--- Mario Goveia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Which is why I did not ask Helga and Joachim to >evaluate the personal opinions on climate change of >political bloggers and web masters. >
Helga and Joaquim were asked to do something even worse - to take a $150,000 challenge offered by some non-scientific website (http://www.ultimateglobalwarmingchallenge.com/) to prove that global warming is due to human activities. This challenge is not being offered by any scientist or any genuine scientific organization. What should one call such tactics? As I had said earlier, such tactics are also being adopted by HIV/AIDS denialists. They also have a small band of scientists supporting their cause e.g. Peter Duesberg and Nobel laureate Kary Mullis who have written many articles in the popular press about their denial of HIV/AIDS. As a matter of fact, on another front the creationist Kent Hovind is offering $250,000 for anyone who can prove the theory of evolution. So far, there are no takers there, as well. Most reasonable people know that if scientists have a legitimate challenge or criticism against any scientific idea or finding, they publish it in a peer-reviewed journal. They do not publish it in newspaper Op-Eds, private websites, signed petitions and political propaganda literature. Helga or Joaquim will correct me if I am mistaken about this. But in my assessment, none of the scientists who have offered skeptical comments on global warming in Op-Eds, news items, etc., circulated in this forum and elsewhere, have published any well-supported argument in any high profile peer-reviewed scientific journal, against, for instance, the latest IPCC consensus statement about climate change and its effects. Write-ups about the IPCC statement were published in SCIENCE, one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world. Nobody laughed at it. In fact, none of the climate change skeptics have published any original research data of their own disputing the findings of scientists who have concluded that anthropogenic climate change is taking place, and is already showing detrimental effects. John Christy and Roy Spencer had to recently offer corrections to a small discrepancy that they thought they had found several years ago. Cheers, Santosh --- Mario Goveia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Instead, I asked them to evaluate for the rest of us > reports of the strange methodology being used by the > IPCC to develop their reports, a methodology that > would be laughed off campus at any respectable > institution of higher learning; as well as articles > authored by some of the top climate scientists in > their field, like Dr. John Christy, Dr. Richard > Lindzen and Dr. David Archibald, who included a > detailed pdf file of his professional opinion that > we need MORE CO2, not less, to make it easier for his > critics to review. >