The remark was intended for the author of the blog, which
I assume is not you.

> B) … but rather the point you made, which refutes itself,

What?

> C) Please, do introduce me to these “tens of thousands of scientists.” I would very much like to meet them.

Stop by any reasonably large university (you know, places like
Princeton or Caltech or the University of Chicago or NCAR – places where people not as smart as you are maybe, but still pretty smart study the climate) and introduce yourself.

B) Madison WI regularly records stupid windchills (I lived there for 2 years, and my car locks froze……IN MY GARAGE), and that is not what Coyote is saying, but rather the point you made, which refutes itself,

C) Please, do introduce me to these “tens of thousands of scientists.” I would very much like to meet them.

1. Quote an environmentalist and who supports a fascist approach to environmental policy.

2. Based on that single example, insinuate that people who care about the environment (which I would have thought would be just about everyone) are a) a monolithic group who hold similar views about how to best protect the environment and b) that these views are inherently fascist.

3. Throw in a false claim: “.. in a system like the earth’s climate that has been reasonably stable for tens of millions of years.” Twenty thousand years ago Madison Wisconsin was buried under a mile of ice. That’s reasonably stable? (By contrast, the Holocene, the last 10,000 years, during which civilization arose, has been unusually stable – until now).

4. Cap it off with with a plastic bag comment (isn’t it funny how environmentalists are wrong about everything).

Of course, the tens of thousands of scientists around the world who
actually study the climate and are warning that human activity is changing the climate and that the effects of this change will likely be serious (enormous loss of biodiversity; rising sea levels; more tropical disease in previously temperate areas; etc.) only believe these things – every last one of them – because that’s how they get the most funding.

I generally trust my doctor but I would never trust anything he says again if I found out he participated in a effort to cover up a medical mistake. I suspect most people feel the same way.

I don’t understand why anyone thinks the scientists that run the IPCC deserve to be trusted given their past behavoir.

Perhaps you are an informal expert of sorts; certainly, one doesn’t need to be a card carrying “scientist of the field” in order to make such judgments. But informed, one must me. The fact that you have made an effort to investigate the issue makes you different from most people who knee-jerk oppose “global warming” or evolution because it sounds like a “liberal theory,” or because their favorite pastor or politician spins it that way. Consider the Florida local state boards, one of whom opposes evolution without even understanding the meaning of the words they’re using! Perhaps you actually have a good reason to criticize the consensus. People who have neither the time nor the inclination to actually learn about the science should just leave it to the experts.

But if I have to set up the priors for my Bayesian likelihoods of theories, I’m going to give the weight to someone who spends their life studying climate theory and atmospheric chemistry rather than a “complex adaptive systems” person who dabbles in climate theory reading in his spare time. And to speak frankly, I don’t think programming a few adaptive systems gives that much insight into climate science; not any more than, say, programming the stochastic systems biological models that I’ve made. You can flash your “complex adaptive systems” badge all you want, but a climate scientist it does not make you.

1. Consensus also means that there are people with alternative theories. The majority are not always correct, that is why people are skeptical. Remember the consensus used to believe in the universe revolving around the Earth.

2. Part of the skepticism also lies in that there is so much money to be had for doing pro-man-made warming. So, you don’t have to be “most correct”, just fit the story that is trying to be sold.

Those two underlying themes appear in over at http://www.climate-skeptic.com quite often.

On a personal note, I’d probably trust the scientific evidence too if I didn’t have knowledge to the contrary. One doesn’t have to be an expert in a field to show underlying flaws in the proof or models. F=ma, if a theory relies on that not being true, then I would be skeptical. The same goes for catastrophic man made global warming, I see a conflict and I’m going to remain skeptical until someone proves me wrong.

On a lighter and ironic note, it’s funny you mention cryptography because I’m neither an expert in Cryptography nor Mathematics, but I’m able to use both to prove the strength of a cryptography system I had based upon complex adaptive systems … go figure … amateurs becoming experts !!!