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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (72187)	6/14/2008 3:17:32 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542829

The problem is finding an unbiased group. Groups like that are inevitably staffed by movement people. I don't know what you mean in this case by "movement" people. First of all, the groups were intentionally made up of scientists from many different nations and continents. Second, they were all scientists who were specializing in the areas of their working groups. Third, the composition of the groups and even most of the IPCC was changed from report to report. The participants were intensely aware of the problem of bias, and of the fact that it was possible that their report would meet with a great deal of resistance. They weren't doing the research themselves as members of the group; they were reviewing the mass of studies that had been done over the previous 4 or 5 years. They were not, despite characterizations to the contrary, out to "prove" the climate change thesis in advance. If you want to say that the vast majority of scientists worldwide who study climate and fields related to climate change are all involved in a conspiracy, wittingly or otherwise, to shove the climate change thesis down the throats of an unwitting world, then go ahead and say it. You won't be alone in saying it. But it is, IMO, nonsense. Their reports have changed over the years, and not for the better. The evidence supporting the thesis has only grown stronger with the passage of time, not weaker or more ambiguous. Claims that the world has cooled off over the past 10 years thereby disproving the thesis, as I have read on SI and elsewhere, are complete nonsense--they are misreadings of studies. I may sound "black and white" here, but sometimes black and white is warranted. There are definitely gray areas--even many gray areas--in the research. No one can with any certainty at all that, e.g., the drought in the southwest will continue for the next 50 years. Or that the Amazon forest will die off and turn to savannah within the next century (both of these have been proposed as working hypotheses and possibilities). No one can say with certainty that the ice will entirely melt at the North Pole by 2030, and the earth will thereby lose a vital 'air conditioner," enhancing positive feedbacks and accelerating the overall warming trend and severe events. But people can talk about probabilities, possibilities and trends if business as usual continues, and we keep spewing more CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. We extrapolate from laws of physics and thermodynamics as well as observed events. So far the specific (as opposed to the trends) predictions of the IPCC haven't been very accurate, but we should take solace in that fact because the inaccuracies have been about specifics not about trends, and the observed facts on the ground have been occurring with more rapidity than expected, not less so.