Re: FW: Daily Tech's response to Rich Kulawiec

[Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org>]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 04:37:58PM -0500, Richard M. Smith quoted
Mike Asher [mailto:masher () dailytech com] as writing:

> One word in regards to NASA's GISS Center.  It's run by James Hansen, a 
> long-time proponent of the idea that man is trashing the planet.  
> The data they output isn't raw temperature readings, but a "corrected"
> dataset incorporating many thousands of arbitrary adjustments, "smoothing
> factors", and elimination of readings they consider inaccurate.    All the
> major temperature tracking stations correct the data somewhat, but groups
> like the Hadley Center (run by the British Government) or the UAH group
> in Alabama do so in a much less politically-motivated manner than Hansen.
> This is why our environmental stories tend to prefer these sources.

Sigh...

I believe that this is the appropriate place to stop and to note
that character assassination is not how good science gets done.

However, it's become rather fashionable of late among creationists and
climate-change deniers and similar because it avoids all that tedious
mucking about with the facts.  We're left to conclude that either:

        a) The widespread agreement among the experts in the field
        does not reflect their actual scientific judgement, but has
        been induced through threats, bribes, intimidation, global
        conspiracy, wishful thinking, or perhaps the Spanish Inquisition
        armed with sofa cushions; or

        b) For some as-yet-unknown reason, all of those people, with
        many years of experience, long lists of publications in
        peer-reviewed journals, substantial scientific achievements
        to their credit, formidable intellects (and occasionally
        formidable egos to match) have somehow made the exact same
        set of mistakes and none of them have caught it, even though
        they have extreme motivation to do exactly that; or

        c) They just might be right.

Let me pause to point something out -- something reiterated in what
I'm about to reference.  The way you get ahead in science is not by
repeating orthodoxy.  The way you get ahead in science is to show
that a widely held and long-accepted theory is dead wrong.
The longer that theory's been around, and the more widely applicable it
is, the larger the reward for overturning it.  And you'll earn a bonus
if you can also show that something useful can be done with your new
replacement theory.  Relatively minor achievements of this nature get you
things like tenure, grants, editorships, conference awards, and so on.
But if you manage to do something huge -- like, oh, come up with an
experimentally-verifiable explanation for quantum entanglement -- then
you will probably earn a dinner date with the King of Sweden.

Now factor into this the kinds of minds that are attracted to
scientific research: these are people with the hubris to believe
that they can use their puny human brains to tease apart the
secrets of the universe.  These are people who deliberately chose
a career where most of their "great ideas" will turn out to be
rubbish by the time they scribble them a napkin and stare at them
for two minutes -- but who keep doing it anyway.  These are not
people very susceptible to a herd mentality: they'll argue about
*anything*, demand proof, critique it, then argue the other
side of the case.

All of which is my long-winded way of saying that smear tactics like
this are nothing more than a sign of increasing desperation on
the part of those who are well aware that exhaustive (and I do
mean exhaustive) research indicates they're almost certainly wrong.

With that in mind, let me point you to this excellent article (just
published yesterday) on this topic -- something I very strongly
recommend you read:

        The cold truth about climate change
        http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/02/27/global_warming_deniers/index.html

A number of points that I was considering making are made
in that article, probably far more cogently than I'm capable of.

If you don't have time to read it, let me sum it up for you: the
"controversy" (to borrow a term from the creationists) over global
warming/climate change/global climate weirdness is not over whether
it's happening.  It is.

It's not over what's causing it.  It's us.

It's over how big it's going to get how fast and which way and what
we might possibly do about it.

And there is substantial reason to believe that reports like the IPCC's
(which was considerably watered down due to political pressure) are
wrong: "wrong" in that they may overestimate how long it will take and
may underestimate how big it will get.  (IPCC == UN Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change.)  We already know that small perturbations of
nonlinear stochastic systems in quasi-equilbrium can result in large
state changes.  What we don't know, and may not know until we're living
it instead of modeling it on supercomputers, is exactly what that means
for Topeka or Madrid or Nairobi.  But "large state changes" could very
well mean "very bumpy ride".  That we may not be able to stop.  And that
we certainly can't get off.

As to why I'm writing this instead of getting into the validity of
the claims cited by dailytech: I'm slowly learning that you can't
reason people out of positions that they didn't reason themselves into,
so I don't see much point in trying with dailytech et.al.  If that means
that I'll be categorized in the same way as Dr. Hansen, then while I'm
clearly not even remotely close to playing in his league, I'd be honored.

---Rsk


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