Image Credit – Wood For Trees and Werner Brozek
From the Investor’s Business Daily:
The global warming alarmists repeat the line endlessly. They claim that there is a consensus among scientists that man is causing climate change. Fact is, they’re not even close.
Yes, many climate scientists believe that emissions of greenhouse gases are heating the earth. Of course there are some who don’t.
But when confining the question to geoscientists and engineers, it turns out that only 36% believe that human activities are causing Earth’s climate to warm.
This is the finding of the peer-reviewed paper “Science or Science Fiction? Professionals’ Discursive Construction of Climate Change” and this group is categorized as the “Comply with Kyoto” cohort.
Members of this group, not unexpectedly, “express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause.”
Academics Lianne M. Lefsrud of the University of Alberta and Renate E. Meyer of Vienna University of Economics and Business, and the Copenhagen Business School, came upon that number through a survey of 1,077 professional engineers and geoscientists. Read More At IBD
The study, Science or Science Fiction? Professionals’ Discursive Construction of Climate Change, by Lianne M. Lefsrud and Renate E. Meyer can be found here.
A couple interesting quotes within:
“Third, we show that the consensus of IPCC experts meets a much larger, and again heterogenous, sceptical group of experts in the relevant industries and organizations (at least in Alberta) than is generally assumed. We find that climate science scepticism is not limited to the scientifically illiterate (per Hoffman, 2011a), but well ensconced within this group of professional experts with scientific training – who work as leaders or advisors to management in governmental, nongovernmental, and corporate organizations.”
…
“The vast majority of these professional experts believe that the climate is changing; it is the cause, the severity and the urgency of the problem, and the need to take action, especially the efficacy of regulation, that is at issue.”
The Investors Business Daily Article goes on to note that:
If the alarmists are getting only limited cooperation from man, they are getting even less from nature itself. Arctic sea ice, which sent the green shirts into a lather when it hit a record low in the summer of 2012, has “with a few weeks of growth still to occur … blown away the previous record for ice gain this winter.”
“This is only the third winter in history,” when more than 10 million square kilometers of new ice has formed in the Arctic, Real Science reported on Tuesday, using data from Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois.
At the same time, the Antarctic “is now approaching 450 days of uninterrupted above normal ice area,” says the skeptical website Watts Up With That, which, also using University of Illinois Arctic Climate Research data, notes that “the last time the Antarctic sea ice was below normal” was Nov. 22, 2011.
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JazzyT says:
“Antarctic land ice, on the other hand, seems to have been diminishing for about all of the time we’ve observed it. This ice won’t contribute to an albedo feedback any time soon, but does contribute to sea level rise”
I would like to see the data supporting the loss of land based ice in Antarctica. I did not know they had satellites there with radar.
tommoriarty says: February 18, 2013 at 10:39 am
JustTheFacts, I have seen you do some good work here on WUWT. But you blew it this time. Please take this as constructive criticism.
I reposted an interesting article from IBD, along with a link to and quotes from the associated paper. This resulted in an open and active debate in comments, which is what I consider to be success. Additionally, I have yet to see a credible challenge to my observation that well educated professional experts with scientific training/geoscientists are quite skeptical of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) narrative. I restate my question to you:
Why do you think that increased scientific literacy results in increased skepticism of CAGW?
Brian Angliss says: February 18, 2013 at 2:33 pm
“First and foremost, our study is not a representative survey. Although our data set is large and diverse enough for our research questions, it cannot be used for generalizations such as “respondents believe …” or “scientists don’t believe …””
This a valid point, but the same issue exists with the oft cited survey of “75 out of 77 “expert” ’active climate researchers’ (ACR) to give the 97% figure” that is held up as evidence of the “scientific consensus”:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/
I am sure you diligently challenge anyone who leverages this non-representative survey, right?
Given such significant errors, Taylor should issue a correction or even a retraction, yet he has failed to do so. Instead, he has republished his original post at least once since being corrected by the authors of the study whose research and conclusions he distorted.
How many of the articles that have cited the obviously erroneous 97% of scientists statistic have been corrected or retracted? Why should Taylor be held to higher standard than say the New York Times?:
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/evidence-for-a-consensus-on-climate-change/
The paper referenced by IBD is examining (in part) the opinion of ‘professionals’ with a vested interest in denying or downplaying human-caused climate change.
eg,
http://oss.sagepub.com/content/33/11/1431.full.pdf+html
The top article seems to have missed the point. It’s hardly unexpected that professionals in industries potentially threatened by policies to mitigate carbon emissions would take a non-neutral stance on the matter, and where their discipline may have a relation to climate science they may try to elevate their competency on climate change science. What is mostly absent from the analysis in IBD, and entirely absent in the top post, is that the competency of these individuals is inflated. There is a small number of properly qualified experts in climate science whose views are more or less aligned with these other professionals, but expertise counts and the opinion of self-elevated ‘experts’ should not be cast as equivalent to actual experts. Likewsie, downplaying the opinion of actual experts by tring to draw some equivalence is only an exercise in positioning (exactly what the industry professionals are perceived as doing according to the paper).
On the flip side, one could elevate the expertise of Greenpeace ‘experts’ with an engineering/science background (who are not strictly qualified in climate science) in order to inflate the number of climate science experts endorsing the IPCC view. That would be just as untenable.
barry sez:
“… ‘professionals’ with a vested interest in denying or downplaying human-caused climate change.”
Since there is no testable, empirical evidence showing “human caused climate change” on a macro [global] basis, your opinion makes no sense. And your comment about mitigating carbon emissions indicates that you are the victim of alarmist propaganda.
More “carbon” [by which the scientifically illiterate mean CO2, a tiny trace gas] is entirely beneficial at current and projected concentrations. More CO2 is better, and there is no downside.
Kajajuk says:
February 18, 2013 at 10:01 am
…. I am trying to find an article i came across that states that the Arctic sea ice varies between 2 and 10 million square kilometers, but i cannot find it…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Speaking of polar ice, do not forget the active volcanoes in both the Arctic and Antarctic.
New evidence deep beneath the Arctic ice suggests a series of underwater volcanoes have erupted in violent explosions in the past decade
National Geographic: Arctic Volcanoes Found Active at Unprecedented Depths
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.: Geologists Discover Signs of Volcanoes Blowing their Tops in the Deep Ocean Evidence of Violent Eruptions on Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Defies Assumptions about Seafloor Pressure and Volcanism
Smithsonian magazine: Antarctica Erupts!
July 15, 2011, National Geographic News: A chain of giant, undersea volcanoes has been found off Antarctica “All told a dozen previously unknown peaks were discovered beneath the waves—some up to 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) tall, according to the British Antarctic Survey…. The scientists were expecting to find volcanoes. For one thing, the South Sandwich Islands are actively volcanic. For another, in 1962, a passing British naval vessel found large patches of floating pumice that could only have come from an underwater eruption.”
Nov 27, 2012: Giant Underwater Volcanoes Discovered “In the first ever-survey of its kind, a chain of massive volcanoes that rise up to 1.86 miles were discovered lurking beneath Antarctic waters near the South Sandwich Islands in the remote Atlantic Ocean”
July 2007: Thousand of new volcanoes revealed beneath the waves “The true extent to which the ocean bed is dotted with volcanoes has been revealed by researchers who have counted 201,055 underwater cones. This is over 10 times more than have been found before. The team estimates that in total there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes, 39,000 of which rise more than 1000 metres over the sea bed.”
University at Buffalo: Study of Dust in Ice Cores Shows Volcanic Eruptions Interfere with the Effect of Sunspots on Global Climate
E. M. Smith has an interesting side note on the topic of ” long-period tidal resonances in the motions of the Earth and Moon.”
E.M. Smith also points to this in another article.
I do not think scientists have even finished making the list of all the possible influences on climate much less determined the relationships or strengths. The fact that the IPCC is claiming the “Science is settled” and humans are found guilty would be laughable if it was not so costly in terms of time, resources, money, misery and deaths the fixation on CAGW has already caused.
barry says:
February 18, 2013 at 5:18 pm
——————————————–
You seem to imply that ‘industry’ experts’ are no more to be trusted than their counterparts, ‘Greenpeace’ experts, but the IPCC is the objective and qualified party in the middle. I don’t think this is in fact so. Arguments concerning the motives of industry experts certainly apply to the IPCC bureaucracy, and if I remember correctly the bureaucracy selects the Lead Authors. I haven’t read Donna LaFramboise’s book yet, but I strongly suspect she raises further arguments regarding IPCC credibility there that might be worth examining.
Brian Angliss says:
When I looked into the survey further, it became clear that Taylor had distorted the study even more than the Lefsrud and Meyer had indicated: only members of the Alberta Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA) had been surveyed, APEGA membership is dominated by employees and regulators of Alberta’s petroleum industry, and 84% of survey respondents were engineers, not scientists.
*************************************************************************************************************************
Dear Brian:
As a member of APEGA, I suggest you learn the difference between “Scientists” and “Engineers” and “Geoscientists” before you go casting aspersions on our profession. My degree is in “Applied Science”. We make “practical” solutions by applying science to real world situations, not some pie in the sky (hypothesis?). We have almost 68,000 registered members and this is just in the tiny province of Alberta. That’s 68,000 “practical” people not star gazers.
“Climate Change” issues have been discussed openly and at length within our organization so when you see the results of a poll, you can be assured that people have voted with reasonable access to available information. Climate is just as important to those who do design work for the oil industry as it is for those of us who work in other areas. You really need to think about that. APEGA members are ultimately responsible to the PUBLIC, and not to any particular industry or self interest group. To suggest otherwise is insulting.
From http://www.apega.ca/About/ACT/code.htm
CODE OF ETHICS
(established pursuant to section 20(1)(k) of the Engineering, Geological and Geophysical Professions Act)
Preamble
Professional engineers, geologists and geophysicists shall recognize that professional ethics is founded upon integrity, competence, dignity and devotion to service. This concept shall guide their conduct at all times.
Rules of Conduct
1 Professional engineers, geologists and geophysicists shall, in their areas of practice, hold paramount the health, safety and welfare of the public and have regard for the environment.
2 Professional engineers, geologists and geophysicists shall undertake only work that they are competent to perform by virtue of their training and experience.
3 Professional engineers, geologists and geophysicists shall conduct themselves with integrity, honesty, fairness and objectivity in their professional activities.
4 Professional engineers, geologists and geophysicists shall comply with applicable statutes, regulations and bylaws in their professional practices.
5 Professional engineers, geologists and geophysicists shall uphold and enhance the honour, dignity and reputation of their professions and thus the ability of the professions to serve the public interest.
Can you please provide evidence/examples of this “fraudulent disinformation”?
Heck. I’d settle for evidence/examples of honest disinformation.
Brian Angliss;
and 84% of survey respondents were engineers, not scientists.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I see comments like this and I wonder…. what do people like you think engineers study in order to get their degree? Calligraphy?
The three lines in the graph that begin with 1997 or 1997.1 appear to
me as cherrypicked to start barely in time to include a century-class
single year spike. Smoothed versions of those indices, when smoothed in
the manner used for smoothed HadCRUT3, only go 11-12 years with no
upward trend. Have a look at:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/
I have a question for any CAGW alarmist.What would prove you wrong?
Kajajuk says: February 18, 2013 at 9:03 am
Re: “frequency of such ‘super-cyclones’ is an order of magnitude higher than that previously estimated (which was once every several millennia..)”
Kajajuk, our records only really go back about 200 years, we don’t even know if we have seen one of these. Maybe the 1899 Cyclone Mahina which hit Baturst Bay in North Queensland came close.
“…I do estimate that all is well, sunshine, rainbows, and lollipops everywhere…you know even an out of the ordinary storm system in 2010, 2011, and 2013 does not prove anything really….”
Where? When and how defined? By your own statements below, do you really think you can use the term “Out of ordinary storm systems ..”?
You state yourself “…a system as complex as global climate cannot be deduced well from ten years of direct measure, but likely 100 in my humble estimation …” I largely agree with you here, except I’m pretty sure 100 years does mean a lot either.
“… your fanatical nay saying…” I quoted a few facts. With all due respect you should perhaps tone down the soapboxing and try doing the same.
“… is just as warranted as the alarmist rhetoric which should, i estimate, lead us to the bliss of a conquered divide. On every issue!…”
I’m not sure quite what you are saying here, but you are either alarmed or you ain’t. And you, my friend sound at least extremely concerned. 🙂
“….Or an apparent lengthening and accelerating frequency of drought from your own post is in my estimation not even worthy of investigation, or further estimation, since we all know what must be true; so why even bother to wonder or question…”
The key word here is “apparent”. Time scale issue to consider again, perhaps? American drought indices show no change, I’m not sure Australia uses a meaningful drought index.
“..I am not a doomsayer, just a curious mind perceiving more than a few fascinating trends; least of which is the possibility of a warming planet (when it should be “cooling”)…”
Sure, I agree here. It (the planet) is perhaps warming to some extent. The questions are; over what time scale, and is it different this time? Temperature aside, we can see the reduction in summer ice extent in the Arctic. Definitely warmer there, in summer, but when did this last occur (we don’t know), and then, what about the Antarctic?
“..A possibility that is credible, albeit not definitive, by virtue of considering the likely ‘estimation’ of what a warming Earth would entail; then designing experiments and metrics to validate or invalidate…likely learning something in the process, as well as developing technologies…..”
This is all happening, and I think it is a good thing. We will learn by it. But no-one benefits from the alarmist approach of “.. we already understand this, it is disastrous, we must act now or it will be too late!”.
You know, and I know, that they know they don’t really know much yet.
We should ‘hasten slowly’, measure and study, and discuss openly.
Hmm. I’m looking though Angliss’ twitter feed.
https://twitter.com/bangliss
Here’s one from Dec. 21st. – “Corporate values lead engineers to deny industrial climate disruption as a way to protect their jobs.”
Comments from Engineers….?
Justthefacts – The 97% number comes from the Doran and Zimmerman 2010 (D&Z2010) study. It polled “10,257 Earth scientists” from
“all geosciences faculty at reporting academic institutions, along with researchers at state geologic surveys associated with local universities, and researchers at U.S. federal research facilities.”
This is a more representative survey of scientists than one professional organization’s members from one part of one country. D&Z2010 also had 3146 responses, or a response rate of over 30.7%, which is far better than 1077 out of 44,000 members (according to Lefsrud and Meyer), or about 2.4%. Furthermore, when you run the mathematics on the margin of error and confidence level of D&Z2010, you find that 77 respondents is more than sufficient to measure opinion when the opinions are so wildly skewed.
For a standard 5% margin of error and a 95% confidence level (ie a 1 in 20 chance that the actual results will be outside the +/- 5% margin of error), D&Z2010 would have needed a sample size of just 39 super-experts to accurately determine what 97.4% of the hypothetical 100,000 super-experts thought. Alternatively, for a 95% confidence level and a sample size of 79 respondents, the margin of error would be +/- 3.5% (for the same 100,000 population). Alternatively again, for a 5% margin of error and a sample size of 79, the confidence level is 99.45%.
However you parse the mathematics, Taylor’s post about Lefsrud and Meyer is simply wrong. As is your claim about D&Z2010.
As for the New York Times, they accurately reported what the Anderegg study said. Taylor did not. And thew New York Time does run corrections when errors are pointed out to them – Taylor has not.
Donald L Klipstein says: February 18, 2013 at 7:30 pm
The three lines in the graph that begin with 1997 or 1997.1 appear to
me as cherrypicked to start barely in time to include a century-class
single year spike. Smoothed versions of those indices, when smoothed in
the manner used for smoothed HadCRUT3, only go 11-12 years with no
upward trend. Have a look at:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/
Please repost your comment in this thread;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/10/has-global-warming-stalled/
and Werner will address it there. The succinct summary is that Werner identified the longest period of time to present for which there has been no warming in each data set. Identifying this unique attribute of each data set is obviously not “cherry picking” as each data set only has one cherry per se.
davidmhoffer says:
February 18, 2013 at 7:21 pm
Brian Angliss;
and 84% of survey respondents were engineers, not scientists.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I see comments like this and I wonder…. what do people like you think engineers study in order to get their degree? Calligraphy?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I’m going to answer my own question since I’m pretty certain Angliss won’t respond.
Electrical engineers study mostly calculus and physics, lots and lots of physics.
Mechanical engineers study mostly calculus and physics, lots and lots of physics.
Civil engineers study mostly calculus and physics, lots and lots of physics.
Chemical engineers study mostly calculus and chemistry and some physics
Geological engineers study mostly calculus and geology and some physics
Get the picture Brian? The difference between a scientist and an engineer is what? I’ll answer that too.
When a scientist screws up the science, their paper gets withdrawn or debunked.
When an engineer screws up the science, telescopes have to be retrofitted with eye glasses at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. Companies go bankrupt. Environmental disasters happen. Buildings collapse. People die.
Which is why engineers don’t have the unmitigated gall to produce graphs with no error bars and pretend that it is science.
Wayne Delbeck and Davidmhoffer – I’m an electrical engineer myself with a Master’s Degree and 15 years of professional experience, so I know very well what engineers study, and I’m not about to cast aspersions on any engineer. After all, we study how to apply science to create solutions to problems, and that’s one hell of a lot of fun. But just because we’re trained in how to use the scientific method does not make us scientists.
A “scientist” is someone who uses the scientific method in order to study how the world works and does so as a profession. Most engineers don’t study the world in the same way, and the engineering skill set is quite a bit different from the scientist skill set. We can’t simply open up the definition of “scientist” to include anyone who uses the scientific method regularly in their professions because that makes the word meaningless. After all, would you call a medical doctor a scientist in the same way a chemist or biologist or meteorologist is? How about a veterinarian? A professional sportsman? An automobile mechanic? All of those professions and more use the scientific method of observing, hypothesizing, testing, and drawing conclusions, but none of them are practicing scientists. And neither are most engineers.
Brian Angliss says: February 18, 2013 at 8:24 pm
Justthefacts – The 97% number comes from the Doran and Zimmerman 2010 (D&Z2010) study.
That’s erroneous, per Barry Wood’s deconstruction;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/
the “Doran EoS paper merely cites a MSc thesis for the actual source of this 97% figure and the actual survey”. The student’s “MSc thesis entitled “The Consensus on the Consensus” – M Zimmermann , who was Peter Doran’s graduate student (and the EoS paper’s co-author). The thesis can be downloaded here:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/m-r-k-zimmerman/the-consensus-on-the-consensus/ebook/product-17391505.html
for $2.
It polled “10,257 Earth scientists” from
“all geosciences faculty at reporting academic institutions, along with researchers at state geologic surveys associated with local universities, and researchers at U.S. federal research facilities.”
Also erroneous, per Barry Wood’s deconstruction;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/
it was a “survey of 10,256 with 3146 respondents was whittled down to 75 out of 77 “expert” ’active climate researchers’ (ACR) to give the 97% figure, based on just two very simplistic (shallow) questions that even the majority of sceptics might agree with.” Here’s a good critique of the survey by Larry Solomon.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/that_97_solution_again/
Furthermore, when you run the mathematics on the margin of error and confidence level of D&Z2010, you find that 77 respondents is more than sufficient to measure opinion when the opinions are so wildly skewed.
77 respondents to a poorly designed survey from some student’s thesis may be sufficient for you to define a global scientific consensus, but the rest of us think it’s a joke… Additionally “96% of the scientist that responded were from North America (90% USA, 6.2% Canada), with 9% from California alone.” which makes the survey even more biased.
However you parse the mathematics, Taylor’s post about Lefsrud and Meyer is simply wrong. As is your claim about D&Z2010.
I’ve presented evidence to substantiate my claims, no need to parse the mathematics as you have attempted to do. The 97% statistic is garbage no matter how you parse it.
As for the New York Times, they accurately reported what the Anderegg study said. Taylor did not. And thew New York Time does run corrections when errors are pointed out to them – Taylor has not.
Let’s not worry about the Times and Taylor for now, let’s see if we can get you to correct your erroneous statements about M. R. K. Zimmerman’s poorly constructed thesis…
Brian Angliss says: February 18, 2013 at 8:42 pm
A “scientist” is someone who uses the scientific method in order to study how the world works and does so as a profession.
Again erroneous, you are on a streak here, i.e. according to Wikipedia;
Your inclusion of “does so as a profession” makes no sense, like Einstein wasn’t a scientist when he was working for the Patent Office and published his Annus Mirabilis papers in 1905?
Brian Angliss says:
February 18, 2013 at 8:42 pm
Wayne Delbeck and Davidmhoffer – I’m an electrical engineer myself with a Master’s Degree and 15 years of professional experience, so I know very well what engineers study, and I’m not about to cast aspersions on any engineer.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yet you did exactly that. Your suggestion reads pure and simple that engineers are not qualified to comment on climate science, yet “scientists” are. That right there is the second largest problem with the climate science debate. The first is the unbelievable gall of producing results with no error bars and claiming them to be definitive. The second is “deciding” that an engineer well versed in radiative physics shouldn’t have an opinion but a physicist with the exact same training should.
I had this same debate with Jan Perlw1tz of NASA who insisted that Briffa’s last paper (which debunks that precious hockey stick that the IPCC relied upon for so long) could not be correctly interpreted by people who weren’t “climate scientists”. I asked that he identify a single aspect of the paper that could not be understood by someone with first year math and stats. He ran away like a little sissy because the truth of the matter is that there is NOTHING in that paper that someone with first year math skills could not understand.
Your precious survey is just another example of the alarmist “scientists” defining anyone who agrees with them as being a scientists and anyone who disagrees as being “unqualified”
I have no degree at all sir. If you’d like to cross swords with me in the area of radiative physics and the greenhouse effect, by all means give it a go. Let’s see what YOU have.
Or are you not “qualified”? In which case, how do you determine who is?
Justthefacts – Most of the stuff you’re claiming is erroneous, isn’t. For example, the results I quote are from D&Z2010. That they’re also from Zimmerman’s masters thesis doesn’t make the fact that they were also published in Eos an less true.
Similarly, it’s not possible for a direct quote from D&Z2010 to be erroneous. While claims about the representativeness of the paper or unintentional selection biases may have merit, Barry’s guest post doesn’t actually claim that Zimmerman didn’t send the survey to the number of people claimed in D&Z2010, nor does his post claim that Zimmerman didn’t actually receive 3146 just as D&Z2010 says. Thus my quote is also not erroneous.
So, I’ll admit the possibility that D&Z2010 is less representative than would be ideal. But given that Barry doesn’t delve into the nationalities of the respondents, I’ll only grant the possibility. After all, there are a large number of foreign-born scientists who come to the United States to practice their profession.
As for the math, you’ve done nothing to address it, and the math doesn’t lie. Especially since my calculations are extraordinarily conservative – there’s no way that there are 100,000 climate super-experts in the world, and so the margin of error is likely much smaller. But if you like, we can cut the population by a factor of 10 just to account for your concerns about the sample’s representativeness. D&Z2010’s conclusions will still hold whether you like the math or not.
As for Taylor, we can’t simply ignore him given this entire thread is based on the fact that he wildly distorted the results of a poll, claimed it produced results that it doesn’t, and has not corrected his distorted claims even after the authors of the study told him he was wrong. There is no excuse for that.
davidmhoffer – as you point out, electrical engineers study “calculus and physics, lots and lots of physics,” just like mechanical engineers, et al. And that’s true.
But as an EE myself, I studied quantum mechanics and optics. That doesn’t mean I understand the physics of chemical reactions. Mechanical engineers study the physical properties of materials like spring force, friction, and hardness. That doesn’t mean they understand the physics of electron flow. And so on.
Having studied electrical engineering myself, I know what kind of physics I was taught. And it was nothing resembling what is required to truly understand atmospheric physics as well as a meteorologist or a climatologist does. In my day job working in aerospace, I work with hundreds of engineers and scientists, and the only ones who truly understand atmospheric physics are the ones who do it day and day out and/or who came out of college with at least a BSci in a field related to atmospheric physics.
On the other hand, I know a huge number of engineers and scientists who think they understand it, but don’t.
Cmon Brian, give it a go.
Explain to me how it takes anything more than algebra skills to understand the application of Stefan-Boltzmann Law. Explain how it takes anything more than first year calculus to understand Planck. Explain the justification for anomalies from completely different temperature regimes being averaged together to arrive at a global temperature trend when they represent completely different energy fluxes. Explain to me how the effective black body temperature of earth differs from the surface temperature of earth and how doubling of CO2 affects each. Explain how the IPCC meme of CO2 doubling = 3.7 w/m2 = +1 degree is NOT applicable to surface temperatures according to the IPCC themselves. Explain how the laps rate can possibly be defined as under going a linear response to CO2 doubling despite the atmospheric air column not being uniform in terms of water vapour.
Pick one. Explain to me why “scientists” can “understand” these issues, but I can’t. Pick one, and show me that I’m over my head.
justthefacts – that’s a fair point about Einstein. But the independent scientist is a rarity these days – science has become as much a profession as engineering or teaching. I think that’s a good thing, by and large, since most fields of scientific study are either so large that no single person can understand it all, or so specialized that it takes years or decades of dedicated work to have an impact, or both.
My point about the broad definition of still holds, however – there comes a point where you cannot simply include everyone who uses the scientific method as a “scientist” without making the term meaningless. There are engineers who are scientists, and vice versa, but most engineers are not scientists and most scientists are not engineers. Again, both professions have related but quite different skill sets.