"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

[snip]

You're talking about one measurement path, a Great Circle, which
may
or
may
not cross numerous currents, the initiation site for El Nino, and
so
on.
From that you're trying to draw a conclusion about global warming.
You
don't
know if the pattern between here and NZ is pro-cyclical or
counter-cyclical
to the earth's temperature as a whole. You are talking about a
measurement
taken over a short span of years, while the data being looked at by
serious
scientists is data from decades at least, and hundreds of years in
some
cases.

Well, I don't have a dog in the debate from which this is taken, but
I
will add
that it is not impossible to disentangle all those things. What is
done
is the acoustic equivalent of computerized tomography.

Here is a random article dredged up by google:
http://jjap.ipap.jp/link?JJAP/40/5446/.

Joe Gwinn

Joe, I'm going to skip the article, because there are 2,000 or 3,000
that
I'd have to read first.

Not if the intent is to understand the method.

I'm interested in the conclusion. It's so easy to be misled by the
methods.
Most of the pontificators here do exactly that.



One can "disentangle" the currents, but there is
still fundamental debate about the influences that initiate the El
Ninos,
for example. So you can separate some effects but now you will have
experts
arguing over the causes -- and reading one article or two or a hundred
won't
tell you the full story behind those causes.

Well, it *is* an active research topic for sure, but they are figuring
it
out.
And this is their tool. My point was that such a tool does exist.


For us non-experts, it's like searching for the golden fleece.

So, there is no reason to believe either side, and therefore no reason
to
believe or to do anything at all? That's the obvious conclusion,
because
the alternative is to choose on faith alone which of the warring groups
to
believe.

Joe Gwinn

As Ranger and others have pointed out, the best use of our abilities on
impossibly complex topics like this is to use the usual tools we have for
judging which experts appear to know what they're talking about, and are
honest and sane.

It's like understanding cancer research. I wouldn't even try it. But I
have
reason to believe the experts who speak through certain institutions. It
doesn't mean they're necessarily right, but experience shows that they're
the most likely to be so.

Anything else is self-delusion.

Cancer research isn't nearly as politicized as climate research, if only
because
cancer research findings do not lead to proposals with such immense
impacts.

Well, that's certainly true. The cranks and contrarians in cancer research
don't get much of a hearing. In climatology, they get funded by coal and
power companies, publish best-selling books, and go on speaking tours.

The political overtones cut both ways. There's always a chance that the
contrarians are right. But the noise level gets so high, when there are
financial interests who have a big stake in promoting their ideas, that it
becomes even more important to size up the sources and judge their
sensibility and motivations, rather than to try to pretend we actually know
the scientific story. At best, we come off as half-assed pseudo-scientists
when we try.


Arguments of the form "most scientists believe ..." don't really have a
very
good track record in science, which is neither a democracy nor a
popularity
contest.

If you thought hard about examples, you'd probably realize how vacuous that
claim really is. What "most scientists believe" probably is right 90% of the
time. That's because the times they are right are unremarkable. It's those
much rarer times they are wrong that stick in our memories.


The classic example is Wegner and continental drift:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift.

More recently, Pruisner and prions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion.
Pruisner was awarded a Nobel prize precisely for bucking the mainstream
wisdom
of the day.

But anyway, you have convinced me that we have no hope of figuring out who
to
believe, and so are better off simply biding out time. It will all sort
itself
out presently.

We have likelihoods based on our personal evaluations of the scientific
communities. We do not have certainty. To the extent that we have to support
one side or the other (which hardly is pressing upon most of us), we can
only judge their appearances and motivations.

--
Ed Huntress