Robert A. Rohde wrote: > Eric Swanson wrote: > > Robert A. Rohde wrote: > > > Eric Swanson wrote: > > > > As a matter of curiosity, would you identify the "paleoclimate > > > > researcher" you mentioned in your post?? > > > > > > Sorry, no. He's a closet skeptic that I've closely interacted with in > > > the past, but not someone that is publicly known for a skeptical view. > > > Out of respect for his privacy, I am not going to identify him here. > > > > Sorry, but most scientists are skeptics by nature. A good scientist > > must ALWAYS be ready to question the accepted explanations, else how > > could he/she ever come up with new and different ideas and theories? > > Since you won't give a name, would you give a summary of his > > reasoning? > > There is a difference between being sensibly skeptical about new > research and unexpected claims and stubbornly disputing > well-established research and broady accepted claims. There are > situations where the second kind of skepticism can be useful to science > too (e.g. Einstein, Pasteur), but more often than not such attitudes > are unproductive for the researcher who holds them. >
Actually the lines of inquiry implied by your skeptic should be quite productive: > The individual who I am talking about basically believes a) that > climate modelling is too simplified and tuned to be useful, You should be able to get a major publication out of that one, by studying the characteristics of the models. > b) that > most of what gets published in the climate literature is dodgy and > shouldn't stand up to scrutiny, Well then, scutinize them. > and c) the climate is basically too > complicated for us to predict. Discover the real factor(s) that are making the measurements appear to track the model predictions. > Of course, armchair skepticism is unproductive regardless of its content, if you are not even willing to even reach out of your armchair and touch a keyboard (which is all it takes to study the models after all.) > Obviously if one is going to take those positions, it is not hard to > see that such a person might say that anthropogenic global warming > hasn't been established and even if it does exist we don't know what it > means for the future. > > Incidentally, I agree with him that there is a lot of garbage in the > climate science literature, but that doesn't stop climate models from > being useful, or negate basic points like increasing greenhouse gases > can be expected to lead to more warming. > > -Robert > http://www.globalwarmingart.com/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
