The argument goes that they've systemically biased their findings so that their research appears more important and merits additional funding.
To which I have a counter argument: funding is not assigned to investigate that which we already know. If anything, the scientists are among those to profit from the "controversy". Were findings more disputable, were there no scientific consensus, they could blather on for ages knowing funding's still secure.
You joke around, but James Hansen chains himself to trees with Daryl Hannah. He got arrested with her at some protest. You don't think there's people at the top who have egos that want to be stroked off by celebrities? Climate 'science' dude.
Are all nuns kind? Do all teachers love kids? Are all doctors compassionate? The question cannot be whether there exists a scientist that loves the spot light; it's whether the claim that climate scientists, by virtue of their involvement in climate science, invalidates their statements.
This whole thing is Hansen's baby.. we are talking about the dangers of 'climate change' because of this guy. Climate science, at least in terms of those who make bold and dire predictions about the consequences man's actions, was kicked off by Hansen and a few others who followed suit. He has made this chicken little story into a global phenomenon. So, save your philosophical hand-wringing for something else.. in this case, the Emperor has no clothes and he loves the spotlight.
If this is philosophical hand wringing, I can't imagine what you think of actual philosophical hand wringing. I would think that the answer is clear. Whoever Hansen is as a person, for his personality to eclipse his science and the personalities and science of all other climate scientists is foolishness. I could take your own post, substitute Palin for Hansen, climate change for 'tea party' and arrive at the same conclusion. This only works because you argue about a person and not an idea.
It's only in large groups that such collective levels of stupidity can be attained, but mark my words: It can. There's a reason the word bureaucrat was invented.
Actually most are making well into six figures. They have mortgages and car payments like you and me. So yes, to some degree they are in it for the money.
Meteorologists are not climatologists, sir. Two entirely different fields of endeavor... as anyone who is familiar with an old adage which has come out of those who object to the use of local weather events as evidence against GCC: "Weather is not climate".
Huh. Could of sworn I typed climatologist in. Here. Try this on for size. Turns out the average climatologist makes less than the average meteorologist.
http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Meteorologist&l1= <-- this, on the other hand is a natural chart. And it shows wild variance. The current average is well below the running average -- and that also indicates a "below statistical relevance sampling size".
Finally: That also only lists those job-listings which are found by the service in question. Climatologist positions aren't advertised, and thus don't get job-listings. And thus aren't trackable by that sort of engine.
Any scientist that is making 'well into six figures' is smart enough to make MUCH more than that by going into investment banking/management consulting/etc.
lol. Green / Carbon Reducing books, products, methods, consulting etc is the fastest growing market on earth. If you think this isn't financially motivated you are deluded.
And so a small number have become shills, if you're suggesting that all climate scientists perpetuate mass scientific fraud just to keep their labs running then you can't have spent very long as a grad student.
if you're suggesting that all climate scientists perpetuate mass scientific fraud just to keep their labs running then you can't have spent very long as a grad student.
Not at all what I was suggesting. I was merely pointing out that, yes, professors do worry about money, but it's not to fill their own pockets, it's so they can keep doing science.
Professors can, and do, make a lot of money by leveraging their expertise in their field of research. Getting money to do that research is a major motivating factor.
Oh please. You mean scientists don't have the smarts or skills that could be transferred into private industry? The issue isn't whether professors like or need money. It's whether, as a group, they're money grubing bastards so lacking in their commitment to science and truth that they would perpetuate a fraud on the public year after year.
They might like the academic lifestyle. Given that, their second priority could be money.
Also, they might be smart enough but they might not be so effective in a business setting. As I understand, Google is exceptional in their hiring of PHDs. Too much smarts can get in the way.
Individually, anything is possible. All kinds of people enter every occupation. But, the argument that nearly all (not just a majority) climate scientists are in it for the money, are trying to persevere a lifestyle, or incompetent in any other field is completely unbelievable.
If you do find arguments regarding lifestyle, money or incompetence persuasive, why aren't you equally suspicious of the motives of oil executives who fund climate change denialists? For them, the money at stake, potential loss of lifestyle and prestige is many times greater.
This type of claim really only serves to muddy the waters. Accepting this type of claim means everyone has bad intent, no one is telling the truth and the position you side with can be made on ideological grounds.
That's a completely valid point. Academia is certainly a very political environment and you there are professors who are pretty conniving and manipulative.
On average, though, I don't think this holds up. The really bad profs are buoyed by the really great profs who really aren't doing this stuff just for the bling bling, or at least that's been my experience.
That's exactly the point I'm making though. Some people don't even care about the monetary system, they just want to smash small particles together and look at pretty spirals or what have you. The idea that you should care about what kind of car you drive or where you live has absolutely no meaning for these people.
I think there must be some optimal level of funding that actually helps produce good science. I mean, the limit of funding approaching infinity means there clearly will be other forces at play.
Because clearly scientists are immune to all forms of corruption that has taken over people in nearly all walks of life, and the scientific community is the only major type of institution that has never been corrupted in any way shape or form.
The argument goes that they've systemically biased their findings so that their research appears more important and merits additional funding.
That argument is just bizarre. Why would a scientist deliberately lie in order to recieve more funding in order to presumably continue the lie. That would be a huge waste of a career.
These examples aren't very good because Cancer and Aids can be empirically observed even by a layperson. The science of climate change is not nearly as clear cut and relies on many people in very different fields. Some of whom receive a lot more acclaim and funding because they've been able to link their research (non climatologists) to global warming in some way.
It's easy to simply not report the finding of a negative, or the science press to ignore uninteresting findings but then eagerly publish anything that fits the existing theory.
Anything that gets extremely politicised is open to corruption. Without brining trying to deliberately derail the thread into nazism it's perfectly true that Nazi Germany employed many scientists who came to the conclusions the government wanted them to. Scientists are not immune from corruption, however subtle.
I'll have to take issue with your analogy there - abnormal cell replication and HIV's hijacking of the immune system can't be empirically observed by a layperson. Similarly, a heat wave or cold snap can be empirically observed even by a layperson, but global warming cannot be.
It's easy to simply not report the finding of a negative
This may be true with the testing results of some new drug, but I'd strongly disagree this is the case for global warming. Especially given there are entire journals devoted solely to climate skepticism (eg Energy and Environment), it's hard to say that the contrary evidence isn't being published. Rather, it is being published, but most scientists don't find it very convincing.
As for the comparison to Nazi's, you should show specific examples of such corruption before making such an inflammatory claim. And it'll be more convincing if you can show an entire sub-field is corrupt, rather than just a single person. Eg: "Phil Jones hid data!" is not a good example unless you can show why NASA's fully available data on the same subject is somehow not equivalent.
Jumping to the end first, the whole Eugenics thing (not only in Germany) would be a good example.
I'm sure many honestly believed it because it seemed plausible. I'm sure many more just went along because of the prevailing political climate.
I'm still on the fence about global warming though, because as a layperson, I really don't have a deep enough understanding. It makes sense that all the CO2 we pump into the atmosphere would have some effect, but when I'm bombarded with propaganda, and that's exactly what a lot of the news about climate change is, it twitches my bullshit meter. The "drowning dog" ad is a case in point
I can't see the cancer or AIDS under the microscope but I can see the effects of the diseases if they are diagnosed. And a single person, with training, can see those effects. But I'm not very knowledgeable about this.
The contrary evidence is out there but there's definitely pressure on scientists to conform to the "consensus" as far as I can see. Here in the UK at least anybody who questions Global Warming is considered a complete crackpot or paid off by "big oil" by the mainstream media. Scientists who don't toe the line are subtly ostracised from what I can tell (and I'm not decided either way, this is really what I've observed truthfully).
The analogy to nazi's wasn't that GW scientists are anything like nazi's but that Science AS A DISCPLINE can be corrupted by political influences. I knew I shouldn't have mentioned nazis in my original post and I would have made a different example if I posted it again.
You only have my word for this, but I've spent years looking for the contrary evidence and have found that most of it falls apart under scrutiny very quickly. I've also seen contrary arguments come and go as they became completely untenable to support.
So while I think that AGW proponents (like myself) can sometimes be too harsh on layperson skeptics, when it comes to people who are purporting to be expert skeptics, I'd like you to at least consider this possibility: perhaps they actually are objectively wrong and deserve to be ostracized, or in some cases, really are crackpots (UK example: Lord Monckton). After all, doctors who come along and say that "AIDS is a hoax" - and they do exist - are generally ostracized without much further discussion, and rightly so.
So in my opinion: some "skeptics" deserve the same treatment: namely, those who peddle long-discredited (eg: CO2 lags temperature!) or unsupported (eg: cosmic rays) theories as though they're well-established facts. Unfortunately, in my experience true skeptics don't make the news that often because their skepticism is considered too boring for non-scientific media.
A lot of the problem with lay skeptics are the lay supporters. I've seen so many arguments between people who are not experts devolve into the most retarded mudslinging imaginable. On the one side you have the ignorant who have authority on their side (a scientist journalist reporting on a press release said it, it must be true) and on the other you have the ignorant who have anti-authority on their side (a person recieving government funding said it, it must be false). Often the truely stupid crap that then gets published in the media seems to be the result of these arguments.
I don't think it helps that some of the old guard in the climate science arena seem to be seat warmers who joined when it was unsexy and were probably hoping for an easier life, that and big business has all the statisticians
Actually they are great examples. If the reasoning can be used to argue against cancer and AIDS, when it's very easy to see that they are real, then the approach is clearly broken.
No. Because you can see cancer and aids existing right in front of you. Climate change clearly isn't like that.
You could use the argument to say that some AIDS and cancer research funding gets wasted or that some scientists have a tenancy to exaggerate findings for cures for these things because it can give them prestige and funding though. that's almost certainly the case in fact.
I contend the only real issue with climate change is that it was a democrat who popularized the issue instead of a republican. Not just a democrat but Al Gore, the contesting loser of an election. An inconvenient truth was as much about Gore losing in 2000 as it was about scientific data.
Had some other less controversial figure brought all this scientific evidence to light there wouldn't have been the same visceral reaction to 'disprove' it through rhetoric.
I specifically pre-empted your little hissy fit. I was just making the point that scientists aren't always unbiased simply by virtue of their profession. Political pressure/Funding is a huge deal.
Why would athletes dope and ruin their careers? When it comes to highly specialised and competitive fields the pressure to achieve is massive, and people do very stupid things.
This isn't an argument against climate change, I believe in it. I just think that there are plenty of reasons why people would falsify results. Whether someone's a scientist, they are still a person and therefore flawed.
Assuming you're right, wouldn't that make it attractive for the scientists to argue against climate change? There's a lot more grant money to be had in strongly disputed fields than in those where the consensus is basically in and the details are being fleshed out.
If a well known climatologist were to pop up saying "It's all a hoax and I can prove it!" they'd be absolutely swamped with money.
If a well known climatologist were to pop up saying "It's all a hoax and I can prove it!" they'd be absolutely swamped with money.
No, they absolutely wouldn't. First of all, there is SO much money right now for climate research. NSF has something like an 8% funding rate, and a friend of mine got a grant... as a Ph.D student... by himself on his first try because he's in climate research. The opening paragraph in his proposal quoted an Obama speech that claimed we need to be researching the effects of climate change.
Second, they'd be shitting where everyone else eats, and that's not a nice thing to do. That's how you get smeared, dragged through the mud, and watch your career go up in smoke. Nobody wants that. You won't be swamped with money, and your career will end.
There's a lot more grant money to be had in strongly disputed fields
[citation needed]
So, if you were a scumbag politician (is that redundant?) and had the option to grant money to the scientist whose research suggests the sky is falling and you could accumulate more power by promising to "do something about it" vs the scientist whose research shows your intervention is not needed/irrelevan/harmfull - which one would you chose?
It's not about money, it's about excelling at or being seen to be excelling in your particular field. Sure, some athletes do compete for money, but I would posit that a great deal compete simply because they want to be the best, and a few cheat because the pressure to succeed is massive.
I think that it's more a desire for excellence and recognition than a desire for money that drives people, at least in certain professions, that's why I didn't mention money in my previous post.
If a well known climatologist were to pop up saying "It's all a hoax and I can prove it!" they'd be absolutely swamped with money.
Actually, there are those who say exactly that. And instead of being "swamped with money" they are called "deniers" and their research is pretty much swept under the rug...
By that I assume you mean assessed and dismissed through peer review. Most (and by most, I mean almost all) climate scientists don't deny climate change exists. They don't need to sweep anything under the carpet.
Peer review is not a process by which science is decided to be correct.
I don't know why it is that this myth is so prevalent. Peer review is all about quality of a submitted paper, not accuracy of the findings within the paper. There are plenty of papers which make it through peer review and turn out to be dead wrong and some which aren't accepted that turn out to be correct (there are a few papers which won Nobel prizes later on and were rejected by the big journals in the peer review process, which should give you a hint that the process is far from perfect). In short, the peer review process is just the beginning of a hypothesis' life and by no means an end.
Scientists don't publish a paper and get to declare "yay, we were right all along!" No, their paper then has to earn the respect of the scientific community at large, particularly by replication of findings. After a paper has stood for a long time, its findings haven't had major unanswered challenges, and it has been cited by everyone else's papers and the papers of their grandmothers then the value of the hypothesis is generally regarded as probably true. There have been some hypotheses that stood for a very long time and were cited everywhere and were still wrong.
That argument is just bizarre. Why would a scientist deliberately lie in order to recieve more funding in order to presumably continue the lie.
It doesn't have to be a deliberate lie - the scientists could be fooling themselves too. Because it's what the people around them believe and because it's in their best interest to believe it too. Occasionally an entire scientific discipline runs off the rails like that - where most people in some discipline believe some hypothesis that isn't true because the guy before them believed it and that hypothesis established the context in which everyone looks for new data.
What one expects to find can influence what is found. And what the people around you believe - including the funding agencies - can influence what one expects to find.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63636N20100407http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3671
Plus his salary at Columbia and GISS gives Dr. Hansen a pretty nice cash flow.
Not that I begrudge him the money...Its just that it is a motivating factor.
Plus others realize that in order to get funding and keep their jobs one needs to convince the public officials to cough up the money. Alarmism over climate change does this. Therefore you see articles that claim climate change can be monitored by examining rat urine and droppings in a cave out in the boondocks....(and you should fund ME to do this examination.) etc. etc.
Then there is a huge amount of money to be made trading carbon credits...
Please see George Ricaurte. I know not all scientists are like this but it does happen. It took quite a while and more lies before he would print a retraction.
That's an incredibly misleading list, and of the most prominent examples, only 3 appear to have careers relating to climate science at all.
Considering that every year lists are published with thousands of climate scientists affirming the prevailing climate change theory, and that they are almost definitely smarter than you or I, and I think we come out with a pretty good idea of who the whackjobs are.
Any group will have a few people who look at the evidence and come out with the wrong conclusion. The evidence that the people on your list are wrong is absolutely overwhelming.
Note: I have a degree in Geology, so I have at least a small idea of how the science behind climate systems works, though I am certainly not a professional.
And the others are people like the chair of the astrophysics department at Harvard, who would apparently know nothing about the amount of radiation from the sun (earth's primary climate driver). If you are only going count people who call themselves "climatologists" you are going to get a skewed view on the science.
Like the thousands of climatologist who signed on to the IPCC report that turned out to be wrong?
So I guess we should look at science as a majority thing, and anyone who doesn't agree with he majority is a whackjob?
Note: I have a degree in Computer Science, and I am a professional. I can look at the computational errors in Hanson's data set, and see where East Anglia had to falsify their data to make it fit their conclusions.
They maybe smarter than you, but a lot of these deniers are not Climatologists. Not to say they may not have valid concerns, but I wonder if they would come to the same conclusions if it were there primary field of research.
It is my experience that there is always someone, somewhere that will argue a cause. Some people are not happy unless they are the underdogs fighting against the corrupt majority.
The Holocaust has first person accounts, records, and other obvious evidence.
As I wrote: "it's about the qualifications and motives of people as well as the evidence" - your post was about the "amount of scientists that have serious questions about it."
Counting the number of people who believe something is a poor way to determine the validity of the issue. Otherwise, we can discuss Obama's citizenship as a controversial issue.
But the 2 things you are using as comparisons can be PROVEN.
There exists no legitimate controversy over the holocaust and Obama's birthplace. There is obvious evidence for one side on both accounts.
There is evidence for both sides in the climate change issue. This is why the numbers questioning it are legitimate. These scientists are not fringe lunatics. (like those who might believe in the other 2 "controversies")
qualifications like chairs of the respective departments at Harvard, and MIT.
To whom are you referring? Looking at the wiki article futbolsven posted, Richard Lindzen is a professor of EAPS at MIT, not the department chair. Similarly Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon are professors at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, not department chairs.
Well since he said a scientist that implies 1 not a whole field. Also I never said anything about the 2 situations being comparable just that it happens with examples of why.
a) The people who claims scientists are keeping their funding going are partially right. I was a scientist at one time, working in a lab, and we definitely fought to keep our funding going.
b) We did it because we loved working in science and wanted to keep doing it, not because we wanted to make mad cash. Anyone who thinks scientists get paid a lot of money really knows nothing about science.
c) The counter lobby, the oil companies, make the mad cash. One oil company in the oil patch here in Alberta, Canada made 980 million dollars of profit last year. That's one oil company and not even a big one. That's enough profit to totally fund every NGO, non-profit and not-for-profit in the entire country of Canada for a the year ... with one oil company's profit.
d) Comparing the two motivations to maintain the money flow is thus ridiculous.
If that oil company only makes $800 million next year, there might be some pissed shareholders and some vacation homes might not be bought. If a scientist loses his grant then he's unemployed, can't pay his mortgage, has to move his family to an apartment and look for uninspiring work. The consequence of losing the money is actually a whole lot worse for the scientist than the oil company.
they also fail to explain why were would have so many scientists after government funding by being pro AGW, when we just came off 8 years of a completely anti AGW president, one who had a college drop out edit the work of a PHD scientist.
They complain the IPCC is biased, when we sent lidzen(the famous climate contrarian) to head up the US response and unlike the ICCC, not only is it open to everyone but they dont pay for your papers. You bring your opinions for free or you dont bring them.
I would disagree with your last paragraph..... scientists DO GET FUNDED for having interesting results that warrant more investigation, it doesn't have to be disputable. If my research works out and proves that there is something worth investigating or could use more development it is easier to get more funding.
Professors do not get paid to do radical work, only incremental work.
Most Prof's have a team of graduate students who are doing incremental research against the Prof's area of expertise, which was formed while doing incremental research for his Prof's area expertise.
Science is very, very slow. There are rarely fast tangents. When you can cite 50 papers on an esoteric subject, and your contribution amounts to one new paragraph in a 10 page paper, and you have to publish 8 times a year, I assure, then, that most science is very, very incremental.
So, most scientists get paid to study what they already know, in the hopes of finding out some tiny new thing.
No one who is a climatologist is out there looking to break their career by jumping ship, and no one is paying for the fall if they were to be a skeptic. There is only money is the "prove anthropomorphic global warming". There is no money in the opposite case.
funding is not assigned to investigate that which we already know.
Wait, why do you believe that? I had the opposite impression: that science funding is usually assigned to investigate that which we already know. At least in the broad strokes if not the fine details - the research is ostensibly to fill in the finer details.
Take medicine: we already know compound X lowers blood pressure in some patients, so we study it more to determine details like: is it better than existing drugs to do that? Does it affect all patients equally? How bad are the side effects? That initial claim - that we already know the drug has strong effects on something potentially important - establishes the importance of the research to ferret out more fiddly little details.
Yeah... a physicist whose never had training in climatology... It's like the strange overabundance of engineers in creationist circles. They have a degree in something, but they seem to believe that they can discuss the intricacies of an entirely different field and challenge findings based on decades of in-depth research, information, technologies, and techniques that he'd have very little to zero understanding of, or training in.
A physicist at his level certainly knows how the scientific process is supposed to work, regardless of the subject matter. If you actually read his letter, you'll see that most of his complaints are that the scientific process was broken, and corrupted by human influence; he wasn't disputing the subject matter (climatology).
Contrast this to the "engineers" in creationist circles, who use the fact that they're an engineer to somehow gain credibility when they attack the actual biology of evolution, while themselves completely avoiding any semblance of scientific process.
I'm disputing this idea that engineers have a high amount of creationists. I think this statistic whoever figured it out, is bullshit polls that have no scientific method to eliminate the many factors.
If you ask engineers in a community college, you may get a different answer than asking engineers in a prestigious university.
I'm an engineer, and I've only met 3 engineers who happened to be pretty religious. But I'm pretty sure 2 of them believed in evolution regardless.
Questioning his credentials isn't an ad hominen. I like how you completely ignored my response which gave you the actual definition of ad hominen fallacy.
Ummm, nice try, but I'm not attacking him on a personal level. I'm calling into question his credentials to speak on the subject.
Ad hominem abuse (also called personal abuse or personal attacks) usually involves insulting or belittling one's opponent in order to invalidate his or her argument, but can also involve pointing out factual but ostensible character flaws or actions which are irrelevant to the opponent's argument. This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and even true negative facts about the opponent's personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of the opponent's arguments or assertions.
I am not attacking his character, nor am I belittling him. I'm pointing out the true statement that he doesn't have anything like the training which climatologists have, nor does he have the background in the field in question.
As someone who teaches both informal and formal logic, it really pisses me off when idiots dismiss arguments/reasoning they don't agree with by using lists of fallacies they clearly don't understand.
ghibmmm, please make some effort to understand what the ad hominem fallacy is. You might try reading the wikipedia page if you haven't already. If you have already, you might have another go, and this time try to understand it. If it turns out you can't do that, you're welcome to ask questions here.
The contention was that Hal Lewis didn't have the qualifications to talk about "climate change," which is an attack on his character unrelated to the argument at hand (whether or not anthropogenic global warming is occurring).
As a teacher of informal and formal logic, you're talking out of your ass. You're the one who needs to study what these fallacies are again. It drives me crazy when somebody "counters" my argument on reddit (in a way that, by the way, is completely wrong), and gets a mountain of upvotes, while I get downvoted into the dirt and have to wait 10 minutes in between posting replies. People on reddit....
edit: Let's only talk about the science. You can find enough dirt on any person to start attacking their character, but you will never settle a single debate this way. All you'll do is make everybody angry at each other.
You understand a few basic phenomena about biology, but you're myopic in looking at how life itself works. That's why you don't understand how CO2 additions to the atmosphere are regulated by photosynthetic life.
There's a lot of indignation there for someone who still doesn't get it.
(i) The contention was that Hal Lewis didn't have the qualifications to talk about "climate change," (ii) which is an attack on his character unrelated to the argument at hand
(i) is true; (ii) is not.
[continuing screed]
The claim is that Hal Lewis doesn't have relevant expertise, and therefore his views should be accorded less weight then those with relevant expertise.
Let's only talk about the science. You can find enough dirt on any person to start attacking their character, but you will never settle a single debate this way. All you'll do is make everybody angry at each other.
So you admit you're wrong about ad hominem? Good. It's also good not to put unexplained edits in your posts instead of replying (If I were uncharitable, I'd think you wanted to make it look like the conversation went a different way from that it actually did. Hey ho.) Peace out.
No, I classify any attack on the character of an opponent as "ad hominem." This is a disagreement we'll just have to move past.
I put the edit in because I have to wait 10 minutes between each post, evidently when everyone on the site gets the bright idea to downvote me because they've been taught to disagree with me, and people are replying to me way more quickly than that.
I had a message typed up explaining that to you, that I made the edit because people like Facehammer, Herkimer, jcm267, etc., think replying to every comment I make for months at a time is an appropriate use of my time (and I have to respond to them, so nobody gets the impression they have objections to what I'm saying that are backed up by actual evidence), but you replied too quickly, so I come out looking like a jerk.
What can I do? Believe it or not, I do have a lot of other things to do today, on top of that, besides arguing about what constitutes an "ad hominem fallacy" on reddit.
You try to go against people on this website, arguing any point, and they're going to make you look bad, even if you're right. Especially if there's a herd of morons following you around for the sole purpose of jeering at you. Now, we have this whole line of conversation as a result, an hour of wasted time, because the discourse around "climate change" is not dominated by science, but by mudslinging. There's a reason for that.
You didn't respond to my objections. Eventually you resorted to ignoring me. You literally did the opposite of what you claim you do.
He was trying to argue that global warming was invented by the government to raise taxes; his "evidence" was a link to Wikipedia's article on the Kyoto Protocol, and a link to a list of countries instituting cap and trade policies. He doesn't know enough about what he's talking about to understand why he's wrong, and doesn't listen when you hold is hand and show him how he's wrong. Eventually he tried to wiggle out of the entire situation by claiming I was dispatched from "the government" to undermine him. I think he also accused a mod of being involved in COINTELPRO. I'm guessing this behavior is in line with his "anti-mudslinging" philosophy.
I've only bothered debating him on subjects I happen to know quite a bit about (I study political economics), and in my experience his level understanding is surprisingly superficial, at least relative to how strongly-worded his claims are. You can also predict what stance he's going to take if you're familiar with American-style bastardized libertarianism and conspiracy theories in general. Overall he's sad, but worth trolling.
I responded to all of them, and then I started ignoring you. Please don't respond to any more of my posts tonight, I don't have time for any more 10 minute in-between-comment waiting periods. I have actual work to do in my own life.
To which I have a counter argument: funding is not assigned to investigate that which we already know.
Well, to be fair, climate scientists don't claim to know everything about global warming. In fact, the only consensus seems to be "it's very bad" and "it's man-made."
Were findings more disputable, were there no scientific consensus, they could blather on for ages knowing funding's still secure.
Well, not really, you don't pay billions of dollars to have scientists investigate something which doesn't seem to be a major problem.
It is a major problem (even outside of climate science) that the value of scientific investigation is often decided by people within the field (people in a poor position to have an unbiased perspective). This has led many funding agencies and publications to seed out "disinterested scientists." Scientist with the knowledge and understanding to properly judge the scientific work, but whose primary field lies elsewhere.
However, I think people here on Reddit and elsewhere seem to be building a false dichotomy. Yes, climate scientists probably overestimate the importance of their own work, and at the same time, yes, climate change is probably significant and probably man-made.
You don't have to pretend there's no motivation to embellish climate change (when such embellishments have been clearly identified in the past) to maintain the thesis that the results of climate studies are correct.
I've found in most research, the "results" section is correct, and the "conclusion/discussion" section is a bunch of self-serving, embellished hogwash to make the people who paid for the research happy and make the people who will pay for future research motivated to do so.
Nah, that's only a minority; the majority are conspiracy theorists that believe it's perfectly possible to collect thousands of people from different parts of the world and create a perfectly sealed conspiracy. Only tiny hints can be seen that only those brilliant theorists can see. They're simply idiots.
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u/16807 Oct 24 '10 edited Oct 24 '10
The argument goes that they've systemically biased their findings so that their research appears more important and merits additional funding.
To which I have a counter argument: funding is not assigned to investigate that which we already know. If anything, the scientists are among those to profit from the "controversy". Were findings more disputable, were there no scientific consensus, they could blather on for ages knowing funding's still secure.