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The Forum > Article Comments > The IPCC needs to change, but the science remains sound > Comments

The IPCC needs to change, but the science remains sound : Comments

By Robert Watson, published 3/3/2010

A few errors by the IPCC doesn't mean climate change is an illusion or that CO2 emissions don't need to be cut.

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baygon, I'm not skeptical of climate change I'm skeptical about our involvement in it and if there is any involvement if it is all due to CO2 emissions.

I'm skeptical about how governments taxing the bejesus out of us, to redistribute to countries who can't get above basic corruption levels, is going to help at all.

I'm skeptical about scientists who in Australia will benefit from $800M in funding this year, Big Green eh, Big Oil doesn't even get mentioned anymore does it - as they say, follow the money to find the motive, and motive there is to get on the "climate change" gravy train. (rarely is it given the full title, AGW, so many like you, it seems think a skeptic of AGW is also a skeptic of CC - they are not, but I suspect you know that)

I'm skeptical about pouring money into schemes for developing energy that are just set up to take money from the government, thermal rocks for instance.

I'm skeptical about hysterical ranters who haunt these pages clapping together whenever anyone forecasts doom, so they can get on the bandwagon and preach their pet fantasy for an emissions free world.

I'm skeptical of people who want to end CO2 emissions but don't want Nuclear, which is CO2 free by the way, it has its own problems but if the CO2 is so bad, then everything else must pale into insignificance, since it is CO2 that's going to cause "mass extinction" isn't it?

But as I said, I'm NOT skeptical that the climate changes .. OK? Always has, always will, whether we were here or not, it would change.
Posted by rpg, Saturday, 6 March 2010 6:43:09 PM
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Jedimaster, so you think reason went into decline around the time Star Wars came out and global warming hysteria started? Interesting. No wonder quancka relates to you.
Posted by whitmus, Saturday, 6 March 2010 9:01:36 PM
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Now, now, Whitmus! Your language is just giving me more data points for my hypothesis.

But you raise an interesting question about dates. The issue at hand is "Institutions of Reason". When one thinks about it- as science has been perceived as being the pinnacle of reason,its major institutions have been considered analogous to churches (in fact western universities were modeled on the church). The Enlightenment scientific establishments, such as the Royal Society,were a loose collection of gentleman scholars, not fully-fledged social institutions.

It was really only after WWII that large scale institutional science really took off, trading on the success of Project Manhattan. It soon became the Military/Industrial/Science institution, with Project Apollo its great achievement in 1969.

Along with many others, my own aspirations to a career as a NASA-funded physicist were aborted when NASA's budget was more than halved in 3 years in the early '70s, cutting out all the peripheral and esoteric curiosity-driven post-doc stuff that makes for powerful free enquiry.

Thereafter, science was pretty well reigned in- the '70s saw some of these erstwhile rocket scientists go into solar energy and environmental developments under Carter (including moi), until Reagan nuked the energy budget and boosted funding for "Star Wars" (the Strategic Defence Initiative).

Since then, it has been all down-hill for free-enquiry science that might give rise to difficult social questions- sure, science funding has grown, but on a tight commercial leash. I feel partly responsible for that, having managed the funding for dozens of "Centres of Excellence in Industry Focused Research" and Cooperative Research Centres in the '90s and early '00s.

So the IPCC and the research groups that feed it, could be seen as the first major demonstration of institutional science becoming a significant social force- venturing into predictions about unpleasant futures based on human behaviour- traditionally the province of the church. And, of course, in strict Islam, the future is strictly up to the will of Allah.

So there- the date was 1969. It did involve rocket science, but Luke Skywalker was still just a glint in George Lucas' eye.
Posted by Jedimaster, Sunday, 7 March 2010 2:25:26 PM
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Jedimaster, thaks for the insight.

With that background I can now understand, why you can't bear to let yourself believe that the CRU, IPCC, & the others could ever behave as they are now proven to have beaved. It must be painful for you even to contemplate.

However, it is time to take off those rose glasses mate, & see the facts. They have behaved this way, & there is only one possible reason. They were watching their world fall apart, as their theory failed.

Instead of trying to sustain the hoax, become part of the solution.
Posted by Hasbeen, Sunday, 7 March 2010 3:16:22 PM
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hasbeen - agreed, JediMaster's rants are becoming increasingly desperate and defensive.

Maybe he's in denial? He's certainly got anger, what next?
Posted by rpg, Sunday, 7 March 2010 4:14:11 PM
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Hasbeen
..and your comments add more data points to support my hypothesis that the anti-AGWs follow the 7-point-drill I described in http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10116, based on conjuring up sin and scandal then bait-and-switching it into allegations of crime (a la Monckton's "crimes against humanity").

I never said that these institutions or their members were, or are anything more than a bunch of people with a common view- in this case the common view that reason is preferred to slavish adherence to received superstition and claims to magic. These people brought you most of what makes modern life possible- without any Inquisitions or Jihads.

I liken science to ant coloniess, that are capable of finding the shortest path from a food source to the nest without using visual cues. No one ant is capable of knowing the whole picture, but they are driven by a simple principle: follow the strongest pheromone trail deposited by the ants in front. Their path starts rather randomly, but becomes straighter and straighter, based on this simple principle. (http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mdorigo/ACO/RealAnts.html) Some ants undoubtedly wander off, but collectively, they are ruthlessly efficient.

Similarly, scientific "food" is empirically-based, reasoned explanations and predictions; their "pheromone" is Occam's razor- the shortest explanation is the best. Like ants, Some of them wander off track, but the inexorable forces of their collective drive for their "food" with their potent "pheromone" means that the most efficient explanations and predictions ultimately prevail.

CRU is just one of many scientific ant-heaps. The IPCC is the biggest ant-heap in the climatology world. Occasional ditherings by individuals or even groups of scientists don't change the basic premise that collective action by scientists is more likely to help us out of our present problems than the Vatican, Mecca or wherever the neocons and other fundamentalists get their instructions.

Well, we've seen the shovels of media-driven dirt thrown at the IPCC ant-heap. A few lead ants have had their antennae knocked off. I'm wondering what the next move on science might be- what kind of metaphorical Antex will be used? Perhaps Baygon knows?
Posted by Jedimaster, Sunday, 7 March 2010 4:21:16 PM
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