What do you mean when you say you “don’t trust the priesthood” for clarification?

For any who don’t already know, the one stop shop for information on climate skepicism is www.wattsupwiththat.com. It includes links to data sites (want to follow the arctic and antarctic ice sheets day by day?), other influential blog sites (including those in favour of global warming), and is by far the most widely viewed site on climate change. Unlike many of the pro-AGW sites, dissenting views are permitted, including full blog postings. Warmly recommended!

You realize of course that if you are a climate denier, you are therefore a holocaust denier and being paid by big oil.

How do you feel about that?

Mark,

Again, my big complaint with your last article, and now with this one is that you are not applying any critical thinking here. 
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Should you trust the media?  Nope (though that does bring up the question of why we should trust you since you in fact are part of the media).  Should we trust the scientists?  Probably not, though I do actually work occasionally with some scientists (even dated one before I met my wife), and I have yet to see them plotting as a whole to fake their results.  However, neither foundation is, in and of itself, reason enough to reject the notion that global warming is happening—its a reason to be skeptical yes, but you are not suggesting skepticism here.  If you are going to be a climate change denier, then at the very least, look at the data (Much of which is publicly available) and make your arguments based on that.
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Other than media hype, your argument rests on the claims of a relatively small group of scientists that essentially a vast conspiracy exists to cover up the truth about the climate, or at least what science can tell us about the climate.  The problem is, many scientists have a hard time admitting they are wrong.  Einstein essentially wanted to abandon Quantum Mechanics because it was not deterministic.  Fred Hoyle (A very important Astronomer/Cosmologist of the middle of the 20th century) hated the Big Bang with a passion and spent most of the rest of his life trying to disprove it. 
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The most important, and most relevant parallel however might be the scientists who still deny the link between HIV and AIDS—Several otherwise prominent scientists (including at least one Nobel Peace Price) either have denied the link, or expressed sympathy for those who do.  These scientists make similar claims to those made by Hal Lewis and some of the other deniers of climate change. 
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Ultimately, results in science are always tentative.  Nothing would make me happier than finding out that global warming is both natural and short term (if it is natural and long term, we will still have to deal with it).  But you are going to have to do a lot more than talk about media hype if you are going to convince anyone and not simply look like you are rationalizing away the evidence. 
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Here is the thing, you are writing a blog for a news paper.  While not technically acting as a reporter, that doesn’t mean you should feel free not to properly educate yourself on the subjects you are writing about.  Writing an article about climate change, either affirming or denying it, without taking the time to at least acquaint yourself with the evidence strikes me as being somewhat irresponsible.

James:

I mean the “white-coated priesthood” of Big Science.

What MarylandBill said…  very eloquently and diplomatically put.

For the record, I never disparaged Hal Lewis’ knowledge, mental status or motivations; I just said those questions should be asked of both sides.

Maryland Bill:

There are several things muddled up together in your reply. 

1. I am not a “climate change” denier.  Indeed, I believe that’s pretty much all climate does.  We are talking about a dynamic system that is eternally in flux.

2. What I am *skeptical* about is Anthropogenic Climate Change.  By “skeptical” I mean that I find the tactics of Big Science+Media+Powerful State in shouting down people like Hal Lewis, not to mention the shady shenanigans revealed in the Climategate emails to primarily have the effect of suggesting to me that what is being done is not science, but a sort of dynamic feedback loop in which a lot of scientists are bellying up to a gigantic trough of money and obligingly providing grist for a political movement and a media hungry for sensation.  One need not (and I do not) assert a “vast conspiracy”, but mere human concupiscence.

3.  Hence, I repudiate the load and inaccurate term “climate change *denier*” (an emotionally larded term meant to invoke holocaust denial).  I affirm that climate changes.  It’s what climate does.  What I question is that it has a lot to do with us.  And *question* is the word, not “deny”.  The reason I question it is because, in *real* science, people like Hal Lewis are allowed to say, “But what if we’re wrong?” while in the dubious world of the American Physical Society and the Climategate emails, people who question are treated like heretics and Sons of Darkness and shut out of the discussion by precisely the shady tactic Lewis described in his resignation letter.

4.  Your demand that I educate myself is therefore a demand that I go swimming but not get wet.  For it’s difficult to educate oneself on a matter when all alternatives to Orthodoxy are systematically muzzled and shouted down as heresy.  Which is my point.

I just said those questions should be asked of both sides.

Well, actually what you said was that questioning the Sacred Consensus was “idiotic”.  Eventually, you moved to saying “Who knows?” (a nice tip of the hat to a vague spirit of relativism).  But then you quickly returned to mocking those who doubt the Consensus as “godlike” and ignoring Lewis’ documentation of the shady tactics used to muzzle Sons of Darkness who doubt the Consensus.  In short, what you really meant was that questions should be directed at heretics, while those who were dubious about the Money Flood feedback loop were tin-foiled hat conspiracy theorists.  I’m just suggesting, as the godlike YOS was suggesting, that there may in fact be three or four sides to the matter, but the Consensus permits only one side to be heard.

“Climate change science I don’t claim to know.  But I know hype.  I work in the media.”

This is what I would call the B.S. meter in action. It says I may not know all the details and fine-sounding arguments from all the different angles, but I know some broader, more generally true things that make me doubt the conclusion.

Right. I agree with that. Follow your B.S. meter.

The problem you face is that when non-Catholics make the same sort of B.S. meter response to Catholic claims, you respond with details and fine-sounding arguments.

There’s nothing wrong with detail or “fine-sounding” argument, so long as they are accurate details and the arguments not only sound fine but are fine.  My beef with climate change zealotry is not the details or fine sounding arguments; it’s the muzzling of counter-arguments.  Unless you are seriously going to propose that nobody is allowed to offer arguments *against* the Church’s positions in our culture, your point falls flat.

That said, could we remain on topic here?

Mark,
1. Regarding the “climate change denier” point.  I believe that people with the intelligence to read this blog, let alone to write it, understand that by referring to climate change, we are talking about human induced climate change.  Regarding the notion that using the term “denier” is meant to invoke Holocaust Denial, that is certainly not my intent—perhaps it was the intent of the person who invented the term, I don’t know.  I am using the term from the simple perspective of stating someone who denies the scientific consensus regarding global warming/climate change etc.
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Further, since when have we become so politically correct?  I am calling it as I see it based on what you are writing.  I don’t call you a skeptic, because your arguments are not based on any real evidence.  A skeptic might question the claim, but will look at all the evidence.  I see no evidence in your articles and no reason to believe (and reasons to not believe) that you ever actually made any attempt to look at the data yourself. 
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2. If someone like Hal Lewis was “shouted down” there are two possible reasons.  The first is your hypothesis, that it was somehow an effort by those who seek to gain from affirming ACC (Short of Anthropogenic Climate Change… typing the whole thing will just get annoying, but I guess I need to lest you accuse me of claiming you don’t believe the climate can change).  The other is the simple hypothesis that what he had to say about ACC simply was not worth responding too, nor printing in peer reviewed journals.  If a prominent physicist started trying to claim that gravity didn’t exist, he would be equally ignored unless he had a lot of evidence to back up his claim; it doesn’t mean that there was a vast group who were trying to shout him down.  If you are going to claim that he was shouted down while providing evidence backed dissent, you need to provide evidence of that assertion (beyond his own claim). 
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3. As for whether or not this is a conspiracy theory or not… Frankly it looks like one, it acts like one and it sounds like one.  No offense Mark, but despite your claims to the contrary, I think many reasonable people who don’t already agree with you, are going to see this as a conspiracy theory. 
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Indeed, considering the fact that there are powerful incentives for some scientists to dissent (Big Oil, Coal, etc. would probably happily pay for research), one should think that more scientists would find it in their self interest to find evidence against ACC.  In addition, the fact that for at least part of the Bush Administration funding for scientific research in the United States was controlled by ACCDs (let D stand for deniers or doubters, your choice) means that scientists in the USA at least were working against their own interests by maintaining consensus on ACC during that period.   
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4. Mark, my demand that you educate yourself still stands.  I have seen no evidence that you have made any serious attempt to educate yourself about either the science, or the controversy regarding Climate Gate and or Dr. Lewis beyond what you could get by looking in Wikipedia.  Shoot, some of your own supporting commentators have provided links where you could get access to more legitimate scientific dissent than you have referenced here.
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Every time you write a blog posting like this, or the one you wrote about asteroids earlier in the week, you undermine your credibility, not just with respect to comment about science, but to comment about other issues as well.  Sure, those who agree with you are going to continue to agree with you, and claim that you are right.  But those who are in the middle?  Fortunately for me, my first exposure to your writing was a thoughtful critique of what is wrong with American Conservatism from the perspective of Catholics.  That piece showed me you had something worth saying.  If this was the first thing of yours I had written?  I would have written you off as another Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh who serves no useful purpose.  It is articles like this that have made it so hard for me to take many conservatives seriously, and why it took me so long to pull away from the Democratic Party. 
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I can’t help but wonder what perhaps the foremost American Catholic Conservative of the last generation, William F. Buckley, would have said if you had submitted these posts to the National Review when he was still editing it?

First, a self-indulgent fanboy interlude:
Wow, neat!  That blurb I quoted in the comments got promoted into the text of an actual Mark Shea article.  An article taking issue with it, but still: nifty! Thanks, Mark!

Okay, enough of that.  I would never believe that Mark is some kind of shill for the oil industry, and I don’t have any particular reason to believe that Hal Lewis is one either.  Based only on what Mark has posted about him, he seems like a scientist with the courage of his convictions who is willing to accept professional ostracism for the sake of the facts.
He might be right or wrong about those facts, but either way, his courage would be admirable.

However, I don’t really have any particular reason to believe that most of the climate scientists who disagree with Lewis are shills for Big Grant Money, either. I suppose some of them must be (given the variability of large sample groups, and the fact of concupiscence), just as I suppose that, there must be at least a few oil industry shills among anthropogenic climate change skeptics (again, only due to the law of large numbers and the fact of concupiscence).  But just as at least some of the skeptics are as honest as Mark or Hal Lewis, presumably so are some of those who support the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. 

Most importantly, 2+2=4 even if someone says so with bad motives.  So the main concern here should be the facts, not ad hominem swipes at either side of the debate.

If one is conservative (i.e., cautious, prudent, and concerned to preserve the gains that human civilization has slowly built up over barbarism), then the following numbers deserve consideration:

The species Homo sapiens has existed for less than 400 millennia, and the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens (i.e., modern humans) for less than 200 millennia. (source:  Hominid Species Timeline, http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/timeline.html )

However, Antarctic ice cores reveal that CO2 and Methane (CH4) levels are now higher than they have ever been in the last 800 millennia. This is uncharted territory for our species (and a fortiori, our civilization), and I think the prudent conservative response is to be concerned that this novelty (unprecedented greenhouse gas levels) not prove problematic.  Maybe all will be well.  But caution seems warranted.  Here is an article on those ice cores, from
http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&RCN=29438

Ice cores give up 800,000 years of climate data

Scientists working on ice cores drilled in the Antarctic have obtained data on the climate and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations going back 800,000 years. Among other things, the cores reveal that the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today are higher than at any point in the last 800,000 years.

The study also confirms the close link between greenhouse gas levels and climate change. ‘The temperature curve over the past 800,000 years matches the CO2 curve beautifully - during glacial periods in which the climate is cold, there is less CO2 in the atmosphere,’ explained Thomas Blunier of the University of Copenhagen, who was involved in the study. This new information on how greenhouse gases influence the temperature will be of help to scientists attempting to predict future climate changes.

The ice cores were obtained by the EU-funded EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) Project. The 3,270 metre core covers eight long glacial periods and eight shorter, warmer interglacial periods and extends our knowledge of how the climate changed in the past by some 150,000 years. Earlier work by the EPICA team took our knowledge back to 650,000 years before the present.

The researchers determined the temperature in the past by studying the mix of water isotopes in the ice, while information on atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations was gathered from tiny air bubbles enclosed in the ice. Their findings are published in two papers in the latest edition of the journal Nature.

The first paper investigates how carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have changed over the millennia. Currently, CO2 levels stand at just over 380 parts per million (ppm), which is 28% higher than during the pre-industrial era. The research revealed that during a glacial period that occurred between 650,000 and 750,000 years ago, the CO2 level was at its lowest level, falling below 180ppm.

The second paper looks at another important greenhouse gas: methane (CH4). The current concentration of methane in the atmosphere is around 1,800 parts per billion; which is 124% higher than in previous periods. The ice core revealed that the curve for methane closely matches the temperature curve.

Crucially, the EPICA research uncovered evidence of rapid climate changes in the past; around 770,000 years ago, levels of both CO2 and CH4 changed drastically within just a few decades. Similar changes also took place around 40,000 years ago during the last glacial period. These could have been caused by changes in ocean circulation patterns, the scientists speculate.

The next step for the ice core community is to obtain a core comprising a continuous climate record going back 1.5 million years. In the framework of the International Partners in Ice Core Sciences (IPICS), researchers are already hunting for a suitable site; the search is expected to take several years.

Maryland Bill,

“Regarding the “climate change denier” point.  I believe that people with the intelligence to read this blog, let alone to write it, understand that by referring to climate change, we are talking about human induced climate change.”

No, sorry.  Just because you want to hijack language doesn’t mean that everyone is going to nod their heads obediently and say, “yeah, OK”.  “Climate” + “change” = the climate is dynamic and changes (paraphrased).  Nothing in the definitions of those two words includes “human-induced”.  That is you and your religious leaders whom you assent to their authority on their holy teaching changing the language to something that it is not in order to make it impossible for someone to disagree with “human-induced global-cooling=>warming=>climate change=>disruption” without appearing to be unreasonable.  Yep, if someone disagreed that there is “climate change”, in the objective sense, then they would be crazy.  But you and your religion are trying to hijack an objective definition and turn it into a subjective one in your religion’s favor then have everyone accept the definition as the objective one.  In other words, you’re trying to re-write the dictionary.  Doubleplusgood. So, no, you fail when you base your entire argument on a misrepresentation of the English language.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but nothing in this world makes your religion look more foolish than your constant need to redefine it and, when you realize you can’t, try to settle on just changing the meaning of words and expect anyone with half a brain to accept your change.

Joe:

Chill.  Maryland Bill is not an enemy.  He is a person with legitimate concerns.

Tom and MB:

I’m familiar with the points you make.  As I say, I have no doubts at all that climate is changing.  That’s what climate does.  My doubts center on whether the data adduces proves *anthropogenic* climate change.  What concerns me (as somebody who is a non-scientist, but who is familiar with how human beings function when defending faith-propositions) is that the Consensus Community is not acting like scientists, but like people defending a faith proposition.  I’m all for faith propositions in their proper sphere.  But I am skeptical that they belong in this sphere.  So I write as a non-specialist in climate science, but as somebody who does know a bit about faith communities and how they function.

One of the fascinating developments of the past century is the way in which the language of faith has leeched into the sciences, with detrimental effect.  No scientist of the 18th or 19th century would have asked if we should “believe in” the refraction of light or the existence of oxygen.  You proved your case with facts and that was that.  But increasingly, we are asked to “believe in” things like evolutionary theory (which one?) or anthropogenic climate.  (Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a big problem with evolution.  But I do have a big problem with a sort of evolutionary mythos that has grown up, which is intended to provide cover for atheistic materialism.  Hence the faith language about “believing in” evolution.  Evolution either occurs and is provable or it does not.  No “believing” necessary, just as there is there is no believing or disbelieving in Bernoulli’s principle.  You don’t have to believe in things that you can demonstrate by flying a plane.

AGW demonstrations are, so far, dubious and ambiguous.  Yeah, there are higher levels of gas in ice.  But the earth has been warming since 1800.  So we are to conclude what?  Yeah, the hockey stick looks grim—till you look at a much larger span of time and it vanishes into statistical insignficance.  That’s why the shady stuff Lewis chronicles in his resignation letter looks shady—alternative voices with alternative interpretations of the data are being muzzled by Soviet tactics.  It’s the act of a faith community silencing heretics, not of scientists dispassionately weighing data.

I’m sorry I can’t go into it more at present, but I have to get some work done today.  I hope you can appreciate my concerns.  I appreciate your honest and irenic approaches, both of you!

I really recommend perusing the discussions at Watts Up With That for a good overview of claims and counterclaims.  Also, pertinent to the ice core info quoted above, see

http://joannenova.com.au/2010/08/ice-core-evidence-no-endorsement-of-carbons-major-effect/

Personally, I started seriously doubting the alarmists quite a few years ago when I started reading in Science and in space science sources of other planets - Mars, Pluto, showing signs of warming.  And then the Climategate stuff came out, and just reading the ‘Read this first - Harry’ file was enough.  Those guys don’t know what they’re doing, the programs/modeling is garbage (dividing by zero and going on as if you can do that?!)  and I wouldn’t trust them to design something as simple as a little red wagon, much less tell us what to do with the planet and planet’s weather, and climate.

I can definitely sympathize with Mark here.  I am no expert, and while I have researched it, I have not gone into it deeply.  And here is my conclusion: 

- human caused “climate disruption” exists and can be demonstrated by the science.

- the case has not been made to the public in scientific terms.  Mark is right, it is being presented and defended in a way very similar to a proposition of faith.

And when we get to Hal Lewis, it really seems that this is his issue.  From what I have read, he doesn’t seem to have a strong stance on ACC itself.  He takes issue with the scientific community’s un-scientific behavior when it comes to this topic.

The reality is this, climate change is not a scientific issue, it is a political issue.  And that is the way it is being discussed, and that is the problem.  Its treatment as a political issue is preventing it from being treated as a scientific issue.

I don’t want to be snookered, even if I am being snookered into the truth.

<i>I don’t want to be snookered, even if I am being snookered into the truth.<i>

That’s an excellent line!  And so true!  I think much of the motivation on both sides of the AGW debate is that nobody wants to be snookered.  The AGW “believers” (a derogatory term) all think Big Oil is steering the debate and the “deniers” (another derogatory term) say it’s Big Govt or Big Media pushing us into spending more money.  There’s probably some truth to both sides.

If only we could all be climate scientists for 10 minutes, then we’d all *know* immediately if this is a hoax or not.  Unfortunately, science doesn’t work that way—it’s messy and convoluted and often takes a long time to figure out.  Heck, it wasn’t until 1993 until the Vatican agreed with Galileo about heliocentricity.

I have no idea if AGW is a valid concern, or, as the venerable Hal Lewis says, a big fraud.  We all want to be on the side of Galileo, the lone soldier speaking truth to the powerful establishment, or David, fighting the good fight for righteousness.  The sides of the AGW just have different views of who the “establishment” is that we should be fighting against: Big Oil or Big Govt or Big Media.

But I do know a couple things: 1) comparing the science of the 1800’s or even the 1960’s with today’s technology and information systems is probably not valid.  2) Occasionally Big Consensus is correct and the little Galileos (on either side) are wrong.

I will go out on a limb and make a Big Prediction (hey Mark, I’m getting the hang of using these capitalizations!): nothing substantive will be done about alleged AGW any time soon.  We have had so much push back—valid or not—that the US is not about to go down the road of cap-n-trade, fossil fuel taxes, reducing subsidies to factory farms, etc, for a long time.  Our lifestyles are so entwined with producing greenhouse gases that we are impervious, collectively, to any changes in our lifestyle, even when there are numerous geopolitical and economic reasons besides AGW to conserve and stop using fossil fuels.  Also, it’s natural to have a bias that our way of life cannot possibly be harming the planet.

So, yeah, why lose sleep over the issue?  There may be evidence of AGW, but obviously even if there is, it’s not nearly convincing enough to stimulate substantive change.  Yet.

@Elaine T:
The point about CO2 not correlating perfectly with temperature on the Joanne Nova link was an interesting contribution to the debate. Thanks for sharing it!

It’s true that uninhabited planets have changing climates.  Indeed, as the article I quoted above mentions, the pre-human Earth had a dynamic climate, too:
“Crucially, the EPICA research uncovered evidence of rapid climate changes in the past; around 770,000 years ago, levels of both CO2 and CH4 changed drastically within just a few decades. Similar changes also took place around 40,000 years ago during the last glacial period. These could have been caused by changes in ocean circulation patterns, the scientists speculate.”
The question is whether the current rise in global mean temperatures is all or partly anthropogenic.  No one disputes that climate change can be and has been non-anthropogenic.
Although the source is quite openly “socialistic” there’s a nice precis of the anthropogenic argument at by physicist John W. Farley at: http://www.monthlyreview.org/080728farley.php

@Mark:

I think your concerns are quite sensible.  The “faith-based” vibe that uses “SCIENCE” to justify scientistic foolishness (e.g., Social Darwinism, the New Atheism, Stephen Hawking’s untutored conflation of physical “Whence?” questions with metaphysical “Why?” questions, those pop-Evo-Psych articles that say primatologists think Evolution is Making You Cheat on Your Wife, etc.) certainly are troubling. 

Much of the Gaia-worshipping enviro-mysticism of the last few decades certainly shows similar symptoms. Also, I don’t doubt that a fair number of Incovenient Truth-ers “believe” in anthropogenic global warming mostly because it’s what People Like Us (i.e., respectable NPR-listening Whole Foods shoppers, not Those People in the Tea Parties) are supposed to believe. 

But then, down through the centuries, plenty of respectable burghers have believed in Christianity for the same reason:  respectability.  Lousy reason to believe something, but doesn’t prove anything either way about whether the thing believed is true.  Still, I agree with your larger point that “faith-based” discourse is especially pernicious w/r/t science. As an observer of American politics, I think we could do with a fair bit less of it there, too.  Unfortunately, there seems not to be (nor in human history to have ever been) a public groundswell for more complex and nuanced, less sensationalistic discussions of . . . anything.

I don’t know much about the professional dynamics of climatology, but if they’re silencing heretics in some way, that is worthy of concern, too.

When you start looking at longer range graphs than the hockey stick, and taking into account things like the Medieval Warm Period, yeah, it looks less terrifying.  But the greenhouse effect is a real effect, and the question of whether it’s being anthropogenically turbocharged bears attention. Of course, that’s the nub of the question, as you’ve said: Not whether climate changes—we’ve beat that dead horse with a hockey stick enough times to establish that we all agree on that—but whether recent changes have been anthropogenic.  I don’t know that it is, but given that, along with solar cycles, Milankovitch cycles, and whatnot, the greenhouse gases are non-controversially known to have SOME effects on climate, it would intuitively surprise me if raising atmospheric concentrations of CO2 from the pre-industrial 280 ppm to the present 387ish ppm didn’t have some effect.

The bottom line for me is simple:  Like Chesterton contemplating a sheepfold gate put there by the men of yore for reasons unknown and deciding it might best be left undisturbed, I look at the chaotic complexity of the global ecology that God has created for us, and I get nervous about ruggedly individualist industrialists mucking around with it.  I see Saruman show up in the Shire, and I get nervous.  Although we may have different hunches about the underlying science, I’m sure you can appreciate my concerns, too.

Tony61,

You’d be surprised.  The new versions of the energy portions of the national model building codes that will be coming out over the next couple years are 25-30% more stringent than the current codes.  That dwarfs any advance in stringency that has ever happened before.  That’s significant policy that is happening right now.

This section of policy-making is smart enough to not hang their hat on GW, and makes many other arguments, but all the noise around GW has certainly helped make it happen.

Wine,
Thx.  Good to know.  I wonder if those changes are substantive; I’ll have to find a journalist to bird dog it.

I have yet to see them plotting as a whole to fake their results. 

They don’t have to.  Group-think and the herd mentality and Kuhnian “normal science” takes care of normalizing their thinking.  Throw in a little gotta-keep-my-funding and the chronic underdetermination of science - any finite set of data can support more than one theory - and you can see how a “consensus” once built will maintain itself without any conscious intent on the part of most. 
+ + + 
ACC 

I thought it was AGW.  The very fact that proponents have felt the need to shift from GW to CC is telling. 
+ + +
Other than media hype, your argument rests on the claims of a relatively small group of scientists 

Not only that, but they form a closed group of mutually-citing scientists who have monopolistic control over the source data, which they rigorously refuse to share.  Oh, wait.  You mean the other relatively small group of scientists.
+ + +
The most important, and most relevant parallel however might be the scientists who still deny the link between HIV and AIDS—Several otherwise prominent scientists (including at least one Nobel Peace Price) either have denied the link, or expressed sympathy for those who do.  These scientists make similar claims to those made by Hal Lewis and some of the other deniers of climate change. 

Then it must be the same thing!  Shazaam!  Another nefarious guilt-by-association link.  You forgot the one about tobacco-deniers, or the Galilean geocentrism deniers who objected to 2000 years of settled science. 
+ + +
I just said those questions [of motive and funding] should be asked of both sides. 

Perhaps so; but hitherto they have been asserted (not asked) only of those questioning the shoddy science and leaps of faith conclusions.  Even Pielke Sr., who agrees that AGW is true but points out the weaknesses of the arguments for it. 
+ + +
Antarctic ice cores reveal that CO2 and Methane (CH4) levels are now higher than they have ever been in the last 800 millennia. 

So we may finally be coming out of the Ice Ages?  This may not be Just Another Interglacial period?  Hmm.  Yet, its close association with the Grand Solar Max is tantalizing, given the association of the Little Ice Age with the Grand [Maunder] Minimum.  Remember: with seven variables you can model anything; but that model will never detect the effects of an eighth variable. 

Also remember: the Arrhenius curve is logarithmic.  Each successive doubling of CO2 produces successively smaller increments of temperature.  The model predictions depend on hypothetical feedback loops which may or may not be correct. 
+ + +
The temperature curve over the past 800,000 years matches the CO2 curve beautifully - during glacial periods in which the climate is cold, there is less CO2 in the atmosphere 

When the oceans are colder, more CO2 stays in solution.  As the oceans warm up, they “exhale” CO2.  But, can you warm a pot of water by blowing a hairdryer over it?  What effects do deep thermal vents and undersea volcanoes have?  They are not included in the Models. 

More recently, CO2 has been steadily increasing, but temperatures have been down (c.1880-1910), gone up (c.1910-1940), down (c1940-1970), up (c1970-2000), and now level to down again (since 2000).  This seems to reflect the MDO (Multi-decadal oscillation in the oceans).  This 50/60 year long cycle, linked to solar cycles, is rising on the back of a long term trend some 400 years old: the rebound from the Little Ice Age.  Between the two, there is a goodness-of-fit of better than 90% to the instrumented data period. 

Notice that the current Models do not account for the 1940s-1970s cooling (motive for the earlier global cooling hype*), nor for the more recent flattening out.  Instead, the past data has been adjusted to minimize the 40/70 cooling. 

(*) Look for Forecasts, Famines, and Freezes by John Gribbin for an account of the scientists and their consensus at the time.  They just didn’t have a political UN body to institutionalize it. 
++++++++++++

just reading the ‘Read this first - Harry’ file was enough.  Those guys don’t know what they’re doing, the programs/modeling is garbage (dividing by zero and going on as if you can do that?!) 

For some reason the mantle of “climate scientist” confers expertise in other people’s fields—from astrophysicists (they have always been more skeptical because the sun was being ignored) to statisticians (who have wondered at the lack of world-class statisticians on the Team) to computer programmers. 

My favorite HADCRU email was the one suggesting that the USA should be broken up into five smaller countries. (Which shows they know as much about political science as about statistics or computer science.)  There just might be a political motive lurking somewhere.

Joe,
I will, for the most part, ignore your comment about my “religious leaders”.  I hope you know that I try my best to be a faithful Catholic who follows all the teachings of the Church.  Regarding the definition of words in language, I hope you know they are not absolutes; context can change the precise meaning of words.  In a debate where we are discussing AGW or ACC, using the words Global Warming or Climate Change would reasonably imply the anthropogenic versions.
—
Mark,
A couple of thoughts about your critique of scientists these days. 
—
1. I am not at all sure that your historical comparison is valid for a couple of reasons.  The first is that prior to relatively recently, science has not had a huge impact on the life of most people.  It meant nothing at all to 99% of Europeans in the 17th and 18th century whether the Earth went around the Sun or if the converse was true—as a result, they never tried to prove the science to the common man, rather only to other scientists.  The second reason however, is that many scientific pronouncements of that time, including the heliocentric model of the solar system were in fact based on belief rather than proof.  In fact Galileo’s heliocentric model of the solar system was not conclusively proved until Friedrich Bessel obtained the first successful measurement of Stellar Parallax about 200 years later! 
—
2. The second thought is that, well frankly most scientific research these days is rather specialized and requires extensive knowledge to understand it.  Most scientists outside of a specific field don’t have the training to completely understand it, let alone people who probably never took a science class other than the normal survey required for most liberal arts or business degrees.  In some cases, the results are non-intuitive.  At a certain point, proof to the non-specialist becomes all but impossible (And this has been true for quite a while.).

So maybe it might be inappropriate for scientists to ask us to simply trust them but how do they prove anything to us?

Ye Olde Statistician:
1. I find it interesting how you and others can claim how scientists could be all lying to us and you claim it should be easy for us to see… without actually providing any proof that that is what happens.  In a sense, you are holding the scientists to a different standard.  If I shouldn’t simply take word of the scientists, why should I believe your interpretation (At least scientists put their own name on their results).
—
2. I find it interesting that though all the opposition to climate change has been shouted down, you and others keep finding yet more scientists who are skeptics and critics of it. 
—
3. Yes, surprise, surprise, most scientists cite the work of other scientists in their field—of course, I am not sure who else they would cite.  And it is terrible that they horde the data and don’t make it public like say, on a website like http://data.giss.nasa.gov/.
—
4. My reference to HIV deniers was meant to prove only one thing; that having a prominent scientist in dissent does not necessarily, in any way, undermine the validity of the scientific consensus. 
—
5. BTW, as far as I am concerned, the fact that you and Mark are making a huge amount of hay regarding the usage of the terms Global Warming and Climate Change frankly proves nothing.  Otherwise, we would have to doubt the existence of cars—they use to call them horseless carriages you know.

1. I find it interesting how you and others can claim how scientists could be all lying to us and you claim it should be easy for us to see…

They’re not lying.  The old positivist science was based on three layers: facts, mathematical laws, and theories.  The first two are usually incontrovertible and cannot be “falsified” save in the trivial manner of further refinement.  The third is an interpretation of the first two.  It is a story we tell ourselves from which the laws may be deduced and the facts predicted.  It is possible for a theory to gain such a hold - a paradigm - that the facts can be seen in no other light. 

However, science is underdetermined.  This means that for any finite set of facts you can always devise more than one theory that accounts for them.  There are, for example, at least three (I have been told five) distinct quantum theories, each of which predicts the same body of facts.  The Afshar experiment supposedly distinguished them, but proponents of the other two theories circled the wagons.  I know of two theories of relativity that agree on all known facts, and there are likely others.  (A third I know of has supposedly been ruled out.) 

You get the picture.  In the real sciences, there is always lively debate about the explanatory theories because the facts, as such, are not self-explanatory.  Only in a few cases are we told that there is only One Possible Theory to which all must give allegiance.  This is very strange. 

Stephen Schneider explained the matter clearly.  Scientists are human beings, too; and they want to make the world a better place.  So they have to downplay doubts and uncertainties.  Each scientist has to decide on the proper balance between being effective [in making the world a better place] and being honest [in his scientific work].  Now he wants to be both.  But the commitment to a goal cannot help but shade the way he looks at a fact. 

Here is an example: Michael Mann’s “trick.”  Mann had reconstructed temperatures of pre-thermometer ages using a variety of proxies using in particular tree rings.  (Ice cores only cover certain regions of the earth.)  This was the one that was so scathingly reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences statistical section for its bad stat work.  OK. So he has this proxy series; but then a funny thing happens.  For recent data, the tree ring reconstruction shows declining temperatures while the [adjusted] thermometer readings show increasing temps.  So his trick was to replace the proxy measurements with thermometer measurements for the recent period.  Without labeling it as such - he apparently did not know good statistical practice.  But more to the point he did not realize that the divergence called into question the whole idea of the proxy-temperature series.  If the two did not agree on recent data, what right did he have to suppose they agreed during the 14th century?  (Any forester could tell you that tree ring thickness responds to a lot more than temperature.  But when the tree-ring proxies are removed, the Medieval Warm Period reappears and the fake “hockey stick” vanishes. 

Even the hockey stick might be okay, except it was a) a remarkable instance of cumulative scientific evidence covering a very long time being tossed out instantly by a railroad engineer based on a single paper by an advocate.  Name another time that has happened.  And b) Years ago David Deming [iirc] received an email after writing a paper perceived as supporting the warming hypothesis that included the call - now we have to get rid of the medieval warm.  It strikes me as suspicious when scientists announce ahead of time what they intend their research to prove, and then they prove it. 

Sometimes, in all honesty, you see what you want to see.  Xenophanes saw marine fossils in the mountains of Greece and that proved the existence of a primordial flood.  Points for figuring out why.  Hint: Xenophanes was a pagan Greek and did not care about the Hebrew Bible. 

+ + +
2. I find it interesting that though all the opposition to climate change has been shouted down, you and others keep finding yet more scientists who are skeptics and critics of it. 

Some are sufficiently tenured or emeriti that they need not worry about pleasing grant committees.  A recent Canadian newspaper report stated that more and more astrophysicists have been voicing skepticism.  This has been partly because of the unprofessional conduct revealed in the email leaks. 
+ + +

3. Yes, surprise, surprise, most scientists cite the work of other
scientists in their field—of course, I am not sure who else they would
cite.

Suppose there are a thousand scientists in the field, and that twenty of them cite no one else but each other.  Apply topological network theory. 

And it is terrible that they horde the data and don’t make it public
like say, on a website like http://data.giss.nasa.gov/. 

And where does that data come from?  Which stations are used?  There are five weather stations around Prague.  Do they use all five?  If not, which ones?  How do they adjust the actual raw temperature readings?  Why do they make these adjustments and not others?  For tips, see W.Edwards Deming, The Statistical Adjustment of Data.  There are a host of questions that must be answered before you even get to the adjusted data that is reported.  It is not even clear to me that a global mean temperature is appropriate: the average human being has one testicle and one ovary. 

Lay on top of that (or underneath it) the fact that very few temperature stations meet NOAA calibration standards and ask if the mean value of poorly calibrated instruments somehow becomes reliable if you just average a lot of them together.  Now ask how many temperature stations in Burundi or Bolivia or Burma meet NOAA calibration standards.  I mean, dude, it matters what you paint the enclosing box with!

5. BTW, as far as I am concerned, the fact that you and Mark are making a huge amount of hay regarding the usage of the terms Global Warming and Climate Change frankly proves nothing. Otherwise, we would have to doubt the existence of cars—they use to call them horseless carriages you know. 

The term “car” is short for carriage and always referred to the chariot or cart being pulled.  It was called horseless because at one time it was pulled by horses but the new ones were pulled by mechanical engines.  But as Mark has pointed out, no one says there is no climate change.  That is why as warming ground to a halt, the name was changed.  It’s really more like the way the Theory of Evolution (which is a fact: species change over time) replaced the Theory of Natural Selection (which is a theory intended to explain evolution).  Why?  Because it became clear that natural selection was not the only and maybe not even the primary explanation for evolution.

AGW is a religion.  Pure and simple.  You may want to peruse this press release and the surrounding website:

http://www.globalweathercycles.com/PressRelease122007.html

AGW is a religion.  Pure and simple.

Oh dear.  I’m as skeptical of this sort of Talk Radio ideological simplicity as I am of the people who shout down Hal Lewis.  Unless you are, in fact, somebody with training in the relevant sciences, you simply do not have the competence to make such grand pronouncements from Sinai.  And even if you do have such competence, you cannot read souls.  It *could* be that people are actually being persuaded by their reading of actual data, you know.  Nothing about a highly complex system is “pure and simple.”  Turn off Talk Radio and stop regurgitating Talking Points fed you by your favority media Talking Hairdo.

The ultimate assertion by the AGW alarmists is that Man can actually control climate.

This is why God will prove them wrong… only God has the ability to control climate… and for Man to assert that Man can control climate is a direct challenge to the rule of God over creation.

It is equivalent to Man at the Tower of Babel declaring that Man would not be divided… that Man could control Man’s destiny.

God said… “We’ll see about that.”

The ultimate assertion by the AGW alarmists is that Man can actually control climate.

This is why God will prove them wrong… only God has the ability to control climate… and for Man to assert that Man can control climate is a direct challenge to the rule of God over creation.

Once again, as the skeptic who started this thread, permit me to say that this is hyperbolic rubbish.  The assertion of AGW folks is that man can and does damage the environment.  Does anybody doubt this?  What is specifically asserted with AGW is that our carbon output is responsible for warming the earth.  The notion that man can have an effect on creation is not a “direct challenge to the rule of God over creation”.  Don’t be silly.  Ever hear of Chernobyl?  The Dust Bowl?  The Dodo?  The Passenger Pigeon?  We obviously have had a huge impact on planet earth and it is part of our duty as stewards to make sure that we act responsibly.

Mr. Shea,

No, I am not “somebody in training in relevant sciences” as you say, but the gentlemen at the link I posted are.  Did you even bother to go there and poke around?  I was pointed to your blog here by Brutally Honest.  Rest assured I won’t be back if insulting new commenters is your SOP.

I have a friend who made a year long project of learning to understand the “science” of global warming - he studied scientific articles in the accepted mainstream journals like Scientific American (which you have to study very carefully unless you are a scientist in the field of climate change> I remember spending many a night talking with him about his discoveries and his struggle to understand the science and ask relevant questions of the experts…To this end he began to write to scientists and professors in the field of climate change asking questions and receiving replies that were inconclusive at best or arrogantly conclusive without addressing his reasonable doubts…
What came out of his honest inquiry was the definite impression that much of climate science is geared towards funding and that the conclusions are sometimes “cooked” to encourage this flow of money towards climate study…and he gave it his objective best, so I tend to fall out on the “follow the money” side of the argument…not that there are no environmental concerns/studies worth funding because there certainly are such issues that require our immediate attention, but that a good portion of such funding is going toward bad science wrapped up in an emotional cause celeb…so have to agree with Mark - I think he’s once again hit the nail quite accurately…we need the naysayers to keep the rest honest, frankly…

@chuck:
You wrote that only God, and not Man, can control climate—and that Man’s attempts to control climate are a kind of Tower of Babel. These are fair concerns.

However, among my concerns about resistance to lowering global carbon emissions is that, if anthropogenic global warming is happening, and we don’t shift away from carbon now, then the global call for even more hubristic meddling with Creation—geoengineering—may become inexorable.  This is the kind of further meddling with Creation that is being seriously discussed by would-be geoengineers:  http://www.economist.com/node/17414216

Geoengineering may be the dangerous Tower of Babel you’re concerned about.  Trying to reduce our impact on the climate now, so as to avoid a perceived need for tinkering to compound our impact later, seems prudent to me.

Healthy skepticism and the Germ Theory:

1. I’ve never seen a germ with my naked eye, have you? Those scientists who claim to have seen bacteria all just reference each other’s studies so it’s Groupthink.  Topological wetware noggining.  And don’t even get me started on viruses! Or the Apollo moon landings!

2. Big Pharma sells us antibiotics.  They have too much at stake to allow us to think for one minute that antibiotics are not necessary.  Universities are funded and communities get tax revenue from pharmaceutical companies.  Why?  I’m not asserting, I’m just asking.  The true believers of germ theory are asserting otherwise, and not asking the important questions.

3. Clinical researchers don’t give us access to their raw data.  How do I do know if the cohorts in the studies are equivalent?... because they tell us? I don’t believe them. There were 32,786 people who supposedly died from sepsis last year, how many of those individuals were entered into randomized controlled double-blind trials?  Yeah, that’s what I thought.

4. Since we cannot see germs, the scientists change the name from “germ theory” to “microbiology”.  Don’t you see how insidious this process is?

5. People still die all the time from supposed infectious diseases.  If the scientists have it all figured out, then how come they haven’t solved the problem already?  Since eternity before and after our lifespans is so immense, statistically, we’re all dead already. 

6. Louis Pasteur’s “bacteria culture trick.” He grew germs on sheep’s blood agar in a laboratory, and then he claimed that the same organisms could grow in human tissue.  The first data set is a proxy set.  It has no bearing on reality. The average mammal has half a uterus.

_____________________________________

Ok, I’m having fun at YOS’ expense.  In fact, I respect his arguments and can certainly see why skepticism about AGW/ACC is valid.  At some point, we’ll know the answer, and my guess is that the final result will be somewhere between the most strident opinions on both sides.  Or not…. and we’ll have a cataclysmic seizure of world financial markets when Manhattan and Hong Kong are submerged 24 hours after the Greenland ice sheet slides into the ocean while Al Gore is snickering while getting his left nut massaged in a Singapore hotel room.  Oh well.

1. I’ve never seen a germ with my naked eye, have you? Those scientists who claim to have seen bacteria all just reference each other’s studies so it’s Groupthink. Topological wetware noggining. And don’t even get me started on viruses! Or the Apollo moon landings!

Or those geocentrism deniers!  Of course, the number of folks referencing one another’s work in microbiology comprise thousands and thousands of researchers, not a score or two, all of whom show up as collaborators on one another’s papers.  Of course, they aren’t topologists, so they have no right to an opinion on a topological question and mock it simply as “referencing” rather than “closed group of mutual collaborators.” 
+ + +
2. Big Pharma sells us antibiotics. They have too much at stake to allow us to think for one minute that antibiotics are not necessary. Universities are funded and communities get tax revenue from pharmaceutical companies. Why?  I’m not asserting, I’m just asking.

Actually, there are some on the Left who do assert this.  And it is well-known that a pharma researcher who has put years into developing a product has a tendency to interpret the results of clinical trials in a manner favorable to the product.  That is why most internal projects require another scientist without a connection to the product to review results. 

3. Clinical researchers don’t give us access to their raw data. 

They do.  It’s required by FDA regulation. 

4. Since we cannot see germs, the scientists change the name from “germ theory” to “microbiology”. Don’t you see how insidious this process is? 

The former is the name of a theory; the latter is the name of a field of study.  It’s not a proper parallel to the broadening of the name of the predicted outcome.  It would be like changing “germ-o-genic sickening” to “health change.” 

6. Louis Pasteur’s “bacteria culture trick.” He grew germs on sheep’s
blood agar in a laboratory, and then he claimed that the same organisms
could grow in human tissue. The first data set is a proxy set. It has no
bearing on reality.

The first is not a proxy data set.  A proxy data set is when you measure X because you cannot get a direct measurement on Y.  For example: to measure Rockwell Hardness (X) instead of Tensile Strength (Y); or Viscosity (X) instead of Degree of Polymerization (Y); or Radiation Backscatter (X) instead of Density of Coal (Y).  Nothing wrong with it per se, but you must establish the correlation and ensure that the correlation holds across the entire range.  E.g., the relationship between tensile strength and Rockwell hardness will vary depending on the alloy.  And second, you are not allowed to plot the Y-hats predicted by the X’s then tack some actual measured Y’s on the end precisely because the correlation has failed to hold up for data after 1960.

The average mammal has half a uterus. 

Exactly.  That is why a global mean may or may not be a useful number.  If you stick your head in the oven and your feet in the freezer, on the average you are comfortable. 

my guess is that the final result will be somewhere between the most strident opinions on both sides. 

My guess is that the 400-year long increase in temperature since the Little Ice Age may falter as the sun shifts out of Grand Maximum and moves toward a Grand Minimum.  There is a disturbing parallel in the pattern of the sunspot cycles from 1600-1820 and from 1821-[present, toward 2041]

Quite possibly, the astrophysicists will prove more right than the meteorologists.  There are some very strange sun-earth connections being surfaced in recent research.

Or not…. and
we’ll have a cataclysmic seizure of world financial markets when Manhattan
and Hong Kong are submerged 24 hours after the Greenland ice sheet slides
into the ocean while Al Gore is snickering while getting his left nut
massaged in a Singapore hotel room. Oh well.

Interesting comments all around = like I said, the opposition keeps the herd from running off the cliff, though only just…chicken little does have a knack for raking in the big $$...Still Mark is correct in his assertion that we need to be responsible stewards of the earth - I gave up my car but I still smoke..I use plastic bags but try to remember to cut the handles, and slit the sides of yoplait yogurt containers and slice up the plastic that cans are attached to,  so the little critters don’t get strangled in their rush to eat our garbage..and there is the all the recycling which is a joke because most of it goes into land fill now anyway… It all seems a little like Sisyphus pushing his rock up the endless mountain - I don’t know what the answer is but carbon credits ain’t it and looks like a huge scam to me….George Carlin had an interesting perspective on the environment - He figured that man is simply part of Mother Nature’s plan to get plastic and now that she has accomplished that what does she need us for? LOL!!! It was a lot funnier when he said it of course:) But his point was we need to relax a little bit and not be in such a hurry to CONTROL everything….I miss old gnarly Carlin…sigh

Mark Shea wrote: “Don’t be silly.  Ever hear of Chernobyl?  The Dust Bowl?  The Dodo?  The Passenger Pigeon?  We obviously have had a huge impact on planet earth and it is part of our duty as stewards to make sure that we act responsibly.”
+++
The Chernobyl fiasco… etc…. bad as they are/were… they are not controlling climate…. nor did any of the listed affect the climate of our earth.
+++
Being good stewards of our planet and her resources are no where near the category of controlling climate.
:-)
God Bless.

How many climate scientists did it take to change a light bulb? NONE. But they did have consensus that it would change.
Why wasn’t Climate Change ever regarded as the number one issue of prime importance to everyone, as we were told climate change was to have been immanent death for the planet?
Why did we enjoy condemning our kids to their graves with CO2 death warrants and CO2 death threats?
Why were there thousands of more scientists than protesters?
Why did CO2 levels rise despite our contributing less with the world economic downturn?
Wouldn’t the plants have shown effects long before the climate would shown effects?
Why did the leftwing hope for the CO2 misery to really have happened and the rightwing discounted it as corrupt exaggerated and politicized science?
Why were scientists not called what they were, fallible and mortal human beings and lab coat consultants?
Didn’t scientists pollute the world in the first place with their chemicals?
Why didn’t the countless thousands of scientists march in the streets if this was certain death we were facing?
Didn’t Climate Change deny ancient climate and therefore have denied evolution too?
Why didn’t the people know that the UN’s warning predicted the effects of CO2 were to have been anything from “nothing at all” to “unstoppable warming” (death)?
Will history view climate scientists as being to science what witch burners and abusive priests were to religion?
History has already shown that Climate Change was to the Democrats what the Iraq War was to the neocons,, lies, fear and ignorance of real science.

The great majority of scientists today are just government bureaucrats in the Federal Distributed Plantation of Science. Corruption, very naturally, reigns from top to bottom. The government simply does nothing well—even the military is run well only in the grading-on-the-curve sense of “for government”—and government “science” is most assuredly no exception. What’s more, be mindful that this same truth extends equally to the Federal Distributed Plantation of Health, which very much includes your doctor, so embrace all their nostrums and advice at your peril.

Mark,
 
All your arguments are exactly the same used by Protestants who don’t want to put the time in to really understand Catholic theology:
 
“Oh, I don’t need to read no documents. I see them old ladies worshippin’ Mary and that there Jimmy Akin tryin’ t’scuse idolatry and my B.S. meter’s on overload, lemme tell you.”
 
“Back when I was a kid you was automatick-ally goin’ to hell if you was a Protestant. Now all them Cath-o-lics is runnin’ around tryin’ to make excuses for Unum Sanctum or Extra Ecclesia Nulla Sally. When are they gonna make up their minds? That ain’t the plain gospel o’ Jesus Christ: same yestiday, today, and ferever.”
 
“Well, I don’t know much ‘bout eatin’ and drinkin’ and sacrificin’, but I do know Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, and I’m all about worshippin’ him and him alone, not some piece of dad-gum bread, no matter what it represents.”
 
“Y’all need ta read the Bible fer yerselves, not trustin’ in some pedophilin’ priesthood to tell you what it means.”
 
Seriously, that’s the level of your argument, here. (Cross posted from CAEI)

“The government simply does nothing well—even the military is run well only in the grading-on-the-curve sense.”
—Max Liberty, communicating with the world via the Internet, which wouldn’t exist but for the ARPANET.

Jon:

Have you not been paying any attention to the conversations with Ye Olde Statistician?  Your analogy is cute and all, but please be serious.

Dude, no. If you look back at sources more intelligent or more concerned with the truth than Newsweek, you find concern about global warming dominating this ‘cooling’ theory even in the 1970s.