Climategate thread

[Fate]

You should listen to grumbler. He knows from deep personal experience on how lonely get its on Languish when no one bites.

[grumbler]

Contiuing to steal from Paradox OT, here is the article of some Dr David Evans who was supposedly a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005:
(snip)

This guy would be a lot more credible if he talked like a scientist.  Scientists don't say things like (my bolds)

If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming.

or

statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot

. Real scientists don't talk like this; they know that they do not know anything "for sure."

There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming.

Of course there isn't.  We don't have experimental planets on which such evidence could be gathered.  There is also no evidence to support the idea that the dinosaurs died out because of a meteor strike, since we have not seen planets with dinosaurs and no meteor strike.  Science does not work the way his comment suggests.

This doesn't mean that he is wrong, of course.  But I think honest skepticism would serve his cause better in the long run than dismissing his opponents as the "alarmist scientists" and publishing conclusions no professional scientist wuld argue are scientific. 

[Fate]

Caveat lector - if you leave grumbler alone he will return to his cave and return to commenting only on Babylon 5 and Oblivion.

[grumbler]

Incidentally I agree with Nick Cohen that we shouldn't use the word 'sceptic' to describe climate change dissenters, I suppose.  Scepticism's a noble tradition and one of the origins of scientific inquiry.  It seems to me insane that it's now a title we give people who object to the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community and to my understanding the only internally coherent explanation for climate change.

I really hate this movement towards dismissing honest dissenting opinion as unworthy. Now it seems that one cannot even be "skeptical" in the face of dogma, as the dogmatists insist that the term "skepticism" is too "noble" for their opponents.

I am skeptical about the intellectual honesty of anyone claiming that opposing opinion is too ignoble to qualify as skepticism. 

[Neil]

The Russian article seems to consist of whining that nobody pays enough attention to Russia.

[Valmy]

Even if this is true, we should still develop clean energy for other environmental reasons and the simple fact that the oil will eventually run out.

Yep.  Environmentalists are useful idiots for getting this project moving forward though.

Save the planet invest in energy production!

[Ed Anger]

Even if this is true, we should still develop clean energy for other environmental reasons and the simple fact that the oil will eventually run out.

Yep.  Environmentalists are useful idiots for getting this project moving forward though.

Save the planet invest in energy production!

I'm still not buying panels.

[Tamas]

Incidentally I agree with Nick Cohen that we shouldn't use the word 'sceptic' to describe climate change dissenters, I suppose.  Scepticism's a noble tradition and one of the origins of scientific inquiry.  It seems to me insane that it's now a title we give people who object to the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community and to my understanding the only internally coherent explanation for climate change.

I really hate this movement towards dismissing honest dissenting opinion as unworthy. Now it seems that one cannot even be "skeptical" in the face of dogma, as the dogmatists insist that the term "skepticism" is too "noble" for their opponents.

I am skeptical about the intellectual honesty of anyone claiming that opposing opinion is too ignoble to qualify as skepticism. 

It was quite surprising to read it from Sheilbh, honestly.  I respect him the most among the posters here, he often seems out of place on Languish with his well thought-out and reasonable arguments, I say this even if we are often on opposite ends of the fence.  So to have him declare that "sceptics" are too noble a title to apply for critics of the HMGW (human made global warming, trademark) was quite the thing. 

[Valmy]

I'm still not buying panels.

That's ok.  We will invent something better and cheaper one of these days.

[Ed Anger]

I'm still not buying panels.

That's ok.  We will invent something better and cheaper one of these days.

I also hate those new lightbulbs. Weak, yellow light. 

[katmai]

I'm still not buying panels.

That's ok.  We will invent something better and cheaper one of these days.

I also hate those new lightbulbs. Weak, yellow light. 

Did you hear the story this past week about the side effect of the energy efficient lights in traffic lights? They aren't warm enough to melt the snow and ice hitting the midwest

[Ed Anger]

I'm still not buying panels.

That's ok.  We will invent something better and cheaper one of these days.

I also hate those new lightbulbs. Weak, yellow light. 

Did you hear the story this past week about the side effect of the energy efficient lights in traffic lights? They aren't warm enough to melt the snow and ice hitting the midwest

har.

[KRonn]

I'm still not buying panels.

That's ok.  We will invent something better and cheaper one of these days.

I also hate those new lightbulbs. Weak, yellow light. 

Did you hear the story this past week about the side effect of the energy efficient lights in traffic lights? They aren't warm enough to melt the snow and ice hitting the midwest

I would have hoped that would have been considered before using the lights, given the possible weather conditions.   

Hmm... maybe they can use small electric powered heaters in the lights.   

[Sheilbh]

So what is the right word, if not scepticism?  It seems quite clear that humans being the main cause of GW can only be "proved" if the scientistis dismiss the datas suggesting otherwise.

I would say dissent.  They are dissenting from the scientific norm, I don't consider people who have an objection to the idea of anthropogenic climate change or the greenhouse effect to be much more sceptical, in the truest sense of the word, than people who have issues with evolution.  Like evolution, or the universe, we can't do an experiment to see what's really happening.

We have, however a valid theory based on science a couple of centuries old that different scientific teams in different countries choosing different datasets finds explains their different but consistent results.

In fact, the term "dissenter" is much worse, it is degrading. And even if there are morons among the "sceptics", not only there are far more in the followers of official canon, at least now there is discussion and debate, following these leaked e-mails. Something which was missing almost completely before that, a fact which alone raises suspicion.

Well it wasn't missing.  The Spectator did a bumper issue on why the world isn't cooling, the mainstream Republican party was broadly suspicious of the idea of anthropogenic climate change, the Telegraph (third biggest selling paper in the country) has someone blogging against it, books by people like Nigel Lawson and others are best sellers.  I think the debate has been there because there's a market for it.  However I do think it needs to be contextualised.  While some worry about the economic cost - which I've no problem with - a lot of these people are saying that the vast majority of scientific opinion is wrong and then retrofit an argument to that.  I don't consider that any more sceptical than people who don't accept evolution, or who worry about the MMR vaccine, or believe homeopathy works.

Dissent's a noble tradition too but I think scepticism is too associated with science.

I'm still not buying panels.

Apparently from an environmental perspective they're not much use

[derspiess]

Hmm... maybe they can use small electric powered heaters in the lights.   

I've heard this mentioned, but it'd be hilarious if the heaters used more power than the original bulbs would have in the first place

But I'm sure there's a design/coating solution to the problem.