[bsaul]

I really thank you for your comment, and the time you took to honestly assess the current situation. The one thing that i still have a hard time accepting is that a whole community of scientist accepts doing science on such a fragile basis (such as the fact that more than three quarter of the world wasn't recording temperature until 50 years ago).

It seems impossible that so many people keep doing their work on fragile data (and code, apparently), while at the same time seeing their work used by politicians all over the world to advocate massive policy changes.

I still haven't reached a personal conclusion, but i would be glad to read about the progress made by "hands deep in the dirt" people like you in their investigation.

[thu2111]

It seems impossible that so many people keep doing their work on fragile data (and code, apparently), while at the same time seeing their work used by politicians all over the world to advocate massive policy changes.

Mmmm. Surely it's the other way around, this is the expected and indeed only possible outcome.

I was in a different HN thread this week where I pointed out that there are some conclusions that might be right but which some sections of academia institutionally cannot reach, conclusions like:

1. We don't know enough to make predictions in this field.

2. Our datasets are inadequate for use.

3. Our research is unimportant and doesn't need to be done.

Note that commercial research can easily reach any of these conclusions; that's the function of senior management who are motivated by some fundamental ground truth goal rather than research for the sake of it.

Climatology is almost entirely driven by academia and other government institutions. They cannot reach a conclusion like, "old temperature datasets are of too low quality to derive models from" because then they'd invalidate the basis of their own careers. My impression is that climatologists have few transferable skills. Perhaps it's just small sample sizes, but it seems like their maths skills aren't really "hard" enough to outcompete physicists, mathmos or CS profs for jobs in finance or other exit routes.

Given that climatology has a single main theory (global warming), and that theory is based primarily on a single dataset (temperature), problems with that dataset have to be addressed by adjusting the data. Otherwise what's left for the field to do?

[bsaul]

But that’s the thing : there is definitely a science for climate modeling, but it’s probably at its infancy. Someone brave enough to correctly asses the limits of the field should be recognized in the field itself. It’s a bit similar in spirit to the « reproducability » issues in biology research.

[busymom0]

It's because anyone who tries to point out holes in the claims gets demonized with a label (denier) and loses all grants and funding. Even IPCC (and therefore UN) no longer provides grants to anyone who points out skepticism.

> In honor of the late AUGIE AUER, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Wyoming, Chief Meteorologist for the MetService, co-founder of the NZ Climate Science Coalition and much-loved scientist of the highest integrity, members of the Coalition have established a fund now totaling $10,000 to be granted to the first applicant to present real-world evidence showing that the man-made fraction of airborne carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming. Professor Augie Auer was appalled that climate scientists should be denied funding and be branded ‘deniers’ unless they submitted to the political global warming narrative and renounced the ancient principle that science is never settled. Those refusing the NZCSC’s request for evidence of dangerous man-made global warming include the IPCC, the Royal Society, the Royal Society of New Zealand, the NZ Ministry for the Environment and Professor James Renwick. To the first person who proves what they cannot, we offer this prize in the name of our late, incorruptible colleague.

So far, no one has been able to win it.