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"Here you can see the hockey stick being built in the factory"

I have to ask, who's paying you to write this shit?

There was a fucking senate inquiry into Mann's hockey stick, it was a result of demands by political hacks who thought that debunking the original hockey stick (Nature 1997) would bring down the entire mountain of evidence that supports AGW. Problem is that the senate committe called in the National Acedenies of Science to examine the claims of the political hacks.

Their testimony (pdf warning), shows that Mann was correct in his conclusions but also gave some minor critisisims about his confidence levels, those critsisims were taken on board and an extended study was published by Mann, et al in the Journal science (ie: the very people who had raised the minor critisisms).

ESR is a respected member of the OSS community and I'll take his word for it absent definitive proof."

Sorry for editing your FUD to reflect reality but I would like other readers who may fall for your (unoriginal) tecno-babble to compare the credentials of ESR (zero publications on climate science) to M. Mann, an internationally recognised climate scientist who has published over sixty papers on the subject in journals such as Nature and Science. Having said that, argument from authority will not impress an eductaed reader anywhere near as much as it seems to impress you.

Both yourself and ESR seem blissfully unaware that when it comes to reproducing scientific studies the source code is about as relevant as the brand of slide rule that a 1960's scientist used. You simply cannot demonstrate that all but the most trivial code is bug free, therfore scientists prefer to reproduce results using the same data and methods with different code. This is a much more robust test and is the reason why the internet is littered with independent source trees that implement the same methods using the same data.

Little is known about which patterns are linked to terrorism. As a result, programs that scan databases looking for any unusual patterns are apt to turn up far too many false leads to be useful, the report notes. No one should be arrested, searched, or have their rights denied simply because an automated data-mining program has identified them as suspicious.

As if that wasn't enough, the National Research Council datamining report said the same thing. From the summary:

Regarding data mining, the book concludes that although these methods have been useful in the private sector for spotting consumer fraud, they are less helpful for counterterrorism because so little is known about what patterns indicate terrorist activity. Regarding behavioral surveillance in a counterterrorist context, the book concludes that although research and development on certain aspects of this topic are warranted, there is no scientific consensus on whether these techniques are ready for operational use at all in counterterrorism.

The FBI obviously has seen these studies and knows what they say. So I can't help but assume their real motivation isn't to catch terrorists. Whether they're doing it to get information to blackmail/defame political opponents, to look like they're trying to catch terrorists, or something else - I don't know. But they're not dumb and they know this doesn't work for its stated purposes.

"why should I care about anyone's connections to the Heartland Institute?"

Because they are lobbyists that are as demonstrably wrong as the young earth creationists and even more anti-social than scientology or jesus stickers on science books. Their pet polycritters are senator Inhofe and ex-senator Malcom Wallop.

Ignorance I can understand but these people deliberatly piss in the fountain of knowledge that comes from science and many of the individuals involved have done so before by providing "tobacco scientists" for the tabacco industry.

"I have brought up the fact that there are problems with..."

Are you saying that this pushes things outside of the stated certainties because unless you are and can back it with solid evidence, it's irrelevent detail. Nobody thinks the models are perfect but they most assuredly think they are useful.

If you are interested, the most measured starting points I can think of giving you are Roger Pielke Sr's work at climatesci.org and Lucia Liljegren's statistical analyses at rankexploits.com/musings.

You must be kidding, you take a guy who until recently, when it seems senility set in, was only ever on the fringes of any genuine debates and call that measured? As you know Mann and Mackyntre had a debate about 5yrs ago that ended in a congressional inquiry into Mann's 1997 hockey stick paper. The NAS were called in to testify on the merits of both, Mann's paper was vindicated bt NAS even though it had minor errors in certainty levels, NAS testimony here. Mackyntre has not come up with anything new since then, Mann published a follow up paper in Science (the journal "Science" is published by NAS who CONSTRUCTIVELY critsised his first paper).

"* Have you read some of the responses to the reviewers' comments for the IPCC reports? If you had, you would hear alarm bells ringing. More to the point, the IPCC chapters contain significant amounts of the lead authors own work: the reports are *not* independent reviews."

-1 False. -1 Ad-hom.

"I can't work out whether you genuinely believe the science of AGW is rock solid and admits of no debate or whether you're so hung up on the precautionary principle that you think open debate is too dangerous to allow."

-1 When_did_you_stop_beating_your_wife?

What about cloud formation?

Clouds formation involves areosols and the IPCC reports state both phenomena as having a low level of scientific understanding. However Japan's Earth simulator does a very nice job of simulating clouds, precipitation and even hurricanes using the basic laws of physics. ( embeded movie half way down the page )

"Check out section 1.2 of the comments draft paper for Carlin's graphs of similar datasets."

I've seen enough of that report to determine it is a rehash of the descredited anti-science peddled by the CEI, my basic objection is that they are not Carlin's views, nor is it evidence, it is a summary of the discredited opinions of the lobbyists at CEI. I will simply assume section 1.2 is a rehash of Bob Carter's ingenuious conflation of upper troposhere measurements with surface measurements. Climate models correctly predict the cooling trend in the upper troposhere as observed by sattelites. IIRC this is due to the radative properties of CO2 and the increased distance between molecules at low pressure (ie absorbed IR energy is more likely to be re-relased as photons than preserved as kinetic energy in collisions). Please correct me if my assumption about section 1.2 is wrong.

"I'm not sure if you are familiar with (or at all interested in) this, but the "Climate Audit" blog is fairly interesting in terms of looking at the methodology and math of climate models, etc. Climate Audit and Real Climate are somewhat infamous for having a vicious feud going on as well."

Yes I am familiar with it and I followed the debate with interest as it unfolded. I wouldn't have called it a vicious feud, more a heated scientific debate, however these days realclimate (founded by M.Mann), all but ignores McIntrye (Founder of Climate Audit). As you probably know the debate was over the statistcal methods used in Mann's 1997 "Hockey stick" paper. You may also know that the debate culimnated in a congressional inquisition into Mann's paper, I say "inquisition" because who the hell holds a congressional inquiry on the veracity of a single paper? Anyway the National Academies of Sciences (who do know a thing or two about statistics) were dragged into the fray and asked to testify.

Many psuedo-skeptics such as those at CEI have since taken out of context quotes from that testiomony to tried and discredit Mann in the false belief that discrediting a single noteable paper would also dicredit the AGW hypothesis. However it seems nobody ever goes to the trouble of pointing to the text of the NAS testimony. Yes NAS qustioned Mann's confidence levels on certain statements but they also vindicated his methods and conclusions (much to the dissapointment of the inquisitors, I'm sure). To Mann's credit he has since addressed those critcisims with a follow up paper, the paper was peer-reviewed and published by his NAS critics in PNAS.

At the time the McIntyre/Mann debate was raging I respected McIntryre's tenacity and views, however since the inquisition he has failed to come up with any new papers on the subject (AFAIK his 2003 critique of Mann is his most recent paper). He has now also become a star attraction at the Heartland Institute's annual "Climate Confrences". In my book these developments currently disqualify him as a serious critic of Mann's work and I no longer frequent his site. As always YMMV.

BTW: From what I can find, the NAS testimony is not linked to by either RC or CA.

"There are many issues with the kinds of reconstruction you cite, particularly if they involve activist scientist Michael Mann, e.g. Proxy inconsistency and other problems in millennial paleoclimate reconstructions [pnas.org]."

To me this one sentance conclusively demonstrates you are a political troll, possibly a paid one. You are no doubt aware of the senate inquiry into Mann's hockey's stick to which anti-science lobbyists point as proof Mann is a "political acticvist". However the thing these luddites fail do do with monotonous regularity is point to the NAS Testimony on which they base their lies.

Quoting from the link:"our reservations with some aspects of the original papers by Mann et al. should not be construed as evidence that our committee does not believe that the climate is warming, and will continue to warm, as a result of human activities. Large-scale surface temperature reconstructions are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not the primary evidence. The scientific consensus regarding human-induced global warming would not be substantively altered if, for example, the global mean surface temperature 1,000 years ago was found to be as warm as it is today. This is because reconstructions of surface temperature do not tell us why the climate is changing. To answer that question, one would need to examine the factors, or forcings, that influence the climate system. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the primary climate forcings were changes in volcanic activity and in the output of the Sun, but the strength of these forcings is not very well known. In contrast, the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the past century are consistent with both the magnitude and the geographic pattern of warming seen by thermometers."

Aside from the facts not fitting your politics, who the hell (other than spanish inquisition types) holds a senate enquiry into a single scientific paper?

As for you slur about grants, you are obviously unaware that Mann and all the other scientists who write the IPCC reports DO NOT GET PAID for what is basically tedious peer-review work. The entire IPCC budget is less tha $6 million/yr and is sourced from 300+ politically diverse nations but lets not let the facts get in the way of your anti-science conspiracy theories.

IMHO you and your willfully ignorant bretheren at the Heartland institute are even more ridiculous than the young earth creationists at the discovery institute, I thank FSM that the only attention your diminishing circle of anti-science lunatics is recieving nowadys is ridicule.

I realize we, as in all space agencies, use helium or something else to keep these instruments cold, but why can't we use the coldness of space to do the same thing?

According to this PDF the Planck mission does not use liquid helium coolant (although Herschel does). Also the upcoming James Webb telescope will not use it.

National Academies == US National Academy of Sciences

Actually, that isn't true. The National Academies include the US National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine and National Research Council in addition to the US National Academy of Sciences. The National Academies

"You've got to be kidding me....[the hockey stick]...has also been discredited"

He isn't kidding you but someone obviously is. Can you name an institution with more credible statistical expertise than the national academies? Again, here is the link to their testiomony in the Mann/McIntyre beat up that supposedly discredited Mann.

And very profitable it can be too.

This is the best joke of all, the scientists who write the IPCC reports do not get paid. Even if they did the IPCC has a budget of a measly $5-6 million a year despite being sourced from the governments of 300+ politically diverse nations. I've worked in busnisses with twice that budget for 25 people, the IPCC reports have a tad more than 25 people behind them, people who collectively REPRESENT every major science body on the planet. Personally I think the IPCC ranks as one of the most robust peer-reveiw process ever undertaken and it has been acomplished for less than what it costs to make a hollywood block-buster.

Of course they could be wrong and any scientist worth their salt will demonstrate that with error bars, that's how science progresses, but given the track record of science do you know of a better philosophy for understanding the natural world?

Do not take the following rant as pertaining to you personally, for all I know you could be a teenager who hates his science teacher.

Creationists are a rare sight on slashdot but moderate belivers who are conflated with creationists are not so rare. I am not relious in the slightest but I have been accused of subscribing to "AGW religion", "worshiping Al Gore", etc. In fact similar comments when not aimed at a particular person but at some general group (such as greenies, IPCC, Al Gore and his mates), will regularly be modded +5 insightfull.

Perhaps the most despised religion on slashdot however are the scientologists, their method of shouting lies untill you belive them is bizzare but for some reason it does work on a suprising number of people. There are genuine disagreements in climate science and there is are general consensus represented by the IPCC reports yet a good number of slashdotters attack these claims with the same methods the shop keeper uses in monty python's dead parrot sketch, and in some cases the same methods as scientologists.

To be fair to all slashdotters these posts only stay positive until the cult mebers blow all their mod points, by the time it's at the bottom of the page the moderation is more...well...moderate. This must be a dilema for them wrt do they blow all the points early, wait until near archiving, or just concentrate on keeping the best machevellian posts up at +5?

I'm 50yrs old and remember the "tabacco scientists" with great clarity, when that enevitably collapsed in total ridicule many of the same "tabacco scientists" became "climate skeptics". They go by names such as the Heartland institute, Marshall institute, Frontiers of Freedom, etc, and are backed by people such as ex-senator Malcolm Wallop, senator Inhofe, and a sizable number of politicians around the planet that have a coal mine on their turf. ExonMobile also fund this anti-science campaing, not because they are an oil company but because they have large investments in coal. The same machevelian bullshit goes on here in Oz but ranting about that on a US centric site would require a shitload of links to people most slashdotters have never heard of.

As I said above, I'm not from the US, I couldn't care less about the 2000 election but I can smell the anti-science lobbyists in those organisations from half a world away. Thing is I don't know if slashdotters who drink their kool aid are simply ignorant, misinformed, practicing luddities

You have have been misinformed.

The NW passage was not suitable for cruise ships in 1906. Besides none of the crossings via a temporary route say anything much about climate.

"Al's famous hockey stick is dirty data taken from weather stations that have experienced heat islands being installed in the form of pavement. Go check out surface data.org. Sometimes one needs to "scrub" the data, and throw out obviously tainted data from a compromised station."

First of all it's Mann et al's hockey stick not Al Gore's, second there is no such "surface data.org" web site, third the source of your half truth is the national academies testimony to the senate which states...

"The basic conclusion of the 1999 paper by Dr. Mann and his colleagues was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on icecaps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years ....[snip]... We also question some of the statistical choices made in the original papers by Dr. Mann and his colleagues. However, our reservations with some aspects of the original papers by Mann et al. should not be construed as evidence that our committee does not believe that the climate is warming, and will continue to warm, as a result of human activities." /end_quote

"Remember all the data pointed to a new ice age in 1970, now the same data points to warming..."

No, but I am old enough to remember reading a whole lot of newspaper articles based on one national geographic article that by chance I also read when in HS. I do remember when the negative forcing of soot was offsetting the positive forcing of CO2 more than in is now. Again looking at the national academies, they first warned of global warming in the 50's, nothing has changed in those warnings except the credibility and urgency have increased by orders of magnitute.

"Turns out that just about all dust in antarctic PENINSULA ice record comes from Patagonia." /fixed

Not sure what your point is here because more dust/soot sitting on the ice speeds up the rate of melting, your link correctly states that the dust levels are low right now because the glaciers are MELTING in patagonia?

I'm not sure where you get your information but if I were you I would start to question them since the sources you do give, are now publishing papers that make Al Gore's movie look optimistic.

Dude, stop dragging those red-herrings around, they stink.

If by pointing to Mann's reconstruction methods you mean to imply Mann, et al's hockey stick was debunked you are simply wrong...

The statisticians at the National Academies do not agree with you, or should I say their written testimony to the senate doesn't agree with you. Anyway they are probably the best statistical experts you can find in one place and are certainly not alone in their approval of Mann's work. Furthermore the minor problems they did point out were adressed by Mann in a later publication in Science which you can look up yourself, this is how science works, no?

The reason I point to that testimony is because it's the half-truth that many psuedo-skeptical, armchair statistitians base their opinions on, whether you in particular realise that or not is irrelevant.

Quote TFL: "The basic conclusion of the 1999 paper by Dr. Mann and his colleagues was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on icecaps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years
....[snip]...
We also question some of the statistical choices made in the original papers by Dr. Mann and his colleagues. However, our reservations with some aspects of the original papers by Mann et al. should not be construed as evidence that our committee does not believe that the climate is warming, and will continue to warm, as a result of human activities."

Why anyone would waste money and scientists time by having a senate enquiry on one particular graph is beyond me but whatever the reason it has served to further strengthen Mann's arguments.

As for the expert you keep demanding, that's not how science does things. Perhaps the NASA links are weak evidence by your standards because most people just rely on their reputation, but if you think they are wrong the onus is on you to provide evidence to the contrary. No matter how many papers I throw at you supporting NASA, you can continue to troll by demanding an individual expert claim an institutional publication which has nothing to do with the credibility of the evidence.

And since you obviously think you are good at stats why haven't you answered my question? - Under your stated assumptions, what's the probability that Antarctica and/or Greenland is NOT losing ice?

"Oh? Already forgot how the used October data from Siberia for the November average temp calculation "by mistake". How about the infamous hockey stick graph that totally ignored the medieval warming period? And then there was the Alaska size part of the ocean that was supposed to be open water but when you looked at the raw satellite image was covered in ice? ...and the list goes on..."

It's your perogative to keep repeating the endless list of misinformation from George Will, Andrew Bolt, Dr Ball and other like-minded opinion columnists. However the misinformation you have been fed about Mann is based on the NAS testimony to the senate which if you actually read it does not debunk Mann's hockey stick. Mann did not ignore the MWP, what he said was that the world was now warmer than the during the MWP, the overwhelming majority of published reconstructions agree with him.

The meat of the testiomony: "We also question some of the statistical choices made in the original papers by Dr. Mann and his colleagues. However, our reservations with some aspects of the original papers by Mann et al. should not be construed as evidence that our committee does not believe that the climate is warming, and will continue to warm, as a result of human activities.

Does your bullshit detector not sound an alarm when none of the psuedo-skeptics that have misinformed you ever point to the sources they base their claims on. Does your bullshit detector not go off the scale when it hears the senate wanted to "verify the claims" of one scientific paper, as if it were the only thing that AGW is based on? How about you and others who believe George and his mates actually look at the accuracy of Mann's 1998 forceasts rather than simply regurgitating the bullshit that the opinion columns spoon feed you.

NAS testimony, Mann's post.

Actually, those two journals are print journals I normally pick up in a bookstore. As for online sources, I'm not aware of any academic journals that are freely available online (unfortunately). For free online stuff, reading a nice variety of newspaper-like sites is probably as good as one can get. A few worth reading:

Science:

Eurekalert, Scientific Blogging, National Academies

Politics/Current events:

Moscow Times, Al Jazeera, PressTV, YNet, UN News Service, People's Daily

All this plus heavy use of Google News with custom sections, of course.

None of this is as good as the journals, but it's more current.

NAS testimony to the energy commitee (pdf).
NAS climate homepage
As you say "other people following this discussion might be curious", even if you are not.

True, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO) was retired in 1995 to free up funding for SOFIA. Work on SOFIA started in the 90s and it made its first flight with the telescope installed last year. SOFIA is a similar idea to KAO, but on a much larger scale (the telescope is 2.5 m in diameter, compared to 91.5 cm for the KAO) and representing a significantly larger engineering challenge.

But yeah, I don't know why this is news now. Science flights aren't supposed to start taking place until next year.

Interestingly, it won't really be ready for science flights next year, but every ten years the US National Research Council does its decadal surveys of all the science programs it's supporting and decides which ones to continue funding on. SOFIA's been so delayed that if it doesn't have any science results by mid-2009 (when the 2010 decadal survey will be taking its data), it runs a real risk of having its US government funding cut. If this happens, DLR (German Aerospace Center), another one of the big funders, will be likely to cut funding as well, resulting in a bleak future for the SOFIA program.

(I worked on SOFIA as an intern at NASA last year.)

I know we're your wayward cousins from "across the pond" So you can be forgiven if you didn't get the memo. Allow me to quote the most relevant part:

Pattern-Seeking Data-Mining Methods Are of Limited Usefulness

Routine forms of data mining can provide important assistance in the fight against terrorism by expanding and speeding traditional investigative work, the report says. For example, investigators can quickly search multiple databases to learn who has transferred money to or communicated with a suspect. More generally, if analysts have a historical basis for believing a certain pattern of activity is linked to terrorism, then mining for similar patterns may generate useful investigative leads.

Far more problematic are automated data-mining techniques that search databases for unusual patterns of activity not already known to be associated with terrorists, the report says. Although these methods have been useful in the private sector for spotting consumer fraud, they are less helpful for counterterrorism precisely because so little is known about what patterns indicate terrorist activity; as a result, they are likely to generate huge numbers of false leads. Such techniques might, however, have some value as secondary components of a counterterrorism system to assist human analysts. Actions such as arrest, search, or denial of rights should never be taken solely on the basis of an automated data-mining result, the report adds.

The committee also examined behavioral surveillance techniques, which try to identify terrorists by observing behavior or measuring physiological states. There is no scientific consensus on whether these techniques are ready for use at all in counterterrorism, the report says; at most they should be used for preliminary screening, to identify those who merit follow-up investigation. Further, they have enormous potential for privacy violations because they will inevitably force targeted individuals to explain and justify their mental and emotional states.

What? You were aware? You just don't care. You like establishing a culture of fear for political purposes, and don't care about what us eggheads say? Oh sorry. Keep calm and carry on.

The National Academies.

When international summit after international summit after international summit all recognize global warming and the human influence how can you still deny it? When from every article 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 and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change can agree on the human impact, what "controversy" is there?

It is so painfully obvious that we do make a difference, that CO2 concentration is much higher than ever seen before, as shown by the Keeling Curve. And I can only hope most people understand that high CO2 levels lead to high temperatures and I don't have to spell that out.

It's not a debate. There is no "maybe." There's no confusion. The entire world's academic and scientific community have come to a consensus on it, but apparently some people here just don't get it.

Its at the point where both U.S. presidential hopefuls have made it both policy and goals to cut down on emissions, its not even politically dividing.

Global warming is real, it does exist, we do contribute, and if you think otherwise you're honestly in denial.

Then how about:
The InterAcademy Council
The National Academies
The International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences
The European Academy of Sciences and Arts
The National Research Council
The Federation of American Scientists
The World Meteorological Organization
Need I go on?

5.1 million dollars if I remember right, according to the US government.

It Depends.

If you're being poisoned by air pollution, it's $6.1 million dollars (down from $8 million in 2000) but if a company is dumping poison in your water supply, it's $8.8 million dollars. If you need to know how much more to pay for little rubber caps to make your Pinto not explode, the DoT suggests $5.8 million, but starting this year wants everyone to analyze their work at $3.2 and $8.4 million, just to be sure. $5.8 million is also used by the FAA.

Laura Taylor of North Carolina State University, said her figure was lower because it emphasized differences in pay for various risky jobs, not just risky industries as a whole.[emphasis mine]

Anyone have a link to the actual study? I've found all sorts of people pontificating on whether it's done right or even the right thing to do, but not the study itself. I'm interested in knowing whether these "various" risky jobs included illegal immigrants in jobs like meatpacking or whether certain very dangerous and well-paying jobs were left out (surely an accidental oversight), similar to how energy and food costs are too "volatile" (read: embarrassing) to consider in inflation.

"The following are some of the committee's key findings that underscore its call to action:

> Studies have not found any significant biological differences between men and women in performing science and mathematics that can account for the lower representation of women in academic faculty and leadership positions in S&T fields.

> Compared with men, women faculty members are generally paid less and promoted more slowly, receive fewer honors, and hold fewer leadership positions. These discrepancies do not appear to be based on productivity, the significance of their work, or any other performance measures, the report says.

> Measures of success underlying performance-evaluation systems are often arbitrary and frequently applied in ways that place women at a disadvantage. "Assertiveness," for example, may be viewed as a socially unacceptable trait for women but suitable for men. Also, structural constraints and expectations built into academic institutions assume that faculty members have substantial support from their spouses. Anyone lacking the career and family support traditionally provided by a "wife" is at a serious disadvantage in academe, evidence shows. Today about 90 percent of the spouses of women science and engineering faculty are employed full time. For the spouses of male faculty, it is nearly half. "

how do you know it's a lie? have you proven creationism to be a lie and not told anyone? while you're at it you might as well tell everyone how you proved evolution as fact while the rest of the world is still trying...

I don't need to because many people already have. Here's a few to get you started.

• Was Darwin Wrong?
• Science, Evolution, and Creationism
• Evolution Resources from the National Academy of Science

Honestly, not wanting your kid's science class to teach intelligent design to your kids is no different (to anyone remotely familiar with scientific evidence, anyway) than not wanting your kid's math class to teach them the "theory" that pi equals 3 (1 Kings 7:23).

You can read the book online for free here.

You can also hear the press conference (Real media format) and read the News Release, which (surprise!) is a lot different than than the article summary.

You can read the book online for free here.

You can also hear the press conference (Real media format) and read the News Release, which (surprise!) is a lot different than than the article summary.

He launched a blog to attract attention to his research and created a website where he posted his manuscripts that had been rejected by Nature. But in early January of this year, he finally had a paper accepted into a real science journal--Geophysical Research Letters (GRL).

Decades of research have created a massive body of scientific literature on climate change, and thousands of new studies on the subject appear every year in different science journals. Yet, within weeks of publishing his first peer-reviewed study, McIntyre was profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The article ran 2209 words and was written by reporter Antonio Regalado.

Not only that, but the poor reporter can't even figure out what the Nat'l Academies are. The building is _not_ a federal building any more than say, Lockheed Martin, is a federal building. Both Natl Academies and Lockheed do large amounts of work for the government, but they aren't directly part of it. (See for example http://www.nationalacademies.org/about/faq1.html) There is a big difference. It hardly matters here, but it is one more reason to discount this rant.

Original can be found here

The article was taken from a National Academies press release. Here's the full report, parts of which (maybe the whole thing? I didn't check) can be previewed as a pdf if you don't want to purchase the book.

Oh, and here's a brief (4-page summary) of the report.

Woulda been nice to have the source info in the summary...

This is what happens when a poorly thought definition change occurs. The dynamics of the Pluto orbit were known for a long time. There's been no sudden increase in scientific insight due to this capricious change. Let's look at the facts. Pluto was considered a planet for more than 75 years. In recent times, many Kuiper Belt objects (which by definition interact gravitationally with Neptune) were found, one which is probably even larger than Pluto and at it's closest approach can be closer to the Sun than Pluto is at it's most distant. There may be many such objects larger than Pluto. So yes, if Pluto were discovered now (ignoring the new definition), it probably would not be considered a planet.

But let's look at the definition. Pluto satisfies the first two conditions, it is in orbit around the Sun and is massive enough to form a sphere. The third condition is that "it must have cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit". That phrase has yet to be defined. So we're saying Pluto is not a planet even though we don't yet know the meaning of a critical term. Let me point out what should be obvious. Namely, if one defines the neighborhood of an orbit as a locus of the trajectory (in four dimensional space-time, eg, the space within distance d of the object at time t), then anything big enough to be round most likely has cleared an impressively large neighborhood of anything of similar mass. I assume reasonably that "cleared" means here that no amount of mass similar in order of magnitude routinely runs through this neighborhood. Also, it ignores the grief that the definition change causes to the outside world. Science textbooks need to be modified to reflect this new definition. Given that the definition is "official" yet is still mostly incomplete, the IAU will need to complete the definition of planet (and you can bet that Pluto == planet is still on the agenda). Finally, the definition explicitly only defines "planet" in the Solar System. The related definition of "dwarf planet" (ie, if it is massive enough to be rounded by gravity, it's a dwarf planet) does apply to exosolar dwarf planets (by a 2003 decision by the IAU).

So all this effort fails to apply to other star systems. This is quite relevant. First, the Solar System is a mature star system, more than 4 billion years old with no signs of recent perturbation. Second, all the orbits of the "planets" are circular. That's unusual. Most of the objects yet discovered have very elliptical (ie, large eccentricity) orbits. The definition would be hard to observe anyway since one would need to be able to account for most of the nonstellar mass in the star system before they could claim that anything has "cleared its orbit".

Finally, the decision was made with little concensus. The IAU is not an open-membership body. My impression is that it admits members directly by election only or at the behest of a "national member", a national level organization (like the US National Academy of Science's Board on International Scientific Organizations) which may have similar membership requirements. IMHO, IAU membership isn't constituted in a way conducive to concensus outside the astronomy community. Second, as noted before, only 5% of the members of the IAU actually voted on the definition in question. Further, only IAU officials had the power to modify the definition when it was being voted on. Finally, no report of the actual vote has ever been made public, as far as I can tell. We know that 424 members voted on it (this is widely reported in the media), but I have never seen reported the actual vote tally.

In summary, a redefinition of a common term, "planet" which manages to remain ill-defined and to have little scientific value by an international body that failed to generate any concensus either inside or out on the decision.

• Adam B. Jaffe
• Suzanne Michel
• Mark B. Myers
• Daniel B. Ravicher

Math 101: 2000 - 400 = 1600. The dead peak of that mini ice age. Either they knowingly compared the temperatures to exactly a *very short* period *they* say was a "cold spell", stopped looking, and were *astonished* to find a heat increase. Or, in the peak of that self-termed "mini ice age", it was hotter.

Huh?

'High Confidence' That Planet Is Warmest in 400 Years;
Less Confidence in Temperature Reconstructions Prior to 1600

WASHINGTON -- There is sufficient evidence from tree rings, boreholes, retreating glaciers, and other "proxies" of past surface temperatures to say with a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years, according to a new report from the National Research Council. Less confidence can be placed in proxy-based reconstructions of surface temperatures for A.D. 900 to 1600, said the committee that wrote the report, although the available proxy evidence does indicate that many locations were warmer during the past 25 years than during any other 25-year period since 900. Very little confidence can be placed in statements about average global surface temperatures prior to A.D. 900 because the proxy data for that time frame are sparse, the committee added.

I agree that this list is insulting. It sure makes me feel like all of those years I spent in graduate school working on my Ph.D. in physics were a total waste. I've been involved in a lot of public outreach projects aimed at improving the visibility of women scientists, but apparently these public outreach programs have not had any effect on the perceptions of the general public.

The person who came up with the CNET list certainly didn't try very hard at all. If they really were interested in creating a list of women who have contributed to mathematics and science, there are a lot of organizations and web sites where they could have found better information. For example:

The Women of NASA
The Society of Women Engineers
The Association of Women in Science
The Committee on Women in Science and Engineering at the National Academies of Science

And of course, there are also many Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Programs at colleges and universities throughout the United States.

People always wonder why more women do not pursue careers in science and engineering. The persistence of the misconception that only men can be successful in science and engineering, as well as stupid garbage like this list, are definitely not helping. Reading the CNET list made me feel as though women's contributions to science are completely unappreciated. On the other hand, reading some of the Slashdot comments mentioning prominent women who should have been on the list, gives me a little bit of hope that things can change.

I can only find two -- a whole two -- scientists who disagree with the usage of bristlecones (McKitric and MacIntyre). If you can find more, please cite them. I've searched.

In 2006, the National Academy of Scientists reviewed Mann's original study. Naturally, Monckton doesn't bother to mention this. What did they come up with? This. "'High Confidence' That Planet Is Warmest in 400 Years".

They confirmed that, while bristlecones are a poor temperature proxy, and the analysis used tends to bias the shape of the reconstruction, it doesn't unduly influence reconstructions of hemispheric mean temperature.

But hey, listen to a viscount with no credentials over the NSF if you'd like. ;)

These factors and many more are reviewed extensively every few years to make sure the project is on track with the goals. If the project has weaknesses, they are notified, and given time to fix the weaknesses. If they still cannot fix problems with the project, the review board will recommended that the project be cut. Most likely (IMHO) the project is failing due to poor management/leadership. The Lead PI is not able to inspire the other investigators to find alternative grant sources, and thus they are not meeting the NSF requirements.

How is this any different?

That we're here to worry about it, for one. Climate changes that occurred 50 million years ago didn't affect human civilization; the one we're undergoing now, will.

Today's CO2 concentration is the highest seen since the emergence of Homo sapiens, and likely the highest in the past 20 million years.

do you guys really think that 'man' is actually doing enough harm to this planet??

It is the scientific consensus that human activity is likely a significant factor in global climate change, yes.

There are a few, mostly industry shills, who argue very loudly that this consensus is wrong. Unfortunately they receive press coverage far out of proportion with their numbers.

The FCC has reserved bands throughout the radio spectrum for use by radio astronomers. The astronomers are using these bands to detect emissions from astrophysical objects (pulsars, for example). Channel 37 has long been reserved for use in radio astronomy. Refer to this recommendation (PDF) from the National Academy of Sciences.

The errors around these techniques are huge and they are not adequately documented in the Wikipedia page - which means it doesn't respond to the original question. Try looking a the recent NAS report which concluded that error bands were sufficiently large that you could only be confident temperatures now are higher than 400 years ago. And no such statement could be made about 1000 years due to the uncertainty. These errors will be even larger for and longer periods.

Your reference to a Wikipedia page (which is zealously defended by William Connolley, who does have an agenda here and is not actually a statistician) does not advance the discussion. As has frequently been acknowledged - on controversial issues Wikipedia is useless because it is subject to extreme positions (masquerading as balance) and edit wars. Just look at the history of that page and the discussion page to see that.

Because of larger uncertainties in temperature reconstructions for decades and individual years, and because not all proxies record temperatures for such short timescales, even less confidence can be placed in the Mann team's conclusions about the 1990s, and 1998 in particular .

That would be the National Academies of Science report.

Facts can be so inconvenient.

My personal belief is that YES, global warming is a reality. But I also believe that it is more to do with the Sun, than with our burning fossil fuel. I also believe the consequences are/will be less severe than predicted.

Also, I do not believe that science is yet at the stage where a prediction about efforts to stop global warming are anywhere near accurate.

Now, you want us to accept that THIS time the scientists are right,

and that we should expend a significant proportion of the world's income on reducing emmissions

- when we have no idea if it will do what we hope it will?

Far better to invest that money in protecting humanity from global warming, and to continue to develop strategies and techniques to live on a changeable and changeing world - just as we have always done.

"You mean, we have no idea how to properly predict climatology? Any changes we attempt to make may be a moot point, because the planet in the end may have complete control?"

The climate scientists do appear to be making predictions. Those predictions aren't pleasant. Further, they are making these predictions based -- now -- on 800,000 years worth of ice core data (rather than ~600K years of data as before). There are other indicators, from tree ring data to a range of species from warmer regions migrating up north and down south as temperatures change. And then there's all that glacial freshwater being dumped into the sea due to arctic warming, as well as unprecedented permafrost melts.

There's plenty of data to back the assertion that human activity is the cause for increasing CO2 density in the atmosphere. --M

Yes. Now we know that the centerpiece of that summary, the "Mann Hockey Stick", turned out to be a scientific fraud.

What's wrong with the one linked from TFA? "The National Academy of Sciences.

RTFA. Nowhere in the article does it say that 2005 was the hottest year we know of. It refers to "recent warmth". For those who care to look for themselves, the actual news release indicates (in its first sentence) that the findings are about "the last few decades of the 20th century". So, this is not "blatant stupidity and carping that passes itself off as science", it's an ambiguously-accurate digestion of real news that passes itself off as journalism, followed by your blatant stupidity and carping that passes itself off as an informative comment. Don't blame the scientists for doing research that gets ambiguously reported by the media.

I know your comment is a response to Gore's book (I read your link). But your comment is irrelevant to the story you commented on. Thanks for the knee-jerk reaction. Your comment should be modded -1 Offtopic.

For those who want to bypass the dysfunctional reporting of the MSM, you can get the full report in PDF directly from NAS.

Also available from that link: The press release, audio of the press briefing, an abbreviated report and opening statement.

Stephen McIntyre offers interesting commentary on the report here.

Sorry, wrong, that is not what they were saying at all. The report states that they have direct temperature records for the past 150 years, very good indirect evidence of temperature for the last 400 years, and weaker indirect evidence for the past 2000 years. While there were fluctuations, including a warm period in the middle ages, there is no indication that in any of those times past it was ever warmer than now.

The National Acadamies summary is better than the Yahoo article, and links to the (155 page!) report itself.

When will people (mostly crazed parents) give up on these witch hunts?

Four dead polar bears in the open ocean. Therefore they died because they drowned. Therefore its because the Arctic has warmed recently. Therefore the warming is caused by "Global Warming" caused by human fossil fuel use.

You left out a few things in your attempt tp recruit Fox News viewers: Tree ring samples from around the planet indicate longer growing seasons and warmer growing seasons in the last 150 years, the fact that the AVERAGE temperature across the Artic is increasing at twice the rate of the rest of the planet, that glaciers on mountains across the planet are in retreat, and that sea temperatures from Antartica to the Arctic are rising. Strangely, all of these phenomena are almost perfectly correlated with the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Saying that we should do nothing because we might not be the cause of the warming is like saying you shouldn't turn the heater down in the summer because it isn't your heater causing it to be hot.

But wait, the Arctic from 70-90 is still not as warm as the 1930s

Whoa buddy! Talk about wild extrapolation. You have two points of data and you think that invalidates every thing else? I know you're not that stupid, so you must be intellectually dishonest (a new, unexplored frontier for conservatives). You do know that global warming doesn't mean that every single measurement point on the Earth will show an increase in temperature don't you? You know that some places will get colder as the climate changes, right? Tell me you haven't been sleeping through class. Bueller ... Bueller.

Since the poster child for linking climate change with carbon dioxide use has been shown to be a product of bad statistics

Actually, your pet theory has been shot down. Sorry. Next.

Therefore, hence, or in conclusion: I call bullshit.

You can call bullshit all you like if it makes you feel better, but it doesn't make you right. Don't you have a Target store to protest or something?

Space Settlement: Homesteading on the Moon?

The degree to which land on the moon may be owned has been the subject of debate and international treaties since the start of the Cold War. This seminar will address the relationship of existing treaties to lunar property rights and the role of such ownership as an incentive for commercial space settlement. Panelists will address the following questions:

• Why settle the moon?
• What are the policy implications of a lunar settlement?
• What are the opportunities and challenges?
• Should privately funded missions play a role in lunar settlement?

On a subject like this, I would think that valuable, widely respected opinions would come from a combination of government, academia, and industry. Anyone have any other groups to suggest?

Many here on /. would equate government with industry, perhaps largely due to our current administration. Academia can also be suspect, as they're by no means a disinterested party, and University patent revenue is trending rapidly upwards.

As a confirmed secularist (Oxford sense 1), the fact that we're even hearing about religion in this discussion is alarming.

But you have to believe that someone out there is ethical, and thinking about the greater good, or slide into total apathy. That can't be good for you. Humans aren't wired that way.

The authors of the report are people who are probably worth listening to. Go read the press release, at least. Their names and titles are on it.
http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/03 09100399?OpenDocument

We all know something is amiss. Perhaps we should take a page from the environmentalist playbook. Think Globally, Act Locally. Spend 10% of your 'wanking on /.' time to being a parent, or a citizen in general, who supports education.

That rallying cry did wonders for the environmentalists. Perhaps it will here as well. One thing's for certain: there is no downside to it. It's all either neutral or up.

There are a lot of Free Software advocates here, right? Believers in a gift economy? OK, STF and give! Make a personal pledge. "I will not want on /. on this subject until I have made some contribution toward fixing the problem."

My contribution has been electronic and surface mail to my Senators and Congressmen, helping with I think US$13k for the local Boys and Girls Club, and equipment donations to the local school system.

I am not a parent, but I am a citizen of The United States of America. I have responsibilities as well as rights.

(Which still sucks given who they're quoting.) But the NYT still should have denoted the error in the standard fashion.

Without a major push to strengthen the foundations of America's competitiveness, the United States could soon lose its privileged position.