Adam noted the pushback that Tyler Cowen is getting from suggesting that the Climategate could raise one’s estimate of the probability of Climate Change.
I think that while Tyler’s point is theoretically valid, and as I said before that any bad behavior was motivated deep belief that the fate of the world was a stake. However, it seems unlikely that this should raise most people’s assessment of the likelihood of climate change.
One’s assessment is only going to rise if this evidence leads you to believe scientists have more conviction than you thought. However, anyone who is interested in the Climate Change issue but doesn’t think that scientists deeply believe in global warming, almost certainly believes that there is a conspiracy. If they believe there is a conspiracy then the emails only serve to bolster that belief.
Thus I have a hard time seeing whose mind is changed for the positive by this.
That being said, it doesn’t change my mind much to the negative. I have gone from probably a 98% belief that humans are causing Climate Change to around 90% – 95%.
It does, however, make me more interested in ensuring that the skeptics have a fair hearing. Previously I had written most of them off as cranks. Now I would like to at least see a back and forth, in which the strongest criticisms are refuted.
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Monday ~ January 25th, 2010 at 2:21 pm
Reasoner
Your characterization of AGW skeptics as cranks shows a distinct a lack of intellectual honesty.
The intellectually honest person does not simply take someone’s word to justify a course of action. This would be swallowing whole the argument by assertion (they say that it is so, and so it must be so). You must do enough investigation to determine whether that person (or group) is trustworthy, and if there is at least face validity to their claims.
In both instances, the Global Warming advocates failed. And many others, like you apparently, failed to even question their claims (or that of their propaganda arm the corporate media).
When accurate temperature records for only a small portion of the Northern Hemisphere only go back 150 years, common sense would show that claims as to man-caused climate change were spurious if not dubious.
Proceeding from there, the rational man would have questioned data collection methods, sample sizes, and the agenda of the claimants themselves. The better-informed or more intelligent individual would have questioned the scientific process itself.
Any of these factors by themselves bring ready skepticism into any claims for AGW…and would make the hurdle for “government action” that much higher than self-benefiting claims that “the science is settled” and “there is a scientific consensus.”
ClimateGate merely shows the degree to which scientists end up yielding to temptation for power and money, just like all the rest of us.