I maintain though, as I always have, that the reduction of carbon dioxide waste is a POSITIVE aim as is anything seeking to minimize the effect of ourselves on our environment. The only things I'm calling into question are the tactics currently being employed. If this data-munging is a universal thing, I'd argue that the ends do not warrant the means. This should be a scientific debate, not an emotional one (as it has become).
[1] I say profitable because it's hard for contrarians to get grant money as they are generally believed to be 'quacks'.
Well, hang on, the article identifies an an erroneous prediction about the impact of man made climate change. It's a bit of a jump you're making from there to "global warming isn't real" or "the tons of carbon we're emitting aren't what's causing the raise in temperature we're seeing".
The energy sector and other carbon emitters would have enough available money to make the government grant money look like small change. Imagine how much it would be worth to them to discredit man made global warming. I'm sure they do fund many of the contrarians one way or another. But the fact that they aren't able to fund reputable research that supports their position really does say something about how quacky the contrarians are regarded as being.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/feb/02/frontpagen...
These are the same organizations who are cited as the "scientific consensus" to deflect criticism and debate.
Were the glaciers the main point of the report, or just a footnote? Probably there was a lot of information in it, so the people who wrote it eventually got sloppy with fact checking.
Also, isn't science about double-checking? I would have thought that melting of glaciers would be easy to measure via satellite imagery.
Errors always happen - they should be corrected, maybe even organizations and procedures should be restructured. But it isn't shocking.
Maybe I just don't have some grand illusions about science, as others seem to (still) have. But somehow the whole thing still lurches forward, just like the big corporations that seem as if nothing should ever be possible to get done.
It is deceptive and wrong, regardless of your emotional reaction to it.
Not that I want to excuse sloppyness (was it deception, really). Maybe heads should roll. But still I am not sure why I should care much?
...because pretending that a group you don't like are conspiracy nuts makes them wrong.
If you're trying to correct misinformation, it's probably not most effective to make some more up and throw it into the fray.
It's not any prettier when it's used to argue against climate change.
"Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, has previously dismissed criticism of the Himalayas claim as "voodoo science".
You have to give it to him though, he didn't play Holocaust denier card at least.
Most glaciers melt at the margins, seasonally. Most glaciers refreeze somewhere, seasonally. Glaciers don't form at all at sea level at the equator, and haven't for a long, long time, but that hasn't stopped glaciers from forming elsewhere. As I experience an exceptionally snowy and gelid Minnesota winter (I have lived in temperate Minnesota or Wisconsin every winter of my life but for about six when I lived in subtropical Taiwan), I'm not seeing any radical climate change here yet, and the current weather pattern could hardly be called "warm" even on the historical pattern observed in my lifetime.
Weather varies all over the world. Climate change over broad historical time and especially over deep geological time is an established fact, but also has nothing to do with human activity. It's not entirely clear that the trade-offs of anthropogenic global warming, a phenomenon I accept as a fact, are all harmful trade-offs or even mostly harmful trade-offs for the majority of the human population.
Does that mean we can get rid of the stupid climate change articles and talk about something we actually know about and participate in, like hacking and startups?