
Prehistoric Climate Scientists Get into a Turf War - davidhcs
http://www.wired.com/2016/02/prehistoric-climate-scientists-get-modern-day-turf-war/
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nkurz
I like that this piece does not try to tell the reader in advance which "team"
they should be rooting for. Is the "Coexistence Approach" something favored by
Climate Skeptics or Climate Scientists? Does the Paleoflora database in its
current form show that paleo climates were hotter than today, colder, or the
same? Should the data be open for the good of the world, or kept private so
it's not abused?

We (assuming most readers are not already familiar with this particular
debate) don't know, and thus have to assess who is doing "good science" and
who is being "obstructionist" without knowing in advance whose side we would
be supporting. I'd hope that articles like this can help achieve communication
across the otherwise overly politicized divide.

Edit: In case anyone else is trying to track down the original sources, I
think this article conflates two of Grimm's similarly named articles.
"Fallacies and Fantasies: the theoretical underpinnings for the Coexistence
Approach for palaeoclimate reconstruction" which is mentioned in the article
is by Grimm and Potts ([http://www.clim-past-
discuss.net/11/5727/2015/cpd-11-5727-20...](http://www.clim-past-
discuss.net/11/5727/2015/cpd-11-5727-2015.pdf)), while "Fables and foibles: a
critical analysis of the Palaeoflora database and the Coexistence approach for
palaeoclimate reconstruction" is by Grimm, Bouchal, Denk, and Potts
([http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2015/03/10/016378.f...](http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2015/03/10/016378.full.pdf)).

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btilly
You're doing it wrong if you read scientific debates as a question of just
deciding who to root for.

In this case most on either side of this debate are going to be on the side of
climate science. The question isn't where our climate is going in the 21st
century. It is what methods we use to determine what climate was probably like
5 million years ago. And in particular whether a particular closed and poorly
audited data set is acceptable to use to produce answers.

~~~
nkurz
I agree with all of this, and was praising this article because it avoided the
cheerleading approach that I think dominates the media. That said, one of the
main contentious issues in contemporary climate science is whether current
conditions are "unprecedented". Usually this concerns times more recent than
those talked about there, but the more parallels that can be made with the
past, the better we can model the future.

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EwanG
One particular approach to Climate Studies - "Coexistance Approach" \- is
being criticized by folks following the other approaches. And it appears that
the controversy is heating up (sorry...).

