Frisco_Slug_Esq
On Strike!
- Joined
- May 4, 2009
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Now to our topic: What about the science of global warming? Is it more like the science of healing cows or the "science" of ghost hunting?
For starters, let me make it clear that the leaders of the AGW movement claim that there is a global warming science. Al Gore's official web site is called: "An Inconvenient Truth Official Site: Global Warming Science, Climate Change Science, Facts and Evidence." [Emphasis added.][iii]
Got that? "Global Warming Science." Let's ask ourselves: What could global warming science possibly be?[iv] Remember, when we needed a scientist to tell us whether or not a cow was sick -- we asked a vet. But what scientist do we ask to tell us that the world is "sick" because it is getting warmer? And aren't there two huge assumptions in the questions to begin with? Namely, (1) that the world is actually getting warmer? And (2) that warmer means sick. ("Can you prove to me the world is getting warmer and is sick?" is much more like asking, "Can you prove to me the noise I hear is a ghost and is scary?" than it is "Can you show me why this cow is sick and what is the specific disease?"[v])
When we talk to a global warming "scientist" are we talking to the equivalent of a veterinarian or a ghost hunter? And with whom, exactly, are we talking?
I, for one, have never heard anyone actually make this claim: "I am a global warming scientist." So I did a little research.
With a special thanks to Robert Carter, Professor at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Australia, here are some candidates for the title of "Global Warming Scientist":
(1) ENABLING DISCIPLINES:
(a) Mathematics
(b) Statistics
(c) Computer modeling
(2) ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES:
(d) Atmospheric physics
(e) Atmospheric chemistry
(f) Cosmochemistry
(g) Meteorology
(h) Climatology (partim)
(3) GEOLOGICAL SCIENCES:
(i) Climatology (partim)
(j) Geochemistry
(k) Geophysics
(l) Geology
(m) Palaeolimnology
Palaeoclimatology
(o) Palaeoecology
(p) Palaeontology (up to and including - i.e. subsuming - biological studies)
(q) Stratigraphy
(r) Quaternary geology
(s) Palaeooceanography
(t) Ice core studies
(u) Ocean Drilling Program
(v) Cosmogenic and radiometric dating
Professor Carter in a personal email to me also estimates:
[T]hat there are more than 100 expert sub disciplines involved in climate change studies; my personal filing system recognizes more than 80 alone, and I am sure there are many topics not included.
In other words, I have given AT readers a short list of possible global warming scientist candidates.
So what is a global warming "scientist?" The answer could be one of two things:
One: there is no such thing as a global warming scientist. There is, instead, a consensus among a number of scientists in differing fields that the planet is warming at an alarming rate. This is the usual explanation that we hear.
There are a couple rational criticisms of this position that need to be understood. Science is not in the business of consensus. It is (usually) in the business of collecting specific facts and then creating abstract principles and general conclusions from those specific facts.[vi] Now this does not mean that these facts cannot be collected and shared by different scientists from different disciplines -- in fact, science is becoming so complex that such cross-disciplinary accumulation and exchange of data is now the norm, rather than the exception.
Here is the problem with this approach as summarized by Professor Carter:
Nobody, including Jim Hansen, is truly expert across more than one or two of these topics. It follows that no scientist "understands" climate change; rather, tens of thousands of scientists each understand, to a greater or lesser degree, those small parts of the climate change miasma that they have personally studied.
Sharing on this level of minutia would be okay but for (as Carter so masterfully puts it) the "climate change miasma." The fact is that the specific facts are not leading in a highly probable way to any general conclusions about global warming, CO2, and our (human) part in it. Induction just isn't working to prove the catastrophic theory of man made global warming ... and most scientists know it.[vii]
This is why those of us who have carefully studied the IPCC reports detect the numerous discrepancies between the logic of the scientists' articles in the body of the reports (and in any outside peer reviewed materials that disagree with the IPCC findings and are therefore spurned) and the rhetoric of doom and gloom in the political summaries of the reports. Scientists that complain about the polarization and the politicizing of the scientific process at the IPCC are routinely ignored, demoted, fired, or quit. Here are 50 (that's right FIFTY) articles that prove this internal dissension within the IPCC and between the leaders of the IPCC and the rest of the scientific community.
All of the talk about "healing the planet" shouldn't be fooling anyone. Global warming science is mostly about grant money, about keeping the myth alive, about buying fancy new equipment to prove that there really are ghosts ... er ... global warming. All of this talk of global warming isn't about healing anything. It is about stretching out the process of proving the unprovable and getting paid for it -- as long as the public can be suckered into coughing up the money for the ongoing studies.
Larrey Anderson
American Thinker
[I agree 100%, it's about socialized science and government teats/udders]