"Then I think there is a certain disconnect between how scientists understand science and how it is presented to the public at large."
There's clearly a disconnect between how science is performed, and how it is perceived. It's not clear that this is the fault of scientists. It's also very clear that certain political groups intentionally cultivate this misunderstanding, so that they can convince the public that an entire field of science is wrong.
"It certainly doesn't help in this regard that many scientists involved in Environmental Science are also passionate political activists."
I have unpleasant news for you, then: the "skeptical" side is composed almost exclusively of politicians and economists.
"This seems to be part of the problem. 'We'll use this data series for the 60 years that it agrees with everybody else, then throw it out for the 40 years where it doesn't, then not show anybody the 40 years we threw out'."
That's not actually what they did, and the fact that you don't understand the nuances of the subject goes back to what I was saying about spending more time looking for "smoking guns" than actually understanding the science. The tree-ring data wasn't omitted to make models fit better (that paper wasn't even about a model) -- it was omitted because it was unreliable data.
If you ask me, the tree-ring data should never have been included in that paper at all. And if it weren't, as far as I can tell, it wouldn't have affected the results -- except that there would be an obvious (but largely irrelevant) gap in modern temperature data -- and the "skeptics" would no doubt be attacking some other absurd corner of the climate change research.
>"It's not clear that this is the fault of scientists. It's also very clear that certain political groups intentionally cultivate this misunderstanding, so that they can convince the public that an entire field of science is wrong."
It sounds like you're excusing bad behavior by saying that other people sometimes behave badly. There is no "certain political group" that is over-representing the value of "peer review" to the public, unless we are talking about environmentalists:
No "certain political group" forced the scientists involved in this scandal to act in unethical and secretive manners. Just because politicians act in unethical and dishonest ways doesn't mean that scientists are excused for sinking to their level.
Nope. I'm not excusing bad behavior. I think those scientists were being immature and irresponsible. But their bad behavior doesn't change my belief that the field of climate change research is valid.
Truth be told, the evidence I've seen doesn't even change my confidence level in their paper -- because unlike "skeptics", I never felt that any one source of historical temperature data was terribly likely to be precise in the first place. Fortunately for climate science, there are many other independent sources of historical temperature data, and all show the same trend. I believe it's extremely unlikely that they're all wrong. Certainly not in the same way.
(In case you were wondering, that's a core difference between skepticism, and "skepticism". A skeptic can be convinced that he's wrong. A "skeptic" wants only to convince others.)
There's clearly a disconnect between how science is performed, and how it is perceived. It's not clear that this is the fault of scientists. It's also very clear that certain political groups intentionally cultivate this misunderstanding, so that they can convince the public that an entire field of science is wrong.
"It certainly doesn't help in this regard that many scientists involved in Environmental Science are also passionate political activists."
I have unpleasant news for you, then: the "skeptical" side is composed almost exclusively of politicians and economists.
"This seems to be part of the problem. 'We'll use this data series for the 60 years that it agrees with everybody else, then throw it out for the 40 years where it doesn't, then not show anybody the 40 years we threw out'."
That's not actually what they did, and the fact that you don't understand the nuances of the subject goes back to what I was saying about spending more time looking for "smoking guns" than actually understanding the science. The tree-ring data wasn't omitted to make models fit better (that paper wasn't even about a model) -- it was omitted because it was unreliable data.
If you ask me, the tree-ring data should never have been included in that paper at all. And if it weren't, as far as I can tell, it wouldn't have affected the results -- except that there would be an obvious (but largely irrelevant) gap in modern temperature data -- and the "skeptics" would no doubt be attacking some other absurd corner of the climate change research.