Rather than providing rock solid studies, backed using actual data and the Scientific Method, members of the Cult of Climastrology have depended on computer models, massaged data, prognostications unable to be proven by Science, and spin machine studies. This one is part of the latter
Climate change doubters really aren’t going to like this study
Researchers have designed an inventive test suggesting that the arguments commonly used by climate change contrarians don’t add up, not only according to climate scientists (we know what they think already) but also in the view of unbiased experts from other fields.
The trick? Disguising the data — and its interpretation — as if it was part of an argument about something else entirely.
I’d prefer they offer up scientific proof that clearly shows that Mankind is mostly/solely responsible for the warming since 1850. Since that is clearly impossible, they’ll pull this kind of non-scientific stunt. Said stunt is propagated by Stephan Lewandowsky, long known as pushing shady science and pop climate psychology. The study itself is slammed by many who understand how studies are supposed to work. How does this one work?
First of all, consider that climate doubters (like scientists) often use objective data to back up their claims. They just tend to represent it in ways that scientists have long found objectionable.
Here’s an example: Data indicate that in the long run — over many decades — global temperatures have been rising. But over shorter periods, temperatures might fluctuate up and down quite a bit. Climate contrarians might exploit this fact by pointing to a small block of data from a short-term period when temperatures were on the downswing, or weren’t rising, and use it to suggest that global warming isn’t actually happening. It’s a tactic known as “cherry-picking†— selecting only data that suit one’s purposes, instead of data that reflect the whole story.
They Warmist scientists find it objectionable because it exposes exactly what the problem with Warmist science is. We’ll get to that in a minute. As far as cherry picking goes, Warmists are yammering about the hottest year ever, and the hottest month ever. Is that not cherry picking? How about when they look at the temperature data from 1980-today: is that not cherry picking? What Skeptics are saying is that Warmist models predicted ever rising doomy temperatures, yet, 95% of the models failed to predict the Pause. Furthermore, the models cannot even predict what happened in the past, for instance, the cooling from the 1940’s to 1979.
They found a way to let an unbiased group of expert scientists judge for themselves how sound climate-doubting arguments are by presenting them with real climate data — but labeling these data as something else. For instance, they presented data on trends in Arctic sea ice extent, but relabeled as data on the profits of a fictitious company. And they re-cast numbers on global sea-level rise as stats on world lithium production.
“So instead of saying, there’s a recovery of Arctic ice, we would say, there’s a recovery of our share prices,†Lewandowsky said.
There’s one thing missing in all this: the central argument. Anyone who tells you there has been no warming since around 1850, the end of the Little Ice Age, is wrong. There has been warming. Even taking away all the massaged, falsified, improperly gathered, and even created out of nothing data, there has still been warming. It matters not at all, because the central argument is not on warming, it is on causation. What is causing the warming. Warmists like Lewandowsky say it is mostly/solely the fault of mankind (yet won’t reduce their own use of fossil fuels and make their lives carbon neutral.) Skeptics say it is mostly/solely natural.
At the end of the day, Warmists have made a hypothesis: it is up to them to prove it. They can’t, so they rely on silly things like this Lewandowski “study”. Along with all the scaremongering, of course.
Read: Washington Post: Skeptics Won’t Like This Study Or Something »
