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Climatic Research Unit Hacked, Files Leaked
huckamania was one of many readers to write with the news that the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Unit was hacked, and internal documents released. Some discussion and analysis of the leaked items can be found at Watts Up With That. The CRU has confirmed that a breach occurred, but not that all 61 MB of released material is genuine. Some of the emails would seem to raise concerns about the science as practiced — or at least beg an explanation. From the Watts Up link: "[The CRU] is widely recognized as one of the world's leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change. Consisting of a staff of around thirty research scientists and students, the Unit has developed a number of the data sets widely used in climate research, including the global temperature record used to monitor the state of the climate system, as well as statistical software packages and climate models. An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertised an FTP file on a Russian FTP server. Here is the message that was placed on the Air Vent today: 'We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents.' The file was large, about 61 megabytes, containing hundreds of files. It contained data, code, and emails apparently from the CRU. If proved legitimate, these bombshells could spell trouble for the AGW crowd." Reader brandaman supplied the link to the archive of pilfered data. Reader aretae characterized the emails as revealing "...lots of intrigue, data manipulation, attempting to shut out opposing points of view out of scientific journals. Almost makes you think it's a religion. Anyone surprised?" And reader bugnuts adds, for context: "These emails are certainly taken out of context, whether they are legitimate or fraudulent, which adds to the confusion."
The CRU has confirmed that a breach occurred, but not that all 61 MB of released material is genuine.
Rarely do I have enough time to generate 61 MB (let alone 61 compressed MB) of data, code and e-mails that serves my political/religious purposes. So if this is tampered data or correspondence, there would almost certainly be conflicting items inside such a large repository. I'm not saying it isn't possible, it just decreases the odds that this is a hoax.
'We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents'
Why? Why a random sampling? If you're going to serve up 61 MB zipped, it might as well be 61 GB zipped. Why not release both sets ("the good stuff.tar.gz" and "everything including the inane 'what's for lunch today?' e-mails.tar.gz")?
It's borderline hilarious that the claim is made that this is 'too important to be kept under wraps' followed immediately by the 'we'll decide what you see' cloaked by the equally hilarious word "random." Random? Really? You want me to believe that you printed everything out and put it on a big spinning wheel, blindfolded yourself and then threw darts at it? I mean, come on. Nothing in the political world is random. You would have done yourself much more justice saying you've released what you feel is relevant.
Being one, I know first hand that hackers are highly disorganized. But come on, why not torrent the whole set or wikileaks it or something? I mean, I'm almost waiting for a high quality Ford Fusion ad in PDF to surface right in the middle of the compressed file saying, "Doesn't this worry you enough to go green?"
My work here is dung.
Reading random chunks of leaked data and E-mail is not the way science is done, nor policy made.
Let's see ALL the data, and let's not see the E-mail at all -- E-mail isn't data.
Otherwise, STFU, this isn't helping anything.
I piss off bigots.
Since some of the emails are sent from them, it's worth reading.
Link
For the specifics read the whole article. For a general summary, this excerpt will do:
"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."
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
MIT climatologist Richard Lindzen has long made these claims about global warming researchers, as he discusses in a talk from a few weeks ago: "Cooler Heads". It looks like he's slowly being vindicated in his views of both the researchers and the conclusions.
I have long felt that there's too much sensationalism surrounding global warming for the crisis to be exactly what it is represented as in the media. I think a healthy dose of scepticism is always a good thing. Equally so with this. I am sceptical that this is a "random sampling", but rather probably closer to being a carefully selected panorama of all of the nastiest bits. I will read through it, as I am sure a couple people will, but I encourage scepticism.
GFA/M/S d-- s: a--- C++++ UBL++$ P+ L+++ !E- W++ N+ !o K- w--- !O !M !V PS++ PE Y+ PGP+ t+++ 5- X+ R tv@ b++ DI++++ D+ G
This certainly highlights the need for oversight in organizations where their output (summaries, trends, studies, statements, etc.) are used to formulate government policy. The fact that there exists evidence suggesting that opposing points were knowingly ignored and/or oppressed is disturbing. Not to mention the fact that data was potentially manipulated to support a pre-existing point of view. We need more transparency.
From HARRY_READ_ME.txt, one of the leaked files.
...This could be a result of my mis-setting of the parameters on Tim's
programs (although I have followed his recommendations wherever
possible), or it could be a result of Tim using the Beowulf 1
cluster for the f90 work. Beowulf 1 is now integrated in to the
latest Beowulf cluster so it may not be practical to test that
theory.
Or cherry picked?
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet (I, v, 166-167)
The forgot bittorrent
h ah aha ah ah haaaaaa ha aha aha aha aah ah ahahha aha ahaa h aha aha ahaaaa h aha aha aha cough cough...ha ah aha aha aha aha aha aha aha hh haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/
While I don't totally disagree with you in principle, is "stolen" data still considered "stolen" if it is posted to Wiki Leaks and linked from there?
Basically, if this data set was pushed to Wiki Leaks first and SD linked to their version, would you have posted in protest?
Leaked data is leaked data is leaked data.
are the new CO2 emissions files, in particular, what each country emits. Everybody has it up until 2006, but after that, it stops. Why? After 2006 is important information. For starters, a number of western countries have dropped emissions (particularly, America), while others have increased greatly (Canada, Australia, South Korea). The real issue that I would like to see is what BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), along with Mexico, Venezuela, Iran, etc have done.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Is this the same CRU that when asked to release the original raw data used in its climate analysis claimed it had all been lost?
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/08/we-lost-original-data.html
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
But it's OK for slashdot to publish stores re: Sarah Palin's email getting hacked -- and linked to "what is, according to the story, STOLEN DATA", as you say.
I think it's all news worthy. Don't you?
I'm sure Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre are just about to release their own personal e-mail histories as well.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Al Gore, is that you, dude?
No.
I think the story (and the Palin one) is news worthy but not giving people easy access to the data.
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
There is a very disturbing question here of why climate research is being handled like a political football. We don't normally politicize chemistry, or physics, or math, or even oceanography. We could and should be having heated policy discussions about how to address global warming, but the scientific evidence is not really in question, and the researchers behind the evidence are clearly not political operatives. So who has turned the public view of climate research into such a circus, and why?
Many people who doubted AGW (humans causing the hockey stick graph, or the graph itself) are claiming this is some sort of smoking gun. I claim it's scientists being scientists, and failing at being politicians.
The very fact that this reveals some scientists are doubting some results is exactly what should happen in science. This is why there is a consensus among scientists. Doubting is a part of science and skeptics alike, but discovering the reasons for the doubt and changing a viewpoint when good, conflicting data are found are hallmarks of the scientist. Skeptics will cling to disproved data, hoping it somehow becomes true if they believe it hard enough.
There is no doubt that the earth is warmer, but mark my words: some idiot media personality will make claims to the contrary due to this. They thrive on confusion, and there's nothing more confusing (and humorous) than watching scientists wrestle with politics.
It involves THOUSANDS of scientists all over the world as well as Glaciers, Polar Bear, Penguins, Shells, Hurricanes, etc. Yup, this little bitty batch of emails from many Gigs of email truly prove it. Why over on fox news and Chevron web site, they have the full story all about it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
(said in a Dana Carvey / Church Lady voice)
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
There's a very real possibility that the research that generated the data was funded with public money. In which case it's not so much stolen as it is repossessed.
Probably.
They could have easily added a comment about the data being posted to website X and people, if they choose, could have gone and found it. As opposed to posting the data directly.
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
The bar for skeptics is always going to be higher. Otherwise we'd have to rewrite the chemistry textbooks every time some student messes up his lab assignment, because this will produce data that contradicts the theory.
I'm now wondering which one of these guys you are. Seriously.
This is SLASHDOT, bozo. Information wants to be free.
"His name was James Damore."
Good Luck with your disinfo efforts, propaganda is not something new.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Yes, as long as it fits the Agenda of the Agenda 21 crowd then we must supress
what woul harm the movement to help Agenda 21 happen.
LOL
Bunch of genocidal globalist scum.
Google the georgia guidestones, limits to growth, club of rome ( gore is a member ),
CFR, bilderberg, and you will start to understand what is going on behind closed doors.
If you will not admit the bilderberg meetings are going on,
and US officials attend in violation of the logan act then you are an IDIOT.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
At least it wasn't the Climactic Research Center.
Oh, was that my outside voice?
I don't have the time, or desire to get into this but here:
http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2009/11/the_hacked_climate_science_ema.php#more
The primary issue is that most climate science has not truly been scrutinize and reviewed. I've been reading the files and it's very damming. It's almost as bad as cold fusion. For example. In note 1075403821.txt Timo Hmeranta states.
One other thing about the CC paper - just found another email - is that McKittrick says it is standard practice in Econometrics journals to give all the data and codes !! According to legal advice IPR overrides this.
So they are going to hide behind Intelectual Property Rights to keep their data from being reviewed!. Holy Fucking Shit! How can science do that and still remain respectable?
It all starts at 0
Well, that's one point of view, but I know that I am not alone in considering 'stealing' to only be inappropriate when it deprives another entity of something (i.e. I steal candy from a baby). If the 'stolen data' was copied rather than deleted from the original source, then the original researchers aren't deprived of anything (except maybe the power that exclusive information affords people). That being said, why lose sleep over it? Furthermore, why cry foul on a news aggregation site that is, in fact, linking to an aggregation of new, interesting information (aka news). I mean, I guess you could make a case about this possibly depriving the original researchers of their integrity. I suppose you could say that it only muddies the waters of an already dirty lake. I suppose you could come up with all sorts of moral/ethical/relative reasons as to why this is a terrible thing for slashdot to do, but so far as I can tell, it primarily just brings more exposure to a very interesting happenstance.
That being said, I hope you can understand that other people who don't share your strict sense of values or morals or ethics or whatever may not see it as being some horrible act. In fact, some may even find it to be a refreshing act of misplaced-but-at-least-attempted rebellion which is somewhat refreshing in an era where those who scream the loudest but perform the least activity get awarded time and again. Furthermore, I hope you can understand these things without having to stick your nose in the air and convince yourself that you are better than anyone who doesn't see a moral issue with this. The human race is not homogeneous. We all have different ideals and values. You can argue for eternity over which values are 'best,' but I think the idea of 'best' goes beyond both subjective and objective reasoning. Call me a moral relativist if you want, but I sure hope your blood pressure doesn't go due to your shock and outrage over information getting leaked on the internet and being reported on a news site....
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
[...header information omitted...]
Subject: Re: ATTENTION. Invitation to influence Kyoto.
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 11:52:09 -0700 (MST)
Dear Eleven,
I was very disturbed by your recent letter, and your attempt to get
others to endorse it. Not only do I disagree with the content of
this letter, but I also believe that you have severely distorted the
IPCC "view" when you say that "the latest IPCC assessment makes a
convincing economic case for immediate control of emissions." In contrast
to the one-sided opinion expressed in your letter, IPCC WGIII SAR and TP3
review the literature and the issues in a balanced way presenting
arguments in support of both "immediate control" and the spectrum of more
cost-effective options. It is not IPCC's role to make "convincing cases"
for any particular policy option; nor does it. However, most IPCC readers
would draw the conclusion that the balance of economic evidence favors the
emissions trajectories given in the WRE paper. This is contrary to your
statement.
This is a complex issue, and your misrepresentation of it does you a
dis-service. To someone like me, who knows the science, it is
apparent that you are presenting a personal view, not an informed,
balanced scientific assessment. What is unfortunate is that this will not
be apparent to the vast majority of scientists you have contacted. In
issues like this, scientists have an added responsibility to keep their
personal views separate from the science, and to make it clear to others
when they diverge from the objectivity they (hopefully) adhere to in their
scientific research. I think you have failed to do this.
[...]
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
kinda hard to get a good reading of the temperature, when stations are placed next to parking lots, AC vents and other heat generating sources
http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/weather_stations/
and what happened to the Ice Age they were trying to scare us with in the 80s?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
here it comes!
"it was taken out of context!"
"this is utter bullshit!, random emails showing it's a hoax is not how science is done!"
"61 megs of data was cooked up and hoaxed!"
You global warming shills better get to work because you are out of a career now.
isn't that these files and this correspondence got hacked.
The shame of it is that hacking was necessary at all.
Transparency, People. We're debating public policy and making decisions for the benefit of all Mankind. Credibility is only hindered by opacity and closed data.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
That crap has been out for ages, and nearly all on the list have been proved to be idiots, not involved with climate research, and in a number of cases, not even scientists.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So, you're arguing that there's a global conspiracy of skeptics out there trying to convince us that there's a global conspiracy of AGW proponents out there.
And failing to see the irony in that statement.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Interestingly, these people who like to imagine themselves as "rational" tend to just mostly have a political tendency to see a left-wing conspiracy and formulate their opinion based on that, or have financial/economic interests. Even if they might be right, it does not mean their position was correctly founded.
I am not making a statement here regarding global warming per se, just that the climate change deniers do tend to come across as the lunatic fringe. I for once wish they are never vindicated -- although I am willing to change my (currently aligned with consensus) opinion if I see strong evidence -- as that would be a failure of the scientific method and would probably lead us into another dark age where creationists et al run rampant...
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
You missed the point. My point is that slashDot did not need to post the stolen data directly. As I stated below, they could have just said something about the data being posted to website X and people could go find it.
However, humoring you...by your logic you would have no problem with me coming into your home and watching your TV right? That is rather trivial example. So let's say I broke into (hacked) your home and photo copied your entire life's worth of documents and posted them online. No problem with that right?
PS
It EVERY case (yours, mine and theirs) it is depriving people of privacy.
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
I actually find it very interesting that Slashdot decided to place this story in the Politics section. Neither those defending global warming, nor those questioning it believe this should be a political issue. The issue is to important to leave any stone unturned. Why exactly is there data that is being repressed by these groups? Isn't that the exact opposite of what they say they're fighting for?
What's up with this box everyone has to think inside of or outside of? Why does there have to be a box?
There was a documentary about climate change hoax on Finnish YLE channel (it's like BBC of Finland) couple of weeks ago. It basically told that the climate data collected from Finland was turned upside down so that it would show warming instead of cooling etc. People who understand Finnish can check it out from Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gmJiZfyDPE People who don't understand Finnish can just check these few seconds where they show how they flipped Finnish data: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suySkDny-zk#t=7m00s
Follow slashdot for a sufficient amount of time and you will see that whatever is "commonly accepted wisdom" is countered here by the kids who like to think they're smarter than everyone else and that they can see through the conspiracy -- although admittedly IIRC the Iraq War was pretty popular around 2002-03. It is a fairly typical right wing political reaction to just resist everything everyone else seems to be accepting in particular if it requires some sort of collective action, even if it actually was the rational thing to do.
The older I get, the less intellectual respect I have for most of /. tbh.
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
They go as far as telling others to delete information that (I reckon) could be incriminating.
"
> Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
> Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
>
> Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t
> have his new email address.
>
> We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
>
> I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature
> paper!!"
CA is the principal "climate sceptic" website.
Of course, much effort is also dedicated to avoiding Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
"PS I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data.
Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !"
And so on.
Of course, they also find time to gloat of the death of "sceptics", etc. etc. All classy stuff.
"Science" indeed.
Here are two really simple theories:
1. Sun heats Earth with radiation in many wavelengths. Lots of optical-band + ultraviolet. /10s of thousands of years.)
2. Solar radiation interacts with matter on Earth and heats Earth.
3. Some of the heat re-radiates upwards away from Earth, but much of the radiation is now in
the lower energy infrared band, since some energy has gone into heating Earth.
4. CO2, methane etc molecules in atmosphere reflect infrared radiation back down to Earth, heating Earth more.
5. Humans are pumping lots of carbon out of the ground, and burning forests that store carbon. This carbon is being
released into atmosphere as CO2, methane etc. Increasing CO2, methane etc concentrations in atmosphere
(concentration of these molecules in atmosphere is roughly doubled so far compared to recent thousands
6. So there is now net heating of the Earth, due to this excess trapping of Infrared radiation by reflection.
Theory 2:
1. Oil companies and large corporate interests whose businesses rely on cheap fossil fuel energy are upset at the
prospect of having to change their ways. They will lose profits.
2. "Fat and happy" western consumers are enjoying their easy lifestyles fueled by a fossil-fuel burn of 400 years worth of stored
carbon per year. They don't want to have to walk or bus more, or eat local, even though it would prevent them getting diabetes
or a heart attack. It's too much work. Let the oil do the work.
3. Both of these interests are screaming in anger and denial that their comfy lifestyles need serious adjustment. Both of them
are in denial so they won't have to admit that they have been guilty of robbing future generations. Both of them are pleading
ignorance of the consequences, when the only way they could be that ignorant is by keeping their eyes shut and yelling really
loud.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
There are very very powerful entities with vested interests in discrediting the well established evidence of climate change(cigs, cancer, and the tobacco institute anyone?).
Whether it's anthropogenic or not is besides the point, its important to err on the side of caution -- which means probable regulation -- something vested international conglomerates see as unprofitable/risky.
61 megs can be easily generated by a small staff interested in discrediting the conclusions of a debate which has long been over.
There's no coincidence about this at all, with cap and trade floating about washington. Just like the insurance lobbies with health reform, the worst polluters are pulling out all the stops to avoid being held responsible.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
...but the data deletion conspiracies, the conspiring to disrupt the peer review process in various clever ways, the knowing avoidance of Freedom of Information Act Requests, the slurs against "sceptics", including celebrating their deaths, and so on.
And that's just from the emails I have read so far.
"Doubting" indeed. And these assholes have had the nerve to indignantly drape themselves in the flag of science.
I'm kind-of a little gob-smacked that you can think this. The PR has been all "warming" for a decade or more. Press releases for every paper, no-matter how ridiculous, linking {fill in the blank} to Global Warming have been routinely published, discussed and editorialised in mainstream media publications, with utter credulity and no raised eyebrow whatsoever. The sceptics have generally been dismissed or ignored.
I've noticed recently, however, say over the last year or so, that comments sections on "warmist" mainstream media articles are overwhelmed with sceptics. The public just don't believe it any more and the newspapers and media are starting to reflect that. I would say that the "warmists" have overplayed their hand, with barely credible predictions of disaster, exaggeration, blatant spin and a seeming inability to accept any criticism. Their proposed policy responses to this (possibly) imaginary problem are unrealistic. I don't think the general public are up for rolling back the industrial revolution, or enacting an economic scorched Earth policy for the benefit of one half of one degree, within the bounds of natural variation and quite possibly outside of the bounds of measurement error.
Well, I think the big thing that this data-dump shows is that it's actually a small group of tightly knit e-mail connected individuals that are driving a whole lot of the AGW effort.
Someone else wrote that this is all Exxon Astroturfing going on to make us knock out Copenhagen. In other words, arguing that a global conspiracy of oil-company funded individuals, like a meterologist in California and a retired statistician are all on payroll along with hackers in Russia, and new posters on SlashDot, are all working to convince us of a global conspiracy to promote AGW... These people are somehow secretly communicating behind the scenes, transferring billions of dollars of off-the-books money to individuals, all without anyone being able to point to a money trail.
On the other side, we have three groups, CRU, Mann/RealClimate and GISS, who have been clearly communicating and using their supposedly "neutral" Web Site (RealClimate) to promote one-sided views of the science, and apparently "fudge" the data until it matches their theory. These people openly receive grants of hundreds of millions of dollars every year, and have access to governments, prime ministers, and corporations, all of whose funding depends on perpetuating and establishing AGW as *the* science.
So, you'd have to believe it was all a big plan to release data on a minor Russian FTP site, found by accident on a blog almost no one reads, and then forwarded to a blog that *is* read often, in an un-threaded discussion while the site owner is on a trip overseas. This well coordinated group then uses these actual emails (admitted as valid and real by Phil Jones, head of CRU) to somehow concoct a story that a small group of climate scientists are colluding to support a theory by ignoring the facts, by using their own words to that effect.
On the one hand, you have individuals scanning through, admittedly, purloined emails and saying, "Whoa! What's going on here." Opposite that, you have the post on RealClimate today saying, "Move along, nothing to see here!" Some of those emails involve apparent schemes to transfer US funds overseas to avoid taxation. That alone is "something to see," despite what RealClimate is saying. And that's ignoring whether the science was done according to any standards of ethics.
We're talking millions of dollars in budgets from publicly funded programs. If there's even a hint of malfeasance in these documents, then a serious investigation should be started. I don't care which side is the global conspiracy. Only one side is spending *my money* to perpetrate it. The oil companies can spend however many trillion dollars they want without it coming out of *my* pocket.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Ok, who let Alex Jones out during the day?
If you think climate science is important and want to know more about it maybe you should spend some time GOING TO FUCKING SCHOOL.
For your theory #1, the current data doesn't fit. Its been cooling for a decade and there is even an email about it with one of those guys asking the other what they should do about the current evidence, with a hint that the instrumental record (direct observations!) must be wrong.
Thats how deeply they feel about maintaining their position. They have real data, direct observations of temperature, that disagrees with their theory and their thinking is that the direct observations must be wrong... but all that tree ring and ice core stuff must be right, of course.
You can't make this shit up.
"His name was James Damore."
Counting the random crap, in email alone, I have had in the last 4 years 4 Gb (ok PST format so who know how much is really data but bear with me), or 1 GB per year, , 61 mb would be less than a month. And as far as I can see the archive of my colleague (most asked me to back it up for them), it is similar measure from 1Gb to 4Gb for similar period of time. 61 Mb is utterly nothing and I think that maybe they are real email, but but choosen out of a larger context. With such picking you could very well take innocuous email and put them together to show something nefarious. You would only have to change the header/date in files which need far far much less time than making all up.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
No, they haven't. http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/20/806300/-30,000-Scientists-Sue-Al-Gore-for-Fraud From the link:
Nothing to do with Gore, and many (most?) aren't "scientists." Oh, and there's no lawsuit, either, just in case you believed that part, too.
Kythe
One of the dumbest arguments I've seen on Slashdot in a while. I may as well ask when militant environmentalists are going to start bombing buildings and sabotaging construction sites to save the planet...wait, that's already happened before.
When people criticize global warming as a religion, they're referring to Al Gore types who refuse to acknowledge any contradicting viewpoints or data. It has a become a religion like Christianity--there's an Eden (the planet before humans came along) that was ruined by sin (industrialization), and we're in for a Judgement Day (natural disaster) if we don't repent (recycle, buy carbon credits from Al Gore's company, feel guilty for existing, and so on).
I believe it was Michael Crichton who once argued that this formula of belief is so common among groups that it must be innate to the human brain.
The important thing to note about this story is that, even if it's all true and all of the emails are genuine, and even if it completely discredits every scientist involved and all of the work they've ever done, this does not falsify AGW theory.
The great thing about a robust scientific theory is that it's not dependent on any one line of evidence or the work of any particular individual or group. Most of the research this calls into question are proxy studies of the temperature over the last couple of millennia. This is only one of many lines of evidence supporting AGW, and it is not the primary line of evidence.
Even if you throw out every piece of research done by every scientist mentioned in this data, there will still be plenty of evidence to show that global warming is real and created by human activity.
So ultimately this is a tempest in a teacup. The deniers will make a huge deal about it, and it may have an impact on public opinion, but it will have very close to zero impact on actual science.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Theory 3, the Earth warms, the heat is radiated back out into space. The warmer it gets, the more heat is radiated back into space. Some evidence, for example Lindzen and Choi, for low climate sensitivity:
"Offence"? Did your thorough study of science preclude you from learning how to spell or turn off caps lock?
Anyway, didn't you get the memo? Science is really just religion and religion is the real science.
You are welcome on my lawn.
aka, not a paranoid schizophrenic
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Another good writeup on the leaked emails can be found here. Summary: manipulation of evidence, private doubts about whether the world really is heating up, suppression of evidence, fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists, attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period , and communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process.
Well it goes kind of like this:
People say the scientists are in it (proving global warming) for the money, but they are scientists. They are PhDs. Well
qualified. Most of them have tenure. These people can get a job whether they are studying global warming, or ocean
currents, or dust storms on Mars. And the total amounts of grant money for research in this whole area is completely
insignificant compared to the potential profit loss of business-as-usual industries and economic sectors. I don't
have those numbers exactly, but it would surprise me if there was not from 1000 times more money to 1 million times
more money at stake on the part of fossil fuel industries and cheap-fossil-fuel-reliant industries, than there is money
at stake in the science community.
So I'm going to go out on a limb and say I should see about a 1000-fold to 1 million fold greater inclination to lie about
the situation on the part of those who think the status quo is just dandy.
These numbers, as you will point out, are made up for illustrative purposes, but I would be surprised if my
off the top of my head ranges of financial risk ratios was off by an order of magnitude.
The mainstream of scientists in the field were convinced of the truth of global warming and the
likelihood of anthropogenic global warming back around 1980. It is only in the last few years since Al Gore's movie
that the mainstream media and some of the public have come over to this viewpoint. So you misrepresent the history
of the politics of this issue. The financially driven denier camp has had the floor for most of the time that the
debate has existed.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Offence is the British English spelling.
I feel really bad for these researchers.
I have published only a few papers and would be mortified if my emails got released to the public. I am constantly joking around with other lab denizens about fudging stuff, and removing data that doesn't fit the expectations. The opportunity for out of context quotations is scary to contemplate. Not to mention all of the politically incorrect jokes about such-and-such a graph's sexual orientation.
If one of these guys said anything like that over the years of emails in this dump, they are in some deep shit for nothing. Image someone going through all of the comments for all of the code you have ever written just looking for any tiny detail to prove you're a hack.
"just added one to this variable now it works" = screwed.
"need to go back and fix this" = screwed.
"not sure why this works but it does" = screwed.
"Bob is an idiot, I am just going to comment out his code" = screwed.
Like Cardinal Richelieu said:
“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him”
Right or wrong, these guys are gonna get the shaft.
Even Lindzen's fellow skeptic Roy Spencer thinks Lindzen and Choi is wrong; see here, and also here and here, and a summary here.
That is what a link is. It is here is where the information is. It is NOT a direct posting of the data. So. Are you an idiot, a troll or a global warming fanatic?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
The GW crowd said that bad year a few years back was because of GW and then *poof*, not much in the area of hurricanes for years.
In these light years I haven't been hearing "The lack of hurricanes is because of GW."
I haven't been hearing "GW theory falsely predicted more and stronger hurricanes."
I have heard things along the lines of "Some GW proponents predicted through a misunderstanding of GW."
You know what that reminds me of? How the Jehova's Witnesses explain away their failed prophesies of doom.
propaganda never lies. it takes nuggets of truths out of context, in a vacuum of any other facts, and extrapolates dubious far off conclusions that find support in people's prejudices. half-truths, or rather 0.01% truths, are not anything remotely like the truth of complex situations, which climate science obviously is
pieces of the truth is never the truth. of course no one will shut up, even if they are only armed with pieces of the truth, but that's not something to celebrate, that's something to be despondent about, as its the root cause of the majority of problems in this world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
1) Spanish Inquisition 2) Priests found shagging choirboys 3) Fundie televangelists banging gayboys 4) Salem
All wrong and shamefully done in the name of Christianity, and all of which cannot be condoned through the use of the Bible, basically. So what we have here are people claiming a name and doing acts that completely go against the very name they are claiming. Hm.
The Enemy is the idea that God would let Something This Bad happen to His People.
Non-Biblical. Just take a look at Job. God never told Job why those bad things happened to him. Yes, some people adhere to what you just said... and I don't see why I need to defend, shall we say, "real Christianity" against accusations directed at people that don't even apparently know what's in the Bible.
It'd be equivalent of you trying to defend the position of climate-change-is-happening from me when all I attack are the ignorant people that believe it and tell me all sorts of wrong things about it out of pure ignorance.
Basically: I met a climate change activist who lied to me about some facts. Therefore, all climate change activists are lying, and climate change is not real... because someone claiming to be a climate change activist told me something about it!!!
That's the approach people take. "These things were done in the name of Christianity!! Christianity must be false!!"
Faulty induction at it's best :)
You forget the massive PR campaign being waged on the side of the GW proponents.
Al Gore's been running around publicizing his new book in advance of Copenhagen.
You know, that book with the massive scientific impossibilities in the picture of what the Earth would look like due to GW.
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I say opinion because 30,000 scientists have said they feel that Gore
has lied and distorted the facts.
Out of those 30,000 scientists, how many have a background in climatology?
http://www.petitionproject.org/qualifications_of_signers.php
3,804 out of the 30,000 are into "Atmosphere, Earth, & Environment", and of those, 39 are into climatology. 39 out of 30,000 scientists are experts into climatology. That's about a .1%.
I'm certain that a holder of a PhD in physics or chemistry would be more qualified than me, a computer consultant, or Al Gore, a politician, but simply saying 30,000 scientists without mentioning their qualifications is disingenuous. It leads the readers out here to believe that those scientists are all 100% knowledgeable in climatology, which is simply not true.
Now, do we have any numbers regarding how many scientists agree with Al Gore?
The weather balloon data does not show warming at higher altitudes thus it is not Global Warming.
You mean this data?
After examining the satellite data, collected since 1979 by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellites, Carl Mears and Frank Wentz of Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, Calif., found that the satellites had drifted in orbit, throwing off the timing of temperature measures. Essentially, the satellites were increasingly reporting nighttime temperatures as daytime ones, leading to a false cooling trend. The team also found a math error in the calculations.
This data doesn't prove that it's man-made, but it certainly takes away the argument that warming isn't happening. It could be cyclical. It could be, as you say, the sun.
Best "String" Ever!
CO2 emissions mitigation policies cost money (as does climate change itself), but they're not going to destroy the economy or "roll back the industrial revolution". Sheesh . That's the skeptic scare version of "global warming alarmism". FUID against climate policy is at least as bad, if not worse, than FUD against climate science. More here on the economics of climate policy, and a good book.
I saw the Great Global Warming Swindle. It's been a while since I've seen it, but the one thing that jumped out at me was the transparently fraudulent graphs.
e.g. Please note the way the charts move about and are shown only briefly in their full context, showing contempt for data in general. It would give Edward Tufte a heart attack.
(And yes, Al Gore is fat. Climate change doesn't depend on Al Gore)
Of course, they also find time to gloat of the death of "sceptics", etc. etc. All classy stuff.
"Science" indeed.
Classy =/= science. Most of us are real jerks and or have major social problems when it comes down to us.
Privately taking some evil delight that an opponent has suffered a tragedy or died isn't exactly unique to science anyway. Hell, I've talked to senior citizens in assisted living who callously laugh when "that bitch who always cheats at bingo" finally dies.
In fact, name me one field, scientific or otherwise, where there aren't some people who would take joy at the misfortunes of their opponents. Just one. Clergy do it. Biologists do it. Retirees do it. Programmers do it. Politicians obviously do it. The RIAA would probably have a kegger if one of our heroes on slashdot were to kick the can.
Not to say it's good, but scientists are obviously going to suffer from the same human foibles that everyone else does. Doesn't make their work invalid. Although I would like to apply that reasoning to lawmakers and RIAA sometimes.
How was this modded interesting? Take the five seconds to look up "the club of rome", "Georgia Guidestone", and "Agenda 21" on wiki. This person needs help, not mod points.
I'm not being sarcastic or patronizing here; these are seriously paranoid ramblings.
Not so simple. It really isn't.
Obviously there are economic interests on both sides. What many people don't realise is that banks like Goldman Sachs are full-square behind policies like Cap & Trade. As traders they get to slice and dice contract payments, hedge them etc and make a huge amount of money. There are billions to be lost or gained either way and these institutions are powerful lobbies. I also think that the billions being funnelled into Global Warming research, on an institutional level, can't be dismissed entirely especially when you consider "pitching" for funding is always going to be more successful if the proposal maintains topicality. There are powerful motivations, conscious or subconsious, to promote your particular view whichever side you are on.
The only conspiracy theory on either side that I'm sympathetic to is the concept of energy security (as a national security issue). Actually conspiracy is the wrong word to use; I would say AGW is a convenient policy hook to hang your energy security hat on if you're a politician. Obviously others have different motives (the Greens for instance). Either way, the waters are muddy and although I believe temperature has increased, I don't believe Earth's climate system involves powerful positive feedbacks and so I don't believe the temperature projections that raise trivial temperature increases into catastophic warming scenarios. It is a question of belief of course, because the models are demonstrably wrong (although obviously not when they hind-cast!).
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Well, I think the big thing that this data-dump shows is that it's actually a small group of tightly knit e-mail connected individuals that are driving a whole lot of the AGW effort.
You mean it took you this long to figure out that there really aren't that many climetologists in the world, and that they all go to the same conferences?
That's called a research community.
... for what should be settled through scientific debate has become. Jeff Masters gives another example.
Go huff pure nitrogen. Now huff pure oxygen. Which one feels better? You know what, it's settled; we need to start reducing the nitrogen content of the atmosphere.
Well that is to the point I think. Lindzen and Choi may well reply to the criticism, I believe that's how it works. I'm not holding this up as the answer, only using it to demonstrate that there is discussion and yet no fact of the matter. On the debate as a whole, I would be very nervous indeed as a politician hanging a trillion dollar policy on Scientists with present levels of understanding.
It's not stealing, it's copyright infringement.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Yeah, I'm just glad the human race is finally going to get what it deserves. Extinction at the hand of their own stupidity.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Quite a few scientists are dicks. They generally are made much more so by politicization of a field they're genuinely interested in. Skeptics work hard to make them look like crackpot conspiracy theorists, and proponents grossly misquote their findings for whatever pet purpose they have in mind.
Also, scientists tend to dislike bureaucracy and paperwork -- and FOIA, while a laudable goal, is a great way to make people you dislike deal with an absolute ton of paperwork.
Let's assume for a moment that human-induced global warming is hogwash. What then is the aim of this vast global conspiracy? Are they in cahoots with the powerful, money-grabbing solar energy industry? Is it a scheme to push new age, carbon-reducing snake oil products? Do they just hate people and want to reduce our standard of living out of spite?
However, humoring you...by your logic you would have no problem with me coming into your home and watching your TV right? That is rather trivial example. So let's say I broke into (hacked) your home and photo copied your entire life's worth of documents and posted them online. No problem with that right?
I don't think that's comparable. You may disagree and that's fine. Global average temperature data is quantifiable scientific data that can be reproduced or verified by sources other than this particular research firm. The personal details of my life, contained in whatever documents that would be copied online, may or may not be. The point is, the global average temperature is information that anyone can access if they go through the means necessary to access it (yes time, money, resources etc are necessary, but it is already there to be measured). My personal documents may contain data that is not similar in that sense. For instance, maybe it contains the number of times I had dinner at a particular restaurant with a particular person. This is not something that anyone can measure for themselves, unless, of course, they are stalking me. Nor is my music taste (something I have extensive personal documentation on), a matter of national interest or a quantifiable data point. Thus, the types of data we are discussing are different in nature and I would call your analogy flawed...if not somewhat hyperbolic.
Again, you may disagree with me on this point and that's fine. I just don't think you are comparing apples to apples. Also of note, you are saying that I asserted that the hacking, in the first place, was not immoral. That's not what I said. A breach of personal property is, in my opinion, immoral. I was asserting, or at least attempting to assert, that 'stealing' with the way it is defined today is not something I, or other people, always find immoral. Nitpick sure, but somewhat relevant nonetheless.
Finally, I think it is important to note that the data in question has been and still is a matter of national concern, at least here in the USA. Thus, the benefit of the public being able to access the data, in my opinion, far outweighs the negative consequences of keeping it under cloak and dagger. I don't think the details of any of my personal records are really worth that much to the majority of the people on the Earth. So, again, there is a flaw in your analogy with respect to the magnitude of the issue. So, again, I would call it flawed.
I will admit that, perhaps, I was over generalizing in my initial discussion of what does and does not constitute theft. As this case and the hypothetical cases you described illustrate rather nicely, these types of moral questions are not black and white and are, for all intents and purposes, very complicated questions. This was the original point I was attempting to illustrate with my post. Different people are going to see each situation differently. Thus, saying that there is something wrong or right about one situation or another is a very complicated assertion that almost inevitably will fault in some way or another. That is why I made mention to the fact that I think questions such as, 'what is best' are best left outside of the realms of objectivity and subjectivity. There is more nuance at work than any one person or any quantifiable variable can account for. Perhaps my first few sentences made it impossible for you to take this message away from my post so hopefully this explanation will help in your understanding a bit. If not, well, then I apologize for my inadequacies at describing the flaws that I see in strict moral reasoning.
Cheers Mate.
PS As a matter of personal opinion, I don not think that personal e-mails of the employees of the research company needed to have been leaked. While they might add some insight to the issues at hand, I am not sure such minor insights outweigh any personal details contained within the e-mail. The data being published I have no problem with. The publishing e-mails, especially if they contain any personal information, is questionable.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
My reference to rolling back the industrial revolution refers to the Green agenda, which at its heart is exactly that. I read Konrad Lorenz when I was a radical greenie at University, so I think I understand the general philosophy (anti-technocracy). I don't say it's shared by those Scientists (some of whom are activists, such as James Hansen) referenced in the emails, but I think it informs at least the extremist end of the AGW political spectrum.
On the economics of climate policy, "green jobs" and a "green economy" are a fantasy as long as green energy has to compete with fossil fuels. That it will do so in terms of global trade, will put the West at a big competitive disadvantage. The only solution here is to raise the trade barriers again. Either way, it's going to be more expensive than mitigation or adaptation (assuming worst case scenarios aren't realised - a reasonable assumption in my view).
On a philosophical level, adaptation is the only rational policy. It's served Humanity well for a hundred thousand years; I see no reason why it shouldn't continue to do so.
"These emails are certainly taken out of context" Ah yes. Because nothing makes out and out fraud more palatable than "context".
Dear idiot parent:
Go huff pure water vapour.
Go huff pure oxygen.
Tell me how long you live on either one. I can tell you exactly what will happen in both cases, but I'm not paying for your funeral.
Om, nomnomnom...
We won't be going extinct. Sorry, but you're not enlightened or insightful for despising humanity. Humanity doesn't "deserve" anything--humanity is just another species on the back of an uncaring rock, making judgements about itself that mean nothing in the end.
I agree that even snide and conniving scientists can be good ones as long as they merely massage charts to look good rather than fudge data. But beyond their FOIA resistance and all of the politics of how much CO2 is warming (or will be) there is one glaring problem. Temperature doesn't seem to be going up beyond what is totally normal. By that I mean actual temperature measured by THERMOMETERS not by tree rings. The temperature records in fact DO go back far enough to judge what is going on. Not many stations, but the ones that do exist MATCH the modern multi-1000s of station data quite perfectly: http://i45.tinypic.com/iwq8a1.jpg
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You know the old saying, never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
They took a random set of information, cherry picked specifically examples.
Then they are talking about one system among 1000s.
This is horrible. Of course global warming deniers are ridiculous.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Its been cooling for a decade and there is even an email about it with one of those guys asking the other what they should do about the current evidence, with a hint that the instrumental record (direct observations!) must be wrong."
WRONG! I F&@#(G WANT TO KILL ANYONE WHO REPEATS THIS TRASH! DO THE F##$!#G GOOGLE SEARCH FOR IT!
http://climateprogress.org/2009/11/20/hacked-hadley-emails-hottest-decade-on-record-and-the-oceans-planet-keep-warming/
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/04/warming-stopped-in-1998.php
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/03/satellites-show-cooling.php
Control. The same thing that has been going on for as long as humans have recorded history. There's always a small group of people who believe that they alone are fit to rule and will do whatever it takes to gain power. The most virulent form this impulse has taken over the last century is called "progressivism" .
"Well, I think the big thing that this data-dump shows is that it's actually a small group of tightly knit e-mail connected individuals that are driving a whole lot of the AGW effort."
Quite the opposite. There's a small group of tightly knit individuals that are driving ANTI-AGW.
And that's actually proven: http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2008/06/ninety_percent_of_enviro_skept.php
Did anyone else get a Decompression Bomb error on chronnet.exe? Here's my scanner record...
2009-11-20 18:07:38 Error while scanning '/home/michael/Downloads/FOIA/documents/kbtree/stepan/chronnet.exe/HD.RES': The file is a decompression bomb
It could just be an error on the part of the scanner but I wondered if anyone else came across that as well. I'm using Avast BTW.
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It is for your own good, and there are some people that know it. These enlightened ones, often called things like "people looking out for the betterment of the planet" are there with a job to do and they are doing it. We are in the process of discarding the industrial base of the US because of their influence. We haven't built a major power plant in the US since the 1970s because of their influence. Many regulations have been passed - all for our own good - because of their influence.
Besides, who signed off on the US being able to hog most of the planet's resources anyway? I am sure there are many that believe the US needs to be taken down a peg or two so as to preserve the remaining resources for the rest of the planet. Certainly doing so as part of an enviornmental movement can't be all bad. Especially if you aren't going to be affected because you are either too poor or too rich.
The problem is that these folks never seem to be able to explain how this really helps much or what the final end point of this might be. The simple solution - fewer people - is starting to get some favor but not much. Especially when it is pretty obvious that we can't really wait for hundreds or thousands of years for the population to shrink gradually. No, only a major war or global genocide would actually help much, and nobody really wants to come out and admit that would be part of a plan for goodness.
I'll be looking forward to getting my checks then.
Hmm. Still waiting...
Still waiting....
Gee. I wonder why I'm not getting paid for being a skeptic of people with bad scientific procedure and policy?
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
TGGWS:
In an official judgement issued on 21 July 2008 the British media regulator Ofcom declared that the final part of the film dealing with the politics of climate change had broken rules on "due impartiality on matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy". Ofcom also backed complaints by Sir David King, stating that his views were misrepresented, and Carl Wunsch, on the points that he had been misled as to its intent, and that the impression had been given that he agreed with the programme's position on climate change. Ofcom further ruled that the IPCC had not been given an adequate chance to respond to adverse claims that its work was politicised and that it had made misleading claims about malaria. However, the regulator said that because "the link between human activity and global warming... became settled before March 2007", in parts 1-4 the audience was not "materially misled so as to cause harm or offence".[67] According to Ofcom the program caused no harm because "the discussion about the causes of global warming was to a very great extent settled by the date of broadcast, meaning that climate change was no longer a matter of political controversy[68].
In fact there is a documentary debunking the debunking:
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Switch to the AGW camp. I've just received my monthly paycheck from the Al Gore Conspiracy.
Seriously, you're just a victim of brainwashing by pseudoscience. Which can be provably traced back to a few conservative 'think tanks'.
Of course, by now there are millions of brainwashed people.
Did you write a book, or are otherwise meaningfully visible?
I don't know about that. Slashdot posts links to wikileaks all the time.
The only issue I see here is that someone decides to only leak PART of the data. That's when you know there's a clear agenda and you're not getting any clearer a picture than if you had no data at all.
Embarassing and suggestive, but not a smoking gun.
Now to go back and add the Slashdot megaupload link to my post...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
While we can't control climate change we still must develop alternate means of energy production or we will learn to freeze! Please see: http://www.helium.com/items/1552529-alternative-energy Thanks for reading another starving writer article!
Exxon actually funds a research organization that studies ways of reducing anthropogenic global warming. They would not have that if they didn't know global warming is real.
Simon's Rock College
"Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him." Cardinal Richelieu
I suspect that these emails will be a global Rorschach test. Skeptics will see in them whatever they wish to find.
Yet, to deny the impact of CO2 or worse yet methane seems like denial of basic science, regardless of the exact details. What do you think makes Venus a burning hell?
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Exactly. Just because it is totally utterly irrelevant if he ate breakfast, had a love life, helped an old lady cross the street or whatnot if he killed someone in between his good deeds.
Massaging data to fit a preponderance is such an act, a willful, conscious and voluntary act that makes a scientist a liar. "He was always such a friendly guy and gave so much money to the homeless" may be true and noble, but he's still a liar.
Come on, this is not the Bible Code.
Have you read leaked memos from Enron? Did you come to any conclusion or were they also taken out of context?
Sadly, I'm not able to receive Fox News over here on the Old Continent, because I like a good laugh every now and then.
I'm not saying CO2 is NOT a greenhouse gas, I just said it is irrelevant if it is, because the dominant strategy is to keep the Dollars where your wallet is and start spending on climate change MITIGATION instead of prevention, because compound interest = sensible investing will yield insane amounts of money over these long periods, so much that we can offset all the downsides of global warming, build a freaking Dyson Sphere and still have some cash left.
Atheists:
1) The starvation of Russia by Stalin.
2) The cleansing of China by Mao.
I don't even need to keep trying because the body count of those two buries probably every religiously motivated atrocity ever. Even "religiously motivated" wars and atrocities have little to do with actual religion and everything to do with using religion as a vehicle for whatever the land/property/wealth grab of the day is against whatever the easy target minority or country is.
Nothing Hitler or Mao or Stalin did was motivated by anything beyond the natural human lust for greed and power. That's what motivated the Spanish Inquisition and it's what motivates priests to shag choirboys (well, that combined the with the psychological craziness that comes from denying yourself your most basic evolutionary urge beyond eating and shitting). We like power. We like control. We'll use any convenient argument to obtain them. That's who we are and that's what we do.
Atheists sure are quick to blame God and religion for everything but really, it's the same on every side of the fence. The human element is the problem. They're lying, cheating, greedy self-interested fuckwads. All of them. Every last one of the little hairless baboon motherfuckers.
So please, stop trying to turn everything into an "us vs. them" or "we're good, they're bad." It's rarely that simple. In most human conflicts both sides are corrupt. There's no reason both sides can't be wrong.
I see it exactly the other way around. Obama, bright lad that he is and understanding the implications of AGW and what needs to be done about it, is faced with the puzzle of how to sell the tough measures that need to be taken.
How do you sell a change in how we do energy to the red-state cowboys and wall street geckos?
SECURITY! That's the ticket! It's not altruistic wimpo pinko greenie hippy policy, it's
red-blooded, self-interested ENERGY SECURITY policy.
Now that's some brilliant political framing for you.
Just might work too. American's are sick of the Iraq war, and this is being carefully positioned to
look like a solution that will reduce the need for foreign adventures in the middle east.
Whatever works to get the change done, I say.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The oil companies can spend however many trillion dollars they want without it coming out of *my* pocket.
Really? You don't buy any goods that are manufactured from oil based materials, using oil driven industrial machinery, or transported in vehicles powered by combustion of oil based liquids?
Funny how they don't like to show the 2008 or 2009 Ice Sheet levels when discussing Global Warming oh I mean "Climate Change"...
It is also funny how they are finding "Sun Spots" that would only be visible with today's technology (one stinking pixel in a SOHO images) and since mostly reliable sunspot counts have existed for 200+ years we are definetly in a minimum period if you define your parameters based off the instruments used from 200 to 50 years ago to measure them....
Gee it is getting colder, this last year it barely cracked 100 in Colorado and only for a day or two compared to 2007 when we had a few weeks of above 100 weather.
We may be contributing to climate change through radiative heating of asphalt etc and a little bit to CO2, but not as much as some peopel would have you believe, that big ball of hot gas in the daytime sky seems to make a lot more of a difference for the temps on earth.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
And your blind dismissal of anything based on the fact that it's posted on dKos makes you an irrational fool. Plain and simple.
...where you can see 1) many of those on the petition are not scientists and 2) the petition mentions nothing about Al Gore.
Tell you what, genius. If you're afraid to visit dKos and fairly consider what's posted there, try these:
http://www.desmogblog.com/search/node/oregon%20petition
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine
http://ezinearticles.com/?Debunking-the-Oregon-Petition-Project&id=1675285
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P8mlF8KT6I
Every one of the links above details what's wrong with the "petition". Or, if you lack the courage to visit anything that forces you to think, try the petition itself:
http://www.petitionproject.org/frequently_asked_questions.php
I know, I know. Facts have a liberal bias. Sucks to be you.
Kythe
Well, that's my point exactly. Energy security is an issue when you have to place your tanks in a foreign country to secure it. But why not just be honest about it? I don't think undermining public trust in the integrity of the scientific process is going to ultimately benefit the position. If my Government said, "we're going to add 2p to the income tax rate and spend that money on research and development into alternative energy and energy efficiency technology to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels", I'd sign on. It seems to me that recourse to deceit is a kind-of reflex action.
And you are called a troll.
Just a little analogous story from my city. 25 years ago, there was a "sustainable region" plan, created with tons of public input, and it said:
DONT build new highways or widen them (because they encourage urban sprawl and pollution and GHGs),
DO Build lots of transit and live-work mini city-centres at transit hubs.
So developer-led councils and right-wing state-level government went ahead building highways and outlying subdivisions for 25 years, ignoring the plan.
So now we come to developing a new region plan aimed at 2040 or some such. And what do they say?
Well, we didn't follow the plan before, so we've got lots of people living all over the place in widespread suburbs, so transit will be too expensive, so we have to widen the f**ing highways, and build new wider bridges.
By analogy, those who know how to know, and know what sorts of things to pay attention to, knew about AGW in 1980, and told governments: Hey, you better plan to avoid this. If action had been taken then, it would have been inexpensive, relatively non-disruptive, and quite possibly effective. Now that we've ignored the warnings and rampaged ahead with a way more energy-intensive economy for 30 years, people are saying: Shit, it's too hard to fix this. We have to adapt.
In both cases, what can you say? F***ing pathetic! It may as well be bacteria in charge cause the brainy humans sure aren't thinking as they act.
Humans are the "system builder" species. That's our survival strategy, like beavers on a grand and generalized scale. And individually, we claim to have the ability to change things. To think. To plan. To change our future. But collectively, we have yet to demonstrate that we can think. Plan effectively. Change things intentionally at the scale that we are entropizing things unintentionally.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
But you're demonstrating here the process of adaptation. To say we must plan effectively so far into the future is whimsical; I don't believe it can be done. We seem to have a problem: the GCM's predict the future out to 2100/2200. How? It's no more credible to predict future climate than it is to predict future city planning requirements. Think about city plans 100 years ago. How realistic would they have been projected 100 years hence? They would have taken into account the horse, not the car. Your plan has to be flexible; it has to make room for unforseen events. I think basing it on unreliable and unverifiable computer models is more than a little conceited.
Hah, yes. Cynicism is the witless man's version of wisdom. Going against the accepted view gives you anti-authority points and gains your views respect that they don't deserve, at least among a certain, immature audience. If you can play to the desires and prejudices of your audience then you've really hit the jackpot.
The main reason my late dad among other two dozen top meteorologists signed that letter to a prior POTUS Bush (Barbara's husband) not to sign Kyoto agreement, as he explained to me, has been that we simply do not know. We would not probably know it for a very long time to come, more likely in our lifetime than not. The atmosphere and the ocean are too complex objects and the data cannot be reliably gathered, as one cannot get vertical data everywhere. And as far as 'global warming' or 'global cooling' crowds are concerned, they are not really taken seriously, as the models they are running and base their conclusions on, are very well known to be inacurate compared to the real thing. The data that needs to be gathered from all over the globe including oceans and atmospheric layers up and down to feed these models is simply not available and would like not be available. So it is a bogus, and "everybody knows the books are cooked".
So hows the gaslight and buggy-whip bussiness doing these days?
Compound interest is just accounting, you need physical and human resources to build a dyson sphere, a wind farm, or a coal plant. This problem is about global risk management and our collective allocation of resources in the still unfolding "industrial age". ALL of the coal fired infrustructure that now exists was built in my 50yr lifetime, to build this infrastructure would have involved millions of people and had an astronomical price tag, but frankly I hardly noticed it was happening.
Problem is the "tradgedy of the commons" is now fucking up the climate of our agriculture and turning the oceans acidic, which in turn is threating the bottom of the food chain we find ourselves dangling from. It's not like we can't plan these things, coal fired plants already have a 40-50yr lifecycle, the current energy infrastructure is barely past generation one. Civilization has only got this far by learning from our mistakes and all but the hydro dams will need replacing over the next 50yrs anyway. This is what's called "progress" and there will be just as many opportunities to make a buck in a "green" future as there are now.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him."
Cardinal Richelieu
who finally found evidence of Global Warming Fraud.
New Economic Perspectives
You sir, are an inflammatory idiot.
No, its a MONEY grab for some people (and power can come from the money.)
OIL the #1 traded commodity in the world. It is what supports the over-sized populations of the world (despite 1/3 still being starved.)
So, CO2 becomes a #2 commodity; pushing smaller ones like Coffee down a slot. As OIL gets phased out - other items will end up on the list and many will re-order in more moves than probably ever have occurred before industrialization. The change will create a lot of troubles as people tend to expect things to stay the same or simply wish them to do so.
CO2 trading is going to involve plenty of fraud, as does any of the heavily traded commodities around the world. We have nations working to mislead the world about their supplies of oil, rigging supply, and WARS... Its potential for abuse is much higher since it is more of a virtual market item (a bit harder to have a war over it...) It is some odd form of TAX but highly profitable in a direct way, as opposed to indirect profit (corruption and legit use) by TAX. The biggest problem with replacing a tax/fee or fine with a "market solution" should be clear for reasonable people in the last few years. Zealots come up with ways to profit from doing needed things, you won't pay for air, water, climate but they come up with tricks to get you to pay for them; economics + psychology. Pollution credits as a way to clean the air and water becoming property which raises in value as free sources are lost...
Gore was for it, now he is for anything but wants something that will work ASAP so he's for stronger measures for coal.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I'm not going to presuppose what Exxon knows or thinks -- but this is called hedging your bets. Aside from maybe being pathological, it's completely rational to fund both a "debunk global warming" campaign and a "deal with global warming" program, especially if the latter stands to earn you money. (Hell, they're just companies. They don't really care if in the future they can't sell oil, as long as by then they have a bigger revenue stream.)
Bravo.
brainwashing by pseudoscience
I'm not sure if you are a troll or just deluded.
The files are now up at Wikileaks.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_emails%2C_data%2C_models%2C_1996-2009
Your post is so full of logical flaws I hardly know where to begin. Here's a few:
1. To be pedantic (like you), science never _proves_ anything. All it can do is show correlations and fail to disprove the hypothesis. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
2. Global warming is not an on/off binary thing - there are levels of severity. Hence the way you applied your game theory matrix doesn't actually make sense.
3. (side note) - I love the way you use the loaded terms 'sin' and 'repent' - very clever _and_ original (/sarcasm). Are you a Michael Crichton fan?
4. You assume the the money made by business as usual could or would be used to mitigate the consequences of global warming. This is so incredibly naive that I'm still amazed that people believe it. I think it's chiefly because people like you _assume_ they will remain in the relatively wealthy classes. But if you don't, I wouldn't expect the wealthy or big business to spend a dime trying to help you, if past performance is anything to go by.
"As the scientific method can only disprove, (S, N) provides the only definite answer"
just to go back to this - SO WHAT? This is normal scientific practice, and is the way ALL science research is done. This is the method that has produced modern medicine, space travel and quantum theory (electronics). Why are you suddenly so dissatisfied with it - is it because you don't like what it's saying?
This is /. - I thought our mantra was that data wants to be free? Shouldn't we be considered liberators for posting it?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Certainly I appreciate the anti-establishmentarianism here, but I also find it very interesting that the same kind of "skepticism" of accepted science demonstrated by creationists towards evolution that is almost universally derided here, finds adherents when we start discussing anthropogenic climate change :-)
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Nope, I worked on climate models.
Almost all AGW-denial stuff is simply a pseudoscience.
"Or they could just publish the raw data and be done with it".
And (or), dog forbid, stop taking public money to finance their research. Indeed, it is only the public funding which makes them subject to FOIA in the first place.
If humans are mostly water, and beer is mostly water, then humans must be mostly beer.
Funny, those of us who have been watching Fox News are not suprised by any of this. You can only hear "WE ONLY HAVE 10 YEARS LEFT" so many times perpetually over a 40+ year period and not be skeptical.
--
The Marines: The few, the proud, the not very bright. - Slashdot tagline 04/21/05
which I assume you are from the anemic publication record. You aren't a PI, and shouldn't be held to those standards. If you go on to postdoc or a permanent position in research you will need to get your act together. Your colleagues wont respect you if you are so cavalier about mistakes and inconvenient measurements or results. If your code generated published data it should be very high quality - good enough for anyone to pick up and use. Better yet, freely available. It's standard practice. Don't know what you do, but my field is very competitive and full of very bright people. What we do is nerve rackingly complicated. If any of these folks get a whiff of incompetence or sloppiness they wont work with you. I wouldn't. Errata are embarrassing and have the potential to end your career.
A couple of years ago I had the displeasure of being part of a very political and mean spirited proposed comment/reply to one of my very first first-author papers. One of the putative commenting authors mistakenly replied all when she clearly meant to reply only to her cohorts. It went to me, my then advisor, the journal editor, all of her colleagues - everyone involved. She looked very foolish. That was the end of it.
If you want to be a professional scientists, act professional.
46 & 2
I find it troubling and enlightening that a truthful post like the parent of this reply is modded down to troll.
I find it particularly scary that a post which is merely pointing out the obvious; that
powerful interests deliberately manipulate the popular media and the stories they carry,
would be considered merely provocative propaganda.
If people by and large are believing that the big stories of the day just come to them randomly,
that is a very frightening situation, because it means that you don't have democracy. You
have a mass of gullible, highly influenceable sheep, who can be heavily influenced as to how
to vote, without even realizing they are being heavily influenced.
I know this partly from personal experience. I was quite a while back an environmental
activist fighting deforestation in my region. We had planning meetings. We planned (non-violent but dramatic)
protests with the purpose of capturing media attention. That worked.
In conjunction with each protest, we fed carefully crafted one-page press releases to the local
and national media, and often, we watched, satisfied, as our press releases, lightly edited, became
the headline news of the next day on TV and newspapers.
And we weren't professionals at this. We weren't even very good at it. But it worked like a charm.
Probably around 1/3 of the prominant news stories on any given day are fed to lazy media organizations
by interest groups. Most of those groups, and the ones with the most funding by far, work for large
corporate interests. This is not a troll for **** sake. This is just obvious basic present day reality.
Please wake up. Look around.
The upcoming failure of the Copenhagen climate meetings is now well known and
openly admitted by the world leaders.
In short, every part of the parent post is true and useful information. If that is a troll, I am truly
frightened about our society.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Hey dipshit, a climate change skeptic (McIntrye) found an error in nasa's GISS data and forced NASA to restate the facts of the matter, that 1998 was NOT the hottest year on record.. thats record belongs to 1934, and 3 of the 5 hottest were before 1940.
hey moron quoting old invalidated new, click here
"His name was James Damore."
I analyze the fundamental meta-problem we have here as follows:
Our powerful technology and organized global-scale economy is, apart from making us rich and comfortable temporarily, also causing global-scale, very-long-term problems. These problems are predictable IN GENERAL TERMS by identifying the most fundamental driver forces in simple models of the processes, but there are admittedly going to be many twists and turns in the match of reality to these simplistic models.
Examples of such problems:
1. Atmospheric chemistry change leads to more greenhouse warming of climate. Timeframe for problem: 100 to 200 years. Inertial lag of adjustments we make: 50 years give or take.
2. Bio-diversity reduction of animal and plant species and varieties, due to deforestation, overfishing, rapid climate change, other land-use changes, pollution. Probable loss of 50% or more species in short term. Time frame: 100 to 500 years.
3. Terrestrial soil biomass reduction (in forests, farmland etc) due to deforestation and conversion of biomass to other uses by people. Time frame for problem: 100 - 600 years. 6 generations of temperate forest are about 600 years, and harvesting all of those generations will significantly deplete the forest-supporting soil in those regions.
So we know or believe, in general and probabilistic terms, that our large-scale semi-organized economic processes are causing these problems. But because of the spatial and temporal scale of the problems, you are right, we are unable to plan solutions to the problems, or even to convince ourselves, collectively, that action is required.
In summary:
We have the power to cause very large, very long-term problems these days.
We do not have the metaphysics or cultural maturity to be able to judge or solve these problems
in advance of the problems being way out of control.
Our reach has exceeded our grasp.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I wasn't presupposing anything; I heard an Exxon research executive state that anthropogenic global warming exists.
Simon's Rock College
There's no "committee in charge" of climate science. This is borderline conspiracy theory. Each research university controls its own funding, each government agency directs its own budget, each technical journal has its own editorial staff. Bad science doesn't get funded or published because it is bad, not because of some central committee who controls everything. Some people are bad scientists. They can't prove anything scientifically; so all they have are PR stunts like this e-mail hack.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Read your parent post again. CRU is only one of very many research teams studying the Earth's climate. You could throw away every piece of data and every conclusion from them and there would be plenty of strong science left.
A theory is only as strong as the people, data, and process to support it.
Definitely true. The point being that there are many more people, data, and processes than CRU, that have led to the current understanding of the Earth's climate. Here's a short list of just the U.S. government agencies that are involved.
http://gcmd.nasa.gov/Resources/pointers/meteo.html
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Atheists sure are quick to blame God
I'm an atheist, but I gotta admit you got me. I blame the bad economy on Zeus.
But I really hate those fucking leprechauns... it's their fault I got a flat tire last week.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
classy stuff
A question...
How "classy" would you be if Flat Earthers were harassing you and interfering with your work based on some deluded idea that you were part of some evil global conspiracy?
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I just skimmed 50 text files that picked up on searches of a few phrases I made up. Certainly no scientific analysis. But from what I have seen, I don't see a conspiracy as suggested by the Air website which seems pretty wacky and unscientific and reactionary. Could be me but..
I met a researcher who contributed to one of the larger climate reports, and listened to his talk and that of other researchers. His key point, which everyone seemed to agree on, is that while there remains much to learn and there are various opinions, EVERY REPUTABLE SCIENTIST AGREES that temperatures are going up quickly. They only differ on how fast. The hockey stick graph is apparently correct. The only question is, will we have massive destruction of our way of life in the next 20-30 years or not. Basically by 2050 you want to be on high ground IIRC.
This man was from Melbourne. In the U.S. perhaps Lamont-Doherty is a good place to ask perhaps.
That said, I attended another much smaller group talk, this was a polar survey (joint Swedish and Japanese teams) and if I understand correctly, they found a flow of different temperature water from one hemisphere to another that was very significant. I think the answer is you have to find a scientist you feel you can trust as a person, and then ask his opinion. Don't start with a reactionary type who has just absorbed 176MB uncompressed of data.
People also seem to think remediation (focusing solar power, seeding clouds) is a scary idea. You don't know what input will mess with a chaotic system in feedback, is my understanding. And there is a risk of scary events like poison gas suddenly bubbling from under the oceans or other things. To me this means we must take major steps now just to reduce our input of greenhouse gases, as we cannot afford to wait until we understand it better. Not when our major cities are on COASTS.
There is much great discussion above, and I am going to save this and read through it to see who is stretching facts and who is not, for instance, the idea that a CO2 bubble can move after it has been frozen and encased in multiple layers of ice is over the top and literally crazy talk. The reason Ice Cores are such great tools for determining the make up of the atmosphere at that time in the planets history is because they are so EXACT. So attempting to suggest that they can migrate is FUD!
The changes in ocean current flows around the planet based on the content of fresh water (glacial melt) and salt water has significantly changed. Its getting worse. We know if the flow changes, Great Britain freezes hard core as do many other places in the world, of course severe winters have happened many times and are cyclical in nature, unlike the CO2 core samples which scientists have proven are NOT CYCLICAL. CO2 content has just gotten more concentrated, there are no cycles based on Ice Cores.
Those that measure glacier melting and retreating have been alarmed, because they have been measuring this for decades, made hypothesis es as to what will happen in the future and so far in the past two or three years have publicly stated that their earlier estimates were WAY OFF. That the amount of melt and retreating, combined with lack of re-freezing in the winter (smaller and smaller areas freeze solid each year which is problematic for many different reasons) is much more severe than previously thought. Thus they now believe in Global Warming theories.
What do we have to do, wait until people on the coast have to live in Tree houses as the oceans move inland due to rising sea levels? How much more difficult will it be to make significant changes that even have the hopes of changing things for the better as such changes take decades to measure?
Why is that independent Scientist, not associated with a political party, are so blatantly shouted down, ignored and their research suppressed?
And multiple people have made excellent points about moving from oil to solar and wind and even if Global Warming was not true, the US would gain in development of the new technologies, not just creating many new jobs but reducing our dependence on foreign oil, which all agree is one of the largest national security risks for the United States today. Heck if we moved everything but our military and perhaps the Airlines off oil, would we produce enough oil domestically to maintain our nation's defense? If not we better get started sooner rather than later finding alternative fuel sources as anything else is most certainly dangerous and I would suggest violates a politicians oath of office to protect the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic.
Reminds me of that quote about encountering or seeing the enemy and discovering that the enemy is us.
I do not own an oil company, oil field or make money from them, if I did perhaps I would want to keep the status quo to enrich myself at the expense of my neighbors...perhaps.
Regardless, the point of the article as I see it, is that documents were stolen, the validity of all the documents now being "discovered" are very much in question, yet that does not prevent one specific political party from attempting to divert our attention to this and from other issues. We need to pay attention to those slanting the date for their own ends...what is it that they do not want us to pay attention to? Health Care perhaps?
Business as usual will not save Americans and the United States. That one political party who refuses to change in order to help Americans needs to get a clue.
One political party started this mess, the other political party went along with it; they are both guilty of not serving and protecting Americans. The more they fight politically against each other, at the expense of American citizens, the more I come to despise them.
Do not think by refusing to work together to fix things it will help get your party elected, it will NOT!
If you are NOT part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Do not be part of the problem!
Your analysis makes a number of faulty assumptions:
You assume that money spent on mitigation will be lost. However, if that money is invested in renewable energy technologies, it will pay dividends in the form of energy sources that are not affected by scarcity of fossil fuels -- this gives countries that pursue the R response a huge advantage during peak oil.
You assume that money not spent on mitigation will be well-invested and pay dividends via compound interest. Recent economic events call this assumption into question, to put it mildly.
You assume that the dividends obtained by investing the saved money will be sufficient to pay the cost of adaptation. However, most credible economic estimates put the cost of adapatation so far above the cost of mitigation that it would take unrealistically good investment to return enough to cover the cost. An ounce of prevention...
You assume that the H response by AGW will be relatively mild in any case. There are growing indications that there is significant risk that this response will be severe -- that is, beyond the reasonable possibility of adaptation. See for example the latest modeling from MIT.
Generally speaking, you are failing to account for interaction with other factors, such as resource scarcity, political instability, economic instability, slow physical feedbacks, population pressure, and many other factors that influence the outcome significantly. Nothing happens in a vacuum.
Greg Craven has a detailed analysis of global warming from a risk management perspective, I think you would find it interesting.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Climate change was a reframing by the right as it's a more innocuous term. It was eventually adopted by much of the scientific community as being "more accurate" and easier to understand by lay people i.e; it more clearly encompasses the broader suite of ensuing changes... rather than global warming which accurately describes the increase in mean global temperature due to the retention of energy in the atmospheric system. Joe Sixpack doesn't grok that weather is not climate, and that a single "freakishly cold" winter in Duluth doesn't mean anything to someone sizzling in Sydney or Sao Paolo year after year.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Phil Jones wrote that he had “just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline,” What Jones meant by "hiding the decline" is being increasingly discovered in the code and related comments. * See evidence in: The Code at Bishop Hill's blog eg the programmer noting: ""***** APPLIES A VERY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION FOR DECLINE*********" * From the programming file "briffa_sep98_d.pro": "; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!! ; yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904] valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$ 2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor" etc. * See: Climategate: hide the decline – codified at WattsUpWithThat.com * See discussion at Climate Audit Mirror The Harry Read_Me File * Links to current articles can be found at: Climatedepot.com The emails are searchable at: Alleged CRU Emails - Searchable
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/slashdot/eqWf/~3/Ltx1dUIvKyA/Hacked-Climate-Emails-Stoke-Debate It disappeared completely from Slashdot. Why?
Real science doesn't need to hide.
I take it, then, that you're siding with Schlafly in the Schlafly v. Lenski dustup?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Other commenters have taken apart your weird assurances that if it weren't for the masses of dollars spent on the climate, we'd all be living on solar domes in platforms in space, as well as your handwaving-away of the economic costs of catastrophic environmental disasters.
Anyway, the latest predictions I heard of our holy climate priests were an increase of 2 degrees centigrade in 2100. (no, not 2010).
The temperature changes aren't evenly distrubted around the globe. This doesn't mean that, for instance, on a day where it would have been 20 C, it will now be 22 C in my neighborhood. Relatively small changes in average global temperature can have large effects on the environment; two degrees' increase leads to a significant chance of ice sheets falling off Greenland (thus raising sea levels), the Gulf Stream ceasing to run (thus freezing Europe), and massively more intense hurricanes.
If the global temperature was a random walk with a delta of -0.1, 0 and +0.1 every year, we can and will obtain much greater deltas just by chance alone.
Why must you make me invoke Morbo?
GLOBAL TEMPERATURE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!
It's not a random walk. If you have some reason to believe that it is, or that a random-walk model would make an accurate model, I'm all ears, but so far as I'm aware, this is utter handwaving bullshit. It's not even accurate as a model of any sort. It's as though I decided to model my weight as a random walk and concluded that I might end up with negative mass, and am thus a valuable resource for physicists.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I wonder if Al Gore will have to give his Nobel Peace Prize back ... nah the Nobel Peace prize is worthless anymore anyways