The Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Cult
on November 30, 2009 at 11:18 amSeveral pieces from three different sites on the global warming cult: that conspiracy to spread the useful lie of human-caused global warming.
In the first, Shannon Love outlines what “peer reviewed” science actually is. Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) cultists act as if peer reviewed science is without fault or error. Of course, this is wrong. Peer review is a way of making sure that methodological biases are passed on between researchers in some area. I have first-hand experience with this. Of my first two peer-reviewed works, the one that got passed the anonymous and secret editors was the one that played to the methodological bias of the field. It was less interesting, less useful, equally as generalizable, but was in its method what the reviewers were expecting. So it got in.
In the second, Shannon Love notes the poor quality of the models created by the CAGW cult. Again, I have first-hand experience backing this up. After I wrote my master’s thesis on the basis of a computer model, I knew to take every other model with a healthy dose (not a grain, but a glass or gallon) of salt. Even among professional scientists, this is serious, because those scientists rarely have training in software development. Global warming models are buggy, amateurish computer programs that until now has been secret.
Combining these threads, Shannon points out that peer review is not even used for scientific software. Yet again, I have first-hand knowledge backing Shannon up. The two statistical programs I use most often are MPlus and R. Of these, only R’s code is publicly available, peer-reviewed, and largely the result of academic research. MPlus, better marketed and for-profit, is secretive. It is hard to take seriously the conclusions of closed-source software, because it boils down to scientists just trusting their tool-makers.
However, software models is all the CAGW cultists have left. This is because they threw away their raw data. So you have to trust their secret, bugger, amateurish software, as that’s all they have.
Only tangentially related to this scandal, but important to realize the CAGW cult is truly a cult, is this story about a kindergarten teacher leading students in a global warming prayer.
Even Real Climate, which generally defends the University of East Anglia, raises red flags about the conspirator’s desire to delete Freedom of Information-related data and the field’s emphasis on secret and commercial data sources.
People, especially politicians, forget: GIGO. That includes the assumptions build into our models. I was shocked, years and years ago, when I dug into the assumptions of the famous Club of Rome model and learned that their projection of population growth and resource scarcity had all technological change around 1980. I guess they figured everything had been invented.
I appreciate that there will be error. It’s inevitable, and that’s one reason for extensive peer review of everything–computer code, assumptions, raw data, etc. It’s hard on the ego of the person whose work is reviewed, but it’s absolutely necessary. (P.S.–the reviewers have their own biases, so the job of an editor is to get multiple perspectives among his reviewers, and to make the reasons for rejection clear. Otherwise, a lazy reviewer can shoot down good work.)
What I can’t tolerate is wrapping a political agenda in the white lab coat of “scientific certainty.”
Oops–the above post should say “had all technological change STOP around 1980.” Clearly when I get angry I need the help of a good editor/reviewer.
I guess I’m supporting my own point.
Daniel,
Well said. My own skepticism of model building began with my masters thesis in computer science, which was a model.
I don’t see how anyone who actually makes one of those would trust them much.
I write more sophisticated models now, they are (hopefully!) more predictive, but GIGO, and that goes for the code itself, and not just input.
Very good comment. Thank you.