It isn’t the sociologists making judgments on legitimate scientific views. It is the climate scientists themselves, whose views have been expressed not only through journal articles but also through several scientific societies, National Academies, the IPCC, etc.
Science is, in essence, a process of validating information, aka, a gatekeeping activity if you will. Are you saying that all of those organizations are part of a conspiracy? I view it as a valid and legitimate basis for authority. Galileo backed up his claims with valid reasoning.

I know all about confirmatory narratives and mutual reinforcement, but scientists are inherently skeptical and to disconfirm the existing narrative, you have to come up with a valid reason, i.e., that has been accepted by peers. If you and Jerry cannot respond to fallacies in the arguments of the “skeptics” that have been repeatedly raised in the climate blogs, I don’t see why I should spend the time to dissect what appear to be dubious arguments on your blog.

Your quote from Dr. Viner sayd he is associated with CRU/UEA, not the Met Office.

On the aether matter – I’ll admit that I pointed to that one because it was a quick and easy way to make a point. Does it have any kind of a connection to your views on climate? I noticed that you drew on information from James de Meo . I’m not familiar with his aether ideas but someone once brought his “Saharasia” hypothesis to my attention. Interesting idea but reading it set off my BS detector, big time. He also doesn’t think that HIV is caused by the AIDS virus, or something like that…

Sylvia

If “cranks” can have “legitimate scientific viewpoints” then the term “science” is also meaningless, regardless of the type.

Sylvia, if sociologists are to sit in judgement on whose scientific views are legitimate and whose are “cranky” then that is what will make “science” meaningless.

As Jerry points out regarding your pejoritive use of half a label (Cranks/Rebels) from one of his NUSAP diagrams:

“The difference between a crank and a rebel may become clear only in retrospect. Which was Galileo? He spent a huge part of his working life on a theory that anyone could have told him would never succeed.”

If the definition of “crankiness” is to be “views with contrary implications to those of the institionalised science consensus” then all you have is an appeal to authority. That’s a logical fallacy.

“those who don’t even want to recognize that there is a problem and whose world view is perhaps being challenged.”

The world has many problems. Fortunately the level of co2 in the atmosphere isn’t one of them. This is because the hydrological cycle has massive redundancy in its capability to adjust the general circulation of the atmosphere as a negative feedback to any increased co2 forcing. Forget positive water vapour feedback, it’s a failed conjecture.

“As there is consistency among different lines of evidence,”

This is too woolly to reply to in a specific way. Paradigms accrete lots of confirmatory narratives – that’s ‘normal-science’.

“perhaps it will help to move away from the obsession with uncertainties in models, and consider value conflicts.”

I can see why anthropologists, and policy people, and climate scientists who know perfectly well that their models can’t predict the future would want to do that. But it doesn’t change the fact that the underlying co2-driven-climate theory is fatally flawed.

“can I suggest that it is from Jerry that you should request a correction, since he stated that the claim about an end to snow in Britain was made by the UK Met Office, which is quite separate from Viner’s institute.”

“According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html

CRU/UEA works very closely with the MET office, as Bill Hartree knows full well.

ReTallbloke comment: “By the way Sylvia, much as I hate to say it, I think that the PNS ‘brand’ was probably irreversably tarnished after Stephen Schneider took it up.”

I met Stephen Schneider at a workshop, a year or so before he passed on, and actually had a conversation with him about this. If you are versed in PNS literature, you might recall I wrote an article on PNS, “Science in a double-bind” revisiting Bateson, which I mentioned to him because of his writing on science as being in a “double-ethical-bind.” His reply, “I lived it..” If you read the paper attached to my first post, there is some mention of Schneider’s experience. But neither you or Jerry have responded to any of the substantive points raised in either of my posts – instead, changing the subject and trying to get me to respond to your blog. Pardon me for being selective in the use of my time. Good bye.
~~~~
Since the thread started here, I would rather keep it here, and on topic. I also turned down a post from Jerry that simply pointed to another post at the tallbloke’s as an example of constructive discussion, which is what we have tried to have here. He is welcome to post it in the comments if he wishes.

“Sylvia A further detail you might want to correct is that the ‘individual scientist’ was Dr David Viner, scientific adviser to the government.”

Hi, Rog, can I suggest that it is from Jerry that you should request a correction, since he stated that the claim about an end to snow in Britain was made by the UK Met Office, which is quite separate from Viner’s institute. Jerry has, it would seem, libelled the Met Office – something he has in common with numerous climate contrarians.

> 1.77 K – over 1 K short of the unsupported 2.8 K number that you plucked out of the air. (You can check the 9% change back to my original, detailed, calculations.) (Nic Lewis)

http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/consensus-what-consensus-the-lie-comes-undone/

with James’:

> I have some doubts about Nic Lewis’ analysis, as I think some of his choices are dubious and will have acted to underestimate the true sensitivity somewhat. For example, his choice of ocean heat uptake is based on taking a short term trend over a period in which the observed warming is markedly lower than the longer-term multidecadal value. I don’t think this is necessarily a deliberate cherry-pick, any more than previous analyses running up to the year 2000 were (the last decade is a natural enough choice to have made) but it does have unfortunate consequences. Irrespective of what one thinks about aerosol forcing, it would be hard to argue that the rate of net forcing increase and/or over-all radiative imbalance has actually dropped markedly in recent years, so any change in net heat uptake can only be reasonably attributed to a bit of natural variability or observational uncertainty. Lewis has also adjusted the aerosol forcing according to his opinion of which values are preferred – concidentally, he comes down on the side of an answer that gives a lower sensitivity. His results might be more reasonable if he had at least explored the sensitivity of his result to the assumptions made. Using the last 30y of ocean heat data and simply adopting the official IPCC forcing values rather than his modified versions (since after all, his main point is to criticise the lack of coherence in the IPCC report itself) would add credibility to his analysis. A still better approach would be to use a model capable of representing the transient change, and fitting it to the entire time series of the various relevant observations. Which is what people like Aldrin et al have done, of course, and which is why I think their results are superior.

http://julesandjames.blogspot.ca/2013/02/a-sensitive-matter.html

Does the first comment count as en extended-peer review?

The tap-dancing around the concept of consensus also deserves due diligence.

Umm, citation needed. That doesn’t seem to tie in with what I see here

http://www.poverty.org.uk/67/index.shtml

If “cranks” can have “legitimate scientific viewpoints” then the term “science” is also meaningless, regardless of the type.

As for the persistence of “scientific ‘truth’ as they see it,” I am reminded of an observation made by the anthropologist Roy Rappaport, that when non-quantifiable issues that are important to people are reduced to numbers, conflicts escalate to matters of high principle that “are no longer resolvable by fact, logic, or even self-interest.” (Rappaport 1996 pdf here)

The context was an issue in which certain kinds of risk were being ignored or downplayed using oil spill risk analysis models. In the climate context, science may well be downplaying risks also (see discussion and references in my paper – I’m leaving aside climate sensitivity for the moment because I have a class to prepare for). But the distrust is coming from those who don’t even want to recognize that there is a problem and whose world view is perhaps being challenged. As there is consistency among different lines of evidence, perhaps it will help to move away from the obsession with uncertainties in models, and consider value conflicts.

> It’s essentially the Lindzen strategy in reverse: having firmly wedded themselves to their politically convenient long tail of high values, their response to new evidence is little more than sticking their fingers in their ears and singing “la la la I can’t hear you”.

Please note how our tall one is tap dancing, Jerry.