Long overdue
Dec. 10th, 2004 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinTim Lambert's blog was a good place to point people when debunking global-warming-skeptic claims, but RealClimate is even better: a climate scientists' group blog for rapid response along the lines of The Panda's Thumb. As an interested outsider, I've wanted to see something like this for years; the same approaches that work well when countering anti-Einstein cranks and "creation scientists" ought to work here, at least as a means of deconfusing the interested layperson.
Contrary to Josh Marshall's misreading, they aren't claiming that the site isn't about the climate change issues; they're saying that it's going to be about the science of climate change rather than about the associated policy questions. I think this is a good choice of emphasis. Reasonable people can disagree about policy even given the best available information. But industry lobbies and their allies in government are currently attempting to poison the whole debate by muddying or smearing the science itself, and this is something on which the scientists can speak with considerably greater certainty.
Contrary to Josh Marshall's misreading, they aren't claiming that the site isn't about the climate change issues; they're saying that it's going to be about the science of climate change rather than about the associated policy questions. I think this is a good choice of emphasis. Reasonable people can disagree about policy even given the best available information. But industry lobbies and their allies in government are currently attempting to poison the whole debate by muddying or smearing the science itself, and this is something on which the scientists can speak with considerably greater certainty.