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Why Scientists Sometimes Lie

Or "Never trust a man trying to sell you a horse"

By: Robert L. Mayo (Diary)  |  November 26th, 2008 at 10:41 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

The problem with the “scientific consensus” on global warming is that participants in the debate are not objective.

In other areas of science, it is assumed without question that researchers will follow the evidence wherever it leads with an open mind that is neutral as to the outcome. That is not the case with global warming. Unlike other scientific questions, the answer to whether humans are causing dangerous global warming has massive political implications for economic and social policy.

Scientists are human beings with political and ideological preferences just like the rest of us. If a scientist has a strong preference for a certain political ideology, and that ideology will either be advanced or inhibited based on the results of his research, it is reasonable to view his interpretation of the data with an increased level of skepticism.

If anthropogenic global warming is accepted as real, it will produce wide ranging political and economic changes that have been long advocated by the political left. There will be massive tax increases and much stricter regulation of business.

It should therefore be no surprise that almost all non-scientists who are on the political left insist that global warming is real and use it as an indictment of free market capitalism and the traditional American lifestyle based on consumerism. In the same way, almost all non-scientists who are on the political right insist that global warming is nothing more than liberal hysteria.

On both sides, their conclusions are not based on an impartial evaluation of the data. Neither Al Gore nor Rush Limbaugh are competent to assess the accuracy of a sophisticated computer climate model. Yet they both believe with absolute certainty.

Flawed human beings will always tend to interpret information in such a way that it reinforces our pre-existing ideological preferences or self interest. Given the huge amounts of funding involved, professional standing in academia and personal political preferences, it would be foolish to assume that scientists are not subject to the same failing.

I do not claim that scientists who support anthropogenic global warming are wrong, merely that it is unwise to massively reorder our society based on interpretations of extraordinarily complex data conducted by people who are not neutral as to the result.

When scientists who believe in global warming stop calling colleagues who disagree with them “Flat Earthers” and “Neanderthals”, or insist that “the debate is over” and therefore it is illegitimate to question them, then I may be willing to listen to their arguments. Not until then.

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  • WHAT

    Global Warming advocates get Federal dollars to do their endless useless studies. Scientists are not immune to dialing for dollars.

    • ntrepid

      Facts are facts?but they don?t always mean what one thinks they mean.

      In addition, there really should be a ?use at your own risk? tag applied to all ?time series data on the internet?. Even data that bears attribution to a certain government entity that is commonly reference by a four letter acronym should be used cautiously. Tracing the pretty pictures and graphs back to raw data would be a real eye opener for all of us.

      To whatever extent the earth has or hasn?t warmed over the last century and a half, I submit that the change is actually undetectable to just about anyone who participates is these on-line debates. Unless you happen to be a real night owl in Siberia you would have little chance of noticing changes in your average temperature because it is the increases in nighttime winter lows in the coldest areas on earth that contribute overwhelmingly to the touted changes in the annual global averages. For most of us, our local ?climate? is not significantly different that it was in 1850.

      (To be just a little less polite for a moment, I think the ?sea level rise that creates a hundred million homeless Muslims? stuff detracts from serious debate. The fact that the same paragraph ends with the admonishment ?don?t question empirical truth? makes it almost funny. Anyhow, it cannot happen. If such a drastic rise in sea level ever were to occur, it would happen over many, many decades and not as a sudden tidal flood. Generations of cows may stand in the same place and die but people will move.)

      Also, the word ?causes? always derails me in some of these arguments. Statistical correlations do not prove causation. While I cannot sit here and tell you with any certainty that cigarette smoking does not cause lung cancer, I don?t believe I have ever seen proof of the isolated biochemical processes that lead from lung tissue contact with representative concentrations of tobacco smoke to the presences of cancer cells. However, I am open to being educated on the matter.

      Ntrepid

      Proud Member for 4 Years and 2 Months

      • DONTREADONME

        What I find perplexing is the lack of solar fluctuations, I told my wife that this year was going to be especially cooler given the sun’s current flux. It has yet to be seen if I am right, but I will not be surprised if we have a very cold winter.

        I always correlate the GW modeling to the modeling I do with NVS and Thermal Vision systems. The modeling works really well with predicting the ability of a viewer to detect, recognize and identify static targets. These assumptions made in the model assume a uniform target signature with a few atmospheric transmission contributions and that the target is stationary. When the target moves or has a non-uniform signature among a background that is close in signature the model has to be thrown out the window. Plus the assumptions made in the model do not adequately account for probabilities of identifying the target by guessing as is seen in human subjects.

        What I am trying to say is that even with a simple system such as I2 or Thermal sensors the model can be quite complex and small fluctuations in the input parameters can cause the results to be widely divergent from the predicted behavior of the model.

        So looking to the earth model, I was always curious as to the ability of the earths vegetation to grow substantially to account for the aborption of increasing CO2 levels. I think a region in the Northern Hemisphere acts as the lungs of the atmosphere. Secondly, what happens if the Sun were to go in a prolonged cycle of minimal activity, or what if the flux is not constant year to year or from solar cycle to solar cycle? I could go on for an hour on all of the parameters I think are inputs to these GW models and analysis, my question is do the models account for these parameters.

        Sometimes, I get the arguement that some of my concerns are minute in the grand scheme of GW, but these seemingly inconsequential effects add together in the rate equations or they can create a negative rate of change to offset the model of run-away global warming.

        One last thing, I am very interested in molecular absorption spectra as a result of increased CO2 concentration and its effect on ground absorption and radiative thermal radiation.

        Quite interesting to note that when I was studying old USSR documentation regarding HF/DF lasers I was interested to see that they specified that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was 375 ppm back in the 70′s. Intersting they are saying now the concentration is somewhere around this number, so maybe the Soviets messed up their calculations back in the 70′s. One other thing, I was always interested in the measurements of thermometers that were made back in the 1800s were they calibrated by NIST back then or what?

        Anyway, as you said chemical_sam I am probably going to far into my discussion then necessary, but it sure is fun to think of the what ifs.

        • DONTREADONME

          Wow that makes for a very compelling case doesn’t it. Empirical evidence is only as good as the scientific measurement tools used, also I am curious how many thermometers were placed over the surface of the earth over the last 130 years.

          Oh, wait a minute the rings of the trees say so. Yeah, that is a precision measurement.

          If you gave me a 130 years of empirical evidence to state that the Earth is warming I would say your window is quite small and that I can make the graph look worse by shrinking it to ten years. Also if I am looking for a trend 130 years with evidence on an earth that is 3G+ years in age I would laugh you out of the room. It would be like you going out an measuring the temperature with a thermometer ten days out of the year and then tell me the average temperature for the year is what your ten measurement divided by 10 come on… Please do not bring the arguement of 130 years to this debate, it looks desperate.

          I bet you are getting ready to say that what Nobel prize have I won? None, but in my line of work accepting data without context or knowledge of the precision is irresponsible

          • WOSG

            The warming is a fact.

            The earth is cooler now than in the last 15 years or so. And in USA which was warmer : 1934 or 2008? 1934!

            The models predicted 3-5 times the amount of warming from 1990 to today than actually took place. Curiously those same models take the basic CO2 impact and quadruple its impact through a highly suspect ‘water vapor feedback’ mechanism that scientist Ray Spencer, PhD, and author of ‘climate confusion’ has shown to be flawed. The scientific conclusion to make is the models are massively overestimating the impact of AGW.

            Put on too little and you have a sea level rise that creates a hundred million homeless Muslims from places like Indonesia and Bangladesh, not to mention putting significant parts of New York City and London under water, which would also destroy the world economy.

            This is utter and absolute fearmongering rubbish and any informed person should know it. Sea level rise per year is 1-2 MILLIMETERS.

  • DONTREADONME

    I would state that not just that their is extraordinary complex data, I would inlcude that the system that scientists are trying to shrink down to a computer model is so extraordinarily complex and dynamic.

    The results of the models that are not accounting for all inputs, feedbacks and dynamics of the system (earth and the changing sun) should be viewed skeptically.

  • charliehall

    There are plenty of time series data on the internet for anyone to see. No sophisticated computer models are needed. Saying that the earth has not gotten warmer over the past 130 years is like saying HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, cigarette smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer, or the earth is 6000 years old. Those who disagree with any of these principles do not have a place at a scientific discussion because they deny the primacy of empirical evidence.

    The warming is a fact. What caused that warming is a matter for scientific inquiry, but the big problem is what to do about the future. Climate models are indeed imperfect and do not solve the basic problem: Put on too many controls and you destroy the world economy. Put on too little and you have a sea level rise that creates a hundred million homeless Muslims from places like Indonesia and Bangladesh, not to mention putting significant parts of New York City and London under water, which would also destroy the world economy. (Please no jokes about how it would be better if Wall Street were under water; this is way too serious for political games. But in any case don’t question empirical truth.)

  • MichaelBDR

    Al Gore has a horse in the race. Because of this, he distorted the CO2 / Global Temperature chart to imply that CO2 caused global warming in the past. That is not true. If you examine the CO2 / temperature charts at a close level, you will see that the temperatures started going up tens and hundreds of years BEFORE the CO2 levels went up. this indicates that a rising CO2 level are not causal to temperature increase, but that temperature increase is causal to CO2 increase. Hypothetically due to increased desertification of the planet at the time and the decrease in plant life available to reduce CO2 buildup. At the large scale he used in his presentations, the time scale was so large that it appeared that the CO2 / temperature chart lines where in temporal synchronization. This is a typical far left political machination to sway the scientifically ignorant masses to believe a certain point of view.

  • chemical_sam

    I wouldn’t venture that far into it. One has to stop cold at the modelling stage. The models for which I have been able to get a description, if not get a look at, make wildly bad assumptions, and don’t reflect the processes they are supposed to mimic. Not even remotely. Some models are couched in relatively good assumptions, like when Arrhenius’ equations are used, adding to an air of legitimacy, but then fall flat with everything else.

    My faves are the models out there that mathematically add CO2 to the atmosphere over time completely ignoring chemical or physical processes. This is done on the expectation that we will burn fossil fuels faster still. Then, armed with the IPCC claim (thanks, Al) that CO2 is directly correllated to global warming, modellers draw an extrapolation of future temperatures, based on a proportionality constant, called a “forcing constant” that was constructed by making the false correllation in the first place. Of course this is all paid for with taxpayer money.

    That’s the type of model, and science, and bias from which the IPCC draws. It’s got very little to do with atmospheric processes of any kind.

    And you don’t get invited to the conversation unless you have something that someone can use to politicize their point.

    By the way, “forcing constants” are unique to scientists who model global warming. Go figure. Nobody else uses them in the hard sciences as far as I know.

    As far as I’m concerned this sort of junk science amounts to propaganda and fraud.

  • chemical_sam

    It may continue to cool as it has done since the turn of the century (a fact), for many years to come, in spite of rising CO2 levels. What then?

    It warms and cools on a daily basis, and a yearly basis, and on a differential basis according to cloud cover, and snow cover, and on a solar cycle basis, and as a function of sproadic volcanic activity, and forest fires, changes in the magnetosphere. Each instantaneous variable affecting the variables that come thereafter.

    On a longer time scale (and a more pronounced temperature scale) there are inexplicable ice ages (the last one from which we are still emerging, terrestrial nutation, centuries-long lulls in solar activity. All documented, all absolute facts.

    Then there’s the geological time scale, where we can site the Cambrian Explosion, the Permian and Carolinan Extinctions, continental drift.

    Interspersed in all of this is the rather bad habit of the biosphere to change on its own. Sometimes a new mode of existence, like in the Cambrian Explosion. Sometimes life makes huge changes in response to natural climate change, coupled with the troublesome fact that life begets changes in weather as well. Sometimes the biosphere does something that’s really troublesome, and switches different modes of itself on and off at different times in the year.

    Remarkably, Earth has endured far greater extremes and ended up in this century about in the middle, without any help from the IPCC.

    To what, if any, extent Humankind has overwhelmed all those processes and doomed the planet to extinction is yet to be determined. That would require a significant decoupling of all those processes I described and many more. That would require a serious attempt at understanding which of those processes can be dropped from the assessment, if any. That would require a serious attempt to model those processes without any of the grossly inaccurate assumptions junk scientists currently employ. The changes that remain would be due to us. There’s no way around the hard work, and there’s no way that anyone should be writing policy based on the conclusions we have now, especially because of the way we have arrived at them, and especially considering the people who stand to gain monetarily and politically from this endeavor.

    And so that I don’t come off as a ne’er-do-well, merrily gainsaying people who claim their right, I’ll offer some solutions that will work.

    Increase the ratio of plants to animals. Simply put, plant more gren plants trees than we consume. The true source of increased levels of CO2 is the inability for plant photosynthesis to keep up with production, however CO2 happens to be formed.

    Create and re-establish topsoil, and meadows. The perfect carbon sequestration medium. It can’t even burn like a forest might. Any farmer can tell you that.

    Mulch.

    Push back the desert in ways that truly elminate desert, not propping up plants that otherwise wouldn’t make it, like in California. The difference between the Sahara and the Amazon is that the Amazon is covered with plants.

    Do a serious analysis, in the asbence of subsidies which hide true cost, on whether alternative energy sources are truly alternative.

    For instance, is wind power worth the land/ocean use and planning, the toll on animal/plant life, the magnets and copper wiring in the rotors and stators, and nickel and steel mining and fabrication, the copper transmission lines, the power inversion apparatus and transformers, the eyesore, the control, and, for God’s sake, the maintenance, for the amount of energy we’d be deriving from the wind?

    And when enough are built and the wind patterns are affected, possibly precipitating another Ice Age, what then?

    Aren’t we currently asking similar questions about coal plants now?

    Where’s all the lithium for those wonderful electric cars coming from? Who’s going to mine/extract the stuff?

    You get the idea. It’s better to get an understanding of what really counts first. The environmentalists can either be patient, or go out and get the correct information themselves if they’re that worried about it.

    Every wrong step in the dark costs you two steps to get back on track. And I smell nothing but regret on the wind the moment we charge ahead with the bad data we have now.