Comments on: Take the Global Warming Taste Test

By: Dano

Dano — Mon, 09 May 2005 14:53:44 +0000

Eudoxis, in order to limit distractions, I should have said:

I searched ISI on anthopogenic climate change, got more hits than you say, and browsing thru the results, I’d say the proportion is not as you allege. Perhaps you can clarify what you mean with examples .

How’s that?

Best,

By: eudoxis

eudoxis — Mon, 09 May 2005 03:04:53 +0000

Eudoxis, I searched ISI as you say. I got more hits than you did. Oreskes is not explicit about her search criteria, so we are left to guess. This highlights a problem with her essay. I searched the SCI database within the Web of Science using keywords without boolean operators. That, by the way is almost restrictive enough to generate a sufficiently small number of hits to come close to the 928 used by Oreskes, I get 1113 articles. Further tweaking might yield 928, questionably representative of the tens of thousands of papers published in the subject area of global warming.

By: bi

bi — Sun, 08 May 2005 11:24:25 +0000

Nudnik: Excuse me? First you cast aspersions on people who agree that global warming is a problem, then you cry foul when others cast aspersions on people who think global warming isn’t a problem?

By: Stentor

Stentor — Sat, 07 May 2005 15:17:17 +0000

Abstratct #25 is a real “WTF?” How do you take an article whose argument is that climate scientists overemphasize the uncertainty in their field, and construe it as casting doubt on the field’s findings?

By: Dano

Dano — Fri, 06 May 2005 22:21:49 +0000

Eudoxis, I searched ISI as you say. I got more hits than you did. Browsing thru the results, I’d say the proportion is not as you allege. Perhaps you can clarify what you mean with examples.

Best,

By: jbonik

jbonik — Fri, 06 May 2005 19:35:32 +0000

Here’s all I could dig up relating to oil money. He did contribute to a book published by the right wing think tank called (ominously) Internation Policy Network (IPN). The book was called “Adapt or Die: The science, politics and economics of climate change”.

IPN has gotten 50k from ExxonMobil in 2003 for “Climate Change Outreach”. Reference : here. The info on the payment to IPN is in in this pdf, under Public Information and Policy Research.

By: Michael Tobis

Michael Tobis — Fri, 06 May 2005 18:49:19 +0000

Re # 20:

This is to me the single most exasperating attitude of the skeptics’ camp. I can take the rest of it but this one infallibly angers me, because it is exactly the opposite of the truth.

The actual incentive for scientists is to claim “more research is needed” rather than to say “look, there’s lots of useful science to do, but we already know that for policy purposes for the foreseeable future, less CO2 is better policy”.

If scientists are nevertheless acting against their personal interest in this matter, they may be doing so out of a sense that they are morally constrained to do so.

By: Nudnik

Nudnik — Fri, 06 May 2005 16:21:28 +0000

It seems completely intellectually vapid to attribute any opposition to the anthropogenic climate change theory to being “employed by oil companies”. It is not like those pushing the “global warming” theory don’t have anything to gain from it. There are billions of dollars going into this research. Clearly there is an incentive to make it seem as bad as possible in order to keep getting grants for more research, etc.

By: Brian S.

Brian S. — Fri, 06 May 2005 15:51:11 +0000

Eudoxis, do you care to match Peiser and post any of the abstracts that you say “directly challenge the consensus view”?

By: nofundy

nofundy — Fri, 06 May 2005 15:16:06 +0000

If Peiser is not currently employed by the oil companies or their front organizations, he soon will be.

By: eudoxis

eudoxis — Fri, 06 May 2005 15:06:59 +0000

Sorry eudoxis, but that survey of climate scientists is useless. Perhaps that survey suffers from a selection problem in the same way Oreskes’ does. I still recommend the readers do an ISI search on keywords including anthropogenic climate change. Some of the articles are clearly revealing.

What bothers me, in general, about these types of discussions (I know this is somewhat tangental to the original post) is the implication that a particular policy viewpoint is indicative of underlying scientific support. Yet, policy proposals rest on assumptions about our ability to change what are widely varied estimations of actual effects of anthropogenic contributions while possibilities for such change does not enjoy any extensive scientific support. What ends up happening is that the discussion revolves around mostly settled issues, ie the earth is warming (or perhaps cooling) and humans are a major contributing cause, simply because the next question of what should be done about it is not really at the stage where any scientific consensus has emerged.

By: Cryptic Ned

Cryptic Ned — Fri, 06 May 2005 14:48:19 +0000

Wow, Tim Lambert, that’s very interesting. Even more interesting is that ALDaily used the “less than 10%” as their hook for linking to the Telegraph article, along with a snide aside about how Science and Nature would never report such politically incorrect results.

By: Tim Lambert

Tim Lambert — Fri, 06 May 2005 14:38:30 +0000

Sorry eudoxis, but that survey of climate scientists is useless. The URL was posted to the climatesceptics list and anyone could participate, not just climate scientists. Details here.

By: eudoxis

eudoxis — Fri, 06 May 2005 14:31:57 +0000

An ISI database search using key words “global climate change” would yield the same references whether Peiser or Oreskes performs the search. Oreskes states she rejected papers that were “not about climate change”. Presumably, then, the abstracts Peiser uses to support his point were used by Oreskes as well. Still, Peiser doesn’t contradict the claim of a consensus, even if Oreskes’ essay reads along the lines of “4 out of 5 leading dentists surveyed don’t disagree that this toothpaste likely prevents cavities”. There are literally thousands of articles in the ISI that discuss climate change (7706 hits for the last 5 years alone). A quick search using “anthopogenic climate change” yields 84 articles and include some that directly challenge the consensus view (check for yourself), most along the lines of distrust of key findings of forcing in the climate models and swamping of human causes by other natural causes. Oreskes’ news essay is a bit sloppy. However, the statement by the IPCC rests directly on several key findings that point to human involvement and those findings have not been adequately challenged. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t any researchers who try or researchers who strongly disagree with the consensus statement. (See survey here where 9.7% of climate scientists strongly disagree that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes.) It’s questionable, however, whether a coherent policy implication can arise from either those key findings or the consensus view, which so broad it’s rather meaningless.

By: Keith

Keith — Fri, 06 May 2005 14:02:25 +0000

Nudnik, the last time a majority of scientists were in agreement like this was when Darwin published his findings. There were dissenters but they were all Lemamrkians or Theists, analogous to the Scientists employed by oil companies and Free Market Worshippers who challenge Global Warming claims today.