Monday, November 01, 2010

Climate science: words of a skeptic

There is close to a consensus among climate scientists that man-made global warming is real. But there remain dissenters, which advocates constantly attack for being corporate tools. But Dr. Judith Curry is one who insists scientific doubt is legitimate. She says, "Yes, there's a lot of crankology out there. But not all of it is. If only 1 percent of it or 10 percent of what the skeptics say is right, that is time well spent because we have just been too encumbered by groupthink." She doesn't think enough work is going into refining climate models and thinks historical trends are being drawn despite scant data for periods decades or centuries ago.

COMMENT: I'm no climate scientist, and I suspect some degree of warming is indeed happening. But I don't think we've got either the causes or the right responses down as completely as some people think, and I can't accept that legitimate doubt is impossible.

No comments: