Comment Re:Translation... (Score 1) 869
Blahblahblah.
I've studied the science and the "science" behind climate change for 20 years. I've reviewed the publicly available data. I've reviewed the models and their results. I've reviewed the common methodologies behind the statistical smoothing and proxy data collection. I've also studied the arguments raised by those who claim it's impossible or simply untrue.
What I've found is that both sides are filled to the brim with people who understand nothing of scientific rigor. They're filled with people who reached a conclusion as soon as they heard the initial one-liner argument from one side or the other. In the end, the real science underpinning this discussion is in its infancy. We're looking at an incredibly complex system with enormously influential inputs that come and go - some in cycles, some not - and which drastically alter the equation. We're still at the point where we don't know what we don't know. What we do know is that changes are happening and have been happening which have an enormous impact on human civilization and the entire ecosystem. We also know that we've been doing significant environmental damage to some areas.
What we most certainly do not know is how our activities have affected the world's climate. We just don't. We can't model any of it because we don't understand it. There's never been a model that's worked even reasonably well for more than about 3 years and not a one can do historical prediction without an enormous amount of fudging (i.e. "yeah no idea why that data is there, so rather than just ignoring it, we told the model that at this specific point there would be some new factor we called "X" that accounts for the change and then goes away at this other point, so now the model looks better". "Oh, our model just ignored that data and we marked it as bad data").
You see, the problem here isn't that I don't understand science. I do. It isn't that I haven't kept up with the field. I have. That's the problem: I've actually looked at it from both sides, and both sides are fairly full of shit.