And he's not exactly chasing people down, he's just responding to people who are deliberately putting their opinions out there.
The earth is getting colder. The termperature changes we've seen over short, medium and long periods of time are consistent with the ice age pattern or solar heating. CO2 has been much higher in the past than it is today without causing a runaway greenhouse effect. CO2 does not absorb sufficient IR to support the global warming hypothesis, etc.
Global warming is a movement of people who do not care about these facts and just want to repeat, over and over, that "all scientists agree" (as if science was concensus based). I have yet to meet a global warming proponent who will actually argue on the science (or even is actually familiar with it) they all just repeat the same claims, or link to blogs of people who also don't understand the science, or link to papers who don't say what they want to claim they say.
Global Warming is a movement that rejects science, and has the ideological defense mechanism of smugly claiming to have a monopoly on science and that anyone who is a skeptic is spewing "anti-science nonsense."
Proof of the preceding claim is presented in the headline of the article in question (and virtually every other similar article out there.)
Ok, now go vote me down-- for science.
http://royalsociety.org/The-Science-of-Climate-Change-report...
Yes, that's right, the Royal Society, which, for those of you who are unfamiliar with science, is the oldest scientific organisation in the world, agrees with the IPCC reports, which I would cite as the secondary scientific evidence. For the primary evidence, just read all the articles cited by the IPCC.
What weighty scientific evidence points against global warming? Or is "real science" being suppressed?
Now, you're not wrong in saying that quoting the WWF in a scientific report seems to be a bit of a screw-up. It shouldn't have happened, and the reports need to be reviewed more carefully to stop it happening again — except careful review did find this mistake, it was corrected, and the rest of the report, all 976 pages, still stands.
Additionally, as I alluded to above, this is not the "The Physical Science Basis" of climate change report, which weighs in at 996 pages and no-one to my knowledge has found any mistakes even as bad as the glacier example.
You cannot disregard that particular IPCC report for one mistake; that would be absurd.
And even if the whole of the "Impacts, Adaption and Vulnerability" was hogwash, you still cannot claim climate change is not happening, as it is the "The Physical Science Basis" that gives (funnily enough) the scientific basis to climate change.
Bringing up the Himalayan glaciers shows a basic misunderstanding of the IPCC process, the scientific process and the magnitude of the error compared to the weight of scientific evidence for climate change. Please provide a peer-reviewed, or even non-peer reviewed, paper showing mistakes in the accepted literature and we'll talk.
I'll say it differently — if that's the biggest mistake you can find in the IPCC report (and given how much hand-wringing and complaining about it there has been, it's highly likely it was the biggest mistake), then you either have to accept climate change is real, or find a bigger mistake.
I really don't know why I'm arguing with you. Of course the IPCC regret the mistake. But they haven't all gone to commit seppuku over it. Refute the scientific basis report.
> "To me the fundamental problem was that when the error
> was found it was handled in a totally and utterly
> atrocious manner<…>".
The real problem with the way you're arguing is that most of the meta-critiques that you've offered about the way mainstream climate change scientists act read almost exactly the same as the anti-evolution arguments that biologists have been assaulted with for decades. "Consensus is not how science is done?" Check. "The evidence goes against prevailing opinion?" Check. "Proponents won't argue the science and just parrot talking points?" Check. "They just shout people down as 'anti-science' when they disagree?" Check.
And all these claims may be true, hell, they probably are. The problem is, that's how scientists act when they're right, just as much as when they're wrong.
This doesn't bear on your claim at all, of course, and I have no intention of getting into a specific global warming dispute (I don't have the expertise or the interest, and frankly, I doubt there are many people here that do); but those arguments mean absolutely nothing, because they are always offered whenever people disagree with the prevailing consensus in a field, whether it's correct or not.
I've only met a couple climate scientists, but my impression was most definitely not that they were ideologically driven morons that simply want to push their preconceived notions on the world. I've always gotten the sense that they really felt that the data supported their claims. Now, that doesn't make them right, but be careful about assuming that they're just perpetrating a fraud for some reason. One of the most common mistakes people make when arguing issues like this is to assume that the other side actually knows (or secretly suspects) that it's wrong, and it's playing dirty to trick everyone else. This is rarely the case, if someone is wrong it's typically more likely that the evidence they've seen strongly suggests their hypothesis, which ends up blinding them to later evidence that might weaken it.
So what? In both cases people are claiming some party should fundamentally alter how they live (perhaps implicitly in the case of evolution) and/or what the believe based on their findings. Of course this will be faced with scrutiny! If the scientist is correct he/she should be able to prove it. If he/she thinks the evidence just strongly suggests their theory then it should be presented that way leaving the other side to simply agree to withhold judgment for now [1].
>but those arguments mean absolutely nothing, because they are always offered whenever people disagree with the prevailing consensus in a field, whether it's correct or not.
That makes no sense at all. Arguments are meaningless because they are used too much? Utterly illogical, have I misunderstood something here?
>I've always gotten the sense that they really felt that the data supported their claims. Now, that doesn't make them right, but be careful about assuming that they're just perpetrating a fraud for some reason.
I'm sure most of them do. But do you think people from the other side aren't just as convinced of their opinions? A big part of the problem is both sides assuming the other is disingenuous.
[1] Not being convinced is always valid unless there is concrete irrefutable proof. Forming new "theories" based on being unconvinced and evangelizing based on them is not as it is "argument from ignorance" (i.e. "See, they don't know, no one does! Therefor the true answer is...").
Maybe I didn't make my point very clearly, and you're right, as stated that's not really what I mean.
What I was trying to get at is that topical debates where one side disagrees with the scientific consensus typically degenerate rather quickly into complaints about the scientific establishment itself, and about how its barely-permeable idea membrane has a tendency to shut down a lot of criticism without fully addressing it.
And this is a valid point; unfortunately, it doesn't tell us anything at all about whatever specific claim is at hand, it just tells us that science puts up some pretty strong barriers to new ideas. Which, I might add, is the main reason that science continues to work, because for every scientific theory out there, even the ones with the most solid evidence, there are dozens of vocal lunatics that have their own pet theories that "aren't being taken seriously" or "have been silenced". In most scientific fields, apart from a few edge cases where data is weak or theory is spotty, there usually is a very strong consensus on most issues, and they're settled well enough that criticisms will usually be dismissed out of hand unless there's a very strong reason to take them seriously.
That doesn't mean that if someone is being "silenced" or shouted down they're necessarily wrong, but it does mean that they won't score any points by complaining about it. That treatment is leveled equally on all new ideas, and even in the best case scenario it usually takes new ideas (if correct) a generation or so to make their way through the barrier (mostly because the new generation thrives on tearing down as many ideas from the old generation as it can, whereas the old generation fights to preserve the status quo).
A big part of the problem is both sides assuming the other is disingenuous.
I absolutely 100% agree. Whenever someone shouts "Fraud!" in these arguments, I cringe, because it's rare that someone will spend a lot of time and effort pursuing scientific ideas that they actually think are wrong.
FWIW, I'm not taking any stand on AGW here, I really don't know enough about it to comment intelligently on the science. But the argument surrounding it, politicized as it's become, has a very similar tone to the arguments about evolution, right down to many of the same meta-critiques about the scientific process. Those talking points were not helpful when applied to evolution, so I'd rather they fell out of the lexicon, their presence in an argument immediately rings several alarm bells due to the similarities. The similar argument style would typically make me assume that the deniers/skeptics are just wrong (if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...), though in this case I'm reserving judgment because a few of their other points seem like they might have some merit.
Not being convinced is always valid unless there is concrete irrefutable proof.
Hmm, I suspect a lot of Less Wrong-ers would disagree with you there, the entire philosophy of that site is based around the idea (one that I find very defensible) that we should usually be thinking statistically instead of right/wrong, and even if we can't know something for sure in the face of uncertainty, any pair of people that are thinking rationally and honestly should, in time, be able to at least agree on likelihood ratios between different possible outcomes by recursing through all the relevant priors and settling discrepancies that way. "Agree to disagree" is merely a way of cutting off that recursive settling of priors, and will sometimes have to happen in the interest of having finite length discussions, but the goal should always be to avoid that, or at the very least, pin down the lowest level disagreement about prior probabilities so that we at least know that both sides have updated their beliefs based on the same evidence.
For instance, if someone was honestly arguing that special relativity was wrong with an X% probability, that's not valid at all unless and until they can go through the various evidences in favor of it (which scientists claim puts its likelihood of being right at, say, 99.9% (we really should be talking likelihood ratios, not percentages, but you get the point)) and justify a set of priors that would lead to that X% probability. Similarly, scientists should be able to go through the evidences against special relativity and and justify granting them less authority, by showing their priors. Then we can look into those lower level assumptions, and do the same thing. Obviously this process can balloon, which is why scientists hate to do this kind of thing when they could be doing real work instead. :)
Fair enough but if incredibly impacting changes are being demanded based on this process then I think it merits a more thorough look than things that have less consequence if wrong.
>has a very similar tone to the arguments about evolution
For similar reasons. If one is to accept the complete evolution story that invalidates larges parts of the bible. Apologists can try to say those parts don't mean what they seem to say but a lot of people won't be happy with such an explanation because once you start that how can you know which parts do apply? The one's that haven't been refuted yet?
There is also a deserved level of skepticism on the (complete) subject of evolution because the loudest voices paint a picture of things that the science doesn't actually reflect (I'll spare us both further details to hopefully avoid this rabbit hole).
>Hmm, I suspect a lot of Less Wrong-ers would disagree with you there
A lot of people would disagree with me there, but personally I find it because they are unable to persuade. Their arguments, no matter how compelling, were not enough to sway what ever intended audience so they claim the other side is cheating. If the other side is pushing some snake oil theory as an alternative then perhaps they are, but if they're just not completely convinced then I think that's fair. We've had a very complete picture of gravity, only to find it was incomplete a couple of times now, for example.
>the entire philosophy of that site is based around the idea (one that I find very defensible) that we should usually be thinking statistically instead of right/wrong, and even if we can't know something for sure in the face of uncertainty, any pair of people that are thinking rationally and honestly should, in time, be able to at least agree on likelihood ratios between different possible outcomes by recursing through all the relevant priors and settling discrepancies that way.
The issue I have with the "rationalism" movement I'm seeing a lot of lately is that it seems to me that revolutionaries would have less opportunities in such a system. If you must believe the thing that is thought by consensus to have the highest probability of being true then the only way you could ever happen on something radical yet more correct in the end would be if you were pursuing something else that followed consensus but eventually contradicted another consensus-approved theory (e.g. this seems to happen a fair amount with quantum mechanics).
How many break-throughs have we had by people who simply didn't buy the consensus and looked for an alternative point of view? Weren't such people "irrational" until they ended up to appear more correct?
>For instance, if someone was honestly arguing that special relativity was wrong with an X% probability,
For me a good example of what I mean is dark matter. An Israeli scientist apparently didn't buy dark matter so he went out and discovered that the gravitational formula seems to just change at some distance. Of course people called him a heretic and such but as far as I know he hasn't been contradicted to this day. His findings could actually be related to dark matter some how, or total coincidence but it's possible that he could end up being right and everything we've invested in dark matter could turn out to have been chasing ghosts (I'm not going to assign probabilities on these two possibilities :).
I can't believe this gets upvotes. No citations, no evidence. Fucking depressing.