Good to see you over here, Merlin.
Thanks - good to be here.
The IPCC may well be a corrupt organization, any organization that allows government bureaucrats a hand in editing scientific work (and allows to do it as a matter of routine) has a lot to answer for.
That's never a good thing. The bureaucrats don't allow us scientists to edit their laws, so why do we let them alter our research?
However, the IPCC's failings have nothing to do with global warming. Granted, there never is an absolute scientific consensus, but the reason why scientists have begun to distance themselves from the reports they issue is because the information simply doesn't go far enough. The last report, for instance, is a watered down version of the effects of global warming on the planet, it isn't the truth.
This, we have to disagree upon. I am not the only physicist who has questioned the legitimacy of the
assumptions made in the science in order to get the theories to coalesce. I am not the only mathematician who has shaken his head in
disgust when the references for the citations are reviewed and the math turns out to be entirely contrived. I am also, nowhere nearly the only theorist who is amazed that none of their computer models (based upon their theories) work without incremental perturbations ("fudge factors") being installed in order to arrive at a
pre-determined result. In fact, of the two universities I spend most of my time at, all of the math and science departments are overwhelmingly populated with skeptics. Most of which are so because none of the predictions are correct.
I realize that theory is no less a viable theory in the face of no observational evidence; that much is certain. However, I do know for a fact that when, observation serves to disprove the predictions of a theory - time after time -
there is something wrong. One thing that may be wrong is the theory, another might be the way we observe, but certainly we cannot blame the test in this case... The test is our existence and we couldn't screw that test up - it's pure, unadulterated observation.
Something that may produce enough success to keep scientists moving forward, yet not enough to prove a theory can often times mean that you are close to being correct. Lord knows, I've been there - done that, too many times to count. Unfortunately, there is another method for creating succesively close (but otherwise inaccurate) results. That is to create a "mechanical theory" for something that is
"fluid", and use a lot of
"fudge" and assumptions to "fine tune" it. IMHO, Gertrude Hawk and Mrs. Fields have nothing on the IPCC, there's enough
fudge in the previous reports to give cavities to all of the teeth in the entire third-world.
