Rejoining scientific consensus vs. rejoining the CoJCoLDS

[_Chap]

An eminent scientist who headed up a research group funded in part by anti global warming fossil-fuel rich billionaires such as the Kochs has just come up with some new conclusions:

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

How, according to his account, did he come to this striking turn-around in his opinions (what the Greeks might have called a metanoia)? Did he stop eating and talk to himself a lot until he felt a voice speaking to him that he was sure was a deity? Nope. Did he yearn for the lost fellowship of the majority of the scientists he trained with and worked with for years? Did he feel a deep need to reaffirm certain shared values of community within a perfectly valid scientific tradition, while acknowledging his continuing doubts in an adult manner? Nope.

He changed his mind because he thought the objective evidence pointed that way. He did sums. He drew graphs. He checked his conclusions by more than one independent means.

When he rejoins the consensus, he will not be required to undergo any kind of process of repentance. His PhD will not be ritually re-conferred on him - because he never lost it. He will not have to make any approved statement of his new opinions. Nobody will shed tears.

He just says what he thinks, and people read his paper and make up their own minds whether the conclusions follow from the evidence.

There is an obvious contrast here, is there not?

[_bcspace]

An eminent scientist who headed up a research group funded in part by anti global warming fossil-fuel rich billionaires such as the Kochs

Aren't left wing governments who throw millions of dollars at research with a predetermined AGW outcome in the same category?

When he rejoins the consensus, he will not be required to undergo any kind of process of repentance. His PhD will not be ritually re-conferred on him - because he never lost it. He will not have to make any approved statement of his new opinions. Nobody will shed tears.

What about those who lose their jobs, memberships, scholarships, etc. because their unmanufactured evidence or the evidence they follow points the other way and they are vocal about it?

AGW is not even science and is so far from consensus that this is a pretty bad comparison you're trying to make.

[_Droopy]

AGW has been over and done with for upwards of a decade, across a number of empirical evidential areas, and is a mummified relic of science gone bad under the influence of politics gone far worse for all those intellectually honest and educated enough to do their own homework.

Nothing will bring it back, not all the government grant money on earth, not all the ideological, political, and emotional investment, not all the feverish apocalyptic raving, not all the unvalidated and empirically useless GCMs, nothing will bring back from the ash heap of politicized pseudoscience the rotting corpse of DAGW and the howling ghost of Lysenko that follows it wherever it goes among the Anointed.

Indeed, new evidence, just out, lowers the casket into the open grave.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/

[_Dr. Shades]

Folks, I think you're missing Chap's point. His point (if I may, Chap) has little if anything to do with global warming per se.

[_moksha]

It reminds me of the BYU Professor who abandoned his preconceived group notions for the actual evidence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDNXuX6D60U&feature=share

Did you know that this BYU Prof has also taken on Sen. Orin Hatch over this issue? Big cajones!

[_Chap]

Folks, I think you're missing Chap's point. His point (if I may, Chap) has little if anything to do with global warming per se.

Sorry, I failed to keep an eye on the thread I started. Terrible irresponsibility.

Shades - you are quite right.

My point was precisely that changing your mind in science is radically different from decisions relating to and the consequences of leaving, joining or rejoining religious organizations such as the CoJCoLDS.

The importance of that point is underlined by the reaction of bcspace and Droopy to the red rag of the issue of whether climate change is or is not occurring, and if so whether it is caused in large measure by human activity in recent history. For them, allegiances apparently come in one giant package, and the idea that there might appropriately be different modes for making decisions in different areas does not seem to attract them.

(But you know what? I don't expect those two to make a lot of sense anyway.)

[_Chap]

It reminds me of the BYU Professor who abandoned his preconceived group notions for the actual evidence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDNXuX6D60U&feature=share

Did you know that this BYU Prof has also taken on Sen. Orin Hatch over this issue? Big cajones!

Thanks. That is a very interesting video.

[_Droopy]

The importance of that point is underlined by the reaction of bcspace and Droopy to the red rag of the issue of whether climate change is or is not occurring...

See, this is what we are facing.

[_DrW]

The importance of that point is underlined by the reaction of bcspace and Droopy to the red rag of the issue of whether climate change is or is not occurring...

See, this is what we are facing.