Peggy Noonan is pontificating on the failings of science in not reaching a consensus on Global Warming.
how sad and frustrating it is that the world's greatest scientists cannot gather, discuss the question of global warming, pore over all the data from every angle, study meteorological patterns and temperature histories, and come to a believable conclusion on these questions: Is global warming real or not?
Wow, what a great idea! Let's get the greatest minds in the world together, have them look at the situation and then offer us advice on what we should be doing. Heck, how about we call it the International Panel on Climate Change?
Well, guess what, Peggy, its' already been done. The world's experts have gotten together, studied each others work, tested models and even presented us with a report.
Most of the Right have rejected it because, and I'm quoting you, Peggy:
science too, like other great institutions, is poisoned by politics.
This is a statement that due to the nature of science can't be true.
This issue is not simple math, where 1+1 is quickly and easily understood. This problem is huge. Getting a complete grasp of the dynamics of the systems involved may be beyond what we are currently capable of. That doesn't mean the science is flawed, but you, like so many on the Right, use this natural limitation of science to raise doubts about any result that you don't like. Your agenda becomes not finding the truth, but protecting your position. To do this you slander the science and the scientists performing the studies.
The funny part is, so many on the Right are driven by a 'there is no Global Warming' and are busy denouncing the scientists involved as driven by an agenda. Guess what, Peggy, it doesn't matter if the scientists are or are not driven by an agenda. Good science can't be impacted by any agenda of those doing it.
Other scientists will study these findings, test them and build on them. In time, a consensus is reached and either the findings are valid or not valid. If the findings are not valid, then any agenda of the scientist is totally irrelevant. A single scientist, driven by agenda, could lie and cheat for a short while, but as his work was found to be flawed, his work (and his agenda) would be cast aside by the rest of the scientific community.
In the study of Global Warming, there is debate over mechanisms, meanings, long term projections and many of the small details. That Global Warming is actually occurring and mankind in a major factor in this process is no longer an issue for scientists.
And yet, Peggy, you and so many others on the Right pretend that the idea of Global Warming is still being debated. It's not.
You lie about the current state of affairs and then have the gall to say you can't trust scientists because they are driven an agenda and will lie to promote it.
Peggy, that is nothing but projection. You know you would lie (heck, you are doing it right here) to further *your* agenda, so you assume the scientists would also. But you seem to have forgotten some of the principals about science you should have learned in middle school.
You can't lie and do good science. If you try to do this, you will be exposed, removed, and made a laughingstock in the scientific community. It's a shame that the same thing can't be said of editorial writers.
16 comments:
First, the Conservative Right said there was no such thing as global warming, now they say it's not caused by people, but cyclical. The neo-cons (especially this administration) are more about commerce than the safety of their children.
People tend to think that Bush caters to the social conservatives, when in reality, it's the business community.
This was a great tirade on those who try and argue that human effects on global warming are debatable. I really enjoy reading your blog.
I believe my favorite quote regarding global warming I have heard recently was when I was discussing how scientific data shows a direct correlation between global carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures. The response I got to that was not a reasoned, rational argument, it was "don't show me data, show me facts." I was pretty much speechless after that.
This is a cmmtte report on the afore mentioned report...
About the Wegman committee: Dr. Wegman assembled a committee of statisticians, including Dr. David Scott of Rice University and Dr. Yasmin Said of The Johns Hopkins University. Also contributing were Denise Reeves of MITRE Corp. and John T. Rigsby of the Naval Surface Warfare Center. All worked independent of the committee, pro bono, at the direction of Wegman. In the course of Wegman’s work, he also discussed and presented to other statisticians on aspects of his analysis, including the Board of the American Statistical Association.
Among the panel’s findings and recommendations:
Mann et al., misused certain statistical methods in their studies, which inappropriately produce hockey stick shapes in the temperature history. Wegman’s analysis concludes that Mann’s work cannot support claim that the1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium.
Report: “Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported by the MBH98/99 analysis. As mentioned earlier in our background section, tree ring proxies are typically calibrated to remove low frequency variations. The cycle of Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age that was widely recognized in 1990 has disappeared from the MBH98/99 analyses, thus making possible the hottest decade/hottest year claim. However, the methodology of MBH98/99 suppresses this low frequency information. The paucity of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable.”
A social network analysis revealed that the small community of paleoclimate researchers appear to review each other’s work, and reuse many of the same data sets, which calls into question the independence of peer-review and temperature reconstructions.
Report: “It is clear that many of the proxies are re-used in most of the papers. It is not surprising that the papers would obtain similar results and so cannot really claim to be independent verifications.”
Although the researchers rely heavily on statistical methods, they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community.
Report: “As statisticians, we were struck by the isolation of communities such as the paleoclimate community that rely heavily on statistical methods, yet do not seem to be interacting with the mainstream statistical community. The public policy implications of this debate are financially staggering and yet apparently no independent statistical expertise was sought or used.”
Authors of policy-related science assessments should not assess their own work.
Report: “Especially when massive amounts of public monies and human lives are at stake, academic work should have a more intense level of scrutiny and review. It is especially the case that authors of policy-related documents like the IPCC report, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, should not be the same people as those that constructed the academic papers.”
Policy-related climate science should have a more intense level of scrutiny and review involving statisticians. Federal research should involve interdisciplinary teams to avoid narrowly focused discipline research.
Report: “With clinical trials for drugs and devices to be approved for human use by the FDA, review and consultation with statisticians is expected. Indeed, it is standard practice to include statisticians in the application-for-approval process. We judge this to be a good policy when public health and also when substantial amounts of monies are involved, for example, when there are major policy decisions to be made based on statistical assessments. In such cases, evaluation by statisticians should be standard practice. This evaluation phase should be a mandatory part of all grant applications and funded accordingly.”
Federal research should emphasize fundamental understanding of the mechanisms of climate change, and should focus on interdisciplinary teams to avoid narrowly focused discipline research.
Report: “While the paleoclimate reconstruction has gathered much publicity because it reinforces a policy agenda, it does not provide insight and understanding of the physical mechanisms of climate change… What is needed is deeper understanding of the physical mechanisms of climate change.”
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Thank you Anon for proving my point. Whenever science is put out, those who disagree speak up, point out where they see weaknesses and the community then looks at the two positions and trys to find the truth.
As you can see here, the issue is noted, studyed, and in the case of the Wegman report, the flaws in the Wegman study have been identified.
As I said, even if a scientist is working on an agenda, as Wegman was, if the work was flawed, as wegman's was (misreading graphs in source material as example) the science come through.
They thought they saw something wrong, raised notice of this fact, other scientist looked at the data, and determined that Wedgman, not Mann was the one who made the error.
Again, thank you
Just another front in the NeoCon War on Facts. See also Evolution and Iraq.
"The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position [of global warming]."
link
928 papers, from scientist world wide, and not 1 disagreed with the greater theory of global warming.
Yet, many in the US, including most of the leaders on the right, claim that there is no agreement.
It is a lie, and to many in the American public accept it.
Thanks for the link
Well if you all would quit bickering and help out, we could get off this planet and start destroying the next one.
Damn those Republicans. What are they trying to do? Kill us?
If you take The name George Bush, and re-arrange the Letters you have Gugh Seebor. If you take that name and assign each letter a corresponding number 1- 26 A- Z and add them up, you get 107. 107 is the Temperature we are supposed to have here today. You then take the "S" which coincidently is used in the spelling of both names, and spell "Satan", thats who George Bush is. Thats why its so hot around here.
The better plan would be to stop destroying this one. It will cost a lot less, and we can start on it at once.
My my my, the stupid brigade is out in full force today, three wingnuts in less than an hour.
You can sure tell it is summer break. There are no classes in the elementry school, so they get to play with mom and dad computer.
Actually, this has nothing to do with Bush. The right has tried to deny Gobal Warming since it was first raised as a concern 2 decades ago.
The effort was obvious then, it is now. What is sad is the number of people of the right who accept these lies as truth, and the spread them to others, or worse; Defend them, even when presented with hard evidence, as at least a couple of posters seem to trying to do here.
My my my, the stupid brigade is out in full force today, three wingnuts in less than an hour.
Now now. Name calling. How mature is that? You call someone a gradeschooler and start name calling?
You can sure tell it is summer break. There are no classes in the elementry school, so they get to play with mom and dad computer.
Why do you assume its a kid out of school? Would that make you feel better that a kid can get under your skin? Not everyone who is an adult lets things stew in their minds until it becomes an obcession, and any differeing opinion irritates the crap out of them.
Have a great day.
Actually it apears that Anon 5 was noting the rather childlike tone evident in the replies from either Anon 2, 3 or 4.
But they are not realy childish, but more of an irrelevant non sequitur you see when a person can not chalange the facts, so they resort to either being silly or engage in ad hominem attacks against posters (although anon #5 does appear to also be engaged in the same behavior, maybe sauce for the goose sauce for the gander kind of thing.)
As to admiting that you don't think about things like this, well that is clear to see IF you were the one that posted anon 2, or 3, or 4. If you are not one of these posters, I do recomend that you conside both the science of global warming, and the manner that the right used lies and distortions to confuse the issue. If you are one of the posters I do hope that you will do the same, but suspect that you woudl rather remain uninformed (or misinformed) on this issue.
In either case, thanks for the post
It's funny when you hear people spin the weather. I know that we've been keeping records for only 100 years or so, but I don't remember the floods in the Northeast, the Hurricanes in the Gulf, the Southwestern Drought, the growth of deserts and the melting of world-wide ice formations as 'normal'. What gets politicized next, the obesity of America? Like that is also past the realm of my senses? "Boss, the plane, the plane!" Like the midget needed to tell Rourke that he saw it first.
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