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It was basically an argument that *most* of the warmth of Venus, is explainable by known thermodynamics, and it fits the data. (I was further hoping that at least some first principles radiative transfer calculations would be offered, experimental data link, or something besides a jumble of equations or model)

In no particular order: Earth, it predicts somewhat well, around the latent condensation level it diverges. Mars, no known atmospheric measurements to test (based on height/pressure). That equation is the dry adiabatic lapse rate, so depending on the humidity, you'd have to use the moist version.

As the moist adiabatic lapse rate equation demonstrates, yes, water vapor has a significant effect on atmospheric thermodynamics. I would like to know, quantitatively about feedback, the length of CO2 in the atmosphere, clouds, and many other processes, either from first principles, or experiment (like what is the decrease in transmission for various wavelengths for say a ten meter insulated tube with various atmospheres, is it still logarithmic over atmospheric distances?), and somewhat fundamentally, the calculated standard deviation of the weather for 1 year, 2 years, etc.

I don't believe there's a conspiracy. I do believe that the accuracy of the models has been greatly oversold, and the problems rationalized, and this "over-investment" has led to the claims about X caused by climate change, ad homiem attacks, and general poor state of understanding of the science, exemplified by "We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. There is IPR to consider." - Phil Jones

"Margo: February 14th, 2007 at 1:34 pm Variables that should always be positive, for example, can be bounded by use of these. Are there any variables that should always be positive in a GCM? I was reading a GCM description by the GISS team, and mass in a grid box is permitted to be negative, but and occasionally does for brief periods. Not making this up. :)"

Have you actually read any papers in climatology? The field is rife with "we used a computer model and some plausible physical laws, came up with some hypotheses, and used the model to experimentally verify".

As for even being reproducible:
We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. There is IPR to consider. - Phil Jones

That's not science, and in that environment peer review is just groupthink.

Ok, so it seems what you're basically saying here is, the guy's background is in physics and econonomics--he's not a climate scientist (btw, who is--do you have to have a degree called "climate science" or can other scientists count as well?) and so his writings on anything touching on the climate should just be dismissed (I notice that you haven't touched on any of the merits / lack thereof of anything he's actually written, so I assume this is your point of view)?

Lastly, since he doesn't fit in the "solid consensus," he should just get in line with the consensus.

You'll forgive me, but that doesn't sound like any kind of scientific community / environment that I would want to be associated with or promote, and I seriously hope you would agree. I don't think this has anything to do with what side of the "global warming debate" / whatever you want to call it you fall on.

btw, slightly off-topic, but it seems somewhat noteworthy that others were interested in the EPA's submission process of the IPCC as seen at: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6354

Secondly, he also states that global temperatures have fallen for the last 11 years. I really would like to see his work. This article (http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/83), reported in the September 26 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows global temperatures rising for the last 30 years.

Hmm... is it possible for temperatures to decline in the last 11 years but rise in the past 30. Uh. Yes. The trend since 1998 is decidedly down. What does that mean? Well that's a more complex question, but your broad brush covers it up.

I suggest reading the following to get a taste of the counter-argument to the EPA's finding:

• John Christy
• Roy Spencer
• Steve McIntyre
• Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.

These all address concerns about the lack of underlying science--not the political/economics issues.

Once again, what sort of idiot would assume that the strength of El Nino's and La Nina's influence on the climate hasn't been extensively studied?

The sort of idiot who knows that the "extensive study" you talk of is, to put it mildly, immature. Satellite measurements have only been available for the briefest period of the Earth's history. Your view, that we know all we need to know already to make 50 year predictions, is idiotic. Would you have the same confidence in an economic model as you have in these climate models? I very much doubt it.

Argument from peer review is not argument from authority. It's argument from science. Try it some time instead of just making sh*t up.

Oh yes it is, you're making the assumption that peer review is some guarantee of correctness. It isn't. It's a guarantee that some other people have looked at the paper for trivial mistakes and in Climate Science, often not picked them up. If you've read the Wegman report, you'll know what I'm talking about. Would you like me to list the thousands of papers, submitted and cleared by peer review that turned out to be unmitigated rubbish? I shouldn't need to, you should raise an eyebrow to any assertion, peer reviewed or not. Climate Science papers, consisting of mostly statistical arguments, are not peer reviewed by statisticians, they are peer reviewed by other climate scientists. As the recent Steig debacle shows, Climate Scientists don't understand the methods they are using.

Which you'd be aware has been *extensively* studied, literally thousands of papers, had you actually read the IPCC reports.

While we are often told about the "2,500 scientists" who contributed to the latest IPCC report, the vast majority of these contributors had no influence on the conclusions expressed by the IPCC and were not asked if they endorsed those conclusions (McLean 2007, 2008, 2009). The IPCC's key personnel and lead authors are appointed by governments, not by scientific organizations. Its Summaries for Policymakers (SPM) are produced by a small group of scientists and are revised and agreed to, line-by-line, by representatives of member governments before they are made public (McKitrick 2007). The full reports of the IPCC are then revised after their executive summaries were written in order to agree with the political documents.

The scientists involved with the IPCC are almost all in careers that rely on government contracts and rely on government grants to support their IPCC activities. Does that fill you with Scientific confidence? Just how gullible are you?

Actually, it did. I don't have a graph for you starting at 1998, but I have one for you starting at 2002, if you're interested:

Do you understand what a confidence interval actually "means"? I refer you to the following article: Numerical Climate Models

Huh? Here's last year's: A typical British summer. Which it was. Only slightly warmer than average (i.e., cooler than recent years), as they forecast. And of the top 20 warmest summers in Britain's history over the past four centuries as of just 2006, three were 1995 or later. Including 2006, the hottest. Which, as you note, they forecast as a record warm summer.

The Met office have taken their AGW message to new highs (and just as well, they needed to sting the Government for some new computers). They have taken to predicting record hot summers every year recently. It's just a shame that the last three have been complete washouts: "For the third straight summer, the UK Met Office has forecast hot weather using their state of the art computer models. Summer 2007 and 2008 were complete washouts, ranking as two of the most miserable, rainy summers on record." (reference:

Your points are just plain WRONG. The US isn't the world, no, but it's one of the few countries that has been able to maintain almost continuous sensor coverage. Places like Russia/Western Europe (a vast expanse) just haven't, particularly throughout the first half of the 20th century and (in Russia) the latter quarter of the 20th century. The majority of temperature stations are in the US. A lot of those stations are cited in idiotic locations, vulnerable to the Urban Heat Island affect.

Secondly, the satellite temperature anomaly differs from the surface temperature anomaly and they only come into agreement via. "adjustment". This is the process where so called Scientists massage the data to make it fit their pre-conceived ideas. For further information about "adjustment", I refer you to Climate Audit. For information about just how dodgy a lot of these temperature stations actually are, take a look at Surface Stations.

Yes, it is well within the bounds of natural variation. Weather didn't start in year 1,000. As I understand it, temperature records from Roman times are hard to come by. Dendro records have their own problems (climate audit has a very comprehensive review of the issues, if you care to look).

Your idiotic graph stops in the year 1990. We've had 20 years of data since then. Moreover, a large part of the increasing trend shown starts around 1900, so is obviously not man-made CO2 based. Furthermore, almost half of the observed change occurred before widespread industrialisation and the increase has NOT accelerated through the second half of the 20th century (apart from in the fake graph of Dr Hansen, proven to be statistical nonsense). Moreover, look at the Y scale. What does it show? Try looking at a graph of temperature with a more natural scale, rather than zooming in to make the end look worse than it actually is.

Invoking the philosophy of open source was used to encourage openness in one bit of research. The published research was ambiguous on the mathematics which were used, and making (some) of the analysis code public helped clarify what was done. That blog has all too many examples of research which is being kept secret, however.

Amen!

Finally someone who recognises the reality as opposed to the theory. The more controversial the area - the worse it gets. Try climate science for example. Here are some egregious examples where the data and method are actively hidden.

Thanks.

I do apply the highest standards that I can to all claims from any source on any topic. As a person committed to minimal belief and maximum tested knowledge in as many areas of life as possible I take it quite seriously.

Unfortunately what is clear is that "climate science", ahem, isn't as hard a science as we are lead to believe nor is it as "settled" as we are lead to believe. Physics has one up on climate science in many regards.

There are many problems with climate science: bad data, limited data, inferred data, statistically - ahem magically - corrected data, bad data collection sites, bad science by scientists, refusals to provide data and programs, political agendas, .... the list goes on and on and on and on.... like the energizer bunny.... (no I don't work for Duracell ;-).

I won't repeat what others are more capable of reporting in depth: http://climateaudit.org/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/ - two excellent sites that work to provide an audit and rational analysis of what is going on in the science and in the actual world. Oh and http://surfacestations.org/ - when you can't trust the sources of the raw data (if you can even get that) how can you trust any conclusions drawn from said data?

I'm not an expert by any means. In fact I'm quite ignorant of much of the climate science science but I'm learning step by step. It's a complicated field with many flaws and whacked out conclusions drawn seemingly from extreme disaster scenarios and good and bad hollywood movies.

I am a computer scientist and as such I do know about simulations. I've written some. I also know about cellular automata and how they can generate their own randomness within their systems. As Wolfram has demonstrated with a number of proofs Nature is a universal computing system that not only includes continuous systems but also discrete cellular automata like systems. It's highly likely that weather and climate systems are systems that generate their own randomness from within their own systems. This means that they can never be simulated with any accuracy. This means that the only way to know how those "natural computations" are going to end up is to watch them run to their conclusions. This means that all computer models for climate are bogus in regard to their ability to predict the future. That is an inherent flaw not due to a lack of human ingenuity but due to a fundamental aspect of Nature. The fundamental notion that "the map is not the territory" has been violated by the climate scientists running simulations WHEN they BELIEVE in their simulations and WHEN they distort the raw input data with statistical games that alter the data so much that fundamentally alter the trends visibly. (See this blink comparator: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/28/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-87-grilling-in-the-cornhusker-state/). Is statistically massaged data that misrepresents scientific fraud? That is a good question that is being investigated and is part of the reason that the likes of Dr. Mann (of hockey stick fame) are so defensive. They don't like their work being scrutinized in depth. Dr. Mann has already been admonished by the NAS.

However, it turns out that there are many such questions with climate science which looks like it's in a big need of a serious revamping of it's peer review process. Also if the claims are as dire as the likes of Gore predict or even 1/50th as bad then it's extremely important that we OPEN the Climate Science to maximal scrutiny by people of all fields to vet it and find the flaws and frauds and correct these mistakes and transgressions and to improve our knowledge of climate science and really find out what is occurring on planet Earth in the dynamic Sol-Earth-Moon-solar-system syste

Urban-related warming over China is shown to be about 0.1ÂC/decade over the period 1951â"2004, with true climatic warming accounting for 0.81ÂC over this period"

Cute, isn't it, how he compares a rate-per-decade with a rate-per-specific-54-year-period in order to make the former appear small. Here's a chart of China's warming since 1900; if UHI accounts for 0.1ÂC/decade there's not much left. The other plots featured - the ones that don't involve China - are basically cover fire, answering a claim nobody made. But it actually gets better than that. Jones claims urban trends are carefully accounted for in the NASA data, but the nature of these corrections is basically a secret. Jones is famously uncooperative with anyone who wants to look at the source data and try to reproduce his calculations. Jones is the one who said:

We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.

CO2 is helping to warm our planet, sending us into destruction

Your kidding right?

The End is Nigh! The End is Nigh! NOT!!! NOT!!!.

You're being irresponsible shouting wolf or fire when there is nothing to see. Move along already.

Clearly the evidence for C02 as a poison and agent of global warming has been utterly debunked by now: here at Watts Up With That on a daily basis and the goring the science fiction spun by Gore and the ice age and making sense of data here and the spinning alarmists and generally Paths To Knowledge dot Net climate science category. Most importantly don't forget Unsetteling Foundations of Climate Science by Dr. Lindzen. Then there is Climate Audit dot org that regularly excoriates the so called climate science.

C02 as THE cause of Global Warming is nothing more than a lame correlation, there are a number of other correlations that are much better. Also C02 levels can be much higher without harm as it was in the many millions of years of Earth's history when the levels where 10 times higher than now!!! Life lived and evolved just fine under ~4,000 ppm of C02 in the atmosphere.

And if you think that the science is settled then you are NOT a scientist and you DO NOT support the scientific method or the process of science education where people who are ignorant of the science ask questions to learn: see Richard Feynman on Scientific Investigation here. Besides almost all Canadians that I ask want it to be 5c to 10c warmer up here as that will open up the Northern areas, which are a plenty, for development and farming opportunities! We're tired of 90% of us living within 200 miles of the USA border! We're tired of our igloos, we want actual homes!

We all benefit if policy is based on reality, rather than bad science or bad data. We all lose if our money is wasted based on bad science. And the policy should make everything public, as you don't know which data will affect you (and you might not be able to get the data you need for your project).

Recently outsiders have spotted bad data at Antarctica and arctic ice mistakes.

• http://wattsupwiththat.com/
• http://www.climateaudit.org/

reading and comprehension. you fail at it. it was announced and then corrected after the "denialists" spotted it. kthxbye. and some source to go with it.

References.

Ask and you shall receive:

1. There were two congressional panels, not one. The one done by the statistics experts that upheld MM's findings was headed by Edward Wegman - its report can be found here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf

A commentary by McKitrick explaining the report can be found here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanOp-Ed.pdf

2. The National Research Council report can be found here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/NRCreport.pdf

From what I understand, you have to read this one carefully - apparently the report and the media spin are in opposition. An op-ed discussing this can be found here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/NAS.op-ed.pdf

Documentation of the dishonest approach used to get the "hockey stick" into the IPCC report can be found here: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html

Additionally, you will also find these links of interest:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?page_id=354
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf

Now, you talk about the "denialists" (which isn't a real word - trust me on this, I write and edit for a living - the word you want is "deniers"...a "denialist" would be somebody who studies or specializes in denial) as though they are either a conspiracy nut or part of a conspiracy themselves. It's not the case with scientists in the field - why would it be the case with commentators inside and outside of it?

For example, I'm a writer, editor, publisher, and grad student. I got into this as an interested party with a critical mind, and the more I looked at the field, the less it made sense. The more I looked at both sides, the more I saw the deniers using critical thinking and attacking the results and methodologies, and people like Mann and Al Gore launching character assassinations in response. One of these "refuted arguments" is the Medieval Warm Period being warmer than today, but the evidence is so overwhelming in favour of it that Mann put that data into a folder with the word "CENSORED" in it for his own analysis. You can't disprove the existence of the Roman Empire in Europe by stating that the Mayans of the time didn't encounter Romans, but Mann attempted to do something similar with his own work.

Are all climatologists fraudsters? I very much doubt it. But Mann did commit what amounts to an academic fraud that changed his field, and in the process undermined a lot of the research in it and relating to it. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and in order to understand its relation to the greenhouse effect, accurate temperature over time measurements are necessary. But Mann skewed his data and created inaccurate temperature over time results - so any analysis based on that "hockey stick" is using inaccurate information, and is in error. This goes outside of the field - a lot of work is being done to determine the role of solar activity in climatology, but if a researcher is using Mann's results, he's not going to be able to make an accurate analysis.

The analysis from the entire field of climatology since Mann's "hockey stick" is now on very shaky ground, and a lot of work has to be redone before the data is trustworthy again. Mann has become a scientific superstar, but the damage that has been done to our understanding of climate is incredibly high.

"They get called deniers because that is exactly what they are: in the face of overwhelming evidence, they continue to deny, using logic that is identical to 9/11 wonks, moon hoax nutters and, yes, even Holocaust deniers."

And what about proven scientific fraud?

A couple of years ago, two Canadians named Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (aka MM) decided to try to recreate the famous "Hockey Stick." As I recall, one was an economist, the other a mathematician - their work was just to reproduce the results Mann had published using Mann's own model and technique.

They couldn't do it.

In fact, they found two things:

First, Mann and his team had cherry picked their data. They took only the lowest samples from the Medieval Warm Period, and only the highest samples for the modern period. In the case of the former, quite a lot of data was collected and then withheld, data which placed the Medieval Warm Period as considerably hotter than today. This is the equivalent of a historian trying to erase the Roman Empire from history.

Second, Mann's model itself would generate a "hockey stick" out of any data that was fed into it. MM fed a number of samples that were actually random noise into the model, and every single one came out a hockey stick.

Once MM corrected the graph and collected more representative data, what they found was a Medieval Warm Period quite higher than temperatures today, followed by a dip in temperature, and a rise in temperature in the last few years, but NOT one that was out of the ordinary in terms of size or scale.

The paper in which this was published ( http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/mcintyre.mckitrick.2003.pdf ) raised enough questions that in 2006 it was put before a committee led by a statistics professor named Edward Wegman, which performed an independent review of both Mann and his team's "hockey stick," as well as MM's work on debunking it. Not only did they find and report to Congress that the "hockey stick" could not be reproduced, but also that the entire paleoclimate field had become isolated and often unwilling to share important data, or clarify their methodologies - in some cases claiming that a bad methodology was fine because the answer was correct anyway. MM's work was upheld, and the "hockey stick" was debunked.

Sources so far:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanOp-Ed.pdf
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html
http://www.climateaudit.org/?page_id=354

When it comes to the IPCC report, the committee broke its own rules to use Mann's "hockey stick." This is documented here: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html

This is very far from "logic that is identical to 9/11 wonks, moon hoax nutters and, yes, even Holocaust deniers" - it is, however, a damning observation that the emperor is wearing no clothes.

"They get called deniers because that is exactly what they are: in the face of overwhelming evidence, they continue to deny, using logic that is identical to 9/11 wonks, moon hoax nutters and, yes, even Holocaust deniers."

And what about proven scientific fraud?

A couple of years ago, two Canadians named Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (aka MM) decided to try to recreate the famous "Hockey Stick." As I recall, one was an economist, the other a mathematician - their work was just to reproduce the results Mann had published using Mann's own model and technique.

They couldn't do it.

In fact, they found two things:

First, Mann and his team had cherry picked their data. They took only the lowest samples from the Medieval Warm Period, and only the highest samples for the modern period. In the case of the former, quite a lot of data was collected and then withheld, data which placed the Medieval Warm Period as considerably hotter than today. This is the equivalent of a historian trying to erase the Roman Empire from history.

Second, Mann's model itself would generate a "hockey stick" out of any data that was fed into it. MM fed a number of samples that were actually random noise into the model, and every single one came out a hockey stick.

Once MM corrected the graph and collected more representative data, what they found was a Medieval Warm Period quite higher than temperatures today, followed by a dip in temperature, and a rise in temperature in the last few years, but NOT one that was out of the ordinary in terms of size or scale.

The paper in which this was published ( http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/mcintyre.mckitrick.2003.pdf ) raised enough questions that in 2006 it was put before a committee led by a statistics professor named Edward Wegman, which performed an independent review of both Mann and his team's "hockey stick," as well as MM's work on debunking it. Not only did they find and report to Congress that the "hockey stick" could not be reproduced, but also that the entire paleoclimate field had become isolated and often unwilling to share important data, or clarify their methodologies - in some cases claiming that a bad methodology was fine because the answer was correct anyway. MM's work was upheld, and the "hockey stick" was debunked.

Sources so far:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanOp-Ed.pdf
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html
http://www.climateaudit.org/?page_id=354

When it comes to the IPCC report, the committee broke its own rules to use Mann's "hockey stick." This is documented here: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html

This is very far from "logic that is identical to 9/11 wonks, moon hoax nutters and, yes, even Holocaust deniers" - it is, however, a damning observation that the emperor is wearing no clothes.

"Turning off the carbon dioxide emissions won't stop global warming."

Ok, irreversible. Surely we can frack up the planet more by trying to fix the soothsaid irreversible damage. Let's terraform Earth into some sticky goo which will be fun to breath.

"As carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, the world will experience more and more long-term environmental disruption."

As humans continue to live the world will experience more and more long-term environmental disruption. Let's be wise and not foolishly go off half cocked with the soothsaying pablum that passes for climate science.

I gather we are now learning how to terraform one planet! This could be good for our descendants move to Mars, Europa and other planet-like moons in the solar system.

Soothsaying the Idiocracy into existence. Not smart.

""People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years. What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years," Solomon says."

People have imagined pink unicorns screwing as being the origin of the universe. What one can imagine and what is really going on are a wee bit different.

When the scientists can't even get agree on the RAW temprature data how can you even trust their computer models? Simulating climate with starting conditions that aren't close to the real temperatures won't help with the accuracy of said simulations.

I'd like to see the source code for ALL climate models used to support the conclusions of ANY climate change claims - regardless of which direction or dire size of said claims. Auditing the scientists is crucial. Open science that can be vetted by anyone is crucial. AUDIT! Verify! Reproduce results (if possible and so far many of the claimed GW can't be independently reproduced by auditors).

Hey my soothsaying computer models says that the world would be a better place for me if you all sent me $1,000 for use in warming my climate with a trip to the tropics.... (it's cold here where I am). If you all show me the money my climate will be warm for the rest of my lifetime with lots of fun times with yummy cold liquid hydrocarbons.

There's a difference in one raw subnetwork, BEFORE any corrections are applied. (Funny how they complain about "adjusting" the raw data for biases, and then complain that the raw data can have biases...) And as long as you're citing Climate Audit, this (and John V's comments below, e.g. #88) is what I was referring to.

http://www.climateaudit.org/

Gavin Schmidt of "real-climate" fame recently posted an article showing how good the model predictions actually were (with respect to tropical temperatures as measured by satellite). As Steve McIntyre (of Climate-Audit fame) noted, Schmidt appears to have carefully chosen his starting point to give the best possible correlation between the models and reality. No surprise there then.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4687

You were doing so well, until you veered off into the realm of liars, charlatans, and people who do math badly. IPCC? Pfft. Trash. realclimate? A blog by the fanatic who invented the hockey stick graph. It's a climate myth GENERATING site. For myth busting, try a statistician. For a detailed recitation of just how little you can trust realclimate, read this.

Personally I suspect a good many scientific disciplines could be improved by a sound thrashing by a statistician.

"When international summit [royalsociety.org] after international summit [pik-potsdam.de] after international summit [nationalacademies.org] all recognize global warming and the human influence how can you still deny it? When from every article [sciencemag.org] in a referred scientific journal about climate change from 1993 to 2003, there isn't even ONE that disagrees with the consensus that that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities, how is it not obvious? When even international panels like the InterAcademy Council [interacademycouncil.net] and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [bbc.co.uk] can agree on the human impact, what "controversy" is there?"

Because the statement of a scientific consensus is, among other things, propaganda. And furthermore, a number of climatologists have been caught making specious claims for what appears to be publicity's sake. The findings of the IPCC have also been called into question, in peer-reviewed journals.

So, let's go through some of the list here...

First, the "hockey stick" graph was discredited a few years ago when two Canadian mathematicians tried to reproduce it, and found that the data used had been cherry picked - only the lowest data points were used for the Medieval Warm Period, and only the highest data points were used for the 1980s onwards. For more information, see http://www.climateaudit.org/?page_id=354

That, however, is nothing compared to how the "hockey stick" got into the 2007 IPCC report. That verged on fraud: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html

The IPCC report itself was based on faulty mathematics. Christopher Monckton, a physicist, decided to examine the climate model used for the 2007 IPCC report, and found that the math was wrong, and that the impact of CO2 on climate had been overstated by anywhere from 500-2000%: http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm

Looking away from the science for a moment, why is it that Al Gore got a Nobel peace prize for a documentary that either misled or got a large part of its science wrong ( http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html )? Why is it that the skeptics who point at the problems with climate science suffer from ad hominem attacks, while the skeptics themselves are just looking at the science? Shouldn't the argument be in regards to the data - and for that matter, isn't the ad hominem attack usually used by the person whose argument is weakest?

The climate is changing - it always has been. In fact, the last eight years have been very abnormal due to the fact that the overall surface temperature of the Earth hasn't actually changed during them (the only measurement station noting an increase in temperature is from NASA, which relies on ground based thermometers which have been overrun by urban centers, which raises the local temperature anyway - sorry, but I don't have the link for this data on hand and I'm running out of time, so you'll have to google for this information yourself). And while CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it is a very minor one. Climate-wise, we have been on an upswing for some time. But how much of that is our fault?

I don't know. But so long as the "science" that is being spouted on this is based on discredited graphs, cherry-picked data, and faulty mathematics, I don't think I'm going to find out any time soon. This "scientific consensus" is propaganda double-speak, and what's needed is honest science where theory is based on data, and not the other way around.

Why should primates evolve into homo sapiens? Because that's what evolutionary theory said happened. So why would that process suddenly stop? You guys are all about testability and detecting false data - so answer the damn question. Why did the process stop? Why aren't monkeys still evolving? If the process has stopped happening, your theory should have a reason. Let's hear it.

And bodies don't last? Well then, why do we have these fossils of hominids from 30-50,000 years ago, and dinosaur fossils from your 65 million years? Have bodies suddenly started deteriorating more quickly?

For climate data, check out climateaudit.org which IS run by a guy who has studied these issues extensively. Read his story about the Mann hockey stick, and how when Mann finally released his program, Steve ran different data sets through it, and got a hockey stick every time. Oh, and go and check - many people who signed the IPCC report are NOT climatologists, and the main author of the report admitted using scare tactics and suppressing dissenting opinions in the final draft. This link describes the lack of due diligence and review of the data, which is why I said it doesn't sound like science to me (that gets back to your testability and verification thing) http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?p=66 As the author points out, billions of dollars of economic decisions are being made and no one is checking the damn data.

And of course, 1,000 years ago, long before CO2 was being dispensed in significant quantities, Greenland was actually green, according to Viking accounts. So if it happened before, why is it necessarily due to man's activity this time? And the reason I'm exercised about this is China has become the largest CO2 emitter in the world, but they get a complete pass on Kyoto, while I'm told I'm going to have pay more for oil and gas in Canada, where it gets pretty cold in the winter. I'll be damned if I'm going to do that while China pumps out ten times more CO2 than Canada does.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080104091616.htm - 2008 is set to be the coolest year since 2000. It's still higher by a fraction of degree than the long term average, I'll admit, but there has definitely been a cooling trend the last few years.

Couldn't find the story I read on Antarctica, so I'll concede that point. I did read that a couple of floating ice sheets are in danger of breaking off. That's where icebergs come from, right? Google "Larson ice sheet" for any number of links - the scientists are predicting a rise in the ocean levels of anywhere from 6 to 20 feet if it breaks off. Let's see how that works out, 'kay? I'm willing to bet money we don't see anything like that.

And hey, I said I'd like my kids to be exposed to other creation myths and religious literature. I haven't read the Analects, but I have read the Tao, and find that it contains much wisdom as well. I wish I had more time and money to get English translations of other myths, but there are only so many hours in the day, and I waste a lot of time here.

Bring on the 100 million beef cows that live in the USA and Canada and I'll eat them doing my part to cause global warming!

Isn't it interesting that the "Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Reaches 'Unprecedented' Levels"?
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3066

Very interesting indeed. Maybe we need to have another 100 million cows to reverse this Southern Hemisphere Global Cooling!

And Climate Audit is also your friend - very eye-opening, unbiased, scientific and statistical examination of a lot of the global warming debate.

Then when you add in problems with the measurement sites and equipment themselves - this station, for instance - we should have even less confidence in the conclusions drawn from the few and far between measurement sites.

Actually, that was sort of a Y2K artifact due to a change in data sources from that year forward combined with smoothing alogorithms. The current warmest year on record is 1934. The difference is negligible between the 2 years, but it was negligible before too and definitely wasn't packaged as such.

There have been many signatories of "open letters" to the IPCC (et al.) who are at the top of their fields in geology, geo-physics, climatology, etc. who do not agree with the "consensus". It's just that the media love a doomsday story and people like you seem to as well. If you want to find out exactly what the whole climate debate is really about, read http://www.climateaudit.org/. It's a real eye opener.

However, if Steve asked me for password privileges to my site, I would most probably say "no" -- he has no right to that data and I would strongly suspect that he would use it in a way that would be unhelpful to my work (I have never seen him show any desire for collaborative research with other climate scientists).

What? How dare you suggest that computer models don't provide an accurate substitute for reality, and are not a solid substitute for real science! Next thing you know people might question Global Climate Models. That could lead to demanding publicly available data instead of "proprietary" data and scrutiny of the millions of dollars spent on models instead of things like updating the proxies, auditing the monitoring stations, and perhaps even demanding open debate.

There is nothing politically charged about black holes, or even supermassive ones. As such, the quote above about the models being proven wrong by reality is easily accepted and non-controversial. Unlike, say GCM that fail to predict say El Nino. The physicists understand that models are a useful tool for seeing what you don't know, but are not science, nor are they to be accepted as reality.

What? How dare you suggest that computer models don't provide an accurate substitute for reality, and are not a solid substitute for real science! Next thing you know people might question Global Climate Models. That could lead to demanding publicly available data instead of "proprietary" data and scrutiny of the millions of dollars spent on models instead of things like updating the proxies, auditing the monitoring stations, and perhaps even demanding open debate.

There is nothing politically charged about black holes, or even supermassive ones. As such, the quote above about the models being proven wrong by reality is easily accepted and non-controversial. Unlike, say GCM that fail to predict say El Nino. The physicists understand that models are a useful tool for seeing what you don't know, but are not science, nor are they to be accepted as reality.

In 1903 he sailed with a crew of six on his 47-ton sloop Gjoa around the northern Canadian coast, commonly called the Northwest Passage. His east-to-west journey finished at Herschel Island in the Yukon in 1905.

Between 1940 and 1942 St. Roch navigated the Northwest Passage, arriving in Halifax harbor on October 11, 1942. St. Roch was the second ship to make the passage, and the first to travel the passage from west to east.

A considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been, during the last two years, greatly abated... 2000 square leagues of ice with which the Greenland Seas between the latitudes of 74 and 80N have been hitherto covered, has in the last two years, entirely disappeared... The floods, which have the whole summer inundated all those parts of Germany where rivers have their sources in snowy mountains, afford ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened ...

At least an interested group of amateurs are working to replicate some of the more controversial research results (e.g. the Britta reconstruction, MBH hockey stick, and the GISS temperature record). See http://www.climateaudit.org/ and http://www.surfacestations.org/ for more.

Don't attack people when you really have no clue. Almost half the climatologists are skeptics and the other half gets big research grants because they aren't.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1885

or

http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/2007/08/does_hans ens_error_matter_gues.html

I used to believe that the global rise in surface temperatures was a settled fact. Since reading about Hansen's error, I have had questions about the data. I've been told that no peer-reviewed science publication seriously questions the data showing a global rise in surface temperatures. This isn't actually true. I found these articles after doing a quick search:

Ren, G. Y., Z. Y. Chu, Z. H. Chen, and Y. Y. Ren (2007), Implications of temporal change in urban heat island intensity observed at Beijing and Wuhan stations, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L05711

Karlén W (2005) Recent Global Warming: An Artifact of a Too-Short Temperature Record? AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment: Vol. 34, No. 3 pp. 263-264

Khandekar, M.L., Murty, T. S. and P. Chittibabu (2005). The Global Warming Debate: A Review of the State of Science. Pure & Applied Geophysics, Vol. 162 Issue 8/9, p1557-1586, 30p

No scientist "denies" global warming. Rather, what these scientists say is that it must be demonstrated, and the data that we have on surface temperatures does not do that unequivocally.

There are of course contrary views.

The conclusion I draw is that the science is not settled. I regard with suspicion any claim that it is.

There's already doubts about the accuracy of our current measurements. Many of the temperature and precipitation reading stations are located in urban areas on rooftops, where localized heating and the "urban heat island" phenomena have been show to skew the results to the high end. Several ave been found to have been placed near the HEAT EXHAUST of building air-conditioning systems. Due to this, many are questioning the veracity and accuracy of even the raw data, let alone the methodology employed in processing the data.

Citation on temperature station problems>: http://newsbusters.org/node/13282

More information here: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1927#more-1927

The classic paper on this is: Jones PD, Groisman PYa, Coughlan M, Plummer N, Wangl WC, Karl TR (1990) Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperatures over land. Nature 347:169-172. This conclusion was refreshed by Easterling '97.

The IPCC TAR stated:

These results confirm the conclusions of Jones et al. (1990) and Easterling et al. (1997) that urban effects on 20th century globally and hemispherically averaged land air temperature time-series do not exceed about 0.05C over the period 1900 to 1990 (assumed here to represent one standard error in the assessed non-urban trends).

There have been a couple of recent papers that Steve has been looking at, but as his site is down I don't have the citations handy (and I don't know them off-hand).

You should be careful with realclimate.org. While the site is climate science by climate scientists, it is characterized by evangelism rather than objectivity. This isn't to say their evangelism isn't often scientific and correct, but they do distort, obscure, and ignore information that hurts their evangelism.

As it happens, Steve started his blog climateaudit.org after he was subject to smear campaigns on realclimate.org over a couple of papers he published demolishing the statistical techniques used in MBH'98. Judge for yourself: MM'05, rc1, rc2, Recap

Steve's papers were ultimately vindicated by a NAS panel review. A copy of which Steve posted on his website: Wegman Report

Rather than the typical biased dogma you swallow whole from /.?

stfu, already. You are just having temper tantrum that this evidence doesn't fit neatly in your template.

Google 'James Hansen', who wrote the NASA algorithms.

Then go to Steve McIntyre's site (he reversed the bogus algorithms) http://climateaudit.org/

Then tell me there aren't heavy politics in play in this *particular* issue with a straight face.

It really depends on whether you're asking M&M or the general climatological community.

Actually it depends on whether you ask competent statisticians or "the general climatological community" whoever that is. It's not a decision to be made on the basis of popularity but on expertise, and the "general climatological community" doesn't have a clue.

This is what a top-ranked statistician had to say:

"We note that there is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimatology studies have had significant
interactions with mainstream statisticians."

You're telling me that eleven different climatological reconstructions are all based on pinecones?

No. They all included a very limited set of the same proxies and most used either the Mann PC1 (which was heavily overweighted in favor of the tree rings of bristlecone pines) or used bristlecone or foxtail tree ring proxies from the same area. Not pinecones, tree-rings.

I don't believe you. And since I'm a skeptic, I looked up the references. What a surprise! They don't all use either the Mann PC1 or bristlecone data.

That's true. They do however all use two proxy sets (Polar Urals, Tornetrask) and 8 out of 12 use either the PC1 or the bristlecone/foxtail series. All of those series have a large 20th Century ramp (unrelated to local temperature) and all were overweighted to make them dominate the reconstruction.

And the idea that they're all bullshit is essentially destroyed by their convergence. Haven't you ever played telephone? The introduction of error, or deliberate fiction, drives down convergence, it doesn't increase it. The convergence of models is considerable evidence in their favor. How do your guys explain the convergence, except for loony conspiracy theories?

I've no idea what "loony conspiracy theories" you are referring to. Perhaps you'd like to consider that none of those reconstructions is independent of each other, as they were all co-authors with Mann, Bradley or Hughes. Convergence can mean that they might be correct but only if there's such a physical artifact that they are supposed to converge to.

A more likely explanation (and one that Steve McIntyre has written about at length) is that they use mathematically the same formula, make the same methodological mistakes, fail the same statistical metrics for significance and are peer reviewed by others in a very limited set who are also not statisticians.

No conspiracy theories required. Only a group-reinforced belief.

Here's what a real statistician said:

"The social network analysis of authors' relations suggests that the
"independent reconstructions" are not as independent as one might guess. Indeed, the
matrix outlined in Figure 5.8 illustrates the proxies that are used more than one time in
twelve major temperature reconstruction papers. The black boxes indicate that the proxy
was used in a given paper. It is clear that many of the proxies are re-used in most of the
papers. It is not surprising that the papers would obtain similar results and so cannot
really claim to be independent verifications."

You can find the entire report here.

Because those fakers are still writing on RealClimate. The Hockey Stick has been debunked, but as with totalitarian regimes, repeating a Big Lie is much easier than telling the truth.

The debunkers (and I assume you're referring to McIntyre and McKitrick) have not been debunked. Every criticism of the Hockey Stick that they made has been upheld. Even the NRC Report (which bent over backwards to avoid throwing out the Hockey Stick altogether) upheld every single point made by Steve McIntyre.

When the Hockey Stick was investigated by an independent team of top-ranked statisticians, the Report was damning, calling the Hockey Stick simply "Bad Science" and noting that McIntyre's criticisms were "valid and compelling". They also noted that the so-called "independent" multiproxy studies used practically the same proxies and made the same statistical mistakes and that the peer review system had failed because of massive conflict of interest.

The question is of course, why you would believe RealClimate in the first place. Like Vaclav Klaus' totalitarian example, the blog is heavily censored and Mann pointedly does not answer questions about McIntyre's points or even more childishly even mention his name.

Because those fakers are still writing on RealClimate. The Hockey Stick has been debunked, but as with totalitarian regimes, repeating a Big Lie is much easier than telling the truth.

The debunkers (and I assume you're referring to McIntyre and McKitrick) have not been debunked. Every criticism of the Hockey Stick that they made has been upheld. Even the NRC Report (which bent over backwards to avoid throwing out the Hockey Stick altogether) upheld every single point made by Steve McIntyre.

When the Hockey Stick was investigated by an independent team of top-ranked statisticians, the Report was damning, calling the Hockey Stick simply "Bad Science" and noting that McIntyre's criticisms were "valid and compelling". They also noted that the so-called "independent" multiproxy studies used practically the same proxies and made the same statistical mistakes and that the peer review system had failed because of massive conflict of interest.

The question is of course, why you would believe RealClimate in the first place. Like Vaclav Klaus' totalitarian example, the blog is heavily censored and Mann pointedly does not answer questions about McIntyre's points or even more childishly even mention his name.

Not necessarily the smoking gun you're asking for, but the IPCC's own documentation is the root of this criticism; look on page 4, third paragraph :

Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter.

This undoubtedly stems from Steve McIntyre's comments on the issue on ClimateAudit. The anti-AGWers (might be a little unfair to throw McIntyre in with the general crowd) generally take this comment to mean that "the working group will modify the data to support the conclusion", rather than the slightly more benign "the working group may modify the data to support the conclusion". However, at this point, the working group report has already been accepted, it's not like they start writing it from scratch after the SPM is published. Still, one can hardly argue that this clause is a positive thing for the perceived integrity of the science.

Not necessarily the smoking gun you're asking for, but the IPCC's own documentation is the root of this criticism; look on page 4, third paragraph :

Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter.

This undoubtedly stems from Steve McIntyre's comments on the issue on ClimateAudit. The anti-AGWers (might be a little unfair to throw McIntyre in with the general crowd) generally take this comment to mean that "the working group will modify the data to support the conclusion", rather than the slightly more benign "the working group may modify the data to support the conclusion". However, at this point, the working group report has already been accepted, it's not like they start writing it from scratch after the SPM is published. Still, one can hardly argue that this clause is a positive thing for the perceived integrity of the science.

Lets see Slashdot's censorship system work its magic:

Many leading scientists have come to believe that human activity is contributing to warming of the planet.

"I see it in some ways as similar to the sort-of debate that has taken place with regard to the science of evolution," said Professor Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center. "Just as I would hope that the Smithsonian would stand firmly behind the science of evolution, it would also be my hope that they would stand firmly behind the science that supports influence on climate. Politically, they may be controversial, but scientifically they are not."

Would this be the same Michael Mann, author of the incredibly flawed and fraudulent "Mann Hockey Stick" which has been extensively debunked by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick?

Yes it is.

So let me guess - they put in the Hockey Stick and then someone pointed out that its a scientific crock of shit. So they hid it behind spaghetti and made it fuzzy like they did in the IPCC 4th Assessment. Would I be close?

If I was you Dr Mann, I'd be hoping for the fuzzy version because the sharp version is a demonstrated pile of crap.

Shall we see who is the biggest abuser of censorship? Step right up.

Lets see Slashdot's censorship system work its magic:

Many leading scientists have come to believe that human activity is contributing to warming of the planet.

"I see it in some ways as similar to the sort-of debate that has taken place with regard to the science of evolution," said Professor Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center. "Just as I would hope that the Smithsonian would stand firmly behind the science of evolution, it would also be my hope that they would stand firmly behind the science that supports influence on climate. Politically, they may be controversial, but scientifically they are not."

Would this be the same Michael Mann, author of the incredibly flawed and fraudulent "Mann Hockey Stick" which has been extensively debunked by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick?

Yes it is.

So let me guess - they put in the Hockey Stick and then someone pointed out that its a scientific crock of shit. So they hid it behind spaghetti and made it fuzzy like they did in the IPCC 4th Assessment. Would I be close?

If I was you Dr Mann, I'd be hoping for the fuzzy version because the sharp version is a demonstrated pile of crap.

Shall we see who is the biggest abuser of censorship? Step right up.

Lets see Slashdot's censorship system work its magic:

Many leading scientists have come to believe that human activity is contributing to warming of the planet.

"I see it in some ways as similar to the sort-of debate that has taken place with regard to the science of evolution," said Professor Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center. "Just as I would hope that the Smithsonian would stand firmly behind the science of evolution, it would also be my hope that they would stand firmly behind the science that supports influence on climate. Politically, they may be controversial, but scientifically they are not."

Would this be the same Michael Mann, author of the incredibly flawed and fraudulent "Mann Hockey Stick" which has been extensively debunked by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick?

Yes it is.

So let me guess - they put in the Hockey Stick and then someone pointed out that its a scientific crock of shit. So they hid it behind spaghetti and made it fuzzy like they did in the IPCC 4th Assessment. Would I be close?

If I was you Dr Mann, I'd be hoping for the fuzzy version because the sharp version is a demonstrated pile of crap.

Shall we see who is the biggest abuser of censorship? Step right up.

Real Climate is full of lying shit, and written by criminal defenders of a disgraced climate fascist ( http://www.climateaudit.org/ )

(we can keep this up as long as you like!)