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Re: [Phys-l] Scientists speaking outside theirfields. Was...The Cause of Global Warming...



On May 22, 2007, at 5:13 PM, Richard Tarara wrote:

How is the "she published a paper in Science 03 Dec 2004, in which she claimed to have reviewed all 928 papers written on climate change from 1993-2003 and found that 75% conclude explicitly or implicitly that we are causing global warming and the other "25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change".

not contradictory to the

"Unfortunately for Naomi, Benny Pieser of Moores U in UK, yes a skeptic and an anthropologist to boot, re-ran her data and found glaring errors. http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/ NationalPost.htm His findings after reviewing the same 928 papers and 200 more he found were that only 13 papers (<2%) explicitly agreed with anthropogenic causes. When taken to task, Oreskes agreed that "there was indeed a serious mistake in the Science essay."

?????

You quote a lot of material above. Can you be more specific about what it is that you find to be contradictory in the two passages?

And what it is about the Pieser work that is possibly willfully dishonest?

I thought I had already explained that.

In his piece at <http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/ NationalPost.htm> Pieser writes, "According to an essay by Naomi Oreskes, published by Science in December, 2004, there is unanimous 'scientific consensus' on the anthropogenic causes of recent global warming." This is simply, unequivocally not true. Oreskes' piece is quite short. Anyone can easily check for themselves. See <http:// www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686>.

Oreskes' work lends itself to misrepresentation. Careless readers or those with an agenda will read things into it that are not there. Perhaps Oreskes intended it that way. I don't know.

David Marx seems to have verified Pieser's work--is he also willfully dishonest?

I don't understand why you say that. I agreed with most everything David wrote in his post and I didn't read it as "verifying Pieser's work" or as repudiating Oreskes' for that matter. Like David, I am not convinced that the warming that we are experiencing is necessarily anthropogenic in origin.* And like David, it doesn't make much difference to me whether it is or isn't. We need to kick the carbon habit in any event.

* As far as I can tell the strongest evidence for anthropogenic warming is the anthropogenic fingerprint in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. That fingerprint is clear and unmistakable. Indeed, if I had to bet one way or the other with even odds, I'd certainly place my bet with the dirty hippies. But as evidence goes, it is circumstantial.

John Mallinckrodt

Professor of Physics, Cal Poly Pomona
<http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm>

and

Lead Guitarist, Out-Laws of Physics
<http://outlawsofphysics.com>