The big buzzwords being bandied about with regards to climate change is Scientific Consensus. I understand what this mean, although I don’t think a lot of the global warming alarmists do.
In every article I write about this, I feel the need to explain - so bear with me.
- According to the science available to us today, there is irrefutable evidence the earth has been warming over the past few decades.
- We have assumed carbon dioxide is the most important contributor to global warming.
The first statement is based upon the results of Science. There have been highly accurate measurements of temperature change since 1978 and quite accurate research of the natural record going back a very long time. The earth warms and cools in a somewhat cyclical manner.
The second statement is based upon Scientific Consensus, but only a bastardized form if that. Scientific Consensus is a judgment or opinion, which is based significantly on peer review of other people’s research. Scientific Consensus is supposed to be open for criticism, but it is not now - nor has it been historically. Scientific Consensus is supposed to be perishable, changing over time as new science emerges on a specific topic, but that is not happening in the global warming debate either.
Our ability to understand global warming and whether we should worry should be based upon the results of science. The scientific community should be encouraging researchers to try to prove them wrong. That is the strength of science.
The truth is, proponents of anthropogenic global warming don’t want to hear anything contrary to their long-adopted consensus. It is more important to be important and right, than it is to allow your consensus to be proven incorrect, or even just potentially flawed.
It is interesting to note that the IPCC hailed 900-odd reports which came to exactly the same conclusion - that global warming is human caused. Yet, this same body reportedly ignored another 1100 studies which refuted one or more of the measures, models, or methods used by the IPCC. It is also interesting that many of the IPCC’s own reviewers have been ignored in their criticism of the IPCC information. Additionally, it is interesting how many scientists who are not skeptics at all are ignored when their research contradicts the scientific consensus.
Before I let you go, think about a few other instances in history, where the scientific consensus was different than the research posed by a minority of scientists.
Thomas Kuhn in his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions discussed this problem in detail. Several examples of this are present in the relatively recent history of science. For example:
- the theory of continental drift proposed by Alfred Wegener and supported by Alexander Du Toit and Arthur Holmes but soundly rejected by most geologists until indisputable evidence and an acceptable mechanism was presented after 50 years of rejection.
- the theory of symbiogenesis presented by Lynn Margulis and initially rejected by biologists but now generally accepted.
- the theory of punctuated equilibria proposed by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge which is still debated but becoming more accepted in evolutionary theory.
- the theory of prions -proteinaceous infectious particles causing transmissible spongiform encephalopathy diseases- proposed by Stanley B. Prusiner and at first rejected because pathogenicity was believed to depend on nucleic acids now widely accepted due to accumulating evidence.
- the theory of Helicobacter pylori as the cause of stomach ulcers. This theory was first postulated in 1982 by Barry Marshall and Robin Warren however it was widely rejected by the medical community believing that no bacterium could survive for long in the acidic environment of the stomach. Marshall demonstrated his findings by drinking a brew of the bacteria and consequently developing ulcers. In 2005, Warren and Marshall were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work on H. pylori
There are also examples of new ideas that were shown to be wrong. Two of the classics are N rays and polywater. Although some believers still exist, cold fusion is generally considered to belong to this class. [Source]
So, my point here is we should be frantically accepting all criticism in an effort to disprove it, rather than rejecting all criticism in an effort to ignore it. Why? In order to ensure survival from these predicted cataclysmic results of global warming, we are talking about impacting the entire global society as we know it - unless it is just our survival we care about. Before we attempt to lead the world in an effort so drastic and so forceful, we are obliged to find the truth. Consensus is not truth.
Posted in: Politics
Subscribe to NPI
You wrote:
“Although some believers still exist, cold fusion is generally considered to belong to this class.”
Generally considered by who? Where did you get this information from? Do you have a public opinion poll or some other data to back it up?
I have only seen one public opinion poll about cold fusion taken in Japan many years ago. Respondents were scientists and engineers. Most of them thought that cold fusion is real. In the U.S. the only thing resembling a poll is the review board assembled by the DoE in 2004. These members took a cursory look at some of the literature. About half of them think the effect is real. See:
http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm
Approximately 2,500 scientists have replicated the cold fusion effect, sometimes at very high signal to noise ratios; i.e., heat at over 100 W, tritium at million times background. Most of these researchers are at major institutions such as Los Alamos and Mitsubishi corporation, because cold fusion experiments are expensive, time consuming, and they require expert knowledge. Researchers have published ~3,500 papers describing these replications, including about 1,000 in mainstream, peer-reviewed scientific journals such as J. Electroanal. Chem., Fusion Sci. & Technol. and Naturwissenschaften. In contrast, there have only been about a dozen peer-reviewed papers by “skeptics” that try to disprove these findings. So, judging by the peer-reviewed literature, scientists are overwhelmingly sure that cold fusion is real.
Many scientists have expressed doubts about these results, but in my experience most of these people have not read the literature and they cannot come up with rigorous arguments to support their views. A negative opinion does not get a free pass; all views must be presented with equal rigor. Some scientist who doubt cold fusion think there is no literature and the effect was never replicated. Their views have no merit, obviously. A scientist cannot know about a subject by ESP. He or she must read the experimental literature and think about it carefully. Cold fusion is not easy to understand.
For more information, see our website, which features a bibliography of 3,500 papers and full text copies of over 500 papers:
http://lenr-canr.org
- Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
I apologize, but the blue block-text means I was quoting someone. I will update the post to ensure the link to the author of that particular phrase is better cited. You can take up your concern about cold fusion with that person.
What this post is meant to address is scientific consensus - you know, like opinion polls.
You wrote:
“What this post is meant to address is scientific consensus - you know, like opinion polls.”
I did not make myself clear. My point is that there is no broad scientific consensus regarding cold fusion, because most scientists who criticize it know nothing about it. So their views do not count. But there is a narrow, informed consensus. Those who have studied it carefully are overwhelmingly sure that the effect is real.
Although I have not studied global warming, my impression is that most of the researchers who have published papers or magazine articles about it have read the literature. They are knowledgeable, unlike the cold fusion critics. So their views probably are valid.
In other words, the scientific process works. Replications, peer-review, and rigorous arguments usually produce reliable knowledge. Although science is not a popularity contest, when a large number of knowledgeable researchers agree about a conclusion, you can be pretty certain they are right. Experts are usually right — and you should not reject their views lightly. I am sure the experts in cold fusion are correct, and I expect the experts in global warming are too.
There may be, as you claim, 1,100 studies that “refute” global warming claims, but I would be suspicious of these studies. Where are they published? Are they peer-reviewed? Are they paid for by vested interests? How many authors are there, and what techniques do they use? These papers might be an industry smoke-screen to deny global warming, similar to the tobacco industry papers that deny cigarettes cause cancer. While I would have to be an expert to determine whether these 1,100 papers have merit, my guess, based on the non-peer-reviewed “papers” opposing cold fusion, is that they do not.
There are thousands of non-peer-reviewed magazines and newspaper articles claiming that cold fusion does not exist, or that it was a mistake, or fraud. Some of them written by scientists, some by journalists, but none of them are valid. Large numbers of “papers” or magazine articles do not mean anything. You have to look carefully at the content of the papers. Global warming, like cold fusion, is not easy to understand.
- Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
Jed,
Thanks for the response. Let me try to better articulate my problem with this.
1) Most of the folks on the internet who are writing about global warming spend no time looking at actual research results. They rely on scientific consensus as a point of reference for their claims about the causes and effects of global warming.
2) Much of the scientific consensus is based upon data from 2004 at the latest. In most cases, this data has been refuted - even by those within the IPCC, from which the consensus is originating.
3) The IPCC publishes ONLY information which supports its consensus - ignoring its own reviewers, any outside reviewers, and any new data challenging the consensus.
I think there is a parallel between the cold fusion acceptance in the general scientific community and the acceptance of new information regarding the causes and potential impacts of global climate change.
In the cold fusion scenario, you have a consensus by the scientific community that the true experts are having difficulty overcoming because there is a bias against further study and consideration.
In the global warming scenario you have a consensus in the scientific community that noted paleo-scientists of all stripes, climatologists, and geologists are having difficulty overcoming because there is a bias against further study and consideration.
I could cite many instances of research that should at least warrant challenge scientifically. The only response is criticism from members of the consensus community (if I may) who are much less qualified in the field.
As has been pointed out often, science is not about consensus. It is about provable facts. The global warming debate boils down to a few real questions about the nature of CO2 in the atmosphere, the nature of thermometers and their placement, and the nature of proxy historical temperature evidence.
A large proportion of the “evidence” for global warming is nothing more than examples of warming being offered for their pursuasive value, which do not in fact prove anything. A melting glacier may be the result of global warming or may not be. Counting it as “supporting evidence” is not science, it is bogus epistemology. Much of what passes as pro-warming debate is of the form: “SINCE the theory is true, here is what is going to occur if we don’t take action soon!” In Logic 101, that is called “begging the question”.
The science of global warming was overthrown when it was pointed out that CO2 has a logarythmically diminishing effect on temperature, that the very proxy evidence made famous by the alarmists (ice cores) upon closer inspection actually showed that CO2 increases followed warming, that the computer-model predictions failed to predict, and that the recent historical record is opposite of what the theory predicts.
But like the Big Bang theorists, The Global Warming crowd just keeps inventing new theories to keep their basic premise alive. Their latest is the “tipping point” argument based on the counter-factual (and counter-intuitive) idea that the global climate suffers from positive feedback sydrome and is about to be tipped off its precariously-balanced status quo and go careening down a graph curve to utter ruin. This is, of course, utterly unprovable, but that won’t stop them from broadcasting it as fact.
My own opinionis that, like the Big Bang theory, the Global Warming theory is simply appealing to a large number of people. It is especially appealing to Marxists, who generally hate industrialization and economic progress and are attracted to any theory that makes “big oil” look bad. They are likewise attracted to the labor theory of value, endlessly refuted since before Marx’s ink was even dry, yet still popular with “progressive” intellectuals to this day.
Such people do not believe out of necessity as does a scientist, but rather out of desire.
Jed Rothwell writes:
“My point is that there is no broad scientific consensus regarding cold fusion, because most scientists who criticize it know nothing about it.”
It is not valid to argue that a consensus does not exist simply because you do not agree with those forming the consensus.
John Howard wrote:
“It is not valid to argue that a consensus does not exist simply because you do not agree with those forming the consensus.”
There can be no scientific consensus among people who have not read the literature on a subject. They know nothing about it, and their opinions have no merit. Only people who have read the literature and who can present valid, rigorous arguments for or against a claim can form a scientific consensus. The others might as well be throwing darts or using an ouija board.
Joel Gaines wrote:
“1) Most of the folks on the internet who are writing about global warming spend no time looking at actual research results. They rely on scientific consensus as a point of reference for their claims about the causes and effects of global warming.”
If it is a valid scientific consensus, then it is okay for people to do this. I do not know enough about global warming to judge whether this is valid consensus, but I can describe a valid consensus in general terms: nearly everyone who contributes to it has read and understood the literature, and can make a rigorous argument in support of the consensus. If that is the case, there is nothing wrong with non-experts taking the expert consensus on faith. This is not an “appeal to authority” fallacy. See
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html
Quote: “This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject. More formally, if person A is not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S, then the argument will be fallacious.”
I know little about global warming, but I assure you that the consensus of opinion among experts in cold fusion is perfectly valid, and you can have high confidence that cold fusion is a real nuclear effect. There are only a handful of people, perhaps 10 or 20, who have read some of the literature and argued that the effect is not real. See Huizenga, Morrison or Jones for example.
I defined a valid consensus as:
“. . . nearly everyone who contributes to it has read and understood the literature, and can make a rigorous argument in support of the consensus.”
By “nearly everyone” I meant that a large majority of experts agree, with only a few dissenting. I also meant the most experts in the field express a formal opinion, in the literature.
There are many scientific debates in which experts disagree. There are others in which only a handful of the qualified people in the world have expressed opinions, and the rest have not even examined the problem. In these cases the non-expert member of the public or the political leader and policymaker have nothing to go on. In such cases I think that a non-expert should take care not to form any opinion, positive or negative.
A non-expert might be fooled by a false consensus. This has happened with cold fusion, as I said. Large numbers of scientists have expressed strong opinions in newspapers, saying that cold fusion does not exist. However, their statements invariably reveal that they know nothing about the research, so they have no right to any opinion, positive or negative. A good example was published in the Scientific American. It includes four statements about the experiments which are factually incorrect, and could only have been written by someone who knows nothing about the research:
http://lenr-canr.org/News.htm#SciAmSlam
As it happens we know for a fact that the editors at Sci. Am. have read nothing about cold fusion, because they told me so. They say it is “not their job” to read scientific papers. That’s mind boggling, but it does explain why they are grossly ignorant. As I said, such people might as well throw darts to decide what they believe.
Well, I am certainly more interested in cold fusion than ever after this conversation. I had heard the term before but never really understood what it meant. The concept is intriguing. I’ll visit your site and immerse myself after the holidays. Maybe we can have this as a topic of discussion on my talk show at some point.
As an epistemologist, I am qualified to point out that qualifications, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder.
Long paragraphs to qualify what is and is not a “valid” consensus can not redefine the term “consensus.
Consensus merely means a poll of opinionators and I have yet to come accross an opinionator who opinionated that his opinion was invalid.
Of course, epistemological non-experts might form an invalid consensus opposing this view, but then they would not exist. Or something like that.
John Howard wrote:
“As an epistemologist, I am qualified to point out that qualifications, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder.”
As an epistemologist, you need to get out more. Goodle finds 594,000 examples of the term “valid consensus.” The term has been widely used for a long time, and the meaning is clear.
Long paragraphs to qualify what is and is not a “valid” consensus can not redefine the term “consensus.
“Consensus merely means a poll of opinionators and I have yet to come across an opinionator who opinionated that his opinion was invalid.”
Are you suggesting that all points of view are equally valid? Do you think that the opinions of people who know nothing whatever about a subject should be given the same weight as the opinions of professional experts who have spent years or decades studying a subject? This is the Wikipedia philosophy:
“The Wikipedia philosophy can be summed up thusly: ‘Experts are scum.’ For some reason people who spend 40 years learning everything they can about, say, the Peloponnesian War — and indeed, advancing the body of human knowledge — get all pissy when their contributions are edited away by Randy in Boise who heard somewhere that sword-wielding skeletons were involved. And they get downright irate when asked politely to engage in discourse with Randy until the sword-skeleton theory can be incorporated into the article without passing judgment.”
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,70670-0.html
- Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org