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from the climate-change-simply-happens dept.
Papas Fritas writes "Patrick Michaels writes in Forbes that atmospheric physicist Garth Paltridge has laid out several well-known uncertainties in climate forecasting including our inability to properly simulate clouds that are anything like what we see in the real world, the embarrassing lack of average surface warming now in its 17th year, and the fumbling (and contradictory) attempts to explain it away. According to Paltridge, an emeritus professor at the University of Tasmania and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, virtually all scientists directly involved in climate prediction are aware of the enormous uncertainties associated with their product. How then is it that those of them involved in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can put their hands on their hearts and maintain there is a 95 per cent probability that human emissions of carbon dioxide have caused most of the global warming that has occurred over the last several decades? In short, there is more than enough uncertainty about the forecasting of climate to allow normal human beings to be at least reasonably hopeful that global warming might not be nearly as bad as is currently touted.
Climate scientists, and indeed scientists in general, are not so lucky. They have a lot to lose if time should prove them wrong. "In the light of all this, we have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem-or, what is much the same thing, of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem-in its effort to promote the cause," writes Paltridge. "It is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis of society's respect for scientific endeavor.""
(Score: 5, Insightful) by L.M.T. Spoon on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:56PM
I get really annoyed when people associate science with statements like "they have a lot to lose if time should prove them wrong" and that scientists "put their hands over their hearts and swear..." [from the last link the summary]. Climate debate is one thing, but it is incredibly unfortunate that science in the public mind is increasingly seen as a fanatical quest for certainty.
As many of us, hopefully, understand: hypotheses are disproven, not proven correct, but may be accepted when they are sufficiently replicable. And a scientist, as a scientist, has a lot to lose if data is falsified, not if the theory is eventually disproven. For, generally, past theories are stepping stones to modernity and progress. Of course if a scientist never gets any verifiable or consistent results, that scientist will be eventually out of a job, but that is the same question as in any profession.
Do not falsify your data and keep looking.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Thursday February 20 2014, @02:02PM
I was tempted to post something snarky about how how a scientist has a lot more to lose if he fails to impress journal editors, but then it hit me. It's probably always been hard to do a job with integrity, whether that job is science or law or software development.
Fight the good fight.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.