I'm also at a loss as to what JD's point actually is, and what the
connection to science is. If I assume it is about the reporting of data
that is related to Global Warming, then David's information points out that
the warm U.S. winter has seemingly nothing to do with Global Warming. [It
would be of secondary interest to see how many of those news reports
included the Jet Stream explanation and the relative coolness of the winter
on a global scale.] If the whole point is that you can't trust single or
even a few 'media' sources...well duh! I've known that since the 60's when
I read everything available on the Viet Nam war--from all sides--and found
almost zero agreement on facts. Fundamentally, I would judge that it is
almost impossible to gather a trustworthy set of facts from the media. This
is John's 'go to the source--like CERN' admonition. In some ways we have it
a better in science than in politics since we have journals that we (at
least) trust to present unbiased data, but with the ever increasing
specialization I suspect most of us would find it very difficult to make
much sense out of much of the primary literature. The Global Warming
example would be the computer Climate Models. We might do OK with the
science in the models, we might mostly understand the basic computer
approach, but virtually none of us could (or would) slog through the tens of
thousands of lines of code to see how effects are calculated. We are forced
to place our 'faith' that the models produce agreement (at least with past)
climate changes without having 'too many' adjustable parameters.
Rick (who has avoids the mainstream media--all biases)
Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, Indiana
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