> The IPCC is not, as many people seem to think, a large organization. In fact, it has only 10 full-time staff in its secretariat at the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva
> The actual work of the IPCC is done by unpaid volunteers – thousands of scientists at universities and research institutes around the world who contribute as authors or reviewers to the completion of the IPCC reports.
There's your consensus - 10 full time staff and many volunteers. Doesn't it seem like you'd have obvious selection bias with who would volunteer for the IPCC? We're talking about the most passionately pro-environmentalism people in the world. People that would make the argument, "Even if global warming doesn't exist, we still need to do something."
Yet when an untrained amateur tries his hand at it and finds the numbers don't work, he's a "denier". I've seen enough decent analysis that goes against the general IPCC position by engineers, programmers, and other people with general science backgrounds who aren't specifically climate scientists. The most damning was that the algorithms that produced the hockey stick curve created the same scary graph with red noise in over 90% of simulations. So, random temperature data showed in 90% of cases that imminent global warming catastrophe was coming.
Despite presenting things sensibly and respectfully, these amateurs often get compared to Fox News or other such ad hominem. Sure, there's knuckleheads on both sides, but you've got severe selection bias in favor of who is working at the IPCC, and intelligent amateurs who respectfully produce data or show that the numbers don't work are shouted down, compared to Fox, or compared to fundamentalist religious people.
"Doesn't it seem like you'd have obvious selection bias with who would volunteer for the IPCC?"
Yes it does: Those who care about its conclusion. I don't understand why you think someone who thinks climate change is not happening should be less likely to volunteer, given the impact of the report.
As the article said: the IPCC is only assessing and compiling results of climate research. Those "untrained amateurs" that you talk about, are they "assessing and compiling", or are they doing their own research? If they are doing research, then they should not be compared to the IPCC but to one of the thousands of references that constitute the sources of the assessment report. And if their results are really believable, then hopefully they will be published and be one of the sources used for AR5.
> The actual work of the IPCC is done by unpaid volunteers – thousands of scientists at universities and research institutes around the world who contribute as authors or reviewers to the completion of the IPCC reports.
There's your consensus - 10 full time staff and many volunteers. Doesn't it seem like you'd have obvious selection bias with who would volunteer for the IPCC? We're talking about the most passionately pro-environmentalism people in the world. People that would make the argument, "Even if global warming doesn't exist, we still need to do something."
Yet when an untrained amateur tries his hand at it and finds the numbers don't work, he's a "denier". I've seen enough decent analysis that goes against the general IPCC position by engineers, programmers, and other people with general science backgrounds who aren't specifically climate scientists. The most damning was that the algorithms that produced the hockey stick curve created the same scary graph with red noise in over 90% of simulations. So, random temperature data showed in 90% of cases that imminent global warming catastrophe was coming.
Despite presenting things sensibly and respectfully, these amateurs often get compared to Fox News or other such ad hominem. Sure, there's knuckleheads on both sides, but you've got severe selection bias in favor of who is working at the IPCC, and intelligent amateurs who respectfully produce data or show that the numbers don't work are shouted down, compared to Fox, or compared to fundamentalist religious people.