| Revision as of 15:48, 11 February 2010 editVoiceofreason01 (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users950 edits →Polish Academy of Sciences: fixed grammar← Previous edit | Revision as of 16:09, 11 February 2010 edit undoDmcq (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers29,599 edits →Polish Academy of Sciences: looks funny to meNext edit → | ||
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| In 2009 the Polish Academy issued another statement with more in it. Basically they say that some of the warming is caused by human activity rather than quantifying it and have pointed out the earth has warmed up and cooled in the past. Of course it has been pounced on by skeptics saying some might mean very little and therefore AGW is untrue and certainly parts of the rest of their statement is skirting round the issue. It is all very silly but it looks notable enough to me to mention specially. Any ideas of what happened there, do they actually have a large number of skeptics or are they doing the usual business of scientists prevaricating and covering all the bases? ] (]) 14:40, 11 February 2010 (UTC) | In 2009 the Polish Academy issued another statement with more in it. Basically they say that some of the warming is caused by human activity rather than quantifying it and have pointed out the earth has warmed up and cooled in the past. Of course it has been pounced on by skeptics saying some might mean very little and therefore AGW is untrue and certainly parts of the rest of their statement is skirting round the issue. It is all very silly but it looks notable enough to me to mention specially. Any ideas of what happened there, do they actually have a large number of skeptics or are they doing the usual business of scientists prevaricating and covering all the bases? ] (]) 14:40, 11 February 2010 (UTC) | ||
| :First scientists rarely prevaricate. That's publicists and Politicians. Sometimes it appears that scientiests are making disengenuous statements because they are trying to be as accurate in their statements as possible. The Polish Academy statement does not refute that some anthropogenic Global Warming is taking place but they are qualifying that with a discussion about the other factors that contribute to changes in climate. This statement is nothing to be alarmed about, this is how science works. All we need to do about this is add a short note in the section on dissenting statements, if someone tries to add something that isn't properly supported by the source we can revert them. I find it a little disturbing that you're this upset by this statement. keep in mind ] and remember we're just reporting what other people of note have found, our personal opinions should not enter into the equation. Also do you have a full english version of the statement? I'm working off news articles.] (]) 15:46, 11 February 2010 (UTC) | :First scientists rarely prevaricate. That's publicists and Politicians. Sometimes it appears that scientiests are making disengenuous statements because they are trying to be as accurate in their statements as possible. The Polish Academy statement does not refute that some anthropogenic Global Warming is taking place but they are qualifying that with a discussion about the other factors that contribute to changes in climate. This statement is nothing to be alarmed about, this is how science works. All we need to do about this is add a short note in the section on dissenting statements, if someone tries to add something that isn't properly supported by the source we can revert them. I find it a little disturbing that you're this upset by this statement. keep in mind ] and remember we're just reporting what other people of note have found, our personal opinions should not enter into the equation. Also do you have a full english version of the statement? I'm working off news articles.] (]) 15:46, 11 February 2010 (UTC) | ||
| ::I think what they said is a bit more than that if you look at . They talk about this temporary warming in section 7 for instance. That is a pretty strong statement. In fact a lot of the struff looks unfounded and bad science to me. ] (]) 16:09, 11 February 2010 (UTC) | |||
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 faq page Frequently asked questions
One of the earliest papers in climate science, published in 1963, reported that a global cooling trend had begun in 1940s, which seemed to be underscored by unusually severe winters in 1972 and 1973 in parts of North America. (It was later shown that this supposed global trend was limited to the Northern Hemisphere, and offset by a warming trend in the Southern Hemisphere.) Other papers, looking at natural causes of climate variability, such as the Milankovitch cycles, "predicted" another Ice Age in 20,000 years (but only if human activity did not interfere). A survey of the peer-reviewed literature for this period showed a total of seven papers that predicted, implied, or indicated global cooling. On the other hand, 44 papers were found that predicted global warming. That there was some diversity of outlook is not surprising, as scientists often have extremely narrow, "knot-hole" views of a subject, and their conclusions are usually limited to whether the particular phenomena they have studied makes a positive or negative contribution to a general trend. The net result of many such contributions, and the overall effect or trend, is assessed by the occasional review paper, or expert panels at scientific conferences. By 1979 the scientific consensus was clear that the eminent threat was not global cooling, but global warming. The common misperception that "Back in the 1970s, all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming" – in less than 20,000 years – is fictional, based on a few studies that were sensationalized in the popular press, and subsequent misrepresentation by political writers. (See also GW/FAQ:A13) Q6: Why should we trust scientists that work for the government? ‡ (Discussion) Q7: Why does this article rely primarily on the conclusions of the IPCC? Because the conclusions of the IPCC, produced through the collaborative efforts of thousands of experts, are the result of the most thorough survey of the state of climate science (or of any science) ever done. There is simply no other organization or effort that is comparable. Q9: Isn't the IPCC a biased source? ‡ (Discussion) Q10: Why should we trust reports prepared by biased UN scientists? The IPCC reports are not produced by "UN scientists". The IPCC does not employ the scientists who generate the reports, and has no control over them. The scientists are internationally recognized experts, most with a long history of successful research in the field. They are employed by a number of different organizations, including scientific research institutes, agencies like NASA and NOAA, and universities. They receive no extra pay for their participation in the IPCC process, which is considered a normal part of their academic duties. (Discussion) (From GW/FAQ:A11) Q11: Why doesn't the article include dissent from the consensus by noted scientists and IPCC contributors? The IPCC consensus regarding climate change was formally developed by thousands of experts, based on the entirety of climate science research and interpretation. The "several prominent contributors" said to be "critical" of the consensus do not constitute a sufficiently significant minority view to warrant inclusion (per the policy of WP:WEIGHT). Nor has any scientific authority been cited that suggests these criticisms in any way challenge the science of the consensus.See also the next two questions. (Discussion) Q12:There are plenty of scientists who dispute human-caused global warming. Why aren't their opinions included? Numerous individual scientists have made a variety of public statements on this topic, both dissenting and concurring, and everything in between. Including those statements here would make the article overwhelming long and cumbersome, and would be granting them far too much undue weight. Public statements made by individual scientists only reflect the opinions of those individuals and not of the scientific community as a whole. (Discussion) Q13: Why doesn't this article include any dissenting views?
It would be more sensible to ask, "what is the scientific case that global warming is not anthropogenic?" But this case is so overwhelmed by the evidence, and held by so few scientists (if any!), that it simply lacks sufficient weight for consideration. (The argument that there is no global warming, that it is not human caused, and that the expected effects are only "alarism", is prominent only in non-scientific venues, and this article is about scientific opinion.) (Discussion, discussion) Q16: Is this article slanted or biased because it presents only one side of the debate? ‡ (Discussion) Q17: Is this article a prohibited synthesis of the opinions of the listed scientific bodies? No. The synthesis of scientific opinion on climate change (based on the primary sources) was done by the IPCC (a reliable secondary source). The statements of the various scientific organizations are affirmations of the IPCC's conclusion; their inclusion in the article establishes the IPCC as a reliable source, and affirms the synthesis it reached as a consensus view. (Discussion) Q20: What exactly is a "scientific body of national or international standing"? An Academy of Sciences or a scientific society that maintains a national or international membership, and that is well-regarded within the scientific community could be said to be of "national or international standing." Discerning how well-regarded a particular scientific body is requires some familiarity with the scientific community. However, for academies or societies that produce scientific journals, some assessment of their standing can be derived from their journal's impact factor ratings as provided by Journal Citation Reports. The journals Science, from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and PNAS, from the US National Academy of Sciences, are considered to be among the world's most influential and prestigious. (Discussion) Q21: What are the criteria for including organizations? ‡ (Discussion) Q22: Is it fair to assume that organizations not listed as supporting are undecided? No. It is fairer to ask, what organizations? It is more likely that any "organizations not listed" simply do not exist, as a reasonable search has not found any. Even easing the definition of a scientific organization to a point that became questionable did not find any undecided organizations (aside from the AAPG). An earlier form of the question noted that the listed organizations are predominately American or British Commonwealth (which is what might be expected for the English-language Misplaced Pages), and questioned whether there might be smaller, non-English speaking nations with scientific societies that are undecided on the issue. This is a possibility, but unlikely; the InterAcademy Council that represents the world's scientific and engineering academies affirms global warming and its dangers. (Discussion) Q25: Given the obvious NPOV violation why shouldn't I tag this article as NPOV?
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Removed material
I just removed the following from the section 'Statements by dissenting organizations':
- However, there are some individual scientists who continue to oppose some part of the mainstream assessment of global warming, mostly along the lines that observed warming is likely to be attributable to natural causes and is not due to greenhouse gases produced my man's activities. Scientists for this purpose are defined as a person who has published at least one peer-reviewed article during their lifetime in the broadly-construed area of natural sciences. Such publication need not be recent and need not be in a field relevant to climate.
- Some scientists have been wrongly labelled as 'skeptics' for differences of opinion that do not amount to opposition to the theory of anthropogenic global warming.
This is clearly an extended, unsourced discussion of opinions of individuals. Therefore it is irrelevant to the section, possibly irrelevant to the article, or if consensus is to keep, it needs reliable source references and to be put into a different place in the article. --Nigelj (talk) 17:30, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
- I reverted for the moment to the version which was there before which said there were dissenting opinions and pointing to where a reader might find more but without the bit trying to explain what they think - there are a large number of different ideas it isn't a coherent group. I think it would be wrong not to point to something about the dissent even if it doesn't strictly fall within scientific opinion. It is like evolution, it points to creationism even if it has nothing to do with evolution and there are some scientists supporting creationism. Dmcq (talk) 17:45, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
- An article on Scientific opinion on climate change needs to include individual positions as well as organisations. The extra material could fit in another section or perhaps rename the existing section "Dissenting organisations and individuals". MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 19:06, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
- And which individual positions do you posit, that merit weight enough (sufficiently authoritative) to describe the scientific opinion (ie. aggregate opinion), as opposed to the personal opinion of the researcher? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:39, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'm not (or perhaps I should say I wasn't) sufficiently interested in the actual positions of dissenters to concern myself with the details. But I'm very uncomfortable seeing them excluded. MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 02:46, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
- Erm? I was not asking about dissenters. I was asking which scientists, regardless of position, who's opinion would have sufficient authoritative weight to merit inclusion as compared to the aggregate opinions. It would be a violation of WP:NPOV, to only present views of dissenters. In the case of adding individual opinions, they must be in balance with the proportion of views. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 11:51, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'm not (or perhaps I should say I wasn't) sufficiently interested in the actual positions of dissenters to concern myself with the details. But I'm very uncomfortable seeing them excluded. MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 02:46, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
- You might be nterested in participating in the discussions started at the original research noticeboard at here or at the neutral point of view noticeboard at here as these points have recently caused disruption here without progress. Dmcq (talk) 21:43, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
- The disruption I'm seeing is a refusal to allow the documenting of any dissenting opinion (let alone in an NPOV fashion). The UK chief scientific officer speaks for me when he just said: “I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism. Science grows and improves in the light of criticism.” MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 02:46, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
- Editors should follow WP:DISPUTE about disputes. It is fairly reasonable to bring up the same point again every so often after a reasonable span of time onto a talk page as the consensus may have changed. However it is not reasonable to keep on and on without either progressing or dropping a dispute, that is disruption. Editors are perfectly entitled to their opinions but they are not entitled to disrupt Misplaced Pages. The dispute resolution process is there so disputes are resolved. It is policy, it is not just a guideline. Consensus does not mean each and every editor will get their idea of what's right into the article. Dmcq (talk) 10:51, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
- You might not be aware but there are rather a lot of articles about various aspects of global warming and climate change. There's also Climate change consensus about the public perception about whether there is a consensus. There's Global warming controversy about the general controversy and if you want the actual science you'd start at Global warming. The actual science talks about points of dispute in the actual science itself. There's a whole subculture of[REDACTED] that seems to be devoted to the various topics. This one is specifically about what the scientific opinion is about climate chaneg and how strong it is. It is not about the science itself or the controversy amongst the public. Dmcq (talk) 11:48, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
- The disruption I'm seeing is a refusal to allow the documenting of any dissenting opinion (let alone in an NPOV fashion). The UK chief scientific officer speaks for me when he just said: “I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism. Science grows and improves in the light of criticism.” MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 02:46, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
- And which individual positions do you posit, that merit weight enough (sufficiently authoritative) to describe the scientific opinion (ie. aggregate opinion), as opposed to the personal opinion of the researcher? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:39, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
- An article on Scientific opinion on climate change needs to include individual positions as well as organisations. The extra material could fit in another section or perhaps rename the existing section "Dissenting organisations and individuals". MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 19:06, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Introduction Adjustments
Would it be reasonable to change the intro sentence from:
- "This does not include the views of individual scientists, individual universities, or laboratories, nor self-selected lists of individuals such as petitions."
To the following sentence:
- "This article does not address the views of..."?
An alternative could be to add a section regarding "Scientific Opinion within non-scientific bodies, surveys of opinion among climate scientists..." etc. Or something more concise to that effect. That section would then summarize the positions of scientists - such as in the Doran and Kendall Zimmerman, 2009 report - giving percentages as opposed to listing any individual names - so as to not provide undue weight to either side. The more problematic portion would be summarizing the positions of universities and self-selected reports (for obvious reasons), but I think that sources could be found to provide reasons that they should be excluded (for political or ideological bias as well as common sense) from the scientific consensus.
I did a quick search in the archives, but there's so much discussion in this area, I might have missed it if this was specifically addressed before.
On the other hand, I don't have a problem with the intro sentence as it stands now and I don't believe it represents WP:OR. Just presenting possibilities. It will never be possible to satisfy some people regarding this article, but it may be possible to address some of the concerns. Airborne84 (talk) 01:34, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Dissenting Organizations
In the 2007 book Climate change: what it means for us, our children, and our grandchildren, by DiMento and Doughman, the following statement is made on page 68:
- "In the past several years, all of the major scientific bodies in the United states whose membership's expertise bears directly on the matter have issued reports or statements that confirm the IPCC Conclusion."
Is it worthwhile adding this to the article in some way? It supports the "dissenting opinion" section only in part. Would it be worthwhile to add as an additional citation to the current one?
The information on page 71 is also interesting and perhaps that could be useful ]. However, the papers surveyed are not listed, and thus this is probably not germane to "synthesis reports, scientific bodies of national or international standing, and surveys of opinion among climate scientists" as in this article.
I should also add that I have no issue with the validity or appropriateness of the current, listed reference supporting the "dissenting opinions" section. However, a second statement that corroborates the first, if only in part, should remove the word "single" from future objections at least. Airborne84 (talk) 01:59, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
- Cold be used as a ref to support the existing statement, if we feel we need one. I'm not sure William M. Connolley (talk) 20:02, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Suggest adding Portal Global warming
Suggest adding
99.155.156.219 (talk) 00:36, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
- Sounds a reasonable idea to have a project on global warming. People could discuss the overall organization of the articles there rather than all the separate merge/split discussions in the separate articles and people trying to stick the same ideas everywhere and decide better where things should be. Dmcq (talk) 01:07, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Bray/Von Storch 2008
I removed the Bray/Von Storch survey of 2003 because of various problems but I think the 2008 one should be in. The survey has been used in a peer reviewed article on another subject which is enough to give credence for the survey methodology - what was principally wrong with the earlier 2003 survey. I'll try sticking in something and see how it goes. Dmcq (talk) 19:34, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
- I'm losing track. Why is the 2008 survey any good? That was the one trivially hackable, wasn't it? William M. Connolley (talk) 20:37, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
- No I believe it was he 2003 where passwords were leaked and anyone could fill it on the internet. The 2008 one was sent to specific people on 3 lists of climate change scientists and the main criticism I can see is that the response rate was only 18%. Dmcq (talk) 01:27, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, the methodology was better. The survey email from Bray contained a link to take-survey.com which included a unique identifier for each recipient. Nonetheless many of us did not respond for fear that the survey results could be misused (not by von Storch but by others). Perhaps this partially explains the low response rate. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:46, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
- 18% is not bad at all; all surveys have low response rates. This was really quite a long survey, so it's surprising that that many responded. MikeR613 (talk) 18:31, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Low response rate isn't so bad: Response_rate MikeR613 (talk) 20:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- No I believe it was he 2003 where passwords were leaked and anyone could fill it on the internet. The 2008 one was sent to specific people on 3 lists of climate change scientists and the main criticism I can see is that the response rate was only 18%. Dmcq (talk) 01:27, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
The two IAP coordinated statements in 2009
The InterAcademy Panel on International Issues (IAP) released two statements on climae change issues in 2009. As the other similar IAP releases, they are not in the name of the IAC (the InterAcademy Council), but in the name of the siignatory membors of the IAP; which (up to date) means 70 and 54 academies of sciences (or other members), respectively. Both were explicitly issued with the Copenhagen conference in mind.
I've not studied the statements carefully yet. I do not know if either or both of them essentially coincide with any of the 2009 statements already mentioned in the text. Also, I'm not quite clear of the status of the second statement, since it is not (yet) endorsed by a two third's majority of the IAP members. In either case, I think they should be mentioned among the joint science academies' statements, not in the IAC section, since they are not issued on behalf of the academies, but ratified by the academies themselves.
My idea so far has been to have separate articles for the various IAP released statements, and link them to the relevant articles about the issues they address. If so, summaries here should be linked to these articles. Now, only an article on the first of the 13 statements exists, about overpopulation, from 1993-1994; actually, already this statement shows concern about "increasing greenhouse gas emissions" (long before 2001); therefore, perhaps this, too, ought to be mentioned briefly in the academies of science section?
Comments? JoergenB (talk) 15:23, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Polish Academy of Sciences
In 2009 the Polish Academy issued another statement with more in it. Basically they say that some of the warming is caused by human activity rather than quantifying it and have pointed out the earth has warmed up and cooled in the past. Of course it has been pounced on by skeptics saying some might mean very little and therefore AGW is untrue and certainly parts of the rest of their statement is skirting round the issue. It is all very silly but it looks notable enough to me to mention specially. Any ideas of what happened there, do they actually have a large number of skeptics or are they doing the usual business of scientists prevaricating and covering all the bases? Dmcq (talk) 14:40, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
- First scientists rarely prevaricate. That's publicists and Politicians. Sometimes it appears that scientiests are making disengenuous statements because they are trying to be as accurate in their statements as possible. The Polish Academy statement does not refute that some anthropogenic Global Warming is taking place but they are qualifying that with a discussion about the other factors that contribute to changes in climate. This statement is nothing to be alarmed about, this is how science works. All we need to do about this is add a short note in the section on dissenting statements, if someone tries to add something that isn't properly supported by the source we can revert them. I find it a little disturbing that you're this upset by this statement. keep in mind WP:FIVE and remember we're just reporting what other people of note have found, our personal opinions should not enter into the equation. Also do you have a full english version of the statement? I'm working off news articles.Voiceofreason01 (talk) 15:46, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
- I think what they said is a bit more than that if you look at . They talk about this temporary warming in section 7 for instance. That is a pretty strong statement. In fact a lot of the struff looks unfounded and bad science to me. Dmcq (talk) 16:09, 11 February 2010 (UTC)