Both the data and the uncertainties are addressed in the IPCC AR4 report.

That’s why they have error bars in their projections.

You’ve hit over the fence for 6 and out.

This is a blog about “The power of numeracy” and all you want to talk about is evil minds. I asked you for a derivation of CO2 doubling sensitivity and like the vast majority of your cohorts, you ducked it and went on talking about evil tobacco people. If you can’t stick to the thread, I’m not going to answer you any more. Far better things to do. Besides, your thoughts are 1-3 years behing what’s already been aired globally.

Geoff.

As mentioned in #127, it was necessary to explain how Geoff Sherrington was so off-base.

If you read #126 and then compare #122 to anything I have written in this thread or anywhere in the WWW, you have to conclude that Geoff Sherrington has set up a “strawman” that makes the Scarecrow of Oz look like Ironman.

The environment lobby is big business in it’s own right and not without it’s own self interest.

It is the data and the uncertanties and the physics that should be discussed not funding.

Since you were so completely off-base on what I was saying, it was necessary to explain.

Feel free to point out what I said that was wrong.

Socially, I see the IPCC acting like you describe the tobacco chiefs, repressing counter opinion, refusing to admit they were wrong, dismissing dissenting papers without explanation, ad homs on those with opposing views.

The IPCC neeeds to put it house in order, urgently. Why not realise that that is the imperative and direct your efforts that way. That would be applauded by those who value scientific integrity.

I have no idea where you are getting the notion that anyone, least of all myself, is promoting the notion that the nature of the threats of cigarette smoke and that of CO2 are similar.

The parallel I’ve drawn is based on two points:

a) The manner in which the scientific case explaining the harm has been opposed by a disinformation campaign: In both cases, the industries threatened by attention to the harms have engaged in a program to cast a degree of doubt on the scientific case that greatly exceeds the actual uncertainties.

- In the case of the tobacco industry, those of us who were paying attention during the 1980s and 1990s can remember hearing many specious explanations given as to why the statistical evidence put forward by the medical-research community should be ignored: “Correlation is not causation! There is a correlation between the density of telephone-pole placements and the density of lung-cancer cases. Do you think that telephone poles cause lung cancer?” For anyone involved in the research or able to understand the steps involved between finding correlation and drawing a conclusion on causality, these arguments were clearly flawed. But these arguments were not aimed at convincing the research community: They were aimed at undermining the confidence in the research community held by the general public. And they were successful at delaying the social response of severe limitations on where and when people are allowed to smoke. The industry denied they were engaged in this disinformation program until 1994, when the so-called “tobacco papers” were leaked. These internal papers clearly revealed that the industry was not as lacking in the ability to understand the implications of the statistical evidence as they had pretended, but was simply fighting a rear-guard action to protect their business interest in selling an addictive substance: nicotine. See, as a starting point, http://www.thenetnet.com/readme/smoke.html.

- Nor did the industry stop in 1994. Concerning the issue of second-hand smoke, the industry has continued to fund “research” to convince the world that passive smoking is not a health threat. This matter is further described in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_smoking#cite_note-whitecoat-106, in the section “Critique of individual studies and epidemiology,” which links to many references.

- In the case of global warming, the plan for a disinformation campaign was frankly discussed in a meeting held April 1998 at the American Petroleum Institute. A memorandum and action plan emanating from that meeting is shown at: http://www.euronet.nl/users/e_wesker/ew@shell/API-prop.html. It details a “Global Climate Science Communications” plan to “Identify, recruit and train a team of five independent scientists to participate in media outreach. These will be individuals who do not have a long history of visibility and/or participation in the climate change debate. Rather, this team will consist of new faces who will add their voices to those recognized scientists who already are vocal.” It makes for interesting reading! It defines strategy and tactics that match very well to what you see on the skeptics’ webpages and the op-eds of the Wall Street Journal.

b) The commonality of certain participants to both programs:

Frederick Seitz: He was a very well-respected solid-state physicist, was President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, President of Rockefeller University – and from 1979 was a paid permanent consultant of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. As such, he directed their “research” program into the health aspects of cigarette smoking. He also founded the George C. Marshall Institute, and was a board member of the Science and Environment Policy Project (SEPP): Both institutions have been very active in this kind of disinformation, not only against the global-warming issue but also against the CFC/ozone-depletion issue. His obituary can be found at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/05/AR2008030503524.html?

Fred S. Singer: An atmospheric physicist who has taken skeptical views on the connection between second-hand smoke and lung cancer, the CFC/ozone-depletion issue (embarrassingly, he called the science uncertain up until 3 weeks before the Nobel Chemistry Prize committee came to the opposite conclusion), and now global warming. After taking the position for years that global warming was simply not happening, he has recently switched to the position that it happens every 1500 years – without missing a beat.

Steve Milloy: Now a FoxNews commentator, he has been associated both with the second-hand smoke issue and now the global-warming issue. The story is the same: The scientists don’t know what they’re talking about and they’re wrong. (Oh, and by the way, he sat in on that meeting at the American Petroleum Institute. You remember the “action plan”? He’s part of it.)