Inaccuracies in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth

[Empress of Groovy 373]

Are you a climate scientist? If not then you would know about peer reviews and how studies are authenticated but your opinion on global warming isn't any more valid than anyone elses. True?

I would tend to value a scientist's review of the literature regardless of discipline or specialization. One of the many skills of a scientist--indeed, any academic--is the ability to synthesize information, present evidence, ask questions, and draw conclusions.

Are you suggesting that the view held by a scientist in a field not directly related to atmospheric or climate science is no closer to reality than the position of someone who repairs shoes?

[MrConservative 0]

Are you a climate scientist? If not then you would know about peer reviews and how studies are authenticated but your opinion on global warming isn't any more valid than anyone elses. True?

I would tend to value a scientist's review of the literature regardless of discipline or specialization. One of the many skills of a scientist--indeed, any academic--is the ability to synthesize information, present evidence, ask questions, and draw conclusions.

Are you suggesting that the view held by a scientist in a field not directly related to atmospheric or climate science is no closer to reality than the position of someone who repairs shoes?

So you would take a physicists view on global warming as one that has relevance? They are all smart people I grant you but if that isn't their area of expertise then there opinion is the same as anyone else's.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Are you a climate scientist? If not then you would know about peer reviews and how studies are authenticated but your opinion on global warming isn't any more valid than anyone elses. True?

I would tend to value a scientist's review of the literature regardless of discipline or specialization. One of the many skills of a scientist--indeed, any academic--is the ability to synthesize information, present evidence, ask questions, and draw conclusions.

Are you suggesting that the view held by a scientist in a field not directly related to atmospheric or climate science is no closer to reality than the position of someone who repairs shoes?

So you would take a physicists view on global warming as one that has relevance? They are all smart people I grant you but if that isn't their area of expertise then there opinion is the same as anyone else's.

Well physicists work with computer models and projections... Theoretical work has much the same methodology.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Are you a climate scientist? If not then you would know about peer reviews and how studies are authenticated but your opinion on global warming isn't any more valid than anyone elses. True?

I would tend to value a scientist's review of the literature regardless of discipline or specialization. One of the many skills of a scientist--indeed, any academic--is the ability to synthesize information, present evidence, ask questions, and draw conclusions.

Are you suggesting that the view held by a scientist in a field not directly related to atmospheric or climate science is no closer to reality than the position of someone who repairs shoes?

So you would take a physicists view on global warming as one that has relevance? They are all smart people I grant you but if that isn't their area of expertise then there opinion is the same as anyone else's.

You must have missed the bolded part. A scientist is most certainly in a better position to review scientific material - even of a different discipline - than a shoe repairman. The shoe repairman would, in fact, be challenged even to distinguish between what is and what isn't scientific material.

Edited October 16, 2007 by Mr. Big Dog

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Are you a climate scientist? If not then you would know about peer reviews and how studies are authenticated but your opinion on global warming isn't any more valid than anyone elses. True?

I would tend to value a scientist's review of the literature regardless of discipline or specialization. One of the many skills of a scientist--indeed, any academic--is the ability to synthesize information, present evidence, ask questions, and draw conclusions.

Are you suggesting that the view held by a scientist in a field not directly related to atmospheric or climate science is no closer to reality than the position of someone who repairs shoes?

So you would take a physicists view on global warming as one that has relevance? They are all smart people I grant you but if that isn't their area of expertise then there opinion is the same as anyone else's.

You must have missed the bolded part. A scientist is most certainly in a better position to review scientific material - even of a different discipline - than a shoe repairman. The shoe repairman would, in fact, be challenged even to distinguish between what is and what isn't scientific material.

shoe repairman or politician? I'd go with the repairman first.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Are you a climate scientist? If not then you would know about peer reviews and how studies are authenticated but your opinion on global warming isn't any more valid than anyone elses. True?

I would tend to value a scientist's review of the literature regardless of discipline or specialization. One of the many skills of a scientist--indeed, any academic--is the ability to synthesize information, present evidence, ask questions, and draw conclusions.

Are you suggesting that the view held by a scientist in a field not directly related to atmospheric or climate science is no closer to reality than the position of someone who repairs shoes?

So you would take a physicists view on global warming as one that has relevance? They are all smart people I grant you but if that isn't their area of expertise then there opinion is the same as anyone else's.

You must have missed the bolded part. A scientist is most certainly in a better position to review scientific material - even of a different discipline - than a shoe repairman. The shoe repairman would, in fact, be challenged even to distinguish between what is and what isn't scientific material.

shoe repairman or politician? I'd go with the repairman first.

Come on Lucky, you can do better than that.

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

I love the predictions. Go to school, get your Phd. All of a sudden your a frickin expert based on what your taught! After all, the time one spends in school makes you only as smart as yesterday.

[no name 1]

I love the predictions. Go to school, get your Phd. All of a sudden your a frickin expert based on what your taught! After all, the time one spends in school makes you only as smart as yesterday.

Spoken as one who obviously has not experienced higher learning...

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

I love the predictions. Go to school, get your Phd. All of a sudden your a frickin expert based on what your taught! After all, the time one spends in school makes you only as smart as yesterday.

Spoken as one who obviously has not experienced higher learning...

I'm waiting for part two. Your check book is still taking damage, isnt it? The resentment is obvious

[no name 1]

I love the predictions. Go to school, get your Phd. All of a sudden your a frickin expert based on what your taught! After all, the time one spends in school makes you only as smart as yesterday.

Spoken as one who obviously has not experienced higher learning...

I'm waiting for part two. Your check book is still taking damage, isnt it? The resentment is obvious

Actually it's all paid off. Next?

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

I love the predictions. Go to school, get your Phd. All of a sudden your a frickin expert based on what your taught! After all, the time one spends in school makes you only as smart as yesterday.

Spoken as one who obviously has not experienced higher learning...

I'm waiting for part two. Your check book is still taking damage, isnt it? The resentment is obvious

Actually it's all paid off. Next?

Resentment?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I love the predictions. Go to school, get your Phd. All of a sudden your a frickin expert based on what your taught! After all, the time one spends in school makes you only as smart as yesterday.

There's rather a lot of work involved in getting a PhD. It doesn't exactly involve you sitting in class reading the blackboard. Further ed courses are rather more interactive than a high-school classroom.

[HAL 9000 96]

So your founding document on whether there is a "consensus" hasn't been peer reviewed. Does this mean our "scientist" will no longer claim there is a consensus? That is what a good scientist would do. There is much more than I have room to post here. I invite you to put your scientific standards to work here and retract your position that there is a consensus.

Once again, our political partisan reveals just how small his understanding is about how modern science works. The tutorial here concerns peer review.

Peer review is a process we use in journals (and that universities use at tenure time) to assess the quality of a specific research contribution or the worthiness of a candidate for tenure. I stopped working at Universities after I finished my postdoctoral fellowship at Texas A&M University (that hotbed of liberalism where I first learned about the science of global warming) so I will confine my remarks to the topic really at hand -- peer review of research contributions.

When a scientist or group of scientists have a manuscript they want to publish, they submit it to a scientific journal for publication. The editor reviews the manuscript and send it out to a few (usually two, sometimes three) scientists whose work is known to the editor to be reliable. These peer reviewiers make comments on the manuscript anonymously for the benefit of the editor. Comments go to the scientific merits and demerits of the manuscript, and, alas, increasingly these days, as to whether the language (typically English, since almost all of the best scientific journals are in English these days, even those published in places like Japan) is sufficiently clear, grammatical, and correct to permit publication. Reviewers are also asked to recommend whether the manuscript be accepted in its current form, after minor revision, after major revision, or be rejected for publication.

This process does improve the quality of the scientific literature. At times, referee comments have helped me substantially improve a manuscript that I've submitted. There were two other occasions where I was a party to work that colleagues wanted very much to publish. I thought the manuscripts were marginal, but went ahead with their request to submit them, since I didn't have time to fix them. In both cases, referees recommended rejection and that is what happened. (I was relieved.) In one of those cases, my coauthors took my suggestions, combined two marginal manuscripts into one very substantially improved manuscript, removed rather strange speculation, and the result was published in quite a nice place.

This is the process that original research goes through in order to be published. Textbooks are rather different and do not go through such laborious review. Authors of textbooks are rather well-known in their fields. And those authors get assigned editors from publication houses that, in many cases, are quite scientifically literature in their own right, and these editors help make sure that the textbook deserves publication.

Now, our favorite partisan complains that the IPCC did not go through peer review. Here we differ. The IPCC consists of a couple thousand leading climate researchers over the world. Their job -- that is, the IPCC part of their job -- isn't to perform new research and get it published. Rather, they review the existing scientific literature and assess its implications concerning climate change. They argue about text internally for a long time. Their work product is often superior to the peer review that we get in the scientific literature for review articles. In a very real sense, this very large group of scientists perform their own internal peer review. They do it very well.

But one of the inherent drawbacks of IPCC is that their work necessarily presents a view of climate science that is two or three years out of date. "IPCC is not at the leading -- or bleeding -- edge of science", Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the (US) National Center for Atmospheric Research, was quoted as saying, commenting on the work that he was a part of. As evidence of that, newer research indicates that sea level rise (assuming that Greenland in fact does not melt) will probably be at the high end of the IPCC projections. It may become very difficult for the Dutch to keep Amsterdam above water, and we'll face some very interesting problems with many of our coastal cities.

Are you a climate scientist? If not then you would know about peer reviews and how studies are authenticated but your opinion on global warming isn't any more valid than anyone elses. True?

Answered previously.

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

I love the predictions. Go to school, get your Phd. All of a sudden your a frickin expert based on what your taught! After all, the time one spends in school makes you only as smart as yesterday.

There's rather a lot of work involved in getting a PhD. It doesn't exactly involve you sitting in class reading the blackboard. Further ed courses are rather more interactive than a high-school classroom.

Please give me a quote from one that is wise.

[HAL 9000 96]

Are you a climate scientist? If not then you would know about peer reviews and how studies are authenticated but your opinion on global warming isn't any more valid than anyone elses. True?

I would tend to value a scientist's review of the literature regardless of discipline or specialization. One of the many skills of a scientist--indeed, any academic--is the ability to synthesize information, present evidence, ask questions, and draw conclusions.

Are you suggesting that the view held by a scientist in a field not directly related to atmospheric or climate science is no closer to reality than the position of someone who repairs shoes?

The scientific method is taught poorly in the USA, in my judgement... as another scientist. (A biomedical scientist)

I don't credit sound scientific reasoning to scientists alone or academics in general by any stretch of the imagination. Some academics and other scientists I've known have honestly been more closed-minded than many individuals around here! To be more fair to all that have given fair opinions here, it is my strong belief that sound reasoning skills can be learned pretty far away from academia.