I personally believe western civilization, in general, suffers from a serious lack of "Science Literacy". Even though it is Science that has allowed us to achieve so much as a Species, and as a Society -- it is this same Science that far too many treat as "magic", as "geeky", as "Debatable".
Funny that those who most question Science's usefulness, seem to appoint themselves as "Experts", capable of dismissing its "Findings".
(Based on what Expertise? ... one should always ask back.)
Well IF Science is indeed, Debatable -- shouldn't it be ACTUAL Scientists Doing the Debating???
(and not the well paid shills from industry and politics, who's goals are typically to create "more heat than light"?)
Well there is a very interesting Interview conducted by Discover Magazine that attempts to do just that -- Let the Pro and Con Climatologists critique each other ... Let the Scientists Speak for themselves!
I have pulled some of the interesting sections of that "debate" for your elucidation ...
(though I recommend reading the entire article if you are so inclined.)
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Michael Mann, is the researcher who developed the famous "hockey stick" chart -- he is the "Protagonist" in this discussion ... (PS. he DID release all the data for this research.)
Discover Interview: It's Gettin' Hot in Here: The Big Battle Over Climate Science
Two eminent climatologists share much different views: Michael Mann -- whose private emails were hacked -- points a finger at skeptics. Judith Curry believes humans are warming the planet but criticizes her colleagues for taking shortcuts.
by Fred Guterl; photography by Imke Lass
From the April 2010 issue; published online March 10, 2010
Interview with Michael Mann (excerpts):
There’s an investigation at Penn State, where you work, into your own role in this. How is that going?
Technically it’s not an investigation. It’s an inquiry to determine if there is a reason for an investigation. [Editor’s note: The inquiry subsequently reported that it had found no credible evidence that Mann had suppressed or falsified data.]
Do you think you and your colleagues did anything wrong?
There’s nothing in any of these e-mails that demonstrates any inappropriate behavior on my part. There are a few things that a certain colleague said that I wouldn’t have said and I can’t necessarily condone, although I can say that they were under a huge amount of pressure. They were attacked by FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] demands. A colleague of mine, Phil Jones, had as many as 40 FOIA demands—frivolous demands—made against him over a single weekend. Frankly, he showed some poor judgment, and there are things I said that I would phrase differently, obviously, if I were saying them in public. But there’s nothing in any of these e-mails, despite the claims of those attacking us, that indicate any sort of conspiracy among climate change researchers to commit fraud, that indicate any destruction of data.
What about the references to "cleaning up" data? Does that amount to destruction?
No. In some cases there’s been intentional misrepresentation of what people were talking about in the e-mail exchanges. Nature had an editorial [December 3, 2009] where they basically came out and said that the attackers of climate change had misrepresented two statements. One was about a "trick," which was simply a reference to a clever mathematical approach to a problem, the way scientists use the term trick: "Here’s the trick to solving that problem," or "trick of the trade," and so on. And then conflating that with an unfortunately poorly worded phrase where Phil Jones refers to hiding a decline in temperatures. Much hay has been made of that. But these are internal discussions among scientists who understand the lingo and understand what it means and understand the context. And it’s extremely easy for those looking to make mischief to take single words and phrases out of context.
http://discovermagazine.com/...
The National Academy of Sciences supported the key point of your hockey stick calculation, which showed higher temperatures in the 20th century than in the previous thousand years, but others criticized you for not releasing the information behind it. Is all that data now in the public domain?
It is. And it was released as soon as we were allowed to do so. I don’t produce any data myself. I just make use of other people’s data. Often scientists in a purely collegial spirit will make available to you data that they haven’t published yet. If you use it, you can’t distribute it. Every single piece of data that we had the right to distribute was available at the time that we published the paper. Once we had permission to publish the smaller number of other records that we hadn’t been able to make available at the time, those were out there.
By May 2000 all of the data were available. All of the claims that our data were not available at the time—by, for example, McIntyre, who’s been leading these attacks—are entirely false.
http://discovermagazine.com/...
Judith Curry is the level-headed Antagonist in this "climategate" discussion. Although she finds fault in some of the methods of the IPCC -- she DOES tend to agree with the urgency of their conclusions. Here are a few such examples ...
Interview with Judith Curry (excerpts):
Do you agree that the Copenhagen meeting was a disaster?
Yes, it was.
[...]
Do you subscribe to the argument that today’s climate models are crude and need to be taken with a grain of salt?
No, I think the climate models are becoming quite sophisticated. We learn a lot from the simulations. But you have to keep in mind that these are scenario simulations. They’re not really forecasts. They don’t know what the volcano eruptions are going to be. They don’t know what the exact solar cycles are going to be. There will be a whole host of forcing uncertainties in the 21st century that we don’t know.
http://discovermagazine.com/...
Should we wait to resolve all the uncertainty before taking action?
The probability of something bad happening is at least as high as the probability that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That turned out not to be true, but we ended up going in there anyway. So we have a history of taking action on bad things that have a low probability of happening.
http://discovermagazine.com/...
Wow! those were some statements. And as I mentioned before I do recommend reading the entire article if you are so inclined.
Funny how the nitty gritty here by actual Scientists involved, is not making the 24/7 merri-go-round of the Media Melodrama circuit. There was no slowing that talking point circus, when the "climategate" story was first spun. (I guess the MSM, they're kinda slow on the rebound, eh?)
Which again goes to illustrate my main Thesis:
that western civilization, in general, suffers from a serious lack of "Science Literacy".
Just hit the snooze button, when a scientist dares to speak up -- that's what we've grown accustom to, thanks to our Media Story-tellers, who see their jobs as to "Filter the News", instead of Report it! And to our great detriment too, I would add. The 21st Century Opportunities will pass us by, if Science isn't put back into a position of authority again, soon.
Achieving Scientific insights should be a National Priority -- not a National back-burner, take it or leave it, entree.
Science IS Progress
( -- NOT the "creative" financing of Wall Street.)
To illustrate the track were on, one only needs look at the results of this recent study:
Mar 12, 2010
How Old Do You Think the Earth Is?
According to a team of researchers from the University of Minnesota, how you answer that question is a "strong predictor" of what you think and know about the theory of evolution.
How old is the Universe, anyways? And why should that matter, as long as, We Got our M-TVees?
Maybe it doesn't matter, eh?
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