Questioning orthodoxy. (Editorial).
Recently hearing Fred Singer from the USA lecture on what he perceives to be the uncritical ways in which global change has been attributed to anthropogenic effects reminded me of the importance we should attach to those who question our current beliefs. For Fred it was not sufficient that the IPCC...
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ftnerc:oai:nora.nerc.ac.uk:2039 2024-06-09T07:38:39+00:00 Questioning orthodoxy. (Editorial). Walton, David 2005 http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/2039/ https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954102005002531 unknown Cambridge University Press Walton, David orcid:0000-0002-7103-4043 . 2005 Questioning orthodoxy. (Editorial). Antarctic Science, 17 (1). 1. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954102005002531 <https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954102005002531> Science Policy Publication - Article NonPeerReviewed 2005 ftnerc https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954102005002531 2024-05-15T08:42:16Z Recently hearing Fred Singer from the USA lecture on what he perceives to be the uncritical ways in which global change has been attributed to anthropogenic effects reminded me of the importance we should attach to those who question our current beliefs. For Fred it was not sufficient that the IPCC had engaged many of the best scientific brains in the world to reach the existing consensus; they might all be wrong because the original question or assumption was wrong. Fred was strongly challenged by the audience of Antarctic scientists, not least because some of his quotations were selective in order to initiate discussion. And we know that there are areas of considerable weakness amongst the several proxies used to compute the rate of temperature change, that we have only poorly quantified and modelled the role of clouds, energy transfer between the oceans and atmosphere, water vapour as a greenhouse gas and that we have yet to be certain that the Global Climate Models really do have all the most significant driving variables. So the IPCC conclusions are drawn on the best available evidence with complementary patterns derived from several different approaches and constitute the best we can do at the moment. Article in Journal/Newspaper Antarc* Antarctic Antarctic Science Natural Environment Research Council: NERC Open Research Archive Antarctic Antarctic Science 17 1 1 1 |
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Natural Environment Research Council: NERC Open Research Archive |
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Science Policy |
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Science Policy Walton, David Questioning orthodoxy. (Editorial). |
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Science Policy |
description |
Recently hearing Fred Singer from the USA lecture on what he perceives to be the uncritical ways in which global change has been attributed to anthropogenic effects reminded me of the importance we should attach to those who question our current beliefs. For Fred it was not sufficient that the IPCC had engaged many of the best scientific brains in the world to reach the existing consensus; they might all be wrong because the original question or assumption was wrong. Fred was strongly challenged by the audience of Antarctic scientists, not least because some of his quotations were selective in order to initiate discussion. And we know that there are areas of considerable weakness amongst the several proxies used to compute the rate of temperature change, that we have only poorly quantified and modelled the role of clouds, energy transfer between the oceans and atmosphere, water vapour as a greenhouse gas and that we have yet to be certain that the Global Climate Models really do have all the most significant driving variables. So the IPCC conclusions are drawn on the best available evidence with complementary patterns derived from several different approaches and constitute the best we can do at the moment. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Walton, David |
author_facet |
Walton, David |
author_sort |
Walton, David |
title |
Questioning orthodoxy. (Editorial). |
title_short |
Questioning orthodoxy. (Editorial). |
title_full |
Questioning orthodoxy. (Editorial). |
title_fullStr |
Questioning orthodoxy. (Editorial). |
title_full_unstemmed |
Questioning orthodoxy. (Editorial). |
title_sort |
questioning orthodoxy. (editorial). |
publisher |
Cambridge University Press |
publishDate |
2005 |
url |
http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/2039/ https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954102005002531 |
geographic |
Antarctic |
geographic_facet |
Antarctic |
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Antarc* Antarctic Antarctic Science |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctic Antarctic Science |
op_relation |
Walton, David orcid:0000-0002-7103-4043 . 2005 Questioning orthodoxy. (Editorial). Antarctic Science, 17 (1). 1. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954102005002531 <https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954102005002531> |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954102005002531 |
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Antarctic Science |
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17 |
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1 |
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1 |
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1 |
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1801374396038774784 |