Climatology Students Learning from Climateaudit.org--Turbulence Ahead!

Climatology students in one class have gotten tired of the evasiveness they see all too often at realclimate.org. They want to support realclimate because they believe the "consensus" orthodoxy, but feel some of the blogmasters at realclimate are real weanies. Their instructor recommended they check in at Climateaudit.org to learn what educated and generally apolitical skeptics are saying. Rather like a "trial by fire" you might say.

I have noticed the weasly nature of the realclimate people as well. But then, that is typical of an orthodoxy that wishes to squash dissent. I cannot blame an educated person with little knowledge of statistics, who believes the orthodox realclimate POV out of respect for "scientific" authority. That is a natural approach for a non-scientist, non-statistician. Those with scientific and/or statistical backgrounds, however, should delve a bit more deeply into the very real and ongoing debate.

Realclimate.org is the conventional, orthodox climate site. If you want to know what the high priests of the orthodoxy are promoting in terms of climate policy and climate outlook, go no farther than realclimate.

For scientists and data analysts, there is no excuse for just going along with the orthodoxy. I salute Kenneth Blumenfeld for being wise enough to direct his students to a meaty debate, rather than simply telling them to accept the "revealed word."

Update 7 Oct 06: Climate Science blog has an excellent example of what is troubling so many climate science students about realclimate.org. Read the article and the comments, including two by Gavin from realclimate--then read the responses to Gavin's comments. Judge for yourself who is being more scientific, and who is being more political/religious (dogmatic and orthodox). Most fascinating!