The Anti-Science

[stone]

Adam, "There is excellent evidence to support the health hazards of lead paint, smoking, asbestos, and alcohol consumption, and all of it can be observed empirically...that is to say, you barely need to study it to know it's true. Climate change is much different.  It's much more complex."

Science is only science when it is dealing with what can be observed empirically. Its just rigorous common sense. All those toxicology studies were hard won battles. It is easy to convince yourself that alcohol causes a hangover but gets very hard to unravel things to the point of coming up with safe drinking limits. Those studies all had epidemiology showing correlations but, as we all know, correlation does not prove causation- it is just a smoking gun. They needed etiological evidence to show how the adverse effects were caused. Those etiological studies had to rely on data from cultured cells, animals and cell extracts- all very imperfect proxies for a human body. All science is very messy at the frontier. By the time anything is ready to publish, the authors will have probably have seen that what they are publishing is a crude over-simplification on the basis of their more recent preliminary data.

[AdamA]

All science is very messy at the frontier.

Agree.  Especially climate science. 

[bigamish]

BigAmish... Teaching evolution... Now that makes one curious about the person behind the handle and avatar...

Like an onion...I have layers. 

[stone]

Adam1226, personally I don't think climate science is especially messy. I just think the mess gets more public scrutiny because so much is hanging on it. People care so much less about, for instance, how much a brown dwarf star weighs or whatever so people working on that are allowed to go about their messy work, pratfalls and all. Any human frailty in climate science gets viewed as a glimpse into a shadowy conspiracy to impoverish everyone.

[moda0306]

Adam1226, personally I don't think climate science is especially messy. I just think the mess gets more public scrutiny because so much is hanging on it. People care so much less about, for instance, how much a brown dwarf star weighs or whatever so people working on that are allowed to go about their messy work, pratfalls and all. Any human frailty in climate science gets viewed as a glimpse into a shadowy conspiracy to impoverish everyone.

Nicely put.

I think we really do have to ask ourselves exactly how "certain" we have to be before we act... I'd hate to have to see Florida underwater before we say, "maybe a 4-banger isn't that bad to drive."

[AdamA]

Any human frailty in climate science gets viewed as a glimpse into a shadowy conspiracy to impoverish everyone.

That's true.  It's also true that, within certain groups, it is a foregone conclusion that climate changes, caused by man, are occurring for sure, and any suggestion that it is not is viewed as a world-is-flat kind of discussion. 

I'm sure there is good science on the topic.  What I've noticed from my own experience with scientific literature is that the experiments are often good, but the data is misinterpreted or overinterpreted. 

[FarmerD]

When 98% of scientists say pregnant women shouldn't consume alcohol, responsible women don't.

When 98% of scientists say CO2 emissions are causing climate change, it is a Bilderberg Illuminati conspiracy to rob humanity of its freedom? I cannot understand this viewpoint.

I find manmade climate change an interesting theory but it is far from proven.  Certainly 98% of knowledge environmental scientists aren't in that camp.  Check out the Oregon Petition if don't believe that.  The main problem of climatology it that it is more scientism than science.  It really isn't possible to set up and test hypotheses since there are literally hundreds of variables involved in climate.  That's why climatologists are forced to use computer models which are notoiously unreliable.  

 

[FarmerD]

On a personal note, whenever someone gives me an opinion, I always try to figure out that person biases.  We all have biases, even me.  Over my career as an environmental engineer in the Air Force, I met dozens of highly degreed enviornmental scientists including climatologists.  When I asked them why they chose environmental science as their career, invariably I get the response, "When I was a kid, I heard the earth was in ecological jeopardy.  Therefore, I decided to help save the earth by becoming an environmental scientist. " or some such.  They didn't determine earth was in jeopardy after years of formal study, they became climatologists BECAUSE they had already reached that conclusion.  People who are skeptical of environmentalism simply do not major in environmental studies. 

BTW I am a mechanical engineer but the USAF made me an Environmental Engineer so I presumably had fewer biases when I started my career.   

[stone]

Climate, evolution and cosmology/astronomy are all fields of science where it is extremely hard to do realistic experiments rather than just making observations of things as they are. No one calls cosmologists pseudo-scientists. People appreciate that they are making the best attempt to understand what is happening based on the information available. We believe they are right when they say that days will be longer in the future or that heavy metals only get made in super-novas or whatever. It makes sense and it fits in with what seemingly has happened in the past. Is the effect of increasing CO2 really any more in doubt than that?

[MediumTex]

On a personal note, whenever someone gives me an opinion, I always try to figure out that person biases.  We all have biases, even me.  Over my career as an environmental engineer in the Air Force, I met dozens of highly degreed enviornmental scientists including climatologists.  When I asked them why they chose environmental science as their career, invariably I get the response, "When I was a kid, I heard the earth was in ecological jeopardy.  Therefore, I decided to help save the earth by becoming an environmental scientist. " or some such.  They didn't determine earth was in jeopardy after years of formal study, they became climatologists BECAUSE they had already reached that conclusion.  People who are skeptical of environmentalism simply do not major in environmental studies. 

BTW I am a mechanical engineer but the USAF made me an Environmental Engineer so I presumably had fewer biases when I started my career.   

That's a great perspective.  To echo stone's comment above, what in your view is flawed about speculating that if we re-create the atmospheric conditions of a previous era that we would expect to see similar climatic conditions to those that existed in that prior era?

[doodle]

Farmer,

The Oregon petition is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with the climate change debate.
This article does a pretty good job debunking it: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-11-12/
But I think you don't have to look further than one of the petitions creators Frederick Seitz who spent part of his career working as a consultant for RJ Reynolds trying to obscure the scientific evidence that smoking caused cancer.

In addition to the petition, I have read the study published by the Oregon Institue of Science and Medicine (a small fly by night operation...which as far as I can tell doesn't have a single climatologist on the staff) challenging climate change. http://www.oism.org/pproject/GWReview_OISM150.pdf It was never subjected to peer review or published in a scientific journal.

[FarmerD]

.   
[/quote]

That's a great perspective.  To echo stone's comment above, what in your view is flawed about speculating that if we re-create the atmospheric conditions of a previous era that we would expect to see similar climatic conditions to those that existed in that prior era?


[/quote]

There's nothing wrong with speculating, however, we can only guess what conditions existed back when.  We's need to know the level of volcanic activity, sunspot activity, cosmic ray intensity, solar wind conditions, amount of water vapor in the air, etc.  We only have limited knowledge of these things.  The big problem as I see it is that experiments can show what happens when you change one variable.  In climate science there are 100s of variables and changing any one variable affects other variables.  Therefore we really don't know what are the biggest drivers of climate change.  Many speculate Co2 is the biggest driven but speculation doesn't constitute proof. 

Ask 10 climatologists what caused the last ice age and you'll get 10 different answers.  Ask any meteorologist how far out he can predict the weather (Answer - 3 days is the most common answer).  Trying to predict climate 100 years in the future is sort of like predicting the stock market 100 years from now.  Given the inherent uncertainty in meteorology/climatology etc, how can anyone say they are absolutely sure manmade CO2 emissions cause climate chamnge?

[Storm]

When 98% of scientists say pregnant women shouldn't consume alcohol, responsible women don't.

When 98% of scientists say CO2 emissions are causing climate change, it is a Bilderberg Illuminati conspiracy to rob humanity of its freedom? I cannot understand this viewpoint.

I find manmade climate change an interesting theory but it is far from proven.  Certainly 98% of knowledge environmental scientists aren't in that camp.  Check out the Oregon Petition if don't believe that.  The main problem of climatology it that it is more scientism than science.  It really isn't possible to set up and test hypotheses since there are literally hundreds of variables involved in climate.  That's why climatologists are forced to use computer models which are notoiously unreliable.  

 

Global warming is pretty widely accepted in the scientific community.  If you've heard there is more than even a couple % of scientists that disagree with it, you're getting your information from biased and unstrustworthy sources.  The Oregon Petition has been pretty widely debunked.

From Scientific American http://web.archive.org/web/200608231250 ... 9EC588EF21

SKEPTICISM ABOUT SKEPTICS

Many conservatives regard the "scientific consensus" about global warming as a media concoction. After all, didn't 17,100 skeptical scientists sign a petition circulated in 1998 by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine? (See www.oism.org/pproject and www.prwatch.org/improp/oism.html on the World Wide Web.)

Scientific American took a random sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition—one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers?a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community.

http://web.archive.org/web/200608231250 ... 9EC588EF21

[doodle]

Farmer,

From what I have read, the science surrounding CO2 and the greenhouse effect is not a theory but a fact. There is a well established connection between atmospheric greenhouse gases and planet temperature in the scientific literature dating back to the mid 1800's. We know from ice core samples and such that the CO2 levels are higher today than they have been over the past one million years. We also know that burning fossil fuels contributes to large releases of greenhouse gases.

I don't understand where/why doubt still exists about this effect? Sure, the timeline and effects are speculation, but there doesn't seem to be much scientific dissent concerning the fact that human activity is changing the composition of our atmosphere and thus impacting the planets climate.

[doodle]

Storm,

As far as I know, that Oregon Petition could be signed by anyone with a B.S. degree. That means that a person with a B.S. in electrical engineering, or math, or any other science degree totally unrelated to climatology, could masquerade themselves as an "expert" according to the criteria of the petition.

Scientific fact is not subject to a democratic process. You don't vote on the laws of nature, so I don't see why a petition is even an appropriate way to critique the science behind climate change. 

[FarmerD]

Farmer,

The Oregon petition is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with the climate change debate.
This article does a pretty good job debunking it: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-11-12/
But I think you don't have to look further than one of the petitions creators Frederick Seitz who spent his career working for RJ Reynolds trying to dispel the scientific evidence that smoking caused cancer.

In addition to the petition, I have read the study published by the Oregon Institue of Science and Medicine (a small fly by night operation...which as far as I can tell doesn't have a single climatologist on the staff) challenging climate change. http://www.oism.org/pproject/GWReview_OISM150.pdf It was never subjected to peer review or published in a scientific journal.

A couple points: 
1) Either side in the Climate change debate has it's share of shady characters.  To counter your point, several of the PHd's in enviro science came right out and told me they were communists or quasicommunists who wanted the govt to take control of all energy, tranportation, and private property so it could be managed in a "more environmentally friendly way."  I don't think they were capable of producing unbiased research.
2) Peer review or publication in a prestigeous journal means nothing to me anymore.  If you don't believe me, read David Freedman's book "Wrong: Why experts keep failing us."  Most published medical, social science, and environmental research is hopelessly biased, sloppily reserched or deliberately falsified.  The saddest part is that this is easily verified. 

Believe it or not but I used to feel the same way about climate change as you do, but I have changed my thinking in the past few years. 

[doodle]

Storm,

As far as I know, that Oregon Petition could be signed by anyone with a B.S. degree. That means that a person with a B.S. in electrical engineering, or math, or any other science degree totally unrelated to climatology, could masquerade themselves as an "expert" according to the criteria of the petition.

Scientific fact is not subject to a democratic process. You don't vote on the laws of nature, so I don't see why a petition is even an appropriate way to critique the science behind climate change.

[doodle]

FarmerD,

You certainly have more experience in the scientific arena than I do, so I respect your insights into the process. Nevertheless, regardless of whether climate change turns out to be as extreme as some scientists proclaim, I think that the local pollution from fossil fuels as well as their non-renewable nature makes them a poor choice for longer term energy solutions.

When I was in Santiago, Chile a few months ago, the air was so thick with smog that you couldn't see the Andes mountains only a few miles away. On many days the government would advise small children and the elderly not to leave their houses because the air pollution was so bad. This local pollution had a serious effect on peoples health in that city...and it seems to be getting worse.

As far as the United States, our economic dependence on fossil fuels has gotten us involved in many senseless wars abroad that are in some ways responsible for the terrorist hatred that has been directed against our country. I would love to see us transition to domestic sources of renewable energy that provide jobs for our people and make us less dependent upon some of the more unstable regions of the world.

Whether global warming is true or not, we need to transition off of fossil fuels for the health of our citizens and stability of our economy.

[FarmerD]

From what I have read, the science surrounding CO2 and the greenhouse effect is not a theory but a fact. There is a well established connection between atmospheric greenhouse gases and planet temperature in the scientific literature dating back to the mid 1800's. .

You are completely correct about all of the above.  What's uncertain is how much does CO2 contribute to the warming we've seen.  I'm not sure how a trace gas like Co2 which contitutes 4 hundredths of one percent (0.04%) of all atmospheric gasses can be the biggest culprit.  To me, sunspot activity has the closest correlation to temperatures on earth. 

That's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

[FarmerD]

FarmerD,

You certainly have more experience in the scientific arena than I do, so I respect your insights into the process. Nevertheless, regardless of whether climate change turns out to be as extreme as some scientists proclaim, I think that the local pollution from fossil fuels as well as their non-renewable nature makes them a poor choice for longer term energy solutions.

When I was in Santiago, Chile a few months ago, the air was so thick with smog that you couldn't see the Andes mountains only a few miles away. On many days the government would advise small children and the elderly not to leave their houses because the air pollution was so bad. This local pollution had a serious effect on peoples health in that city...and it seems to be getting worse.

As far as the United States, our economic dependence on fossil fuels has gotten us involved in many senseless wars abroad that are in some ways responsible for the terrorist hatred that has been directed against our country. I would love to see us transition to domestic sources of renewable energy that provide jobs for our people and make us less dependent upon some of the more unstable regions of the world.

Whether global warming is true or not, we need to transition off of fossil fuels for the health of our citizens and stability of our economy.

Completely agree on all counts.  Personally I'd like to see a much stronger committment to nuclear power myself. 

Gee I hope I'm not provoking a even bigger thread on the relative merits of nuclear power.

[moda0306]

I see the nuclear power decision as seperate in many ways from the global warming discussion & response.  The main response to global warming would be a sizable "tax" on emmissions.

The main response to allowing nuclear is deregulation and figuring out how dangerous the hazardous waste storage is (and might become).

If taking on nuclear is the key to doing something about global warming for political reasons, then so be it, but it's almost irrelevant to the debate of whether there's anthropogenic global warming and whether we can regulate it.

[Lone Wolf]

What's uncertain is how much does CO2 contribute to the warming we've seen.  I'm not sure how a trace gas like Co2 which contitutes 4 hundredths of one percent (0.04%) of all atmospheric gasses can be the biggest culprit.  To me, sunspot activity has the closest correlation to temperatures on earth. 

That's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

That's more or less how I view it, but I really don't know.

It's a lot like investing -- people like to pretend that they know what's going on at all times (and how and why it happened), but there are sometimes simply too many variables in play to know for sure.  What's cause and what's effect?  The narratives are not always obvious but we want to construct one anyway.

The problem is that there is so much at stake that few people are willing to say, "I'm not sure."  The thing is... most people just aren't all that sure.

A big factor that comes into play is cost.  You'll notice that belief in man-made global warming has waned sharply as we've experienced the tough economic times of the last few years.  There's been a large swing of people from the "I'm not sure but people yell at me and call me anti-science if I don't believe" into the "I'm still not sure but by God anything that threatens to hurt the economy is something I don't want any part of."

[Storm]

1) Either side in the Climate change debate has it's share of shady characters.  To counter your point, several of the PHd's in enviro science came right out and told me they were communists or quasicommunists who wanted the govt to take control of all energy, tranportation, and private property so it could be managed in a "more environmentally friendly way."  I don't think they were capable of producing unbiased research.
2) Peer review or publication in a prestigeous journal means nothing to me anymore.  If you don't believe me, read David Freedman's book "Wrong: Why experts keep failing us."  Most published medical, social science, and environmental research is hopelessly biased, sloppily reserched or deliberately falsified.  The saddest part is that this is easily verified. 

Believe it or not but I used to feel the same way about climate change as you do, but I have changed my thinking in the past few years.   

1. Citation needed.  You can't counter my point by saying "some scientists are communists or quasi-communists."  This is an ad-hominem because you are attacking the scientists for something unrelated.  I'd bet some people that don't believe in climate change are communists as well.  This doesn't change the science or the work they do.

2.  Peer review is the most commonly accepted practice in the scientific community.  If you have a hypothesis, you do a study and publish it in a scientific journal.  Your peers review the study and try to poke holes in it.  If your hypothesis stands up to peer review, you might gain recognition in the scientific community and become accepted as an expert in your field of study.

Scientific studies that are published in journals are easily verified.  That's why they call it "peer review".  When Pons and Fleischmann claimed to have invented cold fusion in the journal Nature, several scientific teams working on similar research were immediately intrigued and tried to reproduce their experiments.  This is how we know they were not successful.  Peer review works.  What other method would you suggest we use?

Without peer review our science would basically consist of "and God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days," and we would all believe the village shaman, witch doctor, or religious nut.

[stone]

I agree with Storm that if you don't know who to trust and don't have the knowledge to make your own mind up, then trusting whoever gets published in a peer reviewed journal is more often than not the best option. I also agree with Farmer D that reviewers are just people who, like everyone else, can succum to group think or personal egotism or other biases. I guess I regect almost all that almost all economists claim even though I realise they are the experts and I'm pig ignorant. You can be in a minority of one, have limited knowledge and still be correct .

Farmer D, -Sunspots may show the closest correlation to temperature (I don't know myself) but that fact (even if true) has no bearing on whether we should reduce CO2 unless previous high CO2 levels that coincided with high temperatures also coincided with low sunspots - so undermining the inference that CO2 influences temperature (and I don't think you are suggesting that). Hypothetically imagine if 60% of temperature variation can be asigned to sunspots and 40% to CO2 and sunspots just happen and there is nothing we can do about them. In such a scenario whether we change our behaviour so as to alter CO2 could still make the difference between us destroying our planet or not.

[Storm]

I think the biggest problem I have overall with the AGW (anti global warming) crowd is that they came up with their goals and conclusion first, then cherry picked extremely flimsy evidence to support the conclusion.

The main goal of the AGW crowd is to avoid all controls or curbs of greenhouse gas emissions.  Some within the crowd have financial goals aligned with this, mainly oil, coal, and gas companies.  Others have political goals aligned with this (ie. party affiliation received money from said oil, coal, and gas lobbies).

So, with the main goal being to avoid all regulation regarding greenhouse gas emissions, now let's look for any scientist who will accept money to produce usually non peer reviewed studies with questionable methods and practices that will try to cast doubt on the overwhelming evidence that:

1.  Greenhouse gases are produced by human activity (there is no question that human activity produces more greenhouse gases than would normally be produced by the ecosystem).

2.  Excessive greenhouse gases cause climate change.

I don't see how those two facts can be in question, yet you will find a few scientists here and there with ties to the oil, coal, and gas industries who will try to cast doubt.  Farmer is trying to do it right in this thread, obviously having read or listened to some of this false science.

Now, onto other issues:

Having travelled to developing countries like China, and having seen the massive amounts of fossil fuels and coal they are burning to achieve their rapid growth, I can't help but think that whatever we do to solve this problem will have to have broad consensus from developing nations.  Even if we curbed emissions completely in the US, if China continues to burn so much coal, it won't make much difference because we all share the same planet.

I can also understand how it would be economically foolish for the US to curb emissions, which might harm business here, while other countries like China continue to pollute unabated.  This would just accelerate the trade imbalances that exist as manufacturing continues to go to whatever country will allow them to pollute with no regulation.

I hate to say it, but if human kind wants to progress to the next level and become a "Star Trek" type utopia, it will probably take a single world government that can put a stop to these practices of outsourcing manufacturing to whatever country is so poor as to not care if you dump raw waste into the rivers and skies.