[Ben C]

On 2009-11-25, William Asher wrote:
Ben C wrote in
:

Right but can't you see that it's _you_ who is doing that? I'm not the
one believing in anything here. The CO2 global-warming hypothesis is
definitely worth exploring, but obviously only if you do it properly.

I just have to know, if having thousands of researchers at hundreds of
laboratories around the world including experimentalists, modelers,
observationalists work on different facets of the problem,

You say "thousands of researchers". OK different facets of the problem,
but UEA name just three sources of global temperatures:

There is excellent agreement on the course of temperature change
since 1881 between the data set that we contribute to (HadCRUT3) and
two other, independent analyses of worldwide temperature
measurements. There are no statistically significant differences
between the warming trends in the three series since the start of
the 20th century. The three independent global temperature data
series have been assembled by:

CRU and the Met Office Hadley Centre (HadCRUT3) in the UK.

The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in
Asheville, NC, USA.

The Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), part of the
National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) in New
York.

At least the first one stinks. Smoking gun or not, and whatever the
pnambic Phil Jones claims he meant by "hide the decline", just the tone
of those emails is enough to consider the work of that lot tainted.
Besides, one would be a fool to believe anything with Michael Mann
behind it for a second time.

As for the second two, how independent are they really? After all, as
far as I know Mann doesn't officially work for the Met Office Hadley
Centre.

with those scientists all striving to have their work reviewed by
others working in the field (including scientists who are skeptical of
the theory to begin with) and published in open journals,

What they don't seem to publish very often is the data and source code,
which seeing as most of the conclusions are based on computer models, is
the important stuff.

Instead I read an awful lot about "overwhelming scientific consensus".
Seems everyone just has a consensus that they have a consensus.

*and* with periodic review of the combined results being conducted by
an independent international body of experts

I trust "independent international bodies of experts" about as far as I
could spit them.

(that again includes some of the skeptical voices) *isn't* "doing it
properly" (as you seem to be implying), what would be a better way to
go about it?

In an ideal world, make all the data and source code public and fund
skeptic and non-skeptic research equally, and both a lot less. Throwing
too much money at the problem has made it worse.

In spite of all the fuss, we're not really cutting CO2 and probably
won't-- and certainly not by enough if the alarmists are right-- so,
provided the world hasn't ended for a completely different reason, we'll
get to see what happens.

So far the closest thing to an actual experiment is the one we've been
doing on ourselves for the last century. If you're right about the
isotopes, it looks like the CO2 has gone up because of human activity.
If McKitrick and McIntyre are right about the temperature record, the
only consequence of that seems to have been a growth spurt of some
bristlecone pines, and maybe half a dozen trees in Siberia.