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Engaging With Climate Skeptics
In the wake of the CRU "climategate" leak, reader Geoffrey.landis sends along a New York Times blog profile of Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech. "Curry — unlike many climate scientists — does not simply dismiss the arguments of 'climate skeptics,' but attempts to engage them in dialogue. She can, as well, be rather pointed in criticizing her colleagues, as in a post on the skeptic site climateaudit where she argues for greater transparency for climate data and calculations (mirrored here). In this post she makes a point that tribalism in science is the main culprit here —- that when scientists 'circle the wagons' to defend against what they perceive to be unfair (and unscientific) attacks, the result can be damaging to the actual science being defended. Is it still possible to conduct a dialogue, or is there no possible common ground?"
Open-sourcing the Global Warming Debate:
In short, if computer models are the primary tool in making all sorts of climate predictions, then let's have transparency in building the models and getting conclusions from them.
Go somewhere random
Where do all the scientists who are skeptics fit in?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
You already are. Err. evolution, not round earth.
"...tribalism in science is the main culprit here..."
Funny, the old word used to be 'fraud'.
-Styopa
Testimony of Richard C. Levin President, Yale University Committee on the Environment and Public Works April 3, 2008 "The Panel concluded that, in the absence of corrective measures, global temperatures are likely to rise between 1 and 6 degrees centigrade by the end of this century, with the best estimates ranging between 2 and 4 degrees." Actually Richard, your a bit high but very close, but I think it will be about 1.95 degrees (2.6 * 0.75); The human contribution to global warming: 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 yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,x) densall=densall+yearlyadj
Both sides are entrenched and doing what is probably irreparable damage to this debate with their quaint little antics. Unless they are replaced we'll continue to have to deal with a public that is either educated by CNN or Fox News.
There very much is a common ground. Truth. Because people disagree doesn't mean that both aren't seeking to know the truth; really, both might have reasonable positions, given everything that individual has experienced and learned to date. Reality will be the ultimate arbitrator which decides who is correct.
There may be people on either side of the debate that aren't interested in the truth... in fact, there clearly are, in both camps. Those aren't scientists, though, and they aren't doing science. They're just people interfering with science. Best to publish all data, and keep discussion reasonable and non-accusatory. The amount of political and activist cruft attaching to the believers and deniers are harming the TRUE cause, which is to find out the truth.
Even the common labels, "believers" and "deniers", are ridiculous; they have more of a place in religious debate.
This way when the debate finally is over, the statements about such can be true.
Of course, this does overshadow the real debate, which is whether or not Governments are the right organizations to correct any issues, which, if we look at similar historic pollution agreements, they have failed miserably.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
The claims of evolution skeptics and round-earth skeptics is not backed up by observation and evidence. On the other hand, the more extreme claims of anthropogenic global warming _proponents_ are not backed up with sufficient observation and are extrapolated from very small datasets.
Given all of this, to say the "science is settled" is a travesty, and all those who said so fully deserve what's come so far and is undoubtedly coming as there's greater public and scientific scrutiny of their methods:
a) the Yamal tree-ring data - data from 10 trees is extrpolated into a 'trend' and finds its way into a number of papers
b) CRU emails - won't say much more, too much said about this already.
c) New Zealand average temperature graphs - high-school style 'cooking the graph' to match expectations
At this point, climate scientists who don't open up their raw data, modelling code and assumptions/decision-making are going to look as sleazy as PHB managers who forecast self-serving weird shit to make themselves look good to their bosses.
Go somewhere random
... require extraordinary evidence. The global-warmists, or climate change proponents need to pony-up some real evidence for all the wild, alarmist claims about doomsday they've been making for the past 20 years... not just anecdotal bunk like misc. ice sleets falling off Antarctica, etc.
It is the job of scientists to observe impartially, test, and provide us with facts and data.
It is up to the politicians to use (or misuse) those facts and data.
But once the scientist sees himself as a politician, it is far too easy for ego and self-interest to blind them to what they should be observing, instead of what they wish to observe.
umm, curry. AFK, food.
Is what ?
Being more efficient ?
Where is the downside of improving efficiency of devices and ourselves ?
Whatever happens to the climate, the resources we currently use are limited.
Come on, everybody knows the Earth is round - like a circle. The Bible clearly states that. Now if you want to try to argue that the Earth is spherical, that a different matter.
No one is really against a better environment, however many people are against the lies on what the real problems are and lies about how some new taxes will magically make everything better.
"Engaging with skeptics" is an approach that I find improvised and naive at best.
First on the list of naivete is accepting their self-description as skeptics without any second-thought. They are anything but skeptics. They are out to destroy the legitimacy of climate scientists in public opinion and they use all the dirty tricks in the book toward that objective. Their self-description as skeptics and their talking points have been carefully laid out by PR firms working for powerful vested interests.
Theirs is a concerted strategy to influence public opinion and the last salvo with this "hacking" thing happens just before the Copenhagen summit. She does not even question the legitimacy of those emails.
Engaging with the public and with legitimate political representatives is what climate scientists must do. "Skeptics" doing disinformation should be exposed, not engaged with.
Let's have some light shone on the temperature data and how it is collected:
From Surfacestations.org[pdf], a project to survey all 1221 of the climate-monitoring stations in the U.S.:
During the past few years I recruited a team of more than 650 volunteers to visually inspect and photographically document more than 860 of these temperature stations. We were shocked by what we found.
We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.
In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source.
And let's not forget the international methods of survey.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
I have to go with the way Dawkins approaches this type of situation. Giving them a seat at the table gives them credibility.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
Cherry picking data is like the blind men and the elephant, in a sense you see what you want to see. You have to step back to see the elephant. There was a debate for decades about climate cooling or getting warmer. There is supposed to be a cooling trend but the problem is instead it appears to be warming. Let's say the data is suspect due to cherry picking, how do we know which is right? It's hard to deny Arctic melting as much as some are trying to deny it. Also people used to judge weather by animal patterns. We forgot how to read them but it worked well. Look at the animal patterns. Explosions of giant jellyfish off Japan and other areas. Numerous red tides including northern areas where they used to be rare. Starfish invading the Bering Straits where they used to be rare. A number of tropical species have been appearing in the UK and the north east coast of the US. It's happened before but it used to be rare and now it's getting commonplace. In Alaska the permafrost is melting deeper than anyone has ever seen before and worldwide the glaciers are melting fast and there are hundreds of photos to prove it. Assuming all the data is suspect there's still a lot of evidence of a sudden drastic change because much of this observational data has happened in the last ten years and it's consistent worldwide. A natural cycle? Why are we assuming that a volcano that spews billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere can affect weather but us doing the same every year has no affect? You might as well say that pouring water into a rain barrel can't make it overflow only rain can make a rain barrel over flow we can't do it. It makes as much sense. A change is happening the only real questions are how much and how fast.
I'm not sure if it's possible for the two sides to have a logical, non-handwavey-gloom-and-doom conversation.
When the hack became public and "climate-gate" was unfolding, people were asking on RealClimate.org (one of the sites involved somehow with climategate) for explanations about the numbers and just what the scientists and researchers were discussing when they were talking about tricks in correlating various datum. In the first 250 comments or so, no one brought said anything about global warming/climate change not being real or if it was caused by humans or not. People just wanted to know what the heck the numbers meant and what the various acronyms were.
Yet those folks were called deniers. That we didn't "get" it, and never would. These comments weren't from site admins or the scientists involved however.
With the predictable responses from the other side.
Maybe the scientists and researchers on both sides can have a reasoned debate, but for John Q. Public, I guess we've been fed so much "doom-and-gloom" or "it's-all-nonsense" that the yelling and finger-pointing are in full tilt before the cooler heads have even opened their mouths.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
This attitude that when it comes to climate science it is a "With us or against us," sort of thing. Either someone accepts that humans are causing climate change, that the results will be catastrophic and so on or they are the ENEMY. Skepticism, dissent, etc are not tolerated. If you don't tow the party line, you are clearly in the pocket of the industry or a moron or whatever, worthy only of being shouted down and silenced.
That sort of attitude is a large part of what leads to the polarization of the issue, and is precisely what it seems that this person is trying to work against. If you have the attitude that anyone who is skeptical of your theory at all is to be dismissed a priori, well then you aren't going to win many converts, are you?
Also I should note that attitudes like this make many people like me extremely skeptical. Whenever people act in a manner that demands unquestioning support, when they simply shout down those that disagree and attempt to silence them, when they are secretive about their methods and data, when they appeal to a consensus, when they say debate is over, well that raises my bullshit alarm. The reason is that is precisely how con artists operate. They present you with what they say as absolute truth and shout down those who would dare question it. They want to present you with only their reality, because they are indeed full of shit and they don't want that to come out. As such they attack those that question them and try to silence them, because they want to deflect from the questions.
Well, when you act like a con man, that really sets off warning bells for me. Why would you do that? Why would you simply try to shut down those that question you if you are so sure of your position? While it doesn't make you a con to do that, it sure as hell makes me suspicious you are one.
So really, shit like that doesn't help. If you are going to dismiss anyone who is skeptical of your viewpoint out of hand, you accomplish nothing. You won't convert any of them, obviously since you just dismiss them, and you'll make others wonder what it is you are so worried about.
All you have to do is read the replies to this article to understand why engaging in serious discussion isn't really feasible. Exaggerated claims of falsification and completely tangential theories about motives seem to be the order of the day.
... just personal attacks and outright lies.
Wikipedia...
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle
Why would I argue that the Earth is spherical? It's an ellipsoid.
Interestingly, ESR has gotten in on the discussion and is a little more damning in his condemnation of the entire Climategate ordeal
http://rebootcongress.blogspot.com/2009/11/eric-s-raymond-on-east-anglia-crus.html
There is only one way to cut through all of the conflicting claims and agendas about the CRU's research: open-source it all. Publish the primary data sets, publish the programs used to interpret them and create graphs like the well-known global-temperature "hockey stick", publish everything. Let the code and the data speak for itself; let the facts trump speculation and interpretation.
We know, from experience with software, that secrecy is the enemy of quality -- that software bugs, like cockroaches, shun light and flourish in darkness. So, too. with mistakes in the interpretation of scientific data; neither deliberate fraud nor inadvertent error can long survive the skeptical scrutiny of millions. The same remedy we have found in the open-source community applies - unsurprisingly, since we learned it from science in the first place. Abolish the secrecy, let in the sunlight.
If this were any other scientific theory this wouldn't be happening. Politicians are in on this, politically deciding which evidence is valid and which is not, on both sides of the issue. The "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" isn't even strictly necessary most of the time. If this were string theory I wouldn't care. The problem is that this is being used to advocate drastic changes in public policy. Policies Al Gore supports would end factory farming and dramatically drive up energy prices. The only possible outcome of this is an immediate and severe increase in the price of food, and famine in much of the undeveloped world. It would lead to millions perhaps billions of deaths over the next several decades. If you're asking me to standby and let our politicians kill millions through famine, because the alternative is even more devastating destruction, you better have some evidence that: A) Your doomsday scenario is fairly certain B) the policy changes you suggest will definitely prevent it. While the evidence for A is getting slightly more convincing, all the evidence seems to be against B. When DDT was banned millions died of malaria, I don't want my generation being responsible for another such well meaning, naive, indirect mass murder.
Seems like the burden of proof should fall on the polluters and not the environmentalists. I find it hard to believe a bunch of people who are arguing for greater efficiency and less waste need to be put on the defensive. But that's politics as usual, I suppose.
How many people can the environment comfortably sustain? We all need resources as input, and have waste products as output... should we reward people for using less, or penalize people for using much more than others?
But really, the only way to find out for sure is to stress the system until it breaks.
It would be nice to preemptively address the problem before we destroy our livelihood, but politically the naysayers will always whine about not getting the resources they're entitled to - it's in their best interests. So just like every pollution problem we've had in the past, we won't really get legislative action until something bad happens and people die. We just have to hope it won't be as catastrophic. Maybe at best we could convince polluters to be responsible to pay into a fund to fix future damages... so they kinda get a short term reward for subjecting us to risk.
I feel like the current fixation on CO2 emissions is kind of silly... it's a good simplification to help focus our efforts on sustainable energy sources as opposed to burning fossil fuels, but the AGW crowd has attacked that simplification, instilling a fair dose of FUD.
Anyway, the optimist in me hopes the US / China / etc. can sort of get in line with some of the other cultures (Japanese, German) who just approach things like recycling and increased efficiency as a no-brainer... why even argue? But the pessimist in me is investing in real estate in Alaska :P
Unfortunately, while we'd all feel better if science was going to determine the policy outcome, I think we're all aware here that the truth about global warming is only a secondary factor in the success or failure of enacting policy to prevent it.
This is true for both sides, and *both* sides know it. Simply put, the issue is way too important to be left to mere science.
AGW is only a secondary issue to many of the non-scientists in the game. The pro-AGW crowd has many people who would like to see Western society's materialistic, high-energy-use lifestyle forcibly curbed, and AGW provides a convenient club.
Likewise, many of the anti-AGW would be willing to sacrifice hundreds of millions of poor people in geographically challenged areas if the only alternative was strict curbs on their lifestyle, but would prefer not to have to actually say it. So they'd deny the science rather than admit the underlying sentiment.
I strongly suspect that among the voters, there's only a small minority for whom the science is the principal factor in determining the preferred policy.
Proof? For all those who hold a strong opinion on AGW in one direction or the other, ask yourself this. What proof would it take for you to accept that the opposite position was actually the correct one? Exactly.
Yeah, the imprecision of the language here always irks me. When you say climate change skeptics, that's not a single entity. Do they mean the hard core 'the earth can't change' types, the ones who think climate change is influenced by both people and natural cycles to one degree or another, the ones who just say it happens but it isn't the end of the world, or some other group who simply doesn't buy into the next scheduled apocalypse? When you say evolution skeptics (deniers), you're almost always talking about a member of a fairly homogeneous group who started with a conclusion and worked backwards, a position that rarely has much merit in its entirety. Not so with this. Yeah, there are some out there like that, but that's hardly the full range of things.
Yeah, you're right.
None of that melting ice caps, record glacial melts, and lack of ozone layer above the Antartic stuff means anything. All of it's BS.
I'll grant you that transparency hasn't been very good. But you can ignore that little passage between Thule and Vancouver that's nearly ice free now.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
To look at the subject from a risk/reward point of view. If we do nothing and the global warming proponents are wrong, life goes on like normal. If we do nothing and the global warming proponents are right, millions of people die.
The short version of everything that's come out so far is: the leading climate scientists pushing AGW were lying left, right, and center, and there is absolutely no evidence, not even a little, to support global warming, let alone AGW. If you haven't done so already,
I've seen it, it shows nothing of the sort. It shows people having considerable difficulty in combining data sets in a consistent and reliable way. This is always a tricky problem. Your "data manipulation" could easily be correction factors for systematic errors or problems with particular data sets. But of course a private note that was never meant to be read is hardly going to be a complete, detailed and fully explained document, is it?
I can only assume that people are reading into it what they want to see.
Your 'point' is is not factually correct. Nothing in the CRU email and data indicates scientists who subscribe to an anthropogenic cause of climate change have not been systematically lying or engaging in unethical practices to support their work. There already are *mountains* of evidence from a huge array of sciences supporting both climate change and an anthropogenic cause. And nothing on Wikileaks invalidates any of the work done at CRU or any other climate research institute.
The reality of all that hoopla is the people doing the agitating had long since decided that not only can the climate not change but even if it did man couldn't possibly have an impact.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Computer models composed by incredibly specialized scientists who've got Ph.Ds in the area under study aren't exactly the same as "software" in a general, loosey-goosey way. You wouldn't open source most business applications precisely because their operation relies on very strict sets of assumptions that work (or don't work) because the people who are building and configuring the systems for that business know (or don't know) precisely how the business should work
you need to look at the science and I think many of you put on some blinders and consider yourself educated in the matter bucause you watched Gore's film.
Before you buy into this, consider the what you are really getting on board with. There are many issues that do not reconcile.
For instance, every farmer knows the level of c02 is barely sustainable. This is why greenhouses must augment with c02 injection. The higher the temp, the more c02 needed. This is a fact that can be proven and replicated. Low co2 harms plants.
AGW trys to tell you something different. They say, c02 is harmful. You can reduce heat by lowering c02 and plants will flourish. Try replicating this in a lab. Im telling you now, it will fail and the plants will suffer.
The science they promote is flawed. c02 has zero impact on heat. AGW cant be substantiated. Its made up. Try it for yourself.
Being a scientist but not of the climate variety, I've got to say 'No'.
In a lot of cases, if not most, dialogue on the merits of your scientific work is simply impossible with a layperson.
I work with this stuff. Every day. 40 (well more like 50-60) hours a week. It took years of study for me (and everyone else)
just to get to the level where you can properly understand what it is, exactly, that I do. That's what being an expert at something entails.
Now when I get into a dispute with someone, they typically have the same level of expertise. They know more or less everything I do. I know what they're saying, and they usually know what I'm saying.
Now you bring into that situation some layperson with their religious reasons or ideological reasons or crank personality, who wants to dispute the results of my work. So they pore over it, and they simply don't understand it. (And ignorance breeds arrogance more often than humility, as Lincoln said) But they think they do. And then they formulate their criticism. Even if that criticism makes sense (often not), it's typically wrong at the most basic level. And that will practically always be the case - because there's virtually *nothing* in the way of criticism that a beginner would be able to think of that an expert hadn't thought about already. You're just not going to find a professor of physics having made a mistake of forgetting the first law of thermodynamics.
Now I'm happy to defend my science against legitimate, good, criticism. But a scientific debate is *NOT* where anybody should be TEACHING anybody science. What kind of 'debate' is it if every answer amounts to "That's not what that word means, read a damn textbook." It's not the scientists who are being arrogant then. Hell, since when didn't scientists bend over backwards to educate the public? We write textbooks, and popular-scientific accounts. Research gets published in journals for everyone to see, etc. It's not like we're keeping it a big secret - The problem is that some people are simply unwilling to learn, yet arrogant enough to believe they should be entitled to 'debate' with me, and that I should be personally burdened with educating them in the name of 'open debate'!
(Just to pick one out of the climate bag. How often haven't you seen someone say "Yeah but climate change is cyclical!" - What? As if _climate scientists_ didn't know that?! Refuting someone's research with arguments from an introductory textbook)
The fact that these climate-skeptics were prepared to take these e-mails, pore over them for some choice quotes (which didn't even look incriminating to me out of context), blatantly misinterpret them without making any kind of good-faith effort to understand the context or the science behind it, and trumpet it all out as some kind of 'disproval' of global warming (which wouldn't have been the case even if they were right), just goes to show that they're simply not interested in either learning the science, or engaging in a real debate. And it's in itself pseudo-scientific behavior in action: Decide there's a big conspiracy of fraud behind climate change, and go look for evidence to support your theory, and ignore all other explanations.
global warming is very real, though AGW is a bit of b.........
I wish I had mod points - this needs modding up!
I don't doubt the anthropogenic basis for climate change - you can take a look at the IPCC Synthesis Report for a persuasive outline of the case. However, once you get past the most basic assertions, the scientific community is doing an absolutely terrible job. Most of the time when I read a paper on climate change I can immediately spot lots of methodological and deductive errors, and, conveniently, they always come out in favour of anthropogenic climate change. Some argue that science is just another religion. This isn't true. However, the sort of 'science' most climate scientists are doing nowadays may as well be a religion, basing conclusions on manifestly insufficient data, and inferring causation based on correlation alone. Right now the climate sceptics don't need to make straw men to argue against - the scientific community is making the straw men for them.
Scientists shouldn't be arguing against sceptics - scientists should be the sceptics. Even ignoring faulty reasoning, many published scientific results are wrong (see this article). Scientists should be constantly questioning results to try to arrive at a refined, unbiased analysis of the facts - instead we have become defensive, treating every sceptical inquiry as an attack, and as a result, the research doesn't get the sort of scrutiny necessary to advance our understanding. Something needs to change.
Score:0, Flamebait. I guess the mods don't want anything to interfere with their settled beliefs.
The socalled sceptics should in truth be called believers, because they seem to believe there is a global conspiracy of nearly all climate scientists, that this conspiracy has been there for years, fiddling with data to make it fit their objective, with all of their data published, all of their models published without anyone being able to refute the science in these, for what evil goal? To make humans more responsible in how we treat our environment? What an evil and nefarious plan!
The IPCC reports are public, they are based upon peer reviewed articles. There may be some data which is protected by copyright, but in general it is all public, data, models and conclusions.
This is FUD of the worst kind, because the "sceptics" know that most "sceptics" will not bother to look into it for themselves.
Let me repeat, it is all publicly available, except for certain pieces of data which may be protected by copyright - after all there are institutions living of selling the data they collect.
If you disagree, then look into what has been published and show us the errors, don't try the old propaganda trick of trying to undermine the scientists, undermine their science if it is wrong
anu other scientific topic:
Most deniers don't stop denying even after all there points have been shot down, and the media gives them undue air time.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Those that do not believe that global warming is real have very real and very sick motives for their denial. No amount of evidence or proof will ever change their minds. They simply are not concerned and all that they want is to feel safe and to have their positions in this world unchanged. In addition it is part and parcel with some other idiotic conservative doctrines. Some of these doctrines are somewhat occult in that they have never been seriously defined. For example the anti abortion loonies have a deep feeling that the general morality may change if abortion remains available. Their feeling is that any change in community morality somehow endangers them. The usual nonsense that it is a moral imperative for them to stop abortions is nonsense. There is no moral duty to stop other people from using an alternative such as abortion. Trying to equate it with stopping slavery or other such tripe are symptoms of primitive minds running wild with poorly formed abilities to reason.
Seriously. They're called experts for a reason.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
The real AGW arguments (and the motivation of all the parties involved) seem to be about the remedies rather than the climate. The AGW believers want to use governments to force people to lead objectively poorer lives. Many of them have wanted this since before Global Warming was even theorized.
They demand the power to do this, but they refuse to release their data. They refuse to publish the code for their computer models. They refuse to rationally refute skepticism. They refuse to understand human behavior as described by the discipline of Economics. They refuse to address the question of whether warmer may be better than colder. They refuse to identify the "correct" temperature, let alone describe how they arrived at that temperature. They refuse to close the loop on their proposed remedies to objectively weigh the benefits against the cost.
If Global Warming was simply an academic question rather than a life-or-death political struggle for power (or against power and for freedom), then it could be discussed as such.
AGW is going to lose the political struggle because of Climategate. It was already reeling from the fact that it hasn't warmed in the last decade. And it faced an uphill battle due to the depression: rich people can afford to pay for environmental spirituality, poor people can't. If the political struggle ends, this can go back to being about whether carbon release causes warming, and how much, and what it really means.
Well then here: IPCC FAQ for your perusal. Not the whole report, mind you, seeing as I'm sure that you don't have the time or patience to sort through the information. I'm guessing that you're referring to CBS as being the "obviously politically motivated" party here? You don't actually say, so I have to assume this.
Greenland is not called GREENland because it's covered by glaciers. Short term local temperature variations doesn't mean shit, this includes your local glacier that melted last year.
The last 10 years have been filled with ball freezing anomalities, and some melts, i won't deny that.
The problem however is that the general climate predictions from the all mighty computer models tells me that my balls should be bueried in the sand to escape the infernal heat. Not that they've migrated to my kidneys to escape the dozen or so record cold levels measured so far this year.
The downsides are poverty, death, government tyranny, despair, hunger, loss of cultural heritage, loss of the ability to technically advance, and a general sense of hopelessness about the future.
Every human action must be tested against thousands of pessimistic "what if" scenarios, often by people with selfish or political motives. And even if you slip past the tests, any gain you receive from your actions will be largely taken from you to pay the salaries of the bureaucrats that tried to stand in your way.
Why bother doing anything?
It shows people having considerable difficulty in combining data sets in a consistent and reliable way.
Yet, these people have no qualms about pushing for costly policy decisions on the basis of the output they provide, despite the fact that their ways aren't consistent and reliable; and they try to massage the data first, and keep quiet about it. I read the emails, and while I saw many instances of "let's try to fit the data to our model" (and frustration that it doesn't fit), I saw very little of "let's try to see if there is another explanation outside of the model". That is very indicative of the mindset of that particular group (and also understandable - they have put years of their life developing that model). It maybe echoed all over the field, in which case all the data sets and methodology may need to be scrutinized from the outside. Unless, as the email says, these folks delete "their" data (obtained with public funding) first.
The article seems quite right to call climatology a tribal discipline, and the lack of desire of the top shamans to open up, and the opposition they present to anyone that questions their models (and motives) that is revealed in those emails looks very childish to me. I have seen a point in the ... errr ... "forumsphere" that this is what "real scientists" do, but it isn't - if you're making extraordinary claims, you better be ready to open up your extraordinary proof to maximum scrutiny, not fight FoI requests as hard as possible.
If anything, the attitude reminds me of the developer team of a certain dot-com I used to work with. They may have high IQs, but their EQs seem to be in the lower 20s. Still, overpaid 20-year-olds is one thing, people who shape my future - quite another. I wouldn't have been so worried, but the "world government leaders" have seized on this as an excuse to push for another major tax hike.
It is just another, gigantic swine flu.
for pete's sake... most of the people in these (Global Warming/Climate Change and whether or not it's Anthropogenic (wtf? who dreamed that one up to hide the 'human-caused' part?) debates can't see the forest for the trees anymore.
Who gives a shit about whether the Earth is warming up or cooling down? Whether the weather is calming or getting more eccentric? Whether humans are the cause or whether this is all just part of a some sun/geological/alien cycle?
Okay, granted, we should all give a shit.
But there's *very real immediate benefits* to not fucking with CFCs so much anymore, to not sticking lead in all our gas anymore, to not using mercury willy-nilly in an assortment of products, and to switching to cleaner alternatives to burning oil and coal. Any asthma patient on a bike stuck behind a gas-guzzler vs a prius in city driving will tell you so.
Are there down sides? Sure. Do most of these downsides conclude in you having less money to spend or more government interference? You betcha.
If you don't want less money to spend just so some random dickwad can breathe a little easier, so fish aren't served with lead on somebody else's plate, and so Australians don't fry to a crisp in UV rays.. hey, by all means, join the 'anti-GW-movement' (whatever that is)... but don't bloody kid yourself that it's not about your fucking money.
If you don't want the government to interfere more - hey, here's a thought, make the changes on your own accord, then governments wouldn't have to legislate these things.
I'll start believing in man-made-climate-change.
Thank You!
I would be classified as a skeptic. I'm not convinced that they are wrong, I'm just not convinced that they are right. The first one would be my fault, the second is theirs. I'm not one of the "earth can't change" types. I'm positive that it is changing, I'm just not convinced that:
A We are responsible for it
B That it's the end of the world as many seem to believe it is.
I am employed as a scientists, in an admitedly unrelated field. My industry is also under fire by "Skeptics" and I can relate to the frustration evidenced in the leaked emails. However, I've always believed that enganging those who are willing to listen, and ignoring those who made up their mind and as you say "Started with a conclusion and worked backwards". My industry is only recently taking the innitiative and it seems to be working.
P.S. I would NEVER use a word like "Hide" in context of normalizing a dataset. That smacks way too much of fraudulent data manipulation.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
"you're still evil for asking all of those questions (even though they turned out to have a good foundation for skepticism, and you were pretty much right about the weak science)
Which questions had a good foundation?
My experience is that a good number of "those questions" -- at least as they filter out into popular discussion -- are either ridiculous or end up having credible responses in support of anthropocentric climate change.
"How can it be global warming if some places are getting cooler?"
"Why is no one talking about urban heat island effect on measurement?"
"The 'consensus' in the 1970s was that we were in for a new ice age! Why should we believe climate scientists now?"
"Ice is getting *thicker* in some places in Greenland. Doesn't this disprove the whole thing?"
"Aren't concerns about global warming are based largely on unreliable computer models?"
"Scientist in is a skeptic for reasons not clearly discussed! Doesn't that mean there's not a consensus?"
Maybe I'm strawmaning the debate, but this is seriously the level of questioning I see. I'd be happy to engage tougher questions if they exist, but as it looks to me right now, either skeptics are either largely represented by people who are poorly articulating whatever substantial objections might exist, or they deserve the scorn they're met with.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
unless you have a PhD or M.Sc. in a relevant scientific field.
You are just making yourself look like an idiot.
You are free to argue about what should be done about it, as that is a values-based political judgement.
Keep the distinction straight, and we're all good.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
This continual presentation of it being some "hippie" scientists fighting the good fight against a massive establishment doing everything they can do keep them down. Ok... Umm so can you please show me this happening? I fail to see it. I see plenty of grants going around for researching global warming, I see plenty of money flowing in to environmental groups, I see plenty of activism on that side. I also see attempts to silence critics, I see many things failing at good scientific rigor and so on.
I also see many corporations getting on board with this whole "carbon neutral" thing. Apparently being green is in style now, so they sell that. My web host takes time to crow on about how good they are environmentally (http://www.pair.com/environmental_policy/). Many corps seem to be willing to buy in to the green trend.
On the other side? Well I see corporations that just don't seem to care. They don't really have anything to do with the environmental debate, they just keep making their products and ignore it. There are also skeptics who put up websites that question the validity of global warming information, none of whom seem to have any sort of backing.
So if there's a massive counter effort going on, man I sure can't find it and it sure doesn't seem to have much effect.
Thus I am lead to call bullshit. I don't think there is this massive effort to try and suppress global warming research and information.
Well guess what? This is yet more con man tricks: Claiming that there is a vast conspiracy keeping your stuff down. Your amazing product would be sold in every store, except that there's a conspiracy that is keeping you out.
Again, none of this says that the people doing this are con men. However I'm sorry, but it sets off deep alarm bells with me. When I see people acting like con men I always have to ask why, I'm always skeptical. Reason is that in my experience, when that is happening it IS because they are con men, they are hiding something. Doesn't mean their whole deal is a con but at least something is being covered up, hidden. So I'm sorry, but actions like this make me skeptical. When you want to hide things from me and yell at me if I ask questions, I believe something is up.
Yeah, you're right.
None of that melting ice caps, record glacial melts, and lack of ozone layer above the Antartic stuff means anything. All of it's BS.
How do you know any of what you say is true if can't see or trust the raw data?
I'll grant you that transparency hasn't been very good. But you can ignore that little passage between Thule and Vancouver that's nearly ice free now.
No one is denying climate change. The climate is and always has changed for billions of years. What is up for debate is WHY the climate is changing.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
You mean the mountains of evidence that either cite CRU papers and models, or utilize GISS and Hadley-CRU data sets for which the majority of sensors are placed wrong?
Rubbish, the scientists aren't "pushing for" anything, they're just presenting results. These results may of course suggest the need for action, but that's in the realm of politics. And if you actually look at the full range of published literature, not a few cherry picked background-free private communications, you might see the evidence and methodology described in a way that's fully "scrutinizable". And indeed has been scrutinized, by other experts in the field - that's rather the point of publishing.
If you get some new data that disagrees with a model that's been built up over years and based on vast quantities of other data, which would you first believe might be suspect:
a) the large quantities of well tested, understood and mutually agreeing data
b) the new data point consisting a small amount of data which hasn't been scrutinized very closely yet.
If they were to *dismiss* the disagreeing data that would be a problem, but they haven't done that, just tried to understand it.
The points I saw in the emails were:
1) complaints about poor quality papers being published in a particular journal, and the suggestion that the journal has been hijacked to push an agenda rather than publish quality science. Therefore, they shouldn't publish there any more or cite articles from it. This was then spun as an attempt to suppress dissenting views.
2) descriptions of analysis and data presentation methods that some bloggers immediately quoted, including slang phrases such as "Mike's Nature trick", as evidence of deception, when it's no such thing.
3) An amusing but incomplete description of the difficulties involved in combining data sets to produce a valid final result.
4) one item that's possibly of legal if not scientific concern - the request to delete data relating to AR4.
One dodgy item - and one that doesn't affect the science.
Have to give your credit. Nearly all the discussions on here by the anti-GW ppl are almost always ACs. It is nice to see somebody who is willing to stick up for what they believe.
With that said, do you have any proof that all these ppl are lying? If you point to the recent emails, it is easy to say what everybody points out; Out of Context.
Likewise, if you point to Times mag from the 70's, with story about possible Ice age, then I will ask for 3 scientific articles from that time that supported that story.
If you scream that you have 1-2000 scientists, then I will simply point out that multiple 10's of 1000's disagree with that, and they have much more credibility on their side (many in the Anti-GW postings were discredited).
If you say that man is incapable of changing his environment, then I will simply point to links that show that man spits out far more CO2, as well as other pollutants, than did many volcanoes, including super volcanoes, that absolutely changed the environments.
And the absolute EASIEST item to point to for global warming, is the glaciers esp. Greenland and Antarctica. As to being caused by Man, that is much more difficult to prove, but nearly all scientists who study it, have laid out very strong data for it, and little against it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Your version of results are wrong. If the current IPCC predictions are correct more people would still starve from sequestering resources for AGW prevention than AGW itself. There is also a trade off between lower emissions (traditional pollutants) and less CO2.
>Greenland is not called GREENland because it's covered by glaciers.
Greenland is called Greenland because Lief Erikson wanted to convince/trick Icelandic settlers to go to this glacier-covered land that he had discovered.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
I think the whole 'climate change' debate is bizarre, and I am deeply sceptical about those who use climate change to push tenuously related political agendas.
If prompted for my strongest climate-sceptic view, it is this: while I'm willing to accept that substantial data shows that mankind's activities have resulted in atmospheric change - and while I'm willing to believe that this influences climate, I've one key question: is the change for the worse? Really? How can you be so sure?
I dislike the doom-laden 'climate change will wreck our environment' crowd for one key reason: they can't provide any evidence that I wouldn't prefer the climate after it has changed. Lots of things have been affected by mankind - and, frankly, I prefer to live in the world in which these changes have been made.
While I applaud being economical - and dislike pollution as much as the next sane person... I also think mankind belongs on earth... and I'm not willing to blindly jump on the change implies disaster bandwagon. I'd like the scientific debate to be, erm, more scientific... science can't tell us what we should chose for our future - it only illuminates mechanisms... if we want to engage in a debate about what influence we should exert on our own futures, maybe we need to bring in philosophy and ethics. All I can assure you is that I expect no clear cut answers.
Please supply:
- The data used for this analysis
- Any computer code used for calculations
- Other computer analysis tools (spreadsheets, etc)
- Any notes taken or emails exchanged by the scientists on the subject during the analysis
- The raw data from the measurements
- A justification of the methodology for the measurement and analysis
- Any additional measurements required to indicate this isn't normal
- A list of every person involved in this project
- The source of funding for this project
And for good measure:
- Please tell us what the AGW computer models predicted for this melting. Preferably, this prediction would have occurred and been published before the melting was discovered.
Thanks. And consider not positing it as an AC.
Whoopdie-fucking-doo.
How about the fact that Greenland used to be warm enough for farming settlement?
Going beyond that, you're using the typical old "won't someone think of the icecaps?!" Do you wanna know how long the Earth's been warming up? Since the end of the last freakin' ice age; About 10,000 years ago. That's about 10,000 years before the industrial revolution (and autos) that are blamed for global warming.
But don't let those facts stop you from using selective data to falsify man-made global warming.
Especially in science. The burden is always on the claimant of the theory. You come up with a theory as to how something works, you then need to provide proof that is in fact the case. They way you do is by showing it is not false over and over. What I mean by that is you can't conduct a single test to show it is true, that isn't possible. What you can do is try to falsify it. You say "Well my theory predicts that Y will happen in X conditions, so if Y fails to happen it is wrong." You then try that, when Y happens, well you are a little more convinced it is true. You also test alternative explanations "My theory predicts Y happens because of X, but it could also be because of Z," so you then test Z and Y doesn't happen, but you test X and Y does. You are now a little more sure.
As you and others repeatedly fail to be able to falsify your theory, you have good evidence it is true. As you try every alternate explanation, as you redo tests over and over to make sure that no mistakes are made, you become certain of your theory.
However it is on you to prove your theory. You don't get to say "This is my theory, it is now accepted as right until someone can show it is wrong." That is the kind of crap the ID people pull. They say "God designed everything and you have to accept that until you can prove it false." No, sorry, in fact that's not how it works. YOU need to prove it true before we accept it, or rather repeatedly test it and show that it isn't false. Can't do that, of course, since god isn't testable (supposing god is real), but that's how it has to work.
So you don't get to say "The burden of proof should be on the other guys." No, the burden of proof is on the person who proposes the theory. Science is a position of disbelief by default. We don't believe things are true until they've been tested, and even then we always have to accept that they could be still possibly be wrong. All scientific theories MUST be falsifiable, otherwise they aren't scientific theories.
I am unfortunately forced to put most "believers" in Human-Caused Global Climate Change into the same group that believe in the "not a sparrow shall fall" form of biblical fundamentalism. Beliving that humans are fully in control of the Earth's climate and can change it at will is just as dangerous as those that believe in a personally involved God that oversees every event on Earth.
Right now, we have at our disposal enough information that we can see most of the inputs to the Earth's climate. We do not yet understand all of these inputs and their relative weightings. Nobody has any real knowledge of how much energy is stored in oceans or how much effect solar variance has on oceans.
Sure, we know there is a lot more CO2 than there was 100 years ago. And some fairly obvious conclusions can be drawn from there being more CO2, but we have real information for only an extremely short period for the Earth. We might know some things about the climate 1000 years ago, but the information is very incomplete.
Could the climate be changing? Sure it could. Can we materially change this, given what we know today? Almost certainly not, at least not without huge inputs of energy or removal of what energy we are putting into the climate system. Neither of which is proposed. The Earth's climate engine is something that is measured in gigajoules. So far, the proposals on the table are not even rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. They are like dusting off the tower that held the Trinity device.
It is obvious that nobody in any position of power really believes there is some onrushing global catastrophe. Most of the rather weak carbon emissions reductions that have been proposed will have zero effect on emissions for a decade and even then it is a decrease in growth, not a real decrease in emissions. Of course, the costs for this decrease in growth will affect everyone in US and Europe in some pretty unpleasant ways. But still, regardless of the cost, the net effect is so close to zero as to be meaningless. And there is nobody saying that if these steps were taken immediately there would be any net change.
So what else could be done? Well, for starters we could eliminate passenger air travel. The reduction in emissions might only be 20% of the total but it would be a 20% decrease in emissions rather than a reduction in growth. We could require special permits to enter a large city by car. You can't outlaw cars in the US because of the way cities have been built for the last 70 years or so. By requiring such a permit it could eliminate much of the commutting by car that is happening. Might not cut emissions by more than 5%, but again it would be a 5% decrease rather than a decrease in growth. This might take years to be able to implement, but it could be done.
The problem is, if we did this what would happen? Nobody really knows. There is a theory that it might change the climate, or stop a change that we don't seem to like much. But the ugly truth is that we simply do not know what would happen. Clearly, the leaders of the world today do not believe (as some do) that it would save thousands if not millions of lives.
Instead, in the US we are looking at utterly pointless plans to implement some sort of point trading system that will enrich a few at the cost of all consumer goods going up in price. Oh the price for manufacturing them will stay the same, but transport will cost more. You can't bring manufacturing back to high-labor-cost US from cheap-labor-cost Mexico and China, but the traders can get rich. Net effect of this will be somewhat lower sales and the three or four manufacturers still in the US will be forced to move out. But little else will really change. Except the growth of emissions will slow just from economic changes.
If you believe that humans can change the climate in a few years with minor energy inputs you are almost certainly wrong. It is extremely arrogant to believe that the energies commanded by humans today could do any suc
The claims of evolution skeptics and round-earth skeptics is not backed up by observation and evidence. On the other hand, the more extreme claims of anthropogenic global warming _proponents_ are not backed up with sufficient observation and are extrapolated from very small datasets.
Given all of this, to say the "science is settled" is a travesty, and all those who said so fully deserve what's come so far and is undoubtedly coming as there's greater public and scientific scrutiny of their methods:
a) the Yamal tree-ring data - data from 10 trees is extrpolated into a 'trend' and finds its way into a number of papers
b) CRU emails - won't say much more, too much said about this already.
c) New Zealand average temperature graphs - high-school style 'cooking the graph' to match expectations
At this point, climate scientists who don't open up their raw data, modelling code and assumptions/decision-making are going to look as sleazy as PHB managers who forecast self-serving weird shit to make themselves look good to their bosses.
Why would this be moded as flamebait? I'm sure I don't know, but we'll give it another hearing....
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
.. correction factors...
More likely, they are FUDGE factors to support mathematical conclusions that the data does not support.
Greenland was once a GREENland with vegetation very similar to what we still find on the East Coast of North America today. Ice core samples clearly proves this. In the times of the Vikings, the Northwest passage was ice free. It is always made out as if global warming were a BAD thing. That is an assumption (belief). If all the ice in the northern ocean melted, the ocean levels would not rise enough to measure. Even if all the ice on land melted, the ocean levels would not rise appreciably. Temperature measurements in the tropical areas of the earth show virtually no rise at all. Would orange trees growing in Edmonton, Canada, really be that bad?
All theory is gray
Hypothetically, let's assume that the amount of greenhouse gases being added to the atmosphere is enough to cause the average temperature to rise.
If this is the case, does it actually *matter* whether it's created by natural causes or by human activity?
If human sources of greenhouse gasses are significantly smaller than natural emissions, it means that we can cut human consumption significantly and it won't have much effect on the overall emissions. This might lead to the conclusion that carbon capture would make more sense. Alternately, it's conceivable that the human activity is just enough to push us over a tipping point so cutting the overall emissions slightly can have a big impact.
Also these particular proponents doing disinformation should be exposed (then fired and possibly prosecuted.)
That wasn't what you ment to say?
Double standard espousing asshole.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Trying to review data and analysis is a dirty trick???
Come on, everybody knows the Earth is round - like a circle. The Bible clearly states that. Now if you want to try to argue that the Earth is spherical, that a different matter.
It may be round, but it's a circle with corners
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Whomever is moderating this flamebait deserves points being revoked. Hopefully metamoderation will decrease their future influence. Remember people, there is no 'I disagree' moderation.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Why should climate skeptics be asked to make a good faith effort when the climate scientists have been so clearly and obviously shown to be acting in bad faith?
And it's in itself pseudo-scientific behavior in action: Decide there's a big conspiracy of fraud behind climate change, and go look for evidence to support your theory, and ignore all other explanations.
Decide there's global warming and go look for evidence to support your theory, and ignore all other explanations.
It's a big pseudo-scientific world out there.
I've been advocating Linux for years and I'd bet there's no possible common ground.
A filtering process occurs and, given enough time, four kinds of oppositors remain:
a) the stubborn, which will not change their minds at any reason, however valid is might be;
b) the trolls, who derive orgasmic pleasure in being against or derailing any discussion -- even one that might save the world!
c) those with vested interests and
d) those gullible enough to be duped by type c.
Thus, being climate an urgent issue, it's like the proverbial fire: you grab the guy and throw him downstairs.
You'll certainly be sued for trying to save his life, but arguing in an emergency/dangerous situation would lead to death.
So, suit it is.
Or, in this case, serious international distress.
"Global warming is caused by CO2 and the CO2 comes from human sources. "
Most intelligent people who have researched the issue have come to this conclusion.
"Curtailing carbon emissions is the only way to prevent further global warming."
Intelligent people should immediately recognize the fallacy in this statement. Curtailing carbon emissions is but ONE possible response, it is not the only response and it is not necessarily the best response. The debate, at this point in time, should focus on the response. "Believing" in global warming does not need to translate into "believing" politicians can fix it with more power.
What is wrong with giving the government(s) power to curtail carbon emissions?
For one, it gives the government control of every faculty of human life. Almost everything we do, from eating, to breathing, breeding, and working has a carbon footprint. Giving the government control of carbon emissions gives the government control of everything. Students of history should recognize this pattern very well. An external force will harm us all unless the government is given enough power to protect us. Governments don't protect, they repress. What happens if the government decides large dogs have too much of a carbon footprint. Or horses? Or more than one child?
Secondly, cutting emissions in the US will do nothing about China and India. In fact, cutting oil consumption in the US will make oil cheaper for third world factories. It is supply and demand. Personally, I would rather see the fossil fuels burnt in the US, under EPA standards, creating American jobs than to have it sent to China or India where it will be used in a much less efficient manner.
Third, it is unclear that cutting carbon emissions drastically in the near future will save us from tragedy. Global warming proponents admit this, but still advocate cutting emissions for lack of a better alternative.
What is the alternative?
While it isn't my preferred approach, one alternative is to do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Oceans will rise, the world will get hotter, and people will adapt. All of the carbon we are pumping out of the ground and burning once existed in the atmosphere anyways. Plants and animals consumed it, fell to the ocean floor, and were buried under ground. The world survived with extra carbon in the past and could again. The Earth is not going to turn into Venus, no matter how much oil we burn.
Of course there will be costs for doing nothing. For one, a lot of very wealthy people are going to lose their expensive beach front properties. Many bailed out bankers will see their mansions succumb to the tides. Tough shit.
A lot of poor people, mostly in third world countries will have to move. Even in the US we may have to move certain cities like New Orleans instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars trying to wall them off from the seas. This will be expensive, but probably less expensive than curtailing global emissions enough to have an effect.
Arable farming land will lost. Some will be gained, but overall there will probably be a decrease in the amount of land available for agriculture. Farmers may have to stop selling their prime lots to housing developments. People may have to stop bitching about genetically modified food and learn to adapt. But most people will not starve to death, we will adapt.
Is there a better solution than doing nothing?
Like I said, I am not a proponent of doing nothing. I think we should do something that actually stands a chance of working. The best way (notice how I didn't use the word "only" here) to curtail carbon emissions is to give people cheaper options. I don't mean solar or wind, or osmosis generators or tide machines or biofuel or nuclear fission.
Perhaps I have read one to many sci-fi novels, but I think we should take the hundreds of billions being spent on cutting emissions and put it into nuclear fusion research. If nuclear fusion can be perfected in the next decade or two then there will be no reason to burn fossil fuels, conserve energy, or give the government a fascist grip on the economy.
...There already are *mountains* of evidence...
that the earth may be getting warmer. SO WHAT? I am sure there are many people in the northern hemisphere who wouldn't mind shoveling less snow or no snow at all and having lower utility bills. I don't think the people of Edmonton would object if they could grow orange trees. Temperature change has been noticed mostly in the Arctic regions of the earth. Temperatures in tropical places have hardly changed. Thus it is not a given that global warming will result in a torrent, uninhabitable Earth.
All theory is gray
Just a nitpick. You talk about AGW as though it's the main issue, but it's not. The primary question is whether the earth is warming for any reason, human or not.
It's possible that global warming is happening, but that humans had little to do with it. If this is the case we may want to do something about it even if we had nothing to do with causing it in the first place.
There are a variety of ways of dealing with this; reduction of human production of greenhouse gasses to is certainly one possibility, but if the bulk of emissions are not anthropogenic this may not make a big dent. Other options include capture and sequestration of greenhouse gasses, or alternately there have been proposals for various large-scale engineering projects to reduce the incoming radiation (mirrors in space, dust in the upper atmosphere, etc.).
Lets look in our history books for a guy named Martin Luther and the Protestant revolution. Before Luther, ONLY the priests could read the bible (It was in Latin and Greek), you were able to PAY off your sins with bribes to church officials, your only way of LEARNING was from the church and their story. Martin Luther "open sourced" the bible and printed it in English. No more paying for sins, no more taking priest's words on it, and you could learn what was in it.
Today. Only the AWG people have any of the evidence, they want us to PAY for our sins of polluting, and the only source of information on the subject that is "acceptable" is from them. AWGers are equivalent to corrupt church leaders in the Dark Ages, nothing more. Until they let others see their "evidence" they are nothing but criminals on a grand scale. The EXACT SAME church leaders that prevented human progress for over 1000 years. Is this the kind of people you all want to be following? You are fools and idiots if you do.
There is NO scientific debate on the topic. History is repeating, again.
"It's not about being right"? Really?
And you miss a couple of alternate scenarios and outcomes.
Scenario 2a. Climate change is not primarily man-made, but emissions are keeping the next ice age from happening.
Activist result: Depth and speed of problem is accelerated by human change.
Scenario 3a. Climate change is primarily man-made, but emissions are keeping the next ice age from happening.
Skeptic result: Nothing happens.
Activist result: Ice age. Humans deeply impacted. millions die of starvation, cities are relocated, numerous mass extinctions, possible irreversible climate trends.
and for that matter
Activist result 1a. Convinced by faulty data that there is no hope unless emissions are controlled, governments struggle to achieve futile targets, concentrate more power in fewer hands, focus more resources on the problem, blame other countries for cheating on targets and dooming us all, attack industrial targets in cheating countries, humans deeply impacted. millions die of starvation, cities are relocated, etc.
I don't know for sure how I can be expected to show you enough data if scientists with opposing views are keeping that data from journals with threats of withdrawing their own results from the journals, but the Vostok Ice Core data suggests to me, anyway, that the change in temperature is consistent with other increases in the past, and is likely to be followed by a steep drop...soon.
I'm no climate scientist, but I felt better about taking out AGW before I knew actual climate scientists were behaving this way.
TSG
Close.
Lief Erikson called it Greenland because he know global warming was coming...
Funny and on topic. definitely going to get modded flamebait.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think we can fairly say that there is enough uncertainty (today) about the data & models to say that global warming may or may not happening. But to some extend this is beyond the point. We don't need to formally prove that global warming will happen to act. We have to take into account the scenarios and their consequences:
1. We do nothing about global warning until it is undeniably in full force (maybe in 25 years, 50 years, 100 years or 200 years), if it ever happen. The consequential scenarios are:
- Humanity faces an unprecedented crisis that leads to our extinction.
- Humanity faces an unprecedented crisis and with its ingenuity it mitigate the crisis, while a set back in history (maybe thousands, millions or billions dies), humanity continue to strive.
- Nothing happen and Humanity continue to do what it does now without suffering any consequences of our current behavior.
2. Global warming or not we decide to curb carbon emission by developing new technology now to replace fossil fuels. The consequential scenarios are:
- Curbing emission takes its toll and GDP growth is stifled if not reversed for decades, resulting into lower quality of life for most of Humanity (some could argue that mostly the rich would be affected).
- Curbing emission actually triggers invention of new methods (renewable, carbon free) to produce energy that are cheap, GDP growth may have been lowered, but after while it comes back to historic levels.
- Curbing emission actually triggers invention of new methods (renewable, carbon free) to produce energy that are cheap, this in turn trigger a new phase of growth, much like the 1990s information boom (and bust of course, because we learn nothing from history).
Now base on this what would you suggest policy makers? Whether I believe in global warming or not, the clear choice is 2, because it mitigates our risks of total extinction while only risking to kill economical growth for few decades.
If you would chose 2 because you are sure that global warming will happen or 1 because you know it will not happen, well you are a lunatic on a hunch.
Further more, unless you are a lunatic (I like this word), petrol, coal, uranium will all run out within 50-200 years (500 years maybe, who cares?). While promoting a change to renewable energy now may turn to be less efficient (future technology making it easier), it is unavoidable.
Is global warming real? I don't care. Act now!
The climate 'thing' is unbelievably complex. I doubt that any single human being actually understand all of it.
In this particular case, everyone looks like an idiot (no matter what qualifications they have). The simple fact is that the climate models can not predict the climate next year, let alone 100 years from now.
Who can get into the discussion? Lots of people. I have even seen an arborist make a useful contribution: re. trees as thermometers, "Trees don't behave like that".
In fact, I've seen lots of non-PhDs post intelligent comments on a variety of blogs. Democracy needs citizens who inform themselves. Saying that only PhDs have a place in the discussion is not the American way.
First off I don't think there is any serious debate, if you took the proportion of people who have some understanding of climatology and are climate change sceptics I would be surprised if it is as high as 1:1000. When you go over those published signatures on various websites, basically none of them are practising climatologists, and the ones that are are generally private consultants, which like it or not taints them. As has been said before, the debate is political not scientific. By some understanding above, I mean at the very least a PhD or equivalent experience, I'm afraid an undergrad course simply doesn't cut it.
Secondly, whilst the idea of "open-sourcing" the data/models is a nice one and I am not against it, look at the practicalities. How many of you have the capacity to deal with hundreds of terabytes of data and run models that take days on a supercomputer? Anyway, the models are actually out there, they are peer reviewed and published. Not the source code (what would you run it on?), but the maths. Although, the peer review process means you tend to be a year or two behind the latests updates I'll admit.
The Slashdot crowd like to be against "authority", but that doesn't mean we should simply be against anything we don't like. On this front page is a story about the LHC. How many people here would claim to understand all the maths and science behind that? Of those that don't (the vast majority of us) how many think it's a load of old hokum? It's far more ridiculous and unbelievable than climate change (CO2 and methane absorb infra-red radiation - it's an indisputable fact and can be proven in any high school), but we don't have a massive crowd here talking about what a waste of money the LHC is and denying that entire area of research do we?
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
What are some of the things you can learn about these climate scientists when you wade through their stolen content with no media filter?
1. These are political animals; whatever pretense of objective impartiality that had been plausibly allowed is gone. The muckity mucks among these scientists spend their time flying around the planet scoring political points as well-funded and credentialed lobbyists.
2. They directly influence the editorial decisions and content of the same peer reviewed scientific journals to which they demand the rest of the world limit its knowledge. When the MSM makes the mistake of publishing something they don't approve of these scientists intervene personally using their media contacts; typically the employers of specific journalists. Publicly they brook no argument with anyone or anything that counters their assertions and they barely tolerate it among themselves.
3. They have no explanation for why global temperature has not increased during the last ten years. They are just as astonished by the exceptionally cold, wet weather they see outside their window as everyone else. Their models do not predict this behavior and the causes are a mystery. The faction among them that is concerned about this and believe it is a problem have been bluntly told by their superiors that they are wrong.
4. They are actively and deliberately preventing access to the data and methods used for conclusions that contribute to the IPCC process. They flaunt the FOI laws of the UK with delays and bureaucracy.
Notice that I have not cited the few "smoking gun" phrases (i.e. "hide the decline") that so many have naturally fixated on. Those cases all have plausible deniability even when then most apparent explanation is simple fraud. I believe the above conclusions are beyond doubt to any rational reader that examines the material without a media filter.
This is a body blow to the AGW community and it will not blow over. These scientists will never again be taken at their word to the degree they had been and their work can no longer provide a basis for ruining the standard of living of the western world, if it ever did.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Yes, people who have no facts to back a claim should stop getting media time.
When someone argument is picked apart using facts and evidence, they should be slapped in the head when they continue to go on with the same invalid arguments.
The media needs to have good science advisers and listen to them.
Oddly, this has a lot to do with the bush administration refusal to acknowledge science and there cutting of science funding. At least Bush wasn't a destructive to American science as Reagan was.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Let's engage with evolution skeptics and round earth skeptics while we're at it.
We might as well. If the warmist scientists are any indication of the integrity of scientists in general, we have no more reason to trust scientists than we have to trust your garden variety snake-handlers.
But Al doesn't mind this scandal, he already got his Nobel prize and millions of dollars for making a doomsday film about a non-existent threat to humanity.
Similarly, though, if we do something, meaning additional government regulation that dampens economic development, especially in poor countries, and the global warming proponents are wrong, millions of people die from continuing grinding poverty that would otherwise have been avoidable.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
The short version of everything that's come out so far is: the leading climate scientists pushing AGW were lying left, right, and center, and there is absolutely no evidence, not even a little, to support global warming, let alone AGW. If you haven't done so already,
I've seen it, it shows nothing of the sort. It shows people having considerable difficulty in combining data sets in a consistent and reliable way. This is always a tricky problem. Your "data manipulation" could easily be correction factors for systematic errors or problems with particular data sets. But of course a private note that was never meant to be read is hardly going to be a complete, detailed and fully explained document, is it?
I can only assume that people are reading into it what they want to see.
So have I, and so can anyone that wants to. Here.
I invite you to peruse the last Slashdot entry about this.
OVERWHELMINGLY we determined there was definitely more going on than "considerable difficulty".
Hiding from FOIA requests, conspiring to lock out a publication that wasn't swallowing their bate (how dare a peer review journal ask difficult questions of AGW!).
Then we have Phil working to keep these two papers from being seen at the next IPCC meeting--
I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !
Cheers, Phil
If those 2 articles don't present valid arguments questioning AGW (and they do, I've read them and invite you to as well) then they shouldn't be afraid of people getting their hands on them. Instead they're afraid of dissenting opinions because they don't want to lose their money. Duh.
Yessir, "considerable difficulty" indeed. Sure looks like science to me.
What a joke.
In my parents time it was global cooling, when I was younger it was a giant hole in the ozone above Australia caused by big evil America, a year ago it was Global Warming, and now it's become "Climate Change".
All a farce and an sleight of hand scheme to misuse taxpayer money. Notice CNN didn't once run a story on this. BBC did, credible enough for me.
"Considerable difficulty" indeed.
Were they short-term, perhaps you'd have an argument. Indeed they've melted something that hadn't seen that in say, well, over twenty thousand years.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Reading the comments, I see a programmer struggling with a chaotic data set, trying his best to figure out how to run sensible experiments on disorganised raw data. Data which is stored in various inconsistent formats and accessed by ancient unmaintained software. I sympathise with the poor guy, I know how frustrating such tasks can be.
Based on this I say it is no surprise that the CRU were completely unwilling to provide information about where their raw data came from, when Steve McIntyre and the others asked for it. The CRU did not know, because their databases were a total mess.
That's what really damages them. The programs were producing the "right" answers so the CRU management did not care where the numbers were coming from. The CRU staff already knew what the right answers were before they even got started, and when they got those answers, they asked no questions about them. This is not science.
It is fortunate that the CRU is not the only organisation involved with AGW, and that the some of the other organisations (e.g. NASA) are publishing raw data and experimental models.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
the scientists aren't "pushing for" anything, they're just presenting results.
Huh? Did you miss the large number of petitions to governments started and endorsed by leading climatologists? Have you missed them collecting signatures from people in all field, even tangential to climate science, as long as those people agree to sign and have a degree? Have you missed their participation in the IPCC and the various government institutions? Have you missed them making predictions and discussing policy options in various forums, in the media, etc.?
The scientists are actively involved in politics, and saying they aren't, or that their involvement doesn't influence their research is just not true.
posting as AC because I already moderated here
Ehm.. Actually, it was Eirik Raude (Eric the Red) who discovered Greenland. His son Leiv Eiriksson supposedly discovered America.
Eirik Raude and Leiv Eiriksson
Everybody uses broad generalizations.
Isn't it just amazing how human mind can simultaneously consider its owner rational and others irrational, despite both engaging in the exact same activity? You even included a cute little list about your favourite anecdotes; just replace "tree rings" with "carbon dating" and you have a typical Young Earth Creationist argument. It's all there, down to a vast conspiracy amongst scientists.
No dataset is large enough to prove something you don't want to believe, and not even the empty set is too small to prove what you want to. Oh, and the scientists are meanies who keep data from you, a random Slashdot poster who are undoubtedly more qualified to interpret it than them. Never mind that where I live the climate has changed quite dramatically in my very lifetime, it's all a conspiracy, a CONSPIRACY I say!
It would be funny if it wasn't so damn scary.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
My peers have reviewed my original comment and determined that it's accurate. They also say I'm "Insightful".
The question is settled. I don't have to waste my time dealing with "deniers" like you.
over one half of the earth's surface.
night must be man-made.
algore said so.
That's not at all how I read that (IMHO interesting) comment. What I read is: lack of expertise on in a field robs you of both the ability to form an accurate opinion, and the ability to perceive the holes in your reasoning that led you that that inaccurate opinion. Ignorance begetting confidence, in all good faith. Which is nothing new at all (one of the most enlightening psychology paper I've ever read -- do check it out). It has nothing to do with being a 'moron', and that you read it as such possibly tells more about you than it does about the original poster.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scientific%20method
and the formulation and testing of hypotheses
So, in what way is Anthropomorphic Climate Change testable? It is a hypothesis, yes. How can it be tested?
Basically. ACC is not science at all. It is philosophy or rather, politics, until it is made testable.
Deleted
In particular, what you are doing is a modern version of Pascal's Wager. You are saying "Here is a scenario that only has these simple outcomes, as such you must logically make this choice."
If you aren't familiar with the original it is about the question of to believe in god or not. Pascal said that you could plot the outcomes on a 2x2 matrix. If you do believe in god, and there is a god, you are infinitely rewarded. If you do believe in god and there isn't a god you get a small reward (that was his argument). If you don't believe and there is a god, you are infinitely punished. If you don't believe and there's isn't, nothing happens. His argument was thus that you should believe in god, since the risks just weren't worth it.
Of course a freshman philosophy student can point out the problems with that, it is way to simplistic to say that is how it works.
Well same shit here. You are constructing the situation such that yours is the only choice by simplifying it as you see fit. So let me give you just one of many other alternative scenarios:
Climate change is happening, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. We may accelerate it in either direction, but we can't stop it. If we drastically cut our energy usage, we will be unequipped to deal with the change, and will die off in the billions. However if we continue to use plenty of energy towards industrial development and scientific research, we will be able to adapt to the climate change and survive.
Any time you present your side as having no downsides, you are kidding yourself. All action has cost, everything has a downside. Also any time you are convinced a complex situation has a couple simple outcomes, you are also kidding yourself. As I said, one possibility is that we are headed for climate change no matter what. There is evidence to indicate this, it would seem the climate has been much warmer and colder in the past than it is now. As such maybe the real issue isn't what do we do to stop it, as that may not be possible, but how do we adapt to survive it.
The first part of what you say is true, but again no surprise. However, the part about deliberately fudging it all to get the "right" answer? I don't see that. But I wouldn't expect to see a full picture in a few old notes and bits of code. Private notes are always incomplete.
Amen to this. Has there ever been a scientific discipline with less predictive power than climate modelling, or one with more misplaced zeal to influence politics? I am glad the cover has been ripped off of the sewer of this discipline. Copenhagen is going to be a fiasco.
an ill wind that blows no good
I totally believe in climate and so should you!
Perhaps you can supply some links. I'm not saying such things don't exist, just that I haven't seen them. However, one thing I did see was a list of signatures from people opposed to the climate change theory - almost all of whom had no science qualifications.
Yes, they get involved with IPCC or the media from time to time. But IPCC's role is not to set policy, but to present evidence and options.
Finally, I don't see any reason as to why any involvement in this way this would influence their research. The other way round, yes.
over half the earth's surface.
Must be man-made.
We don't need proof, because algore said so.
We believe whatever algore says because algore determines and only speaks the truth.
If you don't tow the party line
People are beginning to understand what it means to beg the question, but this one still irritates me
http://grammartips.homestead.com/toetheline.html
Unfortunately, the emails show they have been manipulating evidence. That's why they don't want to release the raw data.
It took decades of measurement and decades of modeling to finally reach consensus that CO2 is causing unusual warming, just as it took decades of testing and modeling to figure out the mechanism of genetic inheritance or to verify the standard model in particle physics.
The vast majority of climate skeptics are working outside their field. That'd be fine if they were presenting testable theory, but they're not. They are opposing testable theory with non-falsifiable assertions-- the data strongly suggests warming. The proposed mechanism seems to explain the data very well. There are plenty of wrinkles still to work out, but unless the "skeptics" start proposing alternate models that fit the data (something 99% of them can't do, because they don't have the background), then they need to STFU and GTFO.
The majority of all the 'raw data' is available on line.
you can even go get your own if you like as it source is not begin hidden anywhere. It is right out in the open so to speak.
Now instead of using stolen 12 year old internal emails and docs which no longer have a clear chain of custody making their contents questionable to dispute man made global warming / climate change. Get a hold of the data and do your own analysis and present your findings along with your conclusions supported by that data.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
....convince/trick Icelandic settlers to go to this glacier-covered land....
That is why he put pollen and other evidence of North American forests at the bottom of the ice sheets so they could be discovered when people drilled for ice cores.
All theory is gray
Hiding from FOIA requests, conspiring to lock out a publication that wasn't swallowing their bate (how dare a peer review journal ask difficult questions of AGW!).
Lock out? They thought the publication was publishing poor quality papers. If that was their belief, why would they not refrain from publishing there or citing articles?
Then we have Phil working to keep these two papers [populartechnology.net] from being seen at the next IPCC meeting--
I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !
So he doesn't think the papers are worthy of inclusion. No evidence of any underhand arrangements to stop it though, just that he'll make the case that they shouldn't be included.
Let's not forget that these are private emails and people are much looser with language. I once make a jocular reference to Schoning my data - how incriminating would *that* look if it was written down?
In my parents time it was global cooling, when I was younger it was a giant hole in the ozone above Australia caused by big evil America, a year ago it was Global Warming, and now it's become "Climate Change".
There was never a consensus in favour of global cooling (despite the media reports at the time), the ozone layer was real and an international treaty was made to deal with the problem, so I don't know what your point is there. Global warming is the same thing as Climate Change, it was just felt that the first term would perhaps confuse those who think that global warming implies local warming everywhere on Earth. And your "scheme to misuse taxpayer money" remark? How do the scientists benefit from that, exactly? That's verging on tinfoil-hattism. A global conspiracy amongst scientists.... to what end?
Funny and on topic. definitely going to get modded flamebait.
If you get modded down this line would explain why... Probably worth a +5 funny without it.
How can you be a good scientist without being able to trace your data all the way from its source? How can your results be valid if they are not reproducible?
There is more information that you should be aware of. Read about the attempts of one man to independently verify the CRU findings. They consistently obstruct him, even after he resorts to the FOIA. And now we know why. It's not just because they thought he was just making trouble for them: it's because the raw data is an impossible mess. The CRU staff knew that and it didn't bother them in the slightest because they were getting the results they expected.
Bad, bad science. Pons and Fleischmann. Condemn the bad science. I agree with George Monbiot: credibility is lost and resignations are needed.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
...And indeed has been scrutinized, by other experts in the field ....
As long as experts are chosen who agree with the opinions of those who espouse global warming caused by people. I suggest you watch the movie "Expelled", as a model of what is going on here.
All theory is gray
The article is using a very short-view definition of "record", both in sense of "recorded data" and "record amounts". Every year mentioned for comparison is from less than a decade earlier.
Also, if they do have archaeological record of ice melt/freeze, how do the past 500 years compare, especially the year after Mt. Tabora exploded (1815)?
The problem with trying to convince people of these processes is that the processes themselves take so long to happen that they cannot really be shown to anyone.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Gold bid raid leader DC'd on us we had a 70450g pot and its gone, its unlikely he will return tonight (name: presadin). He came on 40 minutes after I made this ticket and is not answering our whispers, this is officially a scam, the gold needs to be properly distributed as an even share among the members of raid ID 10981080 who were present at 9:30 PM server time. Thank you.
you mean the emdails which were supposedly extracted from stolen data which cannot be confirmed? At best it's cherry picking, more likely it's merely fabricated.
Where were these hackers before cap and trade hit congress? How much were they paid under the table by the most egregious polluters in the US?
If you want to offer different and valid interpretations of data, or point out the possibility of selection bias, it's one thing, but you can't cite "conveniently unconfirmed" exceperts from data breached at a suspiciously convenient time to back your position and expect not to be called on it.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
A global conspiracy amongst scientists.... to what end?
Money? Nah, couldn't be!
b) CRU emails - won't say much more, too much said about this already.
HAHA face is red.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
How do you know any of what you say is true if can't see or trust the raw data?
This is a false argument. How can you ever be sure about the integrity of anything unless you are the one doing it? How can you trust the raw data if you are not collecting it? How can you trust the analysis if you are not the one analyzing it? How can you trust the satellite data if you didn't build the satellite?
How can you trust the food from the store if you're not the one making it? How can you trust your prescription if you're not the one giving it? How can you trust your car if you didn't build it?
Or in other words, you are arguing from the standpoint of paranoia/conspiracy. Everyday you rely on total strangers to make sure your life keeps humming along. You are surrounded by black boxes that you don't have access to yet you seem perfectly content in assuming that people are doing their jobs. Why are climate scientist suddenly the target?
For example, how do you know if your local transportation authority is really doing the best job to keep traffic moving? They could have incentive not to, such as increased tax flow to the coffers by making motorists spend just that much more on gasoline. Or perhaps their even getting kickbacks from a couple oil boys for making sure consumers spend their quota.
Conspiracy? Well, how do you know it's not happening? Can we get access to the raw data of the traffic grid? Can we get the source code for the programs running the traffic network? It's publicly funded, so WE should be able to get access and review ourselves, right?
No one is denying climate change.
I take it you haven't visited any mad dog skeptic sites lately. There are plenty of people denying exactly that with a passion and dedication that most religions would kill for
The climate is and always has changed for billions of years. What is up for debate is WHY the climate is changing.
The mountains of research done on this is pretty clear about why it's happening. But I don't expect facts to get in the way of beliefs anytime soon. Be that as it may, why is not the important. The important questions, and the ones the climate scientists spend a lot of time working out, are how it's going to affect us and what we can do to prepare for it.
~X~
~X~
Rubbish, the scientists aren't "pushing for" anything, they're just presenting results.
Rubbish yourself, the "scientists" at CRU were clearly "pushing for" a pro-AGW outcome. Why else the attempt to banish anti-AGW papers from the IPCC reports regardless of their merit, or to blackball a scientific journal based on its editorial practices?
Good science stands on its own merits. It doesn't require backroom deals or underhanded methods.
The end result of Climategate should be academic discreditation for several of those involved, and jail for a few - most likely to include Phil Jones. He very blatantly disregarded valid Freedom of Information requests. That's a felony in Great Britain.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Rubbish, the scientists aren't "pushing for" anything, they're just presenting results. These results may of course suggest the need for action, but that's in the realm of politics.
There are multiple problems with this stance. The first is that scientists almost always have preferred answers. When the first Hubble results were coming in an the value of Ho seemed anomalously high, I recalled someone commenting that if so-and-so had a religion, it would be 50 (the low end of expected Ho values.)
Most of the time, this doesn't matter. With AGW it does, precisely because people with money and power would like to use the purported risk of AGW to get more money and power, and Big Hydrocarbons would like to kill everyone and invade Poland, or whatever the industrial equivalent of that is.
There are huge economic and political stakes in this game, and they ultimately turn on the quality of the data and the strength of the results. Those are complex things to analyze, and when scientists have an agenda--which they almost always do--they tend to overstate the quality of their data and interpretations over others (in paleoanthropology I believe this is called the "Leakey Effect").
I don't think there's anything going on in the AGW crowd beyond typically optimistic group-think, but if you don't think that's a problem, well... we disagree with each other.
As for finding common ground: we find it in the data--all of which should be openly published, unmassaged, to allow for honest dialog--and in the fundamental theories--physics and chemistry, mostly--that underpin the often unphysical climate models.
Insofar as sceptics deny those things, they are hopeless. But if they play the game of science by the rules, using their biases to provide viable alternatives to the AGW consensus or valid criticisms of other work, they should be fully engaged in the scientific process.
The public policy issues related to AGW are too important to leave any honest voices unheard.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
The ozone hole is a separate problem from global warming (as far as we know).
Here are just a few reasons:
1) Further their own careers. Big (positive) claims about AGW are important if you want to get published in the high impact journals.
2) To get grant Money to stay publish and stay employed.
3) Face time with the media
4) Genuine-belief in AGW--even if not well supported by the actual evidence.
5) Insider politics -- why criticize a peer's research that largely agrees with your own? The incentives are reversed.
6) Other environmental motives, e.g., "even if AGW is wrong, reducing pollution, sprawl, cars, oil dependency, etc is good" (I have heard this argument a lot)
7) (Mistaken) belief in the precautionary principle, i.e., AGW is a risk and refusal to see it in cost vs benefit terms.
But IPCC's role is not to set policy, but to present evidence and options.
IPCC is an inter-governmental institution that publishes alarmist reports and policy recommendations, used as excuse for government legislation. Tell me more about them not playing politics.
Tell me more about how scientists only publish results: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23044
http://www.abcmoney.co.uk/news/052007177503.htm
http://www.prlog.org/10075695-climate-change-petition-pits-scientists-against-each-other.html
Of course, you could google it yourself, but you prefer to keep your head in the sand.
Finally, I don't see any reason as to why any involvement in this way this would influence their research.
O'rly? Promoting policies, which are based on your research isn't going to influence you? But not promoting policies would? You're trolling, my friend, you can't be that blind to the obvious or dumb. If you are, you can't claim you understand the "science".
...the glaciers esp. Greenland ...
Why is Greenland called that? Could it be that it once was a green land? Ice cores give evidence of that by the finding of pollen and other plant evidence. The land was forested with similar vegetation as we find in North America on the East Coast.
Besides that, why is global warming always portrayed in a negative light? What are the benefits of a warmer Earth? If all the northern ice melted, the ocean levels would not rise at all, because most of that ice is already floating in the ocean. Even in Antarctica, much of the ice is on the ocean, that if melted would also not make ocean levels go up at all. It's every bit of ice melted on LAND, both in the north and south, how much would the ocean levels actually go up?
All theory is gray
It is unfortunate that the signal to noise ratio on the skeptic side is low.
I have no problem with thinking skeptics. I think there should be more of them. But the problem is almost all the skeptics are fanatical mad dog skeptics with solid Ph.Ds in arcmchair climatology backed by B.S's in BS. It's become like evolution vs. intelligent design, only worse.
There are few good skeptics out there, but the overall onslaught of the mad dog skeptics have made it so that it is that much harder for them to be heard. It's clear from the emails that the science community now views any skeptic, no matter how reputable, as 100% hostile, and this hack has done nothing than make it 100 time worse than it already was.
It's really sad, but the mad dogs have done it to themselves. Every idiotic thing they do, they only make skeptics in general look worse. If all the mad dogs would just shut the hell up so the skeptics who know what they're talking about could engage into a useful scientific dialog then perhaps things could get back to science instead of political mud-slinging.
~X~
~X~
There's no such thing as a felony in Great Britain. And there's still no firm evidence one way or another regarding the FoI thing.
And where exactly are these underhand methods or backroom deals? All I saw was a frustrated statement that "I'll do by best to stop these papers getting into the IPCC report" (paraphrased). No mention of an underhand methods to be used in doing so.
Bzzt, wrong. The IPCC synthesis report is merely a conglomeration of assessment reports. Specifically, various reports that assess others' results. More specifically, many of those results came from CRU and company. Which means the assessment reports are invalid, which in turn means the Sythesis report is invalid. Simple application of GIGO.
I said that *I* couldn't trace it from the source based on the leaked files. Can they? I don't know, we only saw a very incomplete set of documents regarding this. No word on whether this code was exactly what was used for the final publications.
Yes, *if* the path from data to results isn't fully accounted for, that would be a problem. Is this the case? Can't tell from what we've seen.
In any case, if I'm not very much mistaken the results have been reproduced by other scientists at different institutes.
And nothing on Wikileaks invalidates any of the work done at CRU or any other climate research institute.
No, on the contrary, in science, deliberate manipulation of data to give the results you wanted from the beginning invalidates your results. Sorry. And the emails are not just internal CRU emails. And the manipulation of data was not just by the CRU.
The reality of all that hoopla is the people doing the agitating had long since decided that not only can the climate not change.
The "climate not changing ever" is precisely the opposite of what "skeptics" argue.
Flattening any unwanted bumps before the industrial age, OTOH, is precisely what the AGW desire
And this is what they do, in an undocumented way, which can't be reproduced from the raw data, which they are loathe to release anyway.
Azural - instrumentals
Lock out? They thought the publication was publishing poor quality papers. If that was their belief, why would they not refrain from publishing there or citing articles?
The problem is that by their lights *every* dissenting paper is of "poor quality".
The analogy here, where the AGW proponents are the sole source of knowledge, is to the Christian church in the Middle Ages. The Bible was in Latin, which no one but the (better educated) priests could read. Instead of the laity being encouraged to learn Latin, or instead of translating the Bible to the local language, the priests and bishops decided what meanings the Bible would have.
Similarly, the AGW priest-kings deny raw data to the public and hold themselves as the exclusive interpreters of the data. It seems to me high time that this Global Warming belief system underwent its own Reformation.
Well, one of the biggest is that there will be less capacity for life on the planet. Basically, much of life counts on Glaciers that are close to the equator. For example, the himilayas provide the majority of China, all of India, much of pakistan, Nepal, Bangledash, in fact, the majority of Asia with water. If the glaciers continue their melting, that area WILL be without water that is used on their crops. Keep in mind that is more than 1/2 of the world's population. Likewise, Africa counts on several glaciers, that are quickly melting. It will be interesting to see what happens. I do not think that it will be pretty. Likewise, the Amazon is looking to lose a lot of water. If that happens, we will lose a good percentage of diverse life. Southern Europe, as well as Southern America and Western America will look a lot more like Mexico. Have you spent time in central northern Mexico? Canada, Russia, and possibly most parts of Northern Europe will be better for it. And the southern area of Africa as well as South America, and New Zealand will slightly improve.
Hearing all that, exactly what do you think that India, China, Pakistan, and Burma will do when their water is running real low? Keep in mind that Burma is being helped by China, and North Korea with some small "medical" nuclear site that is being dug in REAL DEEP. Glad I do not live in that area.
Okay, how do they gain lots of money from this? And would this be more than the lots of money they could get from the fossil fuel industry by publishing valid anti-AGW papers?
Actually, the problem is that the entire process replicates a circular argument. A study is done, and peer reviewed by scientists who already agree with the premise, making it pretty likely that they won't have major problems with the conclusion or the methods used to achieve it, since they use the same ones. The study is blessed as long as it agrees with the accepted conclusion.
So rather than a rigorous winnowing process, we end up with a mutual admiration society, or a secret scientists club to which only those in one camp are allowed full membership.
This interview with Dr. Vincent Gray, a former expert reviewer for the IPCC, illustrates other problems with the IPCC's "scientific method". They wouldn't know objectivity if it jumped up and bit them in the ass. Couple that with the U.N.'s statements that AGW is really just a means to a global governance end, and it's difficult to see an unadulterated, pure, trustable process here.
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=55387187-4d06-446f-9f4f-c2397d155a32
...the Earth is round - like a circle. The Bible clearly states that....
Except that the Hebrew word translated as "circle" can also be used to describe a ball i.e.. a sphere.
All theory is gray
Ooh, clever bit of package-dealing there. Just like tossing off the word "deniers" to lump climate skeptics in with the nazis.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
....the integrity of scientists...
is clearly illustrated by the movie "Expelled".
All theory is gray
No, it's called Greenland because at the time, it was green. Eric the Red found Greenland at a time when agriculture was viable there. He didn't have some devious motive to convince his countrymen to try to settle a frozen wasteland.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Rubbish yourself, the "scientists" at CRU were clearly "pushing for" a pro-AGW outcome.
They certainly were, and it seems to me that the people who should be most upset at what they were doing is their own side. If your cause is correct, it doesn't help you to have anyone cooking the books or trying to suppress publication by dissenters.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Said the priest to his followers, "follow my lead and you shall arrive in heaven."
"What is up for debate is WHY the climate is changing."
No, the why isn't really in question, what is in question is the extent to which we are to blame, we know CO2 has an effect, and we know that we are responsible for the massive increases in CO2. The question is whether there are other events, possibly natural, alongside CO2 that are also contributing. What is also in question is what the extent of the effects will be.
Don't waste your time watching "Expelled". Simply hit your head once or twice with a hammer. It's quicker, and will have the same results.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Not sure what the AGW agenda has to do with lead-free gas, mercury, or CFCs. CO2 seems to be the new "pollutant" and the only one the proponents care about anymore.
And I think that asthma sufferer might have a problem with your agenda, as you have taken away the only effective treatment they had for asthma attacks by banning the insignificant amount of CFCs used by their inhalers.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I'm not agreeing that their claim that the papers were poor quality was valid - I don't know, I haven't seen them and it's not my field anyway. But if that was their opinion, so what? As long as they don't use any unethical methods to suppress publications (and I see no evidence that they have done so), what's the problem?
Publishing raw data has never been required for science. What is required is that what is published is enough to enable someone else to reproduce the analysis. So they'd need to explain where the data comes from, what the analysis code does with it, etc. Now, if their papers fail to do this I'll agree with you - but in that case the papers should have failed peer review.
It shouldn't be necessary for someone to have their data and code to reproduce the results, any more than it should be necessary for someone to have the exact same lab and equipment to reproduce some other scientific experiment. If it depends on a specific data set, then by definition it isn't reproducible and so isn't scientific.
I've been quite depressed about the state of the climate change debate. Given the CRU incident and the fresh impetus found by AGW-sceptics I've gotten tired of the same arguments that go nowhere. Now the sceptics want all the data and all the code to check. To me, that implies that climate science is effectively dead, since no science can be done unless and until it has been verified by sceptics, and if it happens that AGW is real, we will have no time to deal with it during the process of verifying AGW science itself, if we accept that 'risk management' is another canard of AGW alarmists.
But let's take AGW sceptics arguments at face value and see what that implies. I am going to make some basic statements about what I think AGW sceptics see as the core issues and the remedies they demand. Please remember that as a AGW supporter, you must view any statement I make with great caution as nothing I propose can likely be trusted due to my bias. Feel free to correct me and to suggest more correct statements; as I will explain, this is a most necessary part of the process by which we can heal this divide. I hope the foregoing will be taken in the spirit of reconciliation, but accept that my thesis must be viewed with wary suspicion. For this reason, I am putting this olive branch in the most general forum for all to take part, the better to protect against any alarmism of mine.
fact 1. AGW science is effectively a religion, therefore:
fact 2. AGW scientists and their supporters can not be trusted with any statement about climate science.
fact 3. AGW science cannot be trusted until it is verified by non-AGW scientists therefore:
fact 4. ALL AGW science data and code must be turned over to non-AGW scientists to verify.
Now I am not going to go into much more detail than that. I hope such a basic coverage of the state of AGW scepticism is sufficient and non-offensive. Given the logic of these 4 points, I can (from my admittedly biased standpoint) only make these implications/assumptions:
implication 1. All AGW scientists must immediately be stood down and their projects be locked down pending a full and detailed re-examination of their work.
implication 2. No policy can be made until the full evaluation of all climate science can be done.
I would add, if I may, two teeny tiny conditions of such a revolution, should it come to pass. You will see they are obviously implications of the previous points, if my logic is not flawed by my obvious bias.
condition 1: since, from facts 1 and 2, no AGW scientist or supporter can ever be trusted with any statement regarding climate science, all scientific methods and data collection will have to be done in clean-room conditions lest faulty assumptions distort the science. Therefore non-AGW scientists will have to work out the science themselves as per facts 3 and 4 without any help or guidance by their biased colleagues. It is no good hoping that AGW alarmists will do as they're told, by their very nature they will bias and distort the science.
condition 2: following from implications 1 and 2, we must totally rely on non-AGW scientists and their supporters for determining whether we act at all, and such decisions must be completely their responsibility, since we have so obviously abrogated ours by shameless bias. Business must be reassured that silly ideas like 'risk management' are tools of alarmism and are economically harmful. The sceptics will and should take their time with this rebuilding of climate change science regardless of the dithering masses who have been led astray by myself and my fellow conspirators.
If this program meets with your carefully sceptical approval, I will openly allow it to be promulgated far and wide: by this perhaps we can finally progress towards a happier, less alarmist future. To reiterate, corrections gladly accepted, but please, make them public to allow us all to reach consensus.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
Sure. Let's shorten the growing season in the US midwest by 30 days and see how that works out for us...
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
If all the ice in the northern ocean melted, the ocean levels would not rise enough to measure.
If you're going to argue for something, try to use facts that show you actually understand the issues, as opposed to facts like this which make you look like an idiot. It isn't the ice in the ocean that is a problem, it's the ice on the land. You present this basic phsyics fact like its some profound insight, while at the same time ignoring the fact that it has nothing to do with the real issues. Here is a hint, it's the ice on land that is the issue. The Greenland Ice Sheet alone contains almost 3 million cubic kilometers of ice, which if it melted would be enough to raise ocean levels about 10m (the earths oceans have an area of about 300 million square kilometers).
>And nothing on Wikileaks invalidates any of the work done at CRU or any other climate research institute.
As soon as I read the email of two scientists planning to delete all data requested under FOIA or the UK version of that law, yes, their work became invalidated.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
O'rly? Promoting policies, which are based on your research isn't going to influence you? But not promoting policies would? You're trolling, my friend, you can't be that blind to the obvious or dumb. If you are, you can't claim you understand the "science".
Perhaps I am dumb. But please explain in simple language for someone as stupid as me - It's clear how your science will influence what policies you advocate. What is *not* clear is how that advocacy will then feed back into affecting how you conduct your research. Why would presenting a view at a political debate suddenly change how I see the science?
What you say is largely true. Scientists do have preconcieved ideas just like anyone else (well, rather less than the average person if they're any good, but there nonetheless). Group-think is also a possibility, and would be a problem if it was happening. But is it?
I don't know, but those leaked emails don't provide much if any evidence of it. On the other hand, I see it in vast quantities in most of the climate "sceptics", along with logical fallacies, superficial analysis (just enough to support their view but no more), personal attacks, lack of understanding of the issues, and many more failures. If they conducted honest, robust and high quality analysis then I have no problem with them contributing. But the vast majority that I've seen do not do this.
Here is an example for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko
Agreed. We do not know exactly what has been going on there, we have only a glimpse into their world. However I think I am right to be suspicious based on the apparently poor organisation of their source data, their attempts to obstruct the scientific process, and the apparent attempts to fudge experiments to match expectations.
It is up to them to come out of the shadows and "show the working", proving that everything is above board and that any errors were accidental and published in good faith. Until they do that - and this is pretty basic stuff for a scientist - I'll continue to be skeptical about everything the CRU might publish.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
This is the most disturbing part. Circling the wagon is the worst thing they could do.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
for the 'population bomb'...
Ever see "The Invention of Lying"? "The world is going to end unless we have sex right now!"
Without releasing the data, asking for action on climate change is exactly the same. Reducing carbon emissions will lead directly to mass starvation in developing countries, and increased poverty throughout the world. You are essentially putting caps on industrial production, which means that everything you buy, including food and medicine, will become more expensive as a result. You'd better be DAMN sure that you're right before making that claim. Anything less, and you're reading golden tablets out of a hat. That is, you are asking people to accept things on faith, unreasonable faith. If they know the data, and how it was collected, it can be reproduced. This is science. You and other alarmists are peddling religion.
[i]They have no explanation for why global temperature has not increased during the last ten years. They are just as astonished by the exceptionally cold, wet weather they see outside their window as everyone else.[/i]
No, actual scientists are not astonished because the magnitude of natural variability per year is significant, and the rest of the physics of the planet doesn't take a nap.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/Fig1.gif
Do the above show something particularly odd or incompatible with mainstream climatological opinion in the last 10 years?
No.
The problem with pushing AGW is that the public isn't buying it. What is the purpose of the discussion? To get popular buy-in so as to push neighbors into positive action to make changes to energy policies and other things that relate to our ecology. What they have done is not only hurt their own argument, but other environmental arguments.
I have not been on the AGW bandwagon, I believe there are other things driving the changes. I have said in the past that if we hitch our horses to this argument, it would bite us in the ass. Instead, the argument should be over-all climate awareness, general environmental involvement, and third world poverty. The drum-beat-hysteria drummed up by people who the public perceive as having a monetary interest, and now the perception of scientific malpractice will hurt the larger issues.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
1. An act of prostitution ?
2. An athletic combo with a skateboard?
3. A cunning and unusual way to accomplish something?
4. An act of deception?
5. A misdirection for the purpose of entertainment, usually with playing cards or coins?
Did you ever stop and think that maybe an ancient norse guy didn't actually use the term "greenland"? Actually, if you look into the history of Greenland, it was, in fact, green. There were pastures and farms there before the ice moved in.
After all, we know that there were people farming in Greenland many centuries ago.
I don't really care much about global warming. I am a skeptic. However, I do love the idea of going on with it. Why? It offers tremendous opportunities for us in the West. I believe we should impose a sort of green protectionism. We should force any country that is not a democracy and that is a heavy polluter out of our markets. We should create a green block and only trade amongst ourselves. How are we going to compete with China when companies there can populate as much as they want? Do they want to trade with us? They must buy our technology so that they can become green. Also they must become a democraticy. I believe this would work very well and it could save our economies here in the West.
The human contribution to global warming:
---
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
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,x)
densall=densall+yearlyadj
---
That code is from the IDL program:
FOI2009/FOIA/documents/harris/tree/briffa_sep98_e.pro
Those numbers where typed in by a human to adjust the results of the data.
They are not from the data.
Those number may be the cause of human induced global warming.
Yeah, that was totally my intent. Oh, wait. You were the one who invoked Godwin's Law. Not-so-clever package-dealing. Try a little harder to make a better argument next time.
What possible motivation? You're kidding, right?
Grants, prestige, professional advancement, MONEY...
Why does anybody ever do anything crooked?
You people amaze me. Proof positive the AGW movement is pure made up bullshit, and here you are slagging "skeptics".
Enjoy the koolaid.
Every third post on this difficult and complex subject is about eight vertical text inches of solid and earnest thinking. The brain cells are firing nicely and people are really considering this issue. It's nice to see so many varied ideas.
I have my own opinions, which in a nutshell are these. . .
Man-Bear-Pig was unfair, thanks Parker & Stone. You try hard, your contributions to rational debate are appreciated, but you take rather too many over-the-counter no-doze drugs to be entirely reliable and effective researchers. You also have accumulated rather too many barnacles on the ship of your public opinion to back down from opinions you might later realize are incomplete or outright misinformed. Basically, you are human.
Even at the end of, "An Inconvenient Truth" the notion was laid out that too much glacial melt stops the ocean convection currents and turns on the planetary big freeze. So Global Warming isn't global warming at all. It's Global Cooling. I've yet to see any evidence to the contrary and so I don't really understand why everybody is pissed off with whatshisname. . , Gore and his video. Despite imperfect data, he's basically right to be concerned about climate change. The weather is totally messed up. Anybody with a balcony window and a memory which goes back more than twenty years can (and will) tell you as much.)
It's the governments and political maneuvering which are annoying. Everybody with a stick in the fire is trying to take advantage of the situation. Fuck that. I don't think anything can actually be done. The cattle will be eaten. It's not in our hands anymore. We're too stupid and ignorant and easily manipulated as a race. Too bad. The blood will flow. But thankfully, that's just one step in a much larger program of existence.
-FL
Why would I try to argue with you? All you're doing is trotting out worn-out smears.
Face it, the hockey team got caught cooking the books. You're not going to make that go away by doubling down on the snotty attitude.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I don't doubt the anthropogenic basis for climate change - I can take a look at the your latest comments for a persuasive outline of the case. However, once I get past the most basic assertions, you are doing an absolutely terrible job. Most of the time when I read a comment by you I can immediately spot lots of methodological and deductive errors, and, conveniently, you always come out against of anthropogenic climate change. You argue that science is just another religion. This isn't true. However, the sort of 'science' you do nowadays may as well be a religion, basing conclusions on manifestly insufficient data, and inferring causation based on correlation alone.
---
Bullshit is bullshit and has the unique property to make just as much sense when negated.
ArcherB: You can see the raw data. All YOU have to do is take the time to look for/at it. YOU are just unwilling to take the time
Which is explained fully with the current climate models. The solar activity, cosmit radiation and vulcanic eruptions all explain the climate from year 0 to 1800 perfectly. Unfortunately nothing from before 1800 matches the data collected later, the only difference is a higher concentration of CO2 which hasn't occured in historic times, and even in prehistoric times have never rised this fast.
Your point was?
The mountains of research done on this is pretty clear about why
it's happening. But I don't expect facts to get in the way of beliefs
anytime soon. Be that as it may, why is not the important. The
important questions, and the ones the climate scientists spend a lot of
time working out, are how it's going to affect us and what we can do to
prepare for it.
There are no mountains of research that show why any climate change is
happening or even IF climate change is happening. Arctic ice cover has increased
every year since 2007, for example, while the AGW models pushed by the NSIDC and IPCC
don't allow for any such increase. Carbon dioxide is
routinely pushed by politicians as the cause of global warming and yet
it is a simple calculation to show that there is already more
than sufficient carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to absorb ALL of the
IR radiation radiating from Earth that is in the wavelength where it
can be absorbed by carbon dioxide... within the first few hundred
meters of the atmosphere. It is even easier to show
that gas-phase H2O in the atmosphere (commonly referred to as humidity)
is present in much higher concentrations in the atmosphere than CO2 and
is a far more potent 'greenhouse' gas than CO2...and yet the planet is
obviously still able to radiate sufficient heat to space in the
non-absorbable IR wavelengths to cool itself. Finally,
supposing for argument's sake that atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentration really was: 1) a problem and 2) correctable, why
would it be the 'climate scientist's' job (read IPCC and NSIDC) to tell
us how to prepare for it's impact? They seem even less qualified
for that job than they are for the investigation of global
warming.
Yep, one can read Spencer Weart's discovery of Global Warming, available online.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
It's a very old idea that has gotten a stronger and stronger case from gathered evidence.
No one is denying climate change.
That's not true. That's not even truthty.
You can't take the sky from me...
What goes for "science" in Climate Science is mearly exercises in Theology.
The Prediction of an Arctic Ocean without sea ice in year 2012 is a tenent of Theology, Devined Knowledge ordained by God, and not subject to any principal of science.
The adherients of this Prediction, a.k.a. Outlook, are Theologists, and their "science" a form of astrology.
I would NEVER use a word like "Hide" in context of normalizing a dataset. That smacks way too much of fraudulent data manipulation.
That's nothing. You should see their source code... what do you call this?
You don't even need to plot this.
I think that was his point.
If the time of the vikings was ~20000 years ago, you'd be correct. But since they're a bit more recent, you're spewing internet BS. Have a nice day.
P.S Growing oranges in Edmonton would be a complete unmitigated disaster. Though having New York and Vancouver washed away would be a nice benefit.
It's clear from the emails that the science community now views any skeptic, no matter how reputable, as 100% hostile
That's where the problem is, and the emails only confirm what was suspected all along. Nobody cares any more what CRU people think - they are done for. Not for their opinions - for what they did. Emails only explain why they concealed data and unethically suppressed critics.
Pitty that the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration find exercises of Theology more palitable than science, let alone unbiased investigation.
I'm really sick of this arguing.
What annoys me is that the science behind climate change is so simple ( well, relatively simple. *cough*LHC*cough* xD ) : the greenhouse effect being 'enhanced' by tonnes upon tonnes of greenhouse gases (being methane, carbon dioxide etc.) being released by us, along with the depletion of the ozone layer around the poles caused by chloroflourocarbons, which are byproducts of aerosols among other things.
If you're in a grumpy mood and feel like denying that the greenhouse effect even exists then please note one thing: Venus - Venus' temperature is higher than Mercury's despite the fact that it's much further from the sun than Mercury, Mercury has virtually no atmosphere whereas Venus has a very thick atmosphere somewhat like our's made up of ~96.5% carbon dioxide, 3.5% Nitrogen and traces of other gases I don't care to name, Venus' much higher temperature than Mercury is attributed to this.
By the way, I have noticed a temperature increase; I live in NSW Australia, close enough to the South Pole to be able to blame the highest rate of skin cancer in the world on the big fat lack of an ozone layer above Antarctica, anyway: where I live around 20 years ago in the middle of Winter frost in the morning was a regular site, over the past 11 or so years I have never seen frost in Winter on any day.
Feel free to yell at me for whatever reason but if you really want to deny anything that I've said at least provide evidence, this isn't a religious debate based on dogma afterall unless you really want to drag in that $%%!'d political debate based on money.
Recently heard someone describe Gore as a industrialist. This struck me odd, but come to think about it, he is little different then the robber baron industrialists of the 19th century. He is positioned to make tens of millions off the backs of the poor and middle class.
Besides, AGW is everywhere. My kid's elementary text books, the Disney Channel, the movies... everywhere. It will take a decade to remove all this stuff and a generation to de-learn it.
That is because the program managers of the National Science Foundation and National Aeronautics and Space Administation are Theologins, not scientists. Their training and expertice is in Theology and they have had nothing to do whatever with any aspect of science, in any way, shape or form.
This simple truth is obvious.
... going to look as sleazy as PHB managers who forecast self-serving weird shit to make themselves look good to their bosses.
You're talking about KDawson?
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
I say no.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
How can you trust the food from the store if you're not the one making it?
I can look a the food and read the list of ingredients and judge for myself. I assume the raw data is printed on the box.
The mountains of research done on this is pretty clear about why it's happening. But I don't expect facts to get in the way of beliefs anytime soon. Be that as it may, why is not the important. The important questions, and the ones the climate scientists spend a lot of time working out, are how it's going to affect us and what we can do to prepare for it.
No, IMHO If it had been made clear there wouldn't be this all out war going on about it. Especially when the political ramifications are so great. They need to do a much clearer job. IANAS but there are glaring contradictions that need to be resolved.
the scientists are meanies who keep data from you, a random Slashdot poster who are undoubtedly more qualified to interpret it than them.
Fuck you.
While I, or the next guy, may not be qualified in climatology, or anything, hoarding raw data is never reasonable (when trying to prove something.)
Maybe I couldn't prove anything, but maybe I could. Every time I hear some specialist talking about not releasing data or being transparent they use this "the public are freaking dumb" excuse, as if 1) the public are all identical clones and 2) uneducated people can't help in unexpected ways.
For instance, someone might recognize incorrect numbers (too much/little rain, etc), incorrect math, incorrect assumptions, incorrect practices, the names of biased parties, etc.
If there was an attempt to hide data here, even if minor, I hope these guys fry (in a career sense) because it's not only the mark of a jackass, but also a poor scientist - someone afraid of having their mistakes pointed out to them.
We don't hide data or make up propaganda to convince Creationists, so why does it need to be done here? Why are people even considering standing up for such horrible practices? (I don't know what happened, but you're prepared to condone it all with a - "don't bug your betters" message.)
Never mind that where I live the climate has changed quite dramatically in my very lifetime,
You're such a retard. Few "deniers" deny that the climate changes - ice ages are proof otherwise - merely that the change is human caused and dangerous. You pulling stuff like that out of your ass is actually part of:
it's all a conspiracy, a CONSPIRACY I say!
Well, it could be. Millions of idiots like you with no more proof or idea than the next guy all jumping on the "is so" platform with no visible motive and using more fallacies to argue than a preacher, are the conspiracy.
When you see two things together 1) questioning AGW and 2) decrying bad methods you for some reason have to lump them together and strike out at anyone who merely wants to see what's going on. I read my own economics, politics, medical lit, comp sci, physics, engineering, etc, why should I sit back here and be content to be spoonfed rather than trying to examine it?
You've become the creationist.
However, one thing I did see was a list of signatures from people opposed to the climate change theory - almost all of whom had no science qualifications.
I really have no idea if you might have seen this or not but just trying to be helpful. These people seem to have some qualifications...
At least the people supporting evolution gives the other side the raw data. The AGW crowd does not let the raw data out; I think this means they are making up too much of the data. Tim S.
The science IS settled.
Where is the unsettled "CO2 is a greenhouse gas" in the science?
Where is the unsettled "Combustion of fossil fuel hydrocarbons produce CO2" in the science?
Where is the unsettled "Temperature rises are underway and nothing else changes enough to explain the pattern of change except greenhouse gasses" in the science?
Now, when the denialist STILL says "Volcanoes produce more CO2 in one year than humans have over their history", what do YOU think they think of as "unsettled science"? Where do you think they get their observational proof of that from?
Or it may have been much greener than it is now:
"Interpretation of ice core data suggests that between 800 and 1300 AD the regions around the fjords of southern Greenland experienced a mild climate, with trees and herbaceous plants growing and livestock being farmed. What is verifiable is that the ice cores indicate Greenland has experienced dramatic temperature shifts many times over the past 100,000 years — which makes it possible to say that areas of Greenland may have been much warmer during the medieval period than they are now and that the ice sheet contracted significantly."
From wikipedia entry on Greenland.
If it depends on a specific data set, then by definition it isn't reproducible and so isn't scientific.
That is exactly the point everyone is making, too -- CRU data depend on their specific dataset, aren't reproducible by definition, and what CRU is doing isn't science, but BS. And 10 or so people are getting paid 3-4 millions of pounds on top of their salaries to do it.
For example, I once contacted a author of a paper basically saying "I read the paper you wrote on a utility to improve security. It seems to me that your utility could also be used to improve performance as well. Could I play with the utility?". Their response was "I wrote that a few years back. I think I lost the code." Other researchers have similar difficulties when trying to perform meta-studies based on other researchers data. This could have been avoided if submitting raw data and code was the norm. These days there would be almost zero-cost in submitting raw-data in electronic form along with almost every manuscript submitted for peer-review and publication.
EOM
The questions we should be asking, but aren't, go much further.
First, of course, is the question of whether or not it is actually happening. The answer is far from clear. And if we can't answer that, then it is ridiculously stupid to be paniced by a bunch of hysterical politicians spend billions or trillions of dollars to fix something that may not even be broken. And the term "politicians" includes those so-called climate scientists who have ceased being scientists in their quest to become advocates of their own global warming religion. Furthermore, if we can't even determine whether or not it is happening, than we have plenty of time to try to do something later if needed.
After that is the question of what, if anything, we can effectively do to slow it down or stop it. If we don't understand the problem, then anything we do is likely to be far from ineffective and may accomplish nothing at all. Why should we destroy our economy for little more than a hysterical nightmare?
Third is the question that hardly anyone is asking or even thinking about. The global warming advocates all take the answer for granted without even thinking about it. That is the question of whether or not we should do anything if global warming is happening and if there are some effective things we can do to combat it. Global warming is likely to be overwhelmingly beneficial for most life on Earth including mankind. Sure, if global warming occurs, there will be some people who come out behind. But global warming means longer growing seasons, especially toward the poles. Large expanses of land would become available for growing crops.
The real disaster would be global cooling. If that occurs, expect billions of people to starve to death. Remember that in the fossil record, periods of cooling, not warming, are the climatological causes of mass extinctions. If global warming helps postpone the next ice age or lessen its effects, the benefits to mankind and other animal life are clear.
There is no reason to panic. Far from it. There is plenty of reason to welcome global warming.
It's time for scientists to go back to doing science. Those who can't should go find some other work and get out of the way of the real scientists.
Evolution deniers can be separated into categories too. There is the $"my god did it" groups and then there are groups who do not think the popular explanation of evolution is correct. To barrow a point from the IDer's, The precambrian/cambrian explosion of life doesn't seem to follow the bottom up branching model as the tree of life suggests today. There is also the problem if speciation that hasn't been observed in nature unless definitions are changed or human intervention happened. Of course this can all be explained without resorting to a god or anything mythical that wouldn't already be necessary for abiogenesis or evolution as currently theorized. Unfortunately, if you suggest anything other then what they are proselytizing, you are labeled a kook or denier or something with no comment on the substance.
On the other hand, the more extreme claims of anthropogenic global warming _proponents_ are not backed up with sufficient observation and are extrapolated from very small datasets.
It's irrelevant how much bad data there is (there is plenty of bad and faked data in every scientific discipline). What matters is how much good data there is, and there is more than enough.
Given all of this, to say the "science is settled" is a travesty,
The science is settled as far as it matters: whether anthropogenic warming exists or not really has little bearing on the question of whether we need to stop emitting carbon into the atmosphere. We need to to stop costly oil imports, we need to because oil itself is a finite resource, we need to to make our cities more livable, and people need to get off their lazy butts and walk more.
People opposing reductions in carbon emissions are people who don't give a shit about the future of mankind or the planet. Many of them think their invisible fairy god is going to shuttle them to another realm when they have screwed this one. And while they're here, they like to maximize their profits and maximize their waistline.
See, people who claim that global warming is happening only need to make a plausible argument that it is possible. Given the risks involved, people who claim that global warming is not happening need to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
My god makes the sun come up every day and set in the evening. You don't believe me, just wait until sunrise tomorrow, it will happen again.
Of course all that melting ice caps, record glacial melts, and lack of ozone layer above the Antartic stuff means something. The problem is that we do not know what it means and to date, it seems that we are being presented with about as much evidence as someone's god making the sun rise and set instead of what we really need to understand it. And when you ask these preachers of the new faith where you can get a copy of their bibles so you can learn it too, you are told that only they can see it- you will have to trust them.
"passage between Thule and Vancouver"? You're already convinced that it is because of anthropogenic global warming? Why when the transparency isn't there and to date, you have no more of an understanding of the real or actual causes then an illiterate person learning everything he knows about god and religion from the "give me your money" brand of church. I mean could the under sea volcanic activity have anything to do with the ice melt? How about the cyclical currents shifting? Seems to me we had some news about lava flows underwater in that area that was thought impossible in the ocean not to mention that NASA has listed the area as one of the most volcanically active areas in the world. But your convinced it's because of global warming that your brother caused (I understand that it's not you) and your ready to give all your money to the church in order to appease god and make it stop with a carbon tax or something.
I really do not understand why someone would mod you interesting. All you basically said is that the sun comes up in the morning and sets in the evening and then suggested that someone's claim who has not backed it up with anything other then claims that aren't being supported or backed up caused it ti happen. Well, here is news for you, because something is happening, it does not mean it was caused or influenced by anything being claimed, it just means it happened. Once everyone gets a chance to examine the claims, data, and modeling, then we can be a little more certain if what happened is because of something specific.
That they will not be on the Shiva B-vaccine list. That should make all "skeptics" fall in line. :)
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
I've collected dozens of independent, peer-reviewed articles in my article devoted to engaging with climate skeptics. I even described my own personal research which independently confirms Greenland and Alaskan glacier melt through their effects on time-variable gravity. Just last month at the most recent GRACE Science Team Meeting, my advisor displayed the most recent GRACE results over Greenland, showing that the mass loss is accelerating and spreading from the southeast coast to the entire western coast.
There most certainly is a mountain of evidence showing that abrupt climate change is happening, and that it's due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
As I keep repeating, 2007 was the steepest drop in ice cover on record. It scared a lot of us when the extent of the drop was shown at the 2007 AGU conference because the climate models weren't predicting such a huge drop. The subsequent increases actually confirm that this decrease was due to weather, not climate, which tends to validate the models.
Completely wrong. Global circulation models allow for short-term variability due to weather. That's the whole point of taking an ensemble with varying initial conditions and parameterizations. Please remember that weather is different than climate, which is an average over at least several years.
When studying any science, it's best to ignore politicians and only focus on peer-reviewed scientific articles. In this case, you should be paying attention to the fact that scientists are saying CO2 is causing abrupt climate change.
Again, I've discussed this in detail many times. You're neglecting to consider pressure broadening, which forces any realistic climate model to treat each layer of the atmosphere differently. CO2 isn't saturated in the highest layer of the atmosphere, which is what really matters.
Yet again, I need to repeat that water vapor is a feedback in the climate, not a forcing. We can't change the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere because it establishes equilibrium with the oceans in a matter of weeks. However, because we're increasing the temperature of the planet by increasing CO2 concentrations, water vapor will tend to provide positive feedback which will make the problem worse.
Also, water vapor isn't well-mixed to t
However, once you get past the most basic assertions, the scientific community is doing an absolutely terrible job.
Is there any wonder then, that some smell a conspiracy?
I don't understand this position, because I don't think it's really tenable; it seems to me even less believable than if you rejected the GW entirely.
You see, if you start believing climatology as a science (so, say, some results are valid), then you don't really have much reason to disbelief other results. And antropomorphic global warming is connected by a lot of little pieces of evidence to global warming. For example, we can measure ratio of various carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, and from this we can determine, which part of CO2 comes from fossil fuels. These little pieces of evidence are consistent with each other; if you choose to not to believe one, you need to account for the other evidence that covers same theory, otherwise you would have to reject everything, including the fact that it is warming at all, which you chose to believe. Another interesting example of such connected evidence was in Copenhagen Diagnosis report, that more sunlight would cause higher peak temperatures in summer, unlike higher insulation - CO2 layer over the planet, which would cause higher low temperatures in winter; guess what is more in-line with observations. So if you were to claim that sun does it, you would have to explain also this.
I have yet to see a theory of non-antropomorhic global warming, which would be consistent with global warming observation. And since you don't have any better theory, it's logical just to accept that man does it.
Climate on earth has been changing for billions of years. And will continue to do so for billions more. (at least until the Sun goes supernova and the earth is vaporized)
Nothing humans have done, or will do, has, or will have, any significant impact on this.
Some species will adapt/evolve, some will not. Some will survive, some may not. Some humans will adapt (and survive), some may not. Some may have to relocate, same may not.
It is certainly desirable to find sustainable sources of energy that pollute less - but it is utter foolishness to tax existing sources energy, or make treaties restricting it. It is also utter bullshit that so-called "rich" countries should take away money their citizens work hard to earn, and give it to so-called "poor" countries so they can waste 3/4 of it on corruption and graft, and some tiny portion builds windmills and solar panels.
I don't know where this fits into the current "climate-gate" issue and the raw data, but here is a story I was told by the state climatologist for the State of Utah:
He was reviewing climate data and digitizing historical records for temperature and rainfall data for the State of Utah when he look up some climate models based on some of the data that he, himself, sent in. He noticed that some of the data was being modified and "fixed up" with some algorithms.
Some of this is legitimate, as the data was recorded by volunteers that on occasion made some pretty huge mistakes. For example, if the high temperature in July was recorded as 19 degrees (F) and the nearby stations were recorded in the 90's and upper 80's, it seems likely that the number was inverted when it was recorded. Particularly when the daytime high is lower than the nighttime low. Numbers input in this manner were reviewed, including automated equipment when something was seen to perhaps malfunction and give a similar kind of error.
Here is the real "criminal" offense that happened: The data "scrubbing" algorithm fixed up the raw data set and then simply replaced the numbers for the "raw" data being used. Yes, the original "raw" data set was simply discarded and never to be seen again. Furthermore, there seemed to be a bias in the numbers being modified so earlier temperatures were kept somewhat cooler and the more recent numbers were made a little bit warmer. Certainly the algorithm used for this scrubbing was kept separate from even the climate model software.
Since this climatologist still had the original paper documents (not digitized), he reviewed some of the data points on some arbitrary day that he selected, and noted what data points were changed and what were kept. Out of about 30 data points for the State of Utah that were modified, he agreed that about 3 of them should have been changed.
Seeing this, he asked for the original "raw" data set on a much larger sample to run his own scrubbing algorithm, and was simply told that such a data set simply didn't exist. Upon pressing the issue, it turns out that all of the raw numbers for the USA and the U.S. Weather Bureau that had been digitized (about 30 years worth at the time) had been scrubbed like this with all of the original data set removed and discarded. The raw physical paper copies of the weather data were still available, but who would bother with trying to re-enter data that supposedly already was in digital form just to correct some data errors?
More to the point, the climate models are working off of bad data to begin with, so there is little more to really trust what those models are predicting when they are predicting based off of an already biased dataset.
This was more than a decade ago when I first heard about this issue... I think the issue has only become worse since then, and very little to try and fix the problem as well.
See, someone attempts to "sound reasonable" and provides not a shred or nugget of evidence. You are not reasonable, you are a Gore shrill, admit it.
It is unfortunate that the signal to noise ratio on the skeptic side is low.
I have no problem with thinking skeptics. I think there should be more of them. But the problem is almost all the skeptics are fanatical mad dog skeptics with solid Ph.Ds in arcmchair climatology backed by B.S's in BS. It's become like evolution vs. intelligent design, only worse.
I think that the fanatic ones are not skeptics at all. They are mostly ignorant people with loud opinions. However, there is an equally big bunch of equally ignorant and loud environmentalists, who are equally bad. This Slashdot article is a prime example of the battle between those two ignorant camps. Way too much noise and partisan moderation. This whole debate should be about data and science and not about people. So we should ignore all the ignorant, loud ones no matter what their opinions are.
I believe, that it is unethical for you to just point out the low quality of those, who don't share your point of view.
I've read through a lot of material of that FOIA.zip. I have no degree in climatology, but I have 20 years of experience in computing and analyzing sensory data and data conversions. From what I've read, there are big problems with how the CRU tempareture data is processed. These problems affect the outcome. How much? Nobody knows, but we all should be interested in finding out.
I have no respect for those, who just repeat, that there's nothing here to see. These people have not read the material. They are just cheerleaders, who support their own team, no matter what. They add no value to the debate.
See, someone attempts to "sound reasonable" and provides not a shred or nugget of evidence. You are not reasonable, you are a Gore shrill, admit it.
Ha ha! It's shill, Gumby, not "shrill". And I thought I was pretty clear about saying it was my opinion. If you want evidence, sorry; you're on your own. I've spent several years trying to figure my own way out of the box and the best I've got so far is an opinion. What you believe is your own problem.
Good luck with that.
-FL
arminw, Quit saying "If all the northern ice melted ocean levels would not rise. It's not true.
The ice sheet that covers 80% of Greenland has existed for over 2.5 million years. Most of it is over 2 km thick and the mean altitude of the ice is 2135 meters (7000 ft) above current sea level. If it completely melted it would raise sea level by 7.2 m (23.6 ft). Melting ice that is not already floating will cause sea level to rise.
data from 10 trees is extrpolated into a 'trend' and finds its way into a number of papers
AGW deniers: data from their own thermometer is extrapolated into the trend "that it isn't getting any warmer".
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Wow, you can see the E. Coli on meat? That's some darn good eyesight.
Trauma doctors were some of the biggest proponents of seatbelts and airbags while the auto industry moaned about the expense and fought legislation strenuously. Yeah, there are still idiots and suicidal maniacs who avoid using either seatbelts or airbags, but both have saved many, many lives since their legislative imposition. It shouldn't come as a surprise that those most familiar with the likely impact of a destructive action would be the most vocal about needing legislative action to stop it.
If Greenland was so green, why did Leif Erikson (it was his dad Erik the Red who discovered Greenland) bother to travel over a thousand miles south-west (emphasis on south) over the Atlantic to find a nicer place for a new settlement?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Ah, is this the so-called lying you mentionned in your first line ?
Reducing carbon emissions will NOT lead directly to mass starvation.
putting caps on industrial production
you sir/ma'm, are UNimaginative. investing in a green economy is likely to be good for the economy; while keeping the short-sighted burning of limited resources will ... very abruptly run into ... limits.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
> Never mind that where I live the climate has changed quite dramatically in my very lifetime, ...and this is supposed to prove global warming? Why, sir, with such experientially obtained proof, you sealed the debate!
Greenland was not green at the time, but a few tiny areas were ice-free. Agriculture was barely viable in a few coastal enclaves. There were small forests and some land that was suitable for pasture. The place was far less suited for Viking colonization than Iceland was, and Iceland was a fairly barren place. Erik the Red wanted colonists, so he told people about the wonderful forests and farm land that he had found. He did not, however, say that there was barely enough to support European agriculture, or that the vast majority of Greenland was covered with glaciers. Erik would have made a good real estate agent.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
It's not about Science, except to a tiny handful of very specialized climate scientists. To the rest of us ill-educated masses (and that means YOU, Gentle Reader), it's nothing but Rhetoric, Public Relations, and Politics now. The silly actions of a few have obscured the real issues, and neither clarity nor consensus will emerge in public discourse for many years to come.
If the anthropogenic climate change "side" is correct, by that time it will be too late to do anything meaningful about the situation, and our descendants will just have to batten the hatches and hope to ride out a 100,000 year storm that will probably make current worst-case scenarios look naively optimistic.
If it's all just part of a long-term period of global warming, the consequences are still the same, and our descendants will still have to batten the hatches and hope to ride out a "X" year storm that will merely destroy civilization as we have built it.
Better hope that nothing is happening at all.
As a proud Earth sceptic let me tell tou it has been proved that the earth is geoid
I'm glad for your god.
As to what the evidence means, the scientific community of which I'm a nominal member has put together some pretty cogent correlations between what man has done, and how-- oddly?-- the glaciers and ice have melted, how the weather's gone a bit freakish, El Nino's and other bizarre metrics point towards the likely fact that:
We did it.
And we are obligated to our future generations to fix it. It's not necessary for everyone to be involved in the process, only that the process of examination is open and truthful. Much of the points of the alarmists is that there's lots of evidence to be worried... indeed very worried.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
On peer review. Once upon a time someone decided to look for the papers referrred to by a scientist and found that one by an employee of the former Ulster Polytechnic did not exist just like its supposed author.
How often does this happen?
If AGW was proven wrong tomorrow
Well, when it stops warming thats not evidence that the AGW theory is wrong. In fact, when it cools for a decade it still isnt taken as evidence that the theory of AGW is wrong. When there are more hurricanes, thats taken as evidence of AGW. When there are less hurricanes, that is also taken as evidence of AGW. When it rains less in a region, thats taken as evidence of AGW. When it rains more in a region, that too is taken as evidence of AGW.
It is quite clear to me that the theory of AGW is unfalsifiable by design.
"His name was James Damore."
and even in prehistoric times have never rised this fast.
How do you know that? Seriously.
Instead of processing the claims made by people, try processing their methodology. Can their methodology make the claim you are making? Seriously?
Now, what method of measurement (pick a proxy, think about how its collected and what assumptions must be made) of prehistoric atmospheric CO2 levels will give them better than 100 year resolution back to say 100000 years? How about 1000000 years?
What you have just claimed is that they have better than 100 year proxy resolution all the way back to the beginning of time, when the reality is that for anything back more than a few thousand years they can't even be certain about what century they are measuring when they look at, for example, a section of an ice core (because they make an assumption about precipitation rates that isnt anything better than ballpark even for recent years)
You arm-chair claim-spouters need to shut up with your bullshit.
"His name was James Damore."
proving that everything is above board and that any errors were accidental and published in good faith.
How can there ever be good faith if they are actively trying to prevent the finding of any errors, accidental OR intentional?
I argue that they cannot be trusted even if the errors are accidental because they obstruct the identification of errors.
"His name was James Damore."
No. The can be no common ground because one side is arguing from a political point of view when the other side is arguing from a scientific point of view.
laughs
The Canadian midwest would love it.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
"The claims of evolution skeptics and round-earth skeptics is not backed up by observation and evidence."
This is not true. It's nice and quaint (and traditional) to get on board and lump something that we have evidence of, seeing a round earth from space, and something which we cannot prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, namely, what happened 5 to 10 thousand years ago. What would be scientific and logical of someone would be that, when finding the same type of data that supports current evolution theory, is not to toss it out because it doesn't support the existing theory. This happens over and over again and is circular reasoning.
I'm wise enough to say I can't know what happened 5 thousand years ago and that just because someone with a degree says something doesn't mean shit. There are more than two possibilities here in this bipolar world.
Everyone knows the worlds weather is changing. Wouldn't it be something if it was always the same? Lining points up on a graph doesn't prove anything. Say it again kids: correlation doesn't prove causality. Why don't you here people talking about how ALL of the planets in our solar system are heating up simultaneously? That is an observable fact we have now.
There's lots of climate-model source-code available on the web. Much of it has been publicly available for years.
Examples:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/
http://www.ccsm.ucar.edu/
http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/Projekte.209.0.html?&L=3
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5846/1866d/DC1
http://geoflop.uchicago.edu/forecast/docs/Projects/modtran.html
Now for all the skeptics out there -- those of you who have downloaded and tested any climate code, submitted patches, constructive suggestions, etc. to the code developers, please stand up and give us a shout-out!
Don't be shy or modest -- even if you've done nothing more than submit a one-line change to a makefile, let's hear about it!
>>>How do you know any of what you say is true if can't see or trust the raw data?
This is a false argument. How can you ever be sure about the integrity of anything unless you are the one doing it? How can you trust the raw data if you are not collecting it? How can you trust the analysis if you are not the one analyzing it? How can you trust the satellite data if you didn't build the satellite?
So you would rather that we just take the scientists at their word that their findings are 100% accurate? Is that what you are suggesting?
And are you saying that this is the way science ought to function?
There are well known methods of determining if the sensors are completely off. We have temperature data from satellites as well as from ground stations. Also, there are ways of determining if the data returned by the sensors is wrong - that can happen if the sensor malfunctions.
Go here for the data. Please read up the documentation on how specific rows are flagged as possibly incorrect data.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/ghcn-monthly/index.php
Please don't pass off your "belief" as science and don't expect the rest of the world to have "faith" in your beloved scientists. The "Mad dog" behaviour that you are pointing out isn't coming from the sceptics right now but rather from your friends at CRU.
Also, while you are at it - please read up on this as well to determine how the so-called scientists at CRU were dealing with FOI requests.
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/willis-vs-the-cru-a-history-of-foi-evasion/
I've seen it, it shows nothing of the sort. It shows people having considerable difficulty in combining data sets in a consistent and reliable way. This is always a tricky problem.
If you have seen it, then you haven't looked at it long enough or you haven't read enough of the material. The emails clearly reveal the following:
- Deliberate attempts to delete email and data even those pending FOI requests
- Deliberate attempts to scuttle peer review
Also, try explaining this:
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/willis-vs-the-cru-a-history-of-foi-evasion/
Deliberate attempts to delete email and data even those pending FOI requests
Yes, possibly. Not scientifically relevant.
- Deliberate attempts to scuttle peer review
No, it was a response to someone else's hijacking of a peer-reviewed journal, which then published low quality papers. Their concerns were not unique, indeed there were several resignations from the journal as a result.
As for your other link, which says:
Without replication, science cannot move forwards.
And then goes on to suggest that providing data is necessary for this. It is not. It is necessary to provide a full description of what was done so that somebody can go off and reproduce the work.
The big fuss about providing data doesn't make much sense, as it's neither necessary to determine scientific validity (a full, published description of the analysis will do that) nor sufficient to detect fraud (the data could be falsified prior to its release).
It is fortunate that CRU is not the only organization computing global temperatures.
NASA/GISS has an independent global-temperature program, and they've been much more open with the general public than CRU has. All of the information you need to replicate (or "audit" if you prefer) NASA's work is available at http://data.giss.nasa.gov./ They use publicly-available raw temperature data, homogenize it with their open-source code, and compute global average temperatures. Their global temperature computations show a bit more warming than CRU's computations do.
This shows the value of having multiple, independent organizations performing the same (or similar) work. If one organization's credibility is in doubt, then its results can be cross-checked with the other organizations' results.
CRU definitely did "step in it" in their dealings with "gadfly" skeptics. Had they taken NASA's approach ("here are all the data and code -- knock yourselves out"), this would not have blown up as badly as it did.
For example, how do you know if your local transportation authority is really doing the best job to keep traffic moving? They could have incentive not to, such as increased tax flow to the coffers by making motorists spend just that much more on gasoline. Or perhaps their even getting kickbacks from a couple oil boys for making sure consumers spend their quota.
Bad example (or maybe not?). This was official UK government policy until this year!
The end result of Climategate should be academic discreditation for several of those involved, and jail for a few - most likely to include Phil Jones. He very blatantly disregarded valid Freedom of Information requests. That's a felony in Great Britain.
Sorry to nitpick but (i) there is no legal jurisdiction called "Great Britain", there is (A) England and Wales, (B) Scotland, and (C) Northern Ireland, each of which are different (Scotland markedly so); and (ii) assuming you meant "England and Wales", we abolished felonies over 40 years ago with the Criminal Law Act 1967.
Would that be the Ozone layer that could only be measured recently so that we do not know that it might be a natural feature of the Earth?
Would thta be the North West Passage which has been navigable since 1934?
> ...and something which we cannot prove beyond a shadow of a
> doubt, namely, what happened 5 to 10 thousand years ago.
Assuming you're refering to evolution, we *can* prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt, because evolution happens *today*. Mendel's work on plants, gray moth speciation in England, etc. And others too
But to go from "Everyone knows the worlds weather is changing" (your words) to "we need to spend trillions of dollars in restructuring the world economy and changing human behaviour" (my paraphrase of most of the green movement's message) is ridiculous, especially on the basis of the evidence presented. The key point is that no one's denying that climate changes. That is a truism. The question is-- is industrial activity the culprit, and to what extent is there warming? Frankly, Nobel prizes to Al Gore notwithstanding, there's still plenty up for debate. In fact, one of the sources of frustration among the CRU lot was that they couldn't show warming from '98 onwards.
But hey, it's hard to show doubt when you're on a moral crusade. Which is what most of global warming activism is all about.
Go somewhere random
Thank you for your answer.
To be clear, I have no problem with all models building on the same assumptions around well established physics.
What I mean was that if you have one data set, with one assumption about how to interpret it, and the rest of the model around it is built completely on physics (that should indeed work the same in all models) then it is no surprise to see consistent results when you vary other modules between being more exact calculations vs rougher estimates of, say, cloud formations.
If, on the other hand, different data sets from different sources and with their own assumptions about how to interpret each keep giving similar results, then that certainly is something to inspire confidence that the models are not overly sensitive to the accuracy of individual assumptions.
So my question is of course not if you have tried reversing gravity ;-) but how wide a set of sources with different assumptions about how to interpret them provide data yielding the same conclusions.
Btw, I changed name of this subthread since I don't question your good faith/intentions/whatever, I just thought you had some good insights into the subject and became curious.
Straw-man #1: That the glacier melting data is fabricated
Straw-man #2: That my concern over the validity of one data set means I'm incapable of considering any of the datasets valid
Straw-man #3: That increased hurricane strength an Al Queda have anything to do with each other.
I'm not saying that all the data is suspect, but the dataset that is frequently indicated to be the best is IMO suspect. Not necessarily completely invalid, but compromised. I'm not ignoring any other data, In earlier posts I indicate that I believe the climate is changing I'm just not convinced that their conclusions as to the causes and magnitude of the changes are accurate. Even valid data does not by itself indicate valid conclusions. I've reviewed papers where their work was good, but their discussion was completely off base and their conclusions were in direct contradiction with their own results.
As to your irrelevant screed at the end. Talk about facts not in evidence.
The problem with knee-jerk reactionary types like yourself are that you jump to the emotional name calling instead of rational discussion involving actual data. I recognize that a lot of other skeptics may be less interested in actual discourse, but until you know more about a persons reasons you should give them the benefit of the doubt. By that I mean you should assume they are willing to look at evidence previously unseen and change their mind. I started out believing in the anthropogenic explanation for global warming, but the more I've looked at the data manipulations performed on the raw data, the less convinced I am.
My political affiliation has nothing to do with my judgements as a scientist. If anything my political affiliation is based on my scientific nature. I changed party affiliations based on the philosophical inconsistencies of those leading the party with which I was previously affiliated.
Also, I am by no means and ideologue. I only bothered to join a party at all so that I can participate in primaries. On election day I vote for the best candidate, regardless of party, and have probably voted for an equal number of Democrats and Republicans over the years.
So in summary, you built up several straw-men and then did an admirable job of knocking them down. However, none of those straw-men even remotely resembled me. You then proceeded to attach the character of a fictional "Climate Change Denier" as though he and I were the same without any evidence to support that assumption. In short, you provided nothing of any value by posting. Better luck next time!
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
There are famous cases in science of certain scientists writing under a pseudonym. For example, William Sealy Gosset wrote under the pseudonym Student (as in the famous Student's t-distribution in Statistics), because he was employed by Guinness, who prohibited employees from pubhishing any papers.
How can a post with score=1 (no karma bonus) get a -1, overrated mod? To the idiot mod who did this: /. doesn't have a "disagree" mod.
Go somewhere random
Sorry, Red, but you don't know anything about industry or economics. When you tax production (or anything) you get less of it. Tax production of food resources, and you will have less food resources. Don't think that you know what is best for every single person on the earth better than those individuals. That type of thinking has ALWAYS failed, and will always fail, leaving nothing but death, poverty, and devastation in their wake. Otherwise, I would invite you to move to North Korea and see what happens when you intervene into the economy on a massive scale.
Valid Data do not by themselves equate to valid conclusions. You can have two researchers look at the exact same dataset and come up with differing conclusions. I've even reviewed a journal article in which the authors conclusions were CONTRADICTED by the results in their own study.
You are correct in that under ideal situations I should have a better theory with better data. However, that is not necessary. Especially since the world leaders are trying to completely re-engineer the global economy (which is a bit of a misnomer since it was never engineered in the first place)!
In my own field there is serious debate as to the relative bioefficacy of 2 sources of the amino acid (needed for protein) Methionine. DL-methionine is a purified source of the active amino acid, whereas 2-hydroxy-4-methylthiobutanoic acid (HMTBA) is an analog that can be converted to Methionine in the body. Over 80 years of research resulted in 2 contradictory conclusions
A. they are equally good sources of methionine activity on a molar basis
B. DL-methionine is a superior source of methionine activity (only 60 to 80% as efficacious depending on the specie)
However, recent work has actually shown that we've been running studies based on a false assumption (That is valid in most comparisons of this sort), namely that HMTBA will perform as a titration of DL-methionine when using regression and dose response curves.
It turns out that the efficacy is not a constant, but depends upon how close the dietary methionine concentration is to the animals requirement. This new evidence (rerunning the statistical analysis on older studies with a model that does not include the titration assumption) also explains not only the previous data better, but it also explains the handful of isolated studies in which HMTBA showed superior efficacy to DL-methionine.
No one was fudging the data. It was all valid based on the statistical methods applied. It just turns out that the methods used were not the best available.
Now look at some of the adjustments used on environmental data sets, including the programmers notes indicating the arbitrary nature of the adjustments. Then you might be able to understand, if not necessarily agree with, my reservations with regards to their conclusions.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
c) New Zealand average temperature graphs - high-school style 'cooking the graph' to match expectations
Ignoring the obvious warming trend since the 1930s in your own graph, that's what it is.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
idiot. reducing CO2 != taxing.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Greenland was once a GREENland with vegetation very similar to what we still find on the East Coast of North America today. Ice core samples clearly proves this. In the times of the Vikings, the Northwest passage was ice free.
Okay, where to begin. Yes, Greenland was once green - on a few selected coastal areas in the south, just as it is today. And what exactly do these ice cores show? That there was no ice in Greenland a 800 years ago? And oh yeah, citation desperately needed.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
For nearly 20 years the climate astrologers have had their way, Mickey Mike Mann et al., extolling the evils of humanity and the need for "cleansing", i.e. racial cleansing to purify the species homo sapians to return it a more "purer" i.e. Arian "White" form.
In ordr to stop anthropogenic global warming, say the astroligers -- i.e. climate scientists, about 40 percent of the Earth's populas well be "cleansed", i.e. killed.
The negotiations to be held in Copenhagen will decide the body count per country (Obama is salivating at killing "Whitie" without impunity ... hay, he da boss in dis town) and put a price tag for global markets all under the watchfull UN Overseers on the plantations.
...That there was no ice in Greenland a 800 years ago?...
Yes, ice cores show that at the bottom of the ice sheet, 8000 feet down, there are pollen grains and microscopic plant remains very similar to the plants, specifically trees, that are found on the East Coast of North America.
The ice cores show thousands of layers, but it is erroneously assumed(believed) that each layer represents a season or year. In World War II some planes went down and were buried under ice and snow. Through radar images, the planes were found 40+ years later under about 250 feet of ice. The ice to the depth at which the planes were found showed layering for many hundreds of layers. This shows very clearly that the annual layering assumption in ice cores is false. The layering simply represents successive freezes, thaws and storms, recurring numerous times throughout the year.
I am sure that you know how to use Google just as well as I, but here is an entry you may look at:
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1992-05-26/news/9205260356_1_war-ii-buried-fighter
I will leave it to you as a simple arithmetic exercise, given 250 feet of ice in about 40 years, how deep an ice pack you might get from about the year 800 until now.
These so-called climate scientists were exposed as having an agenda and they manipulated data to give evidence of a foregone conclusions. The e-mails clearly showed that these people who call themselves scientists were not interested in truth in the least bit.
All theory is gray
As I keep repeating [slashdot.org], 2007 was the steepest drop [uiuc.edu] in ice cover on record. It scared a lot of us when the extent of the drop was shown at the 2007 AGU conference because the climate models weren't predicting such a huge drop. The subsequent increases actually confirm that this decrease was due to weather, not climate, which tends to validate the models.
No, 2007 was not the 'steepest drop' in arctic ice cover, it was the 'smallest minimum extent' recorded. The increase and decrease in arctic ice cover follows the seasonal cycle and the rate of the decrease and increase in the seasonal change is similar from year to year. It is the 'minimum' and 'maximum' extent of the ice cover during the year that are of interest as a monitor of climate warming or cooling. The increase in the 'minimum' extent in 2008 and 2009 indicate a cooling trend that cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases since the concentration of those has increased during that time period. If you want to claim that cooling somehow validates the models (which it obviously does not) you need to explain where a significant amount of planetary heat is being stored since the 'greenhouse gas' theory of planetary warming requires that the amount of heat being radiated from the earth must continuously decrease.
You're neglecting to consider pressure broadening, which forces any realistic climate model to treat each layer of the atmosphere differently. CO2 isn't saturated in the highest layer of the atmosphere, which is what really matters.
Pressure broadening? Atmospheric gas pressures are very low, varying from 1 atm at the earth's surface to near vacuum at the upper atmospheric limits. These low pressures have no significant effect on the carbon dioxide adsorption spectra. The simple fact is that there is more than sufficient carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at this very minute to absorb ALL of the IR radiation radiating from Earth that is in the wavelength where it can be absorbed by carbon dioxide... within the first few hundred meters of the atmosphere. Your reference to carbon dioxide saturation in the 'highest layer' of the atmosphere (whatever that is) suggests that you lack any understanding whatsoever of 'saturation' or phase equilibria.
Yet again, I need to repeat that water vapor is a feedback in the climate, not a forcing. We can't change the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere because it establishes equilibrium with the oceans in a matter of weeks. However, because we're increasing the temperature of the planet by increasing CO2 concentrations, water vapor will tend to provide positive feedback which will make the problem worse. Also, water vapor isn't well-mixed to the top of the atmosphere, so CO2 is the only greenhouse gas of consequence in that important outer layer.
Water vapor is an atmospheric gas that has a much stronger 'greenhouse' effect than carbon dioxide. Water concentration in the atmosphere varies VERY widely around the globe and over time, but is always many, many times greater than that of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide, in contrast, is at a relatively constant concentration around the globe. Water vapor is certainly NOT a 'feedback' in the climate but is the single biggest driver to the climate we experience on earth due to it's contribution to global energy transfer, it's unique ability to condense and form atmospheric optical barriers, it's unique ability to accumulate as a solid over thousands of years, and it's enormous global reservoirs in liquid form. Mixing has nothing to do with water concentration in the upper atmosphere. That is determined solely by pressure and temperature (which also vary widely around the globe). When I read your comments, I'm struck by how little you seem to understand about the basic physics of gases...which is, after all, what we're talking about.
a) the Yamal tree-ring data [telegraph.co.uk] - data from 10 trees is extrpolated into a 'trend' and finds its way into a number of papers
Well according to Steve McIntyre, "It is not my belief that Briffa crudely cherry picked. My guess is that the Russians selected a limited number of 200-400 year trees - that's what they say - a number that might well have been appropriate for their purpose and that Briffa inherited their selection".
If you want to have a reasoned opinion on climate change and the data it is best not to use James Delingpole as your source. Simply put, Steve McIntyre did not like 12 trees used for the 1990 temperature so used 34 other trees from nearby. Can you do that? Simply take the growth from one area and directly compare to another?
b) CRU emails - won't say much more, too much said about this already.
Agree :)
c) New Zealand average temperature graphs [telegraph.co.uk] - high-school style 'cooking the graph' to match expectations
Maybe or maybe not. I agree that the temperature corrections look rather dodgy. If the data did show that New Zealand was not warming while the rest of the globe is warming, would that invalidate AGW? There is a lot of data out there, most of it considered good science. A few blips here and there do seem to be taken too mean more than they should.
The most dangerous drug
Thanks for the lecture about seasons; it would've been informative if I were still in elementary school. If you'd clicked on the "steepest drop" link, you'd notice that the plot's title is "Sea ice area at summer minimum." A casual visual inspection will confirm the peer-reviewed conclusion that the summer minimum experienced its steepest drop from 2006-2007.
Well, first of all it's not that simple. Ice extent at the summer minimum is just one observable, others include duration of the melt season, and thickness of the ice.
More importantly, please recognize that climate models don't predict monotonic warming. This strawman you're attacking simply doesn't exist. Short-term variability is expected; long-term averages are what's important.
The models predicted drops in sea ice extent, but nothing like the drop observed in 2007. If the drop in 2007 had continued for (at least) several years, that would've been a genuine climatic signal rather than short-term variability due to weather. But since the models never predicted such an extreme drop, that would've indicated that the models were flawed.
Contrary to popular belief, climatologists aren't denying the fact that natural variations such as changes in the Sun's brightness affect the climate. Climatologists aren't saying that our emissions are completely responsible for everything that's happening to the climate. It's just that once we account for all known natural variations, an artificial signal remains which is best explained by accounting for greenhouse gas emissions.
For example, modern dynamical climate models can't account for the physics of El Nino and La Nina events. Usually, circulation in the Pacific ocean sends cold water to the surface which serves to cool the atmosphere by warming the ocean. El Nino pauses that upwelling of cold water, thus warming the atmosphere by reducing the rate at which heat from the atmosphere is dumped into the ocean. La Nina does the opposite; it intensifies the upwelling of cold water, which draws more heat than usual from the atmosphere. The large dip in atmospheric temperatures in 2008 occurred because of a significant La Nina. These short-lived events have no effect on the long-term climate because they merely swap heat between the oceans and atmosphere. But they do make it difficult to use either ocean or atmosphere temperatures alone to st
Thanks for the confirmation - you can argue with Climate skeptics the same way you argue with Young Earth Creationists: they will keep coming up with new "proofs" that they are right. Yes, Ladies and Gentelmen: Greenland is covered with 8000 feet of ice, and below it is the seed that God, errm, Erik the Red himself planted 800 years ago. And even the WW2 planes are used by Creationists: http://creationwiki.org/WWII_airplanes_are_now_beneath_thousands_of_%22annual%22_ice_layers.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
...below it is the seed that God, errm, Erik the Red himself planted 800 years ago....
It is patently obvious that you and many others are UNWILLING to admit the assumption of ANNUAL ice layers is wrong. You are also unwilling to do the simple arithmetic necessary to determine at least approximately how much ice might have accumulated since about the year 800.
When they do take ice cores from the bottom of Greenland ice, they find this:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/317/5834/111?hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&FIRSTINDEX=0&maxtoshow=&HITS=10&fulltext=(Willerslev+AND+greenland)&searchid=1&resourcetype=HWCIT
You are no better than the so-called climate scientists, who manipulated data, falsified data or ignored data that does not fit into their foregone conclusions.
Your reference to creationism is nothing but a red herring. Just because they use the buried airplanes to support their arguments, does not change the fact that these airplanes were buried under hundreds of layers of ice, about 250 feet thick. The facts clearly show that these so-called "layers" have nothing to do with years, but alternate cycles of freezing, thawing and more snow in successive storms.
All theory is gray
Listen, the fact that you keep confusing the ice core data from the center of Greenland with the ice near the coast despite being told several times can only mean one of two things: either you are an imbecile or you are ten times more dishonest than all of the things alleged in Climategate. And you even pretend that the article you link to says "800 years" instead of "within the past million years". Creationism at its best.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
It is indeed a tax when it is a mandatory program that forces private businesses or individuals to pay the government in order to be allowed to continue operations.
You can try to define your way out of uncomfortable truths all you like, but the fact is that any action taken by government in this arena will do nothing but cause more pain, suffering, poverty, and death in the world.
Humans have one method, and one method ONLY of efficiently allocating resources, and that is the free market. Any form of intervention that utilizes physical force or the threat of physical force will act to move resources to areas where they will not be used efficiently, such as housing speculation or so-called green energy, most of which has a larger impact on the environment than existing centralized energy production methods.
You might want to brush up on your grammar (not to mention re-examining your self destructive ideology) before calling other people idiots.
you remember that the western free market can only exist by enslaving the third world don't you? how's that for a physical threat ?
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
further more :
how 'bout the 1000's of deaths each year through pollution induced cancer ?
the housing speculation IS the free market.
'so-called' green energy HAS less impact on the environment, that's the ENTIRE point.
'a tax when it is a mandatory program that forces private businesses or individuals to pay the government in order to be allowed to continue operations.' WTF ???? the POLLUTER has to pay for it's damage to society. if they don't, we should abolish all law.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Clearly, you aren't an expert in policy/politics. Climate skeptics aren't trying to further scientific debate, they are trying to further their political agenda. Calling into doubt climate science -- legitimate criticism or not -- is an effective way to achieve their political objectives.
Telling them to STFU or GTFO is clearly going to work. LMAO. Perhaps you should STFU until you read a basic political science textbook.
Then why did the head of the CRU resign last night in disgrace? They were manipulating data (eg, lying) and keeping dissenting views from being expressed.
Repeat after me: there is no global warming, and there never was. The proof is in those emails and source code.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Deliberate attempts to delete email and data even those pending FOI requests
Yes, possibly. Not scientifically relevant.
Science is about the pursuit of knowledge and truth. If someone is hiding the source of their knowledge, even breaking laws to do so, how is that not relevant?
Maybe you're really just saying that truth itself isn't relevant to AGW. With that, I agree wholeheartedly.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Nothing in the CRU email and data indicates scientists who subscribe to an anthropogenic cause of climate change have not been systematically lying or engaging in unethical practices to support their work.
You are absolutely correct in this statement. There is no evidence in the emails that these scientists were not all lying.
Keep defending the indefensible. It's what liberals do best.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Have to give your credit. Nearly all the discussions on here by the anti-GW ppl are almost always ACs. It is nice to see somebody who is willing to stick up for what they believe.
Thanks. If you're not willing to stand by your principles and ideas, why have them in the first place?
With that said, do you have any proof that all these ppl are lying?
Did you not read the emails where they discussed discounting data merely because they didn't like the researchers? Or the source code where they manipulated the data? Those are both a form of deception, eg lies.
It's telling that the head of the CRU, Phil Jones, resigned/was fired last night for fraud. Will you still stand there and say he and his colleagues were not lying now that he's essentially admitted it?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Firstly, he hasn't, he's temporarily stepped aside for the investigation. Secondly, even if he had, have you really never heard of any examples of someone having to resign for political reasons rather than for a performance-related one? If so, you can't have been following politics for long. Empirical truth is not affected by political events.
Finally, even if he was guilty of everything you claim, it would not prove a lack of global warming. 1) If that was the *only* evidence of global warming, it would merely revert the status of knowledge to "we don't know". 2) it isn't the only evidence, other independent researchers have plenty of evidence of their own.
But again, there's about as much evidence for that research being faked as there is of a 9/11 conspiracy or faked moon landings. i.e. if you really want to see it, you'll find some way of justifying your view, no matter how tenuous.
That's stupid. If slaves are involved, then it isn't a free market by definition.
Further, I would say that you should PROVE that the western "free market" (read: we don't have a free market, and haven't had one for almost 100 years) depends substantially on any form of slave labor. Sure, a few places are run unethically, but the vast majority of foreign employees are working of their own will, and for wages that are negotiated by the labor force in general.
"1000's of deaths" Prove it. When you do, sue the companies responsible. This has been done before successfully, and would happen more often if we didn't live in a fascist society (Read: a society where government and corporate power have merged). Further, this has nothing to do with carbon emissions, which are not carcinogenic, so your point is invalid to start with.
"housing speculation" This is most assuredly NOT caused by the free market, but was a result of Greenspan's policy of artificially low interest rates. As stated before, we have not had a free market in this country for almost 100 years. When you have a quasi-governmental organization (again, fascist combination of government and corporation) setting interest rates, this type of thing is bound to happen, and will continue to do so again and again until the market is allowed to set rates. Artificially low interest rates sends a false economic signal, making people think that we have a lot more savings than we do. This is what leads to malinvestment.
"green energy" Green energy is for the most part only economical because of government subsidy. "Dirty" energy is used to create all those solar panels, wind turbines, etc, and is used to maintain them. For the most part, it is also required to fill out the base load of the grid. Spain has attempted to install the Cap and Trade that you crazies love so much, and it has lead them straight into a depression (20+% unemployment).
You don't understand the concept of a tax. You also don't understand that in order for damages to be claimed, damage must be proved with a "preponderance of evidence". That is how polluters pay for the damage they have caused. In general, this means they are forced to pay for the cleanup, pay for the damage they caused to their victims, pay punitive damages. It does not mean that they pay the government a bunch of money that will never be used to address the so called problem.
A question for you: individual people produce CO2 by simply living. Should they be forced to participate in cap and trade? What about other living beings? Do we pay trees for cleaning up the CO2? Where does it end?
Remember, we are talking about limiting the process which life itself depends upon. This is exactly what makes people rich or poor, and you want to use government guns to make them poorer. Remember, this will impact the poor more than the rich, as they have a higher carbon impact proportional to their income. What do you have against poor people?
Nature Magazine recently published an editorial "Stolen e-mails have revealed no scientific conspiracy". In fact no credible scientist has made a statement which disagrees with that editorial in any meaningful way. I don't need to defend anything concerning climate change science because there is nothing which challenges the science. So keep grasping at lies & and conspiracy theories. Because those and my typo are all an ignorant fool such as yourself has.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Hey, I completely forgot to ask: when Greenland was ice-free during the MWP - where did the fucking water go? There's now about 23 feet sea-level rise worth of ice on Greenland - IOW that's the amount sea levels should have been higher in the MWP than now. Just 4 feet, and London would be beach property.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
"1000's of deaths" ...snip...carbon emissions, which are not carcinogenic, so your point is invalid to start with.
indeed, it's not the CO2 that are cancinogenic. go suck on a car's exhaust if it's not that poisonous. or on a industrial chimney.
When you do, sue the companies responsible.
LOL!
artificially low interest rates
don't link the interest rates to the housing speculation. the housing market went bust because of DEREGULATION. (the free market needs regulation.)
quasi-governmental organization (again, fascist combination of government and corporation)
AH, here we are at the centre of YOUR misconceptions. what you call a quasi-governmental org. is in fact a result of weakened democracy, through corporations taking over the government. taking away the government WON'T help the little guy in his defense against the onslaught of the corporations.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
"green energy" Green energy is for the most part only economical because of government subsidy.
and nuclear energy isn't subsidised ? and oil isn't subsidised?(if you're only watching FOX, I'll have to tell all those wars (in Iran, Iraq(*3), Kuwait, Afghanistan ... in the last 5 decades) are/were for oil, do you have any idea how much those wars cost?)
and see here :
http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/energy-payback-ratios-for-electricity-generation/
for a hint about the real economic factors of the different energy-systems.
furthermore:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8792
base load ?
see here :
http://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/348/1/Baseload-power-bull.html
and here :
http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/myth-of-baseload.html
and here :
http://www.sustainabilitycentre.com.au/WindPowersStrength.pdf
and here :
from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_Power_Sources : for very large penetrations of the most intermittent source, wind energy, such sources when taken together become highly reliable
Spain
the economic crisis of Spain has nothing to do with windpower, but because of troubles in the tourism-sector(NW-europe goes on vacation in maroc, turkey in stead of Spain now), linked with over-investment in building new touristic facilities. (and a resulting crash of housing-prices.)
A question for you: individual people produce CO2 by simply living. Should they be forced to participate in cap and trade? What about other living beings? Do we pay trees for cleaning up the CO2? Where does it end?
Remember, we are talking about limiting the process which life itself depends upon. This is exactly what makes people rich or poor, and you want to use government guns to make them poorer. Remember, this will impact the poor more than the rich, as they have a higher carbon impact proportional to their income. What do you have against poor people?
sigh. cap-and-trade is a bad idea to start with, and that idea has been put forward by the industry, not by the 'greens'. a much better idea would be to invest in high-efficiency systems, superior insulation(triple pane, at least 1 foot insulation in roofs,passive housing), electric transportation/Zero-emission-Vehicles , replant the deserts, replant the forests, ... there are a LOT of good ideas out there, enough to give us a comfortable life with zero impact on the environment and future generations !
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
"farming industry pollution" brought 5,210,000 hits in Google.
Just a couple of weeks ago all the UK national media reported in how we may need to all go vegetarian if we are really serious about the environment.
So I think it is more you not reading about it, you lazy bum.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Maybe you can, but I will assume you are just a general bum on the street that has never played the instrument.
Now, could you tell me who is a good piano player? Murray Perahia? Eugeny Kissin? Angela Hewitt?
Could you?
Well, let me tell you something, I could.
But I spend 15 years of my life studying 4 hours a day learning music and to play the piano.
This applies to any other human endeavour.
If you would come to say to a piano player of the stature of the ones mentioned that they don't know what they are doing, most likely they will not engage with you at all, if some other accomplished piano player would criticize them, they will take notice, if an unknown person like me would, I would have to make very precise arguments but I am absolutely certain that I would grab their attention as somebody with a clue after a couple of minutes.
I am always surprised how Slashdot harbours so many people that reject expertise in such a facile manner.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So if you don't do it in 5 seconds or less I declare you officially a liar.
I hope you understand my allegory.
Rate of change matters, because we poor humans (and living things in general) can't react to global sudden changes very well.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I just need to look to the available data.
As long as people like you can't get this very simple fact through the obviously atypical thickness of your skull there is frankly little we can talk about.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
We are destroying forests pretty much everywhere. This means less CO2 is taken away from the atmosphere all around the world.
We are pumping fossil CO2 into the atmosphere like there is no tomorrow.
Even a lay person should grant that our industrial and social activities in the last 300 years have contributed (I would add massively) to an in crease in CO2 in the atmosphere.
Now, it is a well know fact that CO2 causes green house effect. Go on, find it, you may even find a video in Youtube to probe it. And we even have anecdotal proof of how a planet with lots of CO2 in the atmosphere looks. Google "Venus atmosphere" and have fun. Check the temperatures. Compare with Mars, or Earth for that matter.
This is only scratching the surface ot the most basic analysis. Add to this the mountains of evidence and frankly one can't understand how any reasonably person can continue with the idiotic opposition to the most basic findings about the current state of the climate in our planet.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The emails show top scientists conspiring to keep out alternative views; to fudge data to support their conclusions; and to delete data that doesn't support their conclusions after receiving FOIA requests for it. This is no conspiracy theory, this is very real, and very damaging. Only the people who completely bought into the AGW religion are ignoring it.
But that's OK, because over time even the hardcore AGW supporters will begin to realize the error of their ways. The damage to your cause is done; your ad hominem attack is only the death throes of a failed cult.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
My god you're stupid. Car exhaust and industrial smokestacks contain other things than CO2. People have been very successful in suing polluters (ever see the movie "Erin Brockovich"?). You have no idea what you are talking about on interest rates and deregulation (every economist in the world, even the stupid ones, agree with me on that).
You don't even realize that you agree with me about the government being in bed with corporations. Corporations taking over government is the DEFINITION of fascism. What you don't realize is that the government is acting as the enforcement arm of the corporations. Remove the enforcement arm, and they can only deal with people through voluntary exchange. If you can't see that, then you are too stupid for me to waste any more of my time on.
I am well aware that all forms of power production receive subsidies. I would be all for removing every single one of them, and allowing them to stand on their own merits. Government interventions here are like having someone attempting to lift some weight, where government comes along and jumps onto the shoulders of the man lifting the weight and tries to help him by pulling up. All he is doing is adding the weight of his bureaucracy to the burden of providing the service. The net impact on society is always negative, because governments don't operate for free.
I'm going to stop feeding the trolls now. Enjoy your eternal depression if the policies you advocate are kept in place.
god you're stupid. Car exhaust and industrial smokestacks contain other things than CO2.
errm ... ever heard of sarcasm ?
You don't even realize that you agree with me about the government being in bed with corporations.
I KNOW gov is under control of the corp. certainly in the US.
Corporations taking over government is the DEFINITION of fascism.
yes, and the removal of gov solves this HOW ??? that's just the removal of 1 protective layer for the consumers(who would became effectively slaves of their bosses) from the corporations. SEE : FEUDALISM (with corps as kings)
What you don't realize is that the government is acting as the enforcement arm of the corporations. Remove the enforcement arm, and they can only deal with people through voluntary exchange.
your argument is so full of holes, I can use it dry my lettuce with it. Voluntary exchange of products is only possible when a LOT of conditions are being met. (perfect information available to ALL actors. infinite availability of consumers and producers, ... look it up in a economics-book. the gov is a needed hand to rectify a lot of problems with those things). ... no universities, and no technology.
a society without protecting the consumer against the corps is ready for the drain.
I can see from your arguments that you don't want to pay taxes. well, I've got news for you : no taxes = NO roads, no education, no pensions, no protection, no military, no libraries, no justice system, no garbage system,
your single-party system should be abolished.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I'm coming late to this discussion, but I have to comment on this. It is simply not true that climate scientists in general don't want to reveal their models. In fact, many of them are publicly available, as is much of the actual data. Here have a look at this collection of climate model code and data.
Incidentally, you are also incorrect about climate science not being esoteric. You think global average temperature is a simple quantity to calculate? Yeah, the result is just a number, but a vast amount of data and calculation goes into getting that number. I think a lot of critics of climate science don't appreciate the degree to which climate scientists have bent over backward to try to make their results accessible to laypeople, although the details are actually quite complicated.
My site: Free Nature Pictures