Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Climate Denial: Failing Science 101 (Again)

The was one single peer-reviewed paper from Australia that went against the consensus on climate change. Now that one single one has been removed; so now there are zero. The story itself is interesting but one of the comments was quite fun - in an odd way. What the commenter is trying to do is justify where there are no peer reviews papers that support denialism...
There is NOT ONE SINGLE CENT of grant money to do any research into climate effects not being caused by humans at [the University of New South Wales] (or anywhere else for that matter!)...

I did laugh - and I'd recommend the commenter to look at the science for Non-scientists bit cos he is falling down at the first hurdle; if you are going to criticise something, at least understand what it is first. Science 101 is that you do research according to the principles of the scientific method then your conclusions are led by what you find. Then you share this with others who can then critique it (peer review). The commenter seems to be confusing science with opinion; it does not work that way. The reason why the science is all coming out supporting the consensus on global warming is because that is what all the evidence shows.

To do science to support one point of view is to ruin your experimental process before you've even begun. Big-ass doh! DOH!

Plus; how do you prove a negative? You can't - it's a logical fallacy. Helpfully, another commentator takes the idiot to task..
The money for research is granted equally for papers that would show the presence of AGW as for papers that do not support AGW. This is because the funding is for papers that look at evidence and use scientific methods to show support for or against hypotheses. The fact that the evidence shows that AGW is indeed occuring is the reason why there are no papers that demonstrate any great error in the AGW hypothesis.

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