In Reply to: RE: Beware of Experts posted by Tony Lauck on October 20, 2010 at 07:30:14:
Well, yeah, that's the thing. As Einstein said, if I had been wrong, one scientist would have been enough. Even if someone were suborning scientists, you couldn't corrupt the entire field, because not everyone is corruptible and even if there were, there are lots of tenured professors out there who can say whatever they want without fear for their jobs. Not to mention that there was in fact a lively scientific debate about whether AGW was real or not, which persisted until the evidence became overwhelming a few years ago. And that the scientific conclusions didn't change during the eight years of the Bush Administration, even though an Administration appointee at NASA was caught trying to suppress news about warming.
My interpretation of the retired scientist business is that you always have a few elderly scientists opposing a major paradigm shifts. Even Einstein played that role, in his rejection of quantum mechanics despite his own substantial role in the creation of the theory.
I've also noticed that most of the scientific critics, retired or not, of AGW aren't climate scientists.
Bottom line for me: if someone had an alternative model, they'd send it off to a peer-reviewed journal. And if the journal didn't accept it, they'd post their report on a web page. But no one has, despite a hugely wealthy energy industry that would be delighted to finance any such investigation and undoubtedly has its own scientists working on the issue privately, as the tobacco industry did.
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Follow Ups
- RE: Beware of Experts - josh358 09:33:36 10/20/10 (5)
- RE: Beware of Experts - Tony Lauck 11:02:12 10/20/10 (4)
- RE: Beware of Experts - josh358 06:55:29 10/21/10 (3)
- RE: Beware of Experts - Tony Lauck 08:25:09 10/21/10 (2)
- RE: Beware of Experts - josh358 10:29:20 10/21/10 (1)
- RE: Beware of Experts - Tony Lauck 10:56:02 10/21/10 (0)