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I would say peer review is not sufficient, but it is to a large extent useful (if not necessary)... that is fairly evident in the non-peer reviewed popular science article you referenced (from a community website?)... he doesn't start off well (I know it's irrelevant, but)... throwing up a snippit of out of context fragments from some "proof" doesn't actually impress me at all... to a physicist (which I am, though on the eng side), it is indeed "gobbly-gook" because it's out of context... not because the math is "scary" or something silly like that...
I'm not refuting much of the basic science he is presenting, but a lot of things are greatly oversimplified (that is the purpose of course, to make it accessible to a general audience), far too verbose, and tainted with opinions (beyond what is normal in scientific literature)... there is danger in oversimplification, one can reach erroneous conclusions... the author does at least state up front that he is trying to present a dissenting voice + has cherry picked from what he feels are good scientific works... he seems convinced, has possibly studied this deeper than it appears on the surface, and probably means well...
fair enough... unfortunately it comes across as religion mixed with science as much as some of the pro AGW texts... I guess I'd rather read a peer reviewed, non-opinionated literature survey by a credible researcher in the field that presents an objective critique of the strengths + failings of techniques used the literature + come to my own conclusions (after reading/evaluating a subset of the papers cited)... + to be fair I haven't really looked (it would be a huge undertaking + I have more important things to do - imho, there is much more interesting science + engineering actually)... As a scientist, I can't really form an opinion without that.
Good science mates careful measurement and sound theory and finds agreement between the 2. The complexities of this interdisciplinary topic make it far beyond what one can really debate here beyond personal opinion... certainly without knowing the details of the computer models used + the data collection techniques..
My main point to someone confused by all this wanting to put it in perspective are: look at the temperature estimates over geological time not just the last few hundred or thousand years. The fluctuations are significant. One can see certain solar induced features etc. That the recent rise is not out of range of "normal" geological scale fluctuations does not disprove AGW, but it does present some perspective... also note that the magnitude of warming due to the greenhouse effect (all factors, I'm not talking AGW here) exceeds the fluctuations over geological time. There are certainly numbers cited in the literature that disagree with numbers presented in that article, but it would take significant knowledge to debate further (in any kind of meaningful way)...
all in all, I don't feel that reasonable efforts to kerb atmospheric pollution in general are a bad thing... whether or not the amount of CO2 we introduce into the atmosphere has a significant impact or not, it is still a pollutant, benign or otherwise, and probably we should avoid manipulating the environment if we don't need to... of course *reasonable* efforts is the key in all this... focus should be broader than just 1 molecule, though with care, it might be a usable metric...
btw, I see a chunk of this thread was deleted, probably rightly so, but I hope I haven't offended anyone in my commentary - I think I was pretty clear + I will reiterate, while I (often) don't agree with his POV, "Reality" (like many Saab owners) seems to be a clever, well read guy + does make some good points (amongst imho some dramatization for effect). I'm certainly not trying to make this a political discussion or attack anyone personally...
James...
posted by 67.158.70...
, Fri, 4 Feb 2011 17:11:03, Sat, 5 Feb 2011 07:10:28, Sat, 5 Feb 2011 11:50:28
, Thu, 3 Feb 2011 18:27:38
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