Slashdot Mirror
Where the Global Warming Data Is
Several readers noted the latest fallout from the Climate Research Unit's Climategate: the admission by the University of East Anglia that the raw data behind important climate research was discarded in the 1980s, "a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue" according to the Times (UK) article. The Telegraph quotes Phil Jones, beleagured head of the CRU: "Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Centre in the United States, among others. Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves; there is no need for anyone to manipulate them." Some of the data behind these other results can likely be found in a new resource that jamie located up at the Real Climate site: a compilation of links to a wide variety of raw data about climate. From the former link: "In the aftermath of the CRU email hack, many people have come to believe that scientists are unfairly restricting access to the raw data relating to the global rise in temperature. ... We have set up a page of data links to sources of temperature and other climate data, codes to process it, model outputs, model codes, reconstructions, paleo-records, the codes involved in reconstructions etc."
Regardless if global warming is a problem, we should ALL strive to lessen our effect on the environment. Restricting emissions that may not heat up the planet, BUT have noticeable problems on health of humans and wildlife. I feel like I have to remind people that even if global warming is false we should always do what we can to conserve our resources and lessen pollution.
This is just another sissy-fit thrown by the denier groups that are willing to use any tactics to distract people from the real issue. If there was any substance to these email, they would've produced the evidence by now. A few sentences blown out of context from a few cherry picked emails are merely red-herring.
If climate scientists refuse to look at proprietary data on the grounds that they can't release it:
"They are cherry picking their data, the met data shows there is no cooling, it's all a fraud!!!"
If instead they decide to agree accept the offer to see it by signing a NDA:
"They don't release the data, they cover it up, it's all a conspiracy!!!!"
Seriously, you will get some scientists that are fine with using proprietary data and some who are not. What the so called skeptics are arguing is that because SOME scientists decided the benefits of using more data outweigh the cons of being unable to disclose it, that means the entire field of climate science is a fraud. Never mind that their findings agree with research done with open data, never mind that you could in principle go sign an NDA yourself if you mistrust the CRU so badly. No it must all be a conspiracy, including the research that were made with open data that achieved the same conclusions.
The more I hear from climate "skeptics" the more the arguments feel similar to those of the evolution skeptics.
Science was the first instance of open source. If someone else can't freely check your data and replicate your experiments you've got nothing. The raw data and source code for the climate models should have been available from day one. The fact that they weren't and that large quantities of data were "lost" throws the conclusions into serious question.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Each American produces over 4 times the CO2 emissions of each Chinese person. (Directly comparing Nations of vastly different populations is absurd; by that standard Jamaica could argue our total emissions should equal theirs).
"it's time we took the money away from the scientists who have been telling us this for years and gave it to the engineers to get us out of this mess."
So, you're saying, "Cut off funding for anyone who questions the official position that this is an urgent global crisis that demands massive government intervention"?
Revive the Constitution.
If the _results_ from the lab in question match up with other independent results, what possible grounds to laymen have to presume the data was deliberately changed? Unless they assume that all independent labs falsified their data in concert, which would be a hell of a conspiracy.
What really bothers me about the complaints around the emails is that none of them (as I understand it) come close to proving that findings were deliberately falsified to point to one conclusion over another. All of the emails were either innocuous or, at worst, ambiguous.
And what have some skeptics done with ambiguous data? They have manipulated it to fit their pre-existing theories. Which is very close to the sort of bad behavior they are charging the lab with now.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
We have this quote from TFA:
By deleting the raw data, no one can ever reproduce or review the process by which raw data became tested theory.
This is not the act of a scientist; in fact, this would make you fail in the Elementary School Science Fair of your choice. The sad truth seems to be that, while Science concerns itself with discovering truth, these scientists have concerned themselves only with discovering funding and prestige.
Climate change theory must now reside with such things as Cold Fusion and Duke Nukem Forever.
Which was more or less addressed because we stopped pumping ozone-destroying chemicals into the atmosphere. Anti-AGCC people always being up "well, the ozone layer didn't turn out to be a problem" line, forgetting that the reason it's not a problem is that we legislated CFCs and such out of existence. Acid rain similar: it's less of an issue because we did something to fix it. AGCC is, unfortunately, much harder to quick-fix
The reason this stuff gets whipped up isn't the "Bilderberger manipulators" but a media that's addicted to thirty-second soundbites. Respectable scientists aren't the ones running feature pieces about how the Maldives will disappear or we could be looking at another prarie dustbowl: that's the media's need to parley anything and everything into a alarmist pablum* deal because reprinting the IPCC studies directly does not sell advertising space for used car dealers and mattress stores. At best, we get grade-six science textbook diagrams and selective quoting, and even that's pushing what the media thinks people can digest before the sports scores.
And this, of course, leads to simplistic retorts like "It's the sun!" or "Climate is cyclical!" because the sum of the data isn't commonly presented. Do you think that all the hundreds of people who hold Ph.D's on this stuff wouldn't notice the big, hot ball in the sky, or haven't done core extractions? Do you really think that they've overlooked things that obvious and just handed right-wing soapboxers such an easy mark? Really?
* Yes, this includes, notably, Al Gore. On one hand, he's done a good job getting the memo out. On the other, he's a lightning rod because people a) they hate anything Rush Limbaugh tells them to and b) he's simplified the science to the point where people who don't know better can poke holes in it and think they're right.
--srj/mmv
The parent posting isn't a troll. He is saying it like it is. This "incident" involves four scientists. Just four. And I'm trying to figure out the scientific arguments being put forward by the contrarians. Are they saying that data has been suppressed that shows the world hasn't being warming significantly since the 1970's?!! Really? Thirty five years ago, I used to skate on local lakes...they used to freeze regularly. Those lakes haven't frozen solid for since 1977. Glacial retreat has accelerated since the 1970's...this is undeniable. And this isn't part of the retreat since the last ice age. To assert that the recent glacial melting is somehow part of a linear decline that began 10000 years ago is an absurd claim that can easily be refuted by looking at measures of sea level over the past 10000 years.
The assertions of the contrarians about these emails are irrelevant to the scientific discussion about climate change. They do not address in any real or logical way the arguments of climate change scientists. They are thus, a clear example of the use of the "Red Herring Falacy".
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I think they're exaggerating the lost of one particular set of data, from one set of researchers, in one university, compared with thousands of different climate research around the world. So this case of data mismanagement at one university, isn't going to make much difference to the case for global warming being caused by humanities energy usage.
How many "lostes" will it take, then?
The real issue that the "climategate" leaks expose is that many of the "scientists" involved are more concerned with promoting their ideology than with finding the facts. It doesn't matter which side of the policy debate you happen to be on - justifying the means because of your support of the ends should never be okay.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Every industrialized nation is to blame here.
Yeah and the dirt farmers that burn thousands of acres of forest are completely blameless. People are to blame here. Interestingly enough, there is a solution to the people problem...
The solution, of course, is to set up a global despotic government, just as proposed in the Copenhagen protocol. History has shown that tyrannical leaders can kill 10-15% of their populations, and often suffer no repercussions at all. With the NWO proposed by the Copenhagen treaty the new tyrants could do away with a billion or more people, and solve this problem.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
You forgot one: Global warming occurs regardless of man.
What then?
Money is the root of all evil?
Because he's simplifying to the point of being wrong. So are you.
It's called climate change because "global warming" has been so soiled by deliberate misunderstanding that it's problematic to use. "Skeptics" have managed to insert a wedge of "creative" misinterpretation into our popular conscious: they'll note a cooling trend in a specific locale, or a specific time period, and gleefully use that cherry-picked factoid to shoot down the whole theory. It'll get some consideration, too, because the idea that the whole planet can go up in temperature on overage, but Podunk can get two snowy winters, is hard for may laypeople to understand. Skeptics know this, and prey on it.
And a carbon tax isn't "a tax on the basic building blocks of life", it's a tax on emissions of previously-unlocked carbon. This is why things like biofuels aren't being subject to a carbon tax, nor are the production of goods that use non-carbon sources of energy, yet produce something that contains carbon (like, oh, food). It's also why you get credits for locking carbon back up. Of course, people like you and the grandparent devise well, lets not mince words, outright lies about how this stuff works in hopes that people will accept because your lies smell vaguely like truth.
I'm reminded of any number of meetings I've been in where some dickhead vice-president who knows nothing about technology will, for political or budgetary reasons, give his or her creative, oversimplified misundertanding that sounds reasonable enough to other dickheaded VPs and managers, yet is outright wrong. What you're saying it like that.
--srj/mmv
No one disagrees that the earth's climate varies a great deal over any long period of time you care to look at. The question is, if the world is warming at the moment (and over a scale of tens of years, it is), then is this due to man-made causes, and is it happening far faster then it could due purely to natural causes? Furthermore, if the temperature is pushed up, will the effects become decidedly non-linear, in that the processes that regulate climate will themselves change and some (quite different ) equilibrium become the norm? The modeling and experimentation suggests that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere will have a warming effect, though how CO2 interacts with the various climate regulatory and feedback processes is extremely complicated and there's a great deal of work to do. The further question of altering the equilibrium state of the climate (which could be utterly disastrous for civilization, and a great many current species of life on this planet) is even trickier to answer, but there's plenty of good evidence to suggest this could happen (including in the geological record, so we know it is possible).
I am not a climate scientist, but I do know that in my own field it takes about 10 to 15 years to get really useful at anything. Therefore I am loath to make some quick contrary claim to someone who has spent many years thinking about something. Nearly everyone I have encountered who dismisses AGW is either pretty ignorant about doing science (that's fine, I am sure they are good at other things - it's unrealistic to believe scientific literacy could be universal), or are just plainly unable to contemplate or accept the changes required in the organisation of human affairs (even though these changes would also happen in the absence of global warming), or are just full of anti-environmental politics for various delusional reasons of their won.
Interstitial spaces are filled with cream.
In other words, it's bad PR. It's kind of you to admit this so readily -- it saves us time. The moment you are concerned with PR your agenda is no longer a purely scientific one. That is what left you vulnerable to "skeptics".
And rather than educate those laypeople with a more correct message, you'd rather adopt a different name. If that alone doesn't summarize what's wrong with this whole movement, and why many are suspicious of it, I'd be hard pressed to name what does.
Naturally the federal government will get to define "previously-unlocked." I am sure it will be a sensible definition that is logical, true to the science, and fair in every way, one that won't favor any particular interest groups or large financial interests. Because everything else government regulates has turned out this way, right?
Because government has never started with a small, agreeable maneuver that sounded good and was difficult or impossible to politically oppose, and then added more restrictions and complications, incrementally over periods of time. I mean, it's not like they have a track record of doing this, right?
When government sees a new excuse for the levy of a tax or the exercise of power, it is not concerned with whether that excuse accurately reflects the actual science. The excuse need not even have a basis in reality, it only needs to be something that average people will believe. "Any excuse will serve a tyrant."
In those meetings, you spoke up and (politely) corrected those VPs and managers, explaining why their reasoning was oversimplified or wrong, and showed those VPs and managers how their wrong reasoning might be corrected. You did that because as a scientist your primary concern is accurate data and sound reasoning, you recognize that good policies and good decisions are based on these, and all other concerns are subordinate to those two primary concerns. Right?
And each American produces almost 8 times the GNP of their Chinese counterpart. So by that standard, each Chinese produces about TWICE the CO2 per unit of economic output as his American counterpart. China needs to clean up its act.
> The problem is that in this field there aren't thousands of other researchers.
Yes, there are in fact.
"People from over 130 countries contributed to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report over the previous 6 years. These people included more than 2500 scientific expert reviewers, more than 800 contributing authors, and more than 450 lead authors."
No matter how you argue the numbers, there are way too many for a conspiracy.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
And predictions from models are not facts either.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
They can't attack the science, so they attack the scientists.
This statement is utterly false.
Read climate audit. Read about the divergence problem. Read about unreproducible graphs. Read about bizarre weightings. Read about manipulated data from now "lost" raw data. Read about white noise input yielding "increasing temperatures" as output.
There is much to attack in this "science".
Azural - instrumentals
Those climate 'scientists', to be responsible, should be telling us not to take a single step until they can generate the scientific models to assure us that if, for example, we invested $100T over 50 years we would lower the temperature even a tenth of a degree.
You're just wrong here, Steve, on two levels.
One is that you're forgetting that "not to decide is to decide." Everyone knows the predictive models are inexact. Even over the past ten years or so, we've seen the best scientific predictions proved wrong -- global warming is getting much worse, much faster, than the consensus belief in 1999.
Waiting for an arbitrary standard of scientific certainty before changing any behavior is an option the world has, one option among many: the "continue as before" option. What we do know is that that leads to disaster. We may not be able to say exactly when which exact magnitude of disaster will arrive, but it is known to be a catastrophe of global proportions.
And we may not be able to know the ideal time to begin acting for optimum return on our economic sacrifice, but it's pretty clearly in the past: beginning global greenhouse-gas reduction efforts ten years ago would have been better than, say, now.
The other level you're wrong at is that it's scientists' job to give us information about our options. Refusing to tell us that the status quo leads to catastrophe until predictive abilities reach an arbitrary threshold of certainty would be a breach of scientific responsibility. And pretty amoral too, it'd take a Guild of Evil Scientist level of inhumanity to know about impending world destruction and swear a pact not to say anything.
Suppose the approaching danger were instead an archipelago of asteroids whose orbit will approximately intersect the earth in a hundred years. The scientists don't know whether the really big rocks will hit the earth but some of the medium-size ones probably will. They don't have any plans for deflecting them or taking earthbound steps to handle the catastrophe. But shouldn't they tell us what they know? And, as fellow human beings, wouldn't they recommend that the world take the best known course of action at the best possible time?
He is also saying there is zero eveidence in the scientific litrature to dispute the OBSERVATION that pumping half a trillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere over the last 150yrs has already fucked up the climate.
That's a conclusion*, not an observation. In the context of scientific research, observations are measurements; while there is a general usage of the word meaning "remark", it's unhelpful to use it in this context.
* Or an assertion without evidence, but I'm giving benefit of the doubt.
because when you are trying to tell the world some important information, use of language is important. It's called nuance
... even as "developing" economies that are actually far more massive are being given a pass while they carry on as if nobody on the planet has learned anything since 1960.
It can also be called "oily hucksterism" or "lying" or "spinning" etc.
We're talking about a movement that wants to re-arrange trillions of dollars of productivity by reallocating its output. We're talking about a movement that's prepared to wildly punish western economies that are doing more than any culture in human history to re-invent how they use energy, recycle materials, transport people and goods
Yes, it takes some real PR to make a kid matriculate from elementary school thoroughly in the grips of this new brand of Original Sin, and seeking salvation for it by cutting giant new polluting economies a whole lot of perpetual slack. Guys like Al Gore have cleverly positioned themselves to make billions off of that well-packaged guilt and fear trip, and it's well-nuanced PR that got him there.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Quite the contrary. People are entitled to their own opinion AND entitled to challenge what others claim as facts including but not limited to the quality and veracity of the raw data.