I researched this subject in a very particular way. I deliberately chose not speak directly to any climate experts or leading scientists in the field. I used only publicly available web sources. Why? Because I wanted to simulate what it's like for people trying to learn about climate change online. My conclusion is "what a nightmare". I was generally shocked and appalled by how difficult it was to source counter arguments. The data was often tucked away on extremely ancient or byzantine websites. The key counter arguments I often found, 16 scrolls down, on comment 342 on a far flung realclimate.org post from three years ago. And even when I found an answer, the answers were excessively jargonized or technical.
I researched this subject in a very particular way. I deliberately chose not speak directly to any climate experts or leading scientists in the field. I used only publicly available web sources.
Why? Because I wanted to simulate what it's like for people trying to learn about climate change online.
My conclusion is "what a nightmare". I was generally shocked and appalled by how difficult it was to source counter arguments. The data was often tucked away on extremely ancient or byzantine websites. The key counter arguments I often found, 16 scrolls down, on comment 342 on a far flung realclimate.org post from three years ago. And even when I found an answer, the answers were excessively jargonized or technical.
One possibility is that the situation will get so bad (either politically or economically) that the papers will be published openly.
Anyway, I keep hearing that most climate change research is based on incredibly complicated models that are entirely secret to the begin with - it's only the data from such models that are published.
Actually that's not the case. The code for the models (many of them) is available. You might want a supercomputer...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/#GCM_code
