-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces(a)Wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of The Cunctator
>The current situation is such that if I unlisted a page right away for
any reason, Wikipedians such as Fuzheado and Angela would strenuously
object and
>consider my action an egregious breach of protocol.
>I strongly believe that just in the same way we formally state that we
trust people to immediately delete utter nonsense, we need to formally
state that
>we trust people to immediately take acceptable content off of the Votes
for Deletion page.
Just to give a flavour of current practice he is a short exchange I had
on Talk:VfD this week
As per current policy it's ok to remove pages from VfD before 7 days if
they're obviously fixed isn't it? Pete 00:20, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
:Yes. For some value of "obvious". Martin 00:21, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
::As long as you can justify it when someone objects and asks you to
explain. Probably if someone objects, they should just relist it though.
Angela 00:33, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I have removed plenty of fixed or non-broken articles from VfD over the
months, and never been pulled up on it. If you are getting pulled up on
it, its because the articles _are_ contentious and need to be debated.
Perhaps you are being too bold?
Pete/Pcb21
Ed Poor wrote:
>Sheldon's formulation is fine, provided he can locate a source for the
>"overwhelming majority" part and gives a numerical definition for
>"overwhelming majority".
>
>As it stands now, the only survey mentioned at Wikipedia seems to show
>much less than "overwhelming" support for the GW theory. Perhaps it
>depends on how one interprets the survey results?
Yes, I guess it does depend on how one interprets the survey results.
If the results are "interpreted" by someone like Ed who doesn't know
the basic language of science, it is possible to misconstrue the
survey and imagine that it shows less than overwhelming support for
the GW theory. Ed is referring here to the Wikipedia article titled
"Scientific opinion on climate change" and a survey which it cites
that was conducted in 1996 by Bray and von Storch. As Gareth Owen has
pointed out, however, Ed has completely misunderstood the Bray and
von Storch survey. Evidently Ed doesn't understand some of the basic
scientific terminology in the questions to which the scientists were
responding.
The most relevant question in the Bray and von Storch survey was, "We
can say for certain that, without change in human behavior, global
warming will definitely occur in the future." The scientists were
asked to rate this statement on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 meaning
they "strongly agree" and 7 meaning "strongly disagree." They gave it
a mean rating of 2.6, which is pretty high.
They were also asked to rate the statement, "There is enough
uncertainty about the phenomenon about global warming that there is
NO need for immediate policy decisions." The scientists strongly
_disagreed_ with this statement. Their responses were rated on the
same 1-to-7 scale. To quote the study itself, "Here there is
undisputed support for immediate policy to be implemented with the
overall mean response of 5.6 and no statistically significant
differences among groups."
So how did Ed read this survey and conclude that scientists are
"about equally split"? He misinterpreted _another_ question in the
survey which asked, "To what degree do you think the current state of
scientific knowledge is able to provide reasonable predictions of
inter annual variability?" In order to make this kind of error, Ed
would either have to be flagrantly dishonest (Gareth Owen's
interpretation) or simply incompetent (my interpretation). I think
the reality is that Ed doesn't know what the phrase "interannual
variability" means. Here's a definition: "Interannual variability"
means "climate variation from one year to the next." What the
scientists are saying is that they don't think the climate models are
precise enough to predict how the climate will change between 2003
and 2004. This is clearly not the same thing at all as the question
of whether they think "the global warming theory" holds up.
This is a really basic error on Ed's part. The term "interannual
variability" is widely used in climate research. If you do a Google
search for that phrase, you'll find more than 36,000 references,
almost all of which appear in scientific contexts. Of course, the
term is hardly used at all _outside_ of scientific contexts, which
undoubtedly explains why Ed doesn't know what it means. As I stated
previously, the fact that Ed doesn't grasp this kind of thing does
not mean that he is stupid or lacks integrity. Nevertheless, he ought
to be rather humbled by the fact that he keeps making this sort of
error. If he doesn't understand the everyday language of climate
science, he shouldn't be trying to impose his interpretations as
aggressively as he has been. This is rather akin to having someone
trying to rewrite articles on music theory who doesn't know the
meaning of phrases such as "chord progression."
Ed also wrote:
>But really, on such a crucial issue as Global Warming theory, with tens
>or 100s of billions of dollars at stake (not to mention human lives,
>assuming the theory is actually true!) -- I'd rather have more than an
>average of answers from a survey question. Better to dig up exactly how
>many answered "strongly agree", "somewhat agree", etc.
I agree completely. We shouldn't be relying on opinion polls to
assess the current state of scientific knowledge. Surveys like the
one conducted by Bray and von Storch can be helpful in getting a
general sense of the state of scientific opinion, but their utility
is limited. To begin with, surveys can only ask a limited number of
fixed questions, and responses to surveys can vary dramatically
depending on minor changes in wording of the questions. Moreover, the
value of the Bray and von Storch survey is limited by the fact that
they only sent it to 1,000 scientists and only got a 40 percent
response rate, and also by the fact that it was conducted seven years
ago.
Fortunately, we have a better indicator of what scientists think:
namely, the reports of the International Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), which was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environmental Program
(UNEP) to fulfill the critical role of providing objective
scientific, technical, and economic assessments of the current state
of knowledge about various aspects of climate change. Some 2,000
scientists, experts and government officials prepared and signed off
on the IPCC's 1995 report, which represented the broadest consensus
available on the issue at that time. The conclusions of the IPCC's
1995 report are consistent with the opinions expressed in the Bray
and von Storch survey, but the IPCC report is incomparably more
detailed and specific.
Of course, the nature of science is that it continues to progress,
and the IPCC's 2001 report is an improvement over its 1995 report,
even though fewer scientists participated in drafting the 2001 report
(only 995, which is still more than double the 400 respondents to the
Bray and von Storch survey). The difference between the 2001 report
and the 1995 report is that the quality and quantity of scientific
research has improved in the meantime, while global warming has
accelerated, making it easier for scientists to measure and assess
the the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on global climate. (The
signal-to-noise ratio has improved, because the signal is stronger.)
Here are a few relevant excerpts from the IPCC's 2001 report:
>Globally, it is very likely that the 1990s was the warmest decade
>and 1998 the warmest year in the instrumental record, since 1861.
>The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) has increased
>by 31% since 1750. The present CO2 concentration has not been
>exceeded during the past 420,000 years and likely not during the
>past 20 million years. The current rate of increase is unprecedented
>during at least the past 20,000 years.
>The warming over the past 100 years is very unlikely to be due to
>internal variability alone.
>In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining
>uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years
>is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas
>concentrations.
>Emissions of CO2 due to fossil fuel burning are virtually certain to
>be the dominant influence on the trends in atmospheric CO2
>concentration during the 21st century.
In reading these statements, it may help to understand that the IPCC
uses the term "likely" to mean a probability of 66% or higher. "Very
likely" means 90% or higher, and "virtually certain" means
probability of 99% or higher. Conversely, "unlikely" means
probability of less than 33%, and "very unlikely" means a probability
of less than 10%.
If we were dealing with someone who was less of an ideologue than Ed,
the IPCC's report would settle the matter. The problem is that Ed
doesn't want to accept the IPCC's standing as an indicator of what
climate scientists think. He prefers the opinion of S. Fred Singer
and the dozen or so people clustered around Singer at SEPP.
One way around this impasse might be to look at what other leading
scientific bodies have said about the matter, so here are a couple:
(1) The American Meteorological Society issued a detailed statement
this year, which strongly agrees with the IPCC:
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/climatechangeresearch_2003.html
Here's an excerpt:
>The nature of science is such that there is rarely total agreement
>among scientists. Individual scientific statements and papers-the
>validity of some of which has yet to be assessed adequately-can be
>exploited in the policy debate and can leave the impression that the
>scientific community is sharply divided on issues where there is, in
>reality, a strong scientific consensus.
[SNIP]
>IPCC assessment reports are prepared at approximately five-year
>intervals by a large international group of experts who represent
>the broad range of expertise and perspectives relevant to the
>issues. The reports strive to reflect a consensus evaluation of the
>results of the full body of peer-reviewed research. A large number
>of U.S. scientists are on the international Working Groups of the
>IPCC that prepare and review these reports. They provide an analysis
>of what is known and not known, the degree of consensus, and some
>indication of the degree of confidence that can be placed on the
>various statements and conclusions. These reports have become the
>prime scientific basis for international political decisions about
>climate change.
(2) The U.S. National Academy of Sciences (the most prestigious
general scientific body in the world) has issued a number of reports
reaching similar conclusions. In a 2001 report, for example, it
stated that the IPCC "does an admirable job of reflecting research
activities in climate science." You can download the full report, or
simply read the accompanying press release, from the following URL:
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10139.html?onpi_webextra6
Obviously I can't do full justice to the substance of these reports
in the space of a single email, and I see that this message has
already gotten quite long. I could continue citing similar reports
from other leading national and international scientific bodies, but
I think I'll stop here.
--
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
| Author of books including:
| Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
| Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------
> From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com>
> his POV on this issue seems too entrenched for him to edit neutrally.
> Thus he tends to sometimes give more weight to 'anti-global warming
> theory' camps than is perhaps warrented.
> ...
> So I tend to direct major edits to articles I don't feel so
> passionately about. It is much easier to be an approximation of neutral
> doing that.
One might usefully apply this insight to both sides, I think.
It's worth remembering that the CFC process is many orders of magnitude less
complicated than the global warming / greenhouse gas question, since the
latter involves the earth's entire climate, which is an extraordinarily
complex process, and one which is still a long way from complete
understanding.
So people on either side who express certainty are probably unwise to do so.
To digress briefly, it appears from the prehistorical record (as best we can
determine it - although useful work has been done with isotope analysis, it's
still tricky to determine data from geological records) that the earth's
temperature has varied very substantially (without any human input at all, of
course) over the course of time, due to factors as arcane as the physical
configuration of landmasses, etc. (IIRC, the recent [in geological terms, of
course :-] Ice Age cycle is thought to have started when the Arctic Ocean
formed.)
A good sense of how poorly we understand climate can be seen in our article
[[Ice age]], an in particular the section "Causes of ice ages", which makes
clear how poorly we understand the operation of the climate.
If and when people have a climate model built only on basic physical
processes, which can successfully "predict" the pre-historical record, given
only the physical data (solar output, orbital path, land-mass configuration,
etc) then I think we can be more certain of the contribution made by
greenhouse gasses to the earth's climate - but our lack of understanding of
the Ice Ages makes clear we aren't there yet.
So I'd be wary of edits from people on either side of the controversy.
Noel
"Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> schrieb:
> Delirium-
> > What's wrong with just leaving it on the page for 5 days and letting it
> > get removed if it's the case that there's little to no support for deletion?
>
> You've got it backwards. For a page to be deleted, there need to be little
> or no objections against that.
I don't see what your statement and Delirium's have to do with each other. Delirium says that he sees no harm in keeping pages that most tend to want to keep on VfD for five days. You say that you don't want pages with support for keeping deleted. I don't see how one and the other are in contradiction.
Andre Engels
The Cunctator wrote:
>The problem is that Ed Poor has been editing articles on
>climate science to give equal weight to opinions outside
>of mainstream science, and describing the different sides
>as "environmentalists, liberals, Democrats and some
>scientists" and "other scientists".
This has been my impression as well. I have also asked Ed a few times in the
past (directly and indirectly) to refrain from making substantial edits to
the global warming articles. IMO, his POV on this issue seems too entrenched
for him to edit neutrally. Thus he tends to sometimes give more weight to
'anti-global warming theory' camps than is perhaps warrented.
I know my limits - my POV on homosexuality-related issues, for example, is so
far to the left that I honestly have a very hard time even seeing my own
bias. So I tend to direct major edits to articles I don't feel so
passionately about. It is much easier to be an approximation of neutral doing
that.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
Rick wrote:
>> The Cunctator has now begun marking his deletions
of >>VfD headers as
>> Minor changes.
>As long as it doesn't change the meaning of the
article, >I guess they are minor.
>Ec
Agreed. VfD headers are not especially relevant to the
content of the articles. The headers especially deface
those articles which have no reasons to be deleted :-)
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Singer wrote in 1995,
<< For the general public, and even for the trained scientist, these
scientific controversies are difficult to sort out. It is indeed a
multi-faceted problem, a chain with many links connecting the release of
CFCs into the atmosphere with the occurrence of skin cancer. Briefly,
the steps are postulated as follows (6):
1. CFCs with lifetimes of decades and longer become well-mixed in the
atmosphere, percolate into the stratosphere, and there release chlorine.
2. Chlorine, in its active form, can destroy ozone catalytically and
thereby lower its total amount in the stratosphere.
3. A reduced level of ozone results in an increased level of solar
ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface of the earth.
4. Exposure to increased UV leads to increases in skin cancer.
Each of these four steps is controversial, has not been sufficiently
substantiated, and may even be incorrect (7,8). One can reasonably
conclude that policy is rushing far ahead of the science. >>
William Connolley is picking apart #1 above (the well-mixed point).
The context of the discussion is the POLITICAL controversy over the CFC
ban. Singer says it's not justified, because NOT ALL of the 4 points in
the chain of reasoning are correct. If even one is incorrect, he argues,
then the Montreal Protocol was unjustified.
It's basically Singer's POV vs. Connolley's POV. Lots of
environmentalsts side with Connolley, and lots of others side with
Singer.
Many of the environmentalists try to bolster their argument by saying
that "the consensus of scientists" agrees with them. But I don't think
Wikipedia ought to support the claim that such a "consensus" exists.
Now if someone did a survey, and 95% of scientists agreed on a point, we
could arguably call that a "consensus" (as we have done on evolution:
95% of all scientists (not just biologist) surveyed support Darwin's
theory, and well over 99% of biologists.
I'm getting tired, so I'll see you guys tomorrow...
Uncle Ed
Sheldon's formulation is fine, provided he can locate a source for the
"overwhelming majority" part and gives a numerical definition for
"overwhelming majority".
As it stands now, the only survey mentioned at Wikipedia seems to show
much less than "overwhelming" support for the GW theory. Perhaps it
depends on how one interprets the survey results?
But really, on such a crucial issue as Global Warming theory, with tens
or 100s of billions of dollars at stake (not to mention human lives,
assuming the theory is actually true!) -- I'd rather have more than an
average of answers from a survey question. Better to dig up exactly how
many answered "strongly agree", "somewhat agree", etc.
If there's really a consensus, showing the survey results this way will
make it obvious. Surely such a capable researcher as Mr. Rampton has
these figures at his fingertips already.
Ed Poor
Mark / Delirium wrote:
>Well, perhaps "comparatively few", but certainly not "none" or "almost
>none". They've declined in number recently, but there are still a good
>number of "sceptical" papers being published. There was one in Climate
>Research pushed just a few months ago (January 2003) by Soon and
>Baliunus that raised somewhat of a ruckus (abstract at
>http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/cr/v23/n2/p89-110.html, among other
>places). Whether this paper or any others are accurate or not is
>another matter, but it is true that they're being published in
>mainstream peer-reviewed journals, by researchers at fairly prestigious
>institutions.
Although, it should be noted, the Soon and Baliunus paper suffered
from such "severe methodological flaws," according to the editor in
chief of Climate Research, that he resigned to protest its
publication, as did four other CR editors. See, for example, the
following URL:
http://w3g.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/storch/CR-problem/cr.2003.htm
In any case, there are two issues here. The first is what constitutes
a "scientific consensus." Some people point to the existence of
people like Soon and Baliunus as evidence that there isn't yet a
"consensus" on global warming, which is true if you define consensus
to mean that "absolutely no one anywhere disagrees." By that
standard, though, you'd also have to say that there is no consensus
that tobacco smoking causes lung cancer or that the Nazis
exterminated Jews.
The question in a case like this has to be, "How much unanimity must
exist before you should call it a 'consensus'?"
Personally I would favor resolving the issue with some language
formulation that avoids the word "consensus" and instead says
something such as "overwhelming majority of scientists active in the
field of climate research." The problem is, Ed in the past has
blocked those sorts of formulations as well.
Allan Cross wrote:
>Hold on, hold on. We're not talking about excluding Theory X from the
>encyclopedia - Theory X in this case only appears on the article
>about [[SEPP]], as one of the claims SEPP makes or made. What we're
>talking about is how we phrase our description of the fact that
>scientists mostly reject Theory X. I'm happy to agree with Jimbo that
>we should be a bit more sympathetic, but the reader should be left in
>no doubt that scientists do indeed reject Singer's claim.
The problem here is that the stuff about Singer and SEPP _doesn't_
just appear on the SEPP and Singer article pages. Ed keeps pushing it
prominently into the global warming article and the ozone hole
article, accompanied by declarations that "environmentalists" are
"attempting to discredit" Singer while refusing to "answer his
scientific arguments." To judge from his edits, you'd think that
Singer (who hasn't published any original research since 1971) was
one of the leading scientists in the field.
Finally, Gareth Owen wrote:
>I don't care that you find it unpalatable.
>Your representation of those figures is flagrantly dishonest.
As someone who has clashed with Ed on this stuff in the past, I
understand Gareth's frustration. However, I don't think it's correct
to say that Ed is "dishonest." I think that with regard to the topic
of global warming, Ed is (1) strongly opinionated, and (2) lacks
competency, which robs him of the ability to recognize the absurdity
of some of his statements. I don't mean to disrespect Ed by saying he
"lacks competency." None of us is competent in all areas of
knowledge, and lacking competency in a specific field is not a sign
of poor character or low intelligence.
I've posted comments here previously giving examples of fairly gross
errors that Ed has made with regard to the topic of global warming. I
could summarize those and give other examples to illustrate my point
about his lack of competency, but that would probably spark another
flame war. My main point here is that I think we should avoid the
charge of "dishonesty." When someone makes an error due to lack of
competence, they're not really being "dishonest."
--
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
| Author of books including:
| Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
| Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------
Ed Poor wrote:
>Lindzen and Baliunas have repeatedly expressed their disagreement with
>environmentalists over the GW theory. I cannot recall Baliunas
>expressing ANY opinion on ozone depletion.
Baliunas was an ozone depletion skeptic, although (like Singer) she's
keeping quiet about it now. Here's the URL to a page that comments on
her ozone hole denial, and also provides a link to an essay that she
wrote about it back when denial was still fashionable:
http://mentalspace.ranters.net/quiggin/archives/001242.html
For those who don't want to bother reading the full thing and
Baliunas's paper, here's the gist of it:
>Reader Robert Parson, from the University of Colorado at Boulder,
>has kindly supplied a scanned PDF file of the hard-to-obtain
>Baliunas paper "Ozone and Global Warming: Are the Problems Real?",
>which I've posted here (2.6MB download) . It's a fascinating
>illustration of the contrarian technique at work. In particular,
>it's noteworthy that Baliunas uses almost exactly the same kinds of
>arguments on the two issues and, if anything, her case on CFC and
>ozone seems stronger. Of course, CFC regulation was a live political
>issue at the time, whereas action on global warming, such as Kyoto,
>was a relatively distant prospect.
>
>A highlight is Baliunas' confident assertion that "the ozone hole
>cannot occur in the Arctic" - a claim that stood up for about three
>years .
>
>Only a few weeks after Baliunas testified before Congress that the
>science on all this was unsettled, the Chemistry Nobel was awarded
>to Paul Crutzen, Sherwood Rowland, and Mario Molina for their work
>on stratospheric ozone. Rowland and Molina were explicitly cited for
>proposing the CFC-ozone depletion theory. This killed Republican
>attempts (by the aptly named Reps DeLay and Doolittle) to stop the
>phaseout of CFCs, and Baliunas has been very quiet on the ozone
>issue ever since.
--
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
| Author of books including:
| Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
| Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------