4 ms·

> The leak of emails that made it crystal clear that a handful of members of the consensus group, on a handful of occasions, talked about keeping the other side

> The leak of emails that made it crystal clear that a handful of members of the consensus group, on a handful of occasions, talked about keeping the other side out of the process of peer-review. There, fixed that for you. The consensus of biologists is that evolution is true. The consensus of astronomers is that the Big Bang happened. The consensus of archaeologists is that the KT extinction event happened and that it was due in significant part to the Chicxulub impact. The consensus of physicists is that quantum physics and relativity are accurate models of the universe at the appropriate scales. The consensus of climate scientists is that the planet is warming and it is anthropogenic. Why is this fact irrelevant here, but not in other fields?

KirinDave 17y ago
Because more money is involved. Because this is actually actionable and requires immediate consideration in long term business planning. And maybe, with some people, because they don't really like the idea of shouldering that much responsibility.
- abstractbill 17y ago
  From wikipedia: With a budget of 9 billion US dollars (approx. €6300M or £5600M as of Jan 2010), the LHC is one of the most expensive scientific instruments ever built in human history. The Large Hadron Collider is pretty expensive! Why does nobody ever accuse particle physicists of "making up" the Higgs?
  - hga 17y ago
    The LHC crew are on safer ground. If they don't find the Higgs, they're still likely to find something interesting. (After all, various people have been worried they'd find something a bit too interesting. :-)
  - aphyr 17y ago
    $9 billion is nothing compared to the scope of government or environmental spending. In the lifetime of the LHC, US oil alone will process literally tens of trillions of dollars. Making policy decisions about a system that big has nontrivial financial impact. :) Personally, I like to believe the LHC is too awesome to fail. After the SSC debacle, nobody wants to back out of a second collider. :)
hga 17y ago
The talking only confirmed their community's observed actions up to that point. Anyone paying attention knew what they were doing, the emails just made it "crystal clear". And it's funny you should bring up Chicxulub and the K-T extinction event. When the Alvarez team proposed that hypothesis, it was not ... warmly welcomed. But they were allowed to argue their point and the community eventually agreed they were (likely) correct. If their work had been in the climate science domain I don't think we would have seen the same outcome. I know we wouldn't have seen the same process. With regards to the "consensus" that the "planet is warming", that "fact" has not been true for the last decade or so, so that "fact" is indeed potentially irrelevant (we need to wait a bit longer to be sure).
- nollidge 17y ago
  > If their work had been in the climate science domain I don't think we would have seen the same outcome. I know we wouldn't have seen the same process. But of course, that is entirely your own conjecture. You "know" this for a fact.
  - hga 17y ago
    I "know" this as a "fact" of human behavior. Yes, it's an appeal to authority (myself :-), but I've been watching politicized science for about three and a half decades so I'm pretty confident about my judgment.
- nollidge 17y ago
  Regarding the "planet has not been warming for the last decade" claim, here's why that doesn't disprove global warming, even if true (tl;dr: 1998 was an anomaly): http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/04/warming-stopped-in-1998.php http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/04/warming-stoppe...

KirinDave 17y ago

Because more money is involved. Because this is actually actionable and requires immediate consideration in long term business planning. And maybe, with some people, because they don't really like the idea of shouldering that much responsibility.

abstractbill 17y ago
From wikipedia: With a budget of 9 billion US dollars (approx. €6300M or £5600M as of Jan 2010), the LHC is one of the most expensive scientific instruments ever built in human history. The Large Hadron Collider is pretty expensive! Why does nobody ever accuse particle physicists of "making up" the Higgs?
- hga 17y ago
  The LHC crew are on safer ground. If they don't find the Higgs, they're still likely to find something interesting. (After all, various people have been worried they'd find something a bit too interesting. :-)
- aphyr 17y ago
  $9 billion is nothing compared to the scope of government or environmental spending. In the lifetime of the LHC, US oil alone will process literally tens of trillions of dollars. Making policy decisions about a system that big has nontrivial financial impact. :) Personally, I like to believe the LHC is too awesome to fail. After the SSC debacle, nobody wants to back out of a second collider. :)

hga 17y ago

The talking only confirmed their community's observed actions up to that point. Anyone paying attention knew what they were doing, the emails just made it "crystal clear". And it's funny you should bring up Chicxulub and the K-T extinction event. When the Alvarez team proposed that hypothesis, it was not ... warmly welcomed. But they were allowed to argue their point and the community eventually agreed they were (likely) correct. If their work had been in the climate science domain I don't think we would have seen the same outcome. I know we wouldn't have seen the same process. With regards to the "consensus" that the "planet is warming", that "fact" has not been true for the last decade or so, so that "fact" is indeed potentially irrelevant (we need to wait a bit longer to be sure).

nollidge 17y ago
> If their work had been in the climate science domain I don't think we would have seen the same outcome. I know we wouldn't have seen the same process. But of course, that is entirely your own conjecture. You "know" this for a fact.
- hga 17y ago
  I "know" this as a "fact" of human behavior. Yes, it's an appeal to authority (myself :-), but I've been watching politicized science for about three and a half decades so I'm pretty confident about my judgment.
nollidge 17y ago
Regarding the "planet has not been warming for the last decade" claim, here's why that doesn't disprove global warming, even if true (tl;dr: 1998 was an anomaly): http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/04/warming-stopped-in-1998.php http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/04/warming-stoppe...