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Scientific Journal Nature Finds Nothing Notable In CRU Leak
eldavojohn writes with an update to the CRU email leak story we've been following for the past two weeks. The peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature has published an article saying the emails do not demonstrate any sort of "scientific conspiracy," and that the journal doesn't intend to investigate earlier papers from CRU researchers without "substantive reasons for concern." The article notes, "Whatever the e-mail authors may have said to one another in (supposed) privacy, however, what matters is how they acted. And the fact is that, in the end, neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers." Reader lacaprup points out related news that a global warming skeptic plans to sue NASA under the Freedom of Information Act for failing to deliver climate data and correspondence of their own, which he thinks will be "highly damaging." Meanwhile, a United Nations panel will be conducting its own investigation of the CRU emails.
The real smoking gun isn't the emails - it's the source code.
They keep talking about those emails in the hopes that no one will call them out on the "VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline"s applied liberally to the raw data.
Really take a look at the graphs in the link above. Plot that array yourself if you don't believe it. No amount of handwaving will explain away blatant lying.
Same with newscientist
I imagine all scientific journals will be quite clear on this point. A few suspect emails do not destroy millions of man hours of research.
There are items of interest--even if determined irrelevant in the end--to discuss.
This is as if immediately after the Kennedy assassination the government was saying "there is nothing to see, move along, move along"
Here's the UN investigation outcome, "those emails mean nothing".
Just wait for it.
Is that a journal where the hockey team review each others papers anonymously? No surprise that they won't investigate anything.
I think open source is the answer here. Open source the data, methodologies, any programs used. Anybody else should be able to reproduce the results by themselves. All that research is paid for by the public dime anyway and it's used to set public policy so it shouldn't be kept secret. Oh, and no anonymous peer "reviewing" would be really nice.
"A few suspect emails do not destroy millions of man hours of research."
Never mind the quality, feel the weight.
This video explains quite clearly how these leaks and the reactions on it should be placed in their correct context:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nnVQ2fROOg
Dependency hell? =>
And the apparent lack of transparency regarding the code, I submit that the researchers under fire be asked to use the code in question to reproduce their results under observation, explaining how they did it.
Why are so many posts with factual errors modded up?
Denialists.
That's right, anyone who "denies" global warming is human caused is denying the truth.
Some "climate-change-denialist fringe" (also their words in the link) who deny the "scientific case" of human-caused (their words, and honest ones. It does not rise to the level of a theory)
No, they could not be credible scientists that look at the data and see other hypothesis. Nor could they be credible in questioning the base data. The "debate is over".
Sorry Nature, epic fail.
Starting your argument with a personal attack is not good form. You expose your own bias to believe the human-caused global warming hypothesis by doing the very thing the scientists in the emails do: attack and discredit those who disagree with you.
Every scientific theory, and even "laws" like gravity, must stand up to rigorous scientific questioning... or they are merely pseudo-religious beliefs. You might as well declare Al Gore the Global Warming Pope and set up a church in Copenhagen.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
What do you see in these mails? Remember these scientists think they are talking in private and never anticipated being found out. Are there mentions or references to dark projects? Some references to their agents and their handlers? Strong ideological opinions to destroy Capitalism and install a world Government?
What happened is very simple. These scientists are used to one kind of debate and one kind of rules. Where "the conclusions reached by Kogen, et al [8] is not supported by the evidence presented by them [9],[10],[11]" would be considered a grave insult and might cause loss of reputation. In the question and answer session in a seminar someone saying, "But, Dr Kaplansky, with a sample size of 27, the correlation coefficient you have arrived at is less than experimental error" wouild result in a collective gasp and "ole!" from the assembled people, usually about 20 people who could actually understand the paper being presented.
These scientists are encountering the rough and tumble world of popular journalism, spin meistering. They are clueless about how to handle it. They feel they are being gravely insulted and highly manipulated. They think they are being quote mined, quoted out of context. The journalists are giving totally irrelevant and completely debunked theorists equal time for balance. So they go about in their clueless ways to counter it. They over react, they try to be more guarded, they are trying to write sentences that could not be quote mined.
Now that people have glimpse of the actual communications between the scientists, compare that to say, the hacked emails of Sarah Palin, See where you find more smoking guns.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
however, what matters is how they acted.
They weren't just saying things in those emails, they were acting on it. Scientific Journal is acting like all those emails were part of a fairytale and none of it ever happened.
In the one email, the author is quoted saying that he "adjusted the numbers." Last time I checked "adjusted" is past tense meaning that he did something. That's not the same as "I can adjust the numbers if you want me to."
If AGW was actually happening, there would be no need to "adjust" numbers and likewise no need to cover up the leaked emails.
... will be bamboozled. There is nothing new in that. It lies behind all political folly.
The data that was adjusted was paleoclimate data, and what it was being adjusted to was temperature data (i.e., the more reliable modern temperature data). As far as I can tell, they neither could nor did adjust the measured temperature data.
The OP did not quote the really important part of the Nature piece :
Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.
The evidence for this is literally all around us. Throw all of the CRU data out if you want. It won't change a thing.
Now the nay-sayers can get a word in edgeways, now they are not being edged out by "non-conspiracists" who "aren't faking data" we can read a bit more:
This document from some German scientists attempts to shed new light on where some of the 'global warming' scientific conclusions may not be substantiated.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
If it's too much for you, start at page 92 and don't whine until you've read at least 92-94
blog.sam.liddicott.com
It is not the millions of dollars in research grants that you need to worry about. It is the hundreds of billions of dollars in industries that stand to be affected if this research is true that you need to be concerned about. Follow the money.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
You realize that them throwing the data away was done for the same reasons the BBC tossed out all those videos and films of old shows -- to save space. "
There's a bit of a difference between throwing out old episodes of Dad's Army and throwing away data that's supposedly helping to prove that man is causing global warming.
The "VERY ARTIFICIAL correction" you describe is never actually used. It's commented out. You can plot that array, but I'm not sure what you think you're demonstrating.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
You can follow the original link to realclimate.org to find many other links to data sources. I have posted the data sources above only because many critics of AGW won't even bother with realclimate.org as they are thought to be part of the conspiracy. The data exists and is public as is the source code.
1) they're guilty of not properly responding to a FOIA request
2) they've said nasty things about certain colleagues work (but still cited it)
3) they've discarded some data for reasons they should have better explained (reasons that were valid -- it wasn't properly calibrated)
Bad for them personally, but utterly irrelevant to the scientific issue, unless you think it's some kind of surprise that scientists are human and sometimes make mistakes. As the Nature article says, it's laughable. Where's the global conspiracy? Where's the outright fraud of substantial masses of crucial data? Nowhere.
It's worth investigating for the possibility of misconduct, but, sheesh, the actual scientific impact is so overblown it's ridiculous. This is why you have many, many other scientists working on the same issues and completely independent ones: so that even if one of them makes an honest or a dishonest mistake, or one method yields incorrect results, the other people and techniques are likely to find the flaw and correct it.
The only "trick" here is the propaganda trick climate-change denialists are using to divert attention from the actual data and results of the last few decades.
Smoking gun? It's like they've (illegally) broken into the house owned by someone they've publicly accused of murder for a decade and found a plastic gun replica that shoots Nerf balls. Aha!! Gotcha!
No amount of handwaiving will explain this away for sure, but how about hundreds of data sets all telling a different story? You are willing to believe that because one data set of tree rings declines and this is 'covered up'thousands of scientist all across the world have faked hundreds of other data sets to publish thousands of peer reviewed articles all telling the same story.Really? How is that different from your average 9/11 troofer, nirther, etc? Advised viewing on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nnVQ2fROOg
Dyslexics are teople poo
Next, the professional climate deniers will be accusing climate researchers of pedophilia. It is the conservative smear tactic of last resort. And since their smear campaigns are always completely bull, they are inevitably forced into using their last resort.
"A few suspect emails do not destroy millions of man hours of research."
Never mind the quality, feel the weight.
So are you disputing the quality of the work of scientists who were not related in any way to CRU? And where's your evidence or arguments?
My UID is prime. Hah!
If you study the leaked data in question, there's no doubt as to realclimate's role in this. Thus, your use of the word "thought" is in error.
(Your links are fine though, I just wanted to clarify the comment about realclimate)
it's in my head
I don't care what you say or what happens to my children or anyone else's children. I'm keeping my SUV.
Fixed it for you.
My UID is prime. Hah!
If it's such god-damnned good science, why then are people saying "we must not have any more debate. Debate is closed. It's time to move on."
There are dozens of independant sources of data, and independant researchers. I would be far, far more suspect if it all matched up perfectly. It doesn't, and that's good. It promotes discussion within the scientific community.
The "skeptics" in this case just don't know what they're talking about, and are guilty of fraud in and of themselves for claiming that a single case can be extrapolated to the entire body of research at large.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
There's a bit of a difference between throwing out old episodes of Dad's Army and throwing away data that's supposedly helping to prove that man is causing global warming.
Except when the data was thrown out, nobody knew that is what it would one day need to prove. Anyway, as other people have said here, there are many other sources of data around that you can use. If you don't trust this lot of data, or even these scientists, then just ignore them and move to all of the other scientists in the world.
Any work that is based on data no longer available should not be considered valid.
If applied generally, that would require throwing out huge amounts of established science, not just in the area of climate research. How about doing it the traditional way of independently reproducing the result (or a similar one), with different data, different code, different researchers? In fact, if this hasn't been done already I'd be surprised.
Oh look! There's an open source clone. I'm afraid your prayers will go on unanswered.
There are many poor nations - many of them island nations - that are pressing the World governments for compensation for damage caused by global climate change. Many folks (AM Radio guys take this route especially) consider this to be just a back handed wealth transfer program - hence the much of the hostility towards global warming.
There are many billions of dollars potentially at stake based on what the outcome of the global warming studies.
As always, this isn't about lives or quality of life - it's about money.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
The Humanity in general and the Western civilization in particular were on trial. We are accused of "destroying Gaia" and facing the punishment of huge fines and severe drop in the quality of life (such as living with worms composting our garbage).
So, guess what? When, suddenly, thanks to a whistle-blower (whom the prominent Illiberals in Congress want prosecuted, BTW), we learn of the massive prosecutorial misconduct (some of it, such as deleting files after receiving Freedom of Information requests, outright criminal), that affects a substantial amount of evidence against us, we move for the "court" to dismiss the entire case.
Those "millions of man hours" are now tainted.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Coal industry stands to lose billions of dollars. Global warming researcher's wages will be relatively unaffected.
The "hockey team" is a name that scientists in favor of radical AGW theories have taken on, named after Michael Mann's (falsified) "hockey stick" temperature reconstruction.
Generally speaking, I think Nature is whistling past the graveyard. Legitimate climate science has either been set back or brought forward a decade, depending on your perspective.
You might as well declare Al Gore the Global Warming Pope and set up a church in Copenhagen.
He's Baptist - no can do.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
As an ex-UK academic, this is conclusive evidence of collusion and corruption in the AGW camp, as well as the complete corruption of, at least, the UK peer review process. Especially as it has to do with politicized decisions.
... stolen" " ... difficult" instantly gives the game away, and shows that the xSRC(s) in the UK need to be immediately abolished so that some honest scientists and social scientists can take back their game from endlessly corrupt politicians.
The whole tone of the editorial "
The likely release was by whistle-blower, not hacking and, in any case, is publicly funded research and this reaction from Nature, New Scientist and the BBC is disgusting. These used to be respected journals and are now as corrupted as ISO.
The US has rightly pointed at corruption at the UN, but this brings subverting world institutions for gain to a new level.
They are however right about one thing, no matter how they spin, this game is over, since both in the EU and US, remember Mann is at Penn State, the raw data will now be subpoenaed, and the CON is OVER!, whether the subpoena issues from the Hill or a US FOI request.
These crooks need to go to jail like the Ponzi artists.
Yeah, that's why this controversy doesn't exist because there in fact were NOT scientists refuting the existing science and there was no group of scientists trying to silence them, nor were there any emails speaking of how these scientists would do so.
Seriously, did you miss that part in this whole scandal?
If it is done independently, then we don't need to rely on the old work. Anything done from scratch would be valid, assuming it could be replicated. And I think if there is still contention over an area of science, we should apply the principle generally.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
My heart bleeds regularly, and I haven't trusted the veracity of the scientific community in forever. In fact, the two conditions are a direct result of one another.
My rule of thumb is this. . .
"If evil can gain from lying, then you can rest assured that the popular media view is faulty."
Also. . .
"There is an inverse ratio between the monetary value of a lie and the veracity of its claim."
-FL
Just because you want something to be true and you can come up with a rationalized answer for why it is true, doesn't mean it is true.
More expensive energy and more expensive products are by definition more expensive. I understand that everything needs to be ramped up. As we develop our understanding and the infrastructure, the costs will come down. But you don't know for a fact it will work. That's why capitalism is great. Risk your own money, not mine. Risk your own financial future, not mine.
Even if someone is right about global warming, that doesn't mean their solution will fix the problem.
Slashdotters are liberals and don't read right wing sites like I do.
Are you reading a different Slashdot to me? Not only is there a large and very vocal right-wing (typically Libertarian) element, it tends to be that element which comprises most of the climate "sceptics". I'm not surprised, as there's inevitably less evidence and history for such philosophies than for conventional political stances, so if your political views tend towards the extremes (in either direction) then you have to put more weight on ideology and less on accumulated evidence. And the implications of climate climage are that at least some form of collective decision making will be required to deal with it, which is of course anathema to those of that philosophy.
This is the traditional way that science is done of course. Someone publishes a radical idea or discovery, and others try and reproduce or show flaws in it. This has never required the keeping of raw data (though it may be good practice) or publication of analysis code. The whole point is that it *doesn't* depend on any individual aspects, or something specific to a particular scientist. This is why I feel that all the demands for source code and raw data are barking up the wrong tree - science already has a better way of verifying results.
It's a pretty major problem - decades of declining education standards have produced a generation that consider naturopaths to have equally valid qualifications as surgeons or climate scientists to be less trustworthy than cocaine ravaged shock jocks. F* the idea that it's all about preaching and take a look around you guys. Nobody freezes their arse off in Antarctica to fake data when they could just as easily fake it at home.
Climate is just the new soft target of anti-intellectuals since they can't get any furthur making fun of evolution.
The review must not have been that thorough.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Nice projection. You, Chemisor, will not believe any temperature data any more. The rest of the world will make up its own mind. Belief has no place in science anyway. That belongs to religion.
People like you have an influence through the political process, but you have no influence in the realm of scientific research. You can pick and choose what to believe. We scientists will continue to do research and publish our results using established scientific guidelines accepted by scientists all around the world, and our results will be made public. You, Chemisor, have the option of ignoring these results, cherrypicking the bits which fit your worldview, or trying to take a step back and analyzing the data like a scientist and drawing a rational conclusion. We cannot do this for you. Good luck.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
When you have gigabytes of private correspondence to sift through of course you can cherry pick / quote mine something to make it look like a conspiracy. That is all some anti-global warmer bloggers have done. They have engaged in the same sort of quotemining that creationists like to go in for which says a lot about the strength of their arguments.
Nobody thinks that the climate was ever in a steady state, least of all climate scientists. What it has done for the last several million years is oscillate between interglacials (more-or-less like now, perhaps a tiny bit warmer) and glaciated periods ( ice ages: a whole lot colder than now -- by about 5 deg C). The temperature difference between an ice age and an interglacial is big, so it is easy to infer it from the geological record. The CO2 levels over that time have tended to be lower in the glacials and higher in the interglacials. None of this is made up: there are good records in ice cores.
Also rather well understood are the smaller temperature changes over the last 150 years. Only about 1 degree, but we had thermometers for that period.
Much harder to get at are the small changes over the last 1000 - 2000 years --- things like the "medieval warm period" Trying to infer these small changes from the geological/tree-ring record is really hard.
So, the executive answer to your question is that the climate changes by both large and small amounts on both large and small timescales. But the smaller the change and the longer ago it happened, the harder it gets to say anything accurate about it.
There's no putting it back. "Peer-reviewed" means nothing when you can't trust the peers. We need FULL investigations by anybody and everybody. We need lawsuits out the ass. Enough bullshit. Let's start over and quit rushing into the unknown.
:p
This is not science. It's ideology, politics, and MONEY.
Disagree? Sue me.
Not only is there a large and very vocal right-wing (typically Libertarian)
This amuses me. I'm a Libertarian because the Republicans were becoming too socially conservative and fiscally liberal. Out of curiosity, would you classify me as "right-wing" because I still believe in capitalism and free markets, or "left-wing" because I don't care if Joe marries Tom and they both get stoned on their honeymoon? And given the huge proportion (compared to the general population) of Slashdotters with science degrees - compsci major with physics minor for me - how on earth are you able to write us off as anti-science?
I am an AGW skeptic. Not a denialist, but a skeptic. I'm not saying that it's untrue, but that I want to see the evidence. In the same sense, I'm also skeptical of quantum mechanics and string theory. That's generally considered to be a pro-scientific stance, you know.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Anthropogenic global warming is just a conspiracy by the evil climatologists to steal our money and freedom. Never mind that it's an entire scientific field and thus a massive amount of people would have to be involved in this conspiracy, so many there's no chance they'd go even a day without a leak. Never mind that they've known about and been researching global warming for far longer than governments have been paying it attention, and thus they must've been working on this for decades on the minor chance they'd be able to expand the influence of the next generation of climatologists (or was the earlier research valid but the newer research is somehow flawed?). Never mind that pretty much every major scientific organization backs the theory of AGW; clearly the broader scientific community is just in the pockets of the powerful green lobby (note how green is a color just like red CONNECT THE DOTS MY FRIENDS). Also I'm pretty sure the Freemasons figure into it somehow.
Teach the controversy!
His argument is clear as day, quantity != quality. Just because there's a "million manhours" put into something does not automatically make it true. Whether it's true or not is completely separate from how much effort has been poured into it.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
More to the point, we want the data that Jones had, and used.
He deleted a lot of it on purpose. The whole "to save space" claim is bullshit, since (for example) the ENTIRE European surface station database, thats every day of every year.. IN ASCII, is less than 500 megs.
I want the data Jones used. Really.
Please explain why it was deleted, and also explain why you asked others to ALSO delete it.
"His name was James Damore."
Exactly, which is why you need to take a close look at all of the cash flowing from the oil corporations into enviro-research. I hate to break it to you, but these guys win both coming and going. It's not like they are actually going to take the price increase as a loss. YOU are going to take the price increase as a loss when they pass it on to you. If things get more expensive due to regulations, and they continue to take a fixed percentage of cost, guess what ? They win, you lose. There is great incentive for them to support these sorts of things
I'm not sure Slashdot has a particularly large science contingent. Compsci isn't an experimental science in the sense that we're discussing here, and Bachelors or even Masters degrees in the hard sciences generally don't include a significant research element. I didn't really have an understanding of research techniques after my physics degree, that didn't come until my PhD.
I am an AGW skeptic. Not a denialist, but a skeptic. I'm not saying that it's untrue, but that I want to see the evidence.
Well, it's all published if you're really interested, and sceptic implies an interest - otherwise "apathetic" would be a more appropriate term.
Personally, I don't care enough to spend months reading hundreds to thousands of climate science papers for hours per day, so I'm limiting myself to debunking the more outrageous denialist arguments. The observation that prompted my remark was that the most strident of the anti-AGW proponents were typically strongly liberterian or conservative, and I've seen convincing evidence that their political views are strongly influencing the way they assess the evidence. I'm not saying that all libertarians/conservatives do that, but there's definitely a correlation.
Since when does the right care about science? They can't even get an issue as simple and data-rich as sex education right, but now I'm supposed to believe that it's all about the evidence?
I used to have doubts about AGW because I heard so many skeptics, but now that they've dropped their masks and are trying to move in for the kill I see that the whole thing is just like the evolution "debate". Conspiracy theories ("It's the evil liberals! They want to destroy capitalism!"), quotes out of context, repeating the same tired debunked arguments year after year... The only difference is that the ideology behind it is a little more popular -- the strawman liberal is apparently a more plausible villain to most people than the strawman atheist.
Visit the
No, I don't think you appreciate how insignificant the problem is. Nobody gives a fuck except the far right (and you can't argue they aren't far-right websites you go to if Slashdot looks 'mostly liberal' to you). The world has not stopped believing "ANY temperature data any more". You only see it as the end of the world for AGW because you have a horribly distorted view of the world from hanging out at websites full of people who seek to discredit good science because it conflicts with their ideology.
Also, pretty much all debate on global warming has already ended--the scientific debate, anyway. The theory of AGW has broad scientific consensus, and most debate is about whether we're very very fucked or very very very fucked if we don't take drastic measures now. The only debate this leak affects is the political debate, which carries about as much weight in science as the political debate over evolution does.
Agreed, I just meant that science generally has a lot to lose. Not that the hours put in proved anything.
It's also been argued that AGW laws will help to suppress development of industry in the third world through increased regulation and taxation, which will apply globally if all the AGW deals go through.
This would ensure that major Western corporations remain dominant, and would also explain why the major energy corporations all support "climate science" instead of funding the "denialists".
"Follow the money" is one of the worst arguments you can ever use against a "denialist", because the big money is backing "climate science".
You're an immobile computer, remember?
You are an AC. Why the fuck should any believe anything you say?
Nature is a journal that publishes "peer reviewed" articles. However the article linked in the OP is not peer reviewed. It is clearly marked as an "Editorial". Furthermore, as it is unsigned, we do not know who wrote it, whether he, she, it, or they know whereof they speak, nor the nature and sources of their biases and viewpoints.
Furthermore: "Peer Review" is not synonymous with audited, verified, nor replicated:
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
When they're taken to court and convicted you can claim they've been CAUGHT in illegality.
I've read plenty and the only disgusting thing I found was how denialists consistently took stuff out of context and misinterpreted it to fit their preconceived viewpoints.
That's a rather funny way of saying "he chose to temporarily step down during an internal investigation regarding the leaked emails and data".
I haven't seen anything to indicate that, and apparently neither has Nature. Or is the most prominent scientific journal in the world in on the conspiracy too?
No, not really. The far-right lunatics will trumpet the death of AGW, sure, but that won't make it so.
No they aren't. Have a look at, for example, the GISTEMP data yourself. It's quite clear there's no giant downward trend like the denialists like to claim.
Consequently, it doesn't matter at all if all the data is released, if all the source code for the models is released, if everybody apologizes and tries to sell the leak as a pack of lies. The damage is done: nobody will believe ANY temperature data any more. Personally, I'm tacitly accepting of AGW, but even I will no longer put any value on that data. Even if somebody tries to reconstruct this data from other sources, I'm not going to believe it. The political influence is just too strong.
So that means you decided already and will refuse to consider any future facts no matter how relevant or well researched. Hence, this reply isn't directed at you.
For the rest of the world, this is one of the bigger problems with bias and unscientific behavior (such as demonstrated in the CRU case). It solidifies the beliefs of the more irrational. I doubt the scandal will have a long term impact, but these problems could have been settled at the very beginning by providing all the data and procedures used. Sure, supposedly the data is proprietary, but at the least, you can state where you obtained all your data from, even if you aren't personally allowed to provide access to the data. I should be able to, with modest effort (and maybe purchasing the data, if necessary), replicate the results of your published research using your tools and your data. If I can't, then it isn't science.
I'm sorry, but did someone at /. forget to mention that the CRU emails did have evidence of a conspiracy to blacklist opposing scientific viewpoints from peer reviewed publications? Did someone forget that Nature, for some years, has been itself criticized for such blacklisting?
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
The whole point of all this business is how climate change effects *living things*. Therefore, those effects/observations/collections should take precedence over other data as indicators to base future conjecture on.
There's another bit that is really critical here, pro AGW side sort of always says that the anti side -the "deniers" used as a derogatory swear word- are "in the pockets of big oil and big coal". You see that criticism all the time, even here on slashdot, in every one of these energy or climate threads. Well, the pro AGW side, who want an emergency situation to radically alter the entire planet and shift huge sums of currency around from person A to B, can therefore be accused of "being in the pockets of big wall street" with their carbon credits trading scam that is pushing AGW as "proven science so we need this new skimming and trading market" to the tune of projected trillions siphoned out of the economy, mostly shifted from the developed world to the developing world with wall street et al taking a huge fat profit in the middle for this "service".
If the criticism on profit motive is good for the goose, it is good for the gander.
Myself, I am way pro cleaning the environment and offering *substantial*, all the way to 100%, personal and corporate, tax credits for developed and deployed decentralized and alternative energy sources and devices.
If that helps to moderate climate change, just frosting on the cake. If it doesn't, it is still worthwhile enough to make the planet cleaner, to help reduce the threats and practices of resource wars, and helps to decentralize the money flows and help the individual more, to get them to be at least partly energy independent.
I *really* want to see alternatives developed to petroleum because of all the wars and strife associated with same... and to coal because it is just dirty. I am also way against that scam carbon market, enriching the already bloated tick parasitical global investment banking so called "industry", and the further push to some sort of global political government, both of which seem to be joined at the hip with the pro AGW stance. Decouple that harmful nonsense from the science and I sure would be a lot happier, but it is locked together now. So I am skeptical and have to take a lot of it-from both sides- with fistfuls of salt.
In other words, some sort of middle ground would be preferable to me that isn't pandering/under the influence of ANY big corporate profits or any furtherance of the nanny state, whether a right wing or left wing overbearing nanny. Had enough of both really, and don't trust either one-including either side's tame scientists- to tell all the truth about much of anything at all if it impacts their profits or political (including academic-political) power grabs.
You misunderstand. We just spent a few gigadollars to experimentally prove QM predictions because we don't take these things on faith but do our skeptical best to disprove them.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"Hire more people to fulfill FOI request if that's what it takes."
It's pretty clear they spent more time dodging FOI requests compared to the time it would have taken to comply with them.
Writing as an ex UK academic, who saw all this stuff comming 20 years ago it really is very simple, we need Honesty in Peer Review, Promotion and the Award of Grants. In Mathematics, more Hard Science, much more Soft Science, much, much more Social Science and most in Medicine and Health Care we desparately need honest in-corruptable players. The problem is we have almost NONE.
... crap. This is the real disaster, far far more important than AGW or any other single issue.
In two generations we have done this to ourselves, destroyed the Enlightenment and Objectivism; repaced it with FOX and CNN and Murdoch's
Most honest men have learned to keep their head down, or be professionally and personally destroyed. Shirly Williams set the agenda for politiziation in place. The seed has grown, and now threatens both Tertiary Education but also all Research in Universities and SRCs. In retrospect this was entirely deliberate and a generation of top University Administrators, VCs and Registrars baught it hook, line and sinker. How sad!
"The people who are trying to sow FUD against AGW know that it doesn't matter what was actually in those emails."
a) They are online. It's not hard to check.
b) Do you seriously think that "it doesn't matter" what is actually in the emails (and data)? If they had been all about ordering takeout and yesterday's game, would anyone have cared? The answer is obvious.
On reading many of these posts that show up whenever climate change is mentioned, I am reminded of the following article, which I will quote below in its entirety. I found it in Scientific American.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
"Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real."
The corrupt culture of "science" (word used broadly) on display obviously most certainly undermines the case.
For a long time, climatology has been unique among the sciences, as it has faced a starkly politicized incentive structure for researchers.
Thanks to the emails, we now know beyond a doubt (among other things) that the entire process of peer review in the field (especially with regards to the critical IPCC reports) has been messed up on purpose by Jones, Mann, et al.
"Errrm ... because it's such god-damned good science ?"
Yes, clearly, as we can glimse from the data and correspondence released.
"It's entirely possible the models and theories are wrong. On the other hand if they're right, and there is not good evidence they're wrong, then waiting an arbitrary time to react results in an inability to react effectively."
That's the nifty thing about putting armageddon way into the future - you will never be held to account if (when) your prediction is wrong.
Of course, we also now know that some major names in the field were quite exasperated that their models had failed to predict recent climactic trends.
"All the debate from the non-climate change side is ad hominem. Al Gore flies a plane, scientists are in it for the money etc clap trap."
Bullshit. People like 'MM' are obviously doing very serious work. That is why the 'scientists' in the emails are obsessed with them, and why it is such a priority to them to make sure that Macintyre, et al don't get their hands on the data.
a) Your characterization of the released emails and data is... well, bullshit.
Corrupting peer review by blackballing 'unreliable' voices, conspiring to oust "troublesome" journal editors, keeping published papers out of the IPCC "even if we have to redefine what the peer-review litterature is", etc. is not "playing with scenarios".
Rigging your models to paper over huge flaws (I.e. tree rings not being good temperature proxies) is not "playing with scenarios".
Deleting data and programs rather than keeping them open for review, even when illegal, is not "playing with scenarios".
And the sheer incompetence on display in their modelling is most certainly not "playing with scenarios".
And so on.
Now, moving on to the issue of extrapolation: We don't know either way, but we can make educated guesses.
- We now know that some of the leading people in the field behave in a corrupt manner to reach their preordained conclusions.
- We have long known that the field has built up a perverse incentive structure, where holding "correct" views yields career advancement and public prestige, while holding "incorrect" views leads to career death and public ostracism.
Needless to say, good science is rarely produced under those conditions.
Let me ask you, how the hell can you "quotemine" by publishing (as a rule) full emails (and data files)?
That are fully searchable (by the thousands) on the mutherfrigging internet?
"Quotemining" works in books, on TV, in magazines and documentaries. But it doesn't work when you are linking straight to the source.
In short, you need to come up with better bullshit excuses.
"And first most important greenhouse gas is water vapor
The water vapour red-herring is #26 on this list of the most common bogus arguments repeated ad-nausem by "skeptics". Sure the water vapour in the atmosphere warms the planet signifigantly. However the atmosphere is basically saturated with water vapour, pump as much water vapour into the atmosphere as you like and it will fall out as rain with a few days.
You cannot staurate the atmosphere with CO2 (re: Venus) or N20, however you can saturate the oceans with CO2 to form carbolic acid and severly disrupt the very roots of the global food chain.
"I believe in AGW but let's not claim the climate science is easy to understand or obvious.
I agree, the science is not settled, philosophically speaking science is never settled.
"This is why I get angry when AGWers equate those that disbelieve in AGW with creationists; the principles behind evolution are much easier and more intuitive to understand than climate science is."
Every scientists is a skeptic and the best of them are self-skeptical. However what people like me get angry about is the huge amount of deliberate and coordinated disinformation from lobbyists such as the CEI and the heartland institute. It's bad enough that the intellectually incurious simply accepted their crap on face value and endlessly repeat but what really pisses me off are the large number of politicians who actively push the same nonesense (Senator Inhofe is a particularly bad example).
There is a name for this kind of propoganda it's called "teaching the contraversy" They teach their contraversy in exactly the same manner as creationist teach their's; ie: via paid astroturfer's and web sites such as icecap, WUWT, ClimateAudit and countless other fronts for the FF industry. These are the people I routinely refer to a psuedo-skeptics, many others call them deniers.
Agrguing with these people and their avid followers is very much like arguing with creationists, evolution may seem a simple idea these days but when I went to school in the 60's it was every bit as contraversial and complex as climate science is today.
More recently the well established fact that smoking causes cancer was also vigoursly disputed by so called scientists. It should come as no surprise that some of the "scientists" spreading FUD on climate are the very same "scientists" who spread FUD for the tabcoo industry in the 80's and 90's (eg: Fred S Singer).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I am one of those folks you mention, but I posted my thoughts on AGW etc up above, so I am outside your generalized description somewhat.
Nuclear is way too contentious politically today, and therefore globally dangerous, because it is part of the "package" to where weapons can be made. You can't decouple it easily if at all. Threats of wars over access and development of nuclear power are *real* and in the news daily. Heck, some places take their nuclear waste, that is still quite dangerous, package it into weapons, that they falsely claim are "depleted" therefore "safe", when they clearly are not (more junk science based on convenience and profit), then inflict those weapons on a lot of people..over access to those people's oil! How nuts is that? (of course they deny oil has anything to do with it..right.. and it sure is a handy way to get rid of tons and tons of nuclear waste and not have to deal with it)
Nuclear reactors make "hot", that's it. That's all they do. We have plenty of other ways to "make hot" in a sense that pose no threat whatsoever to anyone and aren't contentious at all really. We don't need a "Sunshine non proliferation agreement treaty" for instance. We don't have a group of nations A telling group B that they can't have access to the wind unless they control it all, give their "permission", and have 24/7 onsite inspectors. We don't have sunshine or wind or hydro power or geothermal power WMD weapons. There are no threats of international sanctions or extensive bombing campaigns (then resultant attacks back, tit for tat) against any nation that is developing such things as solar power.
I am all for nuclear power-fusion, but not fission, except in a very few limited circumstances. And right now, and probably for at least the next fifty years or more "right now", the only *practical, working already* nuclear fusion power we have is solar (PV and thermal), and related to solar, such as wind and biofuels. Those should be developed more, along with a much more intense program of vehicle and appliance efficiency, and superinsulation for all buildings, and the elimination of as much physical job commuting as can be done with more extensive broadband deployment. Whenever possible, move bytes, not people.
I also like those alternatives over fission because they scale from individual *ownership*, double plus good in my economic book, all the way to huge commercial for profit scale, which can help maintain the baseload energy industry and help to also shift away from petroleum fuels and burning coal, to lead to more diversification of sources, more national energy security (for all nations), less monopolistic accumulation of cash and political power for the already established energy cartels, less chances or excuses for war, and a cleaner environment without chancing the above mentioned negative aspects.
following the money is not bad
consider the 1.5 quadrillion dollars in derivatives and the need for a speculatative. bubble to prop them up for just a little longer. and let us not forget the loot available from reducing living standards. then there are 5 billion people to be killed and that would free up some loot.
The damage is done: nobody will believe ANY temperature data any more.
Wrong. People who have been deniers won't change their standpoint. People who believe the science will look through the fog of misinformation and come to the conclusion that while some of the emails are unsavory, the science hasn't changed because there was no fraud. Only a few that were undecided will be swayed. Others will become more active in exposing how the fossil fuel industry has been waging a PR campaign that includes lying and bad science as well as buying scientists and think tanks for decades. The net result will be that the truth comes out. Just like about tobacco. Or evolution, Or that the earth is round.
Oh and have a look at http://www.desmogblog.com/
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Well, we all know that Nature, NASA, and the U.N. are prime players in the conspiracy. As are NOAA, the National Academy of Sciences, and the science academies of Brazil, China and India.
I mean, either there's a massive conspiracy by climatologists all around the world, or a handful of corporate shills and religious true believers (including both fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist propertarians) have the media's ear and are quoting stuff out of context and flat-out inventing shit. And that's impossible, right?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Yeah, like NASA. Those guys put up data from thermometers that clearly shows the hockey stick.
Oh, wait. No, it doesn't. That's odd. Maybe you can find the hockey stick in this data. I can't. What I find in the data is that scientists like to live in cities that get warmer as they get larger.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I just wanted to say: while I normally read /. set at "Score 4", within those limits, it's really, really nice to be reading here rather than the letters column of most newspapers.
There are for and against postings, but they're all arguing the scientific procedures based on established rules for what kinds of data-reduction are acceptable and not.
It's the first place I've been in the last 3 days that isn't just people shouting "It's a fraud" and "It's nothing at all" at each other.
Well, it's all published if you're really interested, and skeptic implies an interest - otherwise "apathetic" would be a more appropriate term.
That's sort of what I was thinking. If he really wants to see the evidence he can go look at it.
I'm also concerned about the trillions of dollars that will be flowing into the hands of corrupt third-world dictators in this century. I'm not as confident as the leftists the money will be spent wisely. OTOH, I am confident that a good chunk of it will be spent on an effort that definitely reduces the human consumption of Earth's resources in the short term: rapid depopulation (of particular ethnicities).
Are you a dendrochrinologist? Because you have to be to understand exactly what's going on, but the issue (and it's been known about for AGES, so hardly "hidden") is that when there's plenty of rain, pest species are controlled, invasion of competition is limited, and so on, then CO2 correlates well with tree ring size.
But the quicker pace of warming has buggered that up and so you can't rely on CO2 and ring sizes to be correlated any more for species that are
1) in areas now seeing drought
2) in areas now seeing pest species invading (cf dutch elm disease, etc)
3) in areas being invaded by, say, southern species that couldn't compete in the colder northern climes
Which is to say not ALL tree rings display this problem, but enough do that you either have to ignore the data after a point or cut down so far that your error bars make the data practically worthless.
Computerworld magazine cited the view of the RealClimate blog that what was not contained in the e-mails was the most interesting element: "There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy
The minimum number of people you need for a conspiracy is two. If you had a conspiracy between three people all several thousand miles apart then you could quite reasonably call that a "worldwide conspiracy".
To determine if there is one (or more) conspiracy going on you'd need to look at what the emails are saying. To determine if it is "worldwide" then the email addresses might be a big clue. e.g. if they are all from uea.ac.uk then it certainly isn't "worldwide".
I believe it would be better science if you could come up same or contradicting results with your own data set instead of the data Jones used. There are many reasons why data might not be available and even if it were available who would be able to tell if it's accurate.
Do your own research and if the results are significantly different publish an article and get famous. There is no conspiracy in getting articles published, well written science has always place in journals.
The complaints about the laws such as the kyoto protocol were that they let 3rd world/developing countries grow..... That is the main stated reason for the US not joining (only country on the planet that didn't). So I'm pretty sure you got that wrong.... Unless agreements change radically it does not stand to help big countries/hurt small ones. If it did then why are most 3rd world countries ok with the deals, or simply left out? Doesn't make any sense.
Forget the emails. All they show is a few very prestigious climate scientists "hiding behind" intellectual property rights, refusing to adhere to FOIA rules (both of these normally anathema to /.ers), deleteing data and emails that might be incrimintory, revealing that they have manipulated peer review by keeping skeptical papers out, even to the point of changing the definition of peer review, refusing to release their data, caliming a peer reviewed article = 'settled science', exulting in the death of skeptics, attempting (successfully) to get editors they don't like fired. Just normal boys will beboys stuff. Nothing to see here> Move along.
But this is /. How about looking at the code? Like here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/climategate-the-smoking-code/ or how about a little sympathy for a programmer, Harry. See what he has to say: http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/HARRY_READ_ME.txt or look here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/22/cru-emails-may-be-open-to-interpretation-but-commented-code-by-the-programmer-tells-the-real-story/
Or how about daling with teh mathematics of it all: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/the_mathematics_of_global_warm.html
So forget the emails; look at the code. Then come back here and say, with a straight face, that the data has not been manipulated.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
and found this. The good part is about half way into this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8395514.stm
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
You make the erroneous assumption that temps are going up right now.
There is no "unknown natural phenomenon" required as nothing interesting is happening in terms of temp.
The rest of your post is baseless personal spewing and is justifiably ignored.
You are making the erroneous assumption that temps are going down right now. I'm not.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I thought people have been questioning the modern temp data for a while due to land use and urban heat effect. Climate Audit has been tracking this aspect for a while now. We might be warming, but the warming is not universal and nothing more than what has happened in the past. In the context of 1000-1500 years, the warming that happene between 1950-2000 is nothing to be afraid of. To quote CRU:
"The principal conclusion from these studies (summarized in IPCC AR4) is that the second half of the 20th century was very likely (90% probable) warmer than any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely (66% probable) the warmest in the past 1300 years."
Before any of this email stuff, climateaudit caught NASA adjusting the output so that the 1940's blip was not more than the latter half of the century. I seem to recall it was a error in how the program was rounding the numbers. Climateaudit made a new graph with 1940's showing the warmest year. NASA reproduced the results and then later produced a new chart that showed the 1990's having the warming year with the 1940's the second warmest.
To quote another post of this subject (a href="http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11531">strata-sphere.com):
"Well, the raw CRU data shows that the first half of the last century (1900-1960) was as warm or warmer than it is today. But even if it was not warmer, it was within the uncertainty of the processed data. But let’s assume this claim still holds water, so what if this was the warmest half century since the beginning of the Little Ice Age! We have only had 3 half centuries since the LIA ended! We all know the Earth has been thankfully warming since this bleak time in humanity’’s brief existence."
Posting to remove erroneous moderation.
Yeah, like NASA. Those guys put up data from thermometers that clearly shows the hockey stick.
Oh wait. No, it doesn't.
Actually it does match fairly well with the hockey stick graph. The graph you posted covers a bit over a century, where as the hockey stick graph covers 1000 years. Both of them show a rise for around 1 degree celcius over the same period.
Here is the description of the graph from the BBC:
The chart is relatively flat from the period AD 1000 to 1900, indicating that temperatures were relatively stable for this period of time. The flat part forms the stick's "shaft".
But after 1900, temperatures appear to shoot up, forming the hockey stick's "blade".
You can't just chop of the shaft and then claim that it never was a hockey stick. Still, maybe you can use your graph to try and prove that the climate is actually cooling.
I imagine all scientific journals will be quite clear on this point. We can't let a few suspect emails destroy millions of dollars in research grants.
Fixed it for you.
Do you honestly believe that tens of thousands of scientists around the world are engaging in a global conspiracy of fraud in order to obtain research grants? That the national academies of science of every major industrialised nation are actively working to perpetuate a fraud against the entire human species merely in order to obtain research grants? This does not sound a little far-fetched?
You can't call out only one side when both are equally bad in their methods.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
So email evidence of data forgery, refusal to comply with FOIA requests, and attempts to silence dissenting opinion is nothing notable?
Perhaps Nature considers these part and parcel of regular science. I don't, however, and I think most scientists would be shocked and horrified to learn the new rules.
Granted, the overwhelming majority of the emails show nothing more than the normal scientific process. Apparently, whomever selected those in FOIA.zip is unaware of the normal peer review process. However, if only by chance, they did find evidence of:
Granted, I may not believe the GW conspiracy theorists, but this development is very troubling. While climatology as a whole is probably unaffected, those making public policy cannot rely on the resuts published by Mann, et al, until the investigation is finished. While this may not have long term effects on the scientific problem of GW, it certainly affects the political aspects of it.
But then again, if Nature sees nothing wrong with forging data to get the result you want, perhaps all of science is doomed.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Exactly! You got it! So, when we talk about ancient history, we can calmly attribute things to geological processes, that we have no control over. But when dealing with our own times, we aren't going to skip a good opportunity to raise taxes and give more control to the government. Scratch almost every modern "environmentalist" and you'll find a worn-out Che Guevara T-shirt underneath...
Actually, you can be sure, there were people explaining the climate change and/or the rising sea levels, that flooded the entire cities, by the anger of the gods. You can also bet safely, that various priests back then suggested (and demanded) large sacrifices to appease the supernaturals.
Kinda like what Al Gore is doing now (warning, unsafe amounts of sarcasm at the link)...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
..And examine the Mainstream Media's blackout on this subject. BBC had the information for an entire month, and sat on the story. A strange situation unfolded, with that bastion of spin, FOX News, breaking the story with more gusto than a bull in a china shop - whilst every other channel either completely ignored it or attempted to skew the reporting to focus just on the theft of data. Only now are some stations grudgingly giving this story the airtime it merits. Here in New Zealand, not a single TV station or newspaper has reported it at all beyond a brief mention in some dirty back pages.. Even the local New Zealand climate scandal (NIWA artificially adjusting temp graphs) is being suppressed. Instead, the lead stories are absolutely jam-packed with images of melting glaciers and prophecies of imminent doom. Considering that the Tiger Woods Indexfinds "climategate" to be one of the most searched terms at the moment, it appears obvious to me that the mainstream media have a vested interest in keeping this information out of the public mind, at least until after Copenhagen. If this scandal had involved ANY other scientific arena of importance, this would have been headline news. I find such collusion between media conglomerates in keeping this story hushed far more disturbing than the story itself.
Oh, Lordy, no replies to this so I'll be the one to go through it. I did, as it happens, read through the file in question. It shows that merging data from different academic projects with different source data and different analysis software, written by scientists, can be a real headache. Quite enlightening if you want to know how messy real science can get but nothing to do with a conspiracy to falsify global warming data.
What we're talking about is "data tampering". Remember that, children.
- "But what are all those monthly files?
I don't know. What are they?
DON'T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look, there are data files, no info about what they are other than their names. And that's useless " (Page 17)
So he has output files, and doesn't know where they came from. Somebody didn't document their code properly. Hold the front page!
- "It's botch after botch after botch." (18)
What is?
- "The biggest immediate problem was the loss of an hour's edits to the program, when the network died no explanation from anyone, I hope it's not a return to last year's troubles This surely is the worst project I've ever attempted. Eeeek." (31)
Maybe the network's shit. Irrelevant.
- "Oh, GOD, if I could start this project again and actually argue the case for junking the inherited program suite." (37) - " this should all have been rewritten from scratch a year ago!" (45)
Maybe the code's shit. Irrelevant.
- "Am I the first person to attempt to get the CRU databases in working order?!!" (47)
The database is a mess. Irrelevant.
- "As far as I can see, this renders the (weather) station counts totally meaningless." (57)
Right, the count of weather stations is meaningless. So we don't know how many individual weather stations are contributing to the data. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the data, let alone that it's been tampered with.
- "COBAR AIRPORT AWS (data from an Australian weather station) cannot start in 1962, it didn't open until 1993!" (71)
There you go, there's an error in the database. Do you think it was deliberately added by somebody not smart enough to check when the station opened? And this one mis-labeled data point from a weather station in Australia is responsible for the apparent trend of global warming? Really?
- "What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah -- there is no 'supposed,' I can make it up. So I have : - )" (98)
What's he making up? Temperature readings? The name of a weather station? Whether two different names refer to the same weather station or not? It's surely not as sensational as you imply.
- "You can't imagine what this has cost me -- to actually allow the operator to assign false WMO (World Meteorological Organization) codes!! But what else is there in such situations? Especially when dealing with a 'Master' database of dubious provenance " (98)
Yes, some stations are listed in the database without a code. The software uses the code as a unique ID. So each station needs to have one. If you don't know the right one, you add a false one. These are labels. We have falsification of labels, not data.
- "So with a somewhat cynical shrug, I added the nuclear option -- to match every WMO possible, and turn the rest into new stations In other words what CRU usually do. It will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to become bad " (98-9)
Yes, the database seems to be in a mess. Some weather stations are not labeled properly, and there may be duplicates. But the data are not falsified.
In short, lay the average temperature rise from 1908 until 2009 over that for 1803 until 1904 and see what you get. I would strongly suspect that you will see little if any change cycle to cycle.
Good thinking. It's a lock that in decades of research, no one else has ever thought to test for cyclical patterns in temperature data.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Don't you see??? By saying that their investigation found nothing wrong, they have proven their complicity in the conspiracy!!
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Also, pretty much all debate on global warming has already ended--the scientific debate, anyway.
Not really, science never stops "debating".
b4364650@uggsrock.com
I used to have doubts about AGW because I heard so many skeptics, but now
That is, in a sense, a strawman argument too. The strawman right-wing nut. Either the AGW proponents have proved their case, or they have not. It shouldn't matter that their opponents are even less credible than they are.
In this leaked email scandal, the case of the AGW has gotten weaker. Is it weak enough to discredit AGW? I personally think not. Is it bad though? Hell yes it is. Those who believe that AGW is infallible should take a second look at the available evidence, and try to figure out the implications if AGW is still supported by scientific evidence even if we disregard the results of the scientists involved in this scandal.
Don't quote me on this.
The problem is, Jones is sitting on top of a lot of data which nobody else can easily get. He has access to data of weather stations around the globe. And those stations don't release the full data.
You can, of course, blow billions of dollars trying to set up stations worldwide to do the same thing. But seriously, isn't it easier to just release the damned data and code?
Don't quote me on this.
Can you come up with a single thing "the right" has done that even approaches what was done in the soviet union with Lysenkoism?
Either the AGW proponents have proved their case, or they have not. It shouldn't matter that their opponents are even less credible than they are.
Ideally, yes. The problem is that I'm not a climate scientist or anything close. Even if I were capable of finding all the relevant journal articles (doubtful) and had time to read and comprehend them (also doubtful), would I be able to interpret them correctly? Probably not. As with most issues I'm not directly involved in, I rely on experts to interpret and summarize the raw research. But even the summaries may not be reliable. It turns out that it's much easier to come up with intellectually dishonest arguments than it is to refute them. My role thus becomes that of a jury -- deciding the credibility of the experts themselves.
The tricky part is that it's not too hard to sound credible even if your arguments are total bunk. Again, I direct you to the evolution debate, in which the proportion of Americans who accept biological evolution hasn't changed in decades despite overwhelming evidence for one side. There are a few things I can work with, though:
1. Most of the skeptics seem to be concentrated in the same chunk of the political spectrum (right/libertarian) and have very strong political, economic, and emotional motivations for their skepticism.
2. The skeptics promote a conspiracy theory involving thousands of people.
3. The motivations given for these conspirators rely on strawman versions of environmentalist and left-leaning positions. Being a left-leaning person myself, I know for a fact that almost none of us are out to destroy capitalism, wreck the global economy, or live out some gaia hypothesis-based escape fantasy, and the few who are have no influence among scientists.
4. The skeptics seem to be almost entirely outside of the earth science community. According to Wikipedia, there are no major scientific bodies who oppose the idea of human-caused climate change.
And a few other things, but I don't want to draw too much from a Slashdot discussion. Against this I have some cherry-picked emails being interpreted by people who seem to have unrealistic expectations for the purity of data, the sorts of things people say in private, and the implications that actually has for a worldwide consensus. Having taken my share of data under time and budget constraints, I'm not that excited by a bit of fudging, and given the items I listed above I don't trust the skeptics to make honest, informed, and in-context criticisms.
Visit the
Sure. The Holocaust.
(What? It's no less ridiculous than tying the modern progressive movement to Stalin.)
Visit the
Let's say I accept that national socialism with all its socialism is right wing, what the hell does the holocaust have to do with science?
Let's say I accept that national socialism with all its socialism is right wing
"National Socialism" is a name. The Nazis were facists who supported eugenics, militarism, and nationalism. These are considered right-wing ideas and are diametrically opposed to the sort of international egalitarianism that socialists promoted. In reality, Hitler was violently opposed to socialism and purged socialists and communists after he solidified his hold on power. Prominent right-wing anti-communist Americans like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh supported him. There is no reasonable way that the Nazis can be considered left-wing or socialist. The only reason the idea is popular today is because it lets people compare Obama to Hitler.
what the hell does the holocaust have to do with science
There was plenty of pseudoscience in favor of eugenics. Also, whether there was an actual worldwide Jewish conspiracy is a question of fact which could be dealt with through evidence (but really wasn't, although I'm sure they had plenty of rationalizations).
By the way, was Lysenko really totally responsible for the famines? I don't know that much about Soviet history, but my understanding was that they had plenty of agricultural trouble before and after him, mainly due to collectivization. I agree that he was a first-class asshole, though.
You should try getting your history from history books. It's much deeper and more interesting than the made-for-TV remix you get from political rhetoric.
Visit the
Eugenics was very popular in the social democratic party in Sweden. A flair for eugenics was in no way exclusive to the right. Want to try again?
Bad science is a product of human cognition. It's not exclusive to any political alignment. You asked for something bad a right-leaning group has done that was on the same order of magnitude as whatever you're blaming Lysenko for, so I gave you one. It was a bad question to begin with since I was talking about the modern American right and you were talking about a guy in Russia seventy years ago, but I answered it. So what if someone else did the same thing? Are you saying that only communists do bad biology?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the modern American left (such as it is) is great with science. Bogus alternative medicine is very popular. I've also seen some feminist sites declare that the growing obesity epidemic is a sham to enforce orthodox ideas about body image, although I haven't looked at that very closely. But these are not central issues of the Democratic Party in the same way that religion-based decision making is for the Republicans.
Visit the
Did you read the post you linked to?
The basic premises of anthropogenic climate change are well established. It's the refinements that are being debated.
"Oh, Lordy, no replies to this so I'll be the one to go through it."
Thanks, I didn't bother to go through it because I asked for examples of code not examples of programmer frustration. I have great sympathy for the guy, I once worked on merging national and local address databases from various authorities for a telco in Australia. The project involving ~50 programmers and testers had been running for 2yrs when I started, it was still going when I left six months later.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
OK. Your statement wasn't as ignorant as it seemed. Good.
Wanna real solutions ? Plant some trees. Or build a nuclear plant (oh, wait: those greenpeace idiots won't let you do this). Develop cleaner nuclear technology - LFTR reactors are propably cleaner (per megawatt) than wind turbines (bzzzt: LFTR progress is blocked by beurocrats in US, other countries also ignore this technology). You see, real solutions are ignored or suppressed
My point is that we chose to pursue real, working solutions and instead promote fraudulent wealth-transfer schemes based on fraudulently tampered data. Instead of perpetuating fraudulent carbon credits "market" we should mandate that any enterprise with footprint of, say X tons of CO2 should maintain a forest that is able to soak up some part of it. Even Chinese would accept this as a part of their stimulus as they are wery well aware of their environmental condition. We also should mandate that any product imported into our countries has to be produced in compliance to our (current) environmental protection laws. This would hike price of many products significantly but this is what I would accept - as opposed to giving my money to banksters in order to "save the earth" and being aware that little of none of this money will find its way to any environment friendly technology.
Cold Fusion has been accepted by the Department of Energy. Read their review on the topic, the one that changed the policy. It makes the point that P & F were correct on every point.
"The Constitution, the WHOLE Constitution, and nothing but the CONSTITUTION."
This is the traditional way that science is done of course. Someone publishes a radical idea or discovery, and others try and reproduce or show flaws in it. This has never required the keeping of raw data (though it may be good practice) or publication of analysis code. The whole point is that it *doesn't* depend on any individual aspects, or something specific to a particular scientist. This is why I feel that all the demands for source code and raw data are barking up the wrong tree - science already has a better way of verifying results.
I hope you never get a job in CM or version management with that attitude.
My publicly funded organization has archives of project data back to the late 1920s. It may be in punch cards, but it's archived. Beyond that, every document we have mandated for control is available for review by appropriate authority. Scientists and engineers enter service understanding their responsibilities. Why do you suppose that another other publicly funded medium would not have the same requirement?
I love crap like this about how our democracy is threatened by the free exercise of speech and the press. It is fun to compare pro censorship literature of the past 100 years to today and see how their tactics have improved, but always coming back to how people need to be protected from themselves, and from their own ignorance. The best part is that of course they are never talking about the reader; the reader is smart because they are reading their article. It is all those other people out there that don't read or can't understand the brilliance that is Lawrence M. Krauss that are the idiots out there we could help so much if they would just do what we say, and read what we write. After all, this is Scientific American.
My Health Care is fine. I like my doctor, and I don't think under any condition I will ever "like" hospitals (oh well). In my experience, government is just the biggest corporation around, and like many monopolies once powerful enough rarely needs to listen to the customer to keep conducting business as it pleases. Academia tells us that government is the voice of the people, but the reality of which person is being heard leaves a lot to be desired.
I think there is a lot that could be done to improve health care in the United States and the world for that matter. In my understanding of the bills as I have read them and listening to the range of opinions on specific issues, I do not like any of the proposals getting serious attention. I am very skeptical that this congress will be able to produce a decent bill. I would be more open minded if congress would at least begin by looking at some of the many social welfare programs and regulations concerning health care that have not been as effective as intended.
The fanaticism in this debate, as the author likes to put it, is the idea that something must hurriedly be passed, whatever it is. "Death Panel" is a buzz word no matter who says it that relates to actual fear (rational or otherwise) some can't easily dismiss, and controversies over how specific provisions of the various bill provisions will actually be interpreted and executed (no pun intended).
And if the scientific method as a whole is going to be brought into this debate, let us consider some principles of engineering. Great designs, in reality, are only as good as they can be explained. If a majority of people can not be more greatly persuaded by truth than by lies, maybe some of the burden lies on you to improve your documentation if not also the design itself. Blaming the reader, investor, or customer for simply not understanding your brilliance is a cop out. And if there really is an emergency, all the more reason for due diligence, not blind faith.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
What's CM or version management, and why is it relevant to what we're discussing here?
And why should what's appropriate for one area of work be equally appropriate for another? I have no idea who you work for or what data you keep, or what would be appropriate in that case, but I'm not going to just assume it's wrong because science doesn't work that way.
Do you have any arguments other than "we don't do it that way in our field"? Journals, which are the most important record of scientific results, are carefully archived in any case.
This kind of talk gets you a flat lip and a bloody nose very quickly, boy. It is not Ok in real life, and it is not Ok online...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Perhaps he assumes the temperatures are holding steading (being normal).
If you believe in proxy data then you believe that we should adjust today's NIST calibrated instruments by +.5c to match them, which is what the models are doing. I have a problem with that.
In 1960 tree ring proxies stopped matching observations, contemporary with the invention of datalogging. It's not reasonable to adjust NIST calibrated measurements to agree with tree rings on this basis. Trees did not have a meeting and agree to change their modus operandi.
And that's without considering that the tree ring data includes strip bark trees like Bristlecone Pines, which have an accuracy of 4-6 sigmas based on angle of attack on the borer. You're better off rolling dice, even before the "scientists" sampled 10x the trees they reported, and only reported the trees that matched the expected curve.
Ice gas proxies have similar problems. Their reports are interesing but anecdotal - they should not be presented in the same graph as measured data.
Regardless, the raw data says that the climate is cooling, and the scientists and their "corrections" claim that the climate is warming. If their corrections carry such weight over raw observations, should we not be entitled to some explanations? Why should we not believe this wacky guy?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I have FOI2009.zip and grep, so echo $SMOKING_GUN or shut the fuck up, bitch.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
No, not this, the message above by 31eq!
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
I read up to "And millions die in third-world nations because they aren't allowed to use their fossil fuels to industrialize." and stopped reading. Simply a false statement
It's interesting that you have such a strong opinion, but didn't bother to back it up with any kind of argument.
More importantly, even if most of my hypotheticals turn out to be wrong, they still need to be argued against in order to support a Pascal's Wager-style argument. And that's the main point - to successfully pull off that kind of argument, one would have to conceive of, and make a solid case against, every other possible outcome. I submit that it is impossible to do this (except, perhaps, in trivial cases).
. This is what I mean with "science never stops debating." I know that scientists nowadays grasp pretty well basics of AGW, I trust their work and anyway I'd be in no position to deny this since I am not an expert.
b4364650@uggsrock.com
I think we both pretty much agree about this. Too much binary thinking is dangerous in a complex world. I may have overreacted a bit after reading a bunch of the previous posts. My point is there are issues in science that they don't spend time debating because unless someone comes up with some totally out of the blue insight they're not going to change much.