5 ms·

You should read a source before you go looking for other people tearing it down. It ultimately makes you incapable of forming conclusions yourself. Also expect

You should read a source before you go looking for other people tearing it down. It ultimately makes you incapable of forming conclusions yourself. Also expecting others to prove to you why you should trust them but offering no reason for anyone to trust you is bizarre.

eesmith 8y ago
I disagree with your first point. I pointed out that the evidence is overwhelming that Young Earth Creationism is scientifically baseless. In that case, I have no problems with pointing to a "tear it down" commentary rather than try to read the primary source, depending on the specifics of the commentary. Which source am I supposed to be evaluating? cryptonector only pointed to https://wattsupwiththat.com/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/ . Am I supposed to read everything there? Is the phrase "Just a very small change in cloud cover along the equator can cool down an overheating Earth, or warm a cooling Earth" connected to the “Sense and Sensitivity” posting at wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/28/sense-and-sensitivity/ ? Note that it was from 2010, seemingly never otherwise published, and it was criticized by https://www.skepticalscience.com/SensitivitySensibility1.html https://www.skepticalscience.com/SensitivitySensibility1.htm... . Or is it some later source that I'm supposed to read? What is bizarre about the trust claims of my original post? I stated reasons why I disagreed with cryptonector's interpretation of climate information and gave links to supporting citations from the scientific literature. Specifically, claim #1: "we have shockingly little information in the grand scheme of things (30 years' worth of satellite data!)". Response: I referenced a 2013 paper describing 173 different lines of evidence for warming across the last 130 years. (BTW, we have 40 years of microwave sounding units and 51 years of sea surface IR data, both from satellites.) claim #2: "recent climate change is minute even by standards of the past two millennia". Response: I cited a 2005 paper with quite different conclusions. I asked for the source of the claim. I also questioned how cryptonector could be certain of this claim if we have such "shockingly little information". I can follow up with additional supporting evidence if there are statements I made which you do not agree with. That's usually how this trust relationship works, yes?
- nkurz 8y ago
  You ask good questions, and raise good points. Since one can't read all the primary sources, how can you decide who to trust? In this case, I don't think there is a simple and logically defensible answer. Normally, your best bet would be to trust that the recognized experts in the field probably have it right. But I think Climate Science is so politicized at this point that unless you can sit down and have a beer at a backyard BBQ with those experts, anything you read is more likely to be well-calculated propaganda than the experts' true beliefs. The data presented in the papers is largely true, but the ancillary spin is so strong that it's hard to know what to conclude without a close reading of the entire paper. And even then, the choice of which papers are published in which journals makes it hard to know how much weight to put on what. So you ask why to trust Willis Eschenbach. For me, I trust him because I've been reading his comments on ClimateAudit.org for well over a decade, and I've never seen him attempt to mislead. He's occasionally wrong, and but readily owns up to his errors. My impression from reading him over many years is that he's a smart guy who believes what he's saying, knows a lot about the field, has no obvious conflicts of interest, and does his best to be accurate. I don't feel like the SkepticalScience.com post you linked to treats him fairly. Since that post considers him together with McIntyre, the best answer I can provide is that you should read McIntyre's latest post (https://climateaudit.org/2018/10/24/pages2k-north-american-tree-ring-proxies/ https://climateaudit.org/2018/10/24/pages2k-north-american-t...) and see if you think their criticisms actually apply. I realize this isn't anything approaching rock-solid logic, but personal testimonial is the best I can offer. As a fervent environmentalist who has been closely reading McIntyre since soon after MBH98 came out, I'm still firmly under his sway, and think his criticisms have still not been adequately addressed.
  - eesmith 8y ago
    As best as I can tell, the politicization of climate science is a deliberate action by those opposed to the actions which will result from accepting the validity of its conclusions. It's the same sort of propaganda effort which fought against the recognition of the link between cigarettes and lung cancer. It's the same sort of effort which tries to get creationism in its varied forms taught as part of a science education in schools. The goal of which is to muddy the waters, and cause people to throw up their hands and declare a pox on both their houses. Is McIntyre going to publish his objections? Or just leave it as a blog post on a site mostly read by sympathetic readers? Since he's 'criticized [this sort of analysis] from [his] beginning in this field', surely he's published his objections, yes? Or someone else has? Why does he refer to "Climategate" twice ("In the weeks prior to Climategate" and "On this day in 2009, a few weeks before Climategate") when multiple inquiries by US and UK organizations found no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct? Doesn't he realize that that choice of term is politicized, and the use of it likely to be used as a flag to categorize the user in the same box as creationists and tobacco lobbyists?

eesmith 8y ago

I disagree with your first point. I pointed out that the evidence is overwhelming that Young Earth Creationism is scientifically baseless. In that case, I have no problems with pointing to a "tear it down" commentary rather than try to read the primary source, depending on the specifics of the commentary. Which source am I supposed to be evaluating? cryptonector only pointed to https://wattsupwiththat.com/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/ . Am I supposed to read everything there? Is the phrase "Just a very small change in cloud cover along the equator can cool down an overheating Earth, or warm a cooling Earth" connected to the “Sense and Sensitivity” posting at wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/28/sense-and-sensitivity/ ? Note that it was from 2010, seemingly never otherwise published, and it was criticized by https://www.skepticalscience.com/SensitivitySensibility1.html https://www.skepticalscience.com/SensitivitySensibility1.htm... . Or is it some later source that I'm supposed to read? What is bizarre about the trust claims of my original post? I stated reasons why I disagreed with cryptonector's interpretation of climate information and gave links to supporting citations from the scientific literature. Specifically, claim #1: "we have shockingly little information in the grand scheme of things (30 years' worth of satellite data!)". Response: I referenced a 2013 paper describing 173 different lines of evidence for warming across the last 130 years. (BTW, we have 40 years of microwave sounding units and 51 years of sea surface IR data, both from satellites.) claim #2: "recent climate change is minute even by standards of the past two millennia". Response: I cited a 2005 paper with quite different conclusions. I asked for the source of the claim. I also questioned how cryptonector could be certain of this claim if we have such "shockingly little information". I can follow up with additional supporting evidence if there are statements I made which you do not agree with. That's usually how this trust relationship works, yes?

nkurz 8y ago
You ask good questions, and raise good points. Since one can't read all the primary sources, how can you decide who to trust? In this case, I don't think there is a simple and logically defensible answer. Normally, your best bet would be to trust that the recognized experts in the field probably have it right. But I think Climate Science is so politicized at this point that unless you can sit down and have a beer at a backyard BBQ with those experts, anything you read is more likely to be well-calculated propaganda than the experts' true beliefs. The data presented in the papers is largely true, but the ancillary spin is so strong that it's hard to know what to conclude without a close reading of the entire paper. And even then, the choice of which papers are published in which journals makes it hard to know how much weight to put on what. So you ask why to trust Willis Eschenbach. For me, I trust him because I've been reading his comments on ClimateAudit.org for well over a decade, and I've never seen him attempt to mislead. He's occasionally wrong, and but readily owns up to his errors. My impression from reading him over many years is that he's a smart guy who believes what he's saying, knows a lot about the field, has no obvious conflicts of interest, and does his best to be accurate. I don't feel like the SkepticalScience.com post you linked to treats him fairly. Since that post considers him together with McIntyre, the best answer I can provide is that you should read McIntyre's latest post (https://climateaudit.org/2018/10/24/pages2k-north-american-tree-ring-proxies/ https://climateaudit.org/2018/10/24/pages2k-north-american-t...) and see if you think their criticisms actually apply. I realize this isn't anything approaching rock-solid logic, but personal testimonial is the best I can offer. As a fervent environmentalist who has been closely reading McIntyre since soon after MBH98 came out, I'm still firmly under his sway, and think his criticisms have still not been adequately addressed.
- eesmith 8y ago
  As best as I can tell, the politicization of climate science is a deliberate action by those opposed to the actions which will result from accepting the validity of its conclusions. It's the same sort of propaganda effort which fought against the recognition of the link between cigarettes and lung cancer. It's the same sort of effort which tries to get creationism in its varied forms taught as part of a science education in schools. The goal of which is to muddy the waters, and cause people to throw up their hands and declare a pox on both their houses. Is McIntyre going to publish his objections? Or just leave it as a blog post on a site mostly read by sympathetic readers? Since he's 'criticized [this sort of analysis] from [his] beginning in this field', surely he's published his objections, yes? Or someone else has? Why does he refer to "Climategate" twice ("In the weeks prior to Climategate" and "On this day in 2009, a few weeks before Climategate") when multiple inquiries by US and UK organizations found no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct? Doesn't he realize that that choice of term is politicized, and the use of it likely to be used as a flag to categorize the user in the same box as creationists and tobacco lobbyists?