There are valid and important reasons to adjust data. New equipment, changing locations, calibration issues, etc. BUT! If the signal you are trying to tease out is about equal to, or even less than, the amplitude of the adjustments being made...then you better have some iron-clad and fully transparent justifications for said adjustments. This has not been the case generally in relation to the climate debate. One of the biggest red flags, even if the adjustments turn out to be largely valid, is the level of secrecy, obstruction, and obfuscation that has been thrown up around these tweaks to data sets in the past. In most cases they have not been very well advertised (they had to be discovered by outside observers), they have not subsequently been very well justified, and the methodology behind them has been far from transparent, often with proponents going to great lengths to keep it away from scrutiny. I haven't looked at these latest adjustments to know for sure that this is the case, but based on the track record, I would be very, very skeptical. In this debate, the willingness of both sides to play fast and loose with data, severely downplay the unknown and contradictory data, make outrageous and non-sensical correlations, and just outright lie about stuff makes it very difficult to even have a reasonable discussion, let alone come to any sort of mutual consensus beyond the most basic premises.
There is an aspect to this with irony that provokes serious giggles......what about all the "scientists" who have moved heaven and earth to explain the pause in warming? They, in turn, are going to have to change -- yet again -- to accommodate the scenario if there has been no pause.
Objectivism checked out of this debate a long, long time ago (if it ever existed in any meaningful way to begin with). I have always found it both funny and sad that the ones who generally shout the loudest about their opponents being "anti-science" are also the most cavalier and disrespectful of actual scientific method.
Exactly! And when somebody points out that the shoe is gone, they claim they knew it all along.
The earth's climate is an ever-changing, wildly complex system with millions of inputs. We do not have them all identified (not even close), and we really do not have much of handle on the relative strength of the variables that we are aware of or how they interact. Contrary to popular discourse, we really don't know how much of an effect human activity is having on climate relative to natural variation (and so we really don't know how much of an effect we could have if we were trying to manipulate the climate in reaction to perceived human influences).
You're right. Climate Alarmists are so ill informed and reactionary. Codflyer said it best. Now, suck it
