torsdag 1 juli 2010

Climate Science by Distillation?

The comments to the previous post exhibit an important aspect of the debate on global warming: AGW alarmists assume that there is massive scientific evidence of an alarming effect of atmospheric CO2 on global climate, evidence supplied by a choir of thousands of researchers in thousands of peer-reviewed articles. 

Yet, when you ask for single key articles to this effect, you get no answer. It is like distilling scientific evidence out of 1000 articles each one containing only 1/1000 of a scientific truth, with the distillation being performed not by scientists with first-hand knowledge but by third hands. Is this science? No. Scientific truth must be carried by key articles by key scientists with first-hand key theories and experiments. Science cannot be advanced by distillation by third-hand political agents, like IPCC.

Bad wine can be distilled to cheap spirits, but cannot be turned into good wine.

4 kommentarer:

  1. There is no one single seminal paper that establishes any of the following:

    1. the "ΛCDM model" of cosmology
    2. the standard model of particle physics
    3. the theory of the formation of the Solar System
    4. the reasons volcanoes erupt
    5. the link between smoking and lung cancer

    And many, many, many others. Obviously in each case you can find a few papers which develop larger chunks of the whole idea. And I already recommended you a good history book on how we arrived at our current understanding of how planetary atmospheres work. But your notion that there must be a single "seminal" paper in which the whole of the field is laid out is absurd.

    Nonetheless, perhaps what you are seeking can be found in Arrhenius's paper from 1896: "On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground". If it cannot, then please clarify what you are seeking.

    SvaraRadera
  2. As concerns 1-4 the lack of scientific support indicates that the
    science is not at all settled. As concerns 5 there must be articles demonstrating the link.

    SvaraRadera
  3. There is no lack of scientific support for any of these 5 things. What makes you think otherwise?

    SvaraRadera
  4. Claes thought you might be interested in this list of the 10 worst and 10 best climate papers:

    http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/09/ten-of-the-worst-climate-research-papers-a-note-from-cohenite/

    SvaraRadera