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OK, this post seems a little out there. Right now you're proposing a massive global academic conspiracy to hide the "truth" of climatology. Do you have a citati

OK, this post seems a little out there. Right now you're proposing a massive global academic conspiracy to hide the "truth" of climatology. Do you have a citation for such a large scale cover-up?

jacoblyles 17y ago
Personally, I don't think there is an explicit conspiracy. But I do think there is a bit of group think in climate science due to the fact that many people who choose to study Environmental Science are also environmentalists. It's a conflict of interest when your primary researchers are also passionate green activists. So, when one scientist says to another "here's my research and data, don't let any of those knuckle-dragging skeptics get a hand on it, I'm going to see if we can deny their FOI requests", the other scientist goes along with it. Summed over hundreds of such acts, an us-versus-them true-believer culture can produce the same effects as an explicit conspiracy.
mnemonicsloth 17y ago
The Implausible Conspiracy has got to be one of the all-time top strawman arguments. Consider: hot dogs are sold in packs of 12, and hot dog buns are sold in packs of 8. When you run out of hot dog buns you have hot dogs left over and buy more buns. When you run out of hot dogs, you have buns left over so you buy more hot dogs. Somehow the makers of hot dogs and hot dog buns manage to get this done without decoder rings, secret handshakes, ominous chanting, or ritual sacrifice. (see also http://xkcd.com/140/ http://xkcd.com/140/)
- Locke1689 17y ago
  It is certainly not a strawman argument. The problem with conspiracy theories is that they often fail in a number of ways: Occam's Razor and falsifiability especially. One of the problems with the AGW conspiracy theory is that it supposes that academics all over the world are actively suppressing evidence to the contrary. The other problem with your hot dog system is that it's not a conspiracy theory. It was quite likely that the actual arrangement happened entirely by accident. Once there, the manufacturers just decided it wasn't in their best interests (profit) to change. To make the same argument about AGW you would have to argue that there is a huge benefit to climatology supporting AGW -- enough to not only convince the academic departments of every major university to go along with it, but also some kind of silencing of the morally grounded climatologists. Instead it seems that disproving the AGW theory would prove quite a nice feather in the cap of any recently hired associate professor at a major university. I'm not saying that all of this is impossible. What I am saying is that this requires extraordinary evidence for such an extraordinary claim.

OK, this post seems a little out there. Right now you're proposing a massive global academic conspiracy to hide the "truth" of climatology. Do you have a citation for such a large scale cover-up?

jacoblyles 17y ago

Personally, I don't think there is an explicit conspiracy. But I do think there is a bit of group think in climate science due to the fact that many people who choose to study Environmental Science are also environmentalists. It's a conflict of interest when your primary researchers are also passionate green activists. So, when one scientist says to another "here's my research and data, don't let any of those knuckle-dragging skeptics get a hand on it, I'm going to see if we can deny their FOI requests", the other scientist goes along with it. Summed over hundreds of such acts, an us-versus-them true-believer culture can produce the same effects as an explicit conspiracy.

mnemonicsloth 17y ago

The Implausible Conspiracy has got to be one of the all-time top strawman arguments. Consider: hot dogs are sold in packs of 12, and hot dog buns are sold in packs of 8. When you run out of hot dog buns you have hot dogs left over and buy more buns. When you run out of hot dogs, you have buns left over so you buy more hot dogs. Somehow the makers of hot dogs and hot dog buns manage to get this done without decoder rings, secret handshakes, ominous chanting, or ritual sacrifice. (see also http://xkcd.com/140/ http://xkcd.com/140/)

Locke1689 17y ago
It is certainly not a strawman argument. The problem with conspiracy theories is that they often fail in a number of ways: Occam's Razor and falsifiability especially. One of the problems with the AGW conspiracy theory is that it supposes that academics all over the world are actively suppressing evidence to the contrary. The other problem with your hot dog system is that it's not a conspiracy theory. It was quite likely that the actual arrangement happened entirely by accident. Once there, the manufacturers just decided it wasn't in their best interests (profit) to change. To make the same argument about AGW you would have to argue that there is a huge benefit to climatology supporting AGW -- enough to not only convince the academic departments of every major university to go along with it, but also some kind of silencing of the morally grounded climatologists. Instead it seems that disproving the AGW theory would prove quite a nice feather in the cap of any recently hired associate professor at a major university. I'm not saying that all of this is impossible. What I am saying is that this requires extraordinary evidence for such an extraordinary claim.