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Matt Ridley, "The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science"

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ant

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Re: Matt Ridley, "The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science"

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Retraction Watch is relatively new. the issues with peer review are just beginning to be exposed. No one quite knows yet how far this stretches back.
I suspect fraudulent use of data has been going on for years.

http://retractionwatch.com/2015/08/20/t ... lagiarism/



If big money is involved, it's even more likely.


Here's a question unrelated to the above: who writes the code for the climate models the IPCC uses?
Last edited by ant on Thu Aug 20, 2015 10:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Matt Ridley, "The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science"

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Ant -

I see the point about authors getting involved in the reviewing. I was unaware that editors ever ask anyone for suggested reviewers (the editor remains responsible, but I expect would often not know who does that sub-sub-sub field and so would just accept the suggestion). At a minimum they should be requesting a citation of a related article in that field, so they can verify that an unfamiliar researcher really does know something about a field. That wouldn't stop the use of fake e-mail addresses for real people, though.

Interesting.
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Re: Matt Ridley, "The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science"

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Ant
Re: appalling behavior. The reason global warming will end civilization is that there will be so much competition for dwindling food supplies, other natural resources, and structures. If we continue at our current rate, New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia will be underwater in 50 years, along with London, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Athens, Marseilles, Copenhagen and Stockholm. Within 100 years, every coastal city everywhere will be unlivable. We already have unprecedented damage to the forests of the Western U.S. and accelerating droughts and other weather extremes.

Read Zeitoun if you want to understand civilization breakdown. The authorities in post-Katrina New Orleans arrested people and held them without contact with the outside for weeks. Other books have documented the behavior of ordinary citizens that was even more scary. When the infrastructure is no longer there, people fight over what is left rather than patiently rebuilding inland. New Orleans, along with Venice, is just the most vulnerable place. Others will have their turn.

If we charged for the externalities, which even conservative economists agree is correct, then no subsidies for alternative energy would be necessary. We don't know what the right price is, but a good cap and trade system will find the right price, be it $5 per ton or $50 or $150. The problem is the current price is zero.

Denialists quibbling about the quality of the evidence is truly appalling. There is no doubt about the main issues, and no doubt about the incredible cost that is coming at us - the only doubts are about how long it will take and whether the disruption can be adjusted to at a bearable cost. But I can tell you this - if democratic society does as badly at adjustment as it has done with prevention, democracy will perish from the earth.
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Re: Matt Ridley, "The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science"

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The reason global warming will end civilization is that there will be so much competition for dwindling food supplies, other natural resources, and structures. If we continue at our current rate, New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia will be underwater in 50 years, along with London, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Athens, Marseilles, Copenhagen and Stockholm. Within 100 years, every coastal city everywhere will be unlivable. We already have unprecedented damage to the forests of the Western U.S. and accelerating droughts and other weather extremes.
The out of food prediction has been going on for years.
Did you read this list of predictions that never came to pass?

There's simply no evidence whatsoever that we are headed for an inevitable apocalypse. Neither is it falsifiable because you can always treat it like astrology treats their predictions.
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Re: Matt Ridley, "The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science"

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Ant,

You are steadfastly refusing to see the point. Falsifiability is not an issue. There is already plenty of evidence that the damage is underway and that it will only get worse. Ability to make precise predictions is not important when there are no overall good outcomes that can be proposed as a result of what is happening.

Thomas Friedman, in today's New York Times, makes a good case that the Middle East is already suffering heavily from its effects.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/opini ... -spot.html

The worst drought in Syria's modern history set off the current conflict which has brought us ISIS, and it may not satisfy your desire for accurate predictions, but it also brought the worst refugee crisis, proportionately at least, since WWII with 4 million displaced already.

I am sure you will not believe climate change is responsible until it is the woods by your home burning, but the problem is, your belief or lack of it will not make a whit of difference to the damage we are doing.

This is not about debate and doubt, it is about the dam breaking above our home. If it breaks on the wrong day, was the prediction false? If it only wipes out 10,000 homes instead of 20,000 homes, does that make it a prediction we should have ignored?
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Re: Matt Ridley, "The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science"

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This climate change doomsday scenario has been predicted in the past. and that day still has not come.
The date keeps being moved forward much like the way a cult that predicts the day their people will all fly away and be saved from the apocalypse by some comet from space.

I agree with the warming trend and the need to take action.
I do NOT agree there's evidence that we're all effin doomed if we don't act in haste. Nor do I agree that what we are proposing and implementing is GOING TO SAVE HUMANITY.
until it is the woods by your home burning,

are you being serious here??
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Re: Matt Ridley, "The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science"

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ant wrote:
until it is the woods by your home burning,
are you being serious here??
The problem, Ant, as always, as you do not address previous arguments that tear your piecemeal objections to shreds. Harry thinks you're not listening because you're too involved in raising more piecemeal objections while ignoring his points.

Yeah, some of the prognostications and short-term data analyses seem ridiculous, but the long and short of it is that the earth is warming and humans are probably largely responsible for it. There is, in fact, a consensus of scientists who say anthropogenic warming is real. And tons of evidence supporting this position. Go to NASA's web site. Go to NOAA's web site. Go to National Geographic's web site. Go to the National Resources Defense Council's web site. They all provide evidence for a warming planet. Using Occam's razor, a reasonable person would see that these organizations are at least mostly right and that climate skeptics are mostly wrong.

But go ahead and cherry-pick this and that to avoid seeing the bigger picture. I mention the various web sites because most of us aren’t climate scientists and we do rely on the credibility of organizations like NASA, NOAA, and National Geographic Magazine. It seems to me that climate skeptics, or at least those who cross that fine line of denial, are wanting to sweep an awful lot of stuff under the rug.
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Re: Matt Ridley, "The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science"

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Ant is reading a book written by one of the merchants of doubt. Nothing anyone says to him will work now. It makes one wonder at what point a half-truth becomes criminal or immoral.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: Matt Ridley, "The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science"

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Interbane

"At what point a half-truth becomes criminal or immoral."

I proposed quite seriously that the denialist funding sources be sued for fraud. I asked about the idea to a friend who is both an environmental economist and an attorney, and he was doubtful. There may not be a prima facie case to be made on some of the things that have to be shown to prove fraud. But if it could, the discovery process would be a treasure trove for sure, as it was for the denialism by Big Tobacco.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they have behaved immorally. If an individual trashed the interests of his or her country for monetary benefit to that extent, by selling information to an enemy, they would be convicted of treason. Morality is not a game of what can be pinned on someone - if you are causing deaths to accumulate money, you are lower than dirt. Period.
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Re: Matt Ridley, "The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science"

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There's plenty to be skeptical about. Some of the science is hit-or-miss and and the issue is frequently over-simplified to the point of absurdity. Science is messy sometimes. Also, how you feel about climate change comes into play on a political dimension. But there's also a preponderance of evidence that does show warming is a very real thing and that humans are the cause of some or most of it. Don't miss the forest for the trees.
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