Some commentaries on Climategate

No, not my commentaries. Those are found in the answers to Derek Lowe's Climategate and Scientific Conduct


They may be just plants, but if they aren't, they are extremely revealing.

David P on December 1, 2009 11:24 AM writes...

I hate the fact that the way of doing science is undermined by this scandal.
I had (have still even) hopes that climate change would be the thing that got developed countries to be less wasteful, which seems to me to be a good thing regardless of the effect on the planet.

"Who cares if the science is right or wrong - I just need a club to bash the fat capitalists with"

17. rob on December 1, 2009 11:10 AM writes...

Derek says the results of climate science have to be very good and very convincing if we're going to believe them.

I agree.

So where are the safety data showing that pumping gigatons of CO2 into the air is an ok thing to do? Where are the coal companies' data and models? The oil companies'?

And can we please plow through the last N years of internal emails from these companies as well? Or those from the lobbies they fund?

Why don't you hold polluting companies to a standard that even remotely approaches the one you hold climate scientists to? Or even the one that-- you say-- pharma companies routinely meet. After all, as you rightly say, the stakes are enormous.

How do you justify using different standards for different institutions?

In other words, to disprove a theory, you have to come up with an alternative theory that is just as well researched. Wrong! To disprove a theory all you need is to demonstrate that it does not fit the data. There is no law that one model has to be replaced by another - we're just as likely to have no model at all! The predictions of AGW do not fit the data without "massaging". Throw it out and start looking again. In the meantime, go back to business as usual - you have no scientific basis to change anything.