Interesting Thoughts about Climate "Science"

When a few influential scientists publish important work, younger scientists will often defer to "established" results that contradict their own, even is the established results are wrong. Science tends to self correct this sort of thing, although it can take a while - the mass of the electron was incorrectly specified for years and years, because everyone who measured it got a different result than Robert Millikan. Millikan had received the Nobel Prize, and they hadn't, so their results "had to be wrong".

And so with AGW [anthropogenic global warming]. Strong evidence opposing it "can't be right" and weak evidence supporting it "must be right", and as a result, AGW is an astonishingly weak theory. In the last twenty years its proponents have made many predictions, most of which have been falsified. Michael Mann said that the Medieval Warm Period wasn't warm, contradicting recorded evidence from the period like the Domesday Book that showed wine vinyards in England in the eleventh century. AGW computer models predicted a warm layer in the middle Troposphere in the tropics; MIT's Jim Lindzen and others looked and looked - no warm zone. NOAA's Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) is the most comprehensive store of historical climate data; people are finding that the data has been frequently, consistently, and mysteriously adjusted so that older temperatures are lowered below what the thermometer readings showed, and recent temperatures are raised above what the thermometer readings showed.

Now, go read the whole thing. Really.

My personal take: I am trained as a scientist, and interpreting data in my own field is part of the work I do every day. The questions I grapple with are so much simpler than such a complex and multi-factorial phenomenon as world climate patterns. Even relatively simple questions like, "does giving women antibiotics in labor decrease the incidence of newborn GBS infection?" or "do annual pap smears prevent cervical cancer deaths?" turn out to be incredibly complicated, once you really delve in to them with an inquisitive mind and an eye for details. Witness the recent debate over routine screening mammography for women in their 40s.

Even in investigations of these relatively simple, straightforward questions, I am accustomed to scientists writing and saying very humble, tentative things about their data - and other scientists immediately pointing out objections, limitations, and caveats to that data.

One thing I never hear in a scientific setting is the kind of we're-right-and-you're-crazy-to-question-us certainty that comes from the climate scientists. When I hear self-professed scientists saying things like "unanimous consensus," "unquestionable conclusion," and "incontrovertible evidence," I really start to wonder. Especially when they are dealing with such a staggeringly complex and multifactorial phenomenon as the climate of the whole gol-darned world.

I haven't delved into the actual data relevant to climate change questions. I find the data in my own field complicated enough. So I can't say whether the anthropogenic global warming folks are all wrong. But I can say that the attitude they are taking makes them very likely to go wrong at some point, and to do so in a very spectacular way.