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Contents 1 Welcome to Mishlai's talk page 1.1 Thank you for the note 1.2 Thanks for your good explanations! 1.3 AMA Advocacy

[edit] Welcome to Mishlai's talk page

Feel free to sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'll try to continue conversations here for continuity, so if you ask a question and are expecting a response, you may wish to watch this page.

- Mish

[edit] Thank you for the note

I am very familiar with RealClimate.org. It is an organization that advocates policy. It also censors scientists who disagree. When reading RC, you will ALWAYS think RC pseudo-scientists won the debate because they do not allow all the facts into the debate.

For example, McIntyre and McKitrick won the Hockey Stick controversy. Have you read the Wegman Report? If you had, you would know it was written by statisticians. They were appalled both at the claims Mann made for the robustness of the statistics used and the fact Mann did not check with any real statisticians before he published. The National Academy of Sciences also weighed in on the controversy. While NAS was very polite to Mann and talked of the value of proxy studies, the report sided with McIntyre on all disputed points of science. They concluded that the bristlecone pine proxy were unreliable. They concluded the 20th century was the warmest in 600 years, but were unable to support Mann's claim it was the warmest in 1000 years. Mann was required to publish a corrigendum. BTW, Michael Mann is one of the operators of RealClimate, so their policy is to proclaim victory and change the subject. Mann's supporters call themselves the "Hockey Team." This group of people, including Wahl and Ammann, have published other proxy studies calling them "independent" but they also rely on bristlecone pine or other proxies known to be unreliable. This confuses some scientists and gives the IPCC cover.

One aspect of the global warming controversy I find interesting is the group think. This is an interesting phenomenon among climate scientists. I do not believe they are all dishonest (as I do believe Michael Mann is), but it is obvious many of them fall under the sway of the claim "the science is settled." After breaking the Hockey Stick, many more scientists are becoming more outspoken about being skeptical of AGW. I have worked on the article you mentioned List of scientists opposing global warming consensus. William Connelly and his posse fight against including self-described skeptical scientists all the time, but there are many more listed now (and higher quality scientists) than before I arrived. The article used to claim the list was intended to be comprehensive. There are far too many skeptical scientists to list them all.

You claim people are attacking the IPCC on nebulous political grounds instead of the science. I have no idea what you are talking about. The entire criticism is that the IPCC is ignoring and twisting the science. You are only reading one side of the debate.

You might be interested to know that the warmers are playing with the temperature dataset again. I would suggest you read the story and the posted comments here.[1]—The preceding unsigned comment was added by RonCram (talk • contribs).

I have indeed not read the Wegman Report, so a real response from me will take a while (in case you're waiting for one). As far as RC, I frequently see them state uncertainty, caveats, qualifications, etc. They also make arguments against the alarmist side, and indeed virtually shredded Flannery's The Weather Makers. These are all hallmarks of intellectual honesty, which is why I place some degree of trust in them. What I see, personally, at RC is not GW-advocacy but science advocacy. This tone is not often taken by the environmentalists or the deniers/delayer crowd.

I will look into the things you cite, but it will take some time. Mishlai 19:02, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Mishlai - i saw that you were looking for the Wegman report (i assume that you've found it) - otherwise here it is here. Of interest as well are the two hearings - First hearing and Second hearing - all of which have documents and transcripts. The video's of the hearings should be there as well (although i haven't checked 'em). --Kim D. Petersen 14:50, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Mishlai, I just learned about Wegman's response to Rep. Stupak.[2] I have not had a chance to read it myself but I understand that it clarifies many points. The document is long (about 10 Mb) so the best thing is to right click on the link and click "Save target as..." It will take a minute or two to download. I look forward to discussing this with you.RonCram 18:25, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Mishlai, I got your note that you have the Wegman report. I thought I had provided you with that earlier, but at least you have it. I did try to provide a link to a piece from Wegman answering questions from Rep Stupak. I see I forgot to provide the link. I provided it above and here it is again. [3] It is a long file. It will download more quickly if you save it to your hard drive. RonCram 13:35, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for your good explanations!

Thanks for your detailed and excellent arguments on talk:global warming and related pages. I try to do something similar, but, by now, I sometimes run out of patience and become much more brusque. --Stephan Schulz 07:03, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I wish to reiterate Stephan's sentiment. There's a constant stream of people attempting to put a spin on global warming-related articles that is contrary to the scientific evidence, and I don't always have the patience to give detailed explanations. I think the explanations are most valuable to third parties, as those who are pushing the non science POV seldom show any willingness to accept information that counters their worldview. Thanks for taking the time. Raymond Arritt 18:03, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks guys. I appreciate the encouragement. I've already said this on your individual pages, but thank you both for your own contributions and efforts as well. I appreciate a community of "honest brokers", and the two of you certainly qualify. Mishlai 19:02, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] AMA Advocacy

Hi, I've read your request for advocacy and decided to take it.

Wikipedia has a whole system to solve disputes consisting in some steps (take a look on it here), from the lightest to the heaviest one. The idea is to use the last resort only on very grave situations and, from what I read of the dispute, this is not the case.

The best thing you can do now is to negotiate with the other party: to discuss civilly and try to get consensus and also try to understand the other's point of view on how should the article be written. But, maybe, an article request for comment (considered as the "second" resort on dispute resolutions) could be useful to bring new editors to the article with new and also better ideas. What I highly suggest you not to do, at least for now, is a user request for comment. Any comments? If you prefer, you can contact me via email. --Neigel von Teighen 15:08, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestions. Another editor has weighed in on the matter, and it may be settled as a result. I'm not sure, Hypnosadist has not responded since then.

It seemed to me that negotiations had reached an impasse, particularly since the conflict centered not around wording -which is pretty flexible - but around whether or not the material even deserved a mention in this particular article. From my standpoint at least, it seemed that negotiations had gone as far as they could and there were points on which we were simply not going to agree.

If it isn't resolved, I'll look into the RfC. My main question for you was whether I should pursue RfC or 3rd Party, because at the time Hypnosadist and I were the only ones seriously discussing the article content, with others just occasionally arguing the topic. At this point its pretty clearly not between 2 people anymore. I'm still curious about the 3rd party request guidelines. Other than that, unless you have suggestions as to how I might have handled things better, I think you've answered my questions.

Thanks again, and sorry if I've taken up your time unnecessarily. Mishlai 16:30, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I think you don't (and won't) need any further action. Negotiation and RfC are the best for solving the dispute you have there. Any question you need an answer for, just call me on my talk page or email. --Neigel von Teighen 12:48, 28 February 2007 (UTC)