posted this before, and I think I'll stop trying to convert people, but the worlds leading sciencits almost universally agree that the world is warming because of human activity.
The intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) are a really brainy bunch, and in their
2007 report says with "90% certainty" that human activities are the cause of recent global warming. This position has been ratified and reiterated by a plethora of science academies and professional societies around the world.
Basically, because I lack the technical training to really understand the science, I am more than willing to believe what the IPCC says - its membership includes literally the most important, most widely published, field-leading scientists from a variety of disciplines/countries. I'm much more likely to believe them than the politicians, or my what mates down the pub say.
I guess, in essence,
this is what I mainly have a problem with. It doesn't help that I've just finished reading 'Bad Science' by Dr. Ben Goldacre. Great book btw.
The above attitude - that science is too hard, and therefore no-one properly understands it - is utter crap. It's the reason why we have to write 'popular science' news articles in baby-talk, despite the fact that the finance section of the newspaper may as well be in Greek for all I can understand. The finance section assumes that if I wanted to know what was in there, I would either already know how to read it, or would go and find out how. The science section assumes that this is impossible.
In a perfect world, the results of experiments, models, and research would be presented
prima facie, and people who were interested in the topic would have the ability to read through and make their own conclusions. People with the required scientific background and interest could rebutt the conclusions drawn from the results and suggest changes to the methods.
This is not a perfect world.
Instead we get a 'summary' of various research -- which, if you've ever read or written a scientific paper, will look pretty bogus -- from 'top scientists' because we're all too stupid to understand. There's no section of 'criticisms or other models'. For example, if the 'studies' were actually meant to reach a conclusion, and not just float political ideals, we would see another mass-publicised 'summary' which would include
"some scientists are concerned about potential biases of the report's lead authors, who have been shown to favor their own research."
"Arctic Sea ice is melting faster than predicted by climate models. Research conducted by the U.S.-based National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Snow and Ice Data Center demonstrates that the 18 models on which the IPCC has based its current recommendations could already be out of date, and that the retreat of the ice could already be 30 years ahead of the IPCC's worst case scenario."
"In January 2005, Dr. Chris Landsea who was already an author on the 2001 report (TAR), withdrew his participation in the Fourth Assessment Report claiming that the portion of the IPCC to which he contributed had become "politicized" and that the IPCC leadership simply dismissed his concerns. He published an open letter explaining why he was resigning and to "bring awareness to what I view as a problem in the IPCC process". The conflict centers around Dr. Kevin Trenberth's public contention that global warming was contributing to "recent
hurricane activity", which Landsea described as a "misrepresentation of climate science while invoking the authority of the IPCC". He has stated that the process of producing the Fourth Assessment Report is "motivated by pre-conceived agendas" and "scientifically unsound". Landsea writes that "the IPCC leadership said that Dr. Trenberth was speaking as an individual even though he was introduced in the press conference as an IPCC lead author.""
Now, sure, most people who complain about something that the government has approved of are called 'conspiracy theorists' but I don't think it's too much to ask to have a real, actual, thorough investigation of the current data. Granted, this data is extremely complex (something that most people seem to ignore in assuming that a single variable is the alpha and omega of the equation, nicely summarised in the above book by the phrase 'I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that') but what we need is a review that
does take into account the actual errors and uncertainties, rather than dumbing it down to an opinion that is '90% confident'. This includes using the models that give the best fit to the observables, not the best fit to 'positive climate change' by people who work in... whatd'ya know - climate change - who are out of a job if it doesn't exist.
Hmmm... that turned into a nice rant, eh? My point is -
don't go trusting these summary sources as gospel. Read through the summary, then have a look at those references. Then have a look at the criticisms of those references, and weed out anything that was done badly. If everyone did this, sure - we might not get a definitive answer about climate change (there may not be one to get) but at least people would STFU about something they have no actual grasp of and stop pretending to be a further source of authority. When enough people ignore the criticisms and re-hash the existing statements, soon enough the debatable fact is an unambiguous, undeniable, unanimous fact.
For hundeds of years, authority figures (yes, they too would have been called literally the most important, most widely published, field-leading scientists from a variety of disciplines/countries) said the earth was flat, and the centre of the universe. Look how well that turned out.
"marlow_coates" said:
hard to disagree with such a group of boffins as them
No! It's NOT!!!
