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[–]moirende 4 points5 points ago

If there's anything the faithful can't stand it's apostates.

[–]Will_Power 7 points8 points ago

How does this bias on climate science compare to, say, the New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, The BBC, The Huffington Post, MSNBC, etc?

[–]JRugman[S] -1 points0 points ago

Doesn't object to accusation of bias in WSJ article... implies bias in other media outlets... appeal to hypocrisy?

[–]Will_Power 2 points3 points ago

My point is that every publication has bias. If we want to talk about bias in WSJ, let's talk about bias in other media as well.

[–]JRugman[S] -2 points-1 points ago

Two wrongs make a right?

[–]Will_Power 3 points4 points ago

What? Of course not. Let's just not pretend that there is more skeptical bias than warmist bias in the media. It isn't even close.

[–]JRugman[S] -2 points-1 points ago

This article is about skeptical bias, not warmist bias. The point here is that the WSJ was wrong to publish one letter and not publish the other.

The activities of other media outlets are beside the point.

[–]Will_Power 3 points4 points ago

Oh, I see. "Please don't discuss the issue of media bias except as it pertains to my narrow worldview." Is that it?

[–]JRugman[S] -2 points-1 points ago

I'm not prepared to have a discussion about media bias in general in this thread. If I wanted to have that discussion, I'd head over to r/media.

I'm not denying that media bias doesn't exist across the political spectrum, and there are many many examples of media sensationalism out there when it comes to reporting on climate change, but in this context, bringing it up is a diversion from the substance of the article. It's a form of ad hominem.

[–]Will_Power 4 points5 points ago

Do you think anyone here doesn't recognize the WSJ's bias?

[–]joe24pack -1 points0 points ago

Appeal to Hipocrisy ? Is that a new type of logical fallacy, now found in the wild? Perhaps the people at http://www.logicalfallacies.info/ might want to add it to their catalog.

;-)

[–]butch123 5 points6 points ago

As proof of the position of this opinion piece in sciencemag is the First reference in the article. A link to union of concerned sciences opinion piece. In THAT opinion piece is the claim that 2011 is the thirty fifth year that temperatures have been above average. The way this statement was made leads one to expect that 2011 was the 35th in a row of increasing temperatures. In fact it uses the historical record dating back to 1880. As there have been two cycles of temperature increases in that time...from the early 1900s through the 1940s, and the 1970s through 1998, the temperatures of the past 35 years started above the average of the record from 1880 to the present.

This is an strawman argument as no one claims that the temperatures have not risen for the past 130 years.

The next link is to a UCAR study that shows more warm records being set in the past decade. This is based on a study of temperatures over the past 60 years. Nothing like cherry picking your start date to exclude the 1920s through 1940s when other high temperature records were set. Furthermore the study found that the claim of a shift to more warmer records being set was that the ratio of warm records to cool records was used to make a comparison. The cooler records typically occur at night with the warmer records during the day. Thus what we are actually seeing is a moderation of temperatures from colder to warmer. Finally the UCAR study falls back on modelling to predict the future. While this is marginally more productive and sounds more scientific than reading chicken entrails...it still is not science.

And finally we see another NAS vanity piece which reiterates the "CO2 is causing climate change meme". The empirical science has yet to be proven and we get more correlation is causation hooted from the rooftops.

[–]JRugman[S] -2 points-1 points ago

This is an strawman argument as no one claims that the temperatures have not risen for the past 130 years.

That in itself is a strawman. Who's claiming that anyone is claiming the opposite?

Thus what we are actually seeing is a moderation of temperatures from colder to warmer.

Also known as: a warming trend.

Finally the UCAR study falls back on modelling to predict the future. While this is marginally more productive and sounds more scientific than reading chicken entrails...it still is not science.

Try telling that to an actual scientist. Maybe one of the designers of the Large Hadron Collider experiment...

And finally we see another NAS vanity piece which reiterates the "CO2 is causing climate change meme".

Yeah. National Academy of Sciences... what do they know?

[–]counters -5 points-4 points ago

The empirical science has yet to be proven and we get more correlation is causation hooted from the rooftops.

The physical underpinnings of the greenhouse effect were outlined a century before we ever started estimating global temperatures.

[–]butch123 4 points5 points ago

The physical underpinnings did not rely on quantum theory.

[–]counters -4 points-3 points ago

And our understanding of the motion of celestial objects didn't originally rely on special relativity. Kepler was still 'right', just as Fourier is still 'right'. Subsequently attained knowledge lets us dive deeper into our understanding of the nature of the universe.

I don't have to invoke any quantum mechanics to describe how the atmospheric greenhouse effect works. It's not relevant to the overall result.

[–]butch123 4 points5 points ago

The barber would bleed you to remove bad humors from your blood, the modern physician sets aside the known errors of his science or limits his practice to the known beneficial aspects. Climate science has many areas such as the Missing Heat and rejection of the actual practice of experimentation for modelling.

[–]counters -2 points-1 points ago

Climate science has many areas such as the Missing Heat and rejection of the actual practice of experimentation for modelling.

The "missing heat" 'problem' is one of empiricism, not theory. Our observation network isn't sophisticated enough to directly measure everything we want to know about the climate and earth system. Lack of high-quality, reliable observations as been the bane of meteorologists for nearly two and a half centuries.

Furthermore, models are used as part of experiments. It's not possible to conduct 'experiments' on the climate system. If you're interested in studying climate impacts of volcanic eruptions, what are you supposed to do? Drop thermonuclear bombs in Krakatau and hope it erupts? We only have a single reasonably-well observed volcanic eruption: Pinatubo. And we weren't even observing the things we want to know about volcanic eruptions when it happens.

A climate model is a tool, just like a chemistry workbench or a particle accelerator. The entire point is to build a simplified system where you can control certain assumptions.

[–]butch123 2 points3 points ago

OK, granted all of the things you say are reasonable and acceptable. I do not think anyone can argue with a reasonable position such as this.

We can discuss alarmism and undue faith in what we actually do know, at a later time. I have a grandchild taking up my time and need to pay attention to the baby monitor.

[–]OortCloud 5 points6 points ago

So why doesn't the WSJ publish the letter from the Gang of 225? Because it BORING. Same shit, over and over, while the Gang of 16 produced an article with some items of interest. There is nothing new from the Gang of 225. Their letter is just the same recycled, baseless hyperbole that the general public has seen through already. I doubt very much that 225 people had anything to do with crafting the letter. I think it more likely that some harried grad student was given the task by his angry mentor. The 225 likely signed on because it counts as a publish on their resumes.