Posted on Oct 22, 2014
MAJ Deputy Director, Combat Casualty Care Research Program
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Have you seen the most recent climate analysis?

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/
Posted in these groups: Science logo ScienceAnalysis AnalysisArctic ice nasa goddard flickr Climate Change
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Responses: 86
COL Randall C.
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Edited >1 y ago
MAJ (Join to see), my respect for you just dropped a notch. If you insist on bringing back up another topic that should die a horrible death like the ones about LTs saluting, the least you can do is be civil. If you want to debate theories, possible outcomes and such, by all means. Your comment to SGT Richard H. was out of line and typical of these type of discussions on the open internet.

I would expect better from a fellow professional soldier.

BTW, anything that follows the words "with all due respect" usually isn't.
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MAJ Deputy Director, Combat Casualty Care Research Program
MAJ (Join to see)
>1 y
COL Randall C. Sir, apologies if my comments were out of line. With that said, I have no problem with telling people who do not see a very real problem that they need to look up. We are talking about something that will change life on this planet, so I have a hard time staying PC.
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COL Randall C.
COL Randall C.
>1 y
MAJ (Join to see), fully understand that you're passionate about your view. I mentioned in another thread on this topic, that attacking someone else's position is fair game ("SGT Hanner, that view is scientific nonsense - as can be seen by ......"), but attacking someone's person ("You must be smoking pot/be a moron/don't have a thought and just spout party line/etc. if you believe that") is not.

As I said, I would expect that, although passionate about our view, we keep debating the merits of the position we hold, and not the merits of the individual that holds that position.
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SSG General Services Technician And State Vehicle Inspector
SSG (Join to see)
>1 y
COL Randall C., well said, sir. Civility and adult language goes a lot further than name calling and insults.
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Cpl Michael Strickler
Cpl Michael Strickler
>1 y
MAJ (Join to see), I voted you up out of respect for apologizing for your actions. Too often those types of comments will devolve into more and more harsh attacks. Thank you for acknowledging you mistake.
COL Randall C., thank you as well for standing up for the standards of decorum we should all adhere to in public debate and communication; regardless of topic and feelings.
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Col Joseph Lenertz
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"I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had. 
"Let's be clear: The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
"There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period. "I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. ."
~ Michael Crichton
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Cpl Mark McMiller
Cpl Mark McMiller
9 y
I doubt anyone could have said it better, Col. Lenertz. And it's even worse when those within the consensus are caught falsifying the data to make it appear to be the opposite of what it actually is. Really, if you've been paying attention, the scientists who pushed global warming got caught ignoring historical weather data and loading their computer program that showed the global warming trend with data they made up. The historical data actually reflects that the planet has been cooling slightly since 1932.
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Cpl Mark McMiller
Cpl Mark McMiller
9 y
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SPC Safety Technician
SPC (Join to see)
9 y
Col Joseph Lenertz Consensus is important in science, sir. Though there is an obvious lag time between the expert that makes a new discovery that revolutionizes a theory, and the widespread acceptance of that new theory among experts, this does not make the value of the older model completely irrelevant. Nor should we expect all scientists everywhere to instantly accept new data and associated theories. They must themselves investigate. This is how the consensus is built, and how poor argument or bad research is found out.

I understand that you're not against the peer-review method itself. But the way you worded your response, it seems that you would trust each individual to take whatever facts they like, and should welcome others openly denying a scientific consensus. This is counter-productive to what I believe your aims are: Each person taking all theories with skepticism and assessing all evidence honestly.

Nothing should be trusted outright, nor should one resist change simply because it is change. However, the fact that models change over time does not mean that a consensus among scientists is somehow a failure. This would be interpreted by many as a failure of the scientific method, which it certainly is not.
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Col Joseph Lenertz
Col Joseph Lenertz
9 y
Consensus is important, in politics and policy. Science only requires a theory that can be tested in the real world, and then validated (repeatable results) by a peer without prior knowledge of the result. I like your position on peer-review and skepticism. But Galileo was right, and it didn't matter that the rest of his peers at the time (more than 97%) professed to believe the sun revolved around the earth. As to models...we can model a spring-mass-damper system or a RCI circuit or heat transfer with a 2nd order linear differential equation, or we can model Earth's temperature changes using computer simulations involving very large chunks of air masses. Both attempt to represent reality. Neither pose a scientific theory.
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SGT Richard H.
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Edited >1 y ago
Dansgaard temperature2
Sir, the problem with most global warming theory is that it's based on "temperatures on record". Temperature records have only been keep for about 130 years, which in the grand scheme of the earth is tiny. For every scientist saying that global warming is a new thing there's another one saying that this is just another cycle out of thousands of years of cycles. If you're old enough, you'll probably recall that the scientific craze of the early-mid 70's was that we were spiraling into another ice age, and it was based on basically the same size snapshot as the current warming theory is. Below is a graphic showing what I'm talking about. There are literally hundreds of them out there to support both sides of the debate, but I picked this one because it's pretty easy to read at a glance and matches what I've seen from scores of sites. I'm not necessarily saying that it's definitive, but then neither is most of the climate science out there.
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SGT James Hastings
SGT James Hastings
>1 y
I totally agree with the Sgt above. I just saw an article indicating that ice floes were increasing in size. C02 is supposed to be the main problem and that is what trees take in to return Oxygen to us so we can breathe. If we significantly reduced the amount of C02 wouldn't a lot of trees die?
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CW5 Desk Officer
CW5 (Join to see)
>1 y
And when we have a freezing cold winter, with lots of snow and ice, the "experts" say that's due to global warming as well. They'll say that you can't take a few months as proof of anything. When it's the other way around, however, it's the end of the world. Oh my.
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SSgt Forensic Meteorological Consultant
SSgt (Join to see)
>1 y
PO2 Ed C. Yes and they like to insult people whose whole career has been involved with weather and climate. lol
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SSG Trevor S.
SSG Trevor S.
>1 y
Voted down for the reasons covered by LTC (P) Randall Cudworth.
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