what you understand to be consensus.
Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is the most comprehensive objective compilation of science on climate change ever published. It offers a ?second opinion? to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2007. The IPCC doc is likely the "consensus" source document you might use as a reference. Unlike that report, the
Climate Change Reconsidered follow-on report finds global warming is not a crisis, and never was.
While we are often told about the
?2,500 scientists? who contributed to the latest IPCC report, the vast majority of these contributors had no influence on the conclusions expressed by the IPCC and were not asked if they endorsed those conclusions (McLean 2007, 2008, 2009). The IPCC?s key personnel and lead authors are appointed by governments, not by scientific organizations. Its Summaries for Policymakers (SPM) are produced by a small group of scientists and are revised and agreed to, line-by-line, by representatives of member governments before they are made public (McKitrick 2007). The full reports of the IPCC are then revised after their executive summaries were written in order to agree with the political documents.
The scientists involved with the IPCC are almost all in careers that rely on government contracts and rely on government grants to support their IPCC activities. Most travel to and hotel accommodations at exotic locations for the drafting authors is paid with government funds.
The IPCC?s agenda is often misunderstood. It is not to discover the truth about how the world?s incredibly complex and ever-changing climate operates. It is, instead, to justify control of the emission of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide.
Climate Change Reconsidered lists 35 contributors and reviewers from 14 countries and
presents in an appendix the names of 31,478 American scientists who have signed a petition saying ?there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth?s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth?s climate.? (my highlights.)
Principal findings of the
NIPCC book include the following:
* Climate models suffer from numerous deficiencies and shortcomings that could alter even the very sign (plus or minus, warming or cooling) of earth?s projected temperature response to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations.
* The model-derived temperature sensitivity of the earth--especially for a doubling of the preindustrial CO2 level--is much too large, and feedbacks in the climate system reduce it to values that are an order of magnitude smaller than what the IPCC employs.
* Real-world observations do not support the IPCC?s claim that current trends in climate and weather are ?unprecedented? and, therefore, the result of anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
* The IPCC overlooks or downplays the many benefits to agriculture and forestry that will be accrued from an ongoing rise in the air?s CO2 content.
* There is no evidence that CO2-induced increases in air temperature will cause unprecedented plant and animal extinctions, either on land or in the world?s oceans.
* There is no evidence that CO2-induced global warming is or will be responsible for increases in the incidence of human diseases or the number of lives lost to extreme thermal conditions.
Climate Change Reconsidered is coauthored by two distinguished scientists:
Dr. S. Fred Singer is one of the most distinguished scientists in the U.S. In the 1960s, he established and served as the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, now part of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and earned a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award for his technical leadership. In the 1980s, Singer served for five years as vice chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Oceans and Atmosphere (NACOA) and became more directly involved in global environmental issues. Since retiring from the University of Virginia and from his last federal position as chief scientist of the Department of Transportation, Singer founded and now directs the nonprofit Science and Environmental Policy Project.
Dr. Craig D. Idso is founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. He received his Ph.D. in geography from Arizona State University, where he studied as one of a small group of University Graduate Scholars. He was a faculty researcher in the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University and has lectured in Meteorology at Arizona State University. Dr. Idso has published scientific articles on issues related to data quality, the growing season, the seasonal cycle of atmospheric CO2, world food supplies, coral reefs, and urban CO2 concentrations.
NIPCC Project Report
A short synopsis of the full report
You might also take a look at
The Manhattan Declaration On Climate Change -
The Manhattan Declaration On Climate Change
Manhattan Declaration endorsers who are climate science specialists or scientists in closely related fields
Text of the declaration -
Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change
?Global warming? is not a global crisis
We, the scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders, assembled at Times Square, New York City, participating in the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,
Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method;
Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;
Recognising that the causes and extent of recently-observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed ?consensus? among climate experts are false;
Affirming that attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing human suffering;
Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than colder:
Hereby declare:
That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity?s real and serious problems.
That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.
That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.
That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation, and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.
That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.
Now, therefore, we recommend ?
That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as ?An Inconvenient Truth?.
That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.
Agreed at New York, 4 March 2008
***************
I could go on with academic and scientific references, but you get my drift. It is time to accept that there is
considerable dispute of the causes of climate change, the impact of human contribution to such climate change and the likely effectiveness and utility of human attempts to affect climate.
One thing there is no dispute about is that if we proceed down the road the current government proposes it will come with a bill in the trillions of dollars and, by their own admission, to little effect...
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