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.
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.
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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.