re: So NOAA and NASA are doctoring temperature data.

quote:

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(I'm guessing Iosh is in the oceanography field or something similar).

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Flattered, but I'm just able to find technical literature in a field, inhale it, and spit back an undergraduate-level understanding, enough to summarize stuff and make arguments as to why one thing is distinct from or consistent with another thing, or do journal-club style criticism. That's about it. When it comes to science I'm basically Kirby.

I used to be an AGW skeptic. Then I started noticing how often skeptical arguments were fallacious and/or contradictory. Stuff that would get torn to pieces if it came from Al Gore was tolerated from Christopher Monckton.

So for a while, I stopped reading any sources except primary literature. No blogs, no debates, nothing that wasn't written by an actual scientist and turned up on Google Scholar. This is difficult to do if you're not able to read a scientific paper, but it helps you get real familiar with the science.

At the end of the day I'm no longer much of a skeptic on anything except policy. I'm maybe a slight "lukewarmer" on climate sensitivity. On policy I'm a very hardened skeptic who thinks cap-and-trade is useless and nuclear/solar is the combo of the future.

Digression over.