The issue is process and credibility, mhaze.

What people are objecting to isn't that a report exists, or that it challenges parts of the mainstream literature. It's how this report came into existence and how it was presented.

A hand-picked panel of five long-standing contrarians, convened in secret, with no public meetings, no transparent record, and no exposure to adversarial review, is not how serious scientific assessment is done. That's not "following the data", that's curating a conclusion and then publishing it under the authority of a government department.

If the report is as solid as you think it is, it wouldn’t need to be insulated from scrutiny. Strong claims survive being picked over in public, argued about in journals, and tested against competing work. That didn’t happen here. The process was opaque by design, which is exactly why a judge stepped in.

And “look at the data” doesn’t settle anything on its own. Data still have to be chosen, interpreted and put in context. You can use perfectly real datasets and still end up with a skewed conclusion by focusing on what suits the argument, glossing over inconvenient uncertainties, or treating minority interpretations as if they’re mainstream.

No one is saying dissent is forbidden. Science advances by disagreement. But disagreement earns credibility through transparency and exposure, not secrecy and authority laundering.

If this report really overturns decades of climate science, the way to demonstrate that isn't to sneer about hysteria. It's to let it stand up, openly, against the rest of the field. So far, the authors and the Department chose the opposite. And that tells us far more than the rhetorical "just look at the data" ever could.

Your contribution has accomplished nothing.

and still no attempt to look at the actual data.

Of course, that's what we'd expect, disappointing as it may be.

But the notion that all this should have been vetted in public prior to publishing is pretty funny. How many government reports have been published without prior public scrutiny? The way this works is that the report is published and then the critiques can evolve. Except it seems when the report challenges the one true faith. Then it must euthanised in utero.

mhaze,

You keep saying "look at the data", but you haven't pointed to a single finding in the report you think overturns the mainstream assessments.

Not one.

More importantly, you're mischaracterising the objection. No one is saying "government reports must be vetted by the public before publication". That's a strawman.

The issue here is that this wasn't a normal assessment process at all. It was a small, hand-picked group assembled in secret, with no open meetings, no transparent record, and no exposure to adversarial review, then published under departmental authority as if it reflected the state of the field. A federal judge didn't invent that concern. He ruled on it.

And yes, reports are often published before critique. The difference is that legitimate assessments don't go out of their way to avoid scrutiny during their construction. They don't treat transparency as a threat. They don't need to.

If you think this report stands on its merits, then great. Pick a concrete claim from it and explain why it outweighs the broader literature. Climate sensitivity, extreme events, attribution, whatever you like. But repeating "look at the data" while avoiding specifics isn't analysis, and it doesn't magically shift the burden onto everyone else.

And for the record, calling this "the one true faith" is just another way of dodging the same point. Science isn't protected by orthodoxy. It's protected by process. This report failed that test, which is why we're even having this discussion.

"but you haven't pointed to a single finding in the report you think overturns the mainstream assessments."

I didn't say there was one. Accepted shibboleths don't get overturned by one paper. It takes time.

But what is really happening here is that the gatekeepers of the faith are upset that the gates are being broken down as the hoax unravels.

Its glorious to watch.

Still no attempts to address the data, just assertions that it should be suppressed.

mhaze,

You posted the report, accused others of refusing to "look at the data", and framed it as something that seriously troubles the mainstream view.

When asked what specific finding you think warrants that confidence, you said there isn't one, and shifted to talk of "gatekeepers", "faith", and a "hoax unravelling".

That isn't disagreement over data. It's a substitution of narrative for analysis.

If you want engagement on the substance, point to a concrete claim in the report and explain why it should outweigh the broader literature. If you don't, then accusing others of avoiding "the data" doesn't make sense.

It's clear now that you're just making this up as you go.

"accused others of refusing to "look at the data",

Not an accusation... an observation.

"framed it as something that seriously troubles the mainstream view."

No that was you trying to misrepresent what I said.

The data in the report isn't new or even unsurprising to those with the will and the wit to look at data other than the approved versions. What vexes the people that you call 'mainstream' ( a give-away if ever there was one) is that the data was issued in a format and forum that made it more accessible in the face of strenuous efforts to suppress it.