I'm surprised and a little bothered by the responses here, especially yours.

Assuming that the subject here was, say, evolution, would you respond the same? Would you be saying, "Well, we should consider it exciting, interesting, and daring when someone says that there's not actually any factual basis for evolution"?

The other commenters are correct in their critique of this. Michaels isn't offering evidence contrary to most scientists' understanding of climatology. That would be exciting, daring, and interesting. Merely attempting to discredit climate research by saying that they're missing data that they once had is ... well, it's thin at the least, and it doesn't further the debate at all.

The whole "science has been wrong before" angle has been answered very well by lots of scientists. The answer basically boils down to, "Yes, but it's usually wrong in a continuous cycle of refinement, not wrong in a 180-degree direction kind of way".

It is extremely wasteful to have to keep answering the same questions over and over in scientific contexts, especially when those are brought by people who aren't familiar with the field, and especially when their questions basically amount to, "You haven't answered all my questions the way I wanted you to, and you might be wrong."

If you -- or Michaels -- wants some credence in the scientific community, then you have to do some actual research, you have to have some actual data, and you have to get it peer-reviewed.

That's how it works.

This brings up the interesting question of "how is this different from denying evolution"? The relevant question is, I think: if the theory turns out to be wrong, how hard is it to explain the data?

If the theory of evolution turns out to be wrong, there's a huge stack of data which we're going to have a very hard time explaining sensibly, including DNA evidence, observations of short-term evolution in certain living things, and the entire goddamn fossil record. Apart from "God put it all there deliberately to test us" there's no way to come up with an alternative explanation.

If the hypothesis that human CO2 emissions have a significant effect on the climate turns out to be wrong, then... well, the only actual data we need to come up with an alternative explanation for is a hundred-year modest overall warming trend (for which we can all easily think up a few alternative explanations). Everything else is just theoretical predictions.

"The whole "science has been wrong before" angle has been answered very well by lots of scientists. The answer basically boils down to, "Yes, but it's usually wrong in a continuous cycle of refinement, not wrong in a 180-degree direction kind of way"."

Well I'm talking about scientific revolutions, which are 180's

"If you -- or Michaels -- wants some credence in the scientific community, then you have to do some actual research, you have to have some actual data, and you have to get it peer-reviewed."

This happens all the time, but you don't hear about it, because they are against the scientific consensus.

Also, funding is 1000 times higher for pro-warming than against. If you want funding to study the blue-footed-boobie get in line, but if you want to study the effects of global warming on the blue-footed-boobie they throw money at you.

That's how it works.

> > "If you -- or Michaels -- wants some credence in the scientific community, then you have to do some actual research, you have to have some actual data, and you have to get it peer-reviewed."

> This happens all the time, but you don't hear about it, because they are against the scientific consensus

Supporting evidence please? Please give some examples that "happen all the time" but "we haven't heard about".

Frankly, you sound like a conspiracy nutter. Please provide some counter-examples to support your case.

I'm not going to play that game. If I gave you a list of papers to counter man made global warming, you'd say "they are sponsored by big oil" or "those scientists are shunned by the scientific community".

How about this, I think the burden of evidence should be for proving man made global warming. Has it been done? No, it hasn't, despite all the "consensus" noise. Buried under all the "concensus" you'll simply find computer models. Computer models that don't even agree with each other, of impossibly complicated systems.

That wasn't the most fortunate way to put it, but I thought the part about furthering the debate would have clarified the previous part. I'll try again:

"Seems to me he's just searching for sticks to hit people with, instead of doing new research and redoing others research to confirm or reject previous conclusions."

Yes, being sceptical is valuable. But not when it's just scepticism. Do some research. Test your hypotheses. Test theirs. Test them again. Test them differently. All of that helps further the debate. It gives us better facts, more facts, a more complete picture of the real world. It helps, it's good.

But saying "you missed a spot" is useless. The science may not be perfect, but then science rarely is perfect anyway. At the end of the day we're looking for the facts, not the perfect experiment.

Want better science? Make it. Forward a new hypothesis. Test it. Let other people test it. And over time we, humanity, will figure out which theory supports the facts better.

That's science. Some 1000-word op-ed article without any citations is not.