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The Limits To Skepticism
jamie found a long and painstaking piece up at The Economist asking and provisionally answering the question: "Does the spirit of scientific scepticism really require that I remain forever open-minded to denialist humbug until it's shown to be wrong?" The author, who is not named, spent several hours picking apart the arguments of one Willis Eschenbach, AGW denialist, who on Dec. 8 published what he called the "smoking gun" — it was supposed to prove that the adjustments climate scientists make to historical temperature records are arbitrary to the point of intentional manipulation. The conclusion: "[H]ere's my solution to this problem: this is why we have peer review. Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand. So for the time being, my response to any and all further 'smoking gun' claims begins with: show me the peer-reviewed journal article demonstrating the error here. Otherwise, you're a crank and this is not a story. And then I'll probably go ahead and try to investigate the claim and write a blog post about it, because that's my job. Oh, and by the way: October was the hottest month on record in Darwin, Australia."
I am very sceptical with regards to a "not named" author claims... ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
How can you re-examine the original data when it's all been erased?
show me the peer-reviewed journal article demonstrating the error here
Of course, on of the issues revealed is that they were preventing dissenting opinions from being accepted in peer reviewed journals...
You can prove anything when you're allowed to select the peers reviewing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/sticky-for-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/
For some reason I don't think going, "Lalalalalala, I can't hear you" instead of refuting the points they bring up is going to engender somebody to change their viewpoint, rather the opposite. If somebody is already believing there is a cover-up this is about the only thing you could do, besides admit it, that reinforces that idea.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Posted at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/sticky-for-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/ Take a look. The real point is the need for openness and open critical review of the methods used.
It all starts at 0
...to link to Willis Eschenbach's response in the summary. It appears that The Economist didn't even bother to contact Eschenbach before publishing this article by an apparently unnamed author. That isn't exactly what I would consider high-quality journalism.
I'm not popular enough to be different.
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
I beg all of you to please see this TED Talk before modding me down again. Ive been labelled heretic for posting on related stories in the last couple of weeks, actually modded insightful until the thought police arrived and modded me troll.
The weather exhibits chaotic behavior and to find precisely one single cause for variation is futile, like CO2 emissions from human activities.
The hottest day on record! screams the summary. Er, well since 1941. Well and good, how do you know the hottest day last century in Australia didn't happen in 1940?
The Earth has been getting warmer since about 10,000 years ago. Truth. AGW doesn't explain that. But it does follow that the Earth was getting warmer while we humans still lived in caves and were probably numbered in the thousands, not in millions of people. No, we are told. AGW is about the speeding up of warming. Really? We know for sure what the speed of variation would be without humans around? Let us not confuse premises with facts.
The variables are many and not one of them is well understood: ocean currents, atmospheric currents, solar radiation (insolation), the effect of the strength of the Van Allen belt, volcanic eruptions, etc. No weather model can correctly predict past, known, climate; how can one believe that the future predictions are correct?
We need a more open discussion and a lot less cries of burn the heretics. We are talking about science, not religion.
BTW, if anyone knows of a climate model that correctly predicts past, known weather, please post a link.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
A little history. Darwin was bombed and mostly flattened in 1941 by the Japanese during WWII. And, most likely, the weather station with it.
Hence, it was probably re-built at a different site with different local effects.
Next?
we are in serious trouble if someone can't question manual manipulation of dataset's which are the basis of spending trillions of dollars of tax payers money on carbon trading. it's even more disturbing is the fact they get labels such as "denialist" - if you are incapable of leaving the emotional responses at the door, then you aren't fit to be argueing the science.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Round here, we don't appeal to authority as a way to argue your point, and we should not degrade people asking legit questions by calling them "denialist" - as if they "deny" for living or something.
Except maybe those FSM loons, but that's cthulu's business to take care of.
For some reason I don't think going, "Lalalalalala, I can't hear you" instead of refuting the points they bring up
Because it's a waste of time, that's why. Offering evidence to a denialist ostrich is like showing a copy of Obama's birth certificate and birth announcements to Birther Republicans: no matter how much hard evidence you provide, it's never enough. Denialist ostriches aren't disagreeing because they have a qualitative or quantitative argument to the contrary, because their objections are based on ideology, not science.
They've been keeping records for what, 150-200 years? That's a lot by our puny standards, but not in geological times.
And when you say, "tree rings!", I ask, "How precise are they?" A cool but sunny summer, or hot but dusty/cloudy/smoky summer could produce anomalous results.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
If the dissenters are morons who don't understand it, what does that make the believers? Blind-faith followers? You can't have your cake and eat it too.
In my Inconvenient Truth Analysis, I point out how Al Gore and/or his graphic designers use a set of information design tricks to try to increase the visual impact of their money slide. For instance, on the right side of the chart you can see where they overlaid one set of data (the red peaks) over another (the blue peaks).
Most of the anti-AGW crowd is simply doing armchair, a-priori reasoning behind why AGW is false. "Humans are too puny to have an effect!" they say, or "The climate has changed drastically fast even without humanity being around!" Often there are political reasons for holding this position--certain arguments on how to deal with GW are certainly political in nature, and may come into conflict with one's own dogma, and thus psychologically one may be predisposed to oppose GW on that basis.
HOWEVER, that does not mean that some people that argue for AGW do not fit into the same shoes. Remember, just because you are "correct" does not mean your reasoning is. Naturally, someone that hates big business and "the man" may also psychologically have a reason to believe in AGW--another reason to rage on about the status quo.
If I was a betting man I'd bet for AGW, but really I know the science behind it is quite complicated and I know I'm nowhere near competent to make a good, solid argument on the matter, so I must approach the issue with a tempered agnosticism while leaning a bit towards the AGW side because that's the verdict by a vast majority of hard-working PhDs, and I highly doubt that climatologists consist of some dark, left-wing communist sect of economy-destroying conspirators. That is what true skepticism is, noncommitance (particularly emotionally) to a position particularly when you are not an expert on it. Many on both sides of the GW debate are not skeptics but reactionaries with their thought ruled by political underpinnings. Most of the people I know that rant about how AGW is a fraud no absolutely nothing about the mechanisms scientists go about acquiring the data on past climate conditions.
It really does weaken the position of those who support the AGW theory. Why? Because it is name calling and over simplification. Pretending that everyone who doesn't agree with you is simply in denial of what is happening and then making up a cute little label is not the sort of thing that speaks to a rational debate. It is the kind of thing a con man would do, and thus makes people wonder, why would you use those tactics?
So as a start, you have to understand that there are some major differences in terms of what people believe who are skeptical of the AGW thing. These are just some examples:
1) There are people who believe the whole thing is a crock, there is no warming, it is all made up, etc, etc. These are the only people who could be called in denial, by any stretch of the imagination.
2) There are people who believe that there has been a warming trend recently, however the trend is entirely natural. It is right in line with the kind of trends seen historically, and thus there is no cause to believe this is anything but a natural occurrence. They are skeptical that humans are contributing in any significant fashion.
3) There are people who believe that there is warming, and indeed man is contributing to it, but that the result will not be problematic, and perhaps beneficial. They do not accept the conclusion that the warming will lead to catastrophe, even though they do accept that humans are at least partly causing it. They are skeptical that a warmer Earth will be bad for humans.
4) There are people who believe that people are causing the warming, and that it will lead to worse conditions, but that it would be even worse to attempt to stop it. They believe that the money spent on trying to stop such a thing could be better spent on other things to improve human life. The sort of thing that while warming might cause X additional deaths per year, spending money on that instead of other things would lead to 5X additional deaths per year. They are skeptical that the proposed solutions are the best.
5) There are people who believe that people are causing the arming and that it needs to be stopped, but that reducing output won't do that. We need a different solution like geoengineering or something. Reducing CO2 output wouldn't help, at least not enough to matter, so we've got to find another solution. They are skeptical that the proposed solutions would do anything.
6) There are people who believe that people are causing the warming, and that it will be bad, but there is fuck-all we can do about it. We are too far along, shit is going to happen anyhow, so we might as well apply our energies and money to surviving the change, not to trying to prevent it, since that it impossible. They are skeptical anything can be done at all, other than to try and survive the change.
So a big part of the problem with trying to frame everyone as a "denialist" is the simplification of the argument, to try and say "Oh they all just ignore everything that is said." No, in fact, many don't. They simply come to a different conclusion. Also they may well find enough evidence to sustain part of the argument, but not all of it. You find people who say "Sure, I'll buy the world is getting warmer. We've got pretty good instrumental data on that. However I'm not so sure about CO2 being the cause. The data on that is more shaky. Either way I'm really skeptical that a warmer Earth will be a bad thing, there's essentially no data to support that." They aren't just saying "La la la, I can't hear you!" They are just not convinced by all the arguments.
Well, when you simply dismiss them as a "denialist" and act as though they are a moron, that does nothing to convert them. In fact, it may do the opposite. They say "Hmmm, this is the kind of thing con men do. When someone questions them, they just attack and shout down their questioner. They are afraid of scrutiny. They want you to accept what they say, unquestioningly. Why are AGW proponents acting like this? Could they be con men?"
So seriously, knock it off with the label. You are doing nothing to help.
none, not one of these people has been able to reliably prove that humans have anything to do with climate change.
And why would that matter? If we believe the climate will change to reduce our living space thorough riding sea levels then we should do something about that, regardless of the root cause.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
No, we don't:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/ice-bubbles-reveal-biggest-rise-in-co2-for-800000-years-414711.html
Dilbert RSS feed
Outside of the United States (other than some ignored sectors in England) this is not even a problem. Scientists and the intelligentsia know about global warming and how it is caused by humans. I'm not even sure how data from the last century could be manipulated - anyone with a thermometer can verify it, and the so-called "disputed" data is all very recent. All of this is really more of a window into the American psychology or politics or what have you than anything to do with peer reviewed climate change. Even if one scientist was manipulating data, which is not the case anyhow, that would not change the laws of physics where the burning of gasoline produces carbon dioxide. Some anonymous criminals break into a university's computers, hold onto the data for months while they cherry pick certain quotes, then release it just before the Copenhagen summit. This has no effect anywhere except in the United States, where a Senator from a fundamentalist, rural state demands the anonymous criminal's accusations be investigated. In a country where people have to battle to teach evolution and common descent of life, and not that some magic man in the clouds created all living things several thousand years ago; where we have a $27 million dollar museum in Kentucky showing this latter theory or faith or whatever, is this the country where we want to hear the opinions of the amateurs from?
I wouldn't want to be lynched either.
Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand.
Aye, there's the rub...
I think the author is overlooking two simple facts: not everyone with a website is an "average guy", and that there are more than a few people in the world who are capable of understanding advanced mathematics and statistical methods who don't have the related PhD that apparently enables one to do so.
Now, you can choose to rely on the opinions of scientists to form your opinions, and often that is enough, but if you really want to be sure of any particular topic, you should investigate it yourself. It might take a lot of work, but you will be rewarded with knowledge.
That said, global warming isn't all that inaccessible. If you have a basic background in math and physics, you can get close to the cutting edge just by reading the IPCC report since its such a great summary of the field. I guarantee you will quadruple your understanding of the topic just by reading that alone, and it will give you a good launching point to dig deeper, because everything it talks about is directly referenced to real peer reviewed papers.
Some interesting things I found reading the IPCC report:
Every self-respecting geek who is willing to opine on the subject of global warming should read that report. Otherwise they are leaving themselves uninformed.
Qxe4
No, "they" are ridiculed because of the absence of anything approximating proof of the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming.
...the absence of proof elevates the value of ridicule from mere fun to pivotal.
Except the absence you assert exists, does not, in fact, exist. There is a total absence of the "absence of anything approximating proof of the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming".
Since you have proven nothing by your silly assertions it is pivotal that I call you a goofball.
Sure, and all biologists should spend time repeating the same arguments proving that earth is over 6000 years old instead of doing science.
No matter what is said and done, denialists will deny, it's a genetic disorder, nothing can be done about it.
Who says that fellow Newton was right? Why are the so-called "scientists" believing his "theories" (they're just theories, people, wake up!) blindly? Just yesterday I saw an apple floating UP instead of down as Mr Newton claims. Surely if one apple does not move down, why should we believe him as far as the movement of heavenly bodies are concerned?
Why was this modded flamebait? The scientific community is still a human institution, and thus vulnerable to the various human weaknesses. My concern is not with the science behind climate change research, it is with the politicising and extremist ideological behaviour on _both_ sides. To me, this is the issue with these emails. I know the political bullshit goes on, but it worries me when bullshit looks as though it may be influencing the scientific process. A rationalistic approach is the only hope we have for determining the actual reality of climate change, and so I don't like to see "delete that data", or "hide that trend". I don't care if the scientists in question believe they need to do this for the "greater good". I want my science to be science.
An amazing number of poorly educated Fox News watchers like yourself stunned scientists worldwide by coming up with such an objection. They never thought about it, them fancy pansy learned people! That'll learn them!
The author is a skeptic only as long as their skepticism and logic leads to conclusions that match the authors personal beliefs. As soon as it doesn't, well lets put a damper on critical thinking. Mmkay?
>
... and demonstrated the anonymous Economist author was a little short of the facts.
From practically every discussion I've seen on this, the selective quoting from the e-mails.. a lot of damage has been done.
Quite frankly this has 2 causes, at least in NL:
1. We're cheap bastards. Lowering our co2 emissions, investing in green energy, etc. etc. is all costing us money.. on the individual and government level. So anything that challenges the notions that 'threaten to' invoke plans regulating going green is welcomed with wide open arms.
2. We, and I daresay most people around the world, have short attention spans and are lazy. A person like Glenn Beck opens his mouth reading those choice quotes off an autocue, and outrage ensues. A shitton of scientists then tackle those quotes, what they mean, what the underlying data is, and so forth and so on.. and 5 seconds in the person watching the TV will have already zapped away to one of 7 variants of "American Idol" (well, their NL equivalents).
Unfortunately, there is no soundbite cookiecut easily consumed way of educating people beyond the level of an 8 year old - and the matter at hand is far too complex for most 8 year olds to comprehend.
Some day they will find out that we've been faking it. Don't EVER let them find out about "first order approximation" or we will be sitting around trying to explain Taylor's theorem to them for the next 150 years >_.
"Ironically, bad science does not make it wrong necessarily"
If you deliberately do bad science, it doesn't matter that you came to the right answer. You've discarded the trust people had in you. We don't need any more Piltdown Men.
It also didn't help that for the past 25 years we've had extreme hyperbole from far too many AGW types telling us we're turning the Earth into another Venus or that we're going to drown and then make ridiculously bad movies about it, e.g., "Waterworld".
If people had their questions answered without namecalling, condescension or "the sky is falling", most people would listen. While many scientists sneer at public relations in general and even popularist science magazines like Discover, communication is important if you don't want to sound like a pompous asshole and actually get your point across.
The head-ramrod of the East Anglia CRU comes off as a complete asshole. That's a BIG problem.
More Sagans, please. Less assholes.
--
BMO
Air bubbles trapped in ice for hundreds of thousands of years have revealed that humans are changing the composition of the atmosphere in a manner that has no known natural parallel.
Curious, but I wonder why the article doesn't mention the dramatic and sudden rise in temperature ~9000 BC due to a Dansgaard-Oeschger event, which is a far larger effect (8 C rise in ~ 40 years!) than anything projected by unphysical AGW simulations. It's almost as if the author of the article is deliberately engaging in anti-scientific fear-mongering by focusing on purported causes rather than actual effects.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
"One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand." Hmm, that must explain why Freeman Dyson is so skeptical! He has no PhD either!
Actually, I know that I know nothing!
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
It is all irrelevant because of the China Axion:
Every unit of energy saved, for example a barrel of oil, will be obtained (for a now lower price) and burned by the Chinese.
Humanity will obtain all fossil energy from the ground and burn it. Question is how long it will take us.
But if the peer-review process itself has been corrupted from within, what then? The basis for your trust is gone. Those who gamed the system have made it impossible for you to continue to practice as you have.
To be a good scientist now, you must _refuse_ to participate in any review process involving the same group of peers as before. You must have a clean assessment with a new team. You must re-affirm old measurements, re-assess old assumptions, and come to fresh conclusions.
In a word, you must rebuild your body of facts. Climate science has fallen victim to one of the oldest of human weaknesses: we "know" when we have the right answer, so we become very good at explaining away all evidence to the contrary.
Climate science is like a sensor suspected of recording data incorrectly. You must to send it back to the lab, re-calibrate and re-measure. There is no other choice.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I studied both newtonian mechanics and special relativity in college, so I'm perfectly aware of its limits, fuckyouverymuch.
It is still used today by scientists and engineers most of the time. It's merely imprecise when you approach relativistic speed and/or huge masses.
An ad hominem is saying "you're a bad person therefore you're wrong".
I'm just saying "you're wrong and you're a bad person". In very technical terms (pardon the jargon) it's called an "insult."
So you judge information based on who told you rather than what they told you?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
That was once the rallying cry of the AGW "consensus" -- that skeptics didn't publish in peer reviewed journals. The skeptics, however, managed to do so. The response of the "consensus"? As seen in the leaked emails, they attempted to prevent the studies from being published and to boycott the journals which published them. So enough about the "peer review" stuff. Number one, it's been done. And number two, it's quite disingenuous to demand peer reviewed articles while working behind the scenes to prevent them from being published.
Every year a whole shitload of peer-reviewed articles get published, most of which are worthless crap that are not necessarily lies.
Peer review is not a QA process. A review board of peers does not guarantee the quality of a paper just like a jury of peers does not guarantee justice. A paper passing peer review only means that the paper has met the *minimum* standard of getting published. It left to the readers to assess the value and trustworthiness of the paper, which is what *publication* is for in the first place. If I read a paper and don't agree with its author, I publish my own research to refute it rather than file a complaint against the reviewers (who are usually anonymous anyway), and wait for the feedback from the reviewers, and hopefully get it approved for publication asap.
But here, we're talking about the *leaked* stuff here. Being leaked means that the material has NOT passed peer review, and the above chivalrous way does not apply.
There are indeed "interesting" things going on according to the leaked material (esp. a readme file by an unlucky "Harry"), and it's interesting enough for a heated and hopefully fruitful discussion, which is NOT at the peer-reviewed-publication level. On the contrary, these discussions provides a good complement angle which is not necessarily worthless.
Oh, and by the way, April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain ;-) [emphasis mine]
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Al Gore is a politician. Everything he says is utterly irrelevant to the scientific issue.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
1. I'm from Darwin. It's a lovely town to live in -- relaxed, beautiful and friendly (though on the downside there's a housing crisis now). It's always great to see the homestead up in lights. I miss living there.
2. Adjustment is a fine thing but of course subjective. I'd be interested in seeing the average adjustment across all data points. If the law of averages holds -- ie if there really is correction for effectively randomised local conditions -- then the worldwide average correction should be close to zero. I don't think that's too much to ask, is it?
3. A worldwide emissions trading scheme will create an estimated $3 trillion market. That's hammer-of-god money. It scares me, personally. Carbon taxes have the same effect in economic terms, with fewer places for fiddles to hide. It's also easier to offset carbon taxes with income tax cuts.
Until recently I've been pretty much convinced of human global warming. Now I'm beginning to wonder. I'm not a skeptic / denialist / seal-murderer per se, but the current round of stuff is ... unsettling.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
At this point, the East Anglia issues that have any actual evidence are twofold. Out of hundreds of thousands of e-mails, a very few seem to show signs of a couple of scientists wanting to make some data that has odd properties fit the rest of their data. The second issue is actually the bigger one - how can it be science if data is privileged and so not necessarily available to anyone else wishing to double check the original experiments. The problem of unverifiable sources is actually the bigger issue, IMHO.
But the data problem itself is not unusual for science - people doing real science in perfectly legitimate ways sometimes have to make judgement calls about how much weight to give different data, and peer review and other methods sometimes involve meta-judgements about those.
A legitimate example would be where there were, say, four studies that all included at least 100 cases or more in their sample size, and a fifth study that had a much smaller size, say 13 cases. There is more than one means of statistically weighting that fifth study so it can be included but not given as much significance as the others, and the question of which methods to use is not always clear. I'd argue that since the first e-mail to draw attention was about some tree ring data that gave pretty good predictions up to the early 1960's, but that didn't predict the actual observed numbers very well post 1960, and they had other tree ring data from multiple areas that kept on giving good predictions up to the latest samples (about 1999), they had a similar problem. High altitude or latitude tree samples are certainly a smaller database than those for more common regions, as well. So, the data that didn't match well with everything else and didn't predict now established observations very well either seemed to also come from a special case database in other ways.
Yes, it shows that scientific integrity isn't always happening at every possible level. I don't think the researchers in question looked hard enough at how to treat the data fairly - they probably saw it as flawed enough that it simply couldn't be relied on, and wanted to have no part of it. Since the data had some useful predictive value for pre-1960 records, it was really more like a minority opinion than true bunkum, and the researchers should have considered what were the ethical limits of manipulating that data - but it does seem to be data where some types of manipulation (by which I mean mathematical normalisation, not a big red eraser approach) are justified.
But I think we have always had that problem. People do get caught cooking data and publishing deliberate frauds. Anyone who follows science knows not every practitioner is infalliably honest, constantly committed to absolute integrity, or adheres to all the formal principles of science. If that's the standard for science to earn respect, there are enough doctors that don't fully follow the oath that we should have no respect what-so-ever for medicine, and I shudder to think what would be a proportionate response to politicians. Here, somebody literally stole those e-mails, and it seems safe to construe that theft as a politically motivated act. If anyone wants to argue that the theft was motivated by the noble persuit of the TRUTH, I'd listen, but right now, I don't believe it.
Who is John Cabal?
"Does the spirit of scientific scepticism really require that I remain forever open-minded to denialist humbug until it's shown to be wrong?"
Does this apply to religion as well?
Unfortunately, folks only assume this applies to science, but how many muslims (christians, et al.) think skepticism applies to religious snake-oil salesman as well? Consider this: if religions were held to task too we would never have met George Bush or Osama Bin Laden.
I am open source, and Linux baby!
Sure and the world is flat and 99% believed that once. Only it's not true and as a poster above pointed out, Greenland -- a vast ice sheet -- used to be settled and farmed by Vikings. So much for global warming. Never mind the pre-1940 rise when there was no f'ing way it could be AGW.
Ah yes, it doesn't take long for someone to post a link to the fully qualified blogger Anthony Watts whenever the word skeptic appers in conjunction with climate, but if you call yourself a skeptic then consider the following...
Well before Watt's stared his website scientists had already explained how adjustments are made to compensate for the urban heat island effect but that didn't stop our pluckly little weatherman from building a website to show those ivory tower dwellers where they were sorely mistaken. As Watts fame (and income) grew, NOAA thought it might be a good idea to try and add some clarity so they took 70 weather stations that Watt's himself had rated as the best. They re-ran their analysis with just those stations and compared the result to the original analyisis using all 1200+ stations. Lo and behold the two curves were virtually identical as can be seen on the first graph in NOAA's response to Watts. Why? - Because the trend does not rely on the abolute temprature, it relies on the changes in temprature. Such systematic errors in measurement have long been known and handled by mathematicians and scientists alike.
Observant readers may note that a fully qualified political scientist by the name of McIntyre did manage to get a paper on the subject published in an obscure journal which was subsequently hyped so much that the US senate held an inqusition (err, inquiry) into Mann's 1997 hockey stick paper.
The inquisition called on the US National Acedemies of Science to proffer an opinion on McIntyre's claims. Their testimony came down heavily in favour of Mann's conclusions but also made some minor crticisims of his confidence levels. Mann being the leading scientists he is took those critcisims seriously and subsequently published an extended study in the journal Science, yes that's right, the world renowned journal published by the very same organisation who critcised his confidence levels.
McIntyre's paper failed to stand the test of time but rather than having another crack at science he went off to become yet another fully qualified blogger and created the popular front site "climate Audit", I say front site because both Watt's are McIntyre are stongly associated with the anti-science lobbyists at the CEI and the Heartland Institute (now there's a couple of targets for an email hack if I ever saw one).
McIntyre used his site to continue pushing the claim that Mann had hidden his data (where have we heard that before?). To put it politely, I am highly skeptical of that claim. If it was true then how did NAS come to it's conclusions in their testimony, and how is it that many others have also replicated Mann's work? Why is it that both Watts and McIntrye take selective quotes from the testimony to loudly declare that they "discredited Mann's hockey stick"? - You would think that if the testimony actually came to that conclusion then they would want you to read it. Yet nowhere on either site will you find an link to the testimony because...well...skeptical people might actually go and read it.
Considering the above farcical chain of events I don't blame Mann for expressing his desire to keep McIntyre's discredited paper out of the IPCC reports, I would have said the same thing. However this does not change the fact that the paper was subsequently included and discussed.
For those who don't like to read scientific papers and abhore pdf's there is an excellent summary on the youtube channel Climate crock of the week, unsurprisingly Watt's abused the DCMA in an attempt to have the video removed.
The skill of genuine skepticisim starts by learning to be skeptical of ones own ideas and beliefs. It's siad that a great scientist starts every day by
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
And why would that matter? If we believe the climate will change to reduce our living space thorough riding sea levels then we should do something about that, regardless of the root cause.
The cause is important because if climate change is not at all or predominantly caused by humans, why should we think that we can do anything to stop the climate from changing anyway? If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that the climate changes. (Period.) The Earth goes through an ice age; the glaciers grow. The ice age ends; the glaciers recede. We know this happens, and that it occurs apparently without human intervention (or interference). Therefore, nobody should be alarmed that Earth is warming; that's what it does. Will a warmer planet be bad for humans? Maybe, maybe not. There are a lot of unanswered questions remaining, but they're all mostly irrelevant if we don't know the answer to the most important question: is there even anything humans could do to stop climate change if we wanted to? It would be great if we could find answers to the questions that remain before passing sweeping global warming legislature. Unfortunately, the debate has turned ugly. Name-calling such as "denialist" certainly doesn't contribute much to the dialog or convince many people...
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
So what European country will be first to make "AGW denial" a crime?
France.
I'd say somebody who's referring to skepticism as "denialist humbug" is in no danger of being accused of being "open-minded". For him the "science is settled". Sad.
This isn't science, it's collectivist religion.
-=Maggie Leber=-
After wading through the article, I'm skeptical about the conclusion: There is no evidence that "peer review" significantly increases the validity of a scientist's conclusion; only that it will test the methods that led to that conclusion.
There are many historical instances of "peer review" either bolstering false conclusions because the reviewers were inclined in the same direction, or denying the conclusion because it didn't fit in with the orthodox view.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
"The rate of change is probably the most scary thing because it means that the Earth systems can't cope with it,"
What? Where did that come from? What does he mean, the "Earth systems can't cope with it?" I'm pretty sure the earth will do just fine. Does he mean that CO2 is being put into the atmosphere faster than it is being absorbed? But saying it like that doesn't sound as scary. And then he concludes with this entirely unsubstantiated quote:
"On such a crowded planet, we have little capacity to adapt to changes that are much faster than anything in human experience."
The article started in such a scientific fashion, and now it ends with propaganda. There is no scientific justification for claiming we have little capacity to adapt to these changes.
This is a perfect example of a lot of global warming ideas: they start with solid science then extrapolate into fear-mongering and propaganda.
Qxe4
There are skeptics and there are cult-like denialists. Denialism exists and it has to be fought because it is particularly damaging. Since the phenomenon is poorly-understood, we need to be able to discuss climate change and raise doubts and questions without the lunatic fringe dismissing the whole thing on the feeblest of pretexts.
But it is relevant.
It's relevant because he's supposedly one "in on the science" and if he goes 'round misrepresenting the science, what are people to think? That the science is bogus? Well, yeah, and that's what we've got. I said earlier that there's been a lot of hyperbole from AGW proponents and bad movies made about AGW, and it only makes people feel like they're being bullshitted, especially when they're namecalled and condescended to when questions are asked.
Enough with the bullshit. If you want people to believe you, don't misrepresent the science, don't exaggerate, and don't trick people.
And most of all, don't deliberately make people feel stupid by doing so.
--
BMO
The only arguments I've heard from the (usually conservative) anti-global-warming crowd are absurd. They fall into two main points as far as I can tell -- one is "It's anti-capitalist" and the other is "Government has no business telling private companies what to do."
In fact this is perfectly illustrated by the above post, who says
How is that "natural"? How does that even remotely follow?
"It's anti-capitalist" is just ridiculous. As an example, say we want to reduce emissions and stop using coal, so let's use nuclear. Where do they think the nuclear plants are going to come from? Someone is going to have to build, staff, and maintain those, and sell the resulting energy at profit. There are thousands of potential jobs just from the construction alone.
Someone has to design, manufacture, install, and maintain the smokestack scrubbers. Someone has to design, manufacture, and upkeep new and more efficient engines. Or solar panels, or hydroelectric power stations, or whatever. All creating jobs, all being done at profit.
There's a whole green industry waiting in the wings to do these things. How on earth is it anti-capitalist, anti-business, or anti-"The Man" to see a need for better and more efficient service, and provide that need at profit?!
"Government has no business telling private companies what to do." I don't get this one either. Private industry would never regulate itself in consideration of anything but its bottom line. There's a reason we're not all still working 14 hour days and dealing with child labor -- and it's not because corporations voluntarily relaxed those standards. Why does anyone think it's a good idea for companies to crap all over everything, dump any pollutants they want anywhere they like? But the second someone suggests that maybe that's not good, out comes Fox News and their ilk to blame government for ruining everyone's fun.
Finally, I don't see how anyone can argue that we can continue to take billions of tons of carbon-based fuel, set it on fire, release whatever combustion byproducts into the atmosphere.. and absolutely nothing bad will happen. So, again, even if it's not having any actual effect on the global temperature, wouldn't we all be better off not breathing that crap?
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
THIS.
Having something published in a journal is not the be-all, end-all, it does not mean that a theory is now correct one and for all time. It means it is time to start wider discussion and testing. The way science works is by trying to prove things wrong. You see phenomena in nature, and you come up with what you think is an explanation for them. You refine said explanation to the point that it makes testable predictions, the sort of thing like "If X occurs, Y will also occur," or whatever. You then set out to try and prove your theory wrong. You test those predictions. You say "Ok, well then let's try making X and see what happens, if we don't get Y, we know that we are wrong." Each time you fail to falsify your theory, you are more sure it is true.
Others join in, they re-try your experiments, make sure you didn't fuck up. They find alternate explanations and test those (well maybe Z could also cause Y, not just X). The more times that everyone tries and fails to falsify your theory, the more sure you are it is the right one. Only by repeated testing by yourself and others, only by actively trying to figure out what is wrong with your theory can you reach one that you are certain (or at least as certain as we can be) is right.
So publishing an article is NOT the last step in that, it is the first. You do some work, your write it up, you publish it. Some reviewers look at it to make sure there is nothing obviously wrong, and it then goes out to the larger community. That's when things start.
Regardless of good science, or lack thereof, Climate Science has a credibility problem.
Well, this article would have a lot more credibility, if the "Climate Gate" issue had not just hit the press. If you didn't read them, their were these emails promising to block any skeptical papers from appearing and to not cite papers in journals that accepted skeptical papers.
Unfortunately, no matter how you feel about Global Warming, the folks in "Climate Gate" have stuck a grievous blow to the credibility of the scientific method, the peer review process, and positions like this.
That said, if peer review was truly working in the field of Global Warming and skeptical papers which were backed up with legitimate data and arguments were able to get into peer reviewed journals, then this article would have a lot more weight and creditability.
Ah yes the Medival Warm Period affecting northern Europe.
Did you know that current temperatures in Greenland are higher than those in the MWP? And oh yes they are farming there now. It isn't a vast ice sheet any more.
For those of you not familiar with that particular publication, one of its distinguishing traits is that it does not publish bylines. Ever. Editorials in The Economist are backed by the reputation of the editorial staff of The Economist, not of any individual writer.
This is a convenient way to pass off work done by someone recently out of business school as the result of years of experience in writing about a particular subject area (not to be confused with years of research and/or work in a subject area or industry).
Obama & Alan Keyes: Keyes points out that Obama was born in Kenya to which Obama replies, "So what? I'm running for Senate, not President."
Your link is broken but it does contain the highly amusing message; "Sorry, but you are looking for something that is not here".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If our goal is truly to reduce global temperature increases - for the moment let's concede they exist - then we should be looking for the most cost effective solution. Given that CO2 is not the number one global warming gas by far (it is actually methane and most of it comes from cows and other ruminates) and the contribution of CO2 to global warming lessens based on the amount in the atmosphere, curbing carbon emissions at a cost of billions per year, this isn't the best way to do it.
As outlined in Super Freakanomics, there are various geo-engineering approaches to address global warming being developed by people like Nathan Myhold and his Intellectual Ventures, which can do it at a much lower cost. The most promising is based on the Pinatubo Effect - sulfur in the upper atmosphere - and can be accomplished for under $100M per year (less than .30 cents per American per year). It also has the benefit of having been proven to be effective and safe.
So, think about that the next time a major push is on for a cap and trade system or carbon tax. And by the way, Al Gore, is opposed to doing this. He would much rather go the less effective, more expensive, and unproven way of reducing CO2 emissions.
I think this is just one facet of a larger problem, which I call the "impeding American Cultural Revolution" aka "The rise of the idiocracy". If you look at conditions today, they are similar to the start of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: disrespect for the science and facts (climate change deniers, creationists, birthers, teabaggers, health care death panelers, etc) and the glorification of the common man (Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, Gretchen Carlson dumbing herself down, etc). The scenario which scares me is: the idiots vote Sarah Palin into office, and she prevents control of greenhouse gases until a massive global catastrophe (where we lose a significant portion of the world's arable land) that makes the Three Years of Natural Disasters look like a minor problem...
This is Slashdot. We have to believe that that there is something sinister going on with the author's name being withheld, so that doubt is cast on the article and therefore AGW in general. Namegate! NAMEGATE!!!!1!!1eleven
I thought for once I fix that for you, usually not my business ;D
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The author raises good points about the dangers of over-reliance on the peer review system. It's a good system but it is not doesn't always work - crap gets through and good articles aren't published.
And neither of you understand the peer review system. It's actually a very complex system, and one full of competition on many levels.
First, there are many scientists trying to get their work published. Second, there are many journals. Third, each journal has a journal impact factor. Fourth, papers mention other papers. Fifth, journals and papers are not the only means for how scientists communicate their work or collaborate. There are conferences, groups invite speakers, etc.
A journal impact factor is a simple calculation. On average, a paper published in Nature gets X number of mentions in other journal's papers. A paper published just about anywhere else gets much less. So people want to get published in Nature, obviously. But people are also realistic, and their PIs help them with finding the right places to get published. And if you don't, you can try again. Sound research is likely to be resubmitted, often times elsewhere.
When a paper is submitted, you don't just get a "we're publishing it!" or a "DENIED!". You get questions from the reviewers, sometimes requests for more data. If it's rejected, often times it's rejected with some helpful, useful suggestions on how the reviewers feel the paper could be improved, and sometimes it's said between the lines that if you resubmit after taking some of those suggestions, you'll get the thumbs up from that reviewer.
Yes, Nature and the like are the holy grail. But many, many people don't look only in Nature. They read the journals dedicated to their little niche, because they know that sometimes good, fresh thinking doesn't make it into Nature just because so many people submit. And guess what? So are all their true colleagues. So while you don't get your name in the newspaper or a mention on the nightly news, your research still sees the light of day, and often times, with more 'useful' eyeballs. And if it's good, you impress people, they collaborate with you, present your paper at their group's internal meetings, or hell, just toss the paper across the lunchtable and say to their colleages, "you should give this a glance." It's extremely common for labs/groups to have two weekly presentations- one presentation is the work of someone inside the group, and often someone in the same group presents research OUTSIDE the group. And often, it's presented regardless of how sound it is; it's meaningful to say "here is what so-and-so found" and then show why they were wrong, or what they did badly.
Now, I'm on the outside of all of this as an IT person, but I've made many scientist-friends and their lives revolve around this stuff. "Willis" clearly doesn't understand it. The peer-reviewed journal system is complex, but also remarkably free of collusion. After all, if someone presents solid research that something widely believed to be true is not, it helps the journal because controversy sells copies, generates debate and discussion, generates mentions in other papers in other journals (hellooooo impact factor!), etc. The primary concern of a journal is not looking stupid by publishing something that isn't sound and well supported, not suppressing controversial research.
Show me a scientist who bitches and moans publicly about his anti-global-warming research not being published, and I'll show you someone whose science wasn't sound enough to cut the mustard. Every day thousands of papers are submitted to journals and rejected partially or fully, and it's not a conspiracy. It's people doing research that isn't supported enough. There is certainly a dark side, namely, reviewers who don't recuse themselves or aren't qualified to evaluate a particular paper, but that's one reason multiple reviewers are involved, and you can always submit your work to another journal.
Please help metamoderate.
There is never an end to skepticism, especially regarding extraordinary predictions about the future.
Isn't this precisely the risk of overreliance on the peer review system? Unpopular opinions get silenced.
That's a common myth. You see, there are many journals. All want to grow their subscribership, increase their impact factor (the scientific journal measurement of notoriety.) They do that by publishing the most interesting research they can.
Doing research that mirrors what's already been done isn't very popular; grad students and postdocs, for example, have to clear what they're doing with their PIs. That's not likely to happen unless they've got some angle. This isn't apparent to the layman- or even someone who has "PhD" in their title, but even a minor difference in premise can be a big deal.
Identical research also doesn't get published. New, fresh, interesting research is what journals want. So while Willis thinks there's a massive groupthink, there's actually little of the kind. It may LOOK like groupthink, because on the surface, yes, there's the gross layer of widely-accepted-fact. The devil is in the details, and that's where research is taking place.
It's a special kind of arrogance to think that you can just stroll in and understand, much less analyze, a field where people dedicate years, if not decades, to their research.
Please help metamoderate.
The mathematical skills of many of those scientists responsible for historic data records have already been assessed indepedently by a high profile team of statisticians (the Wegman commission) a few years ago:
http://climateaudit.org/2007/11/06/the-wegman-and-north-reports-for-newbies/
Referring to the criticism of McIntyre and McKitrick of hockey-stick reconstructions, those professional scientists "tended to dismiss their results as being developed by biased amateurs".
The Wegman commission, however, concluded differently:
"While the work of Michael Mann and colleagues presents what appears to be compelling evidence of global temperature change, the criticisms of McIntyre and McKitrick, as well as those of other authors mentioned are indeed valid."
Their judgement about the quality of the professional scientist's work was quite revealing:
"The papers of Mann et al. in themselves are written in a confusing manner, making it difficult for the reader to discern the actual methodology and what uncertainty is actually associated with these reconstructions.
It is not clear that Dr. Mann and his associates even realized that their methodology was faulty at the time of writing the [Mann] paper."
"I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn’t matter because the answer is correct anyway.
Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science."
"It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community."
"A cardinal rule of statistical inference is that the method of analysis must be decided before looking at the data. The rules and strategy of analysis cannot be changed in order to obtain the desired result. Such a strategy carries no statistical integrity and cannot be used as a basis for drawing sound inferential conclusions."
If you still think, that was just an "exception", but at least their algorithms to compute the global temperature data have somehow been elaborated and implemented much more skillful and careful, have a look at their computer code and particularly the inline commments:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/
"OH FUCK THIS. It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I'm
hitting yet another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform
data integrity, it's just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they're found."
"Here, the expected 1990-2003 period is MISSING - so the correlations aren't so hot! Yet /locations are identical (or close). What the hell is :-)"
the WMO codes and station names
supposed to happen here? Oh yeah - there is no 'supposed', I can make it up. So I have
"getting seriously fed up with the state of the Australian data. so many new stations have been
introduced, so many false references.. so many changes that aren't documented. Every time a
cloud forms I'm presented with a bewildering selection of similar-sounding sites, some with
references, some with WMO codes, and some with both. And if I look up the station metadata with
one of the local references, chances are the WMO code will be wrong (another station will have
it) and the lat/lon will be wrong too."
"I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as
Australia was. There are hundreds if not thousands of pairs of dummy stations, one with no WMO
and one with, usually overlapping and with the same station name and very similar coordinates. I
know it could be old and new stations, but why such large overlaps if that's the case? Aarrggghhh!
There truly is no end in sight."
"Wrote 'makedtr.for' to tackle the thorny problem of the tmin and tmax databases not
being kept in step. Sounds familiar, if worrying. am I the first person to attempt
to get the CRU databases in working order?!!"
and many more...
We have been collecting climate data for what now... a hundred years in detail? And perhaps a few hundred in total in a more general sense.
And just how long has the earth been around? Compare those numbers in terms of order of magnitude. We don't know diddly.
An AGW proponent is often quick to point out "how quickly" it's all happening the warming is happening these days and how it couldn't have happened before the industrial revolution, except that sort of statement can only be verifiably backed by the data that we've actually collected, not by climate data from before we started recording it, let alone before humans walked the face of this earth... and we *KNOW* that when dinosaurs were around, the earth was considerably warmer than it is today. This planet, and the life upon it, survived it before... it will do so again... even if we somehow actually were the cause of it (which as I said, I doubt).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
i doubt that.
Actually, the blogger replied to the response and addressed each point. He admitted to 2 minor mistakes that didn't affect his main point. Here's a link to his reply here. It's worth a read-through. He's a bit more than just a random blogger. He studies and focuses specifically on climate change. It's only unfortunate that so many folks seem to pick their side instead of reading both sides of the discussion. Depending on others to do your thinking for you is dangerous.
Maybe some siloviki is just mad some Carbon credits might expire worthless? Hammer everyone.
I agree to a point of course. When the final product of a report or study heavily relies on THE data, then it becomes important. If it's data agnostic (such as where data is merely the tool which is used to test a hypothesis), then the data presented might serve to motivate the original hypothesis, but it is generally unnecessary.
" October was the hottest month on record in Darwin, Australia." -it's always the hottest/coldest week/day/month year somewhere, a more meaningful measure is the ratio of hottest-s yo coldest-s
Yeah, I know that increasing levels of CO2 and methane will increase the sky temperature (all else being equal). My contention is that climate change (precipitation as well as temperature) is affected by far more than CO2/methane (think other GHG's, particulates, land use, etc.).
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
The argument that you need a PH.D to understand the climate models you folks have created means you've simply created a magic language like the religions of past - Latin for example being the official language of the Church which conveniently was not understandable by the common man. By creating a complicated language and set of mysterious rituals (like the 'Trick' of the one guy everyone on the Sky is Falling Brigade uses to pump up their numbers) you don't manage to be convincing. People aren't at the point any more when some guy in a robe speaking in a indecipherable tongue is enough to be convincing. So pronouncing that you'll cease to answer critics if they don't rise to your level is counterproductive. But if you want to climb on your high horse, feel free. That's sure to convince reasonable people that you and your fellows aren't full of it.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
It's kind of tough for someone in Ohio and Michigan to swallow the pill of higher energy costs and a further reduced lifestyle to save the very port cities that blithly ignored the total social destruction brought about the port cities forcing free trade and international finance down the rest of the nation's throat. I mean, its very hard to care about San Francisco being under 20 feet of water when the people of San Francisco had no problem unload millions of Japanese and Korean cars to the destruction of half of the jobs in the Cleveland, Akron, Detroit, and more. After decades of being told to accept a reduced lifestyle and adjust due to change brought on by the shipping of massive goods by the coast, suddenly the coast wants even further cuts in the interior's way of life to continue? It seems to me that if you look at the map and see Japan, Korea, and half of China underwater, that all looks pretty good if you just got laid off from GM Detroit.
This is my sig.
The problem with injecting sulfur into the atmosphere is acid rain. Were it not for acid rain, we could use readily available stones of various kinds as a building material and make long lasting, beautiful buildings and homes for ourselves. We could have fresh water and abundant lakes and have plentiful foul.
I'm sorry, but I grew up in the rustbelt and I've seen just how much acid rain really screws up everything, and I really have no desire to make a bad problem that much worse. If we're going to try and monkey with the global temperature, then the answer has to be to come up with a cheap way to get carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
This is my sig.
The issue you run into is that there is little incentive for the highly centralized players in fossil fuels to change their ways. It's an oligopoly and they all play by the same rules to ensure they are properly compensated for their massive capital investments. Shell and Exxon would ride our economy to the brink of failure in order to extract more profit. Good for them, not so good for us.
Of course, the government can't just sit on the taxes. They have to use those taxes to invest in new technology to compensate for the damage to the economy for overtaxing the old technology. There's no use risking the entire future of our economy by being afraid of being "too early" to come up with alternatives for something as vital as energy production.
Earlier URL notwithstanding, the link to Willis's rebuttal seems to have moved here.
Breakfast served all day!
Very simple.
Scientific Research should be published and available freely to the public, and transparent.
This is not what is happening with the Climate Research.
Why is this not a simple thing?
The reason why is because these people are not interested in Climate Research, that is why.
They want to set a precedent to tax all nations on earth, they don't care what the topic is....if it is to make believe we can control the climate on Earth, so be it.
Science always goes wrong when people close it. I know they come up with all sorts of excuses....Well, we cannot have THEM looking at our research, they aren't qualified!
Oh, we can't have the public look at it, they are too stupid to understand the papers WE write.
Oh, our data is PROPRIETARY, we are sorry, you can't look at it.
I have read and seen every single line and its CRAP.
Give you another example how insidious this is. I got a Email from a prof, here at UW-Madison soliciting work on a cool wireless project, with new cutting edge hardware. I wrote back and said I am interested to learn about the hardware as long as I don't have to sign a non disclosure agreement and it wasn't a broadcom device which if it was no need to reply.
Haven't heard anything.
Wireless is a sticking point with me. Everyone knows what goes on with wireless stuff. Especially when dealing with Broadcom devices on linux. Closure of the hardware gets me very angry, and I started shouting about the crap that happens behind the scenes between Microsoft's licensing of wireless and companies that provide or even hint at opening their drivers. Essentially Microsoft will threaten or imply the drivers API may or may not change and arbitrarily not including them in the installation process for Windows out of the box.
The second thing I do not like about not sharing information, whether it is to lock in markets like broadcom and microsoft alliance tries to do, or why wireless N took 5 years to approve, or JUST PLAIN F'IN GOOD OLE AMERICAN CORPORATE GREED, you basically end up with bad products.
So is it not anyones surprise, that just like trying to use a closed wireless hardware device and be all secretive and crap, you get crappy working devices, likewise you close climate research or research in general, you get crappy research.
In this case, research with a purpose to keep scientists busy by buying their silence, while you use the results of the work to establish a nefarious world wide governmental bureaucracy, to make trillions.
Meanwhile, people will die by the millions, which I sometimes wonder if Copenhagen meetings real issue they discuss is population control.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
global warming means 1 to 3 degrees celsius rise in AVERAGE world temperature. it does NOT mean that every single place will get warmer. the AVERAGE temperature will rise.
what global warming means for us is that, for this average temperature rise to happen, there will be a lot of temperature changes in innumerable places around the world. some places will get extremely hotter, some will get extremely colder. in some places, temperature will hardly change, or in some places it wont change at all.
the thing is that, ALL of these extreme and minimal changes all around the world is going to get averaged into a 1 to 3 degrees rise in AVERAGE world temperature.
in layman's terms it will be disaster. because we cant know and calculate which place will get what kind of temperature change. greenland can get noticeably hotter. japan may get extremely colder. or ocean currents can dampen japan's extreme cold and make it a mild place, but carry the cold to some other place. mega floods may hit some places, droughts may hit others. actually some of these are already happening.
world climate is chaotic. we cant calculate what will happen where, when and how. this is the point here. not your average temperature getting hotter so its a good thing (TM).
Read radical news here
economist is a publication that publishes whatever is needed by the industries and private interests it backs at that point. it can even impliedly support radical islamicization of 3rd world countries and the erosion of civil freedoms and liberties in those countries, if the radical islamicization appears to be good for business in those countries.
in short, economist is a publication that can easily sell its mother if there is profit to be made in there. dont give us any shit about reputation of the Economist.
Read radical news here
The argument that you need a PH.D to understand the climate models you folks have created means you've simply created a magic language like the religions of past
Uhuh.
So, what, quantum mechanics is just "magic"? How about higher mathematics? Computing science? Law? Medicine? Because all of these fields have a specialized language of their own, and contain within them concepts that will simply be incomprehensible to a layman.
The unknown author reminds me of this Jonova pic posted recently.
http://joannenova.com.au/globalwarming/skeptics-handbook-ii/web-pics/circular-journo-flat-web.gif
Does the spirit of scientific scepticism really require that I remain forever open-minded to denialist humbug until it's shown to be wrong?
Counter-question: How do you know that it’s “denialist humbug”? Maybe it is. But: How do you know ?
See. There’s your answer.
————————————————————
Truthiness (“gut feeling”) is not knowing. And that’s exactly why we forever keep open minded. (So if you are skeptical of others, by the same philosophy, you also have to always stay skeptical of your own “beliefs”. [Really “beliefs” don’t belong here at all.])
Because sometimes there is something that we call denialist humbug, and that turns out to be true. (I bet we can come up with numerous examples, where something completely contradicted the “known” beliefs of that time.)
But the nice thing is, that you can just calibrate how hard it is to accept certain new things, based on how sure you are of what you (think you) know. You can train yourself to balance it properly. And most likely that’s what you’re doing already.
So something that does not fit, will have a hard time convincing you, for a good reason.
————————————————————
See, with truth and knowing, we often think in a very automatic way. And not about what that all means, and what we really know. Or what is a real fact.
If you think about it, before ending up in your brain, all information went trough thousand filters, modulators, and other things that created “bias”. Else it wouldn’t even be useful to you.
It all went at least trough your senses. Which themselves have a huge natual bias.
And even worse: Because we are social lifeforms, most of it came from other people. So how do you know that anything of what they told you has any relationship with what you call “truth”?
What is truth / what are facts anyway? We can’t even prove, that anything except for ourselves exists at all. Or that it just is made up by the brain.
But what we know is, that we humans only accept things, if they fit into our mental model of the world. If not, even if it’s true and we know it, we can’t fit it in there. But we have to fit it in there, because humans only can know things by associating them with other things. No fitting in, no association, no knowing. Period.
That’s a big problem. Because often, what would be best of us, or seen as “truth”, just does not fit. And gets dismissed. We’re all doing it constantly. At least every second comment here contains something like that.
And the worst thing: We can’t even say if things are absolute facts. Is the sun yellow? Well, depends on how you look at it. What color does it really have?
You can got down that path, with logic. But it will be a looong way, until yo have linked it all back to quantum physics and mathematics. If we would try to guarantee that our beliefs are all facts, we wouldn’t get anything done at all.
But even then, we end up at some paradigms and axioms. Things that we can’t explain further. Like the big bang. Like the basic “why?” and “from where?”. (Some put a “god” behind that all, and ignore/forbid that that god also would have to come from somewhere, to prevent themselves from going crazy over that ultimate problem.)
What happens if we have multiple of those basic paradigms, which conflict, but where none of them can be proven to be right or wrong. That’s really bad. Luckily, basic physics are relatively clean from those.
But in practice, since we can’t walk that ro
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Firstly truly shows us an example of peer review NOT working, that is something we all now take for wrong, but peer review shows as true. I am doubtful you will find tons of those, you may probably only cite a few scandal SPARSELY distributed in a few fields. But as a whole, peer review WORKS, for every example of peer review working SLOWLY toward pruning the fraud, you have tons over tons over tons of peer review properly edging our knowledge toward an increase and not s atgnation/dcrease a fraud is.
Furthermore even if you can make the case of a few paper not being shown for the fraud they were for a long time, the OVERWHELMING number of paper in climate science is really improbably all wrong. That stretch the imagination.
At some point you have to draw a line in sand as layman (expert is different, they should always be skeptic and try to falsify the previous results) and say , everything BEFORE that line is skepticism, and after that line it is DENIALISM. COE ? We are long past that point. Thermodynamic ? Ditto. Climate Change ? IMHO we have been at the line for some time. People are not SKPETIC of the scientist results. Cliamte scientist have had an hypothese, they went by the calculation, falsification, peer review process. Thousand of times. As a LAYMAN, past that point it isn't skepticism, it is DENIALISM. Just like those PMM building guy with magnet which keep beeing skeptic of COE, without even a basic understanding on magnetism. Elitist ? Maybe but then again if I go to a doctor, an expert, and he says me I need an op, then I go to a few other doctors for a a confirmation, if after I have been to half a dozen doctor I am still "skeptic" I need an Op, then I am not anymore in search fo a second opinion, I am cherry picking until I find a doctor which says I don't need an Op, *IN DENIAL*. And that is exactly what climate change denialist are doing, catching on any single misplaced detail to deny the FULL BODY OF EVIDENCE.
By the way : bad science on climate denialist
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Whether you agree or disagree with AGW, there seems to be little debate, just name-calling. From my own (probably biased) view, I'd say the pro-AGW crowd have done a rotten job at explaining their side of the argument. At least the anti-AGW crowd seem to be prepared for a bit of transparency. The pro-AGW might well turn out to be right, but when issues are raised they tend to take offence rather than defending their position.
Problem one is that we are talking about data gathered in various ways from various sources. There must, of course, be some numerical filtering to try to compare data from different sources. However much of the filtering appears (from the outside) to be poorly explained. We are estimating temperature from tree-rings, ice cores and antique thermometers and making decisions on variations of a couple of degrees or sometimes much less. In a day when it might be 50 degrees Celsius in outback Australia 20C in Tasmania and -120C in Canada, we try to produce an average.
Now this data may be accurate enough to support the analysis, but it doesn't look that way to the uninitiated. Somebody needs to convince us.
Second, much of the (mass-media) published information derives from Drs Jones and Mann and their colleagues. The recent revelations have raised *serious* doubts about their data integrity. Never mind the emails, the widely discussed "harry-readme" file chronicles the efforts of a researcher to identify correct data and understand the filtering source code. It tells a tale of confusion and some suspected sharp practises. Perhaps "Harry" is out of his depth and Dr Jones et. al. have immaculate data and source code. However Dr Jones' refusal to honour Freedom of Information requests leave us all with great suspicions. If we cannot trust Dr Jones and Dr Mann, can we trust any of the IPCC and related material? Maybe, but it has not been well explained.
Third and perhaps worst is the number of morons who trumpet AGW concerns without any understanding what they mean. Mr Gore, for example, consistently makes impossible claims. It is too easy to look at these stumbling fools and think that their silly words represent the "scientific" view. When they are shown to lack credibility, by association the science seems to lose credibility. Why have serious scientists never told the buffoons to "sit down and be quiet"? Or have they? The media have seldom reported such.
I don't know if AGW is real. I do know that most of what I hear about is gobbledegook. I'd like to be treated like a "grown up" and have the science explained in clear terms, without the black magic and the "oh, you couldn't understand this". I'd particularly like this before we destroy the world economy implementing schemes that probably won't even fix the problem, if AGW is real.
OK, flame away.
Michael J Smith
Yes, you should ALWAYS remain open about everything.
That doesn't mean you have to give the same value to everything.
You can "take sides" if you want, but if you're no longer open to the other side, it becomes like a religion. When something becomes like a religion, it usually ends up in a lot of people dying.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
"It is amazingly difficult to get believers to reevaluate new data
I disagree but rather than repeat myself ad-nausem I will just point to my earlier post explaining why I think Watts has gone well beyond any limits of skepticisim or decency.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
> So, what, quantum mechanics is just "magic"? How about higher mathematics?
> Computing science? Law? Medicine?
In most fields, explaining the "what" is generally not too hard, but sometimes the "why" gets tricky.
> Because all of these fields have a specialized language of their own, and
> contain within them concepts that will simply be incomprehensible to a layman.
Not necessarily a "laymen", but they should probably be comprehensible to an educated man (or woman) with a reasonable understanding of science and maths but no specific expertise in that field.
I have a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Maths (from 20 years ago). I haven't tried to understand string theory (it doesn't interest me) but I have a working grasp of most of Einstein and Newton. I have a fair grasp of basic anatomy and chemistry and my doctors have never had trouble explaining my (many) medical problems.
Maybe if people tried to explain AGW instead of just saying "trust us" I'd be happier to ruin the economy to prevent it.
Michael J Smith
"It's worth a read-through."
No it isn't, and here's why.
"It's only unfortunate that so many folks seem to pick their side instead of reading both sides of the discussion. Depending on others to do your thinking for you is dangerous"
Yes it is, see my link above for reasons why.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Just saying it looks like a vast ice sheet from where I'm sitting
That depends on where you look -- if you look where the Norse settlements were...
Eastern settlment area, and Eastern settlment map ... You'll find it's fairly green.
Western settlment area, and Western settlement map. A zoom of the area of the Brattahlid and Gardar farms (two of the largest/richest farms), and a zoom of the Sandnes farm area from the Western settlment. Plus ground photos of the ruins:
Gardar ruins; Bratthlid ruins; Hvalsey church
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
This is utter nonsense, Climate data, unlike say Quantum string theory, does not require more than school mathematics and some (scientific) and other common sense.
The data, and lack of it, and the unreliability of proxies eg tree rings and ice cores is clear. The effects of poor experimental methods on modern data and the fact that, even then, recent data does not, in a statistically significant sense, support a warming hypothesis is obvious. If you plot, say, the last 10 years data it fits a slowly DECLINING line, not a Hockey Stick.
The mathematical models used by Climatologists have never been demonstrated to work, and almost always demonstrably fail, exactly as Chaos theory predicts, ie instability of the solutions of differential manifolds with respect to small variations of initial conditions.
UK climate scientists have been at this for fifty years, especially at the Met Office and have NEVER got it to work.
You need no PhD to conclude that AGW is populist un-scientific Bullshit, and is no more than a media scare story eg Flu Pandemic. It is also a symptom of the group-think here to label opponents as "deniers".
You don't have to provide an alternate explanation to falsify a theory, you simply have to show that it doesn't do a good job of explaining what is going on. The "You can't explain it!" crap is precisely what the religious nuts try to pull. They say "Science can't explain everything about this, thus you have to accept our explanation." No, sorry, not how it works. Just because there isn't a scientific explanation at this point doesn't mean you are right.
Well same deal here. You don't have to provide a perfect climate model to falsify an existing one, you only need to show how the existing one is wrong.
Science isn't about being fair, it isn't a case of "Well YOU explain it better than me, or accept I'm right." It is a processes for learning about the natural world, and for separating what works from what doesn't. Showing something doesn't work is an important part of science. Ideally you'd be able to present a theory that doesn't but that's not always the case.
Cold fusion was a good example. Group claimed to do cold fusion, other labs falsified their research, since their experiments were not repeatable. None of those labs provided a theory for working cold fusion, none had to. All they did was show that this particular theory was wrong.
After all, if an 8 year old can't understand it, we know it's elitist nonsense :P
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
BZZZT, wrong! UV is used to polymerize the plastic material used on your teeth.
If your common knowledge about chemistry and dentistry is wrong, then how can you be so sure about your knowledge of climatology?
Or, it is a convenient way to allow published material to stand or fall by its own merit and not be interpreted through the prism of its author. I believe it also has the practical advantage that there is no article "ownership" at the Economist, and hence there is no ego about getting contributions or suggestions for changes from other staff members. Lastly, it passes the experience test: I've been reading it for ~6 years now and the quality of writing and journalism is far in excess of any other mainstream publication. Oh, and their staff list is online. You can check out their credentials if you really feel the need.
[FUCK BETA]
Since the author insists on peer review, an article in The Economist, by an unnamed author, should not have any credibility.
The author him (her?) self is saying that we should not believe what he or she has written. Okay. I'll buy that.
I'm wearing shorts and the air conditioning is on at full blast. I live in Brazil.
Because there were better measurement methods available in 1960. You *could* keep using tree-ring data after 1960, but the result would be noisier.
How do you think tree-ring data is calibrated? They compare tree-ring with thermometer data for the period after reliable thermometers were available.
To eliminate extraneous factors. There are other influences than temperature that affect tree rings and one must select the cases where we are reasonably sure that those other influences did not play a major part.
Not universally, the data is adjusted case by case, depending on the particular circumstances. It's *you* who are looking just at those particular cases where earlier data was adjusted downwards.
Are you suggesting the documented colonization of Uganda by the British during the nineteenth century followed by gradual destruction of the colony in the second half of the twentieth century didn't happen?
I have some news for you, the part of Greenland for which the country was named is still green today.
AGW has been *amply* proved. I have seen a demonstration of this personally, I have a photo of myself at the end of a glacier in 1967, where today there's only bare rock. It's up to the AGW skeptics to prove the ice isn't melting.
If everyone who currently doesnt believe in global warming, believes so because they A)Want to stick with the status quo, B)Believe the government is out to get them or, C) Believe the liberal elitist secret organization is out to get them. Is a denier. If they believe the GW isn't happening due to mis-truths, lies, and blatant falsehoods that have been foisted onto them, then they are just sheep. BUT we are all but sheep. I just trust doctors, and scientists more then politicians.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
one one hand you have to have an open mind for the theory and data that it could be true, but remember that it has to be falsifiable to fit with the scientific method. Anything that cannot be proven true or false or has a hard time being proven true or false possibly might not be falsifiable and thus not subject to the scientific method.
In order to get a true scientific skeptical mind you have to remove all bias, be it religious or political or both it could even be a non-religious bias or personal bias or the scientist just wants grant money and is biased in the report. You have to look for bias, anything that has a bias cannot follow the scientific method. When following the scientific method you have to be neutral and use logic, reason, and critical thinking, something most people don't do these days.
Any modern spreadsheet, Excel, Openoffice.Org Calc, Lotus Symphony, iWork, etc have statistics functions to calculate the margin of error and correlation so you can import the raw data into a row or column and then use the build in statistical functions to check the data. I use that to check a lot of "peer reviewed" reports when I was in college and I found a lot of them didn't even bother to do these things and when I checked them the margin of error was high and the correlation was low. Obvious the reports I reviewed were cherry picked or something was wrong and it wasn't a random sample and the hypothesis checking was done wrong.
More people will criticize religion and politics, but forget that religion and politics can corrupt science as can many other things corrupt science. Modern Science has turned into a secular religion that worships nature and the environment, Science isn't supposed to be a religion or like a religion, and it isn't the answer to everything and cannot be used for many things such as art, humanities, emotion, writing, relationships, etc. While it is good to use logic and reason, it is just as important to use emotions and imagination and balance the right and left sides of the human brain. Sometimes science skeptics tend to forget that.
Science like religion and politics needs major reform and seems to be a hybrid of politics and religion instead of what science used to be.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
"October was the hottest month on record in Darwin, Australia". Yeah, and it's been what, -40 to -50 in parts of western Canada - in early December? So what's his point?
For one thing, if you are given a data set with temperatures for various dates for various locations around the globe, you don't need a PhD to plot a simple chart showing temperatures along one axis and dates along another axis. A chart like that can be used to determine if the trend if towards higher temperatures or not.
A second chart which maps CO2 levels for those same dates can be used to arrive at a simple correlation between temperature and CO2 levels. Again, I don't see why someone with even rudimentary understanding of statistics can't do this.
And oh, if we are only going to be believing PhDs, allow me to point out that Gavin Schmidt's PhD is in Mathematics while IPCC head Pachauri's PhD is in mechanical engineering.
Also, may I point out the simple fact that many of the skeptics have PhDs in climatology and atmospheric sciences (Dr.Roy Spencer, Dr. John Christy).
And if the author is going to be making a big deal about peer-review process (completely ignoring the fact that the peer review process being used was completely flawed because of lack of data to do this peer review), may I point out this article from BBC which points out that IPCC got the dates wrong for the melting of Himalayan Glaciers by 300 years?! and it took their "peer-review" process only 2 years to figure this out.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8387737.stm
Also, IPCC now acknowledges that many of the papers they referenced for their reports didn't go through peer review at all.
don't ever cross a bridge because bridge designers never take special or general relativity into account. Only good ole' Newton.
Calling it "Climate Change" does nothing to increase clarity.
The climate changes at least four times per year for much of the world. The climate changes twice a day for much more of the world.
Wrong! The climate does not change, the weather does. Climate is the long term average of the weather in a certain area. Weather is what is happening at defined moment in a certain area.
My trust in your ability to judge the issues in Global Warming is not really helped by the fact you can't distinguish between these two.
On the other hand, I agree with your statement that not everything should be measured only in economics and we should put human values in more often.
What person will donate an airborne act of love?
If average-totally-unqualified guy felt some restraint about commenting on topics he knows nothing about.... that would end something like 90% of the comments posted on Slashdot?
I know this is the first time I pulled up Slashdot it awhile - the troll factor makes in not work reading and who picks the stories these days? - and seeing this story right there.... Funny.
Using "Common Sense" is being either to arrogant or to ignorant to ask people who know more about something than you.
have you actually ever read the report? Assessment report: The physical science basis
I have actually.
Really? Ok, you're you're ahead of 99 of the people making comments. I will memorize your user name and put you on my mental "people who actually know what they're talking about" list.
The IPCC "physical basis" report is, indeed, non-technical, but i's probably as good an overview of the science at a non-technical level as you're likely to find-- you can start chasing down the references if you want the details.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
This is just a side note, and I'm not arguing about wether or not global warming is happening here, I just don't like the methods of the poster:
The point that October was the hottest month on record for Australia is a red herring. October was also the third coldest month on record for the US. A single month tells us nothing about global climate change even when it falls on an extreme. The slashdot mods should have removed this extraneous comment before posting.
Ah yes the Medival Warm Period affecting northern Europe
http://joannenova.com.au/globalwarming/hockey-stick/mwp-global-studies-map-i-1500.jpg
it's in my head
A true spirit of science requires that you remain open minded. Period. Forever. And never reach certainty.
This means that all actions are taken against a background of uncertainty. That's the way the world is, and lying about it doesn't make it any better. All you can say is that one interpretation of the perceived facts is more probable than another. And *NOW* is when action is possible. You can't act in either the past or the future, but only in the now.
Being open minded doesn't mean being indecisive. It just means accepting that any action you take might not be the correct one. You can only make your best guess.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
But the magazine is, at best, equal in quality to other publications like Harvard Business Review, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, all of which publish bylines. I would argue, after reading many articles in each of these publications (including the Economist) over the past ~6 years, that the Economist is somewhere near the bottom of this list when it comes to quality due to the oftentimes bizarre conclusions and predictions the Economist authors come up with based on what I can only explain as amateur-level knowledge of economic theory or myopic perspective on current events.
Yes, you are very lucky to have scientists to think for you. Thats our job.
That's one of the dumbest things I've heard in a while. Scientists don't think for anyone but themselves, they are there to provide testable theories which fit testable facts.
and so shouldn't be complaining when those specialists consider each others (peer reviewed) conclusions to be inherently more valuable
The problem with this is that scientists who are skeptical are excluded and you end up with little cliques of self reinforcing dogma. Religion, if you will.
The words "Fuck that" spring to mind.
Deleted
"It's worth a read-through." No it isn't, and here's why.
I'm sorry you feel that way. I did take the time to read the link you provided and the written testimony to the oversight committee. Here are some excerpts worth noting.
Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium” because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods, and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales.
...
The scientific consensus regarding human-induced global warming would not be substantively altered if, for example, the global mean surface temperature 1,000 years ago was found to be as warm as it is today. This is because reconstructions of surface temperature do not tell us why the climate is changing.
I find it interesting that the conclusion was that the claim that it's the hottest in a millenium was a bit of a stretch scientifically speaking and that even if they find out it was warmer in the past they will still conclude that humans are the cause of the recent increase in temperature. Which, I find ironic since humans were the reason for the coming ice age in the 70's as well.
If everyone who currently doesnt believe in global warming, believes so because they A)Want to stick with the status quo, B)Believe the government is out to get them or, C) Believe the liberal elitist secret organization is out to get them. Is a denier.
My wager is that that's an extremely small percentage of the people currently being described as "deniers".
If they believe the GW isn't happening due to mis-truths, lies, and blatant falsehoods that have been foisted onto them, then they are just sheep.
Again! You go back to the old language!
Anybody rational isn't going to believe that GW isn't happening. They might believe that it's not happening due to human activity. They might believe that it's happening but it's not harmful to our way of life. Don't you see how many hundreds of possibilities you're grouping in with the one label?
It's not a black and white issue!
Every individual you talk to has their own opinion for their own reason. Talk to them. Find out what it is. If it's something clearly wrong, then address it. If not, well, then maybe you have to take a long look at yourself.
BUT we are all but sheep. I just trust doctors, and scientists more then politicians.
The only one of those groups who have demonstrated positive change in my personal life has been doctors. I don't know any scientists, and I don't know any politicians, and so I have no particular reason to trust or distrust them.
I definitely don't have enough insight into the scientific process, as applied to GW research, to judge whether it is being abused to make data mislead the public, which is the claim of many people here.
Comment of the year
Hmmm.... If climate isn't weather, then clearly hurricanes and tornadoes and sea level rises and cold weather in Copenhagen can't be attributed to climate. They are merely weather, and cannot be climate in any real sense.
Unless, well, weather really is climate in the long run? If so, perhaps the last decade of declining temperatures have finally left the realm of weather and entered the realm of climate. And perhaps the frigid weather in Copenhagen really reflects the current climate of colder weather.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
Here's the deal: Science is skepticism. No theory is 100% correct, and long-held axioms tend to be disproved by new evidence (just ask Aristotle or Newton). By saying, "I am a scientist", you acknowledge that whatever you believe to be true today can easily be demonstrated as being false by some new datum tomorrow. And I say "tough toenails" to anyone who wants the title of "scientist" but isn't willing to be intellectually rigorous in this regard. That's right - every belief, every axiom, every hypothesis, every theory, every rule, every "law" must be, in a scientist's mind, tagged with a confidence factor that never, ever hits 100%.
Now, this is just what I believe. I could very well be wrong.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/12/sticky-for-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/ The link changed
It all starts at 0
Exactly. And what if the current lack of sunspot activity is precursor to a climate that is changing to colder weather rather than warmer?
Doesn't it make more sense to prepare for cold, which actually kills far more people than warmth?
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
'This man is too heavy,' said the doctor who had been called in to see a patient in the Land of Fools, 'and his ailment will undoubtedly become worse unless something is done about it.'
He went home, leaving his knowledge and expected some action to be taken.
When he returned to see the patient, he was met by sorrowing relatives.
'Doctor,' they said, 'the man was sicker than we knew. Even after his weight had been reduced, he died.'
'Perhaps he did not get his weight down fast enough.'
'No, it couldn't have been that. We decided that the best way to take off weight was to cut his head off. We had that done in five minutes.'
—Idries Shah, "Reflections"
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
Human behavior can stop all kinds of natural trends. Bush Fires and floods, for example.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Your mention of the 70's ice age is enough to tell me where you are coming from. Did you look up the follow up paper I mentioned or did you just grep the testimony for "Mann" and then post what you thought were the juicy bits?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/willis_eschenbach_caught_lying.php
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/08/climate_fraudit.php
For just about every blog post you find being skeptical, anyone can find one countering it. It really isn't a game anyone can win.
The best we can do is keep the scientific journals, method, and research as transparent as possible. And then, since none of us has the expertise to evaluate the actual science, and for every "pro" blog there is a "con" blog, we have to trust the judgement of the actual scientists and the reviews of them by other independent scientists.
Can anyone provide a link to one single anti AGW paper that has solid, unbiased scientists behind it?
I googled a bit trying to find one and could not. The best I could find was lists like this:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
But going down the list, and searching the history of the authors, their connections and business associations, every one of them is questionable. And each paper had numerous papers refuting it, or the original authors had later changed their mind.
Before I hit submit I found one more
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=84E9E44A-802A-23AD-493A-B35D0842FED8
But was from 2007 and seems to be largely refuted.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/09/climate-insensitivity/
Is there one single anti AGW paper that most climate scientists say "yes, this is a pretty valid counter argument and we need to study if further"?
I wish I could remember the source, but I remember reading about how creationist groups will take the words of someone like Steph(v?)en J. Gould out of context and basically make them say the exact opposite of what they actually say in context. The writer concluded that there are "liars, damn liars, and creationists".
Similar to the upcoming US election results
No, I read everything you linked to. I think you misunderstand my reference though. I'm not saying there was a 70's ice age. I'm referring to popular belief in that time that there was the beginnings of a cooling trend (which there was, if short-lived). But during that time there was suddenly a growing concern in larger circles that we were causing global cooling.
My point simply being that we need to be careful of jumping to conclusions based on even a 30 year trend when it refers to the ebb and flow of global weather patterns that may span 100's of years. Especially when there is a growing spread in results such as the last 30 years of tree ring data not matching the recorded temps.
For the ferocity that the global warming (now called climate change) groups defend the "fact" that humans are about to destroy the planet if we don't stop polluting today, it would be nice to see more fact. In truth, there are too many factors involved in temperature change to be certain what is causing what. I'm not saying we don't have an impact. That would be naive. But I also think there are some short-sighted solutions being brought to the table.
The Church of the Self-Righteous has its own concept of Trinity:
1) Global warming
2) Darwin's theory of evolution
3) Apple products
Suggesting that any of these three sacred cows is not infaillible is a blasphemy; worse, a mortal sin.
As with any dogma, rebellion only leads to excommunication:
1) Raise an issue about Global Warming: you are an agent of Big Oil, evil and corrupt.
2) Discuss flaws in Darwin's theory of evolution: you are a fundamentalist christian, a bigot and a fool.
3) Disagree with pricing or superiority of Apple products: you are paid by Microsoft, or plain stupid.
It must be really, really awesome to be on the side of Truth all the time.
lucm, indeed.
The cumulative effect of all adjustments is approximately a one-half degree Fahrenheit warming in the annual time series over a 50-year period from the 1940's until the last decade of the century.
link.
.5C is the AGW signal over that time span. Their adjustments are the cause for alarm.
This document used to be linked from their climate page only two weeks ago. Now it's not. I wonder why. I'm sure it has nothing to do with what's going on in Copenhagen.
Of course I expect you to reply that this is regional data (it isn't) or that NOAA isn't reliable. I don't expect you to get your head around the idea that if your corrections to the underlying data are the indica that are your report, you have scientifical issues. Maybe there's something good on TV.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The real point is being overlooked here. The unnamed author puts forth 2 claims.
1. Those without PhD's cannot prove to him/her that the data was manipulated. The "I'm smarter than you argument".
2. If it's not "peer reviewed" then I'm not listening. The "Convince my friends first argument".
We'll start with number 2.
Peer review is meaningless when the emails SHOW that the peer review process is tainted by scientists eager to exclude those who do not share the same conclusions from reviewing their data.
The first argument can be dismissed entirely due to the fact that the knowledge of a subject is irrelevant if the process of reviewing the data has been corrupted by Scientists eager to get the next grant for their research. Scientists live on grants. The Universities that employ scientists also live on those grants and your tenure with those schools is directly related to the amount of grant money you bring in. Those that follow the government line get grants. Those who don't are denied grants. Therefore any conclusion against AGW results in a lack of grants which results in a loss of work from the University. Scientists know how to cover their ass.
In closing, knowledge restrained by job security is not knowledge, it's propaganda. Fixed peer review is worthless.
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
"AGW denialist"? At least this PR droid has half a brain.
I am a bit confused as to the "Expert and Government Review" as shown by the IPCC here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data.htm
Can anybody please explain what the government has to do with this? Is this a valid peer review process?
Word!
Pretty much fucking sums up the "debate": climate science vs. propaganda, hosted on zero-standards websites. Seriously, check the publication standards on the places that host denier material, versus the original sources of legitimate climatology information. Scientific legitimacy, publication in Science or Nature is significantly more challenging than submitting an e-mail address and creating a unique user ID.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
The research unit has deleted less than 5 percent of its original station data from its database because the stations had several discontinuities or were affected by urbanization trends, Jones said. "When you're looking at climate data, you don't want stations that are showing urban warming trends," Jones said, "so we've taken them out." Most of the stations for which data was removed are located in areas where there were already dense monitoring networks, he added. "We rarely removed a station in a data-sparse region of the world."
Only the data that should be destroyed, because it was wrong, was destroyed. It was not "Insightful" of Anonymous Coward to recommend keeping known-bad data. Fuck. This is why I last logged in months ago.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
Perhaps it's time to once again point out that "scientific proof" is a red herring.
Even after Quantum Mechanics and Einstein's Theory of Invariance, Newton's Laws of Motion and Kepler's Law of Planetary Orbits apply fully to all the conditions on which they were first based. No planet travels close enough to light speed for relativity to invalidate those theories as they apply to the observations on which they were based. These 20th century discoveries are often trumpeted in light reading for non-scientists, and some lower quality textbooks, as "overturning" classical mechanics or the like, but in fact they only extended what was previously known and proven, with modifications that really only apply to entirely new classes of observations. The conditions that require relativity or QM, nobody had thought they understood before that, so nothing was disproved by those extensions of human understanding.
And while LIGO searches for the wave or particle responsible for gravity, nobody suspects we might find it has a repulsive component we never noticed before, or that the value of the universal gravitational constant will be radically altered. Gravity is attractive, and its magnitude is known to a high degree of certainty, and it is the same value measured hundreds of years ago for most scenarios in which we calculate gravity. So I am not discounting the occasional dramatic leap in the expansion of knowledge in any way, but it is false of you to claim that in science we can never accurately use the words "prove" and "proof".
There was legitimate doubt about the ability of carbon dioxide to significantly impact global mean temperature, but there is not now, since its emission spectrum was proven to not overlap water's, by the identification of well-defined bands, rather than a blur -- in the 1950s. No legitimate scientist doubts it because it is proven beyond a shadow of reasonable doubt by things that are absolutely known about physical optics. Plenty of ignoramuses can be persuaded otherwise by overpaid charlatans, but that is not part of the scientific process. It is part of social and political processes we all ought to outgrow, post haste.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
AGW is a scientific problem that climatologists can work on. But the effect on our economic, social, geographical, pschological, etc. aspects are not climate issues. Therefore regardless of the result of any global climate study, the climatologist is not in a position to claim what that means for us. If they do make claims without the proper "credentials" as some of you point out, they are acting advocates, not scientists. They must involve those who can interpret what these climate changes will mean for us, the people. Otherwise, they are engaging in the same kind of baseless-claim-making that they accuse their opponents of.
Not to even mention the fact that these studies are as much an exercise at statistics as they are in the scientific measuring, etc. Some of these guys are demonstrably not very good at the statistics portion of their science.
Further, it's surprising to describe 'cherry picking' in a contributor's work without mentioning, at least contrasting against, the recent Briffa controversy wherein the history of global climate was measured by three trees in an entire valley in Siberia. Maybe it was valid, but if so why did Briffa suppress the source data for a decade?
Since the obvious trend in the Darwin data is a cooling trend, the question remains, what changes to the screen or siting produce /consistent/ cooling even as global temperatures are supposed to be rising? This is supposed to be the hottest October in record so the raw data should illustrate that somehow.
The Economist author also appears to miss the controversial disclosures regarding peer review. With a collection of scientists working to change who reviews peers, who accepts papers, and even redefining what 'peer review' itself is supposed to mean, the final appeal to authority near the end of the piece undermines his thesis by grabbing for a rhetorical stanchion that has rusted through.
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Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
Bigot :== Someone who's mind is made up, and is impervious to discussion.
Skeptic :== someone willing to examine new information.
A useful touchstone is to ask "What would you consider good evidence for X"
Thus, if I ask a global warming doubter what he would consider good evidence for global warming, if he replies "It's all a conspiracy" then there is little point in talking to him. On the other hand if says, "A good climate model should match with good accuracy the past -- including things like the Little Ice Age."
Or "I'd like to see the data sets, and on the processing see explanations why they adjusted the data the way they did"
Or "Good models should show large regional effects such as the El Nino / La Nina oscillation, the periodic drought pattern in the Palliser triangle on the Canadian prairies. While I don't expect the data to match year by year, I do expect it to show the patterns."
This is a person that may be open to discussion.
E.g.
If you ask a creationist what evidence he would find convincing for evolution, and he answers "I want to see a whole new species with the intermediate steps produced by evolution" I then ask him how different they need to be: Are horses and donkeys sufficiently different? They can cross breed, but the progeny are sterile. How about Dachshunds and St. Bernards? They can't breed without assistance"
If I get answers to these without much foaming at the mouth, then perhaps we can have a discussion. If he asks me to breed dogs starting with cats, I'll have to ask him for more time.
e.g. I have friends who believe in Astrology.
I proposed the following experiment:
Pull a bunch of hospital records for a given hospital. Pick 12 days -- one from each sign. Pick 20 kids from each day.
20 years later. Get a bio from each individual describing the influences on their life, or alternately, provide a questionaire.
Now ask the astrologer to match up the birthdates to the people based on their life story or questionaire results.
IF astrology has as much insight as astrologers claim, they should be able to do a pretty good job of matching. I'd be convinced at levels better than 80% assuming that the data set hadn't been compromised.
(Check -- do it backward as a double blind. Give out the questionaire, let the astrologers make the prediction, THEN ask them for their birthday.)
(Alternate: The astrologer interviews the person, but certain questions aren't allowed -- e.g. what is your birthdate -- were you the oldest, youngest or in the middle of your grade regarding relative age? When the astrologer is fairly certain, they record the sign, and move on to the next interview.)
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
...Darwin's theory of evolution...
Like any other scientific theory, may be challenged. That is how science works. Just because a majority of people, including scientists, believed at one time that the earth is flat, doesn't make it so. Just because a majority of scientists believe that Darwin's theory of evolution is correct, doesn't mean it should never be challenged. There are good scientists with just as many degrees and qualifications, that doubt some of the current theories, including Darwin's.
All theory is gray
I've been a subscriber to several email alerts from the Economist for three years now. I usually read about 1/3 to 1/2 the articles referenced.
In general I have found that the Economist:
1. Reports stories in a very shallow manner. They are short, lack details, lack references.
2. Have a consistent bias..
3. Don't do a good job of separating opinion from fact.
4. Often don't talk about anything related to economy.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
The link you posted has been replaced by
this one.
Link
Help stamp out iliturcy.
There was a cooling trend from the mid 1940s to the 1970s. It it attributed to unrestricted pollution and increasing industrialization releasing SO2 and other aerosols. We started cleaning those up in the 1970s when the temperatures started rising again. "The coming ice age" got sensationalized by a couple of articles in Newsweek and Time but it was never a consensus in the climate community. A study showed from 1965 to 1979 there were 7 papers about global cooling published and 42 papers about global warming.
Humans are not about to destroy the planet in the long view. But we might make it difficult or impossible to support the level of population we have. If that's true it probably won't be pretty how we get to that lower population level.
n/t
How we know is more important than what we know.