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Originally Posted by artao
I can see that with Skybird on the scene (happy belated birthday, btw) I really don't need to add much if anything, but ...
The whole "follow the money" argument is, to me, laughable at best. Follow the money indeed!! And where will you end up? Staring dead-eyed at the polluting industries that ultimately got us where we are in the first place. They stand to lose HUGE swaths of money, and will do anything (not 'just about' anything, but ANYTHING period) to discredit climate change so their pockets stay packed.
All I really need is my own senses to see and feel that climate change IS happening, right now. Winter in Wisconsin is NOT what it used to be, even 15 years ago. It used to be late October thru early March, now it's become December to mid-February ... I can already smell spring in the air ...
I like to say that it's not worth risking our planet for a few bucks, even if there's only a small chance climate change is real .... and IMO there's no denying, realistically, that is IS INDEED real ...
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I agree, but even I have to admit that climate science did not do itself a good service to allow getting political itself. That is something quite some scientists complain about the IPCC report, even those forming the huge majority thinking GW is real and man-made - they point out that the IPCC not only presented scientific data and conclusions, but tried to push it's own agenda of what it thinks politically should be done. But this is not a scientist's job. Doing so is a basic sin for every science, damaging objectivity, precision, and trustworthiness. It massively increases the probability for interest conflicts in science.
Like you, I think the current winter means not much, and I compare the seasons 30 years ago during my schooldays with the present, as well as comparing on ancient photos the conditions of given landscapes and glaciers 60, 80, 100 years ago, with images from the present, and then I do not need any scientific debate wether or not a massive warming has taken place or not - it is as clear and undeniable as the sky is blue and the sun is bright. also undeiable is that chnage in plant'S yearly growth cycles (their "spirng clock ticks around 2 weeks earlier now), or the spreading patterns of given species species, especially insects, as well as infectous pathogenes. If a given life form depends on a certain minimum temperature to surive, and after 40 years if being found 1000 miles north of the area where it was located before becasue more north to it it could not survive back then, tahn that area north obviously has chnaged and has become warmer.
But the need to examine observations scientifically and produce data in order to give politicians a basis on which to form educated decisions, remains. And this effort has been damaged in a very stupid and unneeded way. In a project of the size of the IPCC reports you cannot expect to totally wipe out human error that may find manifestation in simple typos aor exchanging two numbers behind the decimal. The scandal lies in the obvious attempts to manipulate and dramatise (like the Himalaya glacier "thesis"), or the very sloppy work being done when just copying from a student'S years old diploma thesis, or copying over an article from an advertisement booklet of the WWF without checking the claims in it scientifically by themselves. This is not human error, but in case of the first: intention, in case of the latter: sloppy work that easily could have been avoided. And unfortunately, there have more such problems become known in the past weeks. these things do not reverse the tone of the scientific debate nor do they completely nullify the consent in arguments, but they do an irrationally big damage to repuation and credibility, increasing it beyond the matter-of-fact damage the events itself really mean. Currently, all this together means a feast for sceptics. Not becasue they suddenly have better arguments (they have not), but because the crowd in the streets is not ticking rationally and thus can be influenced by the kind of propaganda sceptics have been spread since years, with hundreds of millions being spend into it every year by organised lobbies whose only inention is not to find scientific truth, but to discredit the GW science and it'S current conclusions, no matter how.
It is highly questionable to me, if scientific projects of the size of the IPCC board make any sense at all., and can ever fulfill the expectations that are put into them.