The Climate of Opinion Around Climate Science II
Lance on Feb 06 2007 at 5:30 am | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, Lance's Page, Media
As a follow up to my earlier post I suggest going to see Jonathan Adler’s own follow up.
First he discusses the Washington Posts coverage. He notes one more interesting point, Schroeder explicitly denies he turned the AEI down because he believed they would have “skewed his results”:
Schroeder, who has worked with Green in the past and has questioned some aspects of traditional climate modeling, said in an interview that he did not think AEI would have skewed his results. But he added that he worried his contribution might have been published alongside “off-the-wall ideas” questioning the existence of global warming.
“We worried our work could be misused even if we produced a reasonable report,” Schroeder said. “While any human endeavor can be criticized, the IPCC system greatly exceeds the cooperation, openness and scientific rigorousness of the process applied to any other problem area that has significant effects on society.”
He also points out something which many of the critics of AEI have ignored (emphasis mine):
The Greenpeace complaint ultimately amounts to nothing more than opposition to critical perspectives on the need for the sort of climate policies Greenpeace supports. Whether or not one likes AEI’s work on climate change — some of which has endorsed carbon taxes and other serious measures — this is hardly a substantive argument that AEI did anything unseemly.
He follows the post up with another one discussing the types of ad hominem attacks, and their justification, that Mattthew Yglesias was using which I discussed in my first post. I think he makes some useful distinctions that I suggest you read in full.
Technorati Tags: Global warming, Climate, American Enterprise Institute
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This climate change modeling is anything but open.
Modelers do not publish their models.
BTW Where should the thermostat be set?
Solar processes (internal to the sun) are not well modeled.
We have no idea if water vapor give positive (greenhouse) feedback, negative feedback(clouds) or is neutral.
So of course time to raise taxes. Isn’t it always?
Good to hear from you Matt.
Actually the question of what temperature to set the world at (if we have that power) or what is desirable is an oft ignored aspect of the debate. Since the world climate is ever changing, and man is going to affect it (as all species do) what state should policy aim at?
This is an inconvenient question for many because they are operating on the basis of some imagined “natural” state, which doesn’t exist, so the question is what to do to lessen man’s impact, not what state is preferred. That question is just ignored as irrelevant.
I am less skeptical (though still skeptical in what I consider a healthy manner) about the science than you are, but I am very skeptical about what it actually means and how people think about it. Then throw in policy implications and the debate is incredibly disconnected from what we as citizens need to seriously consider when it comes to evaluating our governments actions.
I’ll be addressing that more later, but good question.
Agreed, Lance. The question that those serious about climate change should be asking is, “How can we adapt to climate change,” not, “Why don’t those nasty old right-wingers think global warming is happening?” They spend far too much time, effort, and rhetoric shredding AEI, the Bush Administration, non-Democrat Congresspeople, etc. and not enough clearly stating exactly what state they believe the climate should be in and clear, concise plans on how to achieve said state. Great post!
[...] Following up on my two previous posts on the atmosphere building up in the field of climate science I see that Roger Pielke is reporting that two state’s governors are trying to remove their state climatologists from their position due to not being sufficiently supportive of the view that climate change is primarily caused by human activity: There are currently two efforts underway to remove two State Climatologists from their positions because they do not parrot thesummary conclusions of the new IPCC Report. These attempts are in Delaware (David Legates; see and see) and Oregon (George Taylor; see). This follows the recommendation by Heidi Cullen of the Weather Channel to retract the certification of broadcast weather forecasters who do not accept what she considers is the accepted scientific view of global warming (see). [...]
Hmmm. I like this new logic. I wonder how Exxon’s contributions to AEI compare to their contributions to, say, the Democratic Party?
That is a good point Peter. I suggest you research that and I’ll put up a post. A chance for some really good satire.
The DNC gets a couple of hundred thousand from Exxon every election cycle. The RNC gets about a million. But it doesn’t matter. A witch is a witch.