"ALAMISTS' VS "SKEPTICS"

David Evans, along with three other scientists, who accompanied Senator Steve Fielding meeting with Senator Penny Wong, argues that the "climate alarmists" will not debate the "skeptics".

Global Warming is clearly a major public policy question and should be debated as such. The question is then whether the debate should be a scientific debate or a public debate. The scientific debate goes to the questions related to the evidence for catastrophic climate change, and the public policy debate goes to alternative ways of dealing with the consequences, based on expert judgement of probability.

Joanne Nova, a science presenter, on her blog links to the Heartland Institute as the reference for those "skeptics" who have published advertisements calling for a public debate. On its surface this appears to be a public debate on "beliefs" about understanding scientific evidence. Senator Fielding, famously has an open mind who firstly attended a Heartland Institute Conference and then went to the Wong Meeting supported by the leading Australian '"skeptics".

Fielding's office provided background on his experts, including the concern of Associate Professor Stewart Franks:

He is perhaps guilty of providing a more philosophical approach to climate modelling than most. Stewart prefers to believe that if we do not understand the physics of climate change, then we might be premature in building models of it and blindly believing their clourful output. He is also a firm believer in the politicization of science by politicians, science advocates and environmental groups is a particularly dangerous development in modern technological society.

Now politicization of science is an interesting term, and the belief in it, goes to the heart of the issue (puns aside). David Evans argues that his side was composed on "independent scientists", that is they are not beholden to public funding, and he claims many of the other side would lose their jobs if they expressed an alternative view. So can scientists on the public payroll still be scientists?

The four skeptics summarized their case in The Australian. The case that the dissents, or skeptics, made is that there is no evidence for greenhouse gases causing global warming, although they accept the evidence of mean temperature rises. The forecasts have proven incorrect in relation to "hotspots" and the measurement of ocean temperatures are unreliable.

Fielding has presented three questions and these were answered by the Government's climatologist, Will Steffen. Tim Lambert presents the graphical evidence for refuting Fielding's questions.

How are scientific issues to be resolved? The fundamental argument is about cause and effect. The argument is that global warming is not caused by greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, and going further that increased carbon dioxide levels do not have a detrimental effect on the earth's climate. Therefore we should be pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. What scientific skeptics should be doing, is not engaging in political debate, but in scientific research and experimentation. As David Evans notes political debates are adversarial.

As soon as science (and technology) enters into the realm of public policy they are politicized. This is as true of the science of the atom as it is of the science of the weather.

A question for the skeptics: Do they recommend that we all take every opportunity to pump as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as possible?




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