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Article lacks sources for its claims. > Patrick J. Michaels is a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of Climate of Extremes

by lucumo 17y ago

Article lacks sources for its claims. > Patrick J. Michaels is a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know. Yeah, figures. Want a grindstone for that axe? Edit: Quote from Wikipedia[1] about the author: "Climate scientist Tom Wigley, [21] a lead author of parts of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is quoted in Ross Gelbspan's book The Heat is On[22]: "Michaels' statements on [the subject of computer models] are a catalog of misrepresentation and misinterpretation… Many of the supposedly factual statements made in Michaels' testimony are either inaccurate or are seriously misleading."[23] Peter Gleick, a conservation analyst and president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute, said: "Pat Michaels is not one of the nation's leading researchers on climate change. On the contrary, he is one of a very small minority of nay-sayers who continue to dispute the facts and science about climate change in the face of compelling, overwhelming, and growing evidence."[24]" Yeah, I'll take a pass on taking this article at face value. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Michaels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Michaels

byrneseyeview 17y ago
You don't trust him, because he agrees with the view he expresses in that article? This is easy to settle. He says the data don't exist. You apparently say the smart default is to assume that they do. So find the data, and that's the end of it. Right? Your edit is pretty hilarious: he can't be right, because he's part of Cato and has published stuff arguing against climate change! Look, somebody at the Pacific Institute ("Research for People and the Planet") has published something saying so! You might be right, but your argument is basically "Galileo is wrong, because he's a heretic. The Pope even said so. Is Galileo a Pope? I. Thought. Not."
- lucumo 17y ago
  Eh, no. I don't trust him because he's written anti-climate change before and doesn't give any sources for his claim that the data is basically fraudulent. Seems to me he's just searching for arguments to discard the scientific consensus and not trying to further the debate at all.
  - ars 17y ago
    > I don't trust him because he's written anti-climate change before So, you are saying you will only trust him if his views match yours?
    - lucumo 17y ago
      No, please stop cherry-picking my statements. I made a sentence consisting of two parts. Leaving out a key part is dishonest. What I said was: > Eh, no. I don't trust him because he's written anti-climate change before and doesn't give any sources for his claim that the data is basically fraudulent. He's clearly a sceptic and that's his right. But I'll give you several points to consider: a) The author has written a book (several even) where he disagrees with the international consensus about climate change. I'd wager a bet that they aren't all about how the data is missing. So either he's out looking for ways to disprove the theories (which is good) and finding a lot or he's just searching for stuff to hit people with, instead of trying to do serious science. I'm inclined to believe the latter, since the former would mean that a few hundred climatologists from around the world are blatantly ignoring clear evidence and the latter would only mean someone with political motives (or being stupid, corrupt or something like it, or any combination of said things). b) He has written extensively about how climate change isn't true, but is only now trying to review the data of people that have found climate change to be happening. That's odd. c) Yes, it makes a difference if he has written anti-climate change before. If he had written pro-climate change before and is now coming to the conclusion that the data can't be checked, his claims are a lot easier to believe because political motives can be ruled out. It's the same when a climate change sceptic would review the data and find that it supports the conclusions. That would mean that it convinced a sceptic. That's a higher bar to pass than convincing a tree-hugger. d) The title of the mentioned book is "Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know". "They don't want you to know"? He's apparently implying that there's a conspiracy to make people believe climate change exists. That does not give me a whole lot of confidence in his intellect or intentions. All that makes me distrust the author. Which is fine, I don't need to trust the author to believe facts he reports, as long as there are sources. But he didn't supply any. So I'm left with an article written by somebody I cannot trust to be intellectually honest about the climate debate and that doesn't contain sources. The only conclusion I can come to is that I cannot trust the "facts" reported in it.
- frig 17y ago
  The article comes across spectacularly lazy which bodes ill for the veracity of its contents. Just look @ how our "researcher" (ahem) "researches" the only known-to-him example of raw data being given out: - supposedly "Peter Webster" has (a subset of) the "raw data" - no other "researchers" aside from the data originators have the "raw data" (at least insofar as is known to Michaels as revealed in this article) - supposedly Michaels is interested in obtaining the "raw data" Is there any evidence in the article that, you know, Michaels tried calling Webster up and asking for the "raw data"? The kind of thing you'd do if you were, you know, seriously interested in getting your hands on this data? Not really: - there's no explicit mention of (attempting to) get in touch with Webster - there's a half-hearted attempt to strew fear and doubt based on the fact that Webster's findings (about hurricane and warming correlation) are apparently at variance with what others have found, but it's half-hearted b/c: -- it doesn't examine whether the different findings are due to methodological differences or due to "raw data" differences (only the latter of which implicates the "raw data" as perhaps suspect) -- as per usual it's not like Michaels tried calling Webster and being like: "do you think your results are different b/c the data has been mangled?" So just with respect to Michael's actions with Webster there's a rather transparent pattern of some mix of incuriousness or laziness. Which (quite apart from any think-tank connections) is why he ought to come across as not all that credible: he's lazy or incompetent or both. I mean really: say you were to read an article wherein the author: - is supposedly searching for some holy grail - identifies a source that has it - makes no mention of trying to get it from that source ...would that not raise a red flag as to the author's sincerity and/or general competence? Would you be more or less likely to take his other claims at face value after seeing that?

by lucumo 17y ago

byrneseyeview 17y ago

You don't trust him, because he agrees with the view he expresses in that article? This is easy to settle. He says the data don't exist. You apparently say the smart default is to assume that they do. So find the data, and that's the end of it. Right? Your edit is pretty hilarious: he can't be right, because he's part of Cato and has published stuff arguing against climate change! Look, somebody at the Pacific Institute ("Research for People and the Planet") has published something saying so! You might be right, but your argument is basically "Galileo is wrong, because he's a heretic. The Pope even said so. Is Galileo a Pope? I. Thought. Not."

lucumo 17y ago
Eh, no. I don't trust him because he's written anti-climate change before and doesn't give any sources for his claim that the data is basically fraudulent. Seems to me he's just searching for arguments to discard the scientific consensus and not trying to further the debate at all.
- ars 17y ago
  > I don't trust him because he's written anti-climate change before So, you are saying you will only trust him if his views match yours?
  - lucumo 17y ago
    No, please stop cherry-picking my statements. I made a sentence consisting of two parts. Leaving out a key part is dishonest. What I said was: > Eh, no. I don't trust him because he's written anti-climate change before and doesn't give any sources for his claim that the data is basically fraudulent. He's clearly a sceptic and that's his right. But I'll give you several points to consider: a) The author has written a book (several even) where he disagrees with the international consensus about climate change. I'd wager a bet that they aren't all about how the data is missing. So either he's out looking for ways to disprove the theories (which is good) and finding a lot or he's just searching for stuff to hit people with, instead of trying to do serious science. I'm inclined to believe the latter, since the former would mean that a few hundred climatologists from around the world are blatantly ignoring clear evidence and the latter would only mean someone with political motives (or being stupid, corrupt or something like it, or any combination of said things). b) He has written extensively about how climate change isn't true, but is only now trying to review the data of people that have found climate change to be happening. That's odd. c) Yes, it makes a difference if he has written anti-climate change before. If he had written pro-climate change before and is now coming to the conclusion that the data can't be checked, his claims are a lot easier to believe because political motives can be ruled out. It's the same when a climate change sceptic would review the data and find that it supports the conclusions. That would mean that it convinced a sceptic. That's a higher bar to pass than convincing a tree-hugger. d) The title of the mentioned book is "Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know". "They don't want you to know"? He's apparently implying that there's a conspiracy to make people believe climate change exists. That does not give me a whole lot of confidence in his intellect or intentions. All that makes me distrust the author. Which is fine, I don't need to trust the author to believe facts he reports, as long as there are sources. But he didn't supply any. So I'm left with an article written by somebody I cannot trust to be intellectually honest about the climate debate and that doesn't contain sources. The only conclusion I can come to is that I cannot trust the "facts" reported in it.
frig 17y ago
The article comes across spectacularly lazy which bodes ill for the veracity of its contents. Just look @ how our "researcher" (ahem) "researches" the only known-to-him example of raw data being given out: - supposedly "Peter Webster" has (a subset of) the "raw data" - no other "researchers" aside from the data originators have the "raw data" (at least insofar as is known to Michaels as revealed in this article) - supposedly Michaels is interested in obtaining the "raw data" Is there any evidence in the article that, you know, Michaels tried calling Webster up and asking for the "raw data"? The kind of thing you'd do if you were, you know, seriously interested in getting your hands on this data? Not really: - there's no explicit mention of (attempting to) get in touch with Webster - there's a half-hearted attempt to strew fear and doubt based on the fact that Webster's findings (about hurricane and warming correlation) are apparently at variance with what others have found, but it's half-hearted b/c: -- it doesn't examine whether the different findings are due to methodological differences or due to "raw data" differences (only the latter of which implicates the "raw data" as perhaps suspect) -- as per usual it's not like Michaels tried calling Webster and being like: "do you think your results are different b/c the data has been mangled?" So just with respect to Michael's actions with Webster there's a rather transparent pattern of some mix of incuriousness or laziness. Which (quite apart from any think-tank connections) is why he ought to come across as not all that credible: he's lazy or incompetent or both. I mean really: say you were to read an article wherein the author: - is supposedly searching for some holy grail - identifies a source that has it - makes no mention of trying to get it from that source ...would that not raise a red flag as to the author's sincerity and/or general competence? Would you be more or less likely to take his other claims at face value after seeing that?