The Real Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming: Skeptics Have Valid Arguments

What this lengthy and very dated press release says is that the authors consider themselves to be infallible and their list of "consensus" non-climatologically trained "experts" have purer motives than the "deniers."

I didn't read that:

STATEMENT BY THE COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES REGARDING GLOBAL CHANGE PETITION

April 20, 1998

The Council of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is concerned about the confusion caused by a petition being circulated via a letter from a former president of this Academy. This petition criticizes the science underlying the Kyoto treaty on carbon dioxide emissions (the Kyoto Protocol to the Framework Convention on Climate Change), and it asks scientists to recommend rejection of this treaty by the U.S. Senate. The petition was mailed with an op-ed article from The Wall Street Journal and a manuscript in a format that is nearly identical to that of scientific articles published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal.

They wished to distance themselves from the article enclosed with the OISM petition.

Some had falsely associated the article with NAS, and the NAS Council wanted to clear up the confusion.

As for "dated press release", it refers to the OISM petition, cited in this thread's article.

I read the links in your #74, but they don't address the controversy.

Far as I can see the evidence of what material is there pretty much speaks for itself in refuting claims the publication attempted to present its self as being from NAS. I don't see it despite the citing of Seitz having been a "Past President, National Academy of Sciences" certainly makes no such claim. And certainly the posted article of this thread made no such claim.

The material clearly identifies itself as being under the ospices of OISM, and not NAS as detracters would have folks believe.

The Article clearly identifies itself as a review of reseach literature, not a study in itself and makes no claim or cite of having been a reprint of anything published in any journal as anything that had been published would. So the claim that it makes pretense of being published in a peer reviewed journal or anywhere for that matter is a rather lame characterisation.

In short it would appear the detractors have created a rather clever strawman to knock, more than any valid criticism of the petition or its supporting material or sponsor.

Thanks.

The PDF of the OISM article, as provided by OISM, doesn't identify OISM as the publisher. Rather, it pairs two authors with OISM, two authors with the George C. Marshall Institute, and lists no publisher.

As to format similarity with NAS, I can't comment.

It does not identify itself directly with NAS, but then its Sourcewatch detractors didn't claim that.

So the issue for me remains, did the signers of the petition think of the article as a publication of NAS, or another peer-reviewed publication?

Would they expect a past president of NAS to endorse a non-peer-reviewed article? I don't know the culture.

OISM doesn't address this point, but then again I don't know if its detractors really tackle it either.

Have the detractors sent out their own mailing to the OISM petitioners and queried them to resolve this? I don't think so.

Straw man or fast one? I don't know.

Did the authors of the OISM article attempt publication in a peer-reviewed journal? If not, why not?

The PDF of the OISM article, as provided by OISM, doesn't identify OISM as the publisher. Rather, it pairs two authors with OISM, two authors with the George C. Marshall Institute, and lists no publisher.

Which would be true of any unpublished document and is true on the website version as well.

The author names and affiliations are to be found in any article as well as publisher where applicable.

Journal papers identify the publisher for copyright and citation purposes. To be able to claim acceptance for publication by a reputable journal is something the published author as well as the publisher insist on. Not citing the publisher where there is one is a potential copyright infringement as the publisher generally has exclusive rights to publication of such documents. Citing a publisher where there isn't one would be fraudulent representation.

So the issue for me remains, did the signers of the petition think of the article as a publication of NAS, or another peer-reviewed publication?

With no letterhead or logo of the NAS identifying any of it from NAS that would be a stretch. Lacking NAS identification the though would not even occur to me.

Would they expect a past president of NAS to endorse a non-peer-reviewed article? I don't know the culture.

If the past NAS president were part of the effort setting up the petition, certainly. The article is clearly identified as a summary/review of information extracted from cited papers and is no way a study in itself. It is informative and a reference not new work.

OISM doesn't address this point, but then again I don't know if its detractors really tackle it either.

Which should they? I see no reason to.

Did the authors of the OISM article attempt publication in a peer-reviewed journal? If not, why not?

It was a summary of information from other works not a study on its own. It was an informative insert, as such, it is hardly due a place in a journal as something submitted for peer-review. The original cited works referenced are what would be reasonably be subject of such journals not the referencing of such in an informative summary.

Karl Popper might have some interesting things to say about "Global Warming Theory". Popper famously dismissed psychoanalysis as an ideology rather than a science. Global Warming is far more ideological than scientific. {Richard Feynman, in "The Feynman Lectures on Physics" compares pyschoanalysists to witch doctors, to the detriment of witch doctors.)

If you want to draw a Global Warming disciple up short ask him (or more likely, her) what observations could refute Global Warming theory. Nine times out of ten they will not have any idea of how to begin to address the question.

Global Warming Theory is not unlike most pseudoscience in that it so thoroughly fuzzy and amorphous. It's maddeningly difficult to argue with psuedoscientists because they do not accept the framework of evidence and verification.

Adherents of Global Warming Theory just know that it's true, they don't need to debate the issue. They argue ex cathedra though few of them have entered on the scientific equivalent of Holy Orders. Al Gore comes to mind as the perfect example. He has never even passed freshman physics at the local community college, probably can't even enumerate Newton's Laws, hasn't even the most elementary grasp of probability theory, statistics or analysis. None of this stops him from speaking with complete and utter confidence about things which people with 1600 SAT scores, who have studied the feild all their lives cannot be sure about.

Al Gore comes to mind as the perfect example. He has never even passed freshman physics at the local community college, probably can't even enumerate Newton's Laws, hasn't even the most elementary grasp of probability theory, statistics or analysis.

More fundamentally, no understanding of the scientific method and the critical role of skeptical test of hypothesis by multiple independent reserearchers experimenters and properly performed observations/experiments.

Consensus and group think is the antithesis of the scientific method.

The link is dated 1998.

They were "killing the messenger" by discrediting the petition's circulator which merely takes attention away from the skepticism that should always follow policy recommendations where the science isn't settled yet.

It wouldn't matter if every scientist agreed on what might happen in the future if even one dissenter proved to be right later on.

Cogitator would have us believe that we are doomed unless we act now; I say, if some of what is being forecast by the loudest among them is halfway likely, then it is already too late to stop it and we should work on living with it.

What a complete load of crap.

OISM never claimed that it had anything to do with NAS. But the point of your sad "rebuttal" is that they wrote an article that LOOKED like an NAS article.

Then it goes on to state that thousands of people who have technical training and advanced degrees in science and engineering are simply too stupid to notice the difference and were fooled by clever packaging. No mention of the substance of the article, just what it looked like!

Then it gives credibility to those who tried to hijack the petition!

You're a long standing Freeper. Don't you know how to recognize a hit piece yet???

“I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change ... no longer than a decade, at the most,”
James Hansen, NASA.

One may wonder what window of opportunity he is really concerned about:

"Regarding Russian Academy of Sciences’ astronomical observatory’s report 8/25/06:"

“On the basis of our [solar emission] research, we developed a scenario of a global cooling of the Earth’s climate by the middle of this century and the beginning of a regular 200-year-long cycle of the climate’s global warming at the start of the 22nd century,” said the head of the space research sector.

Khabibullo Abdusamatov said he and his colleagues had concluded that a period of global cooling similar to one seen in the late 17th century — when canals froze in the Netherlands and people had to leave their dwellings in Greenland — could start in 2012-2015 and reach its peak in 2055-2060."

Sunspot Activity at 8,000-Year High
Sun's Activity Increased in Past Century, Study Confirms
New Scientist - Hyperactive sun comes out in spots

ASA - Long Range Solar Forecast

And might already be showing up in falling ocean temperatures since ~2003

Sea Change in Global Warming

Al Gore comes to mind as the perfect example. He has never even passed freshman physics at the local community college, probably can't even enumerate Newton's Laws, hasn't even the most elementary grasp of probability theory, statistics or analysis. None of this stops him from speaking with complete and utter confidence about things which people with 1600 SAT scores, who have studied the feild all their lives cannot be sure about.

From Wikipedia: Gore attended the elite St. Albans School where he ranked 25th (of 51) in his senior class. In preparation for his college applications, Gore scored a 1355 on his SAT (625 in verbal and 730 in math). Al Gore's IQ scores, from tests administered at St. Albans in 1961 and 1964 (his freshman and senior years) respectively, have been recorded as 133 and 134.[9]

In 1965, Gore enrolled at Harvard College, the only university to which he applied. His roommate (in Dunster House) was actor Tommy Lee Jones. He scored in the lower fifth of the class for two years in a row [9] and, after finding himself bored with his classes in his declared English major, Gore switched majors and worked hard in his government courses and graduated from Harvard in June 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government. [9] After returning from the military he took religious studies courses at Vanderbilt University and then entered its Law School. He left Vanderbilt without a degree to run for Congress in 1976.

From Book Reviews: Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth: The Environmental Ethic versus the Big Business Ethic

"Gore’s interest in global warming derives from a chance encounter he had with pre-eminent oceanographer, Roger Revelle, in an undergraduate class at Harvard in the 1960s. After directing the Scripps Oceanographic Institution in La Jolla, California from 1950 to 1964, Revelle went to Harvard University where he served as Professor of Population Policy and Director of the Center for Population Studies. It was from Revelle, one of the great American scientists of the 20th century, that Gore learned about the study of CO2 concentrations measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. The graph on this page shows measurements from Mauna Loa which document the increase of atmospheric CO2 in a continuous pattern since 1957. Revelle had showed Gore this trend after only eight years of measurements. Gore uses this graph in his documentary as primary evidence of the increased “greenhouse” effect caused by increase in CO2.

I doubt that a class Roger Revelle was involved with was Elementary Basketweaving -- especially at Harvard.

Cogitator would have us believe that we are doomed unless we act now; I say, if some of what is being forecast by the loudest among them is halfway likely, then it is already too late to stop it and we should work on living with it.

Cogitator would prefer that people don't mischaracterize his actual positions. Cogitator believes:

1. Anthropogenic global warming is occurring.

2. The future course of AGW scenarios range from annoying to seriously disrupting global civilization. The likely mid-range constitutes significant climate changes, ecological shifts, and reduction of global economic strength.

3. According to the experts, the trajectory of AGW can still be changed, but the window for effective action closes in 10-15 years.

4. Another decade will both confirm the warming trend and allow better predictions of the future course.

5. The best way to deal with AGW is to embark on a restructuring of the national and global energy production systems. This is also prudently necessitated by national security and economic concerns. All useful alternate energy technologies should be considered and the best (based on cost-benefit analysis) pushed toward wider implementation.

6. Emissions controls are unlikely to be effective because of economic/population pressure requiring increasing amounts of energy. Restricting a nation's economic growth is counterproductive, and for developing countries causes human hardship and environmental damage.

7. While it is too late to "stop" AGW, it's not too late to make plans to reduce its impact, particularly if increasingly skillful model predictions indicate an increased likelihood of deleterious or dangerous climate change.

What if a letter of a similar nature had been written to the chairmen of major tobacco companies about 30-40 years ago, asking them to cease funding of "agents" (for lack of a better term) that kept putting out information questioning the link between smoking and cancer (which was not "proven" at the time)? Would you have objected to that?

Absolutely. Let the senators combat rhetoric with better rhetoric in the battle for public opinion. (Although in the case of tobacco, I hesitate to endorse any Congressional intervention at all).

If they have to threaten government action to "win" an argument, they've already lost. Or rather, we all lose in the general dumbing down.

If AGW constitutes a serious enough threat to the general welfare, Congress should act. But it doesn't need censorship to aid its deliberations.

OISM never claimed that it had anything to do with NAS. But the point of your sad "rebuttal" is that they wrote an article that LOOKED like an NAS article.

That's only part of it. It looked sufficiently like PNAS style (and it was associated in a letter with NAS because the letter was authored by a past NAS President) that NAS felt it necessary to disavow any possible mis-association.

Furthermore, the number "17,000" signers has been repeated over and over and over and over ... and over and over... and over and over... again by skeptical sources as something significant, skeptics who frequently don't note the lack of QC on who signed. As clearly noted, very few of the signers had any indication of expertise to judge the issue on scientific merit. Thus, they may have felt the accompanying article was authoritative, rather than a skewed view of the issue (which it undeniably is).

The Petition itself also cleverly conflates opposition to the Kyoto Protocol (I would have signed that!) with uncertainties about the scientific understanding of climate change (and with the use of "catastrophic" also grabs a few people who might otherwise admit that something is certaintly happening). So to quote the "17,000" number as an entire group uncertain about the science of global warming is erroneous in the extreme. A lot of the signers may have just read the first paragraph and signed it.

THOSE are the main reasons I have a problem with the OISM petition and any op-ed that quotes it as a resource.

So then you are just another member of the peanut gallery like the rest of us?

If I told you I had an IQ of 180 and six Ph.Ds in biochemistry, meteorology, chemistry, particle physics, volcanology, and skateboarding, would that make what I say about global warming be any more accurate? (I think I read once that the argument from authority is always fallacious.)

I think I have a good intellect and a reasonable grasp of science. I know enough about science to understand scientific issues, but I bail on advanced mathematics. Unlike Gore, my verbal SAT score was about 100 points higher than my math.

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