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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
"...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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Seriously. They're called experts for a reason.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
No, the burden of proof is on the person making claims.
"who just approach things like recycling and increased efficiency as a no-brainer."
excepot recycling isn't a no brainier and efficiency always has a cost. Neither topic is a no brainer.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
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.
Meh, less cost isn't always better. The main environmentalist claim is "look at the externalized costs".
Yeah, it would be interesting to convince Japan to try spend the energy trying to reign in the pile of waste swirling around in the Pacific, and feed it to their plasma incinerators or something.
Yeah, I saw the Penn & Teller BS episode on recycling too. And I'd still rather expend the extra energy to recycle, the same as I'd rather spend the extra energy to clean my house once in a while. I think people and civilizations can be evaluated by the quality of their waste byproducts.
Anyway, as far as the climate change argument goes, I'd say the burden of proof for "hey, we ought to get something in the legislature to provide incentives for better efficiency" is a lot different from "hey, my industrial and consumer waste makes negligible impact on the environment". We've just been running under the assumption of the latter for a long, long time.
That said, legislature and policy is seldom driven by proof, but mostly panic and maybe a brief window of retrospect. So I can understand why the science community is so confused.
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.
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.
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.
Well I don't think anyone is suggesting that we set it up on github so every clown coding in his mothers basement can can start contributing. I don't know that the important thing here is a true "free software(tm)" or "opensource(tm)" license. The important thing is that before we start looking at this research and assuming it is all correct because a few other scientists did a peer review and then making sweeping and expensive policy changes at the highest levels we should open up what they did so that people can look for problems in their methodology.
Now I don't think that anyone will care what I think of their code but I'm guessing that there is more than one person out there with a Ph.D in climate change that could look at this stuff, if it was public, and either confirm that the work is valid or point out it's flaws. At least there could be a debate about it among scientists. It is understandable that they are worried that powerful lobbies will try to distort their work and lie about it. But there is no other option. This is science that is affecting public policy and it can not be done in the dark.
On the other hand given how poorly some of this stuff appears to be coded it seems that they could use all the coding help that they could get: http://di2.nu/200911/23a.htm. Hopefully these assessments of how sloppy their work is are not accurate, and that most of the work that has gone into the IPCC reports is less error prone than the stuff that has been leaked.
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
Trying to review data and analysis is a dirty trick???
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.
"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.
"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
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.
1. They did no such thing. This stems from a personal out of context note.
2. There were concerns about a journal starting to have an agenda and they should consider not publishing in it. ONE journal. Hardly preventing peer review.
3. One comment about one set of data we know very little about. again and out of context accusation. For all we know that data may have been bad.
4. this is a case of a smear compaign. EVERYTHING is based on out of context notes and innuendo
Quite frankly I am getting really sick and tired of ignorant people getting time spouting off crap they know nothing about.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
1. What is the decline being hidden? What is the trick? I ask because I know, let's see if you do.
2. Peer review hasn't been redefined. Perhaps you never knew what it was in the first place. Peer review is not equivalent to supplying open, raw data nor supplying random "skeptics" with data they want. Look up Lenski's dealing with Schlafly for an example of how silly this is.
3&4: Haven't heard of the FOIA request stuff, but given the track record so far I don't doubt that when looking into it, the picture is different than you imply. The first two may not count as a smear campaign, but they do imply outright falsehoods, so who cares? Lazy, ignorant, knee-jerk responses to out-of-context quotes used against climate scientists and global warming proponents only undermine your "skepticism".
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
So, in what way is Anthropomorphic Climate Change testable Not to pick nits(a lie), but I believe the word you were looking for was anthropogenic.
I assumed he was talking about the theory that it's getting hotter because the climate's all mad at us for being such assholes with the air pollution. I'll grant that it's a more or less untestable theory unless someone knows the climate's address so we can send flowers or chocolates or something.
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~
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.
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.
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?
>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 ----
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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
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?
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).
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!
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
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.