Sunday, July 29, 2012

responding to skepticism, the right way..

The New York Times has an op-ed by University of California research scientist Richard Muller where he declare his reversal on being a climate change skeptic and its cause being related to human action. The reversal has been picked up by other news outlets such as the LA Times and the Cleveland Plain Dealer that covered the rebuttals and dismissals by contrarians. What is most important about this mea culpa is not that its change of position, but that he outlines the objections to climate change that he had, and how he did the analysis to question his own outcomes. He also highlights that much of the research supporting climate change could use the same critical analysis. He also challenges others to refute his findings instead of just dismissing them. This is the spirit of science, the doubt and revision until you are sure. To be fair, the results have not been published, though the are claimed to be peer reviewed. We will have to wait for them to be published and the debate to continue. You cannot claim to be objective, unless you can demonstrate that you can be convinced, otherwise you are living by faith alone.

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