No, I am not '"forgetting" that the AGW folks fixed the peer review system', I am explaining why even if that's true it doesn't mean that AGW people are "paid to confirm AGW". Also, so far as I can tell it isn't true for any sensible meaning of "fixed". But, no doubt, if you repeat the claim often enough without providing any evidence, it will become true.
The tree data trick does not mean what you say it does; see http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805721105.full... (key finding from conclusions section: "We find that the hemispheric-scale warmth of the past decade for the [Northern Hemisphere] is likely anomalous ... This conclusion appears to hold for at least the past 1,300 years ... from reconstructions that do not use tree-ring proxies, and are therefore not subject to the associated additional caveats."). Temperatures vary a lot on a timescale of a few years, so the much-ballyhooed "no warming since 2000" doesn't in the least mean that the models are wrong; see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/a-warm... and also figure 4 in http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/mailings/2009/20091216_Tempe... (and the text below that figure). Your claim about "accounting for how temperature stations were moved" is too vague to respond to. The AGW folks did not "misrepresent the Russian data" so far as I can tell; see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1000732.
Do you have any actual evidence that climate scientists "pick people based on whether [they] think that they've bought in and are not going to rock the boat"?
I simply do not believe your claim that throwaway "this is consistent with AGW" remarks in papers on other topics "constitute[s] much of the supposed consensus". Are you suggesting, e.g., that a large fraction of the papers in Oreskes's study were really about other topics and had only throwaway references to AGW (it sure doesn't seem like it from her description), and that if those papers were excluded then the study would find much less acceptance of AGW (it sure doesn't seem like it from her description)?
I'd like to point out that you have a nice two-way argument here. If papers by climate scientists support AGW, that's because climate scientists are all "true believers" who have been picked based on whether they've bought in and aren't going to rock the boat. If papers by other people also support AGW, that's because they've just slapped brief pro-AGW remarks onto papers about other things. So, I wonder, is there anything the peer-reviewed literature could contain that you would regard as good evidence that careful scientific study supports AGW?
> I am explaining why even if that's true it doesn't mean that AGW people are "paid to confirm AGW".
What part of "you get grants for peer-reviewed publications" don't you understand?
> Also, so far as I can tell it isn't true for any sensible meaning of "fixed".
The folks who wrote the "ClimateGate" e-mails disagree, but then they did the fixing.
> So, I wonder, is there anything the peer-reviewed literature could contain that you would regard as good evidence that careful scientific study supports AGW?
The climate people have threw away raw data, so we can't know whether "normalization" was actually reasonable. They're still saying "trust us" even though every time someone finds an error in their work, the error goes the same direction....
BTW - Scientific truth isn't defined by consensus.
Everything you have said here I think I have already answered earlier, with the following exceptions.
It was you, not me, who introduced peer review into the discussion; I've no idea what your basis is for talking about a "fixation".
Most of the raw data that the CRU threw out in the 1980s are, AIUI, still available elsewhere. CRU's model produces results extremely similar to everyone else's models.
I don't think it's true that every time an error is found it goes in the same direction. (Specifically, I think I remember seeing a counterexample. I don't remember what it was, but then you haven't mentioned any specifics of anything at any point so I don't feel too bad about that.) It might be true that every time an error is found and trumpeted about by disbelievers in AGW it's in the same direction, but there is an obvious explanation for that, no?
Of course scientific truth isn't defined by consensus, and of course I neither said nor suggested that it is. But for someone who isn't an expert in any scientific field, the consensus of experts is typically pretty much the best estimator they have for the truth.
The tree data trick does not mean what you say it does; see http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805721105.full... (key finding from conclusions section: "We find that the hemispheric-scale warmth of the past decade for the [Northern Hemisphere] is likely anomalous ... This conclusion appears to hold for at least the past 1,300 years ... from reconstructions that do not use tree-ring proxies, and are therefore not subject to the associated additional caveats."). Temperatures vary a lot on a timescale of a few years, so the much-ballyhooed "no warming since 2000" doesn't in the least mean that the models are wrong; see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/a-warm... and also figure 4 in http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/mailings/2009/20091216_Tempe... (and the text below that figure). Your claim about "accounting for how temperature stations were moved" is too vague to respond to. The AGW folks did not "misrepresent the Russian data" so far as I can tell; see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1000732.
Do you have any actual evidence that climate scientists "pick people based on whether [they] think that they've bought in and are not going to rock the boat"?
I simply do not believe your claim that throwaway "this is consistent with AGW" remarks in papers on other topics "constitute[s] much of the supposed consensus". Are you suggesting, e.g., that a large fraction of the papers in Oreskes's study were really about other topics and had only throwaway references to AGW (it sure doesn't seem like it from her description), and that if those papers were excluded then the study would find much less acceptance of AGW (it sure doesn't seem like it from her description)?
I'd like to point out that you have a nice two-way argument here. If papers by climate scientists support AGW, that's because climate scientists are all "true believers" who have been picked based on whether they've bought in and aren't going to rock the boat. If papers by other people also support AGW, that's because they've just slapped brief pro-AGW remarks onto papers about other things. So, I wonder, is there anything the peer-reviewed literature could contain that you would regard as good evidence that careful scientific study supports AGW?