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Would you also say that gravity, evolution, and germ theory believers also point to just trends that support their position? Of course the thing these all have

by splawn 11y ago

Would you also say that gravity, evolution, and germ theory believers also point to just trends that support their position? Of course the thing these all have in common with climate change is scientific consensus..they just lack all the political "opposition". Actually it just hit me that people still debate evolution too.. lol.

rimantas 11y ago
Climate science is complicated by the fact that there are gazillions of variables and we hardly understand them and their interaction. Gravity is predictable enough for us to fly some apparatus millions of kilometres and land it on the comet. We are far far away from this kind of precision in regard of climate.
- splawn 11y ago
  Are you claiming there isn't scientific consensus on climate change? Edit: and by "climate change" I mean the notion of "humans are causing the planet to warm up with CO2"
  - midwest1 11y ago
    The term consensus seems... polluted. The scientific consensus refers to the number of scientists that believe in anthro-climate change, but not the number of scientists who actually study climate change detection and its relation to greenhouse gases. In other words, the opinion of a natural scientist, who relies on models developed by scientists who study climate change detection and attribution, does not matter at all. In the same way my opinion on relativity, as an engineer, means nothing about the consensus of people who can say relativity is an accurate theory. I believe there is definitely a majority. But the oft-mentioned studies mentioning 97% consensus are highly misleading.
    - splawn 11y ago
      Here is the oft-mentioned study's abstract and a link to the full study. Abstract We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors’ self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024/pdf http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/0240...
      - midwest1 11y ago
        I read this study earlier. Searching the Consensus Project from Skeptical Science shows papers such as: "Gruber, E., & Brand, M. (1991). Promoting energy conservation in small and medium-sized companies. Energy Policy, 19(3), 279–287." "Boykoff, M. T. (2008). Lost in translation? United States television news coverage of anthropogenic climate change, 1995–2004. Climatic Change, 86(1-2), 1–11." I am concerned that this paper qualifies social scientists, psychologists, and other soft scientists as hard science climate researchers capable of deducing the possibility and cause of global climate change. What the fuck do they know? I'm all for believing that there are a majority of hard-science climate researchers who agree that there is human-caused global warming. This study; however, gives nothing close to a true number.
        splawn 11y ago
        The ISI search generated 12 465 papers. Eliminating papers that were not peer-reviewed (186), not climate-related (288) or without an abstract (47) reduced the analysis to 11 944 papers written by 29 083 authors and published in 1980 journals That seems like a pretty large sample size to me. I guess you could claim that they cherry picked 11, 944 papers out of some much larger number, but that seems like a stretch. Of course meta-studies like this are always problematic, but considering the overwhelming result I think its at least safe to say that scientists producing papers that run contrary to human caused global warming are in the minority.... and to me that is the best answer we can get as far as what the consensus is. Like you, Im willing to change my view on this (or anything really), but im always going to go with wherever the scientific consensus seems to be.
- Daishiman 11y ago
  Umm, we do understand them. We've been making effective climate predictions since the 80s. Just because our understand is not complete and that you don't even bother to read the corresponding literature doesn't mean anything about the science itself.
talmand 11y ago
>> Would you also say that gravity, evolution, and germ theory believers also point to just trends that support their position? Most of them don't, but as for the few that do? I denounce them the same as any other scientist, climate or otherwise, that cherry picks their data and trends that only support their side of the debate. That was not the kind of science I learned in school.

by splawn 11y ago

rimantas 11y ago

Climate science is complicated by the fact that there are gazillions of variables and we hardly understand them and their interaction. Gravity is predictable enough for us to fly some apparatus millions of kilometres and land it on the comet. We are far far away from this kind of precision in regard of climate.

splawn 11y ago
Are you claiming there isn't scientific consensus on climate change? Edit: and by "climate change" I mean the notion of "humans are causing the planet to warm up with CO2"
- midwest1 11y ago
  The term consensus seems... polluted. The scientific consensus refers to the number of scientists that believe in anthro-climate change, but not the number of scientists who actually study climate change detection and its relation to greenhouse gases. In other words, the opinion of a natural scientist, who relies on models developed by scientists who study climate change detection and attribution, does not matter at all. In the same way my opinion on relativity, as an engineer, means nothing about the consensus of people who can say relativity is an accurate theory. I believe there is definitely a majority. But the oft-mentioned studies mentioning 97% consensus are highly misleading.
  - splawn 11y ago
    Here is the oft-mentioned study's abstract and a link to the full study. Abstract We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors’ self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024/pdf http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/0240...
    - midwest1 11y ago
      I read this study earlier. Searching the Consensus Project from Skeptical Science shows papers such as: "Gruber, E., & Brand, M. (1991). Promoting energy conservation in small and medium-sized companies. Energy Policy, 19(3), 279–287." "Boykoff, M. T. (2008). Lost in translation? United States television news coverage of anthropogenic climate change, 1995–2004. Climatic Change, 86(1-2), 1–11." I am concerned that this paper qualifies social scientists, psychologists, and other soft scientists as hard science climate researchers capable of deducing the possibility and cause of global climate change. What the fuck do they know? I'm all for believing that there are a majority of hard-science climate researchers who agree that there is human-caused global warming. This study; however, gives nothing close to a true number.
      - splawn 11y ago
        The ISI search generated 12 465 papers. Eliminating papers that were not peer-reviewed (186), not climate-related (288) or without an abstract (47) reduced the analysis to 11 944 papers written by 29 083 authors and published in 1980 journals That seems like a pretty large sample size to me. I guess you could claim that they cherry picked 11, 944 papers out of some much larger number, but that seems like a stretch. Of course meta-studies like this are always problematic, but considering the overwhelming result I think its at least safe to say that scientists producing papers that run contrary to human caused global warming are in the minority.... and to me that is the best answer we can get as far as what the consensus is. Like you, Im willing to change my view on this (or anything really), but im always going to go with wherever the scientific consensus seems to be.
Daishiman 11y ago
Umm, we do understand them. We've been making effective climate predictions since the 80s. Just because our understand is not complete and that you don't even bother to read the corresponding literature doesn't mean anything about the science itself.

talmand 11y ago

>> Would you also say that gravity, evolution, and germ theory believers also point to just trends that support their position? Most of them don't, but as for the few that do? I denounce them the same as any other scientist, climate or otherwise, that cherry picks their data and trends that only support their side of the debate. That was not the kind of science I learned in school.