[Zipperfish]

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

Nature isn't the scientific equivalent the bible for scientists, in spite of what the Warmist faithful might believe. Much legitimate sounding critique of peer review in the mainstream Science journals has been turning up, concerning the climate arena in particular.

Science operates through peer-reveiwed journals. There's a lot of criticsm and some of it is deserved. But overall, judging by the progress science has made over the last couple of hundred years, it has a pretty good track record. Ironically, many who excoriate the peer-review process are also the first to tout a paper they agree with when it is peer-reveiwed. The criticsm tends to be specific to papers with which they disagree.

$1:

As to whether what bloggers say matters, McIntyre's record is pretty good on exposing bad science without benefit of peer review. His non-peer-reviewed study on Mann's hockey stick graph was able to spark two reviews of the graph, and the general feeling at this time is the HSG has been thoroughly debunked. Mann was also able to reveal GISS measurements of US temperatures as faulty, and have the warmest year there changed from 1998 to 1934. Recently the skeptic bloggers exposed faulty data when October 2008 was claimed to be the warmest October in history (it wasn't). The record of what skeptic bloggers are able to do without being allowed into the old boys network of peer review is pretty good.

McIntyre's criticism of Mann's statistical anlaysis was in a peer-reviewed journal, I believe. In Fact, McKitrick and McIntyre's paper did, not, as you put it result in "the general feeling that the HSG has ben thoroughly debunked." It resulted in less confidence in the resutls of his graph, and opening up the possibility, at the bounds of the uncertainty limits, that teh medieval warm period was as warm as it is now.

And again--October 2008 was never "claimed" to be the warmest October in history. NASA published their NOAA data sets, as they do every month. They published the wrong month accidentally. They were notified within hours and changed it. There was never any press release or "claim" of any kind. McIntyre got radians and degrees mixed up once. Shit happens.

$1:

Basically though it depends on how you frame the questions, and who you ask. Most skeptics agree there was a warming trend, and we are most likely still in it. They also believe human activity which would include stuff like land usage should have at least some influence on climate.

Ah, if only that were true. In fact, most sceptics I meet think (a) there is no global warming, or (b) global warming stopped in 1998. I agree that most true sceptics believe the above, myself included. I see "true" sceptics as opposed to the global warming sceptics who are not sceptics at all in the true sense of the word, but merely adhering to their side of the argument as the ideologues among the Warmists adhere to theirs.

According to the wiki article Scientific opinion on climate change, the Bray study involved a web accessed username and password system, and a username and password were distributed to a sceptics mailing list.

Here's an interesting fact from the wiki article:

$1:

With the July 2007 release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate.

EDIT: in the interests of full disclosure, I should add that I have to agree to some of your points with qualification. While I don't think there's been any conspiracy afoot, I do think that "groupthink" mentality has led to a lack of questions about assumptions regadring climate change theory. I'd say, on Bray's study I've moved from a 1 to a 2.5 over the years.

[N_Fiddledog]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

EDIT: in the interests of full disclosure, I should add that I have to agree to some of your points with qualification. While I don't think there's been any conspiracy afoot, I do think that "groupthink" mentality has led to a lack of questions about assumptions regadring climate change theory.

Gee, I wish I could be as kind, unfortunately I have to say I disagree with absolutely everything you say above.

However, just to try to be nice at least, I won't nit-pick through your every claim, and produce the other side point by point this time. I'll simply admit you have one opinion on all that, I have another.

Oh, one thing unrelated though, I was mentioning earlier in the thread how the skeptic blogs are going wild with outrage over this one. They hate it when the warmist data managers try to sweep inconvenient data under the rug with what I believe Orwell called Truthspeak.

I forgot to add one of my faves - Jennifer Mahorasy - to the mix. She's down in Australia where they're particularly sensitive to anything that happens in the Antarctic. Apparently the Australian media has been trying frantically to spread this statistical rumor of supposed Antarctic cooling as unchallenged fact, without anybody knowing there's actual critique. Here's a snip of what she has to say...

$1:

One of the authors of the new paper, Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, has explained that he is pleased that the previous inconvenience of a cooling trend in Antarctica can now be dismissed. Indeed he now has a paper published in the prestigious and peer-reviewed journal Nature claiming as much. But this does not necessarily make it true.

Dr Mann is famous for managing to falsely recreate past temperatures so they accord with the popular global warming consensus. Indeed Dr Mann is responsible for the infamous hockey-stick graph that suggested the medieval warm period did not exist.

In this new study Dr Mann and others have combined incomplete data from both satellites and weather stations with some complicated statistics to generate a model of climate for the continent for the period 1957-2006.

Bill Kininmonth, formerly of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, was interviewed on Australian national radio as part of a segment on the new findings. Mr Kininmonth explained that there has been no reduction in the cycle of Antarctic sea ice and that he was generally sceptical that the west Antarctic ice sheet was likely to melt – a claim made earlier in the segment by Dr Barry Brook from Adelaide University.

In apparent contravention of ABC Broadcasting principles, the comment from Mr Kininmonth has been expunged from the transcript and the podcast. [4]

It seems computer models can remove evidence of cooling and editors can remove comment from climate change sceptics – but of course the truth does not cease to exist because it is ignored.

The Rest of the Story

[Zipperfish]

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

Oh, one thing unrelated though, I was mentioning earlier in the thread how the skeptic blogs are going wild with outrage over this one. They hate it when the warmist data managers try to sweep inconvenient data under the rug with what I believe Orwell called Truthspeak.

Well, I find that most blogs are just people going wild with outrage anyways. Anyways, if they have an issue with it, they can always write up a paper for a peer-reviewed journal like McIntyre and McKitrick did. That is what led to what you and Ms. Mahorasy would refer to as the destruction of the Mann hockey stick. The great thing about science is that the truth will out eventually, regardless of the oppostiion to it. Certainly, in this case, we need only wait: it will either continue to get warmer, or it won't.

$1:

but of course the truth does not cease to exist because it is ignored.

Well, we certainly agree on that point, anyways!

[faile]

ZipperFish ZipperFish:

Science operates through peer-reveiwed journals.

No, science operates through hypothesis, experimentation, scrutiny, and independent validation of results. Peer-reviewed journals are the vehicle by which the results of the experimentation and scrutiny are published and read by other interested parties. Having something published by a peer-reviewed journal does not automatically make something part of the "scientific canon", and anyone who uses an argument to that effect whether they agree with the paper or not is an idiot.

[Zipperfish]

faile faile:

ZipperFish ZipperFish:

Science operates through peer-reveiwed journals.

No, science operates through hypothesis, experimentation, scrutiny, and independent validation of results. Peer-reviewed journals are the vehicle by which those results are published. Having something published by a peer-reviewed journal does not automatically make something part of the "scientific canon", and anyone who uses an argument to that effect whether they agree with the paper or not is an idiot.

I would say that the peer-reviewed journal fulfills, to some degree, the "scrutiny" part of your definition of science. I'm not sure what you mean by a "scientific canon," but my view would be that models and theories stand until they are replaced by models or theories that match observations better or that have better predictive capability.

[faile]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

I'm not sure what you mean by a "scientific canon," but my view would be that models and theories stand until they are replaced by models or theories that match observations better or that have better predictive capability.

Science used to have this concept called 'burden of proof.' It meant that nothing at all stands until it is adequately shown to be reasonably accurate.

[Zipperfish]

faile faile:

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

I'm not sure what you mean by a "scientific canon," but my view would be that models and theories stand until they are replaced by models or theories that match observations better or that have better predictive capability.

Science used to have this concept called 'burden of proof.' It meant that nothing at all stands until it is adequately shown to be reasonably accurate.

No, I think that burden of proof is primarily a legal term. "Proof" is a an ideological construct--it exists in mathematics, logic and (in a somewhat different context) in law. In science, you can't prove a theory.