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Originally Posted by Airwaves
Okay, I guess they're all wrong and you're right cause you want global warming to be just one of those issues that will go away.
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No, they're not
all wrong. Many climate scientists disagree with them, some because the methodolgy used is sloppy or suspect, as are some of their motives.
Earlier you asked me if I was a scientist. No, I am not. I am an engineer with a Masters in Physics, one used to dealing with data, using it to design, build, test, and if need be, redesign, rebuild, and retest advanced electronic and optical instruments. I understand scientific method: observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena; formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation; use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations; performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments. I use it, or a variation of it, when delving into new territory when developing new instruments using bleeding edge technologies or working with PhDs to advance our understanding of optical phenomena.
I understand the process of peer review, which means to have the theory one has put forward reviewed by one's peers, both those that agree and disagree with it. If it is reviewed only by those who agree with it, then the review is suspect. It may cause a self-perpetuating positive feedback loop, blocking out all opinions or data that disagree with the theorem, particularly those that show the theory to be flawed. It is this problem that I see with the many proponents of anthropogenic global climate change. It is the problem with the National Academy of Sciences, a body that is supposed to be apolitical and open minded. It hasn't been open minded since the 70's and is less so today. It has become far too political to be considered unbiased.
In my previous post I mentioned the Mann “hockey stick” graph, the one that shows a marked increase in global temperatures over the past 100 years or so. It was used by the NAS as one of the proofs that human-caused global warming was indeed happening. But that graph has been debunked as being based upon questionable data, has not undergone true peer review, and neither has the algorithm used to generate the graph. For background on the Mann graph, here is a paper that addresses the issues with the graph, the data that was used to generate the graph, and well established historical data that was ignored by Mann and his colleagues because it didn't fit in with the theory:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf
Other theories with a good deal of verifiable data that point to other causes of global climate change have been ignored out of hand. One such has been postulated by Dr. Henrik Svensmark of the Danish Space Research Institute. Svensmark theorizes that the sun's output is the major driver of climate change throughout history, barring such things as volcanic eruptions and extraterrestrial events (asteroid strikes). He backs it up using carbon dating techniques on layers of soils, peat, and other organic layers in clay and sedimentary rock to determine the solar output throughout the past millennia:
http://www.dsri.dk/~hsv/Noter/solsys99.html
Others have checked his data, including some of his skeptics, and so far no one has been able to prove his theory wrong. Yet others have gone beyond Svensmark's initial work and looked back a number of millennia and still his theory holds up.
The one thing I have learned over the years is that just because the media splashes theories of global warming across the pages/TV screens/computer displays doesn't mean they're valid. All theories should be taken with a large grain of salt until others have had a chance to dig deep and prove or disprove them. Anthropogenic global warming is one of those that should be looked at with skeptical eye. There are still too many unanswered questions, too many flawed computer models that are being used to extrapolate what Earth's climate will be like over the next 100 years. Basing environmental policies upon a problem that may not even exist is foolish at best and extremely dangerous at worst.