[WikiEN-l] Enviornmentalism vs. Science (was: William Connolley a rational contributor)

Tue Nov 25 17:08:59 UTC 2003

"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> writes:

> 1. There is no scientific consensus. They just made it up. The IPCC's
> contributors, when polled, were split 50-50 

Are you talking about the SEPP survey?  
Of 71 IPCC panel members polled, only 15 responded, and the respondees were
entirely self selected.   It's questionable that such a sample may be thought
of as representative.  Wearing my other hat, thats just not good statistics.

If you were an environmental scientist whose scientific opinion supported
anthropogenic global warming, would *you* respond to a survey run by an
organisation dedicated to discrediting your work?

Show me an poll run by a reputable independent polling company (Gallup or
MORI, say), and I'll give the results some credence.

> on whether human-caused emissions were contributing to GW.

The sentence with which they agreed was: 
"it is not possible to attribute all, or even a large part, of the observed
 global-mean warming [of 0.5 degree Celsius since 1890] to the enhanced
 greenhouse effect on the basis of observational data currently available."

Firstly, that sentence appears in the IPCC report.
Secondly, however you paint it, that is not the same thing as 
   "whether human-caused emissions were contributing to GW."

> 2. Even if an overwhelming majority of people believe something, this
> doesn't make it true. All the experts were against Copernicus, until one
> solitary observer (Galileo) pointed his telescope at the Jupiter and
> discovered 4 moons revolving around it.

That's true.  
They laughed at Galileo.
They also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
-- 
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)