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The creationist comparison shows up other places, too. I've encountered it several times before, and you can Google "denialist creationist" to find more. Me trying to refute martythemaniak may not impress you, but if when you first read that topmodded post you nodded vaguely, might there be some validity in Crichton's implication that the arguments invoked for AGW could be arguments for eugenics if you filed off the serial numbers? It's an offensive charge, but it's not a goofy one IMHO: it is far more true of the arguments for AGW than of the arguments for actual "settled science" like quantum mechanics or natural selection or antibiotics or the Big Bang. "What are good sources to read, that are not opinionated?" One non-opinionated source as background both for my exasperation about the Darwinist analogy, and for my claims about the flabbiness of 10-year-old climate predictions, which also happens to be interesting reading for hackers interested in machine learning: _The Minimum Description Length Principle_. Lots of math to help you think precisely about questions like "by how many bits did this hypothesis reduce the surprisingness of the world compared to alternative hypotheses?" For sources more specific to the AGW controversy, good luck finding someone unopinionated. The controversy long ago became uncivil, and all sides are indignant about various scummy folk who have lined up on other sides. But I can point you to sources that seem (opinionated but) sound. As far as I know, the IPCC reports (see martythemaniak's URL) are a reasonably good presentation of the highbrow case for crisis AGW (high CO2 climate sensitivity, low natural variation): I've never seen an advocate claim that vital parts of the pro-crisis case were overlooked or horribly poorly presented there. And I think McIntyre's critiques of the IPCC reports --- mostly centered on the historical climate record reconstruction I mentioned --- are generally sound. He has a website, Climate Audit; he has also written the Mann critique up as at least one traditional journal paper. Besides his Mann critique, he has also done things like catching a Y2K bug in temperature records. (Of course that's not impressive as virtuoso rocket science, but I think it's pretty convincing evidence that he's a careful guy who does a lot of homework.) It is natural for AGWists to find him irritating, but it is inexcusable to try to dismiss him as a ignorant closedminded crank by analogy with modern disbelievers in natural selection. And besides the math and technical background, some academic sociology background: McIntyre is not the only opinionated grouchy outsider who has torpedoed a politically correct prestigious academic consensus in the last decade or so, Cramer did too: http://law.bepress.com/nwwps/lep/art9/ . |
So what point are you trying to make? Do GW people as a rule compare AGW people with creationists? And even if they would, what bearing would it have on the debate?
I have found McIntyre's blog, he seems to be a busy individual. At the moment he is discussing something about prehistoric buckets. That might be too much detail for my entry level... Also, I wonder what he would dig up if he spent the same energy on finding evidence FOR global warming.
Didn't find suitable articles at the Cramer link. Anyway, I will do my own searching.