Global Warming
Read this opinion piece by a ’scientist’ that did a literature search of article on climate change and found that almost all articles support man made climate change. Tell me if you find her argument compelling.
Several things that caught my attention.
The IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members’ expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. A National Academy of Sciences report begins unequivocally: “Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.” The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and it answers yes. Others agree. The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have all issued statements concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling.
All these organizations by their very nature must collapse the opinions of many different people into one opinion. It could very well be the case that in each one of these organizations a large minority objects to climate change. This dissent would not be very well reflected when summarized by the organization by conveying the opinion of the slight majority as the opinion of the organization.
We read 928 abstracts published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 and listed in the database with the keywords “global climate change.”
Doing this search this way seems somewhat problematic since you are using the language of the people who support using the expression ‘global climate change’. It may by the case that those that dissent from this opinion use different language to argue against ‘global climate change’. A more exhaustive list of terms would of been nice just to rule out this possibility.
To be sure, a handful of scientists have raised questions about the details of climate models, about the accuracy of methods for evaluating past global temperatures and about the wisdom of even attempting to predict the future. But this is quibbling about the details. The basic picture is clear, and some changes are already occurring.
This might be the most problematic argument she makes. She seems to be saying Although our methods don’t provide an accurate view we can still see the view. This is bordering on a contradiction.
So why does it seem as if there is major scientific disagreement? Because a few noisy skeptics — most of whom are not even scientists — have generated a lot of chatter in the mass media.
Skeptics are not scientists, therefore their view is not valid. This is normally used by people attempting to advance their TRUTH when their TRUTH can’t be shown to be TRUE to that person. This kind of argumentation is the opposite of convincing. It mostly suggest that someone believes something so much that they are willing to censor others when those other deny its truthiness.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
1.) She is not a climate scientist. She is an associate professor of history who was doing a study of current “scientific” opinions of climate change.
2.) A scientist who had relevant work suggesting a stable climate would surely use “global climate change” as a key word as it is important to communicate the difference of finding.
3.) Nobody censors unqualified scientific opinions. You can post them wherever you want thanks to our awesome constitution. She is actually arguing that unqualified opinions are getting too much chatter in the media.
April 17th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
lol, “global climate change” has been happening for about 4 billion years, in fact, there has never been a single point in the history of the fucking planet which has not had “global climate change”.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
All the more reason why one would include “global climate change” as a key phrase whether they were on the global warming bandwagon or not.