måndag 2 november 2009

Royal Consensus vs Nonconsensus of US Physicists

160 US physicists have signed a letter to the Senate starting:
  • You have recently received a letter from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), purporting to convey a “consensus” of the scientific community that immediate and drastic action is needed to avert a climatic catastrophe.
  • We do not seek to make the scientific arguments here (we did that in an earlier letter, sent a couple of months ago), but simply to note that the claim of consensus is fake, designed to stampede you into actions that will cripple our economy, and which you will regret for many years. There is no consensus, and even if there were, consensus is not the test of scientific validity. Theories that disagree with the facts are wrong, consensus or no.
This letter is in direct contradiction to the statement of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
of Oct 16. I have written a letter to the Royal Academy asking for a comment, and will report on the answer here.

5 kommentarer:

  1. Oh come on. Monckton? Can we please direct our attentions to people who know what they are talking about, please?

    As for the "consensus", it's described in a perfect straw man way. The scientific consensus is that human activity is sufficiently altering the radiative properties of the atmosphere as to cause unusually rapid climate change, sufficient to be disruptive to social and ecological processes.

    That "immediate and drastic action is needed to avert a climatic catastrophe" is merely sufficiently plausible as to arguably carry some weight in the discussion. Nobody claims that is consensus except people who want to disrupt the conversation.

    SvaraRadera
  2. There is consensus that

    "human activity is sufficiently altering the radiative properties of the atmosphere as to cause unusually rapid climate change, sufficient to be disruptive to social and ecological processes"

    as I said.

    SvaraRadera
  3. It certainly appears that way within the relevant communities, yes. I would put it this way:

    http://is.gd/4Zhrs

    SvaraRadera