Comments on: Oh, You Mean that Science

By: jay

jay — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 20:27:11 +0000

David, the debate on McIntyre’s work has been fierce as one might expect it to be given that he is suggesting the essential model of the IPCC is fundamentally flawed. However, what he has done is asked for some basic safeguards such as the archiving of data series as part of the mormal publication process (something Mann has so far refused to do) so as to allow independent verification of the results. Given that we are proposing to spend billions and potentially lose trillions in Kyoto compliance costs this would seem a minimal requirement.

As for TCS: I occassionally write for TCS and have never - with one exception - found any heavy handed pro-business bias or editorial requirement. After all, many of those same companies support PBS and assorted other organizations which are in no way required to toe the party line.

(The case where I saw a bit of editorial bias was where I wrote an article which responded to a TCS slag of the Caandian medical system. I could not help pointing out that Canadians live longer than Americans at about 2/3 the per capita health care expenditure. Poor Nick Schultz simply did not have room for this article at TCS. He didn’t say it was wrong, just unwanted. Writing op/ed this happens and it certainly does not reflect the hand of corporate control. Rather, in the US, it reflects a touching faith in a hopeless, sprawling, inefficient, health care system which provides brilliant care for some and none at all for others because it is “market driven”. Ah well.)

By: David Magda

David Magda — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 16:34:15 +0000

The hockey stick model isn’t in as much doubt as some would like to believe:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=8

A peer-review paper even goes so far to completely discredit McIntyre’s conclusions:

The close reproducibility of the MBH98 reconstruction based on both (a) the use of an independent CFR method and (b) the use of the individual proxies used by MBH98 rather than the Multiproxy/PC representation used by MBH98, discredits the arguments put forth by McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) in support of their putative correction to the MBH98 reconstruction.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=10

A bit of searching turns up some corrections to some things stated by McIntyre (and McKitrick):

http://info-pollution.com/mandm.htm

Also, from the “About” page on Tech Central Station:

TCS is supported by a small group of sponsors: the American Beverage Association, ExxonMobil, Freddie Mac, General Motors Corporation, Gilead Sciences, McDonalds, Merck and PhRMA.

Not a large surprise that the TCS would publish articles casting “doubt” on climate change, given some of the sponsors.

P.S. Would it be difficult do add a ‘preview’ button to the comments? It would be convenient to see how my comment comes out–this way I can reformat it so that it’s easier to read if necessary. Just a suggestion.

By: KevinG

KevinG — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 18:58:28 +0000

The report also said:

The committee pointed out that surface temperature reconstructions for periods before the Industrial Revolution — when levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases were much lower — are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that current warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not the primary evidence.

That is, there are many independent lines of evidence that arrive at the same conclusion and Mann’s research is not the primary evidence. That’s kind of an important thing to say don’t you think?