At 10:02 PM 12/3/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
I do not know enough about climatology to place any bets, but based on what I know about cold fusion and many other difficult areas of science and technology, if I have to bet, I'll stick with the people who do this for a living and who have been looking at the data every day for decades.
Basically, I'm with Jed on this. However, it's worth looking closer at this "expert" thing, and at what have been called "cascades." Here is an article about a cascade that continues to have major effects: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/science/09tier.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Remarkably, this is an example where Gary Taubes has *exposed* the cascade. Taubes was involved, in the 1990s, in solidifying the cold fusion cascade.
Because Taubes is actually interested in real science (besides his career), I see it as possible that he might take another look. It would be a great opportunity for him if he did ....
Be that as it may, on Wikipedia, the cabal that was so oppressive wrt cold fusion first came into conflict with me on ... global warming. William M. Connolley, the administrator who first banned me from cold fusion, was actually a climate scientist. I had noticed this group of people sitting on the global warming article. One incident that I remember was when I attempted to insert, in the article, the definitions used by the IPCC in describing its *degree of certainty* as to anthropogenic global warming. Basically, the IPCC reports were very carefully crafted, and they were essentially conservative. But the terms they used were easily misunderstood by the lay reader, so I believed that the text should define terms like "probably," or "likely." The cabal absolutely didn't want to allow that. It would be "confusing," and "too much detail."
Right. They wanted to convey an impression, their own point of view, which was that global warming was a severe emergency.
I actually happened to agree with them, at least as to possibilities. It might be an emergency. But we need science and we need sober examination, and what happens with cascades is that a group "consensus" forms without a solid basis in science. They are social phenomena.
The article I cited above from John Tierney gives a good explanation of how cascades can form. It's important to understand that a cascade forming doesn't mean that the group is wrong. They might be right. It means, though, that the position taken isn't necessarily scientifically established.
Opposing cascades can form. That is there can be a pro-AGW cascade and a cascade that dismisses the whole thing as nonsense. Once people buy into a cascade, their opinions can be very difficult to dislodge with mere facts. After all, "we" already know the truth. And so every new fact is fitted into place in that picture, with whatever made-up explanations are necessary for this.
There is a review on cold fusion in a major mainstream multidisciplinary journal? There must be something wrong with this, since we already know that cold fusion is totally bogus, wasn't that shown conclusively twenty years ago? So we look, and, indeed, we find stuff to bring up:
1. Nothing new has been discovered in the last ten years. Or at least it looks like that, at first glance. (We can easily dismiss new stuff like Rossi, since his claims have not been verified.)
2. Naturwissenschaften is a biology journal. (Actually, it's multidisciplinary, but most articles involve the life sciences in some way.)
3. Edmund Storms, the review author, is on the editorial board of Naturwissenschaften. (Yes, he is, and the pseudoskeptics somehow never notice that this fact, in itself, indicates that cold fusion has turned the corner. He did not review and approve his own paper. It was solicited by the managing editor, and who else would write that paper? Some physicists who has no clue about the field?)
4. He mentions biological transmutation. Obviously, he's a wing nut. (If cold fusion is real, it would not be surprising if there are examples where proteins can set up the catalytic conditions. That work (Vysotskii) has not been confirmed, but replication *should* be attempted.)
5. The review hasn't been cited. (It's a review, and what it reveals is actually old news, the evidence was in place a decade ago. This review would likely only be cited in an attempt to contradict it, and it appears that, while it's likely attempts have been made, counter-reviews have not been accepted at any mainstream journal.)
That's how cascades persist. Through rationalizations. With the "dietary fat" cascade, for years, contrary research had great difficulty getting published, it was claimed that it would be "dangerous," people might draw premature conclusions from it and ... die! Then, as research showed that a low-carb, high fat diet (Atkins) actually produced lower cardiac risk factors than recommended low-fat diets, it was said that these diets "hadn't been subject to long-term testing." That's correct. But the testing of low-carb diets was now more extensive than the testing of the low-fat diets that have been -- and continue to be -- enthusiastically recommended by some agencies and "experts."
Basically, had there been a real scientific consensus, based on solid and confirmed research, the conservatism would have been reasonable. But the point that Taubes makes -- devastatingly -- in his articles and books, is that there never was this real scientific consensus.
I'm very concerned about global warming, because the possible risk and damage is so high. We should know, and that requires research. A great deal of research has been done, and because of the pro-AGW cascade, researchers with contrary evidence can experience harassment, and some pro-AGW scientists have gone overboard promoting their conclusions. I was concerned on Wikipedia, about the AGW situation, before I became involved in the cold fusion mess there. And I was threatened that I'd be banned, before they ever had an excuse. Because I'd questioned them.
They hated discussion. They had the admin tools, and they used them without discussion, and sometimes to suppress discussion.
They were generally narrow-minded pseudoskeptics, convinced they were right, their attitudes had nothing to do with science. It was a social phenomenon. They acted all over the "pseuodscience" and "fringe" areas. Often, their actual views were reasonable, but how they treated opposing views was not, it was actually contrary to Wikipedia policy, but they had sufficient clout and cover to get away with it.
