Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

Interesting piece on Climategate by former National Hurricane Center Director (and former KHOU meteorologist) Neil Frank.

Some have asked why people like myself pay attention to critics of Anthropogenic Global Warming, rather than the “(insert random percentage between 75 and 99 here) of scientists that agree with it.” To which it is important to provide a few points of perspective:

• We don’t know what percentage of the relevant scientific community actually supports the AGW consensus, and to what degree, because the pro-AGW crowd is the only one that’s been doing the counting.
• Some scientists previously counted on as holding the AGW consensus have changed their mind, complaining that the process has become politicized and that their research has been distorted.
• The number of scientists dissenting against the AGW consensus continues to grow. Here, for example, are some 700 scientists that disagree with the AGW consensus.
• Many scientists have been questioning the AGW consensus almost from the beginning.
• It’s a lot easier to forge consensus when questioning AGW, or producing results that refute it, can kill your career.
• Ever since ClimateGate information started leaking out, it’s become more apparent that a significant percentage of that consensus was maintained via data manipulation, suppression of dissent, and outright fraud.
• Even if a majority of climate scientists support AGW, that would not ipso facto prove the AGW case; science relies on empirical data, not popular votes.
• That also raises the question: Who do you call a “climate scientist”? Meteorologist? Oceanographers? How about experts in Botany to talk about tree rings, one of the central issues of the Climategate scandal?
• Finally, climate studies are in their relative infancy. To make far-reaching changes to economies and society, in essence giving up on economic growth in order to hand over vast tax and regulation powers to unelected bureaucratic elites, based on computer climate models that, in some cases, date back to 1981 (or earlier) is sheer folly.

In light of that, Frank’s commentary points out that there are many more AGW-skeptics than the media wants to report on:

But who are the skeptics? A few examples reveal that they are numerous and well-qualified. Several years ago two scientists at the University of Oregon became so concerned about the overemphasis on man-made global warming that they put a statement on their Web site and asked for people’s endorsement; 32,000 have signed the petition, including more than 9,000 Ph.Ds. More than 700 scientists have endorsed a 231-page Senate minority report that questions man-made global warming. The Heartland Institute has recently sponsored three international meetings for skeptics. More than 800 scientists heard 80 presentations in March. They endorsed an 881-page document, created by 40 authors with outstanding academic credentials, that challenges the most recent publication by the IPCC. The IPCC panel’s report strongly concludes that man is causing global warming through the release of carbon dioxide.

In short: many critics of Anthropogenic Global Warming aren’t just a few Internet cranks, they’re thousands of well-trained scientists with expertise in areas related to climate change, and whose only point of agreement is that there are too many questions about it to throw trillions of dollars at the problem without determining whether it’s real or not. Calling them all “deniers” is pure argumentum ad hominem.