Global warming and scientific consensus

[BlasterBates]

It wasn't hidden, it was mentioned how they had adjusted the data in the literature, it's quite normal to smooth data for models that's how you fit them. The whole issue is another example of how the media misreported something as being controversial and dishonest when it was nothing of the sort. NASA has no problem with these data, perhaps next you'll be telling us next that man didn't land on the moon because you read it in the Sunday Sport.

Have actually understood what it means?

Basically the proxies didn't pick up the warming at the end of the 20th century.

So you have this proxy right and you can discern from it what the temperature record is, but when you compare the proxy record with real temperature record it doesn't match. so they hid this fact.

Ask yourself this, if the proxies showed declining temperatures over the last 30 years when the temperature was actually rising, would it show rising temperatures in the past if it had risen?

I suggest you read Judith Curry's blog. In her opinion the temperature proxies are a heap of bollox, and she's a professor of climate science.

[Bagpuss]

I suggest you read Judith Curry's blog. In her opinion the temperature proxies are a heap of bollox, and she's a professor of climate science.

This is the problem, you are searching for the opinions that agree with your own non scientific view. Take a little from here a little from there, a bit of spin from some media outlet with a hidden agenda. Whereas you should (if you were to take the scientific approach) be looking at the weight of evidence. For example if 95 papers demonstrate some sort of effect and 5 papers don't then the weight of evidence is of an effect, it doesn't mean the 5 are wrong but it's highly likely they are given all the other evidence. What you have done is take an opinion and you are sifting for the 5 papers in an attempt to prove you are right. That's not science and it's pretty much akin to what the newspapers do, who increasingly can only deal and black versus white (100% right or 100% wrong), that is not science.

[sasguru]

This is the problem, you are searching for the opinions that agree with your own non scientific view. Take a little from here a little from there, a bit of spin from some media outlet with a hidden agenda. Whereas you should (if you were to take the scientific approach) be looking at the weight of evidence. For example if 95 papers demonstrate some sort of effect and 5 papers don't then the weight of evidence is of an effect, it doesn't mean the 5 are wrong but it's highly likely they are given all the other evidence. What you have done is take an opinion and you are sifting for the 5 papers in an attempt to prove you are right. That's not science and it's pretty much akin to what the newspapers do, who increasingly can only deal and black versus white (100% right or 100% wrong), that is not science.

Exactly Baggie.

But these cretins don't have the foggiest notion about science and statistics, let alone the epistemiological relationship between the two, nor the fundamentally probabilistic nature of the universe.

[Cliphead]

Exactly Baggie.

But these cretins don't have the foggiest notion about science and statistics, let alone the epistemiological relationship between the two, nor the fundamentally probabilistic nature of the universe.

Still, nothing is proven either way despite trends nor are the consequences carved in stone.

[EternalOptimist]

The way I see it, we are constantly being asked to make judgements on things we are not expert in. There is no way we can become experts in one lifetime on the things that really matter to us.

Is that food safe to eat
Is that medicine safe to take
Should my kids get that innoculation
Is that plane safe to fly in
Is that country safe to visit
should we have the bomb or is it a bad idea
which government
Should we publish paedos details on line

and a thousand more


So we have to adopt a stance, a strategy, an approach.

my own approach is to make a rough and ready risk analysis, then to do a sense check, then to look at the people making the claim. Then I listen to people whose opinion I respect. Then I look at the track record of similar claims.
If I am still interested, I might dig around a little.

Last of all, way last, I would check to see if there was a concensus. If there is , then thats fine, but if the people making the claim rely a lot on concensus, and use it as a fact to bully then that becomes intellectual coercion
then consensus = fashion = mind control = danger=hidden agenda

[sasguru]

Still, nothing is proven either way despite trends nor are the consequences carved in stone.

There is a surprising number of people who believe you can prove something in science. You can't. You can only really disprove a theory.
You can prove something in Mathematics. Only in Maths is the stuff that was done thousands of years ago still valid.
What we have in science is a bunch of hypotheses/models about how the world works. If there is experimental evidence to back the models,
the theory is considered good but there is no guarantee that some future data will not arise to disprove it.

And so with AGW, the data has been sifted and analysed by thousands of scientists and the hypothesis of AGW is now widely believed as being explanatory and predictive.
But that doesn't mean the "science is settled" as some naive people would have it. It never is.
However, with all these anti AGW threads around, no one has yet produced evidence that overwhelms or overturns the current evidence or convincingly falsifies
the theory of AGW. Such a person would be as famous as Einstein.

[sasguru]

The way I see it, we are constantly being asked to make judgements on things we are not expert in. There is no way we can become experts in one lifetime on the things that really matter to us.

Is that food safe to eat
Is that medicine safe to take
Should my kids get that innoculation
Is that plane safe to fly in
Is that country safe to visit
should we have the bomb or is it a bad idea
which government
Should we publish paedos details on line

and a thousand more


So we have to adopt a stance, a strategy, an approach.

my own approach is to make a rough and ready risk analysis, then to do a sense check, then to look at the people making the claim. Then I listen to people whose opinion I respect. Then I look at the track record of similar claims.
If I am still interested, I might dig around a little.

Last of all, way last, I would check to see if there was a concensus. If there is , then thats fine, but if the people making the claim rely a lot on concensus, and use it as a fact to bully then that becomes intellectual coercion
then consensus = fashion = mind control = danger=hidden agenda

You're a hypocrite.
Do you vaccinate your children? Or if you had cancer would you rely on the consensus medical opinion?
Course you would. Why when there are plenty of non-consensual opinions on both subjects?

[Cliphead]

There is a surprising number of people who believe you can prove something in science. You can't. You can only really disprove a theory.
You can prove something in Mathematics. Only in Maths is the stuff that was done thousands of years ago still valid.
What we have in science is a bunch of hypotheses/models about how the world works. If there is experimental evidence to back the models,
the theory is considered good but there is no guarantee that some future data will not arise to disprove it.

And so with AGW, the data has been sifted and analysed by thousands of scientists and the hypothesis of AGW is now widely believed as being explanatory and predictive.
But that doesn't mean the "science is settled" as some naive people would have it. It never is.
However, with all these anti AGW threads around, no one has yet produced evidence that overwhelms or overturns the current evidence or convincingly falsifies
the theory of AGW. Such a person would be as famous as Einstein.

Maths I understand and I love the clean simple logic of a mathematical proof. Science by it's nature is less clear as you pointed out but is also prey to the failings of human nature. To doubt is a driving factor in pushing science forward and key to the empirical method in my opinion. When science tends towards dogma then we're all walking on thin ice and I personally will sit back and from a distance view it all with a healthy dose of cynicism while trying to remain impartial.

[EternalOptimist]

You're a hypocrite.
Do you vaccinate your children? Or if you had cancer would you rely on the consensus medical opinion?
Course you would. Why when there are plenty of non-consensual opinions on both subjects?

I wouldnt vaccinate my children because of a concensus(and didnt with rubella), and I wouldnt take any treatment because of a concensus. I would use the approach that I outlined above.

I am not a hypocrite and you are coming close to calling me a liar

[shaunbhoy]

I am not a hypocrite and you are coming close to calling me a liar

Like being savaged by a dead sheep EO.