If bad AGW science were a crime the IPCC would be in Jail

[brenthutch 444]

Legal verdict: Manmade global warming science doesn’t withstand scrutiny
Comments Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Digg Reddit Buzz Email By Lawrence Solomon June 6, 2010 – 10:47 pm

A cross examination of global warming science conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Law and Economics has concluded that virtually every claim advanced by global warming proponents fails to stand up to scrutiny.

The cross-examination, carried out by Jason Scott Johnston, Professor and Director of the Program on Law, Environment and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, found that “on virtually every major issue in climate change science, the [reports of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and other summarizing work by leading climate establishment scientists have adopted various rhetorical strategies that seem to systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties or even disagreements.”

Professor Johnson, who expressed surprise that the case for global warming was so weak, systematically examined the claims made in IPCC publications and other similar work by leading climate establishment scientists and compared them with what is found in the peer-edited climate science literature. He found that the climate establishment does not follow the scientific method. Instead, it “seems overall to comprise an effort to marshal evidence in favor of a predetermined policy preference.”

The 79-page document, which effectively eviscerates the case for man-made global warming, can be found here
Financial Post
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe the author of The Deniers.


Read more: http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/06/06/legal-verdict-manmade-global-warming-science-doesn%E2%80%99t-withstand-scrutiny/#ixzz0qgCVF6xk
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[kallend 2,150]

Clicky no worky.

However, based on his 2008 and 2009 publications it looks like his mind was already made up as a denier.

Good job for the world that scientists and not lawyers do the science.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Andy9o8 2]

What Johnston has done is not a "cross-examination"; it is a "critique". In a true cross-examination, the party being cross-examined has the opportunity to answer back.

[brenthutch 444]

http://www.probeinternational.org/UPennCross.pdf

[brenthutch 444]

It only takes a fifth grader to understand that a climate model that takes into account water vapor, and ignores the effects of clouds has a few holes in it.

[lawrocket 3]

It looks from the summary more like "the rhetoric does not match the science." It so happens that rarely if ever does rhetoric match science because science is objective and rhetoric is not.

It often takes a lawyer - a master in rhetoric - to spot it.if you've got a point to make then make the science fit in with it.

I think we can all agree that the rhetoric from both sides is a bit on the heavy side.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[billvon 3,120]

>It only takes a fifth grader to understand that a climate model that
>takes into account water vapor, and ignores the effects of clouds has a
>few holes in it.

Yep. So why are you ignoring cloud effects in the climate models? The IPCC isn't. From their last assessment:

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Observational data have clearly helped the development of models. The ISCCP data have greatly aided the development of cloud representations in climate models since the mid-1980s (e.g., Le Treut and Li, 1988; Del Genio et al., 1996). However, existing data have not yet brought about any reduction in the existing range of simulated cloud feedbacks. More recently, new theoretical tools have been developed to aid in validating parametrizations in a mode that emphasizes the role of cloud processes participating in climatic feedbacks. One such approach has been to focus on comprehensively observed episodes of cloudiness for which the large-scale forcing is observationally known, using single-column models (Randall et al., 1996; Somerville, 2000) and higher-resolution cloud-resolving models to evaluate GCM parametrizations. Another approach is to make use of the more global and continuous satellite data, on a statistical basis, through an investigation of the correlation between climate forcing and cloud parameters (Bony et al., 1997), in such a way as to provide a test of feedbacks between different climate variables. Chapter 8 assesses recent progress in this area.
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Perhaps the law professor you quoted never read the report he was "cross-examining."