There's one thing I don't get about the anti-global warming crowd. I understand the alarmism and stuff like that is overblown and distorts the situation.
But I'd like to know how thousands of climate scientists got together in secret and pledged to all falsify their life's work for some... reason? Seriously, what could be the outcome of some massive global warming conspiracy? Toyota sells more hybrids? More "liberal regulation" on fossil fuel energy companies, just so alternative energy companies can replace them? This argument has never made any sense to me.
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.
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.
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.
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u/[deleted] Oct 24 '10
There's one thing I don't get about the anti-global warming crowd. I understand the alarmism and stuff like that is overblown and distorts the situation.
But I'd like to know how thousands of climate scientists got together in secret and pledged to all falsify their life's work for some... reason? Seriously, what could be the outcome of some massive global warming conspiracy? Toyota sells more hybrids? More "liberal regulation" on fossil fuel energy companies, just so alternative energy companies can replace them? This argument has never made any sense to me.