And this is pretty much the exact reason why I do my very best to not use Wikipedia as anything other than a starting point for real, actual research, if even that. Yes, crowd-sourcing can lead to individual articles that are arguably accurate, but “consensus” is not necessarily equivalent to “correct”, despite anthropogenic global warming cultists’ cries to the contrary.
“All articles on Wikipedia are true and accurate.”
- Ben Franklin
Yes, crowd-sourcing can lead to individual articles that are arguably accurate, but “consensus” is not necessarily equivalent to “correct”, despite anthropogenic global warming cultists’ cries to the contrary.
Yes, Wikipedia is a crowd sourced encyclopedia, which has it’s pitfalls but is, in my experience accurate. At least if you a) know enough about the subject to know BS from fact b) cross reference with other sources and/or c) are not looking up a controversial topic.
On the other hand anthropocentric global warming is not supported by a crowd sourced consensus. It is supported by a consensus of the data. Yes, scientists “have a consensus” on what is causing global warming but that consensus is supported by the data.
Your comparison is hardly apt.
That’s the thing though, AGW is *not* supported by fact, but rather a large structure of fabrications that all interweave to produce a framework of “consensus.” Most AGW “facts” only hold true in climate models, and fail the test in real life. The “data” of which you speak is all virtual, existing only in simulation (like the problems with the upper atmosphere not warming as show in the models).
The scandal with climate-gate showed that interested parties were actively gaming the system to keep dissenting, factual and real world data and research out of publications. Many other researchers publishing AGW papers refuse to release their original data and source code for review and replication. Many papers cited in the media have either never been officially published (largely due to the fact that they cannot pass even their highly biased “peer review”) or were retracted after errors were found. Those same papers are often later cited by other papers as evidence that AGW must be true (think the Mann hockey stick graph). It is a very similar processes to the one mentioned about Wikipedia.
Hell, even the doom and gloom predictions hyped by the “experts” don’t pass the smell test. The whole idea of AGW hinges on the positive feedback loop. co2 in the atmosphere causes a very slight temperature rise, which cause the atmosphere to absorb more h2o (the dominant “greenhouse gas” of the planet, accounting for 90% plus of the greenhouse gas effect on the planet) which causes yet more heat to be retained etc. problem is so many of those people are constantly hyping more droughts and larger deserts caused by AGW, which totally throws out the core part of their theory. Areas of drought and desert are a majors source of heat loss for the planet (ever been in a desert at night?), and if more co2 causes larger deserts and less water in the air, then that can only mean that co2 is part of a larger *negative* feedback loop, and that instead of a warmer wetter world, were heading for a cooler drier one.
Meanwhile empirical evidence is leaning more and more towards the obvious conclusion that the sun is the largest driving force in our climate, and mankind has a negligible effect on a global scale. look at recent research by cern concerning cloud formation and cosmic rays, and there was another recent paper that showed a statistical correlation between temperature and the norther lights (whose intensity id directly affected by solar intensity). *Those* are papers that have published their data and methodology and have actual real world data to back up their claim. When the AGW crowd starts doing that, maybe I’ll pay attention to what they say. But then again, maybe if they did that their pet cash-theory would not survive the scrutiny.
“With quotes on the Internet, authenticity is difficult to establish.” — Abraham Lincoln
xkcd is a brilliant comic drawn by one Randall Munroe, who has picked apart crowd-sourced Internet resources several times through his comics. One in particular that comes to mind was during a “color survey” he did in early-mid 2010. The results can be found here. The relevant point is his early discovery that “Nobody can spell ‘fuchsia’.” Even Google’s “suggestions” got the spelling wrong! (“Did you mean: fuschia”)
Gets back to that “motivational” poster found somewhere in every public school I’ve ever visited: What’s right isn’t always popular, and what’s popular isn’t always right.
@ Steve: Yeah, see, that!
Adam wrote:
… Which completely defeats one of the primary purposes of encyclopedias – introducing new knowledge to people who are completely unfamiliar with the topic at hand. Cross-referencing can fix that problem, if people take the time / know to do so, but the problem is that Wikipedia is increasingly being regarded as the final authority, when it is anything but.
Lucusloc handled this already, and quite comprehensively I might add, but, to put it simply, no it is not. Global warming, itself, is supported by a “consensus of the data” (which is something of a ludicrous phrase, when taken literally), but the “anthropogenic” part of it decidedly is not, hence my inclusion of that word.
The comparison holds.
@ lucusloc: Thank you for saving me from all of that typing
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@ Archer: I discovered XKCD back in Georgia Tech, caught up on the archives quickly, read it every day it comes out, and am occasionally very thankful for Explain XKCD (Tongue Appreciation Day? Really?).
And this is not to say that what is popular is never right, but, being an engineer, it does not matter how may people say a bridge “should” stay up when it collapses into an abyss…