Would you let a dentist operate on your brain? Or vice versa?
No?
Why not? After all, they both spent years in training, they’re both scientists, they’re both in the medical profession, and both of them work on your head. Surely their skills must be fungible!
So why haven’t you addressed the incredibly obvious issue with her claims that I pointed out above? I’m looking at NASA’s data there. Claiming that NASA’s data is bad and yours is better is a pretty extraordinary claim that, at least requires a reference to a peer-reviewed article describing exactly why and a link to the dataset you think is better.
Claiming that our understanding of thermodynamics is significantly wrong is a much more extraordinary claim.
Relevant, even if climate science isn’t the Pope’s field:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/03/3665559/rick-santorum-pope-francis-climate-change/
Dear Readers:
I propose a vote to prove whether or not US Senators are human! If we can prove that they’re not, it might be grounds to finally get rid of them once and for all. As the first voter, I vote definitely ‘NOT HUMAN’.
Is anyone counting?.. Hello, is anyone out there?..
Somehow she’s such a fabulous retired scientist that she can read the data in a way that 99% of scientists who are actually employed in the appropriate fields are unable to do?
And has been pointed out to you repeatedly, she makes the same tired old claims that have been refuted over and over again. There’s no reason to refute them again in this thread.
But I love the idea that a NASA scientist is claiming that the science done by NASA is flawed. Whose fault is that, exactly? Is she proud of her incompetence?
It’s pretty well known, actually, that some spikes in carbon dioxide have been the result of positive feedback from other warming. It doesn’t mean that carbon dioxide doesn’t drive more warming, which still appears to be the case from those cores as well as other sources.
The way scientists, and honest people in general, handle that is by listing references. The other people here aren’t exactly making outlandish claims when we say 97% of climate scientists aren’t complete idiots. But for instance when we disputed the lie that there has been no warming, @anon62122146 referred his data to NASA’s website as well as described his actual methodology, and I gave a link to a review paper that in turn references many other sources.
Osborn links nothing more substantial than some anecdotal winters, and there is nothing about her to make me presume she must have more hidden somewhere than NASA and published scientists who reference their data. Especially since she is repeated widely discredited claims, and heck, it seems implying the very bold proposition that adding a gas that blocks energy from escaping a system somehow doesn’t shift the equilibrium energy of that system upward.
Osborn is also simply declaring that climate variation seems to be all solar driven without giving anything. No numbers, not even a hint of a model to actually explain climate without carbon dioxide, and I’m familiar with enough of the literature to say there isn’t any. Maybe you can guess how much I think of people who try to throw shade on the smallest features to dismiss the work of other scientists, yet declare their own theories certain without providing any support at all.
If this is enough for you to doubt what scientists world over have found, you may a well throw out evolution and relativity, too. It doesn’t matter if the person you’re quoting is well-known; she’s freely ignoring evidence when it suits her, providing essentially nothing behind her claims, and generally applying an insane double standard to dismiss the work of nearly everyone who has actually obtained results on the subject.
Do you actually care about an honest appraisal of the subject? Then you shouldn’t be standing up for something so dishonest; you should be disappointed in them for making such a weak case, if not mad for trying to mislead you. Because, you know, after a certain point sticking up for obvious disingenuity reflects on you too.
Eppur si muove. 
: 
Oh my goodness what a poorly-written and thought-out argument.
How is it possible to write an article on climate change and not mention carbon even once? Even once!! Not even to refute the effect of carbon on climate change? Did she miss that whole part of the theory? Forgot about it? It’s kinda the whole point.
Next, she says that she’s only arguing about anthropogenic climate change (without mentioning carbon, even to refute it!), and that she agrees with global, non-anthropogenic climate change, but she spends her whole article trying to cherry-pick data to say that the earth isn’t warming, when even the most staunch AGW-deniers accept. (Because it’s pretty damn hard to refute.)
One of her main argument for this is that we’ve had many cold winters. Note: She does not say the earth has had many cold winters, only that certain places did, like “Biggest Snowfall of the Year in Patagonia!” (she seems as shocked by this as the one about Jerusalem — is she aware that Patagonia is as far South as you can get before hitting the south pole? Does she just think that South = hot?). It’s very easy to find individual places that had cold winters, like the 2015 polar vortex that she also seems to think means it was cold. Was she not aware that while she may have been chilly in the US, it was (again) the warmest winter on record for the whole rest of the world? Does she know there’s a world out there?
Writing a listicle of a few snowfalls in completely random parts of the world, while ignore the global world temperature is what Fox News pundits do. It’s not what scientists do.
However, this is the money-quote that makes it blatantly obvious she is not a scientist
The notion that the last couple of decades has continued a purported warming trend is patently false. Temperature deltas have flatlined for nearly two decades now.
Does she know what deltas are? If the deltas (the change) are remaining constant (as she says) that means the warming trend is continuing. The change is the same every year. Her sentence means the exact opposite of what she thinks it means.
She claims to be a “scientist.” I can’t find a single paper authored by her. 'nuff said.
They “win” by getting to define public policy without interference. That reality eventually bites them (and everyone else) in the ass because they were ignoring it is another issue altogether, unfortunately.
Of course, the best way to slow population growth is better education and opportunities -especially for women, free at the point of use healthcare, and so on. Doesn’t give Malthusians a hard-on, that, though unfortunately
You’re not going to love reading the comments, then.
Frankly this sort of thing just turned me off reading any of her books–although I like SF and I like mysteries, both involve logic.
FTFY
When someone introduces themselves as a polymath, I immediately suspect they are not, and the credibility of any claims they make is subject to greater scrutiny.
It’s not terribly difficult to learn that Stephanie Osborn the writer, is connected with “Stephanie A. Gannaway-Osborn”, formerly of Teledyne Brown Engineering.
What is a “lead file manager”? It doesn’t sound like her job on that doc was as scientist or engineer, but I don’t actually know what her title means.
I don’t want to defend her views (ill-defined, and unexplained as they may be), but I suspect that attacking her credentials is unlikely to bear much fruit.
Depends on where, I think. I don’t think I’d argue about Cepheid variables, but I suspect there are some differences between stellar and planetary atmospheres…
And yet, somehow, I’m the only one who didn’t rate a snarky and condescending reply.
“Methodology” is a pretty fancy word for executing two Python commands (plus another three or so to get the data in the right format). The real point is that anyone who can’t check that for themselves in five minutes and yet thinks they know better than working scientists, like the drive-by trolls we always attract here, is clearly suffering from Dunning-Kruger syndrome. (Though I think it would be more accurate to say that the rest of us are the ones suffering from their Dunning-Kruger syndrome)
It was an honest question. I don’t know what the job is.
I assume she’s part of the “technically I’m a scientist, but have no training in any of the specific fields involved in this issue” crowd.
People, I posted a possibly-interesting article with a different slant from the usual climate-change-sky-is-falling. I responded once to someone who was being lazy in not checking more carefully on the author, and am not interested in debating the subject in this forum.
I am not a climate scientist (although I have followed the issue, on all sides, for years), and I do not intend to argue the technical issues with you, or debate - with complete ignorance of her reasons - why the article author did or didn’t include any particular argument, or why she didn’t include footnotes, a reference list, or anything else.
If you want to debate something, go to her blog site and debate it with her. Being somewhat familiar with her (no, I’m not a friend of hers, and have only met her once during a panel at a convention), I’m betting she can hold her own, and then some, in any rational discussion.
Your personal attacks on her scientific integrity and knowledge are ridiculous. If any of you pull that shit on her, I hope she rips you a new asshole.
And without real reason, apparently, since as we explained it’s too contrary to evidence to be of interest and you now say you are not interested in discussing it.
If posting articles is an end in itself, I thought Lewandowsky et al. was an interesting comment. It not only notes how the “hiatus” is a distortion, how you could get a sky-is-falling “acceleration” the same way, but how the prevalence of the one term and absence of the other shows just how much even the scientific discussion has really been framed by deniers.
Bingo!
