Quote:
Originally Posted by Flames89
Unfortunately I don't have the time to dig up the HUNDREDS of scientists involved in this study to put their qualifications infront of you. I also don't have time to pull the same qualifications from the THOUSANDS of scientists who have agreed on this issue.
Yes, the media says "scientists", because, by nature, a media piece has to be accessible to the common folk. What you want is a monster bibliography with every written word.
Experts and scientists say smoking is bad for you ...
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The problem I have with all of this is that the panel opening shuns and does not let dissenting voices participate in the discussion. Many many good scientists who have a dissenting view, that is a view that the contribution due to man may be small or not at all quantifiable at his stage, have been sounding silenced.
I personally don't find it surprising when a panel made up of people who have made up their mind comes out with conclusions that support what they already believed before having a "debate". There are dissenting viewpoints that to look like good science. If it isn't good science then the scientists on these panels have to openly debate that and show why. But by and large they don't do that and haven't done so. And we aren't talking scientists supported by big business or anything like but honest to goodness scientists who look at the data they've collected and come to a conclusion that differs from someone elses study.
Now this paper may address that. You can't tell from the abstract or from what a reporter says about it. It may also be a good degree of hand waving but because it's a hot topic it gets center stage in a respected journal (yes indeed high quality academic journals don't just look at data quality but what is hot at the current time).
Note this isn't simply a problem in the realm of climate change. This is a problem in every scientific discipline.
btw this is what the editors comment on the article contains:
"Many natural biological and physical systems are undergoing changes consistent with a gradual rise in temperature. Such changes have occurred on all continents and in most oceans since at least 1970. An Article in this issue is the first to formally link the observed changes to human-induced climate change. The study is a meta-analysis that uses a larger database than the recent IPCC report, and it takes account of land-use change and other complications. The authors conclude that anthropogenic climate change is affecting physical and biological systems globally.
But as Francis Zwiers and Gabriele Hegerl point out in News & Views, this proof based on the principle of joint attribution stops short of the statistical certainty that would be provided by 'end-to-end' models linking human activity directly to the observed changes, rather than via effects on the climate system."
Now I have no idea off hand what that means exactly other than it certainly suggests that the link is NOT definitive at all.