Science or scientists?

Your life will waste away if you respond to the BS from the billions of non-scientists available.

Which brings me to a question I've wanted to ask you for a while: why do you spend time here, rather than say at real climate.org ?

 

Perhaps the broader question, why do any of us spend time here?

I bought the Prius because I hate burning gas money and even before the Prius, always have. But sad to say, environmental "green" has often been one of the broad accusation of why anyone buys a Prius. So I come to this forum for the "Readers Digest" version, just to be able to address such claims.

This forum is also a 'honey pot' attracting those who would poison Prius discussions with useless distractions. "Freds House of Politics" is another such 'honey pot'. To the extent some of us rascals enjoy needling these visiting Prius critics, the 'honey pot' works.

Now Doug and I have known each other since shortly after I bought our first Prius and joined various Prius forums. We both had the same model Prius and abiding curiosity about the technology. Independently, we both put 12V-to-120VAC inverters in our cars. When I saw Doug carried a small, floor jack to change tires, I bought and carry one too. He also experimented with transmission oil filtration. Doug is a teacher and biology researcher who 'walks the walk' of empirical science and I am fortunate to have met him.

Bob Wilson

 

Absolutely we should key off the science not the scientists, or the politicians pretending to be scientists.

On Mr. Jones, certainly there was enough questions on his methodology. his dog seemed to eat his homework, that it could not be adequately peer reviewed in any direct way because he did not make things available. It has been peer reviewed in a black box way, open methodology by GISS, NCDC, and B.E.S.T. which means that even though there are questions, most data is now available as well as algorithms for people to find any problems. The temperature record with error bars is rock solid. I think one criticism of mr. Jones will stick and it should, you should not compare paleo climate that is smoothed (averaged) over many years or decades by proxies, with a temperature record that shows yearly data not smoothing for variation. Mr. Jones himself has admitted this mistake.

I think we can credit Mr. Trenberth with some vary interesting hypothesis about the frequency of heavy storms and deep sea heat. The great thing about these hypothesis is they been responded to with a number of peer reviewed studies, most of them supplying evidence against the hypothesis. My criticism of coverage of Trenberth, is the hypothesis seem to be looked on as facts, and not the studies trying to test them. This is part of an effort to overturn the null hypothesis, that I disagree with. To my knowledge Trenberth hasn't cheated like jones, but many politicians take his hypotheses as science, instead of questions awaiting data and review. Certainly the study of how ghg changes the frequency and intensity of intense hurricanes and tornadoes, and how deep sea water sequesters warmer air are interesting questions that merit scientific study, and we can credit Trenberth for pushing these questions.


Certainly these two have big personalities, but we shouldn't question the science because they are involved. There are so many other papers in their fields of study than they have put out.

 

Perhaps a yet broader universal question....no I won't go there...

...beyond Prii help, this site is a place to keep up with Automotive technology (esp. green cars) and attitudes about energy policy etc. I became more active in 2009 when I was trying to figure out how much coal an EV would use: buckets of coal to buckets of gasoline comparison.