"Viking13: 1. Try IPCC 4 Vol1 chap 8 on the computer models www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm 2. What would you take as evidence that warming is anthropogenic? 3. IPCC 4 Vol1 Chaps 3, 4 and 6 deal with evidence of warming."

Given that the IPCC is discredited, and there is little evidence of sustained warming, why would I be silly enough to believe that any slight warming MIGHT be attributible to anthopogenic sources? As for AGW models, I have no trust in them whatsoever. As I said, I've been watching 4 day rainfall models over the past few months, falling over badly. Given that long-term models depend on a large number of factors, just as 4 day rainfall models do, the error 100 years out would be astronomical.

Thanks Bonmot. I'll have a look at it when I have some time.

Michael I have no idea why JonJ didn't give it, nor why Bonmot gave me a different one to the one you referenced, but I now have the data and I'll have a look at it. It's the only way to deal with this issue, and when you do you find that the IPCC reports are not particularly reliable.

Some of the blog sites around are even worse.

You also find that the land-based temperature measurements aren't the best either from a data collection and analysis point of view, which is why I prefer the satellite measurements.

I disagree with you on peer review. Facts speak for themselves. The peer review process has outlived its usefulness in its present form. It's not enforcing rigour so much as conformity in the climate debate, and maybe in lots of other areas as well.

I've peer reviewed. Not on climate change, but in new media. It's not a process that determines whether something is right, just whether you think it has enough merit to be published.

It is also slowing the process up. The Internet gives us the opportunity for an open publishing process and would lead to fewer mistakes being made.

If the peer review process wasn't so cumbersome the Mann Hockey Stick graph would have been debunked long before it was and at the very least saved the IPCC an embarrassing front cover.

viking13 Do I take it from this that no evidence would persuade you that the AGW hypothesis is true? If so, it follows that for you the falsity of AGW is an unfalsifiable proposition - that is to say, that it is an article of faith not a claim based on evidence. Thats's fine - lots of people have faith in lots of things - just don't confuse it with science. (See Karl Popper The Logic of Scientific Discovery for the importance of falsifiability as a way of demarcating science from non-science.)

Graham Y No process determines what is right. That is why science is never certain. Peer review weeds out arguments which are susceptible to obvious criticisms, especially that the proposed addition to science has not taken account of material already published. That is its value. Once published, arguments survive or fail depending on the criticism they receive. On the NZ temperature data, I gave the summary of the results of the revision and I think bonmot has given you the raw data. As s/he says, Merry Christmas and happy plotting.

I should have noted Michael is that another problem with peer review is that people use it as a proxy for truth in situations where they either don't have the intellectual tools to understand an issue themselves, or where they think they are talking to someone who doesn't.

But there is research around to show that most papers published in peer-reviewed journals are wrong. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7915--most-scientific-papers-are-probably-wrong.html. Mind you it is itself peer-reviewed so one is presented with a species of the Cretan paradox!

So in and of itself peer review means very little.

And we also know from the Climategate emails that it is possible to stop even deserving papers being published in particular journals, and then, when they are published in other journals you can't influence you stigmatise those as being a lesser variety of peer review.

As I said, I think we need to move away from the whole process as it occurs at the moment.

Wikireview would work much better.

1.Scientists of the calibre of the IPCC lead authors would be funded for research and travel whichever field they were in; and thus their personal interest does not explain their working on global warming.

“…would be funded”?

By voluntary means? Good! Let them go into those fields, and a) their works be funded by people who willingly pay for them, not those coerced into paying for them against their will, and b) where they can measure their success in some other way than by hitching their wagon to the star of endless governmental intervention.

But if you mean funded by government, scientists have no other route for advancement than to further the ends of their political masters; and rationality requires some other method of falsification than to rely on government-funded science as you have done.

This is a known phenomenon in social science – government-funded functionaries alleging the need of supposed crises requiring massive governmental regulations, with the resulting interventions being worse than the original problem e.g.
• military/industrial complex
• in the medical field
• in animal health, Ovine johnes disease,
• in agriculture, introduction of cane toads, African lovegrass, Bitou bush, etc.

2. References to proofs that the science is dodgy?

What sort of proof will you accept?

3.You are right that the science does not dictate what the political or economic response should be.

Thank you. This shows the existence, not the conclusion, of all the normative issues that the advocates of policy contend are concluded, when they assert that the positive science proves that “we” should ever vest more power in government.

The argument is that, even if all the positive science were conceded, which it’s not, the policy advocates have not even begun to address, or even apparently to cognise, the issue whether government can provide a better than worse outcome, all things considered, and how one would know and demonstrate that.

But perhaps you will have a go at honestly trying to answer each of the questions of social science I have asked PeterA above?