It is probably true that a majority or even super-majority of scientists believe in AGW, but perhaps that will change as more learn of the shenanigans and bad statistics that are so widespread in climate science and the IPCC in particular. It’s funny because much of the “consensus” meme comes from the influential article/paper by Naomi Oreskes, but which was itself the worst example of cherry picked, shoddy research I can think of.

Every scientist on the planet should put on their statistics hat and read up on the Hockey Stick Affair for examples of what you and I are talking about. Perhaps it is old news around here, but the best summary of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans is by UK blogger “Bishop Hill” entitled “Casper and the Jesus Paper.” It’s a fascinating read. Then for a thorough technical debunking of the Hockey Stick, go and read the Wegmen Report [PDF].

FYI, someone coined the term “lukewarmer” that describes my position very well. Basically, standard Stephan Boltzman blackbody (or grey, rather) physics gets you to about 1 degree C increase for a doubling of CO2. Most everybody is in agreement up to this point. It is the HUGE feedback of 3-5 times the original forcing posited by the AGW crowd that is in contention, and required for the more alarmist temperature projections. Such feedback effects and high earth “sensitivity” is anything but proven at this stage, IMO. Model projections are not proof.

(disclosure: I am a geologist and masters level geophysicist. I am a practitioner not a researcher and have never published a paper in my life. I don’t know a lot about climatology. I do understand the physics of AGW. It isn’t that hard.)

Back on topic: I am a “devout agnostic” and an evolutionist. I am willing to declare war on the ID movement because they encroach on and would weaken science. But it seems to me that Dawkins’ and Meyers’ war on religion generally is a bridge too far, their atheism they cram down people’s throats is perhaps a religion of its own.

For example, to restate the example I gave above, how can something which is a bad proxy to local/regional temperatures be weighted strongly in a proxy study merely because it is a good (or better) match to Northern hemisphere temperatures ? Where is the cause for the effect ? Just claiming “teleconnection” is not a serious explanation. You do not need to be a PhD in quantum mechanics to figure out there are problems with that approach.

Another example of a serious breakdown in proper scientific procedure is the more recent Steig paper on the Antarctic. Normal scientific procedure when you are attempting to draw conclusions from sparse data is to test your theory on sample data to check that it works, prior to running it on the the real thing. Steigs technique was not tested on any area where accurate temperature data was available to make sure that the reconstruction technique was valid. Is that really good science ? No, and again you do not need in depth scientific knowledge to realise that.

“I think it’s a bit rich for you to describe scientists who are going their best as being driven by ideology.”

Well perhaps you will agree that “confirmation bias” is the biggest hazard for any scientist with a theory, and that from someone looking on from the sidelines excessive confirmation bias looks like ideology. Particularly when you read through the discussion of things like Ammann and Wahls verification statistics in their response to McIntyre and McKitrick; first they wait several years before releasing how they calculated them (is that good science ?) and finally when they do release it you get to see they basically just threw out the data they did not like to get the figure they wanted. Seeing stuff like that it’s hard not to believe there is not more than a little ideology behind it.

All I can say is that the vast preponderance of scientists that have looked at the problem think you are wrong. If you have looked at the data with the care that they have, please refer us to your analysis. If not, we’ll be forced to the conclusion that you are another redneck libertarian who wants to continue to drive his gas-guzzling SUV.

I think it’s a bit rich for you to describe scientists who are going their best as being driven by ideology.

There are serious problems with many major “alarmist” climate studies; both their hindcasting with proxies and forecasting with computer models.

Pointing out these issues is very much a scientific approach yet it is treated by the climate science priesthood as heresey.

I’m always curious of people with a scientific background who support the current state of climate science. Have they followed it for example to the extent of understanding most of the alarmist proxy studies depend on non-existant teleconnections ? ie tree rings in one small part of one country (which have no use as a proxy for their own local temperature) somehow become fantastic proxies for Northern hemisphere temperature. There’s no physical connection, yet the studies DEPEND on their being one. It’s not difficult to see that if you take enough data, some of it will agree with your signal, that does not make it a proxy for your signal though.

That’s just one of many issues. I can’t understand how people with a scientific background who do not have an ideological axe to grind over this can call people complaining over things like that “denialists”, in the derogatory fashion in which it is meant.

Re. medical reform, we in the UK are mystified by all the references to the NHS in the US debate, since as far as we can tell what Obama is proposing is the French or (particularly) German “social insurance” model, and nothing in the least bit like the UK single-provider set-up.

German medicine is structured much more like the US system than like the British one; the main difference from the US is that insurance is universal, compulsory, and safety-netted. But there are competing insurers, hospitals, specialists etc. etc. much like in the US.

The general take here in the UK is that the endless scare-mongering about “British style socialized medicine” is simply a scare tactic of the US right and the insurance industry.

I see you took my sarcasm a bit too seriously with regard to “effete snobs” which harkens back to the Nixon days.

The point was that scientists can be just as irrational as backwoods Christian fundamentalists when it comes to areas outside of their expertise… and they are.

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By the way, the U.S. does not deny health care to anyone. What it does is provide health care in a very inefficient manner to those who cannot or chose not to have health insurance: providing care through hospital emergency rooms and sticking the hospitals with the costs.

The real reform could be accomplished quite simply: revise tort law so that physicians are not subject to overwhelming jury awards against them for mistakes made in treating patients [government doctors are totally protected against that]… and expand the present Medicaid system paid for by the states by adding federal funding.

The first action reduces the health care charges to patients because insurance rates for doctors would plummet. The second action limits the disruption to the present system and protects the choices that paying customers presently have.

The Obama plans are a power grab by the government and ignore the simpler and more effective alternatives available.

It’s good to have a comment from a US citizen. I can even agree to the extent that the European Green party, though good on environmental matters, advocates all sorts of make-believe medicine that is antiscientific and plain barmy. George Monbiot put it rather well in We must break link between green issues and alternative medicine.

So I agree that being anti-science is not the exclusive prerogative of right wing politics. That being said, there is no denying that George Bush’s regime was anti-science to an extent unprecedented in US history. Worse still, it attempted to corrupt science by means of political pressure and political appointees. It is also true that in the US the creationist movement is largely fuelled by right wing fundamentalist religious groups, just as it is in the Islamic world. The description ‘Christian Taliban’. has always seemed rather appropriate to me.

I doubt somehow that we will reach much consensus on these questions. Looking at your own blog I see the usual climate-denial, torture-advocating, Obama-hating line of the US far right. Perhaps you think that it is just ‘right’ rather than ‘far-right’, but you must remember that, on many questions, the US left is well to the right of European conservatives. The opposition to universal health care from the US right is utterly baffling to Europeans. So are the outright lies used by the opposition, from groups like Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. There is no other rich country in the world that denies health care to a large fraction of its population. Obama has done much to rebuild the US’s reputation in the rest of the world. Perhaps you don’t care much what the rest of the world thinks, but like it or not, the Bush years did enormous harm to the reputation of the US as a civilised country. It was beginning to look like the dying days of the Roman empire, but now there is hope again.

Your last remarks are really rather revealing. You are happy to use the internet and all the other things that physics has brought you, because of research that started mostly from government grants. Industry gets involved only at a later stage when it becomes obvious how to make money from it. To label the people who have done these things as "effete snobs" reveals, more than anything else, the shallowness of your thoughts when it comes to science.

My own research has always been funded by grants, from charities (the Wellcome Trust) or, indirectly, from taxpayers’ (the Medical Research Council) Perhaps you’d care to look at my publications and offer a view about whether I have been wasting my time and the taxpayers’ money?< I await your verdict with interest.

That’s basically the same thing as saying that all Brits would rather abandon their principles than face danger by standing up for them… or that all Brits have bad teeth… or that all Brits prefer to stay home, drink warm beer, and watch the television set rather than be engaged in productive work.

Certainly there are under-educated Republicans who hold religious beliefs that are scientifically unsound [although creation stories could be seen as allegorical... just as the "big bang" makes some sense from our human perspective, but leaves gaping philosophical and scientific questions].

There are other Republicans/conservatives such as myself who accept science as our best way to understanding our physical world… as long as it is science that follows the scientific method. For example, nuclear physics makes eminent sense to me because it has been through the process of a theoretical examination, experimentation, and implementation that yield the same results over and over. Yet I remain a skeptic about anthropogenic global warming because it falls short of even good theory having a basis in computer modeling and not fully compatible with observed data.

The point is that science is not the bailiwick of one political party. Too much of the rhetoric from scientists in one arena is nothing more than thinly veiled politics and personal biases.

Of course, what else can you expect from a group of effete snobs who receive their livelihood from government grants and have their jobs protected by tenure and unions.

Oh, did I just say that? Sorry, no justification for such stereotyping.

In the old days this grouping – or “team” – tended to be roughly equivalent to a Department, and it does often still exist now, though the titles are different.

The difference is that the academic “team” frequently disagrees with what I call the “Type ii” definition of “team player” preferred by managerial superstructures, which usually amounts to:

“Someone who can be relied upon to say “Great” to whatever we tell them we are doing, and who will loyally toe this line in public.”

Now, at a very fundamental level, most academics believe that the core thing that makes universities universities – and thus their “brand identity”, if you prefer the managerial bollocks – is precisely that academics conform to pattern (i) above, and NOT to pattern (ii). But the tension with the kind of managerialist agendas that are depressingly common in modern universities is obvious.

Of course, you see the same thing over the last two to three decades in other professional occupations that are pursued in large organisations, perhaps most famously the health service. I recently read an article that summed this up nicely for the NHS, but one can make plenty of parallels for academia.

Hmm… Not a “team player”, then, what?

This reminds me of the managerialism that crept through our own great land during the 80s and 90s. I think it is a “philosophy” — it certainly isn’t science — created to provide jobs for its creators, for all the “good” it did.