Eric Swanson wrote: > Robert A. Rohde wrote: > > Eric Swanson wrote: > > > As a matter of curiosity, would you identify the "paleoclimate > > > researcher" you mentioned in your post?? > > > > Sorry, no. He's a closet skeptic that I've closely interacted with in > > the past, but not someone that is publicly known for a skeptical view. > > Out of respect for his privacy, I am not going to identify him here. > > Sorry, but most scientists are skeptics by nature. A good scientist > must ALWAYS be ready to question the accepted explanations, else how > could he/she ever come up with new and different ideas and theories? > Since you won't give a name, would you give a summary of his > reasoning?
There is a difference between being sensibly skeptical about new research and unexpected claims and stubbornly disputing well-established research and broady accepted claims. There are situations where the second kind of skepticism can be useful to science too (e.g. Einstein, Pasteur), but more often than not such attitudes are unproductive for the researcher who holds them. The individual who I am talking about basically believes a) that climate modelling is too simplified and tuned to be useful, b) that most of what gets published in the climate literature is dodgy and shouldn't stand up to scrutiny, and c) the climate is basically too complicated for us to predict. Obviously if one is going to take those positions, it is not hard to see that such a person might say that anthropogenic global warming hasn't been established and even if it does exist we don't know what it means for the future. Incidentally, I agree with him that there is a lot of garbage in the climate science literature, but that doesn't stop climate models from being useful, or negate basic points like increasing greenhouse gases can be expected to lead to more warming. -Robert http://www.globalwarmingart.com/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
