klapauzius said:
Just out of curiosity, since this argument is so loudly made all the time:
Which "ideology" would be driving the IPCC and the majority of scientists?
If there is a conspiracy, what is driving it?
Monetary gains, comparable say to what big oil, gas and coal are making?
I'm not a big fan of labeling others, because I feel everyone makes decisions based on their core beliefs and that everyone's beliefs are different from everyone else's.
That said, I think that the idea of AGW fits in with multiple ideologies, not just one.
Since I self-identify with one group, I will give it a label: Environmentalists. (My alias here is "TreeHugger" spelled backwards.) That is one group who tends to accept the science of global warming. There are several others.
On the other side of this argument are another set of ideologies. I also happen to have ideologies on this side of the isle. Personally, I am generally opposed to the centralization of governmental power. In my mind, the UN is the epitome of that. And there are other groups that do not accept AGW with which I do not self-associate.
So, for me, the question becomes one of "Is the UN corrupting the science or is the science sound?" Guess what? To answer that question, you cannot simply read
Skeptical Science OR
Watts Up With That. They both claim the others are idiots. Those ad hominem attacks don't tell anyone anything. And I find plenty on both sides that I do not agree with. But frankly, I find nothing particularly skeptical about
Skeptical Science. They seem to say whatever the IPCC says and point out that it's all backed by peer-reviewed papers. I get that. But the UN and their signatories control the funding for the research, so is all the science really just foregone conclusions? For that, I need skeptics of the IPCC, and they happen to live in the other camp.
The bottom line is that I do not accept any argument that says to only get your arguments from here or there. But on those sites, I can see technical arguments about the merits (or not) of the science. For instance, one of the things being pushed in favor of AGW is this graph:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/trend/offset:0.1/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/trend/offset:-0.1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Anyway, I do not consider this issue settled, even if others here do.