Climate change: Science, not insult

Scientific methodology should be sacrosanct — it requires competing hypotheses to be tested over and over again to make sure we have the right conclusion. Sometimes, new data require the old to be thrown out in favour of the new.
[snip]
Here’s an example from the world of climatology. Several years ago, the work of Michael Mann inspired a profound belief that temperature trend lines were shaped like a hockey stick — flat for a long time, then a sharp increase in recent years due to carbon emissions. It took the careful work of two Canadians, Ross McKitrick and Steven McIntyre, to show that Mann’s data and statistical methodology were flawed, disproving one of the bedrock arguments in carbon-induced global warming theory. The “hockey stick” is no longer touted.
[snip]
If anyone should be thrown into jail, it’s someone who believes people should be locked up if they challenge a scientific hypothesis. Instead, it should be left to the scientists to sort out what ideas hold up through empirical verification. This is the essence of good science, and we should make sure we don’t undermine its important process.

[one correction: Mann's infamous hockey stick, which had the minor 'flaw' of returning an upturn-curve even if random data was input - is still used pervasively to this day, and is in fact the underlying 'data' for several of Gore's slides in An Inconvenient Truth - coming to a public school near you...]

READ MORE