The findings of climate science will (and should) be held to a much higher standard of accuracy and certainty than normal scientific studies. Scientists can be wrong about the lesser spotted skink for twenty years and then change their minds; no harm, no foul except maybe to the skinks. But if the implications of the work of climate scientists lead to serious proposals for the entire world to make dramatic shifts in its basic patterns of energy usage, it would be utterly naive and idiotic for scientists to expect that there wouldn’t be lots of people second guessing their work and checking over it in the hope of discovering mistakes.

An article by Fred Pearce in The Guardian newspaper does a good job, I think, at examining some of the hassles and problems that climate scientists face — and they will only get worse. Pearce describes the attempts by scientists at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit and elsewhere to avoid the intrusive and expensive process of handing over mountains of data to critics who they correctly believed to be hostile. It’s a pretty fair minded piece; Pearce acknowledges the difficulties the scientists faced without losing his grip on the core facts of the case. I sympathize with the scientists faced with these time consuming and intrusive requests, and think maybe the British government needs to provide more clerical support to its universities if it is going to keep such far reaching freedom of information requirements. Still, climate scientists are working with the political equivalent of radium, not modeling clay and if you can’t stand the heat — you shouldn’t be in kitchen.

There are similarities between the battle over climate science and the smaller scale but intense and emotional battles over issues like vaccination and autism. But the climate science problem is much harder to manage. 190 plus nations, each with different interests and different political structures, are not going to reach an agreement on fundamental changes in industrial and energy policy without some pretty intense reviews of the underlying data. Virtually any skeptic with even the shadow of a plausible case is going to get a hearing before this is done. And as part of the process of building a deep and strong enough global consensus to go forward, those discussions are going to be held more than once, in more than one country. The polio vaccine is almost sixty years old, and they still aren’t sure they accept it in northern Nigeria. And given many of the countries involved are democracies and that in quite a few of them many voters can’t read or write and have had no scientific education whatever, this process seems unlikely to go at the speed many would like. It’s highly unlikely that public opinion will be quickly swayed by experts they’ve never heard of invoking methodologies and protocols whose histories and rationales they don’t understand. But those voters know very well what the price of fuel and cooking oil is, and they won’t support politicians who make these prices go up. They will also be quick to believe that the ‘experts’ promoting these policies are sinister elitists or otherwise pawns of shady global forces. Already we hear that the Indian government is setting up its own environmental assessment agency to reduce its dependence on the IPCC. When the Indian institute disagrees with the IPCC, whose word will carry greater weight in Indian politics?

If global warming has triggered the decrease in stratospheric water vapor seen since 2000, it could mean that the climate models have predicted too much global warming, since they don't predict that such a negative feedback exists. On the other hand, if this is a natural cycle, we can expect the recent flattening in global temperatures to average out in the long run, with a return to steeper increases in temperature in the coming decades. Climate models currently do a poor job modeling the complex dynamics of water vapor in the stratosphere, and are not much help figuring out what's going on. Complicating the issue is the fact that about 15% of all thunderstorms capable of delivering water vapor into the stratosphere are generated by tropical cyclones (Rosenlof and Reid, 2008), and tropical cyclones are not well-treated by climate models. We also have to factor in the impact of stratospheric ozone loss, which acts to cool the lower stratosphere. This effect should gradually decrease in future decades as CFC levels decline, though. The stratosphere is a devilishly complicated place that can have a significant impact on global climate change, and we are many years from understanding what is going on there.

How to answer this one?

From Pajamas Media
Now, I am not a scientist. I am just a mother who raised 9 kids and trains horses for a living. Nothing scientific about that, but it seems to me everything should always be open for discussion. The idea that a subject like man-made climate change is a done deal just doesn’t make sense to me, yet reply after reply let me know in very certain words that there is nothing to talk about.
In addition, the shared attitude of arrogance towards me or anybody who would even consider such “propaganda” as an alternative view was surprising. Humorous at first, but then a bit hurtful. My intelligence, my character, and, just a few days ago, my faith were attacked by men, all much smarter then me, who for some reason felt they needed to smear me and our simple, small-town event.

Outrageous to me was one scientist who claimed our high school students would not be able to understand the information and especially when the opposing side was paid off and presenting lies.

Well, let's leave aside the business of what the 9 kids tells us about you, and how much time you've had to think about complicated grownup stuff. I'm not sure you want to go there, really.
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It is not clear how the writer would recommend addressing these matters if both of these facts are in fact true. Instead, the very idea that they could be true is greeted with mockery. There is not even an attempt at a pretense of an intellectual approach. There is just a rapid slam of the Overton window.

It's a very remarkable debating approach: you cannot hold these positions, which greatly weaken my case, because I will mock them as unreasonable, without any explanation as to why they should be unreasonable.

The peculiar fact that baseless acccusations are frequently self-referential appears here. They accuse us of evasiveness and defensiveness, yet they simply adopt a posture of refusing to consider on which side the dishonesty originates. This is just a distracting way to duck the serious questions: 1) are there professionals lying about climate science? (well, in fact this is exactly what they themselves claim, so I wonder how it can be so outlandish. We are just asking which side the liars are on!) 2) can high school students really get a clear picture of science when there are professional careers for people to lie about it?

Just who is being evasive and defensive here?

It's also an explicit know-nothing revival. A modern society cannot continue to exist for very long when people take this attitude of contempt toward expertise. No average person doubts that Colt McCoy is a better athlete than they are. Why do people refuse to acknowledge that there are smarter people than themselves? It is not just arrogance and ignorance. It's dangerous.

We are proud of our athletes in America. We used to be proud of our scientists too.