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Your response is a fantastic example of why this debate has become so horribly polarised. Has there ever been reliable evidence that Steve McIntyre or Anthony W

by Maktab 17y ago

Your response is a fantastic example of why this debate has become so horribly polarised. Has there ever been reliable evidence that Steve McIntyre or Anthony Watts are being paid by energy companies for the work they do? Both have made valuable contributions to the science surrounding this issue, McIntyre by spotting actual flaws within datasets and Watts by driving the effort to catalogue and categorise the quality of the all-important weather stations. They're not demagogues throwing around baseless accusations who should be ignored. McIntyre is the main target of the Hadley Centre scientists' ire, which I suspect has more to do with the fact that he's actually competent and knows how to interpret the data they release, something they oddly seem to fear. Lest we forget, scientists like those at the Hadley Centre have their own incentives, as their funding is directly correlated to the prevailing fear of global warming. Moreover, the debate has become so poisoned that few scientists would be brave enough to go far down a route which might dispute even a small part of the conventional wisdom for fear of being labelled a 'denier' (a term you used elsewhere in this discussion). But this is not what scientific debate is supposed to be about. This is supposed to be a profession ruled by the Scientific Method and dedicated to the primacy of experiments and data. What your personal incentives are or who pays your salary should be secondary to the results you produce. Science should have no place for flippant ad hominem dismissals, nor for the talk of 'enemies' that pervades this thread and the emails of the Hadley scientists. We should be thankful for the role played by men like McIntyre, because they act as an important quality check on data which will be used to make massively important political decisions which may have huge impacts on each of our lifestyles and finances. We should have more adversarial data analysts, not fewer.

tome 17y ago
I don't know anything about McIntyre or Watts. I was responding to the parent who was comparing climate science to building a space shuttle. My point was that climate scientists are not funded like space shuttle developers, nothing more than that.
- Maktab 17y ago
  If I misread your comment, please accept my apology. I must admit that I responded in the way I did partially because of this statement that you made a couple of hours ago, and I assumed that the comment I replied to was making a similar case: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=952651 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=952651 Sure, and if researchers are being forced to draw the line higher than usual due to external pressure from highly funded deniers, whose fault is that? EDIT: Besides, if we define the adversary to be somebody making legitimate critical analyses of your data and models and showing up flaws in them, isn't dealing with that meant to be part of a scientists job? How different is it in practice to defending your work against criticism from other, supposedly more respectable, scientists? It's ridiculous to claim that a lack of resources is a valid reason for intentionally hiding data from people with the skill to perform an adversarial analysis on it. If a scientist can't defend his results against Steve McIntyre, it means his results are indefensible. The person doesn't matter; the data, and its integrity, do.
  - tome 17y ago
    You're asking me how is a massively organised campaign participated in by thousands of people not educated specifically in your field different from defending your work against a critical colleague who happens to have his own pet theory?
    - yummyfajitas 17y ago
      It doesn't matter who the adversary is. If a flaw is found, the work is incorrect.
jberryman 17y ago
> Has there ever been reliable evidence that Steve McIntyre or Anthony Watts are being paid by energy companies for the work they do? EDIT: referring to McIntyre: The guy is a semi-retired mineral consultant. He's been paid his whole life by energy companies. He is not a scientist and the so-called "valuable contributions" he made were determined to be of "little significance": http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Stephen_McIntyre http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Stephen_McIntyre
- mnemonicsloth 17y ago
  The Sourcewatch website you link to is run by the Center for Media and Democracy, a leftist advocacy group. I'm having trouble imagining a less reliable source on this subject. In the specific article you provided, all of the relevant links were broken.
electromagnetic 17y ago
My biggest concern with 'climate scientists' is that they're little more than statisticians, which certainly doesn't make them reputable, trustworthy and it especially doesn't make them scientists. There is so little fact checking being performed and present day thermometer readings are all but useless as most are contained within urban heat traps. Global Warming isn't a question of whether CO2 or Methane contribute to higher absorption of infrared energy. It's a question of what its effects are, and what the environment's reaction will be (IE will heated oceans produce more clouds and produce a sharp reversal in the effect or will it produce no effect at all, etc.). The other thing that concerns me is the political nature of 'climate science', not only are so many politicians embedded in being 'green', but the organisations themselves have a political agenda that makes them (at least appear as though they're) prone to bias. Most emphatically claim that our only alternative to fossil fuels is the mass development of alternative energy, which is flat out bullshit. Firstly before we get into any discussion of carbon sequestration, these 'scientists' and the public in general (thankfully many politicians - never thought I'd have thankfully and politicians in the same sentence without 'they're all dead' inserted between the two - haven't ignored the green-glowing Elephant in the room) make no discussion of the one main, technologically available alternative we have: Nuclear. A renewed Nuclear power project in virtually every western country, including widespread MOX usage would vastly reduce our need for fossil fuels, whilst barely effecting the amount of highly radioactive nuclear waste we produce. It's likely just me, but when 'scientists' purposefully neglect to mention existing and well established technology as a solution to our energy crisis it makes me question their motives. Who are really paying for these studies if their only suggestion is alternative energy?

by Maktab 17y ago

tome 17y ago

I don't know anything about McIntyre or Watts. I was responding to the parent who was comparing climate science to building a space shuttle. My point was that climate scientists are not funded like space shuttle developers, nothing more than that.

Maktab 17y ago
If I misread your comment, please accept my apology. I must admit that I responded in the way I did partially because of this statement that you made a couple of hours ago, and I assumed that the comment I replied to was making a similar case: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=952651 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=952651 Sure, and if researchers are being forced to draw the line higher than usual due to external pressure from highly funded deniers, whose fault is that? EDIT: Besides, if we define the adversary to be somebody making legitimate critical analyses of your data and models and showing up flaws in them, isn't dealing with that meant to be part of a scientists job? How different is it in practice to defending your work against criticism from other, supposedly more respectable, scientists? It's ridiculous to claim that a lack of resources is a valid reason for intentionally hiding data from people with the skill to perform an adversarial analysis on it. If a scientist can't defend his results against Steve McIntyre, it means his results are indefensible. The person doesn't matter; the data, and its integrity, do.
- tome 17y ago
  You're asking me how is a massively organised campaign participated in by thousands of people not educated specifically in your field different from defending your work against a critical colleague who happens to have his own pet theory?
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    It doesn't matter who the adversary is. If a flaw is found, the work is incorrect.

jberryman 17y ago

> Has there ever been reliable evidence that Steve McIntyre or Anthony Watts are being paid by energy companies for the work they do? EDIT: referring to McIntyre: The guy is a semi-retired mineral consultant. He's been paid his whole life by energy companies. He is not a scientist and the so-called "valuable contributions" he made were determined to be of "little significance": http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Stephen_McIntyre http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Stephen_McIntyre

mnemonicsloth 17y ago
The Sourcewatch website you link to is run by the Center for Media and Democracy, a leftist advocacy group. I'm having trouble imagining a less reliable source on this subject. In the specific article you provided, all of the relevant links were broken.

electromagnetic 17y ago

My biggest concern with 'climate scientists' is that they're little more than statisticians, which certainly doesn't make them reputable, trustworthy and it especially doesn't make them scientists. There is so little fact checking being performed and present day thermometer readings are all but useless as most are contained within urban heat traps. Global Warming isn't a question of whether CO2 or Methane contribute to higher absorption of infrared energy. It's a question of what its effects are, and what the environment's reaction will be (IE will heated oceans produce more clouds and produce a sharp reversal in the effect or will it produce no effect at all, etc.). The other thing that concerns me is the political nature of 'climate science', not only are so many politicians embedded in being 'green', but the organisations themselves have a political agenda that makes them (at least appear as though they're) prone to bias. Most emphatically claim that our only alternative to fossil fuels is the mass development of alternative energy, which is flat out bullshit. Firstly before we get into any discussion of carbon sequestration, these 'scientists' and the public in general (thankfully many politicians - never thought I'd have thankfully and politicians in the same sentence without 'they're all dead' inserted between the two - haven't ignored the green-glowing Elephant in the room) make no discussion of the one main, technologically available alternative we have: Nuclear. A renewed Nuclear power project in virtually every western country, including widespread MOX usage would vastly reduce our need for fossil fuels, whilst barely effecting the amount of highly radioactive nuclear waste we produce. It's likely just me, but when 'scientists' purposefully neglect to mention existing and well established technology as a solution to our energy crisis it makes me question their motives. Who are really paying for these studies if their only suggestion is alternative energy?