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> And even now the science is clearly biased - what does the field do, for example, when there is consistent evidence that it's predictions are far too warm? Th
by jjoonathan 7y ago
> And even now the science is clearly biased - what does the field do, for example, when there is consistent evidence that it's predictions are far too warm? They go digging for explanations like oceanic absorption, rather than adjust their models.
I was in academia and reading the literature as this kerfuffle went down (2012, IIRC). The models of temperature overshot, but the models of global heat flow did not, so the net effect of the misprediction was always going to be a delay rather than a change in the ultimate effect. To use the hydraulic analogy, we could see water flowing into the barrel at the same rate (satellites can measure total heat influx / outflux from Earth very accurately) but the barrel's rising water level slowed down in an unanticipated manner. They eventually tracked it down to oceanic mixing. In the hydraulic analogy, the barrel got wider below where we expected it to get wider. The water is still pouring in, though, and it doesn't change the fact that the water level in the barrel is rising.
Academia treated the matter with the utmost professionalism. The journal articles minced no words about the models that had failed and the implications, limited as they were.
Liberal media didn't report it at all. Bias? Sure, a little.
Conservative media sang the temperature models' failure from the rooftops, ignored the success of the heat models, and jumped to the conclusions that global warming as a theory was in doubt and that scientists had biased the results. The conservative media's bias was the worst of the three, by my reckoning.