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I'd settle for 500 years of accurate, precise (with an error no greater than 0.05C) temperature measurements from at least 5000 sites scattered reasonably uniformly over the globe.

Considering that CO2 levels will continue to rise for 1000 years afterwards -- we really will have missed a chance to build a sustainable economy. By analogy, you won't save the building from fire, because you want to measure exactly how hot the flame is, to within 0.5C, to prove that the house is really in danger.

In assessing certainty, one cannot simply pull number like 500, 5000 and 0.05C out of thin air. There is a confidence interval that goes with the measurement. Do you know what that confidence interval is? Didn't think so.

On the other hand, climate scientists *do* know what their confidence interval is. It is all in the ipcc reports. Ever read one? Didn't think so.

No, tree rings won't do. Nor will ice cores. Because we have less than 100 years of temperature measurements to calibrate them with.

I'd trust statistical techniques to assess the error range of proxies, over rules of thumb.

Oh, and I'd like to be able to see the raw data, the massaged data, and the formulae used to do the massaging. Note that the CRU people can't or won't provide the raw data - either of which is a big warning sign in my book.

The CRU people provide almost all of the data, except for date they cannot provide because it is not theirs to provide. That is hardly a conspiracy. In fact, they are simply obeying the law. The vast majority of the data is here. You can also find tonnes of raw data and source code here

I say all of this with no expectation of having convinced you of anything. Try to find a "top 10" skeptic arguments. No such resource exists, because wild charges of conspiracy is the best evidence that skeptics have. If you fail to find a top 10, that actually contains sound arguments -- would that be sufficient to cast doubt on your AGW opinion, or will the burden of proof just shift further away?

No, most of this data has been available for years, although RealClimate assembled this convenient index in part as a response to claims that scientists were withholding data that were leveled in association with the recent data theft from CRU.

There has long been plenty of raw and corrected climate data, as well as climate models with source code, more than enough for any interested investigator to replicate major conclusions of climate researchers.

Most of the interest in raw data seems to be politically motivated and to be directed toward finding pretexts to level accusations against climate researchers in order to create the illusion of doubt about the science. The groups that scream most loudly about unreleased data never seem to do much with the great bulk of data that is available. One popular strategy seems to be to demand raw data from somebody who does not actually own it, and then cry "conspiracy" when they try to explain that unreleased raw data must be requested from the actual owner. For example CRU was bombarded with "freedom of information" demands for raw data that was not generated by them and that actually belonged to national meteorological services.

ignorance indeed:

(1) Greenland used to be green....
Actually it didn't, it was called GREENLand to lure people there...marketing in action. Or perhaps a translation error.

(2) Medieval Warm Period
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/medieval-warm-period-mwp/
2000 year temp graph

(3) Rome used to import ENGLISH wine
correlation vs causation

(4) Astronomers have been pointing out *forever* that Major and Minor Ice Ages are dependent on the precession and nutation of the Earth's orbit.
I don't dispute this. However, there is *no* proof of this causing the *rate* at which we are seeing change today. Something else is effecting the system that wasn't around previously...like us.

(5) http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf where proxy data shows the global warming folks are seriously out to lunch
The Heartland Institute? seriously? they are such a blatant shill for Big Oil and Big Business it's not funny.

The recent disclosures that some scientists may not have followed accepted processes for handling data (ignored more complete data sets for smaller data sets that better supported their ideas etc.) are serious things to investigate and rightly should be investigated. I don't know of any climate change proponents who disagree with that.

It doesn't, however, change the other *vast* accumulated data that show a very marked divergence from historical norms at rates not seen previously.

ignorance indeed:

(1) Greenland used to be green....
Actually it didn't, it was called GREENLand to lure people there...marketing in action. Or perhaps a translation error.

(2) Medieval Warm Period
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/medieval-warm-period-mwp/
2000 year temp graph

(3) Rome used to import ENGLISH wine
correlation vs causation

(4) Astronomers have been pointing out *forever* that Major and Minor Ice Ages are dependent on the precession and nutation of the Earth's orbit.
I don't dispute this. However, there is *no* proof of this causing the *rate* at which we are seeing change today. Something else is effecting the system that wasn't around previously...like us.

(5) http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf where proxy data shows the global warming folks are seriously out to lunch
The Heartland Institute? seriously? they are such a blatant shill for Big Oil and Big Business it's not funny.

The recent disclosures that some scientists may not have followed accepted processes for handling data (ignored more complete data sets for smaller data sets that better supported their ideas etc.) are serious things to investigate and rightly should be investigated. I don't know of any climate change proponents who disagree with that.

It doesn't, however, change the other *vast* accumulated data that show a very marked divergence from historical norms at rates not seen previously.

There were no peer reviewed papers in the 70s saying we were headed for an ice age.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/

With the global warming 'scandal', you have a few scientists who are the only ones with access to the raw temperature data.

This is a myth that is being propounded for political purposes. In reality, climate research is one of the most open areas of scientific study. I don't know of any other field in which so much of the raw data and even the analysis software has been made publicly available. A huge amount of data and computer code, including a great deal of raw climate data is available online. There is some data that is owned by various national meteorological services and not publicly available, but even this is routinely provided to qualified researchers. The conclusions of CRU (the owner of the stolen files) have been replicated by multiple independent research groups that have carried out their own independent analyses of the same data.

Have you tried looking for the data? And exactly what "funny business" was actually going on?

Well, one thing wrong with your statements is that you think climate scientists in general are hiding their models and data. Here, have some climate models and data.

Another error in your statements: the last decade is the hottest on record, in any of the records. You can easily look this up for yourself, so there's no excuse for being wrong about it. The rest of what you said is similarly flawed and uninformed, as can easily be verified with minimal research.

I'm coming late to this discussion, but I have to comment on this. It is simply not true that climate scientists in general don't want to reveal their models. In fact, many of them are publicly available, as is much of the actual data. Here have a look at this collection of climate model code and data.

Incidentally, you are also incorrect about climate science not being esoteric. You think global average temperature is a simple quantity to calculate? Yeah, the result is just a number, but a vast amount of data and calculation goes into getting that number. I think a lot of critics of climate science don't appreciate the degree to which climate scientists have bent over backward to try to make their results accessible to laypeople, although the details are actually quite complicated.

Also, pretty much all debate on global warming has already ended--the scientific debate, anyway.

Not really, science never stops "debating".

Yes and yes (yes, Realclimate again, but try clicking the links and reading this time).

I click on them, and then I actually read them.

#1 cites Mann. Thats right, its cites Mann. Do you even comprehend the stupidity of using Mann to validate Mann? Why do you keep doing it.

#2 shows a graph, with something similar to Mann's stick produced by Oerlemans, Moberg, and Esper. Before I roast your citation, I am going to point out that Moberg has co-authored at least 8 papers with Jones. Now on with the show.

This is the RealClimate version of Oerlemans graph.
But this is NASA's version of the graph. AND THEY PROVIDE THE ACTUAL DATA

Why doesnt Mann's version of the graph (hosted by Mann and used in defense of Mann) look anything like NASA's version(hosted by NASA and used to illustrate whats in the paper?)

You really are a sucker.

Yes and yes (yes, Realclimate again, but try clicking the links and reading this time).

If you did read the links, you'd see that Mann refers to "dozen model-based and proxy-based reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature by different groups". And that was in in 2005. Do your homework.

I guess this means you seriously do think that all of climate science hinges on one single study.

Yes and yes (yes, Realclimate again, but try clicking the links and reading this time).

If you did read the links, you'd see that Mann refers to "dozen model-based and proxy-based reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature by different groups". And that was in in 2005. Do your homework.

I guess this means you seriously do think that all of climate science hinges on one single study.

"And first most important greenhouse gas is water vapor

The water vapour red-herring is #26 on this list of the most common bogus arguments repeated ad-nausem by "skeptics". Sure the water vapour in the atmosphere warms the planet signifigantly. However the atmosphere is basically saturated with water vapour, pump as much water vapour into the atmosphere as you like and it will fall out as rain with a few days.

You cannot staurate the atmosphere with CO2 (re: Venus) or N20, however you can saturate the oceans with CO2 to form carbolic acid and severly disrupt the very roots of the global food chain.

"I believe in AGW but let's not claim the climate science is easy to understand or obvious.

I agree, the science is not settled, philosophically speaking science is never settled.

"This is why I get angry when AGWers equate those that disbelieve in AGW with creationists; the principles behind evolution are much easier and more intuitive to understand than climate science is."

Every scientists is a skeptic and the best of them are self-skeptical. However what people like me get angry about is the huge amount of deliberate and coordinated disinformation from lobbyists such as the CEI and the heartland institute. It's bad enough that the intellectually incurious simply accepted their crap on face value and endlessly repeat but what really pisses me off are the large number of politicians who actively push the same nonesense (Senator Inhofe is a particularly bad example).

There is a name for this kind of propoganda it's called "teaching the contraversy" They teach their contraversy in exactly the same manner as creationist teach their's; ie: via paid astroturfer's and web sites such as icecap, WUWT, ClimateAudit and countless other fronts for the FF industry. These are the people I routinely refer to a psuedo-skeptics, many others call them deniers.

Agrguing with these people and their avid followers is very much like arguing with creationists, evolution may seem a simple idea these days but when I went to school in the 60's it was every bit as contraversial and complex as climate science is today.

More recently the well established fact that smoking causes cancer was also vigoursly disputed by so called scientists. It should come as no surprise that some of the "scientists" spreading FUD on climate are the very same "scientists" who spread FUD for the tabcoo industry in the 80's and 90's (eg: Fred S Singer).

Which data sets are those? Seriously. Which? Show my a hockey stick that does not use Mann's or Briffa's data. Do it now.

This straw man is old and has been debunked so often it's silly. Realclimate deals with it on their page Myth vs. Fact Regarding the "Hockey Stick":

Paleoclimate evidence is simply one in a number of independent lines of evidence indicating the strong likelihood that human influences on climate play a dominant role in the observed 20th century warming of the earth’s surface.

Nearly a dozen model-based and proxy-based reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature by different groups all suggest that late 20th century warmth is anomalous in a long-term (multi-century to millennial) context (see Figures 1 and 2 in “Temperature Variations in Past Centuries and The So-Called ‘Hockey Stick’”).

Mann et al produced an updated paper in 2008 using a more diverse and larger dataset, showing that recent increases in northern hemisphere surface temperature are anomalous relative to at least the past 1300 years.

You didn't seriously think all of climate science hinged on one study, did you?

Which data sets are those? Seriously. Which? Show my a hockey stick that does not use Mann's or Briffa's data. Do it now.

This straw man is old and has been debunked so often it's silly. Realclimate deals with it on their page Myth vs. Fact Regarding the "Hockey Stick":

Paleoclimate evidence is simply one in a number of independent lines of evidence indicating the strong likelihood that human influences on climate play a dominant role in the observed 20th century warming of the earth’s surface.

Nearly a dozen model-based and proxy-based reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature by different groups all suggest that late 20th century warmth is anomalous in a long-term (multi-century to millennial) context (see Figures 1 and 2 in “Temperature Variations in Past Centuries and The So-Called ‘Hockey Stick’”).

Mann et al produced an updated paper in 2008 using a more diverse and larger dataset, showing that recent increases in northern hemisphere surface temperature are anomalous relative to at least the past 1300 years.

You didn't seriously think all of climate science hinged on one study, did you?

Which data sets are those? Seriously. Which? Show my a hockey stick that does not use Mann's or Briffa's data. Do it now.

This straw man is old and has been debunked so often it's silly. Realclimate deals with it on their page Myth vs. Fact Regarding the "Hockey Stick":

Paleoclimate evidence is simply one in a number of independent lines of evidence indicating the strong likelihood that human influences on climate play a dominant role in the observed 20th century warming of the earth’s surface.

Nearly a dozen model-based and proxy-based reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature by different groups all suggest that late 20th century warmth is anomalous in a long-term (multi-century to millennial) context (see Figures 1 and 2 in “Temperature Variations in Past Centuries and The So-Called ‘Hockey Stick’”).

Mann et al produced an updated paper in 2008 using a more diverse and larger dataset, showing that recent increases in northern hemisphere surface temperature are anomalous relative to at least the past 1300 years.

You didn't seriously think all of climate science hinged on one study, did you?

• GHCN v.2 (Global Historical Climate Network: weather station records from around the world, temperature and precipitation)
• USHCN US. Historical Climate Network (v.1 and v.2)
• Antarctic weather stations
• European weather stations (ECA)
• Satellite feeds (AMSU, SORCE (Solar irradiance), NASA A-train)
• Tide Gauges (Proudman Oceanographic Lab)
• World Glacier Monitoring Service
• Argo float data
• International Comprehensive Ocean/Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) (Oceanic in situ observations)
• AERONET Aerosol information

You can follow the original link to realclimate.org to find many other links to data sources. I have posted the data sources above only because many critics of AGW won't even bother with realclimate.org as they are thought to be part of the conspiracy. The data exists and is public as is the source code.

Here, the climate data (raw).

This comment reveals a very popular ignorance. You can't publish "raw data" that you don't own. Many times the climate data comes from National Meteorological Services that require an NDA to be signed. Organizations like CRU cannot give away that data, but of course, you're if you want to pay/sign an NDA you're welcome to do that.

But there is data that is freely available, like here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/

So really, your comment, and the 1000s of others like it all over the web, are without merit.

No, the source code that was leaked wasn't climate model code. That's not what CRU does. The guys who analyze historical trends aren't generally the guys who create climate models. Different skill sets; trend analysis is statistics, climate modeling is physics. Besides, the source code for the climate models is available online (and has been for a long time). Anybody who wants can work with it.

In fact, it's not clear whether the code that was leaked was ever used for any published data. Anybody who has done research probably has code on their HD where they've asked questions like, "Well, what if I assume that this data is wrong and make this modification to the data. Does that change my conclusions?" A lot of the time, the result is not particularly interesting, and it never gets published.

Then this must be lies, since it refutes the claims that random data makes a hockey stick: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/on-yet-another-false-claim-by-mcintyre-and-mckitrick/

Where's the refutation of the refutation?

And, I might add, they ought to be able to hang onto that clean data so that other people can examine it and see if they can duplicate the results.

Great. Let's eliminate the "intellectual property" laws that have closed off some of the data.

Many nation's weather services -- the sources of the CRU's data -- claim copyright or place other restrictions on their data.

Of course, I'm sure the conspiracy theorists will weave this into their fantasies as well, that those laws were passed specifically to enable the climatological cabal to steal away America's sovereignty, or whatever.

And here's their response, pointing out his misuse of statistics.. This is fun, isn't it?

I agree that the data and code should be made public. Fortunately, NASA has been doing this for some time, as have many other researchers. Gavin Schmidt at NASA has put together a list of links to global warming data and code that is available online.

If you are interested in the scientific context of this story and the emails, I would recommend reading Gavin's posts on context at Real Climate as well.

There have also been interviews with Gerald North who led the NAS investigation into the hockey stick controversy a few years ago, and Peter Kelemen, prof at Columbia, explaining why this hack will not affect the science. Basically, global warming theory is supported by many lines of evidence from many different sources, and does not depend on the credibility of any one source. Furthermore, there is nothing in these emails or data that actually disproves any of the published research.

If this is the best skeptics can do, I think they're in for a rough time. The skeptical argument has little scientific support, so they resort to a silly PR stunt like this hoping to get a draw in the public debate. It has been great to see prominent deniers like Inhofe in the senate going way out on a limb, claiming this proves global warming is a hoax and so forth. There will hopefully be full investigations, at which point they'll probably end up looking pretty foolish when the science is vindicated.

I agree that the data and code should be made public. Fortunately, NASA has been doing this for some time, as have many other researchers. Gavin Schmidt at NASA has put together a list of links to global warming data and code that is available online.

If you are interested in the scientific context of this story and the emails, I would recommend reading Gavin's posts on context at Real Climate as well.

There have also been interviews with Gerald North who led the NAS investigation into the hockey stick controversy a few years ago, and Peter Kelemen, prof at Columbia, explaining why this hack will not affect the science. Basically, global warming theory is supported by many lines of evidence from many different sources, and does not depend on the credibility of any one source. Furthermore, there is nothing in these emails or data that actually disproves any of the published research.

If this is the best skeptics can do, I think they're in for a rough time. The skeptical argument has little scientific support, so they resort to a silly PR stunt like this hoping to get a draw in the public debate. It has been great to see prominent deniers like Inhofe in the senate going way out on a limb, claiming this proves global warming is a hoax and so forth. There will hopefully be full investigations, at which point they'll probably end up looking pretty foolish when the science is vindicated.

Unfounded denier claim #6 of 7.

That SciAm link itself links to a RC page titled The CRU hack: Context.

One of the points it makes is:

HARRY_read_me.txt. This is a 4 year-long work log of Ian (Harry) Harris who was working to upgrade the ... legacy CRU TS 2.1 product ... The CSU TS 3.0 is available now ... and so presumably the database problems got fixed

Two responses:

• Who says the TS 3.0 data isn't as fudged up as the 2.1 data was?
• By what basis should we assume that the database problems got fixed? Faith in the people who hid the decline?

Claim #6 has nothing to do with climate time series, but I'll bite: The "database problems" and their fixes in CRU2.1 are discussed and explained in detail in a peer reviewed article: Mitchell and Jones, 2005:An improved method of constructing a database of monthly climate observations and associated high-resolution grids.Int. J. Climatology, 25, 693-712, Doi: 10.1002/joc.1181.

I have more faith in reviewed articles written, discussed and refined by people who have worked in the field for decades, rather than people who believe what suits their pocketbook best without any knowledge of the subject matter. How about you?

Unfounded denier claim #6 of 7.

That SciAm link itself links to a RC page titled The CRU hack: Context.

One of the points it makes is:

HARRY_read_me.txt. This is a 4 year-long work log of Ian (Harry) Harris who was working to upgrade the ... legacy CRU TS 2.1 product ... The CSU TS 3.0 is available now ... and so presumably the database problems got fixed

Two responses:

• Who says the TS 3.0 data isn't as fudged up as the 2.1 data was?
• By what basis should we assume that the database problems got fixed? Faith in the people who hid the decline?

They ought to be able to use the clean data without need for obfuscation, as these climatologists were caught doing.

Um, do you have any evidence or even a link pointing to evidence for that claim? I submit this as a counter-claim:

FTFL:

"Since emails are normally intended to be private, people writing them are, shall we say, somewhat freer in expressing themselves than they would in a public statement. For instance, we are sure it comes as no shock to know that many scientists do not hold Steve McIntyre in high regard. Nor that a large group of them thought that the Soon and Baliunas (2003), Douglass et al (2008) or McClean et al (2009) papers were not very good (to say the least) and should not have been published. These sentiments have been made abundantly clear in the literature (though possibly less bluntly).

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to 'get rid of the MWP', no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no 'marching orders' from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though."

Remember Gore's CO2 graph? Probably a 95% correlation between CO2 and temperature, which he presented as proof that CO2 CAUSES global warming. Except that the CO2 increased 800 years AFTER the warming trend. In other words, warming CAUSED CO2 increases, the opposite of what he implied.

That's a classic argument that has been refuted again and again. Like at How to talk to a climate skeptic; CO2 Lags Not Leads, or at Realcliamate.org; The lag between temperature and CO2. (Gore’s got it right.).

In short, with warming periods lasting for around 5000 years, a lag of 800 years isn't as significant as you might think. Other factors than just CO2 affects warming, which isn't surprising or unknown.

Most of your assertions have been debunked a long time ago. To take just one example:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/

And, from working in academia as a programmer, I can tell you that the quality of engineering is in general low, because most of the time you don't have professional software engineers working on the product. Unfortunate, but there's not enough money for anything more than an RA, which are often inexperienced.

Lie.

FALSE. All accusations of fraud have been addressed by the scientists in question, as well as outside sources. There is a reason this hasn't been getting much mainstream media coverage. For everyone's information: data was not manipulated, dissenting papers were not suppressed
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/cru-hack-more-context/

Climategate: Why it matters

"The allegations .. are .. that climate scientists .. withheld and destroyed data they should have released as good scientific practice", Andrew Orlowski

I would comment there only theREG has disabled commenting on this 'story'

"Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Centre in the United States, among others. Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves; there is no need for anyone to manipulate them."

Some of the data behind these other results can likely be found in a new resource that jamie located up at the Real Climate site: a compilation of links to a wide variety of raw data about climate "

Perhaps someone should contact Andrew and point him to the site ...

Climategate: Why it matters

"The allegations .. are .. that climate scientists .. withheld and destroyed data they should have released as good scientific practice", Andrew Orlowski

I would comment there only theREG has disabled commenting on this 'story'

"Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Centre in the United States, among others. Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves; there is no need for anyone to manipulate them."

Some of the data behind these other results can likely be found in a new resource that jamie located up at the Real Climate site: a compilation of links to a wide variety of raw data about climate "

Perhaps someone should contact Andrew and point him to the site ...

Let's assume your numbers are correct, and that we have the highly simplified situation that you describe, with a simple absorption-reradiation day-night cycle.

Now, take a 100-year period. What difference between energy absorption and radiation do we need to induce in order to make the air temperature increase by 1 degree C, assuming no change in albedo? That's simple - it's the total energy required (1273 J/m3) divided by the time period (3e9 seconds), which is roughly 0.4e-6 W/m3 or, in other words, half a billionth of the incident energy. That's an order of magnitude which puts the effect in the "plausible, but needs verifying" range for me, and not something to be dismissed out of hand.

CO2 levels TRAIL [wikipedia.org] temperature increases (note the graph is read from right to left)

Actually they don't. At least, not in that graph. It's an optical illusion. Open the image in an image editor and draw vertical lines; you'll see that the peaks of CO2 and temperature match perfectly, which tells us nothing about causation whatsoever.

And any scientist worth his salt knows that the MAIN greenhouse gas is WATER VAPOR, not CO2. Well, if you heat the planet, of course you're going to evaporate more water into the atmosphere, which keeps the planet warmer. However the water vapor wasn't the CAUSE of the heating. It's merely acting as an insulator. If you remove the heat, the atmosphere cools, water condenses, and you're back to the beginning.

That's right. Assume we are heating the planet by adding carbon dioxide; it's made worse by the extra water vapour chucked into the atmosphere by the excess heat.

Considering the huge amounts of energy involved, the complete inability of mankind to produce even a small fraction of that energy even if we wanted to

That's irrelevant. We're not producing energy. The argument is that we've artificially increased the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 30%ish.

the minimal REAL impact that CO2 (the alleged "culprit") has on the greenhouse effect when compared to water vapor

It's 25%ish we (might be able to) influence as opposed to 70%ish we can't. I don't view that as "minimal".

or even methane

The human-driven change in methane levels has had one third the effect of human-driven changes in carbon dioxide levels. Yes, methane can *potentially* be really nasty, but comparatively it hasn't been - yet. Insert your standard "methane sink going critical" apocalyptic scare story here; there are more than enough to go around.

and the fact that the martian polar caps are also receding,

That avenue's a bust, unfortunately.

and atmospheric phenomena on Jupiter is recently increasing

That tells us very little. All we know there is that something changed. The equatorial temperature *appears to have* increased, with a corresponding drop at the poles. What we definitely do know is that a chaotic system underwent dramatic change, which is not exactly surprising in itself.

it's much more reasonable to conclude that our solar system is receiving more radiation, either from the sun or nearby stars, for whatever as yet unknown reason.

Not really, given a) the above, and b) a sound physical hypothesis for man-made warning.

"Read it yourself"

Pity you didn't follow your own advise. Here is an incomplete list of the factual faults with your "informative" post.

1. The emails were NOT stolen from RC they were stolen from a server at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU).
2.RC's blog is hosted in the US by a company called "webfaction", it has nothing to do with the UAE. Last time I checked the UAE and the US were sperarated by a large body of water.
3.Here is the list of contributing scientists, you will note all but one of these internationally recognised scientists work for US institutions, none are employed at UAE.
4. Their love of open data sources is hardly "newfound", they put up the list as a reaction to morons who can't use google to find existing data.

"I just can't find the reference just now."

Yes just like you couldn't find existing data without someone compiling a list for you, suspiciously convienient if you ask me...

As to whether or not the site is actually used for policy advocacy, don't trust me. Read it yourself.

Thanks, that makes for interesting reading, very informative site.

The site is the web page of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU), whose data, models and bias is under scrutiny here. This is the server the material was stolen from, and they're struggling mightily to do damage control. The material was assembled in response to a FOIA request and intended to be destroyed when the request was legally thwarted. This same organization has claimed to have "lost" the primary data their published information is based upon, and one of the researchers in a stolen email actually stated a preference for destroying the raw data to releasing it. Their newfound love of openness is nothing but damage control and the data they give should be treated with suspicion. Using them as a primary reference for this issue is of debatable worth.

And yes, one of the emails did reference using the site for advocacy - I just can't find the reference just now. If you know where it is, please post it here. As to whether or not the site is actually used for policy advocacy, don't trust me. Read it yourself.

So there, mister "flamebait" moderator.

The site is the web page of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU), whose data, models and bias is under scrutiny here. This is the server the material was stolen from, and they're struggling mightily to do damage control. The material was assembled in response to a FOIA request and intended to be destroyed when the request was legally thwarted. This same organization has claimed to have "lost" the primary data their published information is based upon, and one of the researchers in a stolen email actually stated a preference for destroying the raw data to releasing it. Their newfound love of openness is nothing but damage control and the data they give should be treated with suspicion. Using them as a primary reference for this issue is of debatable worth.

And yes, one of the emails did reference using the site for advocacy - I just can't find the reference just now. If you know where it is, please post it here. As to whether or not the site is actually used for policy advocacy, don't trust me. Read it yourself.

So there, mister "flamebait" moderator.

So most of 'them' must be much older than a hundred plus years... Global warming has been around since 1895 or older.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius

They demand the power to do this, but they refuse to release their data.

This should do for a start:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/

They refuse to publish the code for their computer models

Really. Did you try SourceForge? And why not??

http://sourceforge.net/projects/climate-model/>

And this one has been public since 1983. 1983 was a long time ago...

http://www.ccsm.ucar.edu/models/ccsm3.0/

They refuse to rationally refute skepticism.

You mean like giving pointers to climate data and climate models that you claim are not public? Or pointing out that this isn't an new theory?

They refuse to address the question of whether warmer may be better than colder.

Ah yes. A little warmer might very well be better. You have a point. The problem is that we are unlikely to stop at a little warmer.

--

This is not a sig. If this was a sig, the "--" would be closer. If it was a sig, it would say something witty. If it was a sig, it would be meaningful. If it was a sig, it wouldn't be nearly this long.

How come the world temprature has dropped half a degree since 2000?

It hasn't.

It is highly questionable whether this "pause" is even real. It does show up to some extent (no cooling, but reduced 10-year warming trend) in the Hadley Center data, but it does not show in the GISS data, see Figure 1. There, the past ten 10-year trends (i.e. 1990-1999, 1991-2000 and so on) have all been between 0.17 and 0.34 C per decade, close to or above the expected anthropogenic trend, with the most recent one (1999-2008) equal to 0.19 C per decade - just as predicted by IPCC as response to anthropogenic forcing.*

According to the GISS data (which takes the polar temperatures into consideration) the decadal trend over 1998-2009 is +0.19C! In light of the fact that the largest increases in temperatures have been observed at the poles, can you understand how a methodology which ignores polar temperatures might not give an accurate global picture of warming?

More importantly do you understand why your question, were it even true, is largely meaningless? If you don't yet understand that comparing the temperatures over a very few of the hottest decades on record (the 1990s and 2000s) has no significant bearing over a record stretching back a century and a half, I suggest you compare the last two decades to the 1890s and 1900s.

And how are world leaders likely to respond if the temperature drops during the 2010s?

Sadly the science tells us that is extrememly unlikely happen. But even if it did, world leaders should respond by accepting the advice of those who understand the statistical significance of any observed falls in trends as against the entire instrumental record. Perhaps you should work at gaining some such understanding yourself?

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/#more-1853

No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.

There hasn't even been a hint in the emails about any data being falsified. If there had been, the "climate change sceptics" wouldn't try to use quotes such as that one. Now, however, they simply have nothing real to show us.

If this refers to the 'triks' dug out in private mails from so-called hack in the mailsystem of CRU -which actually shows signs of an inside job-, check the response at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/ . Hint: quotemining.

You can measure the ratio of different types of carbon in tree rings.

What has been found is that 13C/12C ratios are the lowest they've been for 10000 years, and that there is a sharp decline starting in 1850.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/

RJ Francey et al, Tellus 51B, pp.170-193, 1999

How often do you go off a cliff when jumping to conclusions?

Did you even bother to READ the email thread this was a part of?

This was discussing the correction of a data series with a KNOWN ERROR. They were discussing how to correct the ERROR.

Here ya go: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/06/of-buckets-and-blogs/

~X~

Check out what this guy has to say. He talks about the science and politics surrounding climate change.

For a summary, there's a huge disjoint in what scientists are actually saying, and what is being presented to the public. When scientists talk, they talk about maybe a degree increase in global mean temperatures within a century, which frankly is within natural variation within a day in any given place. What is being presented to the public is drought, hurricanes, dying polar bears, rising ocean levels, and other catastrophes. Now, not so many scientists are willing to put their reputation on the line to say any of this is going to happen. Even the IPCC is not willing to go that far.

In 2007 people freaked out because ant-arctic ice was retreating a little farther than normal. Now it is growing back. Once again, the change was extremely small compared to the natural variation in ice coverage every year (as you can see in this graph).

Another important point he makes, is that statistically 2009 the earth had the same mean temperature as 20 years ago.

Sometimes people bring up the point that there will be an inflection point, that somehow we will hit a point where suddenly the feedback systems kick in and the temperature starts rising drastically. However, there is no evidence for this, and in fact the evidence points the opposite direction: that the more CO2 we get, the less cumulative greenhouse heating we see.

Another thing he talks about is that it's a good idea to measure the actual greenhouse effect, that is the amount of energy that gets trapped in the atmosphere. We can measure this with satellites that measure radiation coming off the earth.

There is a lot of bad science going on, and if you look around, you should be able to see some for yourself. Watch that movie, and look especially for disjoints in what scientists are actually saying and what is getting presented in publications like New Scientist, or that you hear politicians saying. Obviously you are not going to get good information from Fox News, either.

Watch that movie, it's a good starting point for figuring out where to make your own analysis. The concepts behind global warming really are simple, and anyone should be able to understand them even if they can't go out and make CO2 measurements for themselves.

Check out what this guy has to say. He talks about the science and politics surrounding climate change.

For a summary, there's a huge disjoint in what scientists are actually saying, and what is being presented to the public. When scientists talk, they talk about maybe a degree increase in global mean temperatures within a century, which frankly is within natural variation within a day in any given place. What is being presented to the public is drought, hurricanes, dying polar bears, rising ocean levels, and other catastrophes. Now, not so many scientists are willing to put their reputation on the line to say any of this is going to happen. Even the IPCC is not willing to go that far.

In 2007 people freaked out because ant-arctic ice was retreating a little farther than normal. Now it is growing back. Once again, the change was extremely small compared to the natural variation in ice coverage every year (as you can see in this graph).

Another important point he makes, is that statistically 2009 the earth had the same mean temperature as 20 years ago.

Sometimes people bring up the point that there will be an inflection point, that somehow we will hit a point where suddenly the feedback systems kick in and the temperature starts rising drastically. However, there is no evidence for this, and in fact the evidence points the opposite direction: that the more CO2 we get, the less cumulative greenhouse heating we see.

Another thing he talks about is that it's a good idea to measure the actual greenhouse effect, that is the amount of energy that gets trapped in the atmosphere. We can measure this with satellites that measure radiation coming off the earth.

There is a lot of bad science going on, and if you look around, you should be able to see some for yourself. Watch that movie, and look especially for disjoints in what scientists are actually saying and what is getting presented in publications like New Scientist, or that you hear politicians saying. Obviously you are not going to get good information from Fox News, either.

Watch that movie, it's a good starting point for figuring out where to make your own analysis. The concepts behind global warming really are simple, and anyone should be able to understand them even if they can't go out and make CO2 measurements for themselves.

Even Lindzen's fellow skeptic Roy Spencer thinks Lindzen and Choi is wrong; see here, and also here and here, and a summary here.

Other e-mails routinely discuss efforts to manipulate and massage the data to account for various political difficulties the data are causing them. For example, one e-mail discusses using a particular modifier to minimize a warming "blip" in the 1940s

Yeah, because if there's one thing the Global Warming Scientific Conspiracy wants to do most, it's to minimize evidence of global warming.

In fact, the 1940s warming blip has been discussed in the literature for some time now, as part of a debate over whether it's real or a data artifact. One of the most recent discussions of this debate is in this paper, one of the authors of which is from the UK CRU group. Here they suggest that it is in fact a data artifact, and ought to be corrected so reflect less ocean warming than previously believed.

For some reason, skeptics froth at the mouth about how the surface temperature record ought to be revised downward due to supposed biases, but when climate scientists develop a downward revision due to actual biases, suddenly it's "damning evidence" from "fear mongerers".

More here.