Scientists understand and espouse the skeptical approach, however it is something that they preach but dont practice, on a whole science can be extremely dogmatic with a large resistance to new ideas that challenge the accepted.
Skepticism is the proper attitude in science and when the evidence is sparse as is the case for harmful AGW, skepticism is the only reasonable position to have.
Right Dookie. That is why they thought it was cooling in the 1970s and I know your gospel, skepticalscience, denies it, but I lived in the 1970s. In fact, it wasn't until the far left wacko environmentalists realized they could use it for their political agenda in the 1990s that "scientists" suddenly began to take notice. Scientists aren't a collective body that believes one thing except the minds of the Dooks of the world. Those scientists that gave money what money wanted were funded and those that didn't were thereby silenced. Duh!!!!
Note:
When dook says you are intelligent enough RC, what he is saying is that you are leftist enough. That is the dirty little secret with most alarmists. They are so deeply leftist themselves, everything they eat, drink and breath pays homage to their religion, leftism. RC just isn't a member of that cult but he isn't a hated conservative either.
Reasons for skepticism:
1.) Paleoclimate
a.) Tree ring - Tree ring data ASSUMES that warmer temps = more tree growth. Is that your understanding from warmers? Warmers temp will help plant growth?
b.) Ice Core - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core
"Because the air continues to circulate until then, the ice age and the age of the gas enclosed are not the same, and may differ by hundreds of years. The gas age–ice age difference is as great as 7 kyr in glacial ice from Vostok."
So this ice core data is not a yearly view. It is closer to an aggregate of hundreds of years. So when they say the warming over the past 60-100 years is unprecedented, how can they tell if their paleoclimate data is an aggregate of hundreds of years?
2.) Temperature records. We have seen only 0.8 degrees of warming over the past 100 years. The US holds the most accurate records over the largest area, yet NASA made "corrections" to the data which changed no warming to warming. It literally increased and decreased yearly temp averages for CONUS by 0.3 degrees. If the US requires "corrections" like this, what of the rest of the world?
The BEST study was done by a "converted skeptic" Muller. Muller was never a skeptic, but he pretended he was. He wanted to show skeptics wrong. He ran his study and found that using differing asumptions the temp change from 1950 to 2000 was 0.9 degrees. 0.9 degrees when other sources have 0.6 degrees. So what did he actually show? He showed that by changing the assumptions you can increase the warming by 50%.
3.) Future models. All of the past warming, the warmers themselves show by LINEAR regression. But their models are far greater than linear. They are nearly exponential in nature. So they model the past 60-100 years using linear, but the future they model with nearly exponentials? Seems odd, but if the models work, no harm right? 97% of the climate models are currently overestimating.
4.) Claims by the warmers.
They claim AGW causes hurricanes:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_...
Tornadoes:
http://www.ustornadoes.com/wp-content/up...
Heat waves: http://sarcozona.org/wp-content/uploads/...
Crop destruction: http://sustainablog.org/files/2009/08/co...
Floods/droughts: http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/s...
5.) Politics:
We all know this is a political issue. There is no denying this. I think some warming is occurring, but when you look at what is placed in the media... Well seeing the media print that much of the world is going to be uninhabitable by 2050... Skepticism is warranted for every claim.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...
Edit:
Dook, Your question was quite funny. You called yourself "pro-science". LOL. I can always count on you for a laugh.
Dook, you keep outdoing yourself. I worship the fossil fuel industry now? That is why I have been saying we should replace all coal power plants with nuclear power plants over the next 30 years. Too funny. Thanks for the laughs.
Raisin - could you explain "nearly exponential" in mathematical terms?
Could you comment on what a linear or logarithmic response to a monotonically increasing forcing function looks like?
Could you cite a climate model that is "far greater than linear" in its response?
Could you cite a climate model that uses different response parameters for past and future?
First you don't credit the source which makes this just shy of plagiarism and this is not related to skeptics/deniers who deny reality not does it condone this in any way
Hey Dook gave the right answer. It took a long time for climatologist to accept that humans could significantly warm Earth. Most people, especially the "skeptics," did not pay attention before the evidence came in.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/timel...
Skepticism is great--denial of reality is another matter.
Yes that is why scientists were for the first 50-60 years generally quite skeptical about the theory of anthropogenic climate change proposed over a century ago, before (over the last 40-50 years) massive scientific research from all around the world, and accepted by the overwhelming majority of educated people, showed it to be true. Most of this research occurred long before today's fossil fuel industry anti-science tools had even heard about it, let alone started stupidly echo-chambering lies about it.
http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warm...
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_cha...
(Newsw.) http://www.sharonlbegley.com/global-warm...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...
I was in college in the 1970s, JimZ, reading newspapers and paying attention to what was happening, not "studying" abiotic oil "geology." There was vastly more publicity then about pet rocks than about climate change of any kind, and no "cooling scare," Whether your memory and "conscience" fails you here, or both, is irrelevant. The historical facts do not fit your prefab fossil fuel industry deception playbook. 200 Nobel Prize winning scientists are not lock-step socialists, as the cockamamie conspiracy theories you like to pretend you are not duped by would have it.
U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 2010:
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record...
“Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.”
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpine...
“Choices made now about carbon dioxide emissions reductions will affect climate change impacts experienced not just over the next few decades but also in coming centuries and millennia…Because CO2 in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe.”
http://www.physics.fsu.edu/awards/NAS/
“The Academy membership is composed of approximately 2,100 members and 380 foreign associates, of whom nearly 200 have won Nobel Prizes. Members and foreign associates of the Academy are elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research; election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a scientist or engineer.”
RC: The fossil fuel industry denial machine you worship is "skeptical" and the overwhelming majority of the world's scientists are "warmers"? You are intelligent enough to be less unoriginal in your anti-science deceit. I know it is hard to admit that you were duped. Denial of denial is easier. Pity nonetheless.
RC edit: As long as you echo anti-science nonsense about climate scientists being "warmers", you are a worshipping tool of the fossil fuel industry DENIAL MACHINE which is what (contrary to your deceitful trickery) I actually said above, regardless of any advocacy of nuclear power plants which have (you were in the right ballpark with 30 years) not been built in the USA for a long time.
I don't see any denialists being skeptical of their own hypotheses, of course their prejudices don't really qualify as hypotheses but rather as lies
For Climate Science skepticism means increasing your margin of error to include all possible observations.
“Skepticism above all toward the veracity of one’s own hypotheses is, of course, an essential virtue for scientists,”
Scientific skepticism has a meaning. It's meaning is not to be deluded by ignorance or continuing to say stupid things that have no scientific basis. Scientific skepticims means to adhere to the scientific method, to test claims through scientific investigation.
"Climate Change skeptics" are not scientific skeptics. They say stupid things like the environment is not warming, or that it is warming without reason, or that it was warming by unknown changes in the sun. A scientific skeptic looks at the evidence. They can see that solar-generated warming would warm the Stratosphere and therefore solar irradiance cannot be the cause of warming.
The scientific skeptical approach has been used to test many possible causes of warming. All of the proposed natural causes have been eliminated through the scientific process. It is not skeptical to not know that, it is simply ignorance.
All scientists are skeptics. But the word means something differnent that Climate Change Ignorants think it means.
What they mean is Science is Settled , hurry up and raise taxes
so those mean ole capitalist can suffer
