Anybody who believed global warming was man made are having questions now?

[CrazyHorse]

Sqrl said:

CrazyHorse said:

Sqrl said:

That you see this as a competition says more to undermine your arguments than sguy78 was able to do throughout the entire thread.

edit: PS - And for the record so there is no missunderstanding here sguy78, I'm not a fan of the way you approached this debate either. 

@thread topic more generally,

Stealing this from WUWT QOTW:

From a recent interview given by the Chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra K. Pachauri, comes this extremely ironic quote:

Q: Has all that has happened this winter dented the credibility of IPCC?

Rajendra K. Pachauri: I don’t think the credibility of the IPCC can be dented. If the IPCC wasn’t there, why would anyone be worried about climate change?

"Why indeed? …"

 

That's quite an odd statement from him really, not a well thought out second setance at all.

I'm more worried about the wider impact of this whole issue as opposed to the damage to the IPCC's credability. I'm very skeptical about man made climate change but the debate is far from over and this whole episode is just going to make the general public less open to all the good climate science currently being undertaken.

Then there is the fallout to science as a whole with distrust of scientists amongst the general public increasing due to the actions of a few people. It already has the President of the US National Academy of Sciences worried. While this is quite concerning perhaps it does highlight the need for a change in the way science is communicated to the public.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8525879.stm

Sorry I missed this post previously.

My thought here is simply that in order to move forward on climate science you have to gut the bad science that exists at present and move forward from there, and we absolutely should move forward.  Chief amongst that bad science, and I hope I've made a convincing case in this thread, is the IPCC.  When you consider that the IPCC was (of their own admission and stated goals) aggregating and summarising existing research this should not be seen as a major loss but in fact the removal of a layer of biased interpretation and a move closer to the full and detailed information itself.

Where it concerns the effect on "good" climate science and science in the more general sense, I take the position that sometimes you have to take your lumps.  I personally have a substantial amount of faith in the ability of science to be a force for good in the world, but I also recognize that its power is far from unidirectional in that regard.  To the extent that people were mislead, and that extent is still unclear, there has to be a consequence and one of those consequence will, and aught to be, a period where the lost trust must be earned back.

With that said i think the issues go beyond communication with the public to the heart of the peer-review process itself.  I've got quite a few opinions on what peer-review should look like but I digress.

I agree with most of what you say there and I'll try to keep my response brief as I know we're getting slightly off topic here.

The problem with science (and this has become obvious in the case of the IPCC) is when it becomes politicized. The backlash in the scientific community against the IPCC is just as great as in the public community. I have always regarded the IPCC as a political entity as opposed to a purely scientific one as evident by its misrepresentation (and sometimes complete ignoral) of some of the scientific advisors to the report.

On the issue of people being mislead and losing trust, again I hope people realise that it isn't the science that is misleading rather the way it is used (or mis-used in this case) by people with an agenda. Most scientists simply work to publish data so that others can further develop the knowledge. Obviously there are some on both sides of this debate (and others) who seek to have their work accepted as the grand truth which reflects badly on others in the field.

As for peer-reviewing, you are correct that it would warrant a whole other debate. Breifly, I think it largely ensures published work is accountable and accurate but there is also a lot of internal scientific politics involved in submitting a paper for review and perhaps more so in how other scientists use (or ignore!) that work.