The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Communicating science > Comments

Communicating science : Comments

By Keith Suter, published 17/3/2010

Scientists do science, not PR: we need to find more innovative ways of communicating science to the general public.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. ...
  6. 11
  7. 12
  8. 13
  9. Page 14
  10. 15
  11. 16
  12. All
Geoff

I should have been more specific. When I say “green hardliners”, I mean the ‘dark greens’ as described by Alex Steffen here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_green_environmentalism#Dark_greens.2C_light_greens_and_bright_greens

Anthony Watts, the once-upon-a-time US television weatherman who morphed into an expert ‘climate scientist’ through his popular denialosphere blog

http://wattsupwiththat.com/

has no credentials in any of the ‘climate sciences’.
Posted by qanda, Wednesday, 24 March 2010 4:24:51 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Don

Re: “climatology credentials” – I should have been clearer; I am referring to those that study ‘contemporary’ climate (what we have been measuring and observing since say the industrial revolution) utilising data sets from traditional instruments, satellite, radiosonde, Argo buoy records, etc. I am not including geologists or marine stratigraphers (for example) who infer climate going back thousands or millions of years. I do include atmospheric physicists/chemists, oceanographers, etc. The problem with inferring climate from the geologic record is that of scale – a one percent error could mean 100,000 years or more. Knowing what the planet’s climate was like even 1000 years ago is open to interpretation, you know this. That is why I put more stock in what we can measure and observe in the anthropocene.

This is a Wiki list of ‘climatologists’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Climatologists

Another for ‘climate scientists’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_climate_scientists

This is a list of those who contributed to AR4: The Physical Science Basis (WG1)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authors_from_Climate_Change_2007:_The_Physical_Science_Basis

Bob Carter is nowhere to be seen.

I think both you and Geoff are getting bogged down in models. It must be understood by the most ardent of sceptics that when conducting time series analysis of a complex, dynamic system, the ‘signal’ must be distinguished from the ‘noise’ (with a high degree of confidence) before you can say a trend is occurring – indeed, this is what has been happening. And yes, natural variations can ‘mask’ the signal. Don, of course outliers must be explained – and time often allows this to be done.

At the end of the day, we have the technology to measure the radiative balance of the planet very accurately – if you take out the human induced climate forcings, no other natural forcing can explain the warming trend that we have been experiencing. Further, it is no use blaming the global warming we have been experiencing on an unknown natural forcing – that does not mean we should stop looking for one.
Aside: Perhaps Leo, Odo & Co can join Roy Spencer as his research assistants - they might learn something useful.
Posted by qanda, Wednesday, 24 March 2010 4:31:22 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
quandar - "Further, it is no use blaming the global warming we have been experiencing on an unknown natural forcing – that does not mean we should stop looking for one."

Don't worry, when our climate science matures further, we may understand how things work a little better, well better than we obviously do now.

Has so much money ever been spent before on a single area of science? Without a result which I know you would all love to see(CO2 causes temperature rise)

Without being able to say for sure, what is causing additional warming, if indeed there is any, (it may just be an artifact of all the "grooming" of data.)

I'm surprised you haven't heard of Anthony Watts, he started a campaign to look at all the weather reporting sites in the USA, and what condition they are in and whether they actually meet the standards they are meant to - makes for an interesting read - then if you think about how various groups then "groom" data from these sites which are clearly dodgy, you end up being quite skeptical ..

I don't think Anthony pretends to be a scientist, please don't slander the man for doing research, that is, checking the source of data that others use without questioning and then adjust or remove from their work completely if it doesn't fit.

All of climate science should thank this man for the fine job he is doing, not castigating him.
Posted by rpg, Wednesday, 24 March 2010 6:51:15 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
This is oh so tedious, but ...

rpg, what makes you think I haven't heard of WUWT?
FYI, I've been following his blog from its inception.

For WATT's it worth, I keep a breast of things, even from opposing streams - THAT'S WHAT REAL SCEPTICS DO, get it?

Given your comments, I doubt very much you do the same.

Btw, here's an expose of 'Dr Watts' - oops, strike that - Mr Watts,

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/message-to-anthony-watts/

Of course, D'Aleo and the SPPI is the 'home' of that other respected peer, the 'Lord' Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount of Brenchley, recently doing a road trip around Oz with his local cohort, the author of Heaven and Earth, mining geologist Ian Plimer - hoodagest?

What really gets up my nostrils is that a supposedly 'real' scientist like Roy Spencer publishes a paper on Watt's site BEFORE he even submits it to a real peer reviewed journal! Watt's he afraid of?

It seems to me, any rational arm-chair scientist should question the veracity of the 'paper' ... but they don't - why is that?

Then they have the audacity to suggest that the IPCC don't communicate science very well ... simply astounding!
Posted by qanda, Wednesday, 24 March 2010 8:40:06 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Oh yeah, it's qanda (as in Q&A) ... not quandar.
Posted by qanda, Wednesday, 24 March 2010 8:41:47 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Leo Lane - well you can try to lay "corruption" on me, I wish you luck. I have never had a climate research grant, never had any money or other benefit from writing about climate, don't owe the field anything and it owes nothing to me. I didn't even get much grant money for my day job, the deep interior of the Earth, though my work is very well regarded overseas. In fact my career wasn't done any good by my pushing minority views my bosses didn't like, though I was ultimately vindicated. So don't whine to me about a great corrupt conspiracy to keep sceptics' views from being published. Let them get in there and do the hard work of persuasion.

odo- OK, whether they're your heroes or not, do you claim they don't advocate policy? And according to your standard, if a person examined a lot of science and concluded humans are degrading the Earth's environment, to our detriment, and should stop doing so, then they automatically become disqualified from commenting on anything because that makes them an evangelist and incapable of rationality.

And if you think humans can't affect the planet, have a look at the April Scientific American. Hardly a wicked climate scientist among them, but they still reckon we're dangerously stuffing up biodiversity, the nitrogen cycle, the phosphorus cycle, the climate, the land, ocean acidity, fresh water and the ozone layer. Yes, humans are arrogant to think they can affect the planet, and indeed it's our arrogance that's getting us into these messes. They are also arrogant who reckon they know better than all the world's natural scientists.
Posted by Geoff Davies, Wednesday, 24 March 2010 10:09:04 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. ...
  6. 11
  7. 12
  8. 13
  9. Page 14
  10. 15
  11. 16
  12. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy