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On the other side of the coin, one could wonder what it was like for those advocating craniometry to realize their pseudo-science racism was doing more harm tha

On the other side of the coin, one could wonder what it was like for those advocating craniometry to realize their pseudo-science racism was doing more harm than good. (No flame war intended: I say this only to counter your analogy.) Those who have reasonable, scientific grounds for being skeptical of anthropomorphic climate change (and there are people smarter than you or I in that boat) don't like the shrill, political-based "deniers" much. They do, however, think it's good to scientifically examine the assumptions of papers such as the one that came out in Nature today. Climate modeling is quite hard, and the conclusions climate scientists come to are open to skeptical investigation. It's certainly become a weirder field of study since politics became its main audience.

DanBC 13y ago
It's great to have smart people discussing the science. As you say, it's interesting and tricky. This thread isn't full of those people - it's full of shrill deniers.
mikeash 13y ago
The problem is that there are very few people with "reasonable, scientific grounds for being skeptical of anthropomorphic climate change". There certainly aren't any represented in these comments. I welcome skepticism. But what people call "skepticism" in the climate debate is nearly always blind contrarianism.
martythemaniak 13y ago
The problem isn't that there's no room for disagreement. It's that the quality of the disagreements and critiques are so low, it's impossible to believe there's no alternative motive at work. Your post is a great example of this type of trash. You start off comparing one of the most researched fields, involving decades of effort spread amongst thousands of researchers around the world with a small number of people who did not even have an understanding of the mechanisms (genetics, embryology, etc) with which they were dealing. The GP's analogy works quite well, our certainty of cigarettes causing lunch cancer is about the same as the IPCC's certainty of anthropomorphic climate change. Second, apart from the normal peer-review of specific papers, there have been several large-scale attempts to "review" all of climate change. A great example is the "Climategate" fiasco, which after a review by a sceptic funded the oil industry, turned out to have been nothing but an attempted hit job on the scientists involved. Third, there is actual review and revision going on within the IPCC. One of the major differences between the 2007 and 2014 IPCC reports is the narrowing of the predicted temperature ranges. Deniers however don't seem to have the evidence to work within the normal scientific process, so instead they must engage of various types of deception and PR work to get their points across. So no, it certainly has not become a weirder field of study. It's just that people threatened by facts are trying to apply political tactics to a non-political field, much like creationist attempts to revise or silence evolution.
MaysonL 13y ago
Screw the models: look at the physical and biological evidence. Permafrost is melting (Google "drunken forests"), bird migration is altering significantly, growing seasons are lengthening, ranges of species are changing. Cumulatively, it's willful ignorance to deny climate change, anthropogenic or not.

DanBC 13y ago

It's great to have smart people discussing the science. As you say, it's interesting and tricky. This thread isn't full of those people - it's full of shrill deniers.

mikeash 13y ago

The problem is that there are very few people with "reasonable, scientific grounds for being skeptical of anthropomorphic climate change". There certainly aren't any represented in these comments. I welcome skepticism. But what people call "skepticism" in the climate debate is nearly always blind contrarianism.

martythemaniak 13y ago

The problem isn't that there's no room for disagreement. It's that the quality of the disagreements and critiques are so low, it's impossible to believe there's no alternative motive at work. Your post is a great example of this type of trash. You start off comparing one of the most researched fields, involving decades of effort spread amongst thousands of researchers around the world with a small number of people who did not even have an understanding of the mechanisms (genetics, embryology, etc) with which they were dealing. The GP's analogy works quite well, our certainty of cigarettes causing lunch cancer is about the same as the IPCC's certainty of anthropomorphic climate change. Second, apart from the normal peer-review of specific papers, there have been several large-scale attempts to "review" all of climate change. A great example is the "Climategate" fiasco, which after a review by a sceptic funded the oil industry, turned out to have been nothing but an attempted hit job on the scientists involved. Third, there is actual review and revision going on within the IPCC. One of the major differences between the 2007 and 2014 IPCC reports is the narrowing of the predicted temperature ranges. Deniers however don't seem to have the evidence to work within the normal scientific process, so instead they must engage of various types of deception and PR work to get their points across. So no, it certainly has not become a weirder field of study. It's just that people threatened by facts are trying to apply political tactics to a non-political field, much like creationist attempts to revise or silence evolution.

MaysonL 13y ago

Screw the models: look at the physical and biological evidence. Permafrost is melting (Google "drunken forests"), bird migration is altering significantly, growing seasons are lengthening, ranges of species are changing. Cumulatively, it's willful ignorance to deny climate change, anthropogenic or not.