Quote:
Originally Posted by llamabeast
licker, I guess maybe you missed my last post in the flurry that followed it, but I'd really be honestly interested to hear - what, in your opinion, is the reason that so many scientists (certainly the enormous majority, but if that's in dispute let's just say really a lot) are concerned about global warming and think that taking action would be helpful. I'm just interested to know if you think they're all dumb, or they're part of a conspiracy, or they're over-excitable, or what.
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I'm not licker, but give my take on it anyway:
The explanation I've heard from researchers like Morner (
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/publi.../33-37_725.pdf) is that it's all about grant pressure--in the EU, he says, you have to show support for global warming or you can't get funding. I think that's reductionist, and I'm not really willing to take Morner's word for it. However, I have observed that the "overwhelming consensus" for current climate theory models comes from within current climatology community (among physicists the issue is controversial, and meteorologists appear to think the data don't support the theories), and to me that says less about monetary pressure per se than Kuhn's /Structure of Scientific Revolutions/. People get stuck on a theory (string theory, or global cooling in the 1960's) and it becomes hard to challenge it from within the paradigm. (Read Richard Feynman's CalTech talk on cargo cult science.) Morner's comments are actually consistent with this phenomenon, unfortunately. Perhaps we have to wait for this generation of climatologists to die off (like Ignatz Semmelweiss' critics).
Or, maybe they're right, and they'll convince all the physicists. It's not like the physicists are universally skeptical, and if the climate models are actually valid it should be possible to show it.
-Max