Also, as commented above, online polls are often bunk, and it seems likely the poll is being gamed, beyond the obvious neo-con crap-flood.

http://thebear.org/essays2.html#anchor506010

Believe what you want, but this is probably the LEAST outside-influenced take on the matter that I’ve found so far.

A few hours left in this…

But I would like to address the idea that he “appears to be backing up his theories with data, tests, and reports.” Anyone can post tables of data and pretty graphs that look “good enough”, and it’s been a known tactic of right-leaning anti-science sites to produce enough “science” to convince the average Joe that their sites have real weight. A typical reader (and I’m including myself in that category) doesn’t have the tools to make a real judgment. It takes close analysis by experts in the field, who aren’t biased by the name or affiliation attached to the data. This is why we have peer review — the people who are best qualified to review the data do so — and why scientific questions are rarely settled in the popular press.

As far as I could tell, McIntyre’s data has not been peer-reviewed, and he holds no advanced degree; he seems to be trying to hold a scientific debate in the wrong venue.

climateaudit.org is about the statistics involved in climate science. They focus entirely on the science of statistics.

The most telling piece of the CA site is in the FAQs.

Question: Does your work disprove global warming?

Answer: We have not made such a claim. There is considerable evidence that in many locations the late 20th century was generally warmer than the mid-19th century. However, there is also considerable evidence that in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, the mid-19th century was exceptionally cold. We think that a more interesting issue is whether the late 20th century was warmer than periods of similar length in the 11th century. We ourselves do not opine on this matter, other than to say that the MBH results relied upon so heavily by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its 2001 report are invalid.

You’ve both admitted that you’re not scientists and you think that both sides of the issue need to be discussed.

On the face of it, that’s a very, very reasonable request. However, the problem is almost identical to the problem we’re having with ID. Scientists don’t see a controversy anymore, but the media needs to have two sides to a story, or else it’s boring – even better if one side is a plucky underdog. Not only is it a waste of time, but “discussing both sides of the issue” is an end in itself to creationists / denialists, as it provides them with a legitimate platform.

The major points that they’re raising have been discussed – and discarded – by the scientific community already. Now, as scientists try to work out what we can do, denialists are busy fitting facts to their theory while insisting that the rest of us pay attention.

We don’t really want to have to argue with them, because it’s a backwards step – exactly as introducing ID into schools would be.

No-one is advocating censorship and, under normal circumstances, we do our best to ignore people who don’t contribute to science. But when scientists are confronted with pseudoscience, they have to decide whether to ignore it, or whether to stand up for their (empirically assessed) beliefs. That’s why people are bothering to vote in this (fairly stupid) poll.

Climate scientists are saying the “case is closed”. Statistical scientists (more that just M&M) are saying the “case could be closed, but we don’t really know.” That is not “pseudoscience”.

Please don’t ignore the implied insults. They were intended to be taken to heart.

Now, stop quote-mining for a moment and think about the issue. I stand by both of my statements: 1) Scientists often disagree; 2) Scientists accept global warming.

Think about any other major (or minor) issue in science throughout history. Someone comes up with a new theory, someone argues, they work out who is right, scientists eventually accept the theory, idiots come along and try to distort it to claim there’s a controversy / conspiracy. McIntyre and his posse, yourself included, are part of a well established pattern.

BRIAN CARNELL:

I respect that you’re trying to promote legitimate debate, but we are definitely are discussing pseudoscience here.

For instance creationism is *not* pseudoscience, it’s just an anti-rationalist philosophy. By contrast, ID is pseudoscience, because it seeks to conceal its creationist agenda under the cloak of a “scientific” appearance.

Pseudoscience is a pastiche of science and it subverts it in the eyes of the public. That is exactly what is occuring in this instance and it’s a valid criticism of McIntyre’s work to call it pseudoscience.

**Unlike the scientists involved, he does not do original research and his work is not peer-reviewed.**

His work shows a poor grasp of the wider issues involved in the paper he’s so fixated on, let alone the wider issues in science. Also, his own critique contained serious methodological flaws.

He uses a style of writing that to scientists marks him down as a crank, but to the layman may be appear to be that of an actual scientist.

This is textbook pseudoscience.

It’s profoudly depressing that a non-scientist with a pronounced agenda and no evidence base can win a competition for “best science blog”, using the votes of equally poorly-informed individuals who only hear what they want to about global warming.

I find this part of the debate completely mysterious. Who cares whether it is human-caused? Human-caused is distinct from human-preventable. I care whether it’s human-preventable, but I couldn’t care less whether it is human-caused.

I imagine a meteor flying toward the earth, on the verge of destroying all human life, a la “Armageddon” or “Deep Impact,” and this group would say “don’t do anything about the meteor! It’s not human-caused!”

It seems that there are a lot of people lined up on either side of this issue, and it’s not readily apparent which side has more scientists and which side has more politicians (or even that the scientists and the politicians are on opposing sides).

The best option, until the noise subsides relative to the signal, is to do nothing.

That’s not Pascal’s Wager, for if it turns out that human actions do have millennial global consequences on climate, the mechanism is poorly understood. Therefore, doing anything, just for the sake of doing something, may turn out to be the very worst thing for this planet.

There was a major report a couple of weeks ago (I can’t remember where it was from, but it was on the CBC) saying that Kyoto is failed and that we need to re-assess our climate change policies. They said that govs should be spending equal amounts of money between cutting GHG and adaption, i.e., dealing with the results of a warmer climate.

They weren’t denying that it’s getting to be a warmer climate — just that we need to spend the same amount of money on reducing the impact as we do on prevention.

I’m aware of the Hockey Stick Controversy and I think it’s a nice illustration of my point that, as an oil industry consultant, you can successfully “filibuster” science by quibbling over what you perceive to be problems.

No one claims that any experiment is flawless and actual scientists (who dedicate themselves to the subject and aren’t oil industry consultants) read papers, peer-review them and subsequently decide how much weight to give to their conclusions.

I think you’d find 10 minutes reading this New Scientist article interesting, particularly the part from “Flaws in methodology” onwards.

Not to be a pest, but CFLs turn out to be a bad choice. Many governments now ban (or are planning to ban) incandescents in favour of CFLs.

The problem is, CFLs require us to throw out our hundreds of millions of energy-saving timers, dimmers and photocell controls as being fundamentally incompatible, greatly off-setting the energy savings of CFLs.

Also, CFLs exhibit shorter lifespans than those their manufacturers claim in conditions other than the ideal ones their manufacturers test them in, such as outdoor fixtures, enclosed fixtures and ceiling fixtures where the CFL is mounted base up. This further offsets their energy savings.

Finally, improperly-disposed-of CFLs contribute toxic heavy metals to our groundwater. Imagine the net effect of a billion more CFLs going into landfill every year, once incandescents are no longer available.

No, I am not a puppet of the incandescent lightbulb cartel. In fact, I ma hoping that a practical LED bulb gets developed soon, so that we can avoid the nasty issues of CFLs altogether.

But I think I’ve made my point that there’s always more to the story if you take the time to think about it.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v449/n7165/full/449973a.html

The main problem that I see, is that it seemed to say that M&M are the only ones who see problems with the hockey-stick created by Mann and his peers.

It makes no mention of the Wegman report (see the Wiki article) that largely agreed with M&M. Steve McIntyre is indeed a retired oil dude. Wegman, however, is “a statistics professor at George Mason University and chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics.”

But when it comes to major economic policy decisions, this is too important to let political biases get in the way.

“Please don’t ignore the implied insults. They were intended to be taken to heart.”

This is hardly the type of argument you should resort to, as an “actual scientist”.

“Now, stop quote-mining for a moment and think about the issue. I stand by both of my statements: 1) Scientists often disagree; 2) Scientists accept global warming.”

So to clarify: you are no longer asserting that “The universal consensus among the scientific community is that global warming is genuinely occuring…”

And we can hardly discuss your opinions without quoting them, can we? I suggest you don’t think of it as “quote-mining” but rather as “peer review”.

“”It’s profoudly depressing that a non-scientist with a pronounced agenda and no evidence base can win a competition for “best science blog”, using the votes of equally poorly-informed individuals who only hear what they want to about global warming.”

Here, hear. And thank you for bringing this discussion back on track.

Having a web-poll for anything is pointless at best. Believing a web-poll is anything other than pointless is just stupid.

No. “Actual scientists” do science. They don’t just read about the science that others did and pass judgment upon it.

What you just described is the International Panel on Climate Change, a committee formed to create policy to address climate change using the methodology of finding support for anthropogenic CC in the research of others. True to your definition, the IPCC did no research whatsoever. Instead, they cherry-picked facts that would support their preconception, drawing conclusions that, in most cases, the authors of the research did not.

The IPCC’s justification (and that of many global warming activists) is apparently that misinformation isn’t wrong if it’s for something they consider to be a good cause.

To an “actual scientist”, misinformation is wrong. Period.

Wegman’s Wiki page was also worth reading, cheers for pointing that out.

In return I’d ask you to have a look at the RealClimate post referenced in the article. Yes, yes, I know, it’s obviously prejudiced, whereas Wikipedia is of course NPOV. But sometimes it’s OK to have an opinion – the interesting bits are where he shows the differences that Wegman’s criticisms make to the controversial graph and the *really* relevant point is his last:

“Can we all get on with something more interesting now?”

This isn’t an attempt to draw a line under an apparent embarrasment to climate scientists, it’s a recognition that further discussion is a waste of time and plays straight into the hands of those who aren’t really bothered whether “climate skepticism” is ultimately accepted or not, just as long as they don’t have to respond to climate change now.

So, let’s recap.

The Mann study may not have been statistically rigorous enough to say for certain that the planet was *never* hotter in the past millenium than it is now. However, other studies have since superceded Mann’s and drawn the same conclusions – see the NS article.

McIntyre, who’s blog is winning this poll, is a “retired oil dude” and his criticisms are ill-informed and methodologically flawed.

The universal consensus among the scientific community is that global warming is genuinely occuring and that something, unfortunately, needs to be done immediately.

His work aims to ensure that conlusions claimed are based on evidence presented. And that methodologies operate as advertised. You’ll have to dig, but he also works towards open access – of methodologies, tools, and data – so that others can repeat experiments and data analysis.

Good reading here if you want to better understand some of the issues…

http://www.climate2003.com/pdfs/2004GL012750.pdf

I look at it this way – I don’t want a climate change prediction based on junk science, because it already seems almost certain that we need to make big changes. So – I’d like those big changes to be the ones most likely to be useful. Furthermore – there is always the possibility that although humanity is doing a lot to run up the greenhouse effect, there may be other factors also working in that direction as well. If that is the case, we want those identified as well. Humans being at fault and needing to change their behaviour is no guarantee that there aren’t other warming causes that we need to mitigate on top our own actions.

Just because someone agrees with accepted conclusions doesn’t mean their science is sound.

Finally – being behind a browser proxy looks like it means that I can’t vote. It appears to be “one vote per IP address every 24 hours”. I first looked at the site today, but in every category I check, it says I already voted in the last 24 hours.

When you have people thinking that BUYING A CAR helps to save the planet, it just goes to show just how much of the human brain’s activity has been shut down in American society and replaced by word viruses.

Cheers for pointing that out.

I am in fact an “actual scientist” and I can assure you that the scientific method doesn’t just involve sitting in a lab to “do science” (I’m forced to imagine bunsen burners and big machines covered in flashing lights).

Collecting and evaluating evidence is of course a huge part of what we do, but equally important is the assessment of other’s work, known as “peer-review”. Misinformation is always wrong and is dealt with severely. Check out Hwang Woo-Suk, for instance.

What you just described is a lab tech.

Once and for all, I am *still* asserting that “The universal consensus among the scientific community is that global warming is genuinely occuring…”

An established consensus does not preclude the possibility that bitter debate has *previously* taken place – although only in cases where the evidence is ambiguous enough to merit such a debate.

Please, please go back and read the posts. Then think about them. Then understand them. Don’t reply until you’re sure that you’ve done this.

If I must choose as “actual scientists” either the peer-reviewers or those you derisively call “lab techs”, then I choose the lab techs.