* Posts by MichaelC58

2 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Mar 2012

Climate-change scepticism must be 'treated', says enviro-sociologist

MichaelC58

Re: I'll consider myself cured, then

I agree, but even consensus peer-review alone is not enough to dictate critical public policy. It is only the first vetting process. You don't get to sell drugs based on peer-reviewed validation studies. You don't get to build and fly passengers in aeroplanes designed to peer reviewed designs. You have FDA and Aviation regulators to challenge, verify and validate the work before lives are put at risk.

That's because peer-review almost never involves verification of raw data and is subject to fads, group bias and confirmation bias and funding capture. When you then add a significant body of highly qualified scientists dissenting, often at risk to their own position and funding, you would be mad to base public policy on it.

The climate change science supporting a green industry worth over a trillion dollars has not been subjected to a single quality standard or a public independent regulator, the model software code never independently audited and qualified, never tested in independent laboratories, the raw data and their adjustments seldom made public. You could not market an aspirin based on the quality of climate science data. So it is lunacy to be restructuring the world by it.

MichaelC58

Naive science

That's the naive school child's understanding of how science should work.

When you introduce billions of dollars, environmentalist advocates, politicians, careers, whole departments, socialist ideology and United Nations power interests, you don't think science might work an a touch differently?

OK, assume that undisputable proof that cGAW was not dangerous was discovered tomorrow. Do you think all the scientists, their institutes, university departments, government departments and the trillion dollar carbon offsets and green industry would say:

"Oh, my bad, there is now a better natural explanation of recent warming " and all resign and

shut down their empires at the end of the day?" Of course not, they would fight to the death.

In science even without the giant politics and industry of climate change, you typically have to wait until the thought leaders resign or die off before a consensus opinion is changed. Take the DDT - malaria debacle. DDT has been re-approved only now, 30 years after 'Silent spring' and millions of Africans killed by malaria.

So, no "research science" alone can not drive critical public policy, it must be "regulated science" by independent, nay, adversarial regulation agencies verifying all the data, all the adjustments and all the conclusions.