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Russians Claim More Climate Data Was Manipulated
DustyShadow writes "On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) claimed that the Hadley Center for Climate Change had probably tampered with Russian-climate data. The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations. The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley CRU survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century."
Proposed supporters of climate alarmism methods to combat global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions are not only scientifically unfounded - in the absence of extraordinary characteristics of modern climate change, but also incredibly expensive in economic terms. Especially dangerous such measures, if adopted, are for the medium and low levels of economic development, effectively cut off their path to reduce the economic gap with more developed nations of the world.
I'm going to venture out on a limb here and say that the Institute of Economic Analysis is primarily concerned about the economic problems with combatting anthropogenic global warming. Unfortunately, that's not what this is about. This is about what scientific tools we can apply to develop a percentage of how sure we are that such climate change is created by man and -- actually happening. Until we establish it is or isn't, will the economic institutions relax and let the institutions who contain the most appropriate experts publish, release and make conclusions from the data.
Credibility skyrockets when I read the subtext of the blog's heading (that is linked to by the story):
James Delingpole is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything. He is the author of numerous fantastically entertaining books including Welcome To Obamaland: I've Seen Your Future And It Doesn't Work, How To Be Right, and the Coward series of WWII adventure novels. His website is www.jamesdelingpole.com
Oh if you think he might be an unbiased reporter working for the telegraph, please visit his page that he shamelessly plugs.
Unless the IEA produces data it claims is 100% raw uncut, this story is below the threshold of credibility.
My work here is dung.
First first post!!
ahh, famous last words.
How we know is more important than what we know.
investigations on http://climateaudit.org/ and http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Yeah, way to skip right over the actual allegation. Do their claims, in and of themselves, have merit? Wouldn't take long to find out. But attacking the claimants sure is a handy shortcut in logical argument, isn't it?
If the CRU letters are any indication, I guess this is how "science" is done these days, now, anyway.
Welcome to the "new science." Guess we better all just get used to it.
The Russians started the first hacking event to create confusion, and are now trying to extend the damage. They are too cowardly to own up to their responsibility for their contribution to climate change.
Unless the IEA produces data it claims is 100% raw uncut, this story is below the threshold of credibility.
He links to the original Russian story. He's just reporting what the Russian experts say.
And we're supposed to trust experts right? We're not supposed to question them because we're not qualified right?
And asking for data? Now you're demanding data?!! You gotta be kidding me!
Ultimately global warming and any solutions we employ or not will be decided on their economic merits. The science will only give us estimates of the relative costs and benefits of relevant courses of action. We still have to decide what to do past that point.
Of course they don't believe in global warming, it's freezing there.
Oh if you think he might be an unbiased reporter working for the telegraph ...
Yes as soon as I saw the TFA, my first reaction was, "isn't there any more reliable source from this other than James Delingpole?"
So if is there any reputable source that is publishing a story about this, could a link please be posted in the original submission.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
hidden motives of thinly disguised advocacy group . . . question you!
Yeah, way to skip right over the actual allegation. Do their claims, in and of themselves, have merit? Wouldn't take long to find out.
I hate to break it to you but neither side has given me data. Saying so and so skipped over data from here and there does nothing for me when I can't see the data and do my own statistical analysis. If the IAE is so sure and has the data, why don't they publish the adjusted figures to show us just how much we were lied to?
No choice but to listen to those with the data publishing the reports. Does it suck? Yes. But oftentimes that's how studies with empirical data works--especially if it cost a lot of money to acquire that data. We're not talking about a repeatable experiment here to be verified in another lab. And for some reason, we're not demanding they open the sequencing data on the cancer gene we just accepted that story and we trusted those scientists. But suddenly it's about climate change therefor you're now all more qualified experts than those with the data. Why is that? What is it about climate change that suddenly everyone and their dog can tell you how wrong the scientists are?
Welcome to the "new science." Guess we better all just get used to it.
Grow up. Your faux apathy rhetoric is amusing after I listen to you accuse me of an ad hominem attack.
My work here is dung.
Unless the IEA produces data it claims is 100% raw uncut, this story is below the threshold of credibility.
The same is true of the climategate "scandal", but that hasn't stopped of it from being taken as proof of either a new world order or academia's corruption by at least 25% of comment'ers on climate related stories on mainstream news sites.
This claim is like Bill O'Riley's commentary; its effectiveness doesn't lie in any sort of rationality or evidence, but merely in it being uttered confidently (usually loudly) and it being something people want to believe. Nothing short of total refutation can get rid of garbage like this.
Hey mate, spare a sig?
I was going to write something like this, but fortunately I noticed that the story was in the Telegraph. I no longer see the need.
Where is their peer-reviewed paper in a respected journal? Is that too "sciencey"? Why do people with no credentials insist that their claims merit as much attention as carefully researched and reviewed investigations?
These Russian experts in particular have a history of opposing international climate treaties (based on flawed expert analysis, as determined by other experts in the linked paper below):
http://www.edf.org/documents/3978_Review_InstEcAn_09082004B.pdf
I think it hilarious that you discredit the Russian statements purely on the basis of financial interest, when there are billions of dollars riding on cap & trade and the whole green industry behind it.
Both sides are well funded, so let's please get over this phobia of money being involved and consider the science instead.
And the science we have seen, is terribly compromised across the board. There simply is no way to produce any rational decisions based on the data and hand, which is hardly surprising given that no-one was allowed to peer review. That was never science, and we now see the result of what happens when not-science meets the light of visibility.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> And we're supposed to trust experts right?
No! You are only supposed to trust the work of peer reviewed climate scientists. And only known trusted warmers can peer review the climate change data. It's circular you see.
If anyone had any doubt the recent bad behavior should have dispelled it. Watching the warming side circle the wagons and attempt to shout down any disent with the same "peer reviewed science" is the gold standard, if you aren't in the peer reviewed literature you need to STFU! When the peer review process being corrupted was one of the key charges being leveled.
Besides the corruption, I tend to suspect the whole "if you aren't peer reviewed you aren't allowed to have an opinion" line of argument to be just a dressed up appeal to authority. Peer review is useful but should never be an argument ender. And then they go back to the appeal to authority well and try to say anyone who isn't a degreed climatalogist you can't have an opinion. Nope, just another appeal to authority.
Democrat delenda est
He links to the original Russian story. He's just reporting what the Russian experts say.
On what basis do you accept that this site is the work of Russian "experts?"
I think you need to excercise a modicum of scepticism. Their description, insofar as the Google translation is correct, of orthodox scientists, (whether they are correct or not), as "proposed supporters of climate alarmism" ought to ring the warning bells, no?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
It doesn't matter if global warming is real or not.
The root question is, does it make sense to pump pollution into a thin atmosphere? No, of course not, it is wrong to keep doing so. Therefore, we need to take steps to stop.
There are monied interests deliberately prolonging this useless debate about "Global warming - real, or not?" Think about why they do that.
Pollution is wrong. Let's come together in some comopolitan city - hmmm, maybe Copenhagen? - and agree to end pollution.
It doesn't matter if global warming happens today or 10,000 years from now. What matters is ending air pollution.
It's not "The Russians" making these claims. It's a privately funded free-market "think tank" that is based in Russia.
They posted a PDF on their web site, issued a press release, and a British paper reported it without doing any source-checking.
For example, the article highlights a quote from an anonymous poster to a blog thread about the press release describing the web-posted report. How's that for "cherry-picking" your sources?
There is data about the amount of CO2 and methane released by humans. There's no serious debate about those numbers. The arctic is melting as are the vast majority of glaciers and even the antarctic is showing signs of melt. The signs are obvious to the naked eye so there shouldn't be a debate about these facts. Even Sarah Palin has admitted there's a warming trend. Where the two sides diverge is the cause. Is there any significant evidence of natural changes worldwide? Volcanic activity, solar radiation, etc? No one has yet to point to any. In fact the sun light has decreased, traceable to the 1960s, by solar dimming from pollution and extra cloud cover. Volcanic activity is within normal ranges for the last 100,000 years. Oddly enough CO2 levels are at a million year high and they are projected to hit 60 million year highs by 2100. Now is the stance of the non human source crowd that human produced CO2 is inherently different than naturally occuring CO2 and can't affect weather? We produce billions of tons of CO2 a year, where does it go and why can't it affect global temperatures? This same argument that humans can't affect their environment has been made and disproved for hundreds of years. We can't cut down all the trees, well we're doing a good job of it. We can't deplete fish in the ocean, same with whales, those were disproven long ago but it was the belief 200 years ago. We can't pollute the oceans because they are too big. There are toxic levels of mercury in fish and there's a plastic mass bigger than Texas in the Pacific Ocean. All these arguments have been made over the years by groups wishing to exploit resources without restriction. Notice the loudest voices are the ones closely tied to big business? The goal is to delay legislation as long as they can to maximize profits.
Use a little common sense. Release thousands of tons of fertilizer into the water and you get a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico from algae caused by pollution. Release billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, not debated. CO2 levels affect global temperatures, not debated. Human produced CO2 affects global temperatures, debated???? There appears to be a gap in the logic. The increase in CO2 mirrors the industrial revolution. No one has found another source for the extra CO2 or another source for global warming. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to do the math but it takes sticking your head in the sand to ignore the facts.
Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL. Cheers Phil
Now, I'm not saying global warming is a hoax, but at this point, if anyone comes up arguing from an appeal to authority instead of an appeal to evidence, they are braindead. The climate authorities have lost a lot of respect through all this. And that goes for the guys in Russia, too. Let them show us the evidence if they want us to believe.
Don't tell me "climatologists say we should act now to prevent global warming!" show me the estimated radiative forcing changes and how exactly that's going to cause sea levels to rise. Show me the effect CO2 is having on the global temperature, and most importantly, tell my WHY you think that is happening. And if you can't explain it, then I'm not believing you. Because I can explain special relativity in terms simple enough that anyone can understand, and climate science is no more complex than that.
Qxe4
Finally, an answer that will appeal to all the faith-based populists:
"You know who ELSE doesn't believe in global warming? Russia."
Where is their peer-reviewed paper in a respected journal?
The CRU made sure it was never published?
That's the problem with gaming the system you see, eventually people find out you were playing a game when they thought you were serious.
And since we have found they were suppressing opposing viewpoints in journals, it's a circular argument to claim the need to see peer-reviewed articles to prove the point...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I agree with you that the source is biased, but that doesn't invalidate the data. As C.S. Lewis once said, "You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong". (I'm not an AGW denier btw)
I'm not saying either side is right however I think scientists could do better by working with analysts more often.
A scientist isn't trained in knowing how much data is to be considered for something to be chance or correlation. Throughout recent history we've had multiple scientists fooled by claims such as physic ability, homoeopathy, etc only to be debunked once it was mentioned that the tests done were achievable by pure chance.
It's all fun and games until one scientist without any understanding statistics claims child jabs give kids alzheimer's then lots of kids die of diseases they wouldn't have gotten in the first place.
In Soviet Russia planet warms you!
Become a peer. All you have to do is get an education. Quit being a lazy skeptic and man up. Become a climate scientist. I dare you.
Here is an hypothesis: In the early 1980's, people who had made claims about the massive impacts of SO2 on the earth (anybody remember acid rain) realized that SO2 had made another impact. Not only did it cause acid rain, but it cooled the earth. Then came Pinatubo. OMG! What have we done!
Now it was time to come up with a scape goat for the impending impact on climate that was certain to occur with a world wide reduction in SO2. How about CO2? Hard to prove, impossible to eliminate, and 'everyone knows that CO2 is a green house gas'. Tin foil hat time? Maybe. Of course, the fact that CO2's impact on radiant heat loss is, and always has been, maximized, may have something to do with all of this. And really. deltaF=5.35lnC/Cnought? Isn't that just a little too idiotically simple?
Cheers
JE
In Soviet Russia, climate manipulate YOU!
Oh to be able to give you mod points.
Its pretty clear that the "Institute of Economic Analysis" is a right wing whackjob source. It was founded by this guy. His wikipedia entry
Who also authored stuff like:
"Kyoto is killing off the world economy like an "international Auschwitz," "The Kyoto Protocol is a death pact, however strange it may sound, because its main aim is to strangle economic growth and economic activity in countries that accept the protocol's requirements."
and
"A Liberal Agenda for the New Century: A Global Perspective"
and has been in a ton of questionable institutes.
So believing anything from a group like this would probably not be wise to say the least.
Hey, I mean they have an open society where anyone can say what's on their mind right? I mean Glasnost and all, eh?
Or maybe they have a shitload of oil and gas reserves that they'd really rather not have devalued by anyone actually deciding burning more fossil fuels would be suicidally stupid. Oh, was that the sound of one of Vlad's enforcers putting a bullet in the back of someone's head?
Get real people. Now the deniers are the Russians and the Saudis. Laughable what kind of crimes people will do for a buck.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
What 'we' are you talking about?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Where is their peer-reviewed paper in a respected journal? Is that too "sciencey"? Why do people with no credentials insist that their claims merit as much attention as carefully researched and reviewed investigations?
They insist because they do not know. They do not know because they insist that they don't need to. It's a perpetuating result of the opinionated layman.
I urge all skeptics to become climate scientists. It requires the mere effort of education. I can assure you that many opinionated layman are pissed off at this very comment and insist that I don't make any sense right now.
So be it. Life is strange.
Going to be lots of fun pawing through NASA's dirty climate laundry.
We're collecting the information and will respond with all the responsive relevant information to all of his requests," Mr. Hess said. "It's just a process you have to go through where you have to collect data that's responsive.
Comply with FOIA
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I am one slashdotter that can't wait for us to drop oil and coal in favour of electricity and batteries regardless of whether Energy dense portable power. How else are we going to get workable lasers on friggin' sharks? As well as all of the other cool things that we are all hanging out for - robot exoskeletons for example
the CRU is taking blowtorches to all the glacial ice in Greenland and the polar caps to make their case, too!
Go on, extrapolate the rest.
Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
"Especially dangerous such measures, if adopted, are for the medium and low levels of economic development, effectively cut off their path to reduce the economic gap with more developed nations of the world."
Despite the fact that Kyoto makes provisions for that and 3rd world countries are allowed to increase pollution levels till they are in line with those of 1st world countries (which will be in decline), then we all decline together with CO2 allocation being done o the basis of population alone.
The problem with your assertion is that it is an appeal to authority type logical fallacy, in and of itself;
1) The scientists have the data, so 2) they must know more about the data than we do, so 3) we should trust them implicitly in their interpretations of that data.
This does not follow, because it totally ignores that the scientists with the data may have intrinsic bias, or even that they could be wrong. This is exactly why when you get a diagnosis from a doctor that says "Operate!", you get a second opinion.
The problem here, is exactly like you stated; The data to get the second opinion is not public. Unlike the patient who may need an operation, who's body is the evidence, and is available on demand for inspection by the doctor giving the second opinion, all the potentially qualified persons to give a respectable response to this question are blocked out because of finanical interests on the data.
Essentially, we have the global climate change fear mongers on one side, shouting "OPERATE!" (through drastic slashing of manufacturing technologies, draconian cap and trade taxation, repossession of private property, and a whole host of other proceedures of questionable value), and on the other, you have the alternative medicine quack that says "The pain is all in your mind" (EG, the non-scientists that say that human released carbon dioxide has no impact on the environment whatsoever, in spite of the fact that this is not supported by even the slightest bit of chemical evidence.)
The patient (which is represented by the public in this case) is then left seeking a REAL second opinion; Are cap and trade&Co really necessary? The patient WANTS a *REAL* answer to that question, but is continually fed the PR pamphlets from both (disreputable) extremists.
I for one, want the data to be released publicly. This is especially true if the data was collected using public funds, such as through NOAA, or in this case, through the russian government and russian taxpayer money.
Right now, the patient is basically pleading with reputable doctors for a second opinion, but the doctors have to turn them away, because the medical history is "Confidential."
Stop trying to sound high and mighty about how fantabulously reputable the CRU scientists are, when you know damned well that scientists are people, and people are faulty.
The *ONLY* way to settle this, is to release the data. Given the far reaching implications of the decisions that will be reached through interpretation of this data, FOR EVERYONE IN THE WORLD, I fail to see how the financial interests of the people who collected it can outweigh the invested interest of the rest of the whole world, who's economical and climatological futures hinge upon it.
If there is bad interpretation, and a misdiagnosis, sunshine will reveal it.
If not, Sunshine will also reveal it.
What we need is sunshine on the raw data; NOT specious arguments one way or the other on which side of the debate to "Simply Trust", when both have shown signs of being disreputable.
Well, the burden of proof really lies on the people making the claims. In this case its sufficient to show that what is obviously a right wing organization (its founder wrote things like: "Kyoto is killing off the world economy like an "international Auschwitz," "The Kyoto Protocol is a death pact, however strange it may sound, because its main aim is to strangle economic growth and economic activity in countries that accept the protocol's requirements." source) with a vendetta, so its extremely unlikely to stand up to large quantities of peer reviewed research.
In the end, you can can either believe lots of peer reviewed science, or institutes that compared the Kyoto protocol to concentration camps. Does this mean that the Russian right wing think tank is wrong? I suppose not, but its extremely like that it is, which is good enough for this type of conversation.
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The same is true of the climategate "scandal"
Are you saying Climategate is not a scandal?!!
Russian crackers (possibly with Kremlin approval) are hired by some US disinformation organization to brake into the computer system of a British university? Sure sounds like a scandal to me.
WHO PAID?
I would like to know why only 25% were included
http://www.surfacestations.org/
If you pick which stations you want to use you can prove either point.
> Quit being a lazy skeptic and man up. Become a climate scientist. I dare you.
What would be the point? You see, I actually have spent some time reading through the leaked data and email. The whole game is rigged. If you aren't known to be a warmer you don't get to peer review for the journals considered important to the climate change game. When an editor broke with the unwritten rule the warmers had the offending editor removed. Another journal allowed a few doubting papers in, the warmers are writing about organizing to not publish in, cite from and generally shun the heretical journal. In other words the science is settled, therefore dissent isn't going to be considered science.
More important, you don't need to be a climate scientist to realize these guys aren't practicing science. They suppress debate, suppress the data and the details of the models used to analyze it. Basically they are putting on their Science! priesthood robes and making pronouncements we are expected to accept without question based on their authority.
But the funny part is they aren't even claiming to be experts in most of the stuff they spew. Several papers have been blown up because they were making claims based on statistical models put together without the input of a real statistician. The Hockey Stick debacle came about because someone used math they didn't really understand... or was outright fraud. Then beyond proclaiming impending DOOM! they go beyond their area of science and push specific solutions. That is the duties of engineers, economists and politicians. Nothing in a climate science degree qualifies anyone to pick a solution out of the dozens of options available. Then they let an idiot like the Goracle be their spokesperson and he is so clueless he things the inside of the earth is millions of degrees.
Democrat delenda est
It's nothing new, either. Remember that Russia is one of the major oil-exporting countries, and significantly dependent on oil exports for its budget. Furthermore, it's a major provider of gas, too, particularly to Europe. If, under the guise of combating climate change, Europe moves to greener power generating and heating tech - solar, wind, or better yet, nuclear - that will leave Russia out in the cold, with no well-paying customers for its only valuable exports.
On the other hand, Russia actually stands to benefit a lot from rapid climate change, if current models are to be believed. For one, it has a legitimate claim to a huge chunk of resources under the polar cap, should the latter melt - that even leaving the disputed areas aside. Furthermore, Siberia would be one of the regions for which climate change would indeed be a regional warming - it is already heating up much faster than any other part of the globe, and if it keeps doing so, it will become much more prospective for human settlement and agriculture, and in short-term perspective provide for easier access to the vast natural resources of the region.
At the same time, there are relatively few important coastal cities that would be threatened by ocean level rise - vast majority of the population is living deep inland.
So Russia would have much less trouble coping with the effects. The icing on the cake is that U.S. (because of its heavily populated coastal cities) and quite a few European countries would be in a very tough position, and those are perceived as historical global opponents, especially the U.S.
So, yeah. There are a lot of political reasons for Russia to downplay effects of climate change, specifically so that other countries reduce their efforts to combat it.
There is little doubt that the email and files that were released were from the CRU and they contain emails showing that some of the leading people involved WERE actively trying to suppress papers by people with opposing viewpoints. Is it still a conspiracy theory when it's true?
Cars were a solution to a pollution problem. Go replace every car on the road with a horse or donkey, then watch the death that follows from all that shit piling up everywhere attracting flies and spreading disease.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS NO POLLUTION. Unless you've figured out how to stop poop from exiting your butt, there will always be pollution. The skies above our major cities are far cleaner than they were 20 years ago, yet you still emorage.
I supposed you want to eliminate every single benefit that oil and coal have brought us, from roads to plastic too eh? How many medical devices and procedures would become impossible without them?
I hate the ignorant, narcissistic, ungrateful generation you represent. Your ancestors made life unbelievably comfortable for you and all you can do is cry like a damn baby about it.
Something must be done! Cap & Trade is something, Therefore it must be done!
You can reduce pollution without upending the entire western economy. Indeed, one of the false choices presented is that if you are not for Cap & Trade, you must be *for* pollution!
Besides, if pollution were really a problem the people meeting would act like it instead of renting thousands of limos and taking private jets to converge to talk about it while using a ton of energy to heat large conference centers...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Interesting how the argument in favor of AGW has evolved.
First we had "They science is settled. The scientific community agrees about man-made global warming (cause we won't let contrary views get published). Besides anyone who denies it is a stupid poopy-head!".
Then when the climate-gate memos came out we had "No smoking gun. It's all taken out of context. Nothing to see here, move along".
Now that it appears serious scientific fraud was committed, we have "Even IF the data is fake, we should still spend several hundred billions dollars cause otherwise climate change will kill everyone on the planet".
Bernie Madoff was an amateur.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I think few would disagree that less pollution is a desirable goal. However, has anyone presented real data that strongly suggests that the current proposed solutions (cap and trade) will achieve that goal? You may be surprised to find that well informed people think it will not: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a-oaXAQY8A&feature=related
As if the Environmental Defense Fund doesn't have it's own bias...
Anyway, maybe it's a lingering Cold War mentality, but even for me, an AGW-skeptic, it just seems too convenient that the Russians drop this bomb during the Copenhagen Conference. Very suspicious!
[Seriously-OT]
BTW, why is it that left-wing protests seem to turn violent so often, but (in the US, at least) right-wing protests don't, even when some demonstrators bring guns?
[/Seriously-OT]
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
No, you're not Steven Hawking. You're some random guy posting on slashdot. You might as well claim to be Tiger Woods, we'd be more likely to believe that.
since we have found they were suppressing opposing viewpoints in journals
[Citation needed]
The point of peer review is to suppress demonstrably inaccurate articles, or articles with such poor methodology that you can't tell whether they're accurate or not. If you have good evidence that some articles were dismissed on the sole basis of their viewpoints, please cite it - and perhaps suggest to the authors of those articles that they re-submit to some different journals.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
"Apparently someone tried, but was blocked by the people at East Anglia, as you can see from this quote: [eastangliaemails.com] "
So there were two articles submitted for publication. They were peer reviewed. Someone in East Anglia, as part of the peer review, recommended rejection. Where is the issue here? If you've some evidence that the articles did not deserve rejection, then you forgot to post it. If, in fact, the other peer reviewers recommended against rejection, then it seem likely that one or both of them got published.
Play Command HQ online
It doesn't matter if global warming is real or not.
The root question is, does it make sense to pump pollution into a thin atmosphere? No, of course not, it is wrong to keep doing so. Therefore, we need to take steps to stop.
There are monied interests deliberately prolonging this useless debate about "Global warming - real, or not?" Think about why they do that.
Pollution is wrong. Let's come together in some comopolitan city - hmmm, maybe Copenhagen? - and agree to end pollution.
It doesn't matter if global warming happens today or 10,000 years from now. What matters is ending air pollution.
I agree. Pollution is bad. So let's concentrate on pollution to limit it and stop this silly war on CO2!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
CAPSING random WORDS doesn't make your ARGUMENT stronger.
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I think after quashing a hundred or so of this type of allegation, only to find out it was absolute rubbish put about for propaganda, one quite rightly gets tired of chasing down the filibustering allegations of the tin foil hat denialist brigade. The obviously fervent prejudices of this "Institute", plus the precise timing, sets off enough alarms to warrant skipping further analysis. As other people have said here, show me the top-tier peer-reviewed climate science journal article if you want to be noticed. If you believe there is some massive global collusion amongst scientists preventing such articles from being published, then you know very little about scientists (or global politics for that matter).
The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.
There is the key word: often. That does not mean that all, or even the majority, of the stations shows this. Is the percentage of stations not getting much warmer the same as the percentage in the officially used data? They just leave that point dangling in the hope that we will infer that it is not the same.
Already people have taken this to say more that it does. Some blogs have already claimed that ALL of the stations used did not show warming. For example, here is a blatent bit of misquoting from a randomly googled blog:
The data from the unused stations reportedly did not show any substantial warming trends.
Oh dear. It is just a slight change, but it completely changes the meaning. And where is that skepticism that is supposed to be at work here? Why assume that the economic think tank is correct?
I will wait to find what the selection criteria was before taking this to be any proof of a global conspiracy.
okay, if you're so smart, why is 40% of the north polar ice cap missing?
did al gore steal it all and turn it into ice cubes for celebrity martini parties?
trust the Russians.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
"Peer review is useful but should never be an argument ender."
Just over a century ago, the peers said "There are only two questions left to answer in physics, the nature of the photoelectric effect, and results of the Michelson-Morely experiment." They were really right about that one.
Peer review turned into a religious ordination. Science faded into the background, as people who were convinced they were right, (and might actually be) decided they had a calling to save the world, and that the ends therefore justified the means.
key takeaways; Science and religion do not mix, and religions do not require a God.
I find it amusing that while railing against the bias and closed minds of the establishment you refer to them as "warmers". Irony knows no bounds.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
>both have shown signs of being disreputable.
Who are these pro-warming scientists who won't release their data? It sounds to me like the anti-warming crowd has convinced you of false equivalency. e.g. "The other side is just as big scumbags as we are."
It appears to me that they know the Siberian data is junk and they are trying to discourage people from using it. The entire email up to that point is a discussion of why Siberian data is poor, and how trends reflected in other disparate areas of the globe are not always evident there.
Also, I'm not entirely convinced that your standard of evidence (a simple statement that collapses the works of thousands of scientists using huge data sets and millions of hours of computer time, into an elevator pitch) is entirely reasonable. I think its fairly well established that CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere, and we have increased its concentration to a level unprecedented in human history. Is there is an above average chance that there is a tipping point in the global climate system that can be reached and will end up setting a new stable point with a vastly different climate than we currently enjoy? The literature would seem to point to this conclusion.
I'm sure you could start from first principles and do all of the math by yourself, starting from the raw climate records. It would be a massive undertaking, but since you seem ready to dismiss the opinions of the majority of climate researchers because you yourself don't understand what they are doing, this seems like a fair compromise. Should only take 15 or 20 years, lemme know how that works out for you.
asking for a peer reviewed article is not a response, it's a cop out. you fail to address the questions at hand and instead go off on a tangent attacking the authors credability. that isn't science.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
This is about what scientific tools we can apply to develop a percentage of how sure we are that such climate change is created by man and -- actually happening.
No, this is about how "scientific tools" behave when they are used in the service of power instead of knowledge. We cannot be x% "sure" of anything. That's semantic balderdash, not science. Sure is sure. It is 100% and it has no doubters. In the lab, if one is "sure," there's no point to the experiment or model. What's happening here is that for political action to happen, politicians are demanding surety, and science can't give it. We can't even properly falsify many of the claims being made, on either side of the argument. There is too much agenda in the way.
At this point, and I don't understand why it didn't happen sooner given the carbon projects in the works, the lid needs to be blown off of this thing and everyone needs all the data and methodology to be public, so it can be replicated. No other method will be fruitful. We need a mountain of evidence proving that these models are sound, and an end to ad hominem attacks on analysis. That's the way it should work.
Scientists may sometimes be good politicians, but the politics, ideally, should end after the grant application, it has no place in the practice of science.
Some good scientists names are going to be ruined because they failed to be skilled politicians, and that's a shame.
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Toro
in fact, the other peer reviewers recommended against rejection, then it seem likely that one or both of them got published.
From his email, Phil seems to think his personal peer review was enough to keep them from getting published.
The fact is, serious doubt has been cast on the value of trusting these guys. If you listen to them because they are 'authorities' and not listen to their evidence, then you are very likely to be misled. Trusting experts is not scientific.
Qxe4
Ok. So they're biased. They might even be lying.
The question they raise still remains, however: why were only a select group of weather monitoring stations used?
A data set is a data set. Increasing its size will only improve the accuracy of your figures. It's absurd that they'd not include all the gathered information unless there was, as the summary says, "some other reason". If you are going to be making a model which will be used to alter the social, economic, and industrial composition of the world, you'd damn well take the time to use all available information to present a more accurate picture, I'd think.
Somehow, this smells - like the discovery some months ago that "global warming" was actually being caused by dishonesty: the temperature sensors were being located near/in places like roof-top air conditioning out-vents.
The source material seemed a little suspect, so with the aid of Google Translate, I attempted to understand a bit about the Russian IEA Mr. Delingpole quotes so freely. The IEA, or Institute of Economic Analysis, is hardly an expert on climate science. The first article on the IEA's website says:
This hardly seems to be an unbiased website, so I thought I would dig deeper. The article the IEA quoted is also fairly suspect, since it goes into detail and reveals the inherently anti "global warming" bias of the source.
I shouldn't have to point out the satellite photos of Arctic Ice and how it has shrunk, or how Polar Bears are in real danger of extinction because of the loss of their frozen habitat.
This drivel seems to come right out of the climate skeptic/big business lobbyist handbook. Normally, I wouldn't bother to respond, but the author's Russian source got me interested enough to investigate. As I suspected, its bullshit.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
But it does ADD to the CRANK factor of the POSTER and add to the general SLASHDOT milieu. Intermix with TLA for added effect, YMMV.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
it's no good attacking them based on the fact they export oil. all the climate researchers who advocate AGW have a budget dependant on global warming research funding, do we also attack them and cast doubt on their motives because of it?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Okay, how's this for credibility: the Russians are believed to have been the ones who hacked into the servers and then selectively released out-of-context quotes to try to discredit the CRU scientists. So gee, should I act shocked that they're continuing their assault? Russia is being the number one impediment these days to a global climate change accord, and it seems to go to the top. For example, they've been one of the main forces holding up a Copenhagen accord.
Back on the initial topic: 100 to 1 odds says that any data exclusions are due to bad data and incomplete records. This is the standard sort of mistake made by people who either don't know how the analyses are done or who deliberately want to mislead. The meteorological station calculations are NOT done by simply taking all data and averaging it. If you did that, the way that the amateur deniers think that contaminated data would enter the record -- such as stations becoming urbanized, being tampered with, etc -- would actually be true. But the data is first analyzed, problem stations detected (in an automated method), and eliminated from the record or normalized. And the preprocessing is itself studied to verify that it's valid -- for example, comparing individual regions to other climate analysis methods, comparing windy days with calm days to make sure the heat island effect has been properly eliminated, etc.
In short, claiming that many stations are being eliminated is complete nonsense because that's *supposed* to happen, and if you didn't do that, the record would be readily thrown off by human development and equipment faults. I'd bet dollars to donuts that this is all that this comes down to. And that quite a few people at the agency putting this out know this, but are deliberately using it for manufactured doubt nonetheless.
And let's all not forget that the CRU dataset is just one dataset using one particular type of datasource and one particular analysis. There are many datasources and many analyses, and of equal prominence to CRU's datasets are NOAA's and NASA's. No, the different datasets don't match up perfectly (for example, whether 1998 or 2005 was the hottest year -- they were close), but the datasets all yield similar results.
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
And how will AGW proponents respond to this in the media? With appeals to authority, ad hominem attacks, and bluster.
The media and the scientists who have become the public faces of AGW in the media have taken the position that the public is too stupid to understand AGW, and must be convinced by multimedia slideshows, appeals to authority, and bluster. They do not seek to convey an understanding of the data, methods, and conclusions. Instead, they seek to replace one belief with another. When this is how you approach your audience, it doesn't matter whether what you teach is true or false, it is indoctrination, not education.
How should they handle it in the media? They should spend 4 hours in primetime, instead of Dances with Fucktards, walk the public through the data, walk the public through the methods, examine the claim being made here, and explain its impact or irrelevance to the conclusions. You know. EDUCATE. Not pontificate. Not intimidate.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Prior to Climategate and unbeknownst to many, there are many of scientists who question the data behind the AGW proponents' claims. I would venture to say that, due to the politically volatile nature of this subject, there are many more that would also like to become signatories yet fear the repercussions. http://www.copenhagenclimatechallenge.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64
CAPSING random WORDS doesn't make your ARGUMENT stronger.
LIAR!
The CRU made sure it was never published?
If that were true, then you'd be able to find perfectly good articles were "censored". Perhaps you think that the CRU had the scientists bumped off and their hard disks melted. That would explain why there is no evidence, right? The scientists, the papers, EVERYTHING is gone.
Either that, or you'd be able to back up your accusation.
Let me guess. You have no idea what papers the CRU never published, AND YOU COULDN'T FIND THEM IF YOU TRIED.
Remember, you are not paranoid if everyone really is against you.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I find it amusing that while railing against the bias and closed minds of the establishment you refer to them as "warmers". Irony knows no bounds.
Indeed. I've always thought "alarmists" was a much more apt description.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Furthermore, Siberia would be one of the regions for which climate change would indeed be a regional warming - it is already heating up much faster than any other part of the globe, and if it keeps doing so, it will become much more prospective for human settlement and agriculture, and in short-term perspective provide for easier access to the vast natural resources of the region.
Wait... so you're saying that for some people a little global warming would not be a bad thing? How do Canadians feel about it?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I agree with that sentiment (I have asthma, as do my kids), though I don't know by what criteria you call the only atmosphere anyone's ever known "thin."
But that's all it is. It's a sentiment, not a reason. We correlate it reliably with pulmonary disorders, that's a reason.
On a related topic, I also think "Chicken Little" tastes good with barbecue sauce. I hope they chuck a bucket of the stuff at somebody over this debacle (whoever turns out to be full of it).
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Toro
You can even publish your opinion, almost anywhere you like. Just don't expect to publish it in a journal unless it meets the journal's stated criteria for accuracy and methodology.
You are only supposed to trust the work of peer reviewed climate scientists. And only known trusted warmers can peer review the climate change data.
Well, since 97% of the people best qualified to judge the methodology of an article about climate science are already convinced by their own observations that AGW is a critical issue, good luck finding someone sufficiently educated who disagrees. Basically you're claiming that virtually all climate scientists are either a) corrupted or b) morons, and I think that's a very tough charge to make stick.
I certainly agree that peer review should not be an argument-ender (and there's plenty of sites like realclimate who are willing to discuss further). However I can also see that time spent battling the publicity of big-dollar vested interests for the "mindshare" of those who don't have the (significant) time or education to make a truly informed decision, is precious time that could be spent actually learning more about what the globe is up against, and could quickly get exasperating. Nevertheless, it's clear that the scientific community needs to make more of an effort to explain their conclusions to the lay public who doesn't know who to believe.
On that last point, for the last couple of hundred years it was qualified scientists whose opinions were generally given more weight; now apparently it's half-educated bloggers. When did that change, and why?
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
It's misinformation after misinformation. Almost all of the refusals to release data by the CRU come down to data shared by national weather services that they are contractually not *allowed* to share. Almost 100% of the data that they are allowed to share is publicly posted.
Now, there were a couple scientists who tried to find every excuse that they could not to share their particular data -- most notably, Phil Jones. But you only have to look at Jones' past to see why. He initially responded to all FOI requests -- including one by a financial trader named Douglas Keenan who fancied himself an amateur climate scientist (almost all of the professional climatologists are on one side of the issue, and its their ideological foes, generally people who don't know what they're doing, who are filing the requests). Keenan "discovered fraud" on the part of Jones's partner, Wei-Chyung Wang, and tried to get the FBI to arrest him. The university cleared Wang of all wrongdoing, but honestly, can you blame Jones for looking for any excuse not to have to deal with that again?
These are people who just want to work. They want to deal with litigious "amateur scientists" as much as they want a hole in their head.
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
>> What would be the point? You see, I actually have spent some time reading through the leaked data and email. The whole game is rigged.
Yeah, because the _entire_ community of climate scientists is one big evil cabal that locks out anyone that dares to challenge their views. My god this is stupid. Just like every other conspiracy theory that is based on thousands of people keeping their mouth shut and working together for some great unknown motivation.
If you could at least come up with a motivation for such massive conspiracy... but no, it's just evil scientists that don't want to be wrong and want to ruin the world instead. Cause that's likely...
Since it's so easy to disprove all of this, become a famous authority on this, get paid millions by energy coal companies, the Heritage foundation and other economically focused think tanks, and retire on your own private island.
Oh wait, you're still on slashdot? I guess it's easier to talk the talk than walk the walk, eh?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Yep. One of the most shocking things about global warming (should you choose to accept this theory) is that the Western countries that are causing it also stand to benefit. Russia was a no-brainer once you mentioned Siberia, the all-time classic example of a vast tract of land unsuitable for use because it's too cold. But I also question whether Europe or the US will be badly affected - affected for sure, but if the farm belt moves north into the Dakotas, so what?
The whole history of Western expansion is that we've built our economy on the backs of cheap foreign labor. As an American, you're "rich" precisely because the Chinese who make your goods earn 10x less than you. This system has survived because the "slave labor" class is like a hot potato that gets passed around. Once the Chinese grow out of it, they'll just hand it off to $THIRD_WORLD_COUNTRY.
But now we're threatening to take the very air they breathe and water they drink from the third world, via climate change, and profit from it. Under these conditions, how long do you think the empire-based economic model can survive?
Dear America
WTF do they put in your water (besides fluoride)? It appears the average IQ has dropped about 20 points the last ten years. Get your heads out of the sand, look around and do some real scientific thinking for a change. Here's a hint: There is extremely little scientific thinking being exhibited by the so-called deniers. The vast majority of them are cut from the same cloth as the 'Moon landing was a hoax" folks. Wake up and smell the blessed coffee already.
.Grow up. Your faux apathy rhetoric is amusing after I listen to you accuse me of an ad hominem attack.
I love it when people criticize ad hominem attacks and then proceed to create an ad hominem attack themself.
+1 Hypocrite.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
So, I would like to add something here. I think that a blanket release of the raw data could be problematic, but am for a data release. Even as someone with a degree that covers environmental sciences, economics, and statistics, I am not qualified to make a true analysis of this data and neither are 99% of the people who would attempt it, then claim one thing or the other. However, I am in support of the release of the data. Withholding data understandably engenders mistrust and releasing it would help, but I think that it should be released to a broad group of people who are agreed to have enough expertise to analyze the data.
This isn't to create some elite walled garden, but to give the science and data the respect they need in order to tell us anything. I feel like if the release was made to a broad enough group, and specifically a group of people with no history of weighing in on climate change, it should quell a lot of concerns about who is allowed to interpret the data.
Finally, thanks for making a real post with genuine concerns about the data instead of simply screaming hysteria like so many have on this data release without attempting to understand the context of the release.
Forget 'explaining' it. Did they test it?
IE, take your chemicals (you know, CO2, argon, etc.) and stick them in a container, and test the impact that sunlight has on them. Figure it out, contrive something. It's not science until you've done that, at least to some degree. This isn't economics, where shit can just be made up as we go along based on observations: the timeline for the global weather patterns is entirely too long to simply observe.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Because the cops are rightist and hire mercenaries to break windows and destroy things so they have an excuse to break out the tear gas. Protesters retaliate and it goes to hell. Of course, it also helps that in a large protest of thousands, if 30 people are arrested then it was a major league violent protest regardless of how small that percentage is of the whole since the media certainly aren't going to cover the boring calm people.
Of course, I don't expect you to really read, believe or research any of this since you just admitted to having an us (rightist) vs them (leftist) mentality and so are convinced that you are the second coming of Jesus.
as "proposed supporters of climate alarmism" ought to ring the warning bells, no?
I know this might be a bit far out there, but a) you did qualify with a big "if", and b) there may be (and I don't know being unilingual, and sometimes I'm not so good in that language, either) a colloquialism or idiom in Russian that translates poorly into English, such as trying to translate things like "yeah, right" (meaning: I don't believe you) or "out like a light" (asleep) or "sleeping like a baby" (usually doesn't indicate waking up every two hours, crying and having pissed one's pants) into other languages, especially if done mechanically. Ok, so that's basically only one point, but I thought it was a big enough point that it needed two letters attached to it.
Basically, you said, "if I'm right, I'm right, no?" And, I suppose the answer is, "Um, yeah, I guess so?" But that's just a strawman where we're supposed to glance right over your big assumption.
Then again, even should we grant you the big assumption, you're tearing down their argument based on an interesting combination of ad hominem (attacking the messanger as being, basically, a bunch of crackpots) and appeal to authority ("orthodox scientists"). Basically, this crackpot has posed a very testable and simple question: were a bunch of Russian data points ignored, and, if so, do they detract from the apparent consensus? The less testable question is whether, if the points were ignored and they do detract from the consensus, they were ignored due to this detraction or not. If they were ignored because, for example, they were unreliable (e.g., a thermometer that was in the middle of a field 80 years ago, but is now in the middle of a sprawling metropolis, thus affected by urban heating, or if it were moved 2 km up or downhill, their values may not be directly comparable, and thus discarding may have been the right thing to do, which then would lead skeptics of AGW to question if they did this consistently to all data points globally or just to these ones in Russia)? Or other valid reason perhaps? The charge is still valid, even if you don't like the accuser.
Except there has been no evidence shown whatsoever that it was a hack. No computer logs, nada. Moreover, the fact that a BBC blogger was emailed the file and decided not to publish it weeks before it became available on the russian site seriously undermines the hacker theory. Not to mention the fact that everything is collated into a FOI folder.
Oh not, you missed the point again. The real question: Is CO2 pollution?
OK, agreed.
Now can we stop calling CO2 a pollutant? The plants in my house disagree with such a statement.
The "changers" have been pushing, for 50 years, an agenda of decreased emissions, lower smog, lower power use, decrease/remove heavy metals from products - yadda yadda. And, for the most part, the results have been predictable: lower-quality automobiles which don't last as long, decreased emissions by a substantial amount (yet fuel economy on new vehicles remains mostly the same since the mid-80s), electronics which fail (and then get discarded) after a couple years due to whiskers on the crap tin solder, and so on.
Now, they're pushing to decrease our carbon footprints, whatever that means. Keep the house colder than the already-chilly 60F? Less driving (and eat more food due to the energy requirement increase from biking)? Less breathing?
You can not end "pollution". That's as brainfucked a quest as ending "hunger", in practice. What're you going to do, force-feed every person in the world? Because I could really use a ham sandwich right now. Pollution can't simply be summed up in a word, and doing so is like the hippies who said "make love, not war". They didn't know what the fuck they were talking about: the issue was much more complex.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I think the previous post is refering to truth. Which in turn is what Lewis was ultimately refering what he believed to be truth. If I remember correctly science is supposed to be the pursuit of truth. Here is a quote Nitezshe you might find more palatable "I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you". The real problem is that everyone is biased; the CRU, the russians, your dislike for C.S. Lewis quotes and my 4 weel drive gas guzzling Tahoe. To one degree or another we all look for what will justify our prejudice and disregard everything else. Are all the scientists like that? No. Are all russians? Richard Nixon thought so.
So some obscure right-wing economic think tank from Russia basically repeats the tired old arguments of a handful of bloggers, and now this is news?
We've been through the Russian data set argument back in September: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/
Been there, done that one. Sorry, this is old news.
Come on guys, give us something new! Where is your real evidence of fraud? Where is your real argument?
>climate science is no more complex than that.
I bet it is, actually. If we understood the climate, we could control it to anyone's benefit.
Look at the Sahara desert. It's right on the equator, you tend to assume, oh that part of the Earth is burnt to a crisp. It turns out the Sahara was verdant (source: History channel) just prior to the rise of Egyptian civilization. Wikipedia: "By around 3400 BC, the monsoon retreated south to approximately where it is today,[16] leading to the gradual desertification of the Sahara. [17] The Sahara is now as dry as it was about 13,000 years ago.[12] "
This is an emerging field. We don't understand all of the mechanics. But if a desert of that size can be created in the timespan of human civilization, that's the danger before us.
ok first off I am pretty sure the data from that little breakthrough will be published in a way that it can be verified objectively if it has not already. second the cancer gene people are not asking the planet to collectively spend trillions of dollars on blind faith in their research. If they where I am pretty sure people would be as concerned(if not more) about the integrity of it. For example any company that plans to spend even millions in r&d based on that research will likely want more than the scientists word.
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!
Good post. Maybe also worth noting is that all scientists depend on grant money, and winning grant money depends on politics. The best scientists have to compete with the most politically adept ones. If the public were more interested in science and less in empowering their own faction it would make things a lot easier.
Pollution is wrong. Let's come together in some comopolitan city - hmmm, maybe Copenhagen? - and agree to end pollution.
It doesn't matter if global warming happens today or 10,000 years from now. What matters is ending air pollution.
The issue here is not pollution. Every single person on this planet, including coal and oil producers, recognize that pollution is undesirable.
This is all about money.
You (And all people that see global warming as a massive issue) are asking people to change their ways to reduce pollution. Change costs money.
Thus the question becomes: Are you willing to spend time and money in order to cut down on the green house gasses, etc. A lot of people say no.
Now they cannot justify their answer as "No, I would rather contribute to global warming rather than make sacrifices". One position is that they deny that humans are the ones responsible. And they are willing to spend money on grants to have scientists try to prove them right.
Global warming is not a scientific debate, but a political one.
Given the credentials of the original press release (really that's all it was), my response was more scientific than the denialist's article.
C.S. Lewis wasn't so much a Christian as an apologist for that faith. Big difference in how much they toe the line to scripture and whatnot.
The Russians say that Hadley-CRU ignored about 3/4 of their data. It should be EXTREMELY FUCKING SIMPLE for the people there to go "Nope, we used it all, except for these very specific examples that we didn't use, and here's WHY". That's what would happen if they were conducting actual science. They would have RECORDS. Instead we're dealing with people who apparently don't record their homogenization techniques and DELETE DATA. For which, if the scientific community were acting rationally, they would keelhaul the fuckers.
No, it's not, when you're depending upon work by the IPCC because their role is to examine human-caused effects. The IPCC is not required to examine any natural effects.
It seems like I'm being bombarded by propaganda from both sides and the only way I'm going to find the facts is if I become a climatologist and study the data myself.
Academic prestive and paid research poistions are the motivation.
The CRU gets massive respect and lots of funding because it's 'leading the charge' against AGW.
If AGW is disproved they lose a lot of funding.
Same goes for *every* climatologist out there. 'Peer-reviewed' becomes a joke because maintaining AGW becomes more important than accurately assessing the paper.
No wonder there's 'consensus'...
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
Sure, wouldn't it be great if there were a peer reviewed article somewhere that also looked at the Siberian data to see if it was accurate?
You won't have to wait long, in press now ... Esper J, Frank DC, Büntgen U, Verstege A, Hantemirov RM, Kirdyanov AV, 'Trends and uncertainties in Siberian indicators of 20th century warming'. Global Change Biology.
Now, I'm not saying global warming is a hoax, but ...
Great! I don't have to write you off as a nutty conspiracy theorist then. ;)
I agree that that quote doesn't paint Dr Jones in a good light, but I there are two things I would point out.
Firstly, in context the quote seems less evil, though I agree, still not what one would hope for from a peer reviewer. Jones is responding to an email asking whether he had seen "this piece of crap by Esper" (an earlier "piece of crap" that is, not the one cited above). It appears that both scientists in this conversation genuinely think the paper is not good. Quoting from the same email just above your quote:
Jan [Esper] doesn't always take in what is in the literature even though he purports to read it. He's now looking at homogenization techniques for temperature to check the Siberian temperature data. We keep telling him the decline is also in N. Europe, N. America (where we use all the recently homogenized Canadian data). The decline may be slightly larger in Siberia, but it is elsewhere as well. Also Siberia is one of the worst places to look at homogeneity, as the stations aren't that close together (as they are in Fennoscandia and most of Canada) and also the temperature varies an awful lot from year to year. Recently rejected two papers ...
Similarly, it is just possible that Jones genuinely believed that the papers he rejected were not worthy of publication. That's actually how peer review works.
Secondly, even being less generous to Jones, --and it is undoubtedly bad luck to draw the chief of the institute whose work you are criticising as one of your reviewers or stupidity for submitting it to a journal where they are on the review board, take your pick -- Science, and the peer review process, is bigger than one biased reviewer (or even a nest of biased reviewers). As the publication of the Esper paper I cited above demonstrates.
Nice to have the luxury of expertise and time to examine all the evidence, but in practice Science relies largely on authority. I cannot spend years arguing or denying that the floating point processor on this box works as it should. I take it on authority from Intel engineers, and if another expert can come out and conclusively demonstrate that it doesn't, I expect them to fix it. Well actually that's not true, this is an AMD ... :?
Because I can explain special relativity in terms simple enough that anyone can understand, and climate science is no more complex than that.
I think you are wrong. It's way more complex and far less certain. Unfortunately the uninformed denialism (as opposed to the informed skepticism of your Lindzen's and Pielke's) has somewhat masked the uncertainties, as climatologists are constantly led to defend the relative certainties.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
the variety of opinions you can choose from
it's no good attacking them based on the fact they export oil.
It's not really an attack, merely setting the facts straight.
all the climate researchers who advocate AGW have a budget dependant on global warming research funding
That may be there, but the scale is vastly different. We aren't talking about countries' GDP in case of researchers.
do we also attack them and cast doubt on their motives because of it?
Attack - no. Cast doubt - yes, of course, albeit proportionally to their personal monetary interest in the matter. As it stands, I see that big opponents of AGW have much more at stake than its big supporters (even if you take into account carbon trading etc, which really benefits very few supporters directly).
Ultimately, of course, we want to look at the claims, and the facts that back those claims, not at personalities behind them. But it is not always possible or feasible to do it to sufficient extent, and ultimately you and me and other people who aren't climate scientists have to take certain things on trust (or spend years learning). In such cases, the amount of credibility is certainly important to establish.
There's a big difference between the cancer gene thing and the climate data thing. Those ones working on the cancer stuff have found something that might help fight against cancer. They're not asking anything of us, they're presenting their information. We can ignore them and go on with our lives.
But the climate change people are claiming that we've got to do this and do that and etc in order to prevent the end of the world. They're trying to make us do something and are using their finds to make us do it, so it's essential that we see their data so that we know that they aren't just manipulating via fraud.
I think this is what they call a strawman argument.
I'm not a C.S. Lewis fan by any means. That is why I said "what he believed to be truth". The point I was making is we are all biased. The point of science is the pursuit of truth.
More than that goes missing every year. It's called summer. You should check it out.
Qxe4
Since CO2 is not a pollutant, according to you, then why don't you prove it to us. Why don't you live in a pure CO2 atmosphere for a few hours, then tell us how things are working for you. I am sure you're plants would love it, so take them with you.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
This does not follow, because it totally ignores that the scientists with the data may have intrinsic bias, or even that they could be wrong. This is exactly why when you get a diagnosis from a doctor that says "Operate!", you get a second opinion.
One problem with this analogy is that it's not just one "doctor" that's saying "operate", it's thousands . How many more "second opinions" do you want before you accept that perhaps you actually need an operation? Are all those doctors quacks, every one of them?
I do agree the data should be public - and AFAIK there already are a great many public datasets, at NOAA and other places. You can gain access to more datasets once you exhibit certain basic qualifications (like a relevant degree). Just make sure you analyse a significant proportion of the data, and not just cherry-pick the bits that appear to agree with your conclusion, like so many deniers are guilty of.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Is there is an above average chance that there is a tipping point in the global climate system that can be reached and will end up setting a new stable point with a vastly different climate than we currently enjoy? The literature would seem to point to this conclusion.
The literature does not support this conclusion. There is no evidence of a tipping point where suddenly the earth's temperature will rise drastically. That is a popular propaganda point, but it has no base in practical research.
Qxe4
Wait... so you're saying that for some people a little global warming would not be a bad thing?
Yes, of course.
How do Canadians feel about it?
I don't know what the effect of ocean level rise will be on Canada. Climate-wise, I suspect that middle and northern provinces will see the same beneficial changes as Siberia.
The really interesting question is, once there are major rearrangements in terms of what is good land and what isn't, what the political consequences of that will be. E.g. regarding Siberia, I would expect China minding a lot.
You must be new to the internet, else you would possibly interpret that as yelling, or at the very least an emphasis.
If he had used italics or bold, you would be picking on him just the same even though that's what they are for.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The only thing that's been tested is that a system composed of gas and an IR emitter traps heat. However, IIRC all the experiments used much larger amounts of CO2, didn't have pressure differentials throughout the container, and weren't large enough to have a climate. The actual theories proposed all say that a certain layer of the atmosphere should be heating up much more rapidly at the equator than elsewhere, but that's not happening.
I thought the claim was the cherry picking of sites and not necessarily changing data (all though this is possible to). If you look at the stations, it is possible to cherry pick and prove anything. From a statistical purity point of view though, the best stations to choose for analysis would be the ones that haven't moved, aren't near an urban area, and have had continuous data collected. That is the charge, CRU did the exact opposite which would in the least be statistical malpractice. I am just trying to get it straight, regardless of who makes the claim. The fact that they are anti-AGW could just mean they are well motivated to discover this type of maleficence in the first place. I want to know if it is true. If it is true, I expect others to jump on the bandwagon soon.
Or did the climate science budget suddenly, dramatically and improbably multiply by a few orders of magnitude, to overtake the global petroleum industry?
Hey, if it did - perhaps climate science should just buy any deniers to shut them up. Wouldn't that be more consistent with these allegations?
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Besides the corruption, I tend to suspect the whole "if you aren't peer reviewed you aren't allowed to have an opinion" line of argument to be just a dressed up appeal to authority. Peer review is useful but should never be an argument ender. And then they go back to the appeal to authority well and try to say anyone who isn't a degreed climatalogist you can't have an opinion. Nope, just another appeal to authority.
Technically true, but without some sort of filter the idiots of the world can and do run DDOS attacks against scientists in "controversial" topics such as this one. And so far, 'peer review' is the best we've been able to come up with.
Go ahead and ask a scientist studying evolution how he feels with regard to creationists for instance. "Oh, I love discussing my work with them" is one answer you will *NOT* find, trust me.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Except there has been no evidence shown whatsoever that it was a hack. No computer logs, nada.
Wrong. East Anglia were first warned when attempts showed up on the logs of other climate scientists. When they checked they found their system had been compromised. Weeks before the Russian hackers posted on their site.
So honestly, whatever is going on in the world... who knows... it seems like everything out there is to seperate people and make them fight rather than "come together" which would be beneficial - but when have humans ever done the right thing?
so I live in the midwest, and when I was much younger, 18 years or so ago, I remember every winter we would get 2 or 3 feet of fluffy white snow which we would do all sorts of things with - I remember one year that it snowed so hard that we were able to grab shovels and pile up a good 8 feet of snow in between two houses, then carve a cave out of it... it took a couple days.
Now, it is december. Some of my grass is still green!!!! I can't remember the last time we got the kind of snow that we got back in the eighties...
now, I am not on either side of the whole global warming debate, but I always err on the side of caution - so if it takes a little thought and research, and my simple observation as I have outlined to you just now, I can't help but think something is wrong.
It's a privately funded free-market "think tank" that is based in Russia.
So since when did it matter who was making a counter-claim, I thought we were talking about science.
After all, with "real" science you'd simply point to the data they are using and show why the results are correct.
But instead we find that the CRU tried to block real scientists from saying the same thing.
But I guess all results that use private funding are inherently invalid, only agencies with government supplied funding can be trusted to always tell the truth, like the CIA for example.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I was going to mod you up but instead here's a comparison of the difference between the IEA stations and the CRU stations. I don't read russian so I don't know which is which but I suspect the blue line is IEA and the red CRU. It shows they've been nearly in lockstep since 1950 and well synchronized since at least 1900.
Gavin Smith of the GISS commented "... the issue is very likely to be connected to instrument changes/metadata changes that the IEA analysis doesn't look at at all."
But Russia is only a part of the world and even if the IEA were right it doesn't affect anything else enough to change the fundamental conclusions about global warming.
"Yeah, way to skip right over the actual allegation."
Have you ever noticed how much fater and less onerous it is to make a loud baseles allegation than it is to defend against one?
If the CRU letters are any indication, I guess this is how "science" is done these days, now, anyway.
Oh please, these people are not scientists they are scum sucking lobbyists. Personally I've been waiting over a decade for the so called "skeptics" to come up with a model or even a paper that shows "global cooling" or gives a credible alternative to the cause of the observed warming signal. The so called "skeptics" and their obfuscatory methods and claims can usually be tracked to far-right economic think tanks such as the CEI, Heartland institute, or in this case the IEA.
These people have as much credibility as the tabacoo CEO's who got up one after the other at the tobacoo trials and said "I do not belive smoking causes cancer". Matter of fact the Heartland Institute is where these CEO's got much of their "science". But hey, don't listen to what virtually every scientific institution on the planet is telling you, just keep thoses fingers in your ears and carry on parroting Anthony Watts in the interests of "fair and balanced" science.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If it weren't so late I would have thought my grandpa dialed into AOL again.
I think you are wrong. It's way more complex and far less certain.
OK, let me explain to you simply the climate science behind global warming. Understanding all the nuances of the climate system will take years (or more likely, is impossible for a single human brain), but anthropogenic global warming only needs three facts, two of which are probably reasonable, and the other which is not. Anyone will be able to understand this.
Fact 1: CO2 blocks some light from escaping the earth, causing energy to stay in the atmosphere that otherwise wouldn't. This is very well established, I don't think anyone seriously doubts this fact.
Fact 2: The earth is getting warmer. True, although the degree of change is small: within a degree or so.
Fact 3: Human produced CO2 has caused most of that warming. Unfortunately no one has ever been able to convincingly demonstrate that this is true.
The IPCC report tries to support fact three by saying that the computer models predict it. Unfortunately, there is no computer model that can accurately simulate the earth's climate. In order to bolster their claim, the IPCC report says, "we can't think of anything else that could cause such a warming other than CO2." What? Why not just show, "CO2 contributes X degrees to the earth's atmosphere, if we double it, then it will contribute X more degrees." There is no such statement because we don't know how much CO2 is actually affecting the earth's temperature. Would it make a difference of any significance at all if we completely stopped CO2 production? We don't know.
In fact, I challenge anyone here to show fact number 3, because I REALLY want to know about it. I've carefully read a lot of the literature looking for an answer to prove that link, but it really doesn't exist. Until it does, anthropogenic global warming remains nothing more than a conjecture.
If you have a way to establish that link, please show it.
Qxe4
A couple of years ago I saw an interview here in Oz with the russian finance minister/treasurer (not sure of the title or if he still has the job). Anyhow, the guy is not only an economic alarmist he is the Russian equivalent of Senator Inhofe, ie: a raving anti-science lunatic.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's all about economics and ideology. Nothing can stand in the way of the "Free Market". (btw TANSTAAFM). They're afraid it's going to hurt their pocketbooks and don't realize how much worse they'll be hurting if we don't do something about it. They reject the science because of their ideology and accuse the scientists of being ideologues instead. Isn't that called projection? I'm doing it so the other guys must be to?
Get off my lawn!
In discussing a scientific subject, questioning an authors credability (sic) by means of peer reviewed articles, is exactly what science is.
Are you really that stupid, or are you just trolling?
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
I have to agree with you that a conspiracy theory generally involves thousands of people keeping their mouth shut.
You have to be fair here however. In this case, thousands of people *didn't* keep their mouths shut. The issue here isn't that people aren't vocal in their dissent, it's that they are ignored or demonized. Some even had to go so far as to threaten to sue to be taken off the 'everybody agrees' list.
Personally, I think real scientists are more interested in their science than yelling doom. Sure they love to be published but they aren't really going to go yell all over the place that they were ignored if such were the case. They leave that to people more interested in being pundits than scientists and as was mentioned in several previous posts, there's no shortage of that on either side of the fence.
Especially given that the opposing views here are 'no big deal' vs 'omg everybody dies by 2025'. That's a gross exaggeration, obviously, but it's always harder to get people's attention when you're holding the 'no big deal' sign.
If I am to be honest with myself that's what I'd do anyway. If I had conclusive evidence against AGW (Not the smoking gun, just an 'hey guys you made a mistake there') and didn't get published, I'd shrug it off and keep working at this point. Sure my data might be entirely valid, but who's going to genuinely care besides the journals who refused the data in the first place? The news? Am I able to fit my data in a 30sec soundbite? Is it worth the effort? Will people even care? Do I really want to be labeled as that evil bastard who wants polar bears to drown?
Mind the frickin' laser...
That's how peer review works, if the peers don't think it should be published it ( usually ) doesn't get published.
A couple of interesting points are made clear from the email. One is that Phil wasn't sure in the case of one journal whether his rejection was sufficient. The other is that he had to argue his case. The journals didn't take his word on the rejection, but expected a reason for it.
"Serious doubt has been cast on the value of trusting these guys" by people who ripped a bunch of email snippets out of contexts, as you just did, and in some cases probably completely misconstrued them. Luckily, climate scientists have solved this problem by having lots of themselves working around the world even as the East Anglia guys are savaged by a campaign of innuendo based on casual, private conversations.
Play Command HQ online
Too lazy to register at yet another blog.
Just follow the money. Billions for CO2 "pollution" credits on the carbon commodities market. Unless CO2 remains a "pollution" these big bucks disappear along with the commissions, fees, and bonuses.
Same with revealing the ETs. The guys who keep em hidden are raking in big bucks exploiting technology. But ooops... that's all changing now. And the criminals running the CO2 scam are going down hard because we have hard evidence of their crimes and we're going to prosecute them.
A few days before the story broke a hacker took control of the realclimate.org site and posted a file containing the emails (reported on realclimate.org). Since then, some of the scientists at realclimate have recieved death threats that are currently under investigation by the FBI (reported on ABC Australia). There have also been reports of people impersonating IT staff at a Canadian climate research center.
Perhaps I have been wrong about the conspiracy theorists, maybe they have a point but just got it backwards.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I know this might be a bit far out there, but a) you did qualify with a big "if", and b) there may be (and I don't know being unilingual, and sometimes I'm not so good in that language, either) a colloquialism or idiom in Russian that translates poorly into English.
Not being monolingual and being accutely aware of how badly Google translation munges stuff I wrote (in the message you are responding to) "insofar as the Google translation is correct." Apparently you missed that.
Basically, you said, "if I'm right, I'm right, no?" ... But that's just a strawman
Had I "basically" written that, I did not, it would be a tautology, not a strawman.
Then again, even should we grant you the big assumption ...
Which big assumption?
you're tearing down their argument based on an interesting combination of ad hominem
I agree with you my objection to Mr Delingpole (or Ms Divine from the SMH) is ad hominem. But allow me to explain. There are some authors attached to (semi-)reputable journals such as the Telegraph, and other's I may read from time to time, whose work has proven to be so scandalously poor that I have made a conscious decision never to reward them with clicks. This is my right. When Delingpole's page came up I felt violated.
Here I cannot agree, what I wrote was not an appeal to authority and your saying so leads me to question whether you understand the fallacy you are citing.
Moreover, while argumentum ad verecundiam might strictly speaking be a lgoical fallacy, ie. X is not True because A says so, Science is, as I am constantly reminding people, largely based on authority. ie. A is more likely than I to know whether X is True or not. Authority tells me that cars can hurt human bodies, as a result I avoid walking in front of them.
Secondly a statement implying that scientific orthodoxy accepts AGW as highly likely, is in no way an appeal to authority, it is a simple statement of fact.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
True, if you don't have an f*ing clue but express an opinion anyway as if it is fact they ignore you. It's the same with almost every profession.
This entire stupid argument is expensive PR versus scientists that have suddenly found themselves in the political arena where the biggest liar often wins.
To use a car analogy it's as if there was a hit and run leaving a licence plate at the scene and an expensive lawyer is trying to pretend it has never happened because witnesses can not agree over what shade of blue the car was.
OK, let me explain to you simply the climate science behind global warming.
And you are ...? Permission denied.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
The root question is, does it make sense to pump pollution into a thin atmosphere? No, of course not, it is wrong to keep doing so. Therefore, we need to take steps to stop.
You just assumed the conclusion you wanted.
Why don't you go live in a pure oxygen environment for a few hours, then tell us how things are working for you.
"The *ONLY* way to settle this, is to release the data."
Even though that "wouldn't take long", it leaves plenty of time to speculate about ulterior motives of one "Institute of Economic Analysis" with their claim about "more" manipulated data while we had just established that no data was manipulated in the first place.
You don't have to speculate if you don't want to, but others probably will.
It is obviously not the same and actually nowhere near that simple.
Here's a challenge for you that should indicate that. Explain subsonic fluid flow near a rough surface in terms simple enough that anyone can understand. Make sure you cover the full range from rest to the speed of sound, a range of different surfaces and indicate clearly where you shift from one model of fluid flow to the next.
Then consider that there is more to climate than simple fluid flow and reconsider your argument above.
"it's no good attacking them based on the fact they export oil."
Yes it is.
"all the climate researchers who advocate AGW have a budget dependant on global warming research funding, do we also attack them and cast doubt on their motives because of it?"
No, because climate researchers aren't in it for the profit, while the oil industry is.
How many scientists are in the Fortune 500? And how many oil execs?
The free market will not naturally minimize its environmental impact. Polluting is good for the bottom line.
Not if green alternatives are cheaper. So isn't it far better to focus all sorts of funds on improving those things to make them cheaper? Then businesses will snap them up instead of being forced to use them. And developing nations will use them because they are the best alternative, short-circuiting the traditional large output of waste from developing nations.
But ignoring that, if your argument was totally correct why do we have the Prius?
I'm so tried of people simplifying everything businesses do down to the fearsome "bottom line", when the reality is every business is made of people, and people are simply not that rational. When you look around very little of what businesses do is "good for the bottom line", like the movie industry or music industry or car industry...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
According to the emails we read that definition appears to include "Data that does not agree with our hypothesis."
Because I can explain special relativity in terms simple enough that anyone can understand, and climate science is no more complex than that.
Oh.
Oh my.
For someone with a supposed penchant for appeal to evidence, you fail spectacularly in backing up this claim. Perhaps you meant to say that you can explain a watered-down version of a few of Einstein's ideas in terms simple enough that anyone can understand. But that's not really the part of your quote that I take issue with. In reality, special relativity is actually rather straightforward (though that certainly doesn't diminish Einstein's insight). You have two inertial reference frames in motion relative to each other, you assume Maxwell's equations hold simultaneously in both of them, you derive that it takes a Lorentz transformation to get the measurements of one frame to agree with another. Boom, done. With climate models where you want any sort of insight beyond the most basic level, you have to look at the energy transfer to the Earth, the energy reflected away, the energy absorbed by various components (sea and atmosphere, at the very least), the fluid dynamics and heat transfer dynamics associated with each of those components, the coupling of the components to each other via heat transfer and phase change dynamics, and if you want to get really technical, you try to tie this in with, e.g., solubilities of various greenhouse gases in water at different temperatures; effects of changing dimensions of ice sheets, deserts, and forests on Earth's albedo; trying to find a way to tie cloud formation in with all the rest of this; etc.
And herein lies the problem: climate science is vastly more complicated than most people make it out to be. There is no easy watered-down explanation that you can give to your grandmother that will do the field any justice, which is what makes it so frustrating when the science is politicized in this vein.
And as for your use of the Phil Jones email, read it a little more closely. You'll see that he was clearly reviewing a paper for a journal (you know, the whole peer review thing that you were talking about), and had little control, beyond his review, over whether it finally got accepted to GRL (Geophysical Research Letters). Note his use of the word 'hopefully.' Very revealing.
Can you point to where ALL this fossil evidence that supposedly "proves" evolution is held. What about Piltdown man doesn't that invalidate the rest of the fossils? Please don't point to the tens of thousands of papers and the godless "scientific community" who invariably fail to question the basic premise of evolution becuase the discovery institute has already debunked them using nothing more than a bannana. /sarcasm
Just case the sarcasm is too subtle.
The "missing raw data" is not neatly compiled into an easily acceessible database. It is held by countless weather and archival centers around the world, some of whom are unwilling to share unless you are willing to jump through hoops and wait months. It is on paper, in diaries, incompatable data bases, microfilm, ancient computer tapes, you name it. Anyone remotely familiar with the enourmous effort by Phil Jones and others to painstakingly collate, correct, and open up the HADCrut data set cannot help but see "climategate" for the witch hunt that it is.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Forget 'explaining' it. Did they test it?
IE, take your chemicals (you know, CO2, argon, etc.) and stick them in a container, and test the impact that sunlight has on them. Figure it out, contrive something. simply observe.
It's such basic science that you can do it in your kitchen. Take a look at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8394168.stm and see a simple experiment you can replicate yourself
- Paul
Red herring. Combating pollution doesn't imply Cap & Trade.
Talk about your red herring!!
Sure reducing pollution doesn't imply Cap & Trade. Reality check: what is being discussed now as the means to reduce pollution *is* Cap & Trade. That is the proposed solution that all the people in Copenhagen are working towards. So it's pretty damn misleading to claim that combating pollution is anything but Cap & Trade, when nothing else is being worked towards on a large scale.
Ad hominem.
Not really, I am saying that the people obviously do not believe what they are trying to sell us on. Beyond just this conference none of those people live as if carbon output is actually the problem they say it is. Shuffling around carbon elsewhere doesn't count, only real reductions do and none of them go to any lengths to do that. I am not attacking the messenger on a personal level such as saying they smell bad and therefore the arguments they make are unsound, I am attacking behavior related to the very thing they are arguing for. You cannot all speaker behavior off-limits, hypocrisy is a perfectly valid point to raise in debate because it fundamentally undermines what they are saying when they want me to do something they will not do themselves and is not irrelevant to the debate.
Someone else said it first, but I'm happy to repeat it - I'll believe there is a crisis when the people who say there's a crisis start acting like it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I beg your pardon, phantomfive, you are in fact my interlocutor. I should perhaps not have given you such short shrift, but that impertinence (in both senses of the word) was calculated to stop me reading another line. However since we are apparently in conversation ...
As you your point three, there are 2 lines of evidence, both of which are fairly convincing on their own. Firstly there is the carbon audit (for and interesting discussion see the beginning of this talk. Secondly, there is the isotopic smoking gun (ie C12/C13 ratios), which demonstrate that the increase in C02 concentration is largely the result of the combustion of biogenic (ie. land clearing and fossil fuels) sources. As I have to run, I'll leave it to you to pursue that yourself.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
No, that's how political/religious activists work, not scientists. Science is done by following the facts wherever they lead, regardless of your theory.
Are you really that stupid, or are you just trolling?
Well, which is it? Are you stupid or just a troll?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
if 30 people are arrested then it was a major league violent protest regardless of how small that percentage is of the whole
Sounds like when people see the cops wailing on someone and whip out their video cameras, conveniently eliminating the context of why (for good or ill) the cops are wailing on the person...
and so are convinced that you are the second coming of Jesus.
Why are left-wingers so accusatory? "Listens to Rush Limbaugh", "Watches FNC", molests little girls, blah blah blah blah blah. For supposedly being so intelligent, wise, open-minded, tolerant and loving of little animals, there are a hell of a lot of ignorant, self-righteous jackasses on "that side of the aisle"...
(Yes, I know that there are a lot of ignorant, self-righteous jackasses on "my" side of the aisle.)
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Replying to an ad-hom with another ad-hom is normally called a retort. Besides I'd say that the words "Grow up. Your faux apathy rhetoric..." are an astute observation, not an ad-hom.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Look at the evidence man, not the authorities.
Qxe4
If that were true, then you'd be able to find perfectly good articles were "censored".
Yes, here's one example.
Where are they? Well how should I be able to find them, when they could not publish them. Meanwhile we have a perfectly good report here from Russia that you are dismissing out of hand. How come *you* don't have to prove *that* is false? What happened to the scientific method here where someone else challenges a theory and you explain why the challenge is wrong using facts, instead of Ad-Hominem attacks?
There's that circle again, that you love to spin around so much. Whee!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Heh.....attacking the person, are we? Brilliant counter-argument you have there.
Read my explanation, if you understand climate science, you will see I am right. Appeals to authority get you nowhere in any real scientific sense.
Qxe4
What I find interesting about the incident is that AFAIK not one of the people at CRU who's email was leaked has claimed that the leaks were forged or altered.
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I see.
Apparently you misunderstood point three, and it should be added that there is little doubt that humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
Point three is, once again, so what? CO2 is increasing. We know this, but we don't know how much this is actually affecting the earth's temperature. This essential bit of science is in no way resolved. It could be significant, or natural variations could be more significant. No one knows.
Qxe4
am i late for a party with my in-soviet-russia joke?
It would have been an "astute observation" had he actually backed up his claims that it was indeed "faux apathy rhetoric". As it stands it's just a "no, it's not!".
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Might want to check the calander.
Play Command HQ online
The raw data is in pretty good shape and easily accessible. However this is just a collation of what is held on paper etc, so the conspiracy theorists still have an escape hatch wich their brain can escape through.
Hat tip to the article on Realclimate for the link. I'm sure you know of realclimate, they're the guys who won't show anyone their raw data.
"It may come as a surprise to some that the first compilation of world-wide meteorological data was published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1927, long before anthropogenic climate change emerged as an important issue (Clayton et al., 1927). This volume is still widely available on the library shelf as are updates that were issued periodically. This same data collection provided the foundation for the World Monthly Surface Station Climatology, 1738-cont. As has been the case for many years, any interested party can access this from UCAR (http://dss.ucar.edu/datasets/ds570) and other electronic data archives." - Realclimate
I await the analyisis of the of the slashdot skeptics.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Slow down, dear Slashdot Editors. The present impasse at Copenhagen might only be a game to raise the bets. Money might still flow and there is no reason to leave the Global Warming Propaganda ship just yet. Go back to peddling the New Religion.
On the other side, Russian economy depends on the fossil fuel exports, their nuclear technology lost luster after Chernobyl, their administration is strictly disciplined by Putin's regime, so who knows if the allegations would hold water...
So, the majority is *always* right? Or maybe even *usually*? Oh ... come on, at least *sometimes* .... oh snap, maybe just *mostly never*.
No, no, no. Science is the pursuit of knowledge. If you want truth you should look at philosophy.
We find no such thing. You are dishonestly stating things that are not in that linked e-mail at all. Dr. Jones points out that the problems in the Siberian data set are known and published about, and yet people keep submitting papers about it without referring to the existing literature. That's sloppy research, and he is right to recommend a rejection as a peer reviewer.
But don't take my word for it, here's the full text:
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Russia is a nation heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports, in fact, their entire economy depends on it else it would just flat out collapse again as it did at the fall of communism.
So the issue is this, even if Russia has made the allegations, even if they do provide data, there's no real way to tell that they haven't manipulated the data themselves to suit their own agenda of keeping the burning of fossil fuels the main form of energy worldwide.
We've seen the same tactics from Saudi Arabia, they have tried extremely hard to discredit climate research because again, without oil sales, their country would be in ruins.
So if the source of the reporter's claims itself is flawed then the whole article is flawed and a good and truly unbiased journalist wouldn't put such an article forward for publication. The fact the reporter himself is clearly quite biased and incompetent doesn't do much to help the situation, it just means he's found a biased source that suits his agenda. So yes, his source, might be right, that this institution did discard a lot of the data, but is that because they found a trend that demonstrate the data itself was bad, which would be no suprise coming from a country with such vested interests in pushing bad data. A good reporter would look for other sources in nations that don't have vested interests in showing up climate change as a sham, but oddly these don't really seem to exist. Even China accepts the problem and with their economy based on needing to pollute by way of their massive manufacturing base, they have much more to lose.
Pointing out the reporter is a joke, just opens the door for realising that even if he has reported what his source said or gave him correctly, doesn't mean his source is even correct and unbiased. It just means he's found someone willing to make such allegations for him to report on even if they're false. If however it had been a reporter with a good track record of being unbiased then we could have more faith that he'd used a valid, unbiased source.
I'm sure I could find plenty of sources willing to testify god exists so that I could write an article hence proving he does, but it wouldn't mean I was right, or that they were right, it would just mean I'd found people willing to push the same agenda as I.
So yes, the objectivity and fairness of the reporter matters, because it's a reflection of the whether or not they're likely to care about the validity of their source or mindlessly just publish without verifying.
I should perhaps not have given you such short shrift, but that impertinence (in both senses of the word)
Indeed, I was not trying to be impertinent, I apologize that I lent myself to such an interpretation.
Qxe4
His point three is not about whether the current concentrations of CO2 are human-produced (as you say, the isotopic ratios seem conclusive), but how much of the measured warming is due to CO2 concentrations. "We can't think of anything else" is not very good as an answer and, according to him (I have no idea), predictive models of temperature-vs-CO2 concentration seem to be lacking.
OG.
The Russians are not "believed" to be the ones who broke into CRU, they are rumoured to be the ones who did so, based on, AFAICT, nothing more damning than the fact that the original URL for the file was at a *.ru machine, and that the server was physically in Russia.
And, as ravenshrike says, there has not been the slightest shred of proof that CRU was broken into. It was a leak. The "hacked" cock and bull story was invented by Jones in order to try to turn a huge scandal into a mere data theft issue.
The Russians stand to make billions out of selling carbon credits, so I doubt they have any incentive to derail the gravy train the West is sending them.
And importantly in the analogy when you get a second opinion you go to another doctor, not some nut-case.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
If you aren't deliberately making CO2, that CO2 is pollution.
There's NO NEED to use that coal and oil to burn. Get out of the stone age, dude. Burning stuff for heat and light is so last epoch. We have technology now that means we don't have to burn this stuff.
He initially responded to all FOI requests
It's worth pointing out that at one point CRU were getting over 50 FOI requests per week from climate skeptics. Maybe it's more now. That is a crazy additional workload for the CRU scientists who are paid to do actual research and not fill out FOI replies.
Beware...Local warming is coming to get you!
I was hoping someone would've already pointed that out! Additionally:
The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley CRU survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.
That is a Strawman argument. No scientist has claimed that every region of the world must experience warming simultaneously in order for the global mean to increase: Regional cooling does not disprove global warming.
It is probably also worth noting the fact that Russia also has some of the worlds largest reserves of oil and natural gas and considers exploiting them to be one of it's most likely avenues to economic success.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
This will be easily verified. Bloggers are now, as we speak, trying to find and looking at the various issues with the stations removed from the analysis. It's interesting to note that the scientists aren't! The story so far shows that many stations that had no siting issues or problems whatsoever were removed from the analysis. This is the important point (it wouldn't be a story otherwise).
One problem with this analogy is that it's not just one "doctor" that's saying "operate", it's thousands [wikipedia.org]. How many more "second opinions" do you want before you accept that perhaps you actually need an operation? Are all those doctors quacks, every one of them?
There are capable, incompetent and mediocre people working in every job on the planet, so who's to say whether a single doctor's diagnosis is accurate at any given time? While in the great majority of cases a doctor would be correct in most cases, do you really want to bet your health that you're not the mistake? Just read the case of Richard Feynman's first wife.
Thousands of experts would have assured you that pholgiston and the ether existed. The consensus view in medicine has been wrong lots of times: routine tonsilectomy, eggs and other foods as contributing to high cholesterol, the effects of tobacco and alcohol - the last is particularly good because you can very easily see that many individual doctors use their medical knowledge to bolster their own prejudices and choices.
You can gain access to more datasets once you exhibit certain basic qualifications (like a relevant degree).
Why should that restriction exist at all? Who decides what a relevant degree? Do you need to be a climatologist? a statistician? is my econometrics heavy MSc enough?
Bollocks was it. The private emails don't reveal anything astounding, and certainly do not reveal some vast international conspiracy.
More important, you don't need to be a climate scientist to realize these guys aren't practicing science. They suppress debate, suppress the data and the details of the models used to analyze it. Basically they are putting on their Science! priesthood robes and making pronouncements we are expected to accept without question based on their authority.
Bollocks again. It's clear the scientists had issues about supplying their arch opponents with every scrap of raw data requested but there are plenty of understandable human reasons for that. If I were working on something, anything and some asshole kept demanding I drop everything to satisfy some random request which was going to be put online to publicly criticize me, then I might have issues too. And that's what it amounts to. I'm sure the personal emails of scientists involved with 9/11 investigation, or evolution, or air crash investigation or any other "controversial" area of research share similar sentiments.
Should these scientists be more open with their data? Probably. An open and transparent framework for peer review will only make their findings more rigorous. Should that mean they pander to every stupid request made by deniers? Absolutely not.
The Hockey Stick debacle came about because someone used math they didn't really understand... or was outright fraud.
Wrong. Climate myths: The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong. The "hockey stick" was investigated by a 2006 report of the US National Academy of Science, which found that:
"The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world."
So, the "hockey stick" is okay, unless you think that the US National Academy of Science are a) liars and b) taking part in a global conspiracy.
I got your dataset, it's a giant iceberg off the coast of Australia.
How hard can it be to create a mandatory public repository of all climate research data points?
Think a website that contains all the data files used in published climate research, with a description of how it was applied in the particular research.
Millions of public funds world wide are going into researching these papers and establishing data points.
It would go a long way into re-creating trust in the science being done; and probably improve the overal quality of the research at the same time by making the raw tools available outside the current select group of climate researchers.
When an editor broke with the unwritten rule the warmers had the offending editor removed. Another journal allowed a few doubting papers in, the warmers are writing about organizing to not publish in, cite from and generally shun the heretical journal.
It's difficult to be sure since you don't provide any references, but apparently you are referring to the publication of a bogus review paper by the Climate Research journal, and the resulting debacle.
Just to let you know, in the real world, no editor was "removed". Half the editors, including the hastily appointed editor-in-chief, resigned in disgust. The reason why people were upset is that an obviously flawed paper was published by exploiting a non-standard review process. If the Time Cube guy managed to publish an article in some journal, you bet people would become wary of being associated with it. Wait, no, actually you would regard this as an obvious conspiracy by the entire scientific community to suppress the very real cubicity of the universe.
See, that's one reason why people call you "denialists" instead of "skeptics". When faced with a difficult problem that they don't fully understand, real skeptics will look for more information, rather than just confabulate their conspiracy fantasies into an alternate reality.
Dump all their data on a website. Respond to FOI requests with a link. Any scientist that doesn't disclose their data SHOULD be viewed very skeptically; they're asking US to 'have faith'. That's not how science is supposed to work.
Wait till the permafrost starts melting, that'll convince the Russians about climate change as their cities start wobbling and sinking.
Wtf
Climategate is about a whistleblower releasing email, data and code having been gathered for a long time (likely due to FOI requests). The only other possible explanation is that it was done by mistake (yes, seriously)
There's absolutely no indications whatsoever that this was done by "hackers" - it would be near impossible actually.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/07/comprhensive-network-analysis-shows-climategate-likely-to-be-a-leak/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/23/the-crutape-letters%C2%AE-an-alternate-explanation/
it's in my head
You can gain access to more datasets once you exhibit certain basic qualifications (like a relevant degree).
Why? Is the data DANGEROUS? There is no justification for that behavior. They aren't temple priests, and they shouldn't act as if they were. Free exchange of information isn't a problem for an honest scientist.
40% as compared to when?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMcxri_f1rw
it's in my head
If you'd like a very good answer to that question, go here:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/12/trust_scientists
Now imagine some guy whose family pissed Stalin off, spending his fifth year at a weather station in the middle of a Siberian winter with nothing but some half-rotted potatoes, a still, and the collected works of Fyodor Dostoevsky for company. What could possibly go wrong?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
When given two claims, one backed by a peer reviewed article, and one not, saying that the unbacked claim is less credible is the scientific way.
The scientific way would be to first apply a bit of critical thought YOURSELF to the contents of the papers. After all, that's all the 'peers' do. Peer review is an important step, but pointing to consensus is never an appropriate rebuttal to a specific criticism. That's just avoiding thinking.
Without AGW, CO2 is not a pollutant.
(It's plant food. More CO2 in the atmosphere = a greener earth)
it's in my head
Unless the IEA produces data it claims is 100% raw uncut, this story is below the threshold of credibility.
Can we, um, ask the same of the CRU?
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
Economists are people who do statistical analysis. You don't need a degree in meteorology to calculate average temperatures read from various weather stations. And if you have any shred of understanding on the subject, you will know that even if they have a temp reading for 1000 stations in Russia, and the temp is recorded as a float, and is recorded every second for 100 years, into that would be:
4bytes * 7000sites * 100 years * 31536000seconds in a year = 88,300,800,000,000bytes. Woah, a huge number! Wait, that's only 88Terabytes, and you can get 2TB drives for $150. Sorry, I don't buy the CRU excuse that they couldn't store the data and had to clean it off - they didn't even have 10Tb, much less 88. Data storage gets cheaper and cheaper - a disk cluster 20 years ago is a thumb drive today. Not buying it.
Then, had you actually read the article, you would have seen this: "One the final page, there is a chart that shows that CRU's selective use of 25% of the data created 0.64C more warming than simply using all of the raw data would have done."
Using all the raw data is precisely what the number crunchers are saying they did. Do you really think a bunch of PhD's in math care whether the data is temps, or stock prices? They do analytics on *numbers*. Don't worry, they're happy to leave the meteorology to the weatherman...that's not what is being studied here, though.
In order to bolster their claim, the IPCC report says, "we can't think of anything else that could cause such a warming other than CO2."
This is a (deliberate?) misunderstanding. The IPCC says, that the numerical calculations agree with the current warming trend and show a rather dramatic temperature increase in the future.
What? Why not just show, "CO2 contributes X degrees to the earth's atmosphere, if we double it, then it will contribute X more degrees." (...) In fact, I challenge anyone here to show fact number 3, because I REALLY want to know about it. I've carefully read a lot of the literature looking for an answer to prove that link, but it really doesn't exist.
This is a bullshit request. Temperature is not a simple analytical function of CO2 concentration. Your request is equivalent to ask for the exact solution to the three body problem (or, rather, the 1-million-body problem), or wave function of a crystal. For all these problems, no analytical, easy solutions are known, and the "easy" part is very likely impossible.
Still, we do have numerical approximations of these things (and in some cases damned good ones!), just as the climate scientists have developed numerical approximations of the earths climate.
If you want to reject the conclusions of the climate scientists on the philosophical argument that "it is just a computer model", then you can reject most of the physics done in the last 50 years.
You could of course detail why you think that the models/approximations of the climate scientists are horribly wrong (preferably backed up with data/simulations on your own), but that is not what you are doing.
There is no such statement because we don't know how much CO2 is actually affecting the earth's temperature.
Yes we do, at least considering the overall trend. Because we do have numerical approximations of these things.
The scientific process isn't different for climate scientists than any other science. In fact, the way science should be conducted is simple enough that any intelligent 8th grader should know it. They would say that keeping data secret is bad science; they would be right. They would say that a valid criticism is a valid criticism, regardless of the source; they'd be right.
There's no certification process to become a scientist, any more than you need a literature degree to be a writer. A scientist is one who does science, and there are 'scientists' on both side of the issue that aren't doing much of that.
But Russia is only a part of the world and even if the IEA were right it doesn't affect anything else enough to change the fundamental conclusions about global warming.
Russia is regularly the "most warm" part when the monthly global numbers are released, and extrapolations made from stations in Siberia are often used to get numbers for the Arctic.
So, on the contrary, this does effect the global numbers released a lot.
it's in my head
Well, if it's produced by a "think tank" whose main product is advice on economic policy, it's 100% guaranteed, certified bullshit.
That's true, I suppose. A clear, honest, answer could resolve the whole situation immediately. I don't think we're particularly likely to get one though; for some reason, they like to hold their cards close to their chest. Distasteful behavior for a scientific organization. I'm not sure their conclusions are wrong, but I sure don't like how they're behaving.
Here are some "second options" :
Are all those doctors quacks, every one of them?
Sorry, but that's simply incorrect. You picked that definition of science up from an Indiana Jones movie, didn't you?
Experimental science follows theory and speculation, forms testable hypotheses and tests them. Why not the other way around? Well, you can't form a testable hypothesis based on fact. Facts don't ask questions. So in science, you can't "follow" facts.
The claims about them have already been thoroughly debunked.
But you should know that, otherwise you would not be trolling as an AC.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
And it's additional work they're required to do by law. They can't just go "sorry, I'm too busy". And how about this - why not make all the data, models publically available and put a link on the website? The reason they're getting requests is because they're sitting on the data.
And to those who say the data is out there, it's just not. A lot of the adjusted data is there but the list of stations used, the raw measurements, the reasoning for adjusting the data and how isn't.
You remind me of the creationist types I used to argue with.
Apart from where you're factually wrong, show me how this differs from, say, how "creation science" is locked out from evolutionary biology.
Your reply smacks of a bad PR firm trying to spin news detrimental to their position.
Thank you for smoking, that is all.
In your portrayal of the unreasonable workload, you fail to point out that these FOIA requests were from different people but largely from the same data, so that giving a satisfactory response to one would have meant giving it to all, hence the workload of one (1) FOIA request.
Convenient mistake you did in forgetting that, eh?
It doesn't matter if global warming is real or not.
The root question is, does it make sense to pump pollution into a thin atmosphere? No, of course not, it is wrong to keep doing so. Therefore, we need to take steps to stop.
It does matter. The debate is not about air pollution. The debate is about CO2. And no, CO2 is not a pollutant. Remember, without CO2 there will be nothing green.
Regardless of who the hacker was or the moral turpitude of the hacker, it does not change the absolutely destructive nature of the contents of these emails. Those emails give good reason to question everything. This issue cannot be scotched, and it would best serve humanity to deal with with complete transparency so that we can get back to the important business of saving the earth.
-- $G
You're saying that releasing raw data would make the facts come out as if it's some sort of natural process. It's not: raw data has to be analyzed by people, and only knowledgeable people at that. And majority of the people in the world knowledgeable about the subject have a strong pro-warming bias today. So they will interpret the data the way they prefer. In fact they have done that already. Nothing is going to change that: the majority will see what they want to see, and what majority believes is truth will be truth, for the time being.
I personally think it's really bad science to talk about these wild hypotheses as facts, both on the pro-AGW side and the anti-AGW side (who are also quick to declare something a fact, be it about ice shelves this and that or temperatures not changing or whatever). And I'm terribly annoyed that that bastard Al Gore and others like him will stand to profit on this. But on the plus side if we take action as if AGW were real, we will reduce pollution, and maybe take a breather for some time from the relentless "must grow!" rule. If (when) in a couple of decades we come to believe that AGW was probably a sham, at least we'll all be a little healthier and a little more mellow.
I hate ad hominems.
Fnord.
The claim is easy to prove wrong. It takes a single statement of the methodology used to choose these stations instead of others.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Calling your opponent names does not help your credibility much, Mart. It does serve to prove the point that your opponent is making.
-- $G
It doesn't matter if global warming is real or not.
The root question is, does it make sense to pump pollution into a thin atmosphere? No, of course not, it is wrong to keep doing so. Therefore, we need to take steps to stop.
There are monied interests deliberately prolonging this useless debate about "Global warming - real, or not?" Think about why they do that.
Pollution is wrong. Let's come together in some comopolitan city - hmmm, maybe Copenhagen? - and agree to end pollution.
It doesn't matter if global warming happens today or 10,000 years from now. What matters is ending air pollution.
I agree. Pollution is bad. So let's concentrate on pollution to limit it and stop this silly war on CO2!
Since when did Carbon Dioxide become a pollutant? We exhale it, plants inhale it. It's part of our atmosphere and always has been.
You are proposing that it is OK to Cherry Pick the data, if you know what you want to prove, or are an expert.
No it isnt; how do you know the __normalization__ makes sense, and if it justifies rejection of raw data, that is exactly why you have to keep all the rew data and see how statistically significant you results are.
Blatant data tampering and dubious data fitting is the main reason why I have recently concluded that AGW is, at the very least not-proven and likely deliberately fradulant. The "we cant release the raw data argument" is laughable in an issue of this importance.
But, most importantly, the CRU e-mails and, more importantly code, raised grave doubts about the ethics of the CRU-MET-IPCC cabal, and this Russian data just re-inforces that, tnere is no point trying to get this genie back in the bottle, the AGW faction have to produce all the raw data and subject their analysis to hostile analysis.
As has been pointed out the US are not in without the consent of Congress, Labour will be out in the UK and Russis and China show no sign of being convinced, I say again, without a lot more convincing proof this scam is dead.
But the climate change people
:)
Back to the point! If by 'climate change people', you mean scientists working in the field of climate change with a specific emphasis on human contribution, then the ones I listen to don't advocate any change in human behaviour. In fact they do exactly what you have posited for the cancer research people, present their data, explain their conclusions and leave the rest to the politicians. If others choose to listen to those that infuse their case with hyperbole (on either side of the discussion) then more fool them.
Perhaps I am alone in not requiring the raw data - there is a point beyond which doubt makes no sense - if we are going to doubt the whole peer-reviewed edifice on which scientists rely to sort the wheat from the chaff - then the discussion shouldn't be about which field we can trust (cancer versus human influenced climate change) but on the how the scientific community present and validate their findings in general.
You would do almost as poorly if you were to start living in a pure oxygen atmosphere. Are you suggesting that oxygen is a "pollutant"?
No. You need to be a Scientologist to access the exclusive material.
No, it isn't that simple. Hadley-CRU almost certainly used automated statistical tests to decide which data to reject, and those can't easily be explained to non-statisticians.
However: http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=28187 [www.informationliberation.com]
So, remind me again, just who is cozying up to Big Oil like a latter-day Anna Nicole Smith in an attempt to get more money to further their own agenda?
No, the CRU very carefully didn't use the raw data - because a lot of the raw climate data, especially the older stuff, is just plain wrong. People haven't been very careful about how they collected and recorded data in the past...
How is it not reasonable that if we understand well and agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that there is a record concentration of it in the air currently, compared to ice core data, and that humans are causing this increase in concentration, that the temperature rise therefore would not, according to the well-known greenhouse mechanism, be linked to human emissions?
To me it seems like insanity to argue that this effect would not exist, or that we should presuppose some unknown mechanism to account for the warming instead of the most obvious explanation, and that it would be perfectly ok to just keep on pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, suggesting that "well, this time the greenhouse gas might work differently!"
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Dollars to donuts. Will we still use that when a donut costs $1.50???
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
Again, when a claim on a scientific subject is backed by peer review, and a counterclaim is not, I don't need to review the content of the papers myself to know that claim 1 starts with a credibility headstart.
Honestly, how hard can it be? Why do people keep insisting that the peer review doesn't matter? Because they want their favourite cranks to be right? Sucks to be you, because it just doesn't work that way.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
In the eyes of morons and cranks, yes. You know what? I don't care about your opinion of me. But the facts and established practices are verifiably on my side, so I don't have to care. I just enjoy sniping at idiots.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Tampering, fudging or normalising data is never justified, and if undertaken by the AGW cabal completely invalidates their conclusion. Everytime this approach is tried it leads to wrong or unsupportable conclusions.
.. 50 years
Anything else is just plain mathematically wrong. Then when you try to fit the data to a trend goodness of fit or significance tells you how well your theory fits all the raw data. Wen you do that, even with the small amount of data that is publically available, you see a small linear temperature fall for the last 10 years, no Hockeystick or exponential temperature rise. This is exactly why there is so much PR and Hype and the Climategate CRU emails show that Jones and Mann are very well aware of this.
This is why all the raw data needs to be released by MET, CRU, NASA & NOAA and be subjected to adversarial analysis without fudging.
Mathematically the AGW gang is in much deeper trouble, since Chaos Theory was formulated in the mid 1990s it has become clear that computer mathematical models relying on extrapolating differential manifolds eg Navier-Stokes and Heat equation are very unstable with respect to initial conditions. Put in laymans terms, even if we could agree on the weather conditions not, and as we see we cant, then there is no chance to extrapolate 1, 10
and this has been known for all the time of the construction of the AGW thesis.
This is why accurate weather forcasting uses satilites and radar not computer prediction, for which the MET office were proponents
This MUST be biased - the writer doesn't agree with my opinions! Move along now, nothing to see here.
Real quick observation... C02 isn't pollution.
load "$",8,1
Let's say you are a patient who wants a second opinion, you would do well to go to another qualified doctor rather than some quack. If you seriously doubted the opinion of the first doctor, then you could reasonably want to get new data as well, perhaps a second X-ray, or even use a different technology like a CT-scan. And what if that second opinion gave you the same answer - do you ask again and again until you get the answer you want? That kind of behaviour could get you killed.
Likewise, when you want a second opinion on climate change, who do you go to? Another climatologist obviously - ideally one who collected his own data independently from another source using different technology. Not reusing the same data.
The fact is, by far the greater majority of climatologists from many different organisations having independently collected their own data are coming to very similar conclusions.
That is something you can't ignore.
How about "I'd like some evidence you're going to do something useful with the data before I bother preparing it for you"?
Yeah. Because releasing the raw data has done such a good job of shutting up the deniers before. No, wait, every time *that* has happened we've watched the climate-change deniers cherry pick data out of context and have screaming fits.
In fact, while we don't know if there is a valid solution, one thing we know with absolute certainty is that releasing raw data to climate change deniers is like releasing raw steak to rabid pit bulls - the results are painful to watch, messy, and not the best use of perfectly good steak.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
The Freedom of Information Act only applies to public authorities as defined in the Act and includes companies that are wholly owned by public authorities. Oh, and even then, if it'll take more than 10 hours to prepare, they don't have to. That's NuLabor(TM) for you.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
They are not obliged to provide the information if they judge that the request is "vexatious" e.g the requestor is deliberately trying to waste their time. It would, in fact be quite reasonable for a scientist in that position to judge repetitive requests from a lunatic fringe of climate change deniers/conspiracy theorists as vexacious. After all, climate change deniers have long based their platform of conspiracy on the notion that accepting money to study climate change means you are a liar.
So they are quite entitled BY LAW to say no to an FOI request, based on defensible criteria in this circumstance.
And to those who say the data is out there, it's just not. A lot of the adjusted data is there but the list of stations used, the raw measurements, the reasoning for adjusting the data and how isn't.
As other posters have pointed out the sites were chosen by an automated process, and the criteria used by that process IS publicly available. And the unadjusted data IS available, since the CRU didn't collect it, the data can be obtained from the sources that THEY received it from. And the methodology IS available, as is the reasoning behind it.
Which begs the question for the climate change deniers - where is the smoking gun?
I interpret it as yelling, more specifically the yelling of a crazy man on a street corner.
You can get access to the published papers easily enough, though you may have to pay (I don't like that, but it's the way it's done, blame the journals not the scientists). No special qualifications required. And actually there's a lot of published material for free.
foia requests aren't so simple that you can point out a link with everything you have. at least in america they aren't. you are asked to search your data, files, emails, physical papers and notes, everything for specific terms. it really does take a while to get everything together.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Free exchange of information isn't a problem between honest scientists. To some random political asshole who will merely use it as ammunition? Not really.
Thousands of experts would have assured you that pholgiston and the ether existed.
But upon experimentation we found evidence that said otherwise, and on the basis of that evidence, our understanding of reality changed. Still some people clung to the old mythology. So you can't justify the notion that you don't have cancer on the basis of past mistakes in medicine because the evidence is with the doctors, and not with you and your comforting mythology.
The *ONLY* way to settle this, is to release the data. Given the far reaching implications of the decisions that will be reached through interpretation of this data, FOR EVERYONE IN THE WORLD, I fail to see how the financial interests of the people who collected it can outweigh the invested interest of the rest of the whole world, who's economical and climatological futures hinge upon it.
You really think that will settle anything, and it won't simply be cherry picked dishonestly like it has every time before? Organising and providing data to people who are not competent to make good use of it is not a sensible use of time. Scientists aren't exactly swimming in resources, and would rather get on with their work. The "sceptics" won't believe it no matter what, and the non-conspiracy theorists don't need it.
Your "second opinion" argument is bizarre, considering there are hundreds of second opinions in climate science, made with numerous independent data sets. The vast majority of them say the same thing. If hundreds of doctors had examined you, doing their own tests each time (not sharing data), and 95% of them said it was necessary to operate, would you accept it then? Even if they didn't show you the raw test data but only the final, summarised results?
Thousands of experts would have assured you that pholgiston and the ether existed. The consensus view in medicine has been wrong lots of times: routine tonsilectomy, eggs and other foods as contributing to high cholesterol, the effects of tobacco and alcohol - the last is particularly good because you can very easily see that many individual doctors use their medical knowledge to bolster their own prejudices and choices.
I think the key difference here is that the human body is a complex, hard to diagnose system. Its functions were not deterministically designed, but instead arose in a complicated, interdependent fashion.
The climate of the Earth on the other hand, well all you have to do is lick your thumb and hold it to the wind to figure out what's going on!
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
You know I get this argument quite often from intellectuals. What you are essentially saying, at least in practice, is that if you hold an unpopular opinion you are obligated to maintain a higher standard of behavior.
If we were operating in strictly academic or professional circles I would tend to agree that keeping everything entirely above board and beyond reproach would be the best way to ensure that if you are correct you eventual prevail in the debate. The problem is we are not in those circles; the climate debate is political first science second.
The "pro choice" crowed figured out early on the way to win the debate was to control language used. This is why the neither side will use the others language now. The "pro life" lost lots of ground before they learned that an academic discussion of ethics and morality was not an effective strategy labeling their opponents as "baby killers" is.
We moved into the same realm with climate science. Its a political problem now and its going to get a political solution regardless of weather that has any relationship with natural world or not. If you are not convinced its happening, or that it is a serious threat and you are seeking to avoid a major political intervention than the answer, somewhat sadly, is to label your opponents. You call them "fascist, warmer, totalitarian, idiot" while they call you "heartless, denier, cook, conspiracy nut,..."
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I'm sorry, did you address the issue? or did you circumvent that little topic and go straight for the ad hominem assault?
If we're going to label anything as "below the threshold of credibility", we should probably start with your comment.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Yes, if providing the data increases your liability for being investigated/sued. There's an awful lot of money and prejudice riding on the status quo. Those people will do nasty things to protect their monetary interests.
At least one of the climatologists was sued (the case was dismissed because the suit was groundless) because he released his data. That's not going to encourage others to share, now is it?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
That sounds nice, and all, but I call bullshit. First, if they were contractually obligated to keep their raw data secret, they could simply say so, instead of just stonewalling FOI requests. Feel free to post copies of the contracts and prove your assertion. Second, if they had the evidence -- the raw data -- that would shut the mouths of "deniers" once and for all, they'd release it in a heartbeat for the very reason you cite that they don't.
The bottom line is that the fact that we still don't have the raw data sets WEEKS after this story broke is damning. Either they don't have it, or they know that it doesn't show what they SAY it shows and are simply trying to avoid exposure, or they are cooking the books (some more?) to support their theories before releasing it. There's absolutely no excuse to not just simply but EVERYTHING on the table at this point, and let EVERYONE, professionals and "amateurs" alike, have at it.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
I say the ANALOGY to HITLER and NAZIS is pretty strong here!!!
Having read the linked Russian article, I think it is BS.
The folks are basing their claims on maps of stations that show supposed biased distribution of stations. They are making the claim that the selected stations somehow exhibit a trend which doesn't exist.
Obviously I haven't played with underlying data (available at meteo.ru -- the Russian meteorological agency), but the maps that show "suspicious" selections are showing the coordinate system as rectangles with equal sides. It seems to me that with this projection, the selection will look like polar stations are under-represented, when, in fact, that will not be the case at all.
If you consider the actual territory (i.e. choose a different projection) you'll likely get a totally different story. So, while I am unsure if we have global warming, and while I think handling of the CRU email scandal was a disaster and the ongoing investigation is warranted, it seems this particular piece is not very strong reason for skepticism.
Knowing how stations are actually selected would solve this mistery easily.
Isn't this how science operates. Someone puts forth a hypothesis based on evidence collected and others test it. Later if it's found to be incorrect it is rejected and replaced with the new theory. The theory of Phlogiston lasted around 100 years and was the forerunner of understanding metabolism as well.
Aether, on the other hand, dates back to far before the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th century and should really be discounted.
Phlogiston, persisted as a theory because no competing hypothesis existed at the time could better explained the data, and the data available at the time did not contradict the theory.
Climate science today is different with many scientists going out of there way to enormous quantities of data ranging from this such as tree rings, to limestone deposits, to sun spots to ice cores to real temperature data from the ground and from satellites.
Mind you, the term "greenhouse effect" was introduced way back in the late 19th century, so the idea is hardly new. It is certainly way longer than say the intervening time between the discovery of eggs in cholesterol, and the discovery that consumption of eggs do not increase blood cholesterol levels.
To equate climate change to phlogiston or egg cholesterol is a long stretch indeed.
Nonsense. There are plenty of scientists who perform work for profitable companies, and often their work directly contributes to profits. Certainly the number of scientists who don't depend on grant money is greater than zero.
One could argue that those scientists not driven by the quest for grant money are more credible. But those are easily shot down by propagandists as funded by "greed" and "big business".
Unfortunately, the global warming argument is less about science and more about politics. Creating alarmist theories (for both sides) was an easy way to fame or money. Certain individuals recognized that taking sides in the debate was a way to increase their fame and money, and some have even become well-recognized, rich heroes in the process.
But now it's worse: At this point, certain countries whose relative economic stature is on the decline recognize that the one effective strategy to change their relative positioning is to weaken the world powers on the top. And to implement such a strategy, all they have to do is appeal to the well-meaning citizenry of those wealthier nations to self-impose economic restrictions. As an example, after all, how can someone argue that it's bad to save the planet for our grandchildren?
Propaganda is an effective military and economic strategy, used for years. Unfortunately, in this debate, well-meaning citizens adamantly fight for one side or the other, and are clueless that they are merely pawns, acting upon propaganda that they firmly believe, because the propaganda was published by notorious scientists and the appeal is both emotional and data-based (whether factual or not). People examine the obvious motives, but often overlook the subtle ones.
In fact, this post was written by a pawn. Who is subtly controlling me? Hmm.....
You sir are a good breath of fresh common sense air.
I have to agree totally with you on this one, as I see this as the only way to proceed with the data, make it public, let other experts take a look and from about 100 different experts we can concur an outcome.
Besides, EVEN taking in account all data, they are still getting a global warming trend. So ... who knows, maybe it is real?
Why would any part of this climate information lead someone to go to the FBI?
It is climate info, and when you compare it to bankfraud or idtheft, it pails in comparison to what evil you can do with this info. Seriously, I smell BS here, as for Jones, I think he is a quack that needs to stop whining and share what he has, like a little spoiled brat in the sandbox, I think he is just afraid someone will debunk him (which happened in the past already) and prove him inadequate to hold on to that data.
The science channel, ngeo and others have run program after program about man-made global warming, man-made global cooling, man-made climate change, etc trying to 'educate' everyone. Funny though, most of the scientists in the shows admit that the earth's climate is just going through another cycle, one of many. And it will go through this cycle, of cooling and warming, regardless of what we want or do. These are archiologists, geologists, anthropologists and climatologists looking at more than just the past 150 years. They also voice that their opinions are shared by their collegues and peers. So, who are these ‘thousands of experts’ then?? Will the earth warm someday melting all of the polar ice?? According to these experts, of course. Will the earth one day cool and become an ice planet again?? According to these experts, of course. Can we all powerful humans do anything about it?? According to these experts, nope. But, of course, the program always ends with the ‘climate expert’ moderator stating that inspite of the facts, opinions and proof presented in the program, that ‘man-made is still a problem that needs to be addressed!’
If anybody would pay attention to more than the usual swill from the major networks, would see that this is a farce. Oh, by the way, I live in North Carolina and by 1990 we were supposed to be the new Sahara Desert because of this. Only sand I see is in the neighbor kid’s sandbox. Also, this years is one of the coldest on record for the past 250 years.
How about you prepare it once and throw it on a torrent?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I find it amusing that while railing against the bias and closed minds of the establishment you refer to them as "warmers". Irony knows no bounds.
They label me a "denier" when I just would like some actual, honest to god hard science, with shared data and civil debate.
Why should I extend to them a courtesy which they don't extend to me?
As long as "bad data" is not defined as "data that doesn't match our models' results"...
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Because avoiding bias is not a courtesy to be extended to an opponent in a debate. It's a basic requisite for scientific enquiry. Your question naturally assumes that there are only two possible descriptions of the current debate: that "they" are wrong, or that "you" are wrong.
If neither side can actually do good science then I would suggest that there is a third option that you have not considered: that you are both wrong.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
And Maurice Strong is a raving despot with designs on global domination with his partner Edmond De Rothschild running the new world bank. I'd rather deal with the likes of Inhofe that those tyrants any day.
Strong's plans are long-term and he stands to be one of the most powerful men on earth (if he isn't already), yet he couldn't resist helping himself to a few million dollars of the "oil for food" money when he had the chance. Now he's teaching China how to pollute and make a profit from it, and here you are attacking people for questioning this massive fraudulent scheme.
If there were real scientists promoting this they would be looking for actual predictions from the theories, rather than threatening and destroying anyone that questions it.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Thousands claimed smoking didn't cause cancer as well...
I wonder what the graph would look like if you plotted it against the deleted bits of Briffa's Yamal series? I'm starting to fully understand the divergence problem now!
pholgiston - Some scientists actually didn't like it as a theory, but it was the best they had at the time
Luminiferous ether - Some scientists actually didn't like it as a theory, but it was the best they had at the time
tobacco - Always known to be slightly bad for you, Doctors were paid a lot of money to advertise it's supposed heath effects
alochol - Always known to be bad for you in excess, no-one ever said different
The relevant degree is to stop complete amateurs continually pestering for data when they are not going to do anything useful with it, without the correct tools you cannot use the data to prove or disprove anything, the people who have the data have very little money, and time to spare
If you know how to do proper statistical analysis then your qualifications probably do cover this ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Greetings and Salutations.
My father was a Microbiologist, and, spent most of his professional life researching yeasts and molds. His method was to gather as much data as possible, and see what results stemmed from it. I believe he would be shocked and dismayed to see this widespread tendency to come up with a conclusion, then, find the data that supports it.
Those so-called scientists who are doing this, either to push a personal agenda or to ensure the continuation of grant money should be ashamed of themselves, and, should either clean up their act, or get drummed out of the scientific community!
This sort of activity not only wastes huge amounts of resources, but, what is worse, undercuts the credibility of the scientific community, making it far harder for the good scientists who are following good protocols and producing good results to be believed.
I observed elsewhere that it appears that the entire world is falling into a pit of hair-trigger, paranoid madness. This example, sadly, supports that belief. I hope I am wrong, but, I fear I am not...
Pleasant Dreams
Dave Mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
Russia, as in the former Soviet Union, is a pretty damned big part of the world.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
...who does not trust some Russian cracker more, than some scientists?
Seriously, those are the guys who normally maintain botnets for a living, create pretty much every crack out there (the elite in cracking definitely is Russian), etc.
OK, I don’t really trust anyone of them, but prefer to have double and thrice checks by (actually) opposing groups, coming to the same resulting conclusions.
But trusting some weird guy from who knows where, who claims something that just so happens to fit with the goals of some other criminals (Big Oil , FOX News friends, etc.), just strikes me as being very counter-intuitive.
(I do not make a judgment here, as they still could be right. But just that for natural reasons, they will have a much harder time, making me believe their statements.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Yes, admitting the entirety of data into calculations of this scale would be foolish.
However, that is NOT what the Russian IEA is claiming Hadley Center did.
The 21-page PDF (http://www.iea.ru/article/kioto_order/15.12.2009.pdf) specifically explains how the English "scientists" discarded more-complete datasets in favor of less complete, used data from stations that were moved around (less reliable) and ignored stations that were, ahem, stationary, etc, etc.
So it's not a question of admitting all data & risking contamination - it's a question of intentionally choosing worse data when better data was available.
There's a translation of the "Conclusions" section of the PDF (can't blame the guy for not translating the entire document, it's a linguistic bitch). Not posting it here - too long - follow the link http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/16/iearussia-hadley-center-probably-tampered-with-russian-climate-data/ and search for "Posted Dec 17, 2009 at 2:44 AM".
One could argue that those scientists not driven by the quest for grant money are more credible. But those are easily shot down by propagandists as funded by "greed" and "big business".
This message brought to you by ExxonMobil.
And how do you know all those things were wrong? Guess what, the consensus told you. So your best strategy is to always follow the consensus, unless you want to invest a decade or so becoming an expert yourself. If you want someone with an immutable and infallible truth, ask a priest or an astrologist.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Everyone is a layman in fields other than his own.
I do not trust anything published by a "scientist" who would rather destroy his own data, than allow access to his peers.
Yeah I'm going to go with you on this one.
The CRU, whos been largely vindicated on most of the allegations made against them (except perhaps the one about plotting to do over the denialist journal editor. That was kind of dickish) and employs some of the best minds in climate science.
*VS*
A notoriously dodgy right wing think tank, headed by a political associate of putin, with a reputation of engaging in dodgy tactics against whatever branch of science they've been contracted to try and rubish on any given week.
I'll bet the heratige foundation is behind the scenes somewhere too. Those cats still running the "smoking doesn't cause cancer" line still?
Without data to prove it, this is just more idiotic noise coming from the angry right wing blogger pack.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
It's basic chemistry to figure out that if you take a liter of octane and convert it into a gas, it's going to take a lot of atmosphere to dilute it to 20ppm.
If you work out how much gas you burn a year and assume an atmosphere of 60km depth at uniform thickness (the real atmosphere is about 120km non-uniform), it becomes shocking how much atmosphere is needed to dilute the CO2 you're producing.
Now to say that a global increase in CO2 is neither a problem, nor something to be concerned about is, well... incomprehensible to me.
Now to take the word of politicians and the media over the scientific community, that's just... mind boggling. I can understand being skeptical but you should be one hell of a lot more skeptical of industry, politicians and the media than of climate scientists.
Yes, blue is the EIA data (all 476 weather stations across 152 "cells"), while the red line is the CRU cherry-picked data (90 stations from 121 "cells"). Actually, even though the line may look synchronized, the "Conclusions" section of the linked PDF specifically explains that by selectively discarding the data, the CRU made pre-1950's temperatures lower than actual, and post-mid-1990's temperatures higher than actual - thus producing an intentional skewing of the trendline. Those couple of millimeters' offsets between the blue and red lines *are* significant to scientists, looks like :)
Pretty funny. I wrote my GP post trying my best to be non-obvious as to which side I am on, and ending with a question.
I must have over-compensated in my effort to be "fair and balanced", because you incorrectly guessed my position.
Yeah. Because releasing the raw data has done such a good job of shutting up the deniers before.
For some reason I would prefer that the scammers ^B^B^B^B^B^B AGW proponents focus on proving their theories rather than "shutting up" the opposition. There's been enough of that already.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
You're way off the mark here. First of all EVERYONE trusts authority figures for information. This is basic psychology and human development. It's not possible to know everything about everything. The more important thing is to trust the RIGHT authority figures. Some of us choose to trust the scientists because it is their job to look into these things, have their information peer reviewed, and find problems with other studies and data. We find this is the best way to ascertain information. I cannot possibly believe that any corporation or journalist or economic study group is more of an authority on this subject but maybe you can.
The fact that 95% of scientists agree that global warming is real and is being caused by industrial activity from humans should be good enough. That's like 95% of doctors agreeing with your original diagnosis.
Time makes more converts than reason
There's that circle again, that you love to spin around so much. Whee!
Conspiracy theories are circular. Evidence works in a straight line.
Yes, here's one example [eastangliaemails.com].
Peer review can be adversarial. The submitters work was not destroyed. They could have published on the internet, or rather, they probably sent their publication to a trade journal such as Energy & Environment. Hardly sinister.
What happened to the scientific method here where someone else challenges a theory and you explain why the challenge is wrong using facts, instead of Ad-Hominem attacks?
This is what happened..
There was scientific consensus in 1979. You cannot make an evidence based (straight-line) argument against AGW, because none exists. I *always* challenge skeptics to produce one, but once their references show the emptiness of their arguments, then out come the conspiracy theories.
All "skeptics" have is circular conspiracy.
Don't believe me? Fine a "top 10" argument list for why AGW is not happening, and I'll happily tear it apart, in a LOGICAL and EVIDENCE based discussion.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Also don't forget that Russia also takes up an awful lot of space, and that historically have had a pretty top notch scientific community.
I wouldn't dismiss what they say out of hand.
That just seems like an insane thing to say. I can't believe you are a scientist or know many scientists.
In my experience (I'm a working scientist, though not in climate), science is very, very competitive. Just brutal, in fact. It's full of mildly Aspergers people who delight in other's discomfort and are convinced (almost) all other researchers are idiots. If you have a clever idea that cuts your rival's work off at the knees, by God, you're going to publish, and you're going to rub their face in it as you do.
I find it impossible to believe that good anti-AWG ideas really have been suppressed for 50 years or however long it is.
Of course to play devils advocate, they also have some of the worst environmental disasters in the world located there, are very much a developed oil and heavy industry country, and lately seem to have some corruptions issues. So they may have a bit of bias.
Either way, worth a legitimate look I think.
But suddenly it's about climate change therefor you're now all more qualified experts than those with the data. Why is that? What is it about climate change that suddenly everyone and their dog can tell you how wrong the scientists are?
If you're looking for a reason, it's about money. The skepticism comes from governments trying to impose new taxes while propaganda machines try to convince people that we're all gonna die if we don't do something NOW. Typically, when someone tries to rush/scare you into parting with your money, there is some sort of scam involved.
Actually, the climate researchers would benefit most from keeping things in doubt. If they sell it is a largely settled question (which they are), they're also saying that we don't need as much research into the science, just the solutions.
Also, any researcher who can definitely show that AGW isn't real would pretty well set up her reputation as top of the field and almost guarantee that she's set up for life. That's how science works: you make the biggest reputation not by affirming the status quo but by smashing it.
Solution:
Am I missing something?
Some of the scientists involved in Climategate should be keel hauled for hiding the data, fudging the data, and getting political in their zeal to get acceptance. They have damaged their own cause beyond measure.
Why should that restriction exist at all?
To weed out trolls.
The background knowledge needed to interpret raw climatological data is immense. I'm knee deep in it now, and it's not straight forward. It's not a nice excel spreadsheet. The amount of work that needs to be done to just get the data into the sort of shape where statistics can be done on it is tremendous. A few quick examples:
Arctic measurements. You may already know this, but shit breaks in the cold. All the time. Add in ice melting and thawing, and 50 mph winds, and equipment does not last long. So our data from arctic areas is filled with holes. It's got bogus measurements. Knowing how to spot those bogus results requires an understanding of the equipment being used, how it functions in the cold, and where it's located. You may be able to totally trust a piece of equipment at temperatures over -10C, but have to throw out all data for temperatures below -60C. Just handing out the raw data to anyone will result in some fool taking it as absolute truth.
There are dozens of climatological oscillations in the earth's atmosphere and oceans. El Nino is half of the most famous one. (No, the other half isn't La Nina, it's the Southern Oscillation) When you look at something like temperature data, you see all sorts of ups and downs. When a couple of these oscillations are in phase, you'll have abnormally high or low temperatures. When they're not in phase, you'll have some mixture. If you're trying to analyze temperature patterns on earth and don't know to take these into account, you're just wasting your time, and potentially going to publicize incorrect findings because of it.
Geophysical data is ridiculously hard to work with. You need to understand the engineering of the tools used to collect the data, the tolerances and quirks of them, the areas they're used in, sometimes even HOW they're used to take measurements. On top of that, you need to have a very good understanding of the physical processes of the earth's climate systems to be able to isolate any sort of signal. Otherwise, it's just a chaotic mess.
In short, this requires experts. It's not something that anyone can just hop into Excel with stats 101 under their belt and do. A lot of work is a partnership between engineers, climatologists, AND statisticians. No, your "econometrics heavy MSc" is not enough. Not by a long shot.
Like anything stupidly complicated, it requires the work of experts. If you want to be an expert, you generally need to spend the time studying to BECOME an expert. How does one prove this? Relevant degree and some peer reviewed publications under your belt.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
And for some reason, we're not demanding they open the sequencing data on the cancer gene we just accepted that story and we trusted those scientists.
Are you sure we're not? I haven't seen a published genomics paper in years that doesn't have the raw data accessible in some form. It's a requirement for most major journals, as well as from most funding sources. If you want to publish, you release the data.
I agree with you that every moron thinks they can analyze the climate data better than the entire field of climatologists. Relatively few people think they understand particle physics better than the people at CERN; but somehow everyone thinks they're an expert on climate change after reading a few headlines that they instinctively disagree with (although they don't actually understand). Science is rarely a good spectator sport.
"There are monied interests deliberately prolonging this useless debate about "Global warming - real, or not?" Think about why they do that."
There are monied interests, such as Al Gore, deliberately and intentionally, with prejudice, trying to end the useful debate about "Global Warming - real or not". To do this they spread lies, as was discussed in the media recently. (Read for yourself - sea drop levels).
Have you thought about why those monied interests want to end the debate?
How about "if you're funded by public tax dollars, whatever data you produce is public property and it's part of your job to release it publicly?"
Then maybe they should ask for additionally funding to bring in 1 or 2 full time people to respond to FOI requests if they are getting so many. Data archival is important, as is freedom of information. If they can't do both, then maybe they need to get more funding so that they can.
How do we know who the honest scientists are unless their data and source code is available for public analysis?
Don't they have to prepare it for themselves in order to use it?
So for that reason, that there are non-statisticians interested in the data, it should not be released, nor should the specific "automated statistical tests" which were used to reject data, because the non-statisticians wouldn't understand.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Presumption of innocence and independent reproduction of results, the same way we've always done it?
More importantly, how do you know if they're honest even if they provide data? They could have faked the raw data. Independent (i.e. different data/code) reproduction is the only way.
Let's take a look at the situation, shall we?
Just show us the facts; the raw data, without any spin of "ZOMG! GLOBAL WARMING!^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HCLIMATE CHANGE! OH NOES!!" bullshit editorializing. If you want to be taken seriously and convince even those who are not merely skeptical, but "won't" believe even in the face of evidence, then show us the raw fucking data without any tweaking - and accompany that data with a history of each temperature sensor (for example, if a parking lot went up next to it, and the temperature spiked the next few years and gradually increased, don't obfuscate that fact). That way, if there really is an issue, one can come to a scientific conclusion rather than political.
Until then, count me among the skeptics who consider this a political rather than scientific issue, especially in light of the fact that it is believed that the Antarctic and arctic shelves are breaking from stress (from "overgrowth"), not due to heat, since they are larger than they have been during recorded history, and that when the alarmists are proven conclusively to be wrong, they change the terminology ("global cooling" to "global warming" to "global climate change" - face it, the global climate always has been and always will be very dynamic).
I could go for some global warming about now, by the way. It'd be nice for winter to just go away. :-)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
It is interesting to read through the comments here dealing with Russia- when talks are currently underway where countries like China are stating that they won't cut anything, and won't allow for independent inspectors to verify anything-
The data should be public. I see no reason why it shouldn't be. The argument that people aren't qualified to look at it is total bull.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
Christians and Jews "have faith" and are mocked for it.
Global warming alarmists and political activists "have faith" with evidence proving the contrary and are cheered on for it.
How is believing in man-induced global warming without evidence to back it up more credible than the claims of Christians or Jews? How is it any less of a religion, especially since when global warming alarmists are questioned they go on a Muslim-style jihad against unbelievers (skeptics)?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
//Free exchange of information isn't a problem for an honest scientist.//
Responding to each and every request for data can be quite time-consuming. How many requests from random, miscellaneous, and often politically-motivated people do you expect a working scientist to entertain per day? Per week?
The way studies of this sort work is the author should include the method he used for gathering data (and correcting it, if applicable). The primary source for the data is NOT THE AUTHOR OF THE STUDY. It is the same place from which he obtained it. Whether this source is NOAA, foreign weather observatories, or international climate bodies is irrelevant---the author is never a primary source of data unless he is performing experiments, and anyone who has done real science understands this.
Another scientist should be able to come along, gather the same data, and analyze it according to the same method. There is an expectation that the author would clarify his methods if asked by another qualified researcher---the imposition on his time is worthwhile because the scientific process requires these checks. A simple data entry error can skew results, and followup investigation can always uncover errors or address shortcomings in methodology. If a neutral and qualified researcher says, "I followed your method with the same data set and got X where you got Y" then certainly further investigation is necessary.
Scientists are not obliged to respond to spurious demands for data or explanations of methodology from anyone at anytime.
The primary data sources (e.g., observatories) may place restrictions on access to the data as well in order to avoid excessive overhead. If it's coming from NGOs, then tough. If it is funded by your government, then contact your representative and demand open access and the funding/staffing to supply it.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Anecdote:
My mom used to do FOI disclosures for a county sheriff's office. They were allowed to charge for FOI
disclosure results: If you're really getting 50/week, I think the case can be made to the regents (or whoever)
that you need some temp workers and that the cost of those temps will be recouped via fees.
It's worth pointing out that at one point CRU were getting over 50 FOI requests per week from climate skeptics. Maybe it's more now. That is a crazy additional workload for the CRU scientists who are paid to do actual research and not fill out FOI replies.
So the correct response to a FOI law that you find inconvenient is to ignore it?
presumption of innocence? In science? Isn't that the opposite of the scientific method?
http://www.beanleafpress.com
The original Slashdot description said "Russia Claims More Climate Data Was Manipulated."
Inaccurate headlines don't help discussion.
Sure. Do you know who showed that phlogiston and the luminiferous aether didn't exist? Scientists. People who had a good grounding in the field. You may remember the continental drift controversy, but its big proponent, Wegener, was a geologist himself.
What the experts say may be wildly mistaken. What the non-experts who loudly disagree with the experts say is almost certainly mistaken.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Ok. Of course they're not just averaging data, that's a completely pointless metric when it comes to weather. But let me ask you this. Why isn't all of that data just dumped into the public then the process by which the selections of which data to use are made public (we dropped station X because Y). You say this is how it works but we honestly really don't know (because we can't, we don't have access to this stuff) if it's only being dropped because it doesn't jive with the presupposed result. And removing data because some of it is determined to be "bad"? But if we define "bad" as anything that makes it difficult for us to show a warming trend...
The simple fact is: who gives a shit why data is removed. The credibility is absolutely 0 until all of it.. ALL OF IT.. bad data included is RELEASED with exactly what analyses were made to determine what data to drop, followed by the processes by which the final results are obtained so that anyone else who follows the same process and agrees with the logic of dropping data (yes, we agree it's bad) will end up with the same verified result. I do guarantee you that there's nothing about meteorology that's so incredibly complicated that people who aren't in an elite select few can't possibly comprehend or understand the results. But when you come out and claim with data of which a percentage has been completely eliminated (and we can't see it) that the earth is warming because of humans (which these studies DO NOT SUPPORT by the way, temperate studies cannot explicitly prove this) that we must turn around and spend trillions of dollars globally, throw incredible taxes on everyone for the sake of "saving the planet," we'd like to see why. If that can't be furnished, no thanks. We'd rather die than risk being bullshitted yet again.
One problem with this analogy is that it's not just one "doctor" that's saying "operate", it's thousands .
But how many of those "thousands" have actually seen the data and performed their own analysis on it or even just reviewed someone else's analysis of it? Maybe a dozen?
Polls of this type are meaningless.
*sigh* back to work...
Go ahead and ask a scientist studying evolution how he feels with regard to creationists for instance. "Oh, I love discussing my work with them" is one answer you will *NOT* find, trust me.
Oh, I dunno about that; I've known a number of biologists who seem to enjoy the game of "debating" creationists (though "baiting" might be a better term). Their usual tactic is to briefly comment on some obscure technical detail of whatever they're working on, and innocently ask the creationist for advice on understanding what their data is saying. Of course, the creationists are generally incapable of dealing with things at this level of detail.
I remember one whose horticultural studies included a lot of data on the growth patterns of a number of "weed" plants that were agriculturally important. The data showed a lot of cases of apparent adaptations that counteracted the weed-control technology used by growers in different areas. A famous case is the widespread adaptation of dandelions in suburban lawn to mowing, with flowers on stems that are short enough to be below mower blades, but which then grow longer as the seeds ripen so that the mowers help distribute the seeds. There are a lot of examples like this. He liked to describe one of these adaptations, and ask for alternate hypotheses explaining why such apparent evolutionary change would be happening so fast, and only in areas where it was to the weed's advantage. He got a bit of enjoyment out of the flustered responses from the religious types. (Saying "God's doing it" was obviously not the right answer, because why would God help out a weed when we know that we're His favorite species? ;-)
OTOH, trying to deal with pesky harassers when you're trying to get work done can be a bother. It's easy to understand why a working scientist might not want to drop what s/he is doing to answer dumb questions from people who can't even use the technical language correctly. Occasional questions asked in a friendly manner, yes, of course. But not people who are antagonistic and obviously trying to interfere with your work.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Not really, no. Generally scientists are assumed to be honest until proven otherwise. How would you work any other way? Perhaps *if* data collection was done by a completely separate team to analysis (with no possibility of collusion) and absolutely everything was published down to the last detail. In practice, these conditions can't be satisfied and would be horrendously time consuming, expensive and wasteful.
Fortunately, there's no need. Since the whole point of science is that results are reproducible, any fraud of significance isn't going to last long before it's discovered. Someone claiming a great discovery that nobody can reproduce looks pretty suspicious. Even fields with large, centralised data sets (such as climatology) have more than one set and typically more than one researcher working on it. Fraud would require conspiracy on a grand and utterly implausible scale - even if there was a plausible motive, which there isn't.
Maybe the contracts say that you are not allowed to share the contracts? Maybe he can't say that the contracts say that the raw data is secret.
Well, it really doesn't matter. It is all part of "their" plot to push the New World Order, they are attacking on all fronts and people are too blind to see. First they control how you live, then your communications, your travel and you lose everything. Al Gore is a big proponent to the New Age Religion, and while you think may think they are a bunch of quacks, as I do, they believe that they will rule the world, and they will according the Bible. The book of Revelations, Daniel and Ezekiel, all talk about the last days and the New World Order. There is nothing we can do to stop it, just accept Jesus and you will be saved from the misery that is coming SOON!
You see, if they control your fear and thought patterns, through various means. Global warming, creating financial crisis, etc, then they will offer "peace and safety", as the Bible says, "They cry peace and safety, then cometh sudden destruction", pretty simple. Will be praying for you all, as soon as the trumpet blasts and the Christians disappear, the whole world will be in chaos and they will usher in their New World Order, let by Satan himself in the form of a man, that man of perdition.
"That if thou shalt confess with thine mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, and believe in thine heart, thou shalt be saved"
Your overall point is good, but publication of the raw data would still be useful. It's much easier to tweak an algorithm to bias it than it is to tweak thousands of data points individually, without leaving any trace of manipulation (for example, maybe (I'm not sure) these numbers could be expected to follow Benford's Law). My guess is that much of the data collection is automated, too, so if we were really paranoid, we could say that the data collection stations must publish their measurements in real time to the public internet. It would be REALLY hard to tweak them, then.
I realize this is probably overkill. I'm just saying that more transparency CAN be useful. Whether its usefulness outweighs to cost of providing it is debatable.
Authority tells me that cars can hurt human bodies, as a result I avoid walking in front of them.
Well, now; I can definitely say that I've never seen a person get hit by a car, so that's just hearsay unsupported by the evidence. I hereby call on all people who reject "argument from authority" to reject this bogus claim. Who are you going to believe, those supposed "authorities" who haven't answered any counterclaims like this one, or people like me who have never seen a person injured by a car? The true skeptics and deniers of the "autos are dangerous" theory should all go out and walk freely in front of cars on the roads, secure in the belief that those cars don't hurt people.
(Actually, some years back, I heard some screeching tires and some thumps from the front of the house, ran out, and saw a couple of fairly old people lying in the street, with a car stopped next to them, and several people frantically calling on their cell phones. But I didn't personally see what happened, so I don't know that the car hit those people. However, I did make a call myself. Maybe I was just taking part in a bit of performance art? I suppose I'll never know.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Contrary to right-wing spin, the CRU letters do not indicate falsification or fabrication of data. The only thing they reveal is that scientists can get pissy about shills and wackos who try to disrupt their work. I suspect that's no more the case "these days" than is was in days gone by.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Ok.
What irritates me is when one side tries to force or ridicule people into believing. This turns people into jackasses who won't get out of the way, since no one trusts the guy with the stick. Try the carrot instead.
Framing the situation correctly and showing interested parties the data, not just your massaged results, builds trust. I don't care how well meaning you are or if 99.999% of the insiders know that we are doomed if we don't act. If you hide parts of the truth, even if it is just to help people see through the clutter of details, you will have lost their trust once discovered. It does not matter if you are right or wrong, good or evil. It is about trust.
Any scientist stating that he is willing to destroy his own data, rather than give access to others, is someone who deserves no trust at all.
She made the willows dance
Just piling on the funny.
Which begs the question for the climate change deniers - where is the smoking gun?
It seems to be everywhere you compare rural raw data with either adjusted data or urban data.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_G_-SdAN04
it's in my head
I don't know, who they are, but I do know, that no full, raw, unedited and "uncalibrated" series are nowhere to be found. The recent "leak" of the materials from East Anglia's CRU contained e-mails and programs (some showing obvious attempts to apply bogus corrections), but not the data files.
Worse — whatever raw data this particular CRU had before, was dumped "to make room", and only the result of their "calibration" is preserved. Whether they sincerely believed, the original data will never be needed, or maliciously thought to hide imperfections in their calibration algorithm is a hot topic. But what's clear, is that it is not available — to anyone.
But, again, even if the calibration were perfect (or, at least, sincere) — we can't get it. And so, there is no way to reproduce the results — for example, a highly-moderated poster (mrsquid0) claimed to have discerned from the leaked IDL-programs, that the correct, rather than bogus version of the script was used to produce a chart published in Nature. However, when asked, where he got the data to run the program for himself, he posted no response... Because he never has... Have you?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
SymbolNOBODY:
You said what's quoted below from you, here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1476008&cid=30428430
"It's tolerated (perhaps encouraged) in part because these annoying actors are otherwised engaged in improving Linux. Major Debian and BSD contributors, for example, use slashdot as a workspace for their human-machine interaction side experiments, of which APK is probably one. In addition many of these trolls post links which, if you follow them, will completely hose a Windows machine. This is part of the game. - by symbolset (646467) on Monday December 14, @01:15AM (#30428430) Journal
I took offense to the BOLDED part... & ALL you EVER seem to have is "ad hominem" based attacks on people, not the points they make. So, my reply in the URL below was simple (and logical):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1476008&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=30428430#30430244
Additionally, "symbolNOBODY"? Well - the day you can make something like this (& that got you PAID for it, & that has done as well for others online):
http://www.tcmagazine.com/forums/index.php?s=b861a743aa23c4568b7d73e07ef7ecec&showtopic=2662
That's also gone over 250.000 views worldwide in 1++ yrs.' time online, & across 15 forums where that guide for Windows Security has been made either an:
1.) "Sticky/Pinned" thread
2.) An "Essential Guide"
3.) Rates 5/5 stars (etc.)
AND, gets "feedback" like this from users that have applied it:
----
http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28430
PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:
"...recently, months ago when you finally got this guide done, had authorization to try this on simple work station for kids. My client, who paid me an ungodly amount of money to do this, has been PROBLEM FREE FOR MONTHS! I haven't even had a follow up call which is unusual. Now I don't recommend this for the average joe, but it if can work for a kids PC it can work for anything! Now, i substituted OpenDNS and activated the Adult Content filter with them for this kids computer. I know its not perfect, but will catch over 99.5% of said sites."
and
http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=10f9ba9ad5ff990aaae1e7ec91f593a2&t=28430&page=3
"Its 2009 - still trouble free! I was told last week by a co worker who does active directory administration, and he said I was doing overkill. I told him yes, but I just eliminated the half life in windows that you usually get. He said good point. So from 2008 till 2009. No speed decreases, its been to a lan party, moved around in a move, and it still NEVER has had the OS reinstalled besides the fact I imaged the drive over in 2008. Great stuff! My client STILL Hasn't called me back in regards to that one machine to get it locked down for the kid. I am glad it worked and I am sure her wallet is appreciated too now that it works. Speaking of which, I need to call her to see if I can get some leads. APK - I will say it again, the guide is FANTASTIC! Its made my PC experience much easier. Sandboxing was great. Getting my host file updated, setting services to system service, rather than system local. (except AVG updater, needed system local)"
Thronka - forums member @ xtremepccentral.com
----
THEN, when you have done so, on THAT account? THEN, you can talk!
Also?
When you have done all of this as I have over time in this Art & S
Let's forget climate change for a minute, what would be the end result of solving this problem be? A cleaner world, less pollution, less illness resulting from pollution, and potentially slowing what a good deal of scientists point to as a global catastrophe?
We all have to make sacrifices to make the world a better place, for instance, the south had to give up having slaves, would any of you short sighted mo-rons go back to that? No, because it was a stupid and barbaric practice. Did it hurt economically? Sure it did, but it was the right thing to do.
Pissing in your pants only keeps you warm for so long - pollution is the same thing - we effing live here people - yet that's exactly what you're actually fighting for the right to do. We should've stopped doing it just on principle, but for the sake of "economics" we're just going to keep right on doing it anyway. That's some lame and stupid bullshit.
At this point, I've kind of lost all hope in you people. I used to be against global warming, but honestly, if this is the best humanity can come up with - the next ice age can't get here soon enough. I hope you enjoy bitching about this big "conspiracy" to clean-the-fuck-up-after-ourselves when it hits. Maybe you can do it from your girly pansy ass SUVs. Sho nuff, I'm sure you probably will.
So basically the data is incomplete, and you have to make guesses to fill it in. Oh, wait, I mean 'educated' guesses, since the only people you let guess are the ones whose guesses agree with yours.
If I want to become an expert on SQL, I go read the specs. If I want to become an expert on climatology, I go ask people to tell me how to guess which numbers will be useful to feed into the statistical analysis specs. I don't consider this crap as coming close to 'science'.
Oh, so anyone who disagrees with the phlogiston theory is obviously not an expert on phlogiston... so they must be a non-expert whack-job denialist.
. Unfortunately, there is no computer model that can accurately simulate the earth's climate.
Isn't there? That depends on what you mean by "accurately". A model which predicts a temperature change of 0 +/- 50 degrees C is obviously not precise or indeed useful, but it's nevertheless correct. One that claims 4 +- 0.1 when the correct value is 5 is wrong. The last time I looked the models had fairly wide error bars associated with their predictions but the lower bound was still positive, and some decent estimates could be made as to the likely effects of different emissions scenarios. There's always the possibility that something has been missed and that the error analysis is not correct, but that's true of pretty much any measurement or calculation. But you don't need perfect precision in your predictions to get a useful result, you just need a decent understanding of the errors and limitations of your method.
That's the thing, they SHOULDN'T FUCKING 'PREPARE' it. Release the RAW NUMBERS.
Ammunition? Against what? The only ammunition you'd give them would be bad-science piercing rounds. Sure, they could fudge their numbers to make it look like the Earth will freeze tomorrow, but if their numberfudgings aren't as valid as your numberfudgings then you should be able to easily defend against them.
What are you so scared of?
If only we could invent some kind of machine to hold and organize data... then we could perhaps distribute these machines around the world and connect them with bits of wire. At that point it should be easy to let the machines communicate with each other to share data with a simple request. Maybe someday we'll be able to have such an 'internetwork' that allows scientists to share their data without all this hard work you describe.
But Russia is only a part of the world and even if the IEA were right it doesn't affect anything else enough to change the fundamental conclusions about global warming.
Russia is only 11.5% of the total landmass on Earth ... and likely about 40% of the Northern Hemisphere. Surely that couldn't be significant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_by_area
Russia is a nation heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports, in fact, their entire economy depends on it else it would just flat out collapse again as it did at the fall of communism.
And i was just struck with a sudden thought that dovetails with your economic analysis quite well. As you say, Russia benefits immensely from oil exports, but what happens to them if the AGW proponents are right? Well, for starters the Arctic ice cap would diminish or disappear entirely. This would open up new sea lanes, create new locations for possible ports, and uncover many new potentially untapped resources. Who stands to gain from that? Mainly Canada, Greenland and.... Russia! (The US would probably gain a little due to Alaska, but not nearly as much in proportion as the others.) They'd have to deal with higher sea levels as well of course, but i think the benefits would probably outweigh the losses in their case.
The other big concern of course is the actual changes to the climate, particularly in relation to farming. A lot of currently arable land would become either desert or swamp, while other areas that are currently too wet, too dry, or too cold would become capable of supporting crops. Which countries have a lot of tundra that might become new farmland? Once again, mainly Canada, Greenland and Russia. There's no guarantee that their gains would equal their losses (though they've got far better odds of it than most) but even so, if future economic prosperity comes at the cost of a few (or a few million) peasants starving, who cares? As much as i disagree with a certain segment of politicians in America i do feel that most of them want what they honestly feel would be best for America, and that doesn't include mass starvation. But that's practically a tradition in Russia, and whatever they may say in public i'm not convinced the elite there has really changed that much from where they were 50 years ago.
Now on the other hand, who would climate change most likely hurt? Well high on that list would be the US and China. We're temperate countries with more to lose than gain, we have large economies that are heavily dependent on trade and would get foobarred if the world economy took (another) nosedive. (Russia has less than a third of the imports and exports than either the US or China.)
So while Russia is benefiting from AGW their biggest rivals are suffering. From the perspective of a Machiavellian Russian elite, the only possible downside would be if China gets so desperate that it decides to invade and/or start launching nukes. Otherwise, Russia can continue selling oil for extreme profits for as long as everyone is willing to buy it, and then sit back and enjoy the benefits of the changing climate while watching their rivals struggle and possibly descend into chaos. It's win-win both economically and strategically, and as the unwanted in-law of both "western" and "eastern" civilization i'm sure they'd take no small emotional pleasure in that outcome as well.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Your second "fact" seems to be far from established. Where is the reliable database that shows that ? "Warmer" over what time period ?
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
No choice but to listen to those with the data publishing the reports. Does it suck? Yes. But oftentimes that's how studies with empirical data works--especially if it cost a lot of money to acquire that data. We're not talking about a repeatable experiment here to be verified in another lab. And for some reason, we're not demanding they open the sequencing data on the cancer gene [slashdot.org] we just accepted that story and we trusted those scientists. But suddenly it's about climate change therefor you're now all more qualified experts than those with the data. Why is that? What is it about climate change that suddenly everyone and their dog can tell you how wrong the scientists are?
If you'd like to horde your data for commercial purposes, that's fine. But if you want to receive power over the public through influence (such as through legislature or global climate treaties) then you must open the data up to debate. If you don't want to do it, then just keep quiet and admit that noone can rely on your conclusions.
Don't you mean "i interpret it as yelling, more specifically the yelling of a crazy man on a street corner."
You don't think they're capable of twisting, distortion, selective quoting, poor analysis? Yes, it all *could* be debunked given enough time, and willingness of people to listen. But who has that kind of time, especially considering they'll never accept they were wrong and just drop it [1] and move onto their next poorly thought out point. And all people will remember is that there were a lot of criticisms, with the fact that they were unfounded being lost in the cognitive biases. Don't forget, if you don't care about the quality of your criticisms, you can throw them up much faster than they can be shown to be wrong. And it's all made worse that invalid criticisms can nevertheless look quite plausible to the untrained eye.
This isn't just paranoia on my part, there's clear evidence of the "sceptics" doing just this if you look. As with the boy who cried wolf, I've now filed most of them in the "not credible and can be ignored" bin.
Your suggestion that the true evidence will win out in the public sphere is quite amazingly naive.
[1] Temporarily, anyway. I've seen lots of cases where some point was comprehensively proved wrong but the same person used it again later anyway, despite the fact that he must now be well aware of the flaws. Honesty? Fat chance.
Proponent: "AGW science is now settled science because there is a consensus as evidenced by the lack of peer-reviewed, published articles questioning it."
Skeptic: "Yeah but here's evidence of lengthy measures taken by other proponents to keep those types of articles out of publication."
Proponent: "Yeah, well, those papers were written by fringe kooks. We still have a consensus."
Skeptic: "...and here's a list of scientists that openly question the science behind your claims. Isn't that evidence against your consensus?"
Proponent: "Steve-o-meter! Steve-o-meter! What, you think science is settled by who has a longer list?"
Skeptic: "No, I was questioning your claim that AGW is accepted and settled science by the Scientific community."
Yet another moron shooting his mouth off about something they know nothing about. Eldavojohn correctly pointed out that it wasn't the Russian scientists who collected and analyzed the met data that were claiming the data was missed used but a group that would/does benefit from continued delay. There is no appeal to authority here merely pointing out the people making the extraordinary claims are trying to get there 5 minutes of fame.
As far as letting "sunshine on the raw data", since the raw surface. upper air, radar and satellite data have been freely available for download for more that 20 years how much more open can the data be.. Then again since McIntyre had a the Russian tree-ring data in his possession for over five years before he libeled Briffa of CRU by stating on his web page that neither Briffa nor the Russians would let him look at the data I doubt it would make much difference to the doubting morons whether the raw data was freely available or not. This is particularly true since McIntyre and Watts have been caught editing out key phrases and words from the CRU emails that invert the meaning of the sentence
Yeah, that majority of "round earthers" is really gonna get it's comeuppance when the flat earth theory is proven for good.
God is imaginary
Idiot!
You form a testable hypothesis that accurately describes the known facts, make new predictions based on it and test them. Then, you modify your hypothesis as needed based on the results. You don't (if you're doing science the way it's supposed to be done) ignore or hide results that don't fit, but that's exactly what the CRU has been caught doing.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Right among their "There is no Global Warming" articles are "There is no Global Financial Crisis" articles. Obviously they live in happy La-La-Libertarian-Land.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I don't think you understand... if it's automated, it can't be wrong. That would involve a programmer making a mistake, and all code is peer-reviewed. Everyone knows that a code review removes all bugs and design issues.
Note this:
It is tied up in confidentiality agreements with the governments that provided it. The Met Office and the UK government say they are now seeking permission to publish it.
This is not true. When CRU was questioned about these alleged agreements there were found only to be a couple which prevented commercial reuse and that was it. The CRU page where this was shown has now been taken down, but that's what it was.
From here.
Apparently there's not so many confidentiality agreements after all.
Maybe there will be a day when all you fucking morons realize there is no aisle, because not a single fucking person on this earth can be said to wholly reside on one 'side'. If left-wingers are accusatory then you must be Karl Fucking Marx.
[Seriously-OT]
Why is it that stupid people have to bring everything back to their pet topic which they themselves can't think about long enough to realize the absurdity of?
[/Seriously-OT]
"You can gain access to more datasets once you exhibit certain basic qualifications (like a relevant degree)."
Martin Luther called - he wants his Reformation back.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Naive? Shut the fuck up. They have nothing to lose by releasing the data other than being proven wrong. Someone bitching about politics isn't a scientist, and when they hide their numbers you can't call what they do 'science'.
As someone having come across a recent incident where a manager was ready to fire a worker because of the insistence that the raw data clearly showed wrong doing.
Logs "clearly" showed that the worker was visiting porn sites. A consultant versed in the information the logs presented was after a protracted process still only barely able to convince the manager that a person could not have generated the traffic manually.
So, the release of raw data to anyone and everyone is a scary proposition. Anyone coming up with the real meaning of the data would be so drowned out for so long that much harm would be caused by all the uneducated or crackpot interpretations.
So yes, it does take education to properly make sense of data.
The *ONLY* way to settle this, is to release the data. Given the far reaching implications of the decisions that will be reached through interpretation of this data, FOR EVERYONE IN THE WORLD, I fail to see how the financial interests of the people who collected it can outweigh the invested interest of the rest of the whole world, who's economical and climatological futures hinge upon it.
And what, pretell, would you do with that data once it was released? Develop your own climate model? I mean, really, on the one hand, the right wing has cut off funding every time it can for science education while shouting "release the data" so that they can then try to formulate their own flawed (no science education, remember) climate models.
If the only people qualified to analyze the data tell you what it means - and you don't trust them - what difference would it make if they released it?
Sadly, given the denial and obstructionism of the past, we really are in a situation where we can't have a middle ground - we either deal with the problem or our lifestyle as we know it ends. We can change or change will be forced upon us. Ironically, many of those opposed to a legislative fix are opposed to it because it would force change upon them. Guess they will have to lose all their beachfront property (though then, they will be screaming that the government got in the way of their trying to fix it, a la the current economic crisis).
Change is coming. It doesn't matter if the data is released or not. Why quibble?
. They have nothing to lose by releasing the data other than being proven wrong.
Apart from all the things I said that you've made a point of ignoring in favour of just repeating your original statement?
Someone bitching about politics isn't a scientist, and when they hide their numbers you can't call what they do 'science'.
Funny how all these strong statements of what is and isn't science tend to come from people who've never done any. Only publishing relevant summarised data and results is normal.
Except they can't actually find the contracts that say they aren't allowed to share, and because they can't identify subsets of the data which are safe, they refuse to share any of it.... Meanwhile, amongst the skeptic crowd we find McKintyre at climateaudit.org, who always does a full disclosure of methods and data.
I would note that it's not clear that Wang was actually innocent, and the university committee has been balking at releasing the committee findings. Since defense relies on the memory of Zhaomei Zeng, who was a co-author of the report that claimed those stations didn't have a quality history in 1990 but now claims they did but that she lost the information. It's a strong sign that there is an issue with station selection, even if the error lies with Zeng not Wang. This is exactly the sort of issues that FOI requests can reveal.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
NO, you LIE!
How is it any less of a religion
Just a wild guess, but maybe lack of the supernatural has something to do with it?
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
there is no aisle
Any wise, intelligent, open-minded soul sees that The Aisle is a good metaphor, and also knows that metaphors are imperfect (which is why they are metaphors, not reality).
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
You're calling BS on the AP. Keenan went to the FBI because in his fantasy world Wang had used government money to commit fraud.
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
You just said: "I hate to break it to you but NEITHER SIDE has given me data. Saying so and so skipped over data from here and there does nothing for me when I can't see the data and do my own statistical analysis" (Emphasis mine)
Then you said:
"No choice but to listen to those with the data publishing the reports. Does it suck? Yes."
Am I the only one who sees the disconnect between these two statements?
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
What they're allowed to release is released. Download at your leisure.
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
And those doctors were bought and paid for by tobacco companies to say that. Gee, I wonder what analogy we could draw from that...
Similar to the upcoming US election results
The headline is very misleading. Not all "Russians" dispute it... only this little "economic institute". Lets follow the money shall we..... my bets is it is a front for industries and individuals who might have to change their behavior with new climate mitigation rules.
Out of context quotes??
If I remember correctly ALL the emails were released in their ENTIRETY. The hackers or leakers have not been found or identified as of yet so blaming the Russians is a bit premature don't you think?
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
I ignored them because they can't be argued against. 'Oh no, they'll use our data to support their points!' NO FUCKING SHIT!
Sorry I'm not in the super science fun club. It's a shame I'll never know the truth because I'm too dumb to get peer reviewed.
Thank you for posting yet another reason why people who don't know what the F*** they're doing shouldn't be involved in the process. They *don't* just take raw data and average it. The heat island effect and expanding urbanization is automatically detrended by algorithms that have been widely studied in the peer-reviewed research, and the results have been validated (for example, by comparing urban vs. rural stations on windy days vs. calm days).
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
Rei is not accurately reporting what we know so far.
The Climategate information trove is much more likely to have been released by Insider source(s). :-
Here are some links which (in my opinion) lend weight to this view
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/speculation.html
http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2009/11/climate-hack-used-open-proxies.html
Russian claims (as yet unverified by external examination) are that the CRU has included :-
more urban stations favourable to the warming position (Urban Heat Island effect) and has
excluded many remote station data not subject to this bias. This may not be directly
related to fraudulent CRU activities as the World Meteorological Office may play a role here.
Here is a link to more details at a sceptical site
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/2744/
We should avoid jumping to conclusions about the Russian claims until more information
by way of a full story becomes available.
From what I have been able to discern so far, the CRU NASA and NOAA raw datasets are
pretty much identical. Each institution just massages and adjusts the raw data differently.
I am convinced there is something not right at these institutions. Full independant
investigations are essential if we are to establish what is or is not happening.
All of the raw temperature data and associated calculation methods should be made
available to scientists around the world.
John Cookson (Canada)
And thousands disagree. I'm sure they're all paid off by big oil though ;)
I'm curious why I've never seen this petition brought up when these stories come up on slashdot.
Now prove that this is the only data set that is used to make climate change observations. If not, then this is not the data I speak of. This is just some data. I can present to you hundreds of terabytes of data that isn't used to make those observations, it still doesn't mean that what they've done is at all admissible as science.
CO2 is not pollution. It is a life giving gas that animals exhale and plants absorb in order to create oxygen for those animals (like humans) to breathe.
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
Now prove that this is the only data set that is used to make climate change observations.
Prove to me you don't beat your wife.
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
Feel free to provide links to support your claim.
it's in my head
This right-wing think tank about economy is not doing science. It's doing the regular climate denier industry dance.
Where are you seeing that?
Clever signature text goes here.
I keep seeing people talk about these scientists and their grant money. As if that somehow adds doubt to their trustworthiness.
Don't you think that scientists, with excellent credentials, could find money from "Big Oil" or other business interests if he could disprove AGW?
The money is for sure on the side of the anti-AGW crowd. Not to mention, if you were the scientist that could conclusively prove that all the other climate scientists were wrong, you'd be the most famous scientist in the world.
No, they'll use the data to *dishonestly* support their points. In other words, to make it look as though there's a problem where there isn't. Very easy to do, if you're so inclined and aren't above a little dishonesty of your own. You don't even need dishonesty actually, incompetence combined with an ignorance of your incompetence and a desire to find a particular result will do nicely. Just trawl through until you find something that looks vaguely suspicious. Don't bother to investigate further, just take it and shout "Explain that!". Repeat. In other words, just keep slinging shit at the wall until something sticks. It's an effective propaganda tool, but science it ain't.
The fact is that you don't *need* the raw data to do legitimate criticism. If something is wrong with their method, criticise it based on how it's been described in the literature (and it is). Other climate scientists at different institutions felt perfectly capable of assessing the work without the raw data, why do these "sceptics" require it?
If you really want to "know the truth" rather than just try and push a point of view, there's nothing stopping you reading the published material, of which there is plenty. No need for any club membership.
Thousands of experts would have assured you that pholgiston and the ether existed. .
And things like 'flat earth' and other now disproved theories, were prevalent during a time before the Scientific Method had been put in place and refined.
That's why we have things like planes, vaccines, and tornado tracking/warning systems. Science works.
Could the climate scientists, all of them, be wrong? Well, possibly. And I'd encourage more research, and more qualified researchers double checking each other's work.
But in the meantime, to selectively ignore this area of science while trusting all the other areas, speaks volumes about bias in the coverage and misinformation that the public is being fed.
What you said, except THE OPPOSITE:
Russian analysis confirms 20th century CRU temperatures
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/russian_analysis_confirms_20th.php
Education is the silver bullet.
Urban vs. rural trends, w/many refs: link
Windy vs. calm: link link2.
The use of jump-point analysis to detect station incongruities: link
The use of a closely monitored reference network as a control:
A general overview of calculations, detrending, etc: link.
Further studies on that: link link2
Now why the hell would you think yourself qualified to be involved in this discussion if you didn't already know this?
Don't you get it? The people raising these concerns are *not scientists*, *have no background in the field*, and *don't know what the hell they're talking about*.
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
It's not known how much effect CO2 actually has on the global temperature. It could be enough to account for the entire warming, or it could be minimal enough that it's indistinguishable from natural variation. This is a huge unknown.
What IS known is that each cumulative increase in CO2 has a logarithmically smaller effect, much like adding extra blankets will have a smaller and smaller effect with each layer.
Qxe4
If the raw data is wrong, then all the data is wrong. The filtered data is less accurate than the raw data - it is filtered not to improve accuracy, but instead to establish trends. If you've established trends using invalid data, then the trends are not accurate.
But the real point is that the CRU says they destroyed the data because they couldn't store it anymore - not because it wasn't accurate. I'm rejecting the notion that they couldn't store it anymore; storage costs go down, not up. Their funding has increased the last 10 years, not decreased.
There are many datasources and many analyses, and of equal prominence to CRU's datasets are NOAA's and NASA's. No, the different datasets don't match up perfectly (for example, whether 1998 or 2005 was the hottest year -- they were close), but the datasets all yield similar results.
And the similar results are of course conclusive. It couldn't be that corrections to the raw data could have contributed to the 'observed' warming. The NOAA would never do something like that, only the oily Russians would try a trick like that. Well, actually they did, but at least they have documented it.
You'll notice the overall impact of hand made corrections to the data increases from 0 degrees around 1900 all the way up to a full 0.5F of warming by 2000. Seems to me that when nearly half the observed warming over the last 100 years lies entirely in 'corrections' you do not have independent verification. It looks a lot more like applying corrections to get the correct/expected result.
Thousands of experts would have assured you that pholgiston and the ether existed. The consensus view in medicine has been wrong lots of times:
How true. We should therefore continue taking millions of tons of carbon-based fuel and setting it on fire. There's no way anything bad will possibly happen from that. Right?
Whether or not that's actually contributing to climate change, maybe it'd be a good idea to stop doing that for a bunch of other reasons -- like less pollution, cleaner air, cheaper energy, and not being dependant on foreign, often hostile, powers. If cleaning up our act stops climate change too, bonus. But acting like that one aspect of the situation is the only thing that matters is single-minded and short-sighted. There are in fact many other reasons to stop using carbon-based fuels as our energy supply.
By the way, a bit of a riddle for you. Venus receives only 25% of the sunlight that Mercury receives. Yet Venus is much hotter than Mercury. Can you tell the class why this is?
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Check your tea for 210Po...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFbUVBYIPlI/
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
If you want to be taken seriously and convince even those who are not merely skeptical, but "won't" believe even in the face of evidence, then show us the raw fucking data without any tweaking - and accompany that data with a history of each temperature sensor (for example, if a parking lot went up next to it, and the temperature spiked the next few years and gradually increased, don't obfuscate that fact).
Also if you're only using data from some possible sources then explain how you came to choose them.
That way, if there really is an issue, one can come to a scientific conclusion rather than political.
It would also help if they were able to explain why they are so quick to dismiss anything which dosn't fit with their theories, including things which appear to be mutually exclusive.
Until then, count me among the skeptics who consider this a political rather than scientific issue, especially in light of the fact that it is believed that the Antarctic and arctic shelves are breaking from stress (from "overgrowth"), not due to heat,
Melting the the Arctic ocean may also be due to the recently discovered active volcanos and hydrothermal vents some 4km down.
since they are larger than they have been during recorded history
Recorded history of the Antarctic isn't exactly a very long time, accurate measurements of sea ice in the Arctic only go back around 30 years.
How about publishing the raw data, publishing the transforms that are used to calibrate it, and publishing the calibrated data?
That way, those interested in verifying the calibration process can do so, and those looking to run stats on the calibrated data can do so?
Wow someone who makes sense. Why not just say pollution is dirty, stinks, and we don't like it? That's good enough for me. It can be proven, and it's fact.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Exactly. I had no idea scientists mentality had changed so much the past 10 years to become more of a dark magic profession. This is all news to me. From what I know, when most scientists make a discovery, they WANT ALL THE INFORMATION OUT THERE TO PROVE THEIR POINT AND HAVE OTHERS REPROVE THEIR METHODS TO VERIFY THEY ARE CORRECT.
Just look at all the great minds of the past, from Tesla to Einstein. They weren't happy until everyone agreed with them via allowing all others capable to independently verify their work. Hell, their inventions/discoveries have held up to scrutiny for a hundred years.
If you look at the graph you'll notice that there is essentially no difference between the two lines after 1950. So it doesn't affect anything much after 1950.
Now prove that this is the only data set that is used to make climate change observations.
Prove to me you don't beat your wife.
He has a wife? I'd have thought here on /. that it would be:
Prove to me you have a wife..
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Thanks for that interpretation.
Just eyeballing the graph it doesn't look like the differences after 1950 are significant enough to change any fundamental conclusions, just some details that scientists pay attention to.
Funny though, most of the scientists in the shows admit that the earth's climate is just going through another cycle, one of many. And it will go through this cycle, of cooling and warming, regardless of what we want or do.
:)
Ahhh, the deluded "this is just another cycle" mantra. As usual you're skipping over the fact that previous cycles happened over geologic time, while this is happening over the scale of human history, a much shorter timespan. It also ignores the fact that what life was able to deal with in the past we humans may not want to have to deal with in the present.
Consider this: humans are increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by something in the range of 2.1 to 2.4 ppm per year. I did a back of the envelope calculation based on the amount of oil consumed a year (figures available upon request or easily searchable via Google) and it is matched by the actual observed increase in CO2. Since the atmosphere currently contains 350-400 ppm CO2, that means we're currently increasing the total by a little over half a percent a year.
That may not sound like a lot, but now take a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Toxicity
Let's pretend that this rate of use/production continues, with a starting value of 375 ppm and an increase of 2.2 ppm per year. This ignores the fact that currently usage is increasing every year but also ignores the fact that eventually we will have to find some other source of fuel.
In about 170 years we will have doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. In about 285 years it will reach 1000 ppm and "cause discomfort in more than 20% of occupants." (That would be occupants of the entire planet.) In 740 years we hit 2000 ppm and "the majority of occupants will feel a significant degree of discomfort, and many will develop nausea and headaches." So everyone on the planet uncomfortable all of the time, and many of them nauseous and with a headache, also all the time. We'd hit 1% (10,000 ppm) in a little under 4,400 years. I expect every animal on the planet would be dead by the time we hit 3% in 13,500 years. That level can be tolerated by humans "for at least one month," but we'd be dealing with it for every hour of every day. 4% (at 18,000 years) is survivable "for over a week," but we'd already have had to deal with 54,000 months of it at over 3%, so i doubt anyone would be left to worry about it at that point.
That's a pretty extreme time frame, but you say "Can we all powerful humans do anything about it?? According to these experts, nope." Absent humans can you name any natural cycle or phenomenon that is _likely_ to kill all higher life forms on the planet in the time frame of less than 20,000 years? There's a few things that could theoretically do it, but they don't happen on that time scale, or all life would have been wiped out on this planet long ago. The claim that humans can't significantly affect things on this planet is clearly hogwash.
On the plus side, hopefully we'll run out of things to burn long before the situation gets that extreme. We might even be smart enough to figure out something better to do than burning stuff before we hit that limit. However on the minus side it's very likely that we'll start seeing serious effects well below the 1% mark. 1000 ppm may just make people feel uncomfortable when exposed to it for days or weeks at a time, but what about an exposure period of decades? And of course there's that whole climate thing
(And i'm sure someone will bring up the fact that there are natural forces that also take CO2 out of the atmosphere, and they might scale up as the amount of CO2 in the air increases. However in the past such adaptions have happened on geologic scales, tens of thousands of years, i wouldn't want to bet the life of the human race on such things being able to handle the same change over thousands or even just hundreds of years.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
How is it any less of a religion
Just a wild guess, but maybe lack of the supernatural has something to do with it?
I guess it would then be preferred to have an absolute lack of anything then?
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I am calling BS on the reaons behind him not wanting
to divulge his findings. He can be asked by the queen and think it odd,
and want to refuse her, it still does not take away the findings he so calls his own,
have been paid for with gov. money and so belongs to the gov....not him.
--
If I had a unicorn, I wouldn't need any affordable, efficient hydrogen-powered car!
No, because they are actually climate scientists. This Russian Institute of Economic Analysis garbage is a Libertarian think-tank, not a scientific organization, and certainly not a climate research institution.
Clever signature text goes here.
Well, I made it almost all the way through this comment page and so far this is what I learned about Global Climate Change or whatever:
This is a complicated issue.
Some people get very riled up and immature about this issue:
Some people use hot topics like this to demonstrate their egotism via displays of logical analysis that take shots at other folk's posts but don't actually address the issue of global climate change.
No one seems to agree that any sort of climate change consensus can be trusted.
Some seem to feel that no sort of climate change consensus matters or can be reached.
Climate change stories gather more interest now than stories regarding potential organic matter on the moon as well as mappings of a particular cancer's genome.
My scientific conclusion:
Global climate change has become such a clusterfuck issue that it now ranks right up there with abortion, healthcare, and the extent to which any given religious text should be taken seriously in modern social context in terms of unpleasantness to discuss. In other words, people's eyes are going to start glazing over and their ears are going to become desensitized to anything relating to the environment. This whole issue is a forsaken mess.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
:(
If you study your own links, you see that they use adjusted data, called homogenized, and is a fitting description. If you first modify rural data to fit urban data it's not surprising that you won't find big differences afterwards.
Example quotes:
Quality-controlled mean monthly temperature data for U.S. in situ stations were obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National En- vironmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service/ National Climatic Data Center (NOAA/NESDIS/ NCDC) archives.
urban meteorological observations are more likely to be made within park cool islands than industrial regions
And on the contrary to what you suggest, many who do statistics on these datasets, and do not agree with how the adjustments are based, are scientist. Why would you even claim otherwise?
it's in my head
Why should that restriction exist at all?
To weed out trolls.
The background knowledge needed to interpret raw climatological data is immense. I'm knee deep in it now, and it's not straight forward. It's not a nice excel spreadsheet. The amount of work that needs to be done to just get the data into the sort of shape where statistics can be done on it is tremendous. A few quick examples:
Arctic measurements. You may already know this, but shit breaks in the cold. All the time. Add in ice melting and thawing, and 50 mph winds, and equipment does not last long. So our data from arctic areas is filled with holes. It's got bogus measurements. Knowing how to spot those bogus results requires an understanding of the equipment being used, how it functions in the cold, and where it's located. You may be able to totally trust a piece of equipment at temperatures over -10C, but have to throw out all data for temperatures below -60C. Just handing out the raw data to anyone will result in some fool taking it as absolute truth.
There are dozens of climatological oscillations in the earth's atmosphere and oceans. El Nino is half of the most famous one. (No, the other half isn't La Nina, it's the Southern Oscillation) When you look at something like temperature data, you see all sorts of ups and downs. When a couple of these oscillations are in phase, you'll have abnormally high or low temperatures. When they're not in phase, you'll have some mixture. If you're trying to analyze temperature patterns on earth and don't know to take these into account, you're just wasting your time, and potentially going to publicize incorrect findings because of it.
Geophysical data is ridiculously hard to work with. You need to understand the engineering of the tools used to collect the data, the tolerances and quirks of them, the areas they're used in, sometimes even HOW they're used to take measurements. On top of that, you need to have a very good understanding of the physical processes of the earth's climate systems to be able to isolate any sort of signal. Otherwise, it's just a chaotic mess.
In short, this requires experts. It's not something that anyone can just hop into Excel with stats 101 under their belt and do. A lot of work is a partnership between engineers, climatologists, AND statisticians. No, your "econometrics heavy MSc" is not enough. Not by a long shot.
Like anything stupidly complicated, it requires the work of experts. If you want to be an expert, you generally need to spend the time studying to BECOME an expert. How does one prove this? Relevant degree and some peer reviewed publications under your belt.
it took you 5 paragraphs to say your smarter then the rest and because of that, nobody should see what you base your oppinion on. Trust you, you know better then us.
i sugest the speaker of the house has alot in common with you.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
If you study your own links, you see that they use adjusted data, called homogenized, and is a fitting description. If you first modify rural data to fit urban data it's not surprising that you won't find big differences afterwards.>/I>
You're confusing two different aspects. You homogenize rural and urban stations, and then adjust by the scale of urbanization, for determining the average planetary temperature. You do not do that for determining how urban stations are changing relative to rural stations. For that, you divide them up into separate urban and rural datasets.
And your evidence for your claim is....? The link you provided is just to a dataset, not an analysis of parkland vs. non-parkland. So we're back to square one: who to trust, peer-reviewed paper or bold assertion on Slashdot? Hmmm...
And on the contrary to what you suggest, many who do statistics on these datasets, and do not agree with how the adjustments are based, are scientist.
1) Scientist != climatologist
2) Few are.
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
Er... The CRU folks DESTROYED the raw data and released 'processed' data which they 'adjusted' based upon some shadowy assertion that the measurements were wrong. How many credible scientists do you know who destroy their raw data?
(No, I'm not confusing the aspects)
Regarding surfacestations they do list the station ratings, which disprove the quote. Only 10% of the stations would fit the description - including both urban and rural.
Regarding the new fangled religion of "climatologists", I'd have to say that very few are. When it comes to the history of the earth (which includes climate), paleogeologists, atmospheric physicists etc are more than likely to have the required knowledge. When dealing with simple statistics (which is how all three hockeysticks got broken) it seems the climatologists do not have the required statistical knowledge - while an economist (as an example) could well have.
it's in my head
I'm not sure it's possible to "have an absolute lack of anything" and I'm not even sure what that would mean, but preference didn't enter into the question at all.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Regarding surfacestations they do list the station ratings, which disprove the quote.
They do not list whether they're built on parkland. I went to the site, and I know how to read. They group the sites into different error categories, but do not declare the specific sources of error.
Regarding the new fangled religion of "climatologists", I'd have to say that very few are.
Like that religion of biochemists and that religion of nuclear physicists? Leave the ad hominems at the door, please.
When it comes to the history of the earth (which includes climate), paleogeologists, atmospheric physicists etc are more than likely to have the required knowledge.
No, they do not. Climatology is one of the most complicated fields of study you can get. What you're recommending is like turning to a general practice physician for diagnosis of a brain tumor. Specialization in science exists for a reason; there's just way too much research and applied knowledge required for each field for "general practice" to be sufficient in this modern world. There are many thousands of papers on various aspects global warming alone in the past decade. If you can't keep up with the literature, you're not qualified to comment on the subject. That's all it really comes down to.
When dealing with simple statistics (which is how all three hockeysticks got broken)
First off, "all three hockey sticks"? What are you referring to besides Mann? There have been more than a dozen reconstructions by different authors since then. Secondly, Mann's work is a decade-old, and originally just a single paper. How much the deniers focus on it blows my mind. Third, it's not "simple statistics"; it took a whole detailed National Academy of Sciences report and a huge amount of peer-reviewed back and forth, and the results are still unclear. Concerning the NAS report, while M&M declared that 7 out of their 10 claims were affirmed, Nature reported it as the NAS reaffirming Mann's work, and a read of it seems to back that up. The NRC report, likewise, was largely on Mann's side. Only the report that largely went against Mann was the Wegman report, and that wasn't peer-reviewed. The main aspects that seem clear are that Mann overused dendrochronology, in particular certain less precisely lines (boreholes are a more accurate method now more widely used), and that Mann should have been more explicit with the uncertainties of the various datasources.
But again, the whole focus on this one decade-old paper just blows me away.
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
If someone has a model that shows something, and you say the result is false without producing a viable model or theory to show that it is, then you are engaging in contradiction, not argument.
"Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says." (Monty Python)
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
As I already stated (in CAPS), the scientist is not the primary source of data. These people should not be badgering the researcher for his climatological data. They should ask questions where necessary to clarify his methods and obtain the data independently from the same sources he used.
The researcher should not be distributing the raw data under normal circumstances; and this, of course, applies doubly if there are privacy or confidentially requirements for access to it.
Why?
1. Independent acquisition of data ensures they are using the official, public data and not an altered version.
2. Performing the analysis using the same methods as the researcher allows them to verify the calculations were performed correctly.
3. Discussion of the methodology in order to duplicate it will provide insight into the work, and if there are shortcomings in the methodology they can address the issues with the original researcher or in their own paper.
However---I repeat---the researcher is never supposed to be the source of data. If he received bad data, corrupted/damaged his data, or deliberately altered his data then there would be no way to invalidate the study based upon data received from him. The researcher is obligated to disclose his sources of data, to explain any corrections made to that primary data, and to clarify his methods of analyzing the data.
In the event that a researcher generates the data he analyzes (e.g., a lab experiment), then he must document clearly the methods he employed to generate it so that others may do the same. Written or recorded data may be subject to confidentiality, especially with research into human behavior---in those cases the distribution of data may be prohibited, require additional consent from participants, or require a confidentiality agreement.
And, just in case...
tl;dr - If they're asking the author of a study for raw climate data, they're doing it wrong.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
=== quote ===
The *ONLY* way to settle this, is to release the data. Given the far reaching implications of the decisions that will be reached through interpretation of this data, FOR EVERYONE IN THE WORLD, I fail to see how the financial interests of the people who collected it can outweigh the invested interest of the rest of the whole world, who's economical and climatological futures hinge upon it.
=== end quote ===
I cannot agree with this more. The predicted implications of this study are so great that it will effect every single person on the planet. I would go further to suggest that cherry-picking or intentionally adjusting data in order to produce the desired report should be treated as a criminal offense. I would not have a problem if life or death sentences were handed out in any situation where this sort of tampering can be proven.
I mean... who are these people? How selfish can one be? Society is better off having these elements removed!
We have an assumption of innocence in that area. In science, we have a presumption of incorrectness. Speaking as a math major, what these guys consider "science" is absolutely pathetic. A huge majority of it is assumed without much challenge (or an impossibility to prove it's actually accurate) and then data is withheld from the public regarding a final conclusion. Absolutely appalling. None of it is admissible as science.
But the climate change people are claiming that we've got to do this and do that and etc in order to prevent the end of the world.
I know there must be an apropos comparison to be made here about the WMD in Iraq, but I don't feel like spelling it out.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Generally, that's done. They're called data repositories and journals, and they generally have that sort of information.
/.. Now that I'm in it, my world has been dumped on it's head. I thought I was on firm footing, with my arm-chair climate philosophizing. The reality is far different. It's well on par with being an arm-chair neurosurgeon. The specialization required and the background knowledge needed to accomplish anything is massive. I've never been as dumb as I am now. Not because I got stupider, but because I learned how much I don't know.
Of course, it's usually phrased "we treated the data as per Julian (1993) and..." so unless you've read that paper and are intimately familiar with it, it doesn't look like they described their methods at all. As a newbie in the field, I run into this all the time. There are long-standing "tried and true" methods for calibration and interpolation. However, unless you've spent a decade reading and working with such methods, it's not apparent. I still have to ask old-timers what's going on in a lot of papers. It's either that, or read dozens more to find out what's going on in this one.
As for data, there is a shitton available if you go looking. Try the BIOS datasets, the NCAR reanalysis(filtered and interpolated, so it's "nice" data) data, etc. The issue isn't in getting ahold of the data. The issue is in being able to do anything with it. Sure, you can grab the NCAR reanalysis data, and do stats on it. But without knowing about the MJO, ESNO, the NAO, the CTI/AL, Indian Monsoon, etc., you're going to find all sorts of signals. All of which bleed out anything that hasn't been well discovered and documented.
A pure statistician will find tons of stuff in that data. 99% of it will have already been accounted for. However, to understand all the stuff that you're going to find with stats, you need to be immersed in a lot of different publications, spanning the last 90 years or so. And to understand those, you'll need a lot of background knowledge on atmospheric physics, oceanography, etc. And if you're going to wade through 90 years of research, and study atmospheric physics and oceanography, you're probably not going to do so at home in your basement. In fact, there are specialized places to do just that...
For a decade I wasn't doing climate science. I dabbled in it, read papers, thought about stuff, had the same ideas about it as the bulk of
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
So basically the data is incomplete, and you have to make guesses to fill it in. Oh, wait, I mean 'educated' guesses, since the only people you let guess are the ones whose guesses agree with yours.
Bloody hell dude, did you take in anything this guy said? Did you notice the bit about people 'cherry picking' evidence - like how how you just cherry picked and smarty pants the comment about incomplete data?
Collecting and analyzing data is *hard*. Im working for our states education department, it took a team of 5 people over 4 months to gather, check and correct our student population counts. I know that the numbers released inaccurate - Why? Its filled in with 'corrected' results and values altered to comply with the (35 years out of date) national counting rules. Now these errors aren't deliberate, they are just there because of the lack of sophistication in our various school administrations systems, a data source with about a 5% shit data rate and a decades old process that no longer reflects the current state of student education.
A well funded, reasonably resourced govt department can not provide an accurate count of bums in seats. They certainly are not releasing the source data either. Why? Because the "in-accurate" results are accurate enough for its purpose. Releasing source data would prompt questions about these minor inaccuracies that would waste tens/hundreds of thousands on education dollars of clarifying the numbers that could of been spent on, oh i don't know, educating our kids maybe?
If I want to become an expert on SQL, I go read the specs.
WTF? Your the bastard who Ive been cleaning up after all my friken life. "SQL for dummies" a database wizard does not make.
And how bout that aviation industry - they wont let me drive one of there jet planes without years of training. They should just give me the manual and the keys man, (it's all done by computers now anyway, its a government CONSPIRACY to keep us driving our cars so they can collect car taxes!.)
If I want to become an expert on climatology, I go ask people to tell me how to guess which numbers will be useful to feed into the statistical analysis specs
Ok, here's one. There's a competition with a million zillion dollar prize for the person that can produce the most accurate avg temperature for a specific week/place. You set up your monitoring station to record the temp a 1 second intervals and at the end of week retrieve your black box. You notice that every 10 minutes, you get a 30 temperature readings in a row of 999 degrees. As you were living nearby in a tent for the week and were not incinerated every ten minutes, you reckon there might be a fault with the equipment.
Me? Id throw away the 999 measurements and use the other ones. I'm guessing your quitting the race because your results aren't 100% accurate and can not be 100% verified. Thanks for the million zillion bucks.
How many myths can you push in a single post? I especially love how you keep pushing the "data is withheld" myth, as though 99% of the CRU data isn't publicly available for download (they're not allowed to share data from some of the various national weather services, as it's proprietary, and so any FOI request that includes such data will be denied). That's beautiful how you in one stroke pretend like there's no peer-review "assumed without much challenge", and then pretend that despite the *definition* of modern science -- passing peer-review -- it's somehow not science.
Keep pushing conspiracy theories that almost every professional climatologist on the planet is really in on an evil scam.
Tell me: how many peer-reviewed climatology papers -- of the tens of thousands -- have you read?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
Been there, done that. The scientists have already done that analysis and determined what stations they would use. Maybe you could argue with the criteria they used to determine what stations to use but to just say they "had no siting issues or problems" without reference to the criteria the scientists used to exclude them is bogus.
The problem is the climate models are basing their point on an argument from ignorance. We are talking about models that can't accurately model large scale climate systems (such as El Nino), and then make the point that since they can't explain the climate warming anomalies of the 80s and 90s in any other way, it must be CO2. There really isn't much more to their argument than that. You should be able to see why this is dangerous: all it takes is one unknown climate cycle to entirely invalidate the argument.
Furthermore, consider that the models have failed to predict the lack of warming in the atmosphere for the last decade, and that even if they are correct in their estimation of CO2, then that means there is something else in the environment that they are missing that has just as big an effect. What is it?
This is all without actually looking at the problems of specific climate models. If you've ever tried to model stock patterns, you will quickly realize you can easily come up with an algorithm that accurately models a pattern in the past, and yet fails miserably at predictions of the future.
The problems with the models is that they are all based on some of the same assumptions. This guy says it better than I do. He gives data from satellites that actually do test the real greenhouse effect, detecting the amount of light that escapes from the atmosphere. He then shows that none of the models actually account for that.
Qxe4
The point of science is the pursuit of truth.
I'd prefer to drop that word "truth." Can we instead say that the point of science is the pursuit of "accurate predictive models" and leave "truth" in those looser realms where terms like "good" and "evil" are used? That would make me happier.
-- thinkyhead software and media
I read a few and found this true of all of them. I've read hundreds of mathematical papers and found this false with all of them.
It isn't surprising though, since mathematics is a real science and what's going on here is psuedoscience. CRU data isn't all of it. If someone posted a mathemats or physics paper and claimed this proof was derived using a trick or data that was withheld but we should just "believe them, look at all this wonderful result we end up with", they would be ridiculed and dismissed from the community. But let's brush that requirement aside for the ever-more-intelligent than everyone else climatologists.
Incorrect.
And no, they haven't been caught doing that. There has been found an email saying something about a "trick" and you choose to interpret it to suit your own prejudice. You have not tested anything based on your prejudice, you just choose to believe what you believe. You're no scientist, and you don't follow any sort of scientific method.
Why should I take you seriously again?
For no reason at all? Because of plain FUD? Yeah, right.
The problem is when you compare the data from the stations the CRU used to the stations the IEA used there isn't that much difference between them, especially since 1950. See here. Blue is IEA, red is CRU.
Do you have that video on the form of a paper? I'm wary to trust a document with no review and no opportunity to find responses, especially one labelled with the domain of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The mere fact that he's presenting this at a CEI sponsored conference rather than a typical climate science one is... suspicious. I find it amusing that many sceptics allege political (left wing) motivations of the AGW proponents but turn a blind eye to the anti arguments being strongly associated with an organisation which claims that it is "A non-profit public policy organization dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. This doesn't make it wrong, but this is undeniably an ideological organisation, not a scientific one. Have a look at who's behind it ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooler_Heads_Coalition) Scepticism is called for. And yes, I'd say the same about pro-AGW arguments presented via Greenpeace.
Right, back to the point. Has anyone reproduced his result? While this isn't my field, I do know enough about real-world research to know that things are rarely cut and dry, especially with cutting-edge measurements of complex systems. I don't have enough knowledge of the subject to reliably assess his result, so I'll wait for some independent reproductions, complementary studies and responses and criticisms from experts.
From what I understand there isn't really any evidence for a lack of warming in the last decade. Yes, if you fit a line for the 1998-2008 data region then there's no increase, but the spread of data points suggest that the slope would have a huge error bar, and is probably compatible with warming, cooling or whatever the hell you like. In fact, did the models even claim to be able to predict with enough precision for decade-scale assessment?
The final point is that modelling the stock market is quite different. There are well understood physical laws involved in climate, whereas the behaviour of humans involved in share trading is rather trickier. Neverless you can make some predictions about the stock market over sufficiently long periods. Your argument about "postdictions" validating models is valid - since models are to a significant extent based on previous results, you have to be very careful to avoid a convoluted form of begging the question.
Actually the people who write the GCM's (General Circulation Models aka Global Climate Models) are for the most part what you could call atmospheric physicists. James Hanson for instance.
I'm wary to trust a document with no review and no opportunity to find responses, especially one labelled with the domain of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
You should also be wary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. By it's very name, if there is no climate change, they will have nothing to do. In any case, the speaker in the video, Dr Richard Lindzen is a fairly well respected climate researcher at MIT, and was one of the principle authors of one of the chapters of the IPCC report. He's as reliable as anyone.
Has anyone reproduced his result? While this isn't my field, I do know enough about real-world research to know that things are rarely cut and dry, especially with cutting-edge measurements of complex systems. I don't have enough knowledge of the subject to reliably assess his result, so I'll wait for some independent reproductions, complementary studies and responses and criticisms from experts.
I'm not sure what you are talking about here.....he basically pulled the data from the satellites. Are you suggesting that the satellites might be having trouble with their measurements?
In fact, did the models even claim to be able to predict with enough precision for decade-scale assessment?
If they didn't, would you trust them enough at this point to transfer billions of dollars at a proposed solution? As it is, yes, they did claim that. Not every individual group doing the modeling makes a claim to the accuracy of their system, in fact, some do have doubts. But the IPCC report claims they are accurate enough to make such precise claims.
Qxe4
If so, I'm not alone. And, I might add, AFAIK nobody at CRU has denied that interpretation or offered any explanation of the email that doesn't include their trying to deceive people. Face it: they were caught in with their hands in the cookie jar and haven't tried to deny it. Get over it and face the facts. Oh, wait, I forgot. You drank the AGW kool-aid and can't face inconvenient facts, can you?
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I think a lot of people would be twice as happy if you'd just give them the data without "preparing" it for them...
This is perfect for you.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1481246&cid=30469186
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. By it's very name, if there is no climate change, they will have nothing to do.
The IPCC doesn't conduct the research, and in any case it doesn't have the ideological goal of convincing the world that climate change is correct (unless that's what the data indicates). On the other hand, the CEI does have an ideological goal of little government interference in business, and climate change threatens that.
In any case, the speaker in the video, Dr Richard Lindzen is a fairly well respected climate researcher at MIT, and was one of the principle authors of one of the chapters of the IPCC report. He's as reliable as anyone.
He's more credible than most "sceptics", certainly, but hardly has the word of God. I'm not automatically going to trust him over any other climate scientist. In particular, his presentation has some rather... overstated and political messages in it, which is poor form for an academic presentation. Again, not proof that he's wrong, but it raises eyebrows.
I'm not sure what you are talking about here.....he basically pulled the data from the satellites. Are you suggesting that the satellites might be having trouble with their measurements?
I'm suggesting that the physical interpretation of the measurements isn't as straightforward as it may appear, that the result hasn't been independently verified and it would be just one piece of evidence among many. I've seen lots of preliminary results in other areas of science which *seemed* to suggest one thing but where there was actually some other explanation. This is particularly true for results on a complex system like the climate.
A negative correlation of radiation with sea surface temperature (not global temperature) doesn't have an immediate, obvious and unambigious interpretation to me, which is why I'd like to read some responses from actual experts in the field.
If they didn't, would you trust them enough at this point to transfer billions of dollars at a proposed solution?
Since climate change is a long term trend, I'm not too concerned that they can't predict short term ones, as long as they can acknowledge and quantify the uncertainties.
Everyone is a layman in fields other than his own.
My point exactly.
I wouldn't trust that either, but I think you might be misinformed on what may actually have happened. You should know, though, that just because one argument may not be reliable (as you have skepticism for the 'science') does not validate the other side of the argument.
And I sure want the Institute for Economic Analysis vetting my climate science. /sarcasm
Yes, it is big. I think someones said 11% and 40% of the northern hemisphere (that must be ignoring the oceans since they cover over 70% of the planet's surface). But it's still not big enough to overturn the existing science.
Oh wow, so you're not alone! Well, that certainly makes you right then!
By now, it's fairly well known that the 'trick' is about 'hiding the decline' of temperatures as shown by tree ring data, a proxy still thought to have been accurate in the past; and a decline not happening in the real world, unless you have superior measurements. You don't. All you have is FUD.
As I mentioned in another reply that ignores the area of the oceans which are significant in their own right.
The IPCC doesn't conduct the research, and in any case it doesn't have the ideological goal of convincing the world that climate change is correct (unless that's what the data indicates).
It does however draw its own independent conclusions. Regardless, you shouldn't trust any group or person if they can't explain to you the reason behind their arguments. Science is evidence based.
In particular, his presentation has some rather... overstated and political messages in it, which is poor form for an academic presentation. Again, not proof that he's wrong, but it raises eyebrows.
If you think Richard Lindzen's talk had a rather overstated and political message in it, and yet feel the IPCC has no ideological goal, then you have either not read the IPCC report or you have trouble noticing overstated and political messages when you agree with what they are saying.
Regardless, there is no real evidence to link any particular trend in temperature to anthropogenic greenhouse gasses.
Since climate change is a long term trend, I'm not too concerned that they can't predict short term ones, as long as they can acknowledge and quantify the uncertainties.
At what point does the uncertainty become so great that it is nothing more than a conjecture? At some point you have to change your goal from "we must do something!" to "let's get more information."
Qxe4
See, this is why I don't trust the "AGW Denial movement", because far too often I see people posting things are that at best, flat out wrong:
As posted on Real Climate.
"No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens."
Now, who drank what kool-aid and isn't facing which inconvenient facts?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
If I want to become an expert on SQL, I go read the specs
I think that if you want to best your competitors at TPC-E, it'll require more than just reading the specs.
I guess you could call mathematics the science of numbers but to me it's more of a tool used to give us a means of understanding things. Albert Einstein stated that "as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
So, why doesn't everyone else go along with the CRU? If they're wrong, the people who show that they're actually wrong should get the respect that CRU loses, not to mention the money.
Your hypothesis doesn't pass the Occam's Razor test. It's simpler to believe that most climatologists support AGW because it's true, than because they're all being paid to say it's true.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Troll huh? Flamebait maybe but I wasn't trolling.
But I'd like to add that what I said isn't true of all global warming contrarians, just a substantial portion of them.
Sure, they could - and in many cases, they have.
But unless you have a clue what the raw numbers are telling you, and what the limits of their accuracy are, how does that help you in any way? This is a lot more complex than "black" or "white". It would only guarantee that idiots around the world will misinterpret everything.
You want the numbers, show some evidence you know what to do with them. Anything else is only going to confuse the issue even further (see: CRU emails).
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Bullshit! 99% of it is available, raw or cooked, if you care to look for it. But that wouldn't support your position very well, would it? Do you expect scientists to hold your hand so you can get it? They've got better things to do with their time.
Maybe because they've already looked at what's being said and dismissed it long ago?
If you do the math you find that volcanoes and hydrothermal vents don't come close to releasing enough energy to melt the Arctic sea ice.
The true skeptics and deniers of the "autos are dangerous" theory should all go out and walk freely in front of cars on the roads, secure in the belief that those cars don't hurt people.
And that my friend, cuts right to the heart of the international anti-auto conspiracy. The pro car injury cabal want to limit our freedom to walk where we want to! So they start their indoctrination by spreading injurist propaganda in pre-schools! Well enough is enough.
Look guys, cars have got bumper bars Duh! This isn't rocket science! If the bump into you they just bounce right off.
I live in Montreal. When I got married 42 years ago on Nov 10th, (A weekend), I can tell you that two days later, winter hit with a 2 foot snowfall and sub-zero weather. Winter started the 12th of November and that was the norm. Since then, on the average, winter has been arriving one day later each year. Last week, on Dec 7th, winter arrived. Snow and cold. Today (15 Dec) is the kind of weather we usually had in November. From my perspective, in the past 60 years, I have seen winter shortened by one month in the fall, and around 15 days in the spring. Living in Canada, with global warming, we will be OK as the earth warms. But the mid-west USA and elsewhere will become unbearable in summer, and the USA will experience (in my view) severe water shortages. We do have to go on the assumption that the trend is there, and to ignore it is to cause your grand-children to pay the hardship price for today's inaction.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Your second "fact" seems to be far from established.
Exactly! He is accepting, on authority nonetheless, two propositions. Namely a) that thermometers measure temperature and b) that statistical tests of significance can separate trends from noise in data. Two propositions which you wisely reject.
"Why should that restriction exist at all? To weed out trolls." The problem is that we trolls outnumber you nincompoops with PhDs etc. And we are the ones who have to pay. And some of us rightfully object. So how about cutting the crap and giving some answers in simple English? Certainly to date you appear to have many people offside. First: some see your "climatology" as a cult. 2nd; You behave that way. 3. Your continual put down of any opposition is what politicians do. And they are not liked for it. 4. If the "deniers" (a word from the Holocaust I believe) ask questions - have you thought they may be genuine questions. On top of this there is the matter of Man Made. Yes there may be Global Warming. But Man Made? You try my patience. And I also have a vote. So now there are two matters. GW and whether its man made. I suggest you're in a battle that you will never win. Even with government money (mine) flowing into your pocket.
Freedom: the only end.
Now that's an insightful comment.
No, what I have is facts; what you have is FUD because you're trying to stampede people into spending trillions of dollars on a pig in a poke.
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And do you really think that a website devoted to advocating AGW is to be believed without hesitation? Not only that, I see nothing in what you quote about the fact that not one of the people quoted in the leaked CRU emails has denied that they were trying to hide the inconvenient fact that the data doesn't support their theory. Handwave that away!
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Oh dear!
Oh, look. A straw man. You beat that one up pretty good.
They have actually not used the tree ring data after 1960(1940?) as it has proven to be inaccurate when compared with real instruments. They didn't throw out all the tree ring data though! They are still using it for a couple of thousand years worth of climate reconstruction. So apparently it WAS accurate before the mid 20th century so everything is hunky-dory there. They seem to not have used the satellites much at all. That's understandable as they were launched to measure the severe global cooling of the 1970s which was plunging us all into a catastrophic ice age(lucky that changed as we were meant to be under three miles of ice at the turn of the millennium). All ice core reconstruction seem to be proving (for the last twenty odd years) is that CO2 increases follows the rising global temperature with a several hundred year lag between the two (as it takes a while for the ocean to warm enough to release all of that evil and awful pollutant). And all thermal radiation and sunspot anti-science has done is to prove that climate change appears to have direct correlation to measured solar activity(damn people without the right connections/qualifications). I agree let's believe the scientists. Starting with the soon to be billionaire who's one qualification to be world climate guru is that he has a degree in the manipulation and adjustment of people's minds. Hooray - let's all drink the Kool-Aid on the count of three.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
With your reasoning some of the planet's greatest people would never have been ALLOWED to advance science the way that they have. I will take my ability to call bullshit when I hear it over someone standing knee deep in data telling me that I am too stupid to analyse it because a couple of my mates haven't signed off on my work before we hit the pub for a few coldies. Shenanigans
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
How about "Why the fuck does it need to be prepared?"
How about "Send me the same data file with the raw data in that you used prior to your doom-laden adjustments?"
How about "Why would you throw out the original data-sets (but not the ones with your adjustments)?"
How about "I don't believe that you didn't have the room to store the original data so try telling the truth"
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
I must apologise for the nine minutes comment before. It actually took you half an hour to prove to the world your breathtaking hat size. The above comment really does show you have a big hat.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
If you read the links, it is clear that the data upon which Wang's research was based did not exist. Why do you criticize Keenan for exposing that?
I'm pretty sure that is because their computers have already been taken into custody. I am sure you can find the data online to support this. I think the warrants were approved on Tuesday. Check out the CRU website as opposed to the google cache links for website published data it's truly hilarious.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Funny how you so easily dismiss the tree ring data, but desperately latch onto the sunspot data as if it was proof of the causation between solar activity and temperature.
Guess what? It diverges too:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
Recent data totally disproves your thesis that solar activity is the prime driver of climate change in recent history. Yet the meme persists in climate skeptic circles and highlights the bankruptcy of the movement.
Tree ring data however is not settled yet. The divergence happens in some trees - especially in those found in the northern hemisphere where the majority of the world's population lives, but not in the southern hemisphere. It is certaintly plausible that human activity is causing the divergence, and if so, the tree ring data would be likely fine in a pre-industrial era.
We don't know for sure, but a person genuinely interested in the science would want to know why - perhaps even favoring more funding to investigate the discrepancy.
Yet instead of teasing out the real cause of the divergence, you'd rather have all tree ring data tossed out so that we can never know the truth.
That there exist people who think that way is truly sad.
This is a problem with CRU's process not with climate 'sceptics' and other interested parties wanting to take a look at the data that might lead to decisions that would drastically affect our lifestyle. Imagine if Linus complained that he was overworked becuase he was getting over 50 requests to release the kernel source per week, oh the outrage! What I'm saying is that just make the climate data publically available by default, what is the point of hiding it?
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
What I get out of this? That we Americans are a lot better these days at spreading the idea of using think-tanks to justify whatever further enriches the individual than we are at "spreading democracy" that benefits entire nations.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
>Russia is being the number one impediment these days to a global climate change accord, and it seems to go to the top. For example, they've been one of the main forces holding up a Copenhagen accord.
Really? Maybe in your fantasies but in reality Russia is actually is in pretty good position right now, the CO2 outout is 34% below 1990 level, simply because this baseline very convinently coincided with the economic slump around the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. So Russia can easily pledge obscene CO2 cuts without actually doing anything AND THEN make some money on top of it trading carbon credit (Ukraine is already making billions on it). The number one impediment is still the USA an China (yes I think they should share the prize).
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
You - ah - obviously don't know the definition of Straw Man argument.
"A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.[1][2]"
Claiming that if we don't do something about climate change, we'll have to deal with the consequences of not having done something about climate change, isn't a Straw Man Argument, and honestly, you're trying to present it as one isn't even sufficiently close to "Superficially Similar Proposition" to qualify for Irony Points.
(Insightful? Really? On what planet?)
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
The problem is that the papers on Siberian data were 'peer-reviewed' by the same people who alledgedly falsified it for their own research supporting AGW.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
No, but I think someone who has been shown to be making baseless claims (ie. you) should show a little more humility when shown to be completely wrong.
But as I've come to expect from denialists (as opposed to skeptics), you don't really care about the facts, just what you can convince other people of with your rantings.
I make no claim that the explanation is correct, merely that you are wrong to claim that no explanation has been offered. The fact that you repeat your disproven assertion immediately after it's proven to be wrong shows that you are incapable of carrying on rational discussion.
Good day sir.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Your nick is well picked.
Not only did I very much explain that it's background knowledge, not raw intelligence, you seem to think that data analysis is some simple task. To cap it off, you talk about great people in science. You do know, that since about 100 years ago, almost all major scientific discoveries were "signed off by my mates"? That's how we weed out truly good ideas from those of uninformed luddites.
I linked to a bunch of data below in this thread. Feel free to amaze the world with your fantastic abilities.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Then they let an idiot like the Goracle be their spokesperson and he is so clueless he things the inside of the earth is millions of degrees.
Yeah, sorry about that. I intended to vote against him at the secret meeting we held, but I was off sick that day.
The world has changed and we all have become metal men.
We already know the data is manipulated. That's what mathematical modeling is. Where is a description of the biases used, how many data points don't fit, etc.?
But all that aside, everyone seems to assume that once convinced the response is clear: "reverse the process".
I don't know that I agree with that. Why should I spend all that money to try to reduce the earth's temperature? The reported alternative is slightly higher alternative temperatures and higher ocean levels. Maybe that's acceptable. Some people with cancer choose not to treat it. That's an acceptable response.
I see where you are coming from. However, I still look at truth as something that is amoral. One can say science is the pursuit of knowledge. But ultimately the pursuit knowledge is to find out what is true. Take E=mc2 for example, it can be used for good or evil yet we know the science behind it is still true. Science from the 30,000 foot view is the pursuit of truth. Insert whatever synonym you prefer. Whatever you decide to call it, "accurate predictive models" or "truth" somebody will always be unhappy with the results.
The Theory of Evolution is also a HUGE DISCEPTION even bigger the Global Warming.
It is NOT supported in the fossil record, where are all those Missing Links they should be there ... ... AND all those ENDANGERED SPECIES why are not any of them mutating and morphing into an animal that can survive.
All the corporate polution of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, it seemed to be intentional, IT WAS, those corporate BOOBs that BELIEVE all the Evolutionary CRAP thought they could bring PROOF of Evolution into being by forcing spieces to MUTATE -- YET IT HAS NOT HAPPENED ALL THE ENDAGERED SPECIES ARE JUST DEING !!!!!!
NOW the corporate BOOBs are environmentalists because they do not want you to know what their smartest people, NASA, have figured out.
You say, well its a gradual thing, SOO GRADUAL THEY WILL ALL DIE ??? That is NOT Evolution that is simply DEATH !
The Theory of Evolution is NONSENSE !!!!!!
AND this means that there are NO Eletes, it is ALL just training, nurture NOT nature, also consider the genetic narrowing that is KNOWN to have happened in the Human Genone a LONG TIME AGO, THERE ARE NO ELETS, there are NO supperiors, there are no SPECIAL PEOPLE WITH SUPERIOR GENES, there is only genetic desease, and we DO NOT KNOW exactly how genetics work, but we do know how it DOES NOT WORK and it is NOT the utterly simple ways that you have been taught and it is NOT the Evolutionary way.
My guess is we have a very large and OLD gene warehouse in the Junk genes where select genes come out to play only when environmental conditions change a great deal and this also has something to do, perhaps when it malfunctions, with genetic desease and Cancer.
The planet was terriformed in the absense of any other viable solutions or theories, for now this is the TRUE state of our most advanced sciences.
Nothing to see here folks, move along. Obviously, Slashdot readers have been identified, correctly, as opinion makers online. We are. But we're not stupid, either. Thanks for playing.
First, it's not clear from the email snippet that the Phil was the same guy who handled the Siberian data.
Second, it is clear that Phil had to argue his case. If he'd had the power of an unexplained veto, there'd be a conflict, but since a rational for rejection was required, the rejection would have to be a defense of the previous work.
Heck, if I was an editor, I'd think myself remiss in not contacting an author who'd been criticized in a submission to get either a "That guy is full of crap and here's why" or a "I made a mistake and this guy is awesome".
Play Command HQ online
It doesn't matter how many times you and your droids assert I'm wrong. Argument by assertion doesn't become proof no matter how many times you chant "you're wrong and what you're saying is FUD." Facts are facts, and the facts are that the "climate scientists" twisted the data to "support" their theory, did everything they could to keep the data secret and got caught. Keep telling me wrong, if it gets your rocks off, but the facts are out there and you can't suppress them any longer.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Given a choice between trusting scientists of whom I know almost nothing, and trusting a hyper-opinionated (see above quoted self-description) journalist working for a neo-fascist turd-rag with a century-long reputation for treating anything that doesn't address money (making and taking thereof) as the only thing that matters ... I'd only piss on the journalist if he had lots of open wounds and I had some particularly nasty bladder infection.
Yeah, nice idea. As a scientist working in industry, I wish you well in your desire to take on a second and third full-time job learning what data you're looking at and it's intricacies ; personally I like to spend my 3 to 4 hours of spare time per day sleeping, and when I'm not at work, I'll think of you in your quest. A little. Enjoy. ... so no problem there checking for drift.
What's that - Oh, I see, you were thinking you'd be able to open the "raw data" in a spreadsheet, throw a couple of basic statistical tools at it, and say "Shazam". But didn't you realise that the raw data you're desiring is probably going to be in 37 differently laid out families of ASCII files, which change in format each time the director of a Oblast's Metrological Service retires or is replaced (there are 47 Oblasts to play with, so you'd get several changes of management per year overall. And don't forget the non-Oblast areas). And of course, half of it'll be in Russian and the other half in various different "helpful" translations into English ; your guess is as good as mine on what languages the "informative" notes will be in. But fortunately there'll only be a few dozen different types of the sensors in use for any particular parameter, and they'll all have different idiosyncrasies. Calibrations will be carried out on Mondays at some institutions, Tuesdays at others
Enjoy your self-appointed voluntary task - meanwhile I'll enjoy getting paid to do a much simpler task and getting a few hours sleep a day.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
That's the way the earth works. It rotates and it orbits the sun. When you read books like "The Salem Witch Trial" and wonder how could people have been so stupid...Well, we're living it!
I don't know why you got the flamebait mod either.
An allegation is just that, an allegation. Unless the accusers can show in a scientifically rigorous way that the stations were excluded for unwarranted reasons it's just more FUD.
The vast majority of the climate data is available from sources other than the CRU. The same sources they got their raw data from. If the list of Russian stations isn't available somewhere how did the IEA in Moscow get it to compare against their own set?
Keep in mind the FOIA we're talking about here is Britain's, not the US's. I've seen comments from (US) climate scientists that they are getting buried by requests lately. It amounts to a DDOS attack by the deniers causing the scientists to waste their time on responding instead of their real work.
Woosh.
-- $G
16, 000 rapes; victims were 80% men, 20% women. Analysis: Cop-out-in-hagens prefer men.
100,000 muggings; victims were 90% men, 10% women. Analysis: Cop-out-in-hagens prefer men.
1 Gt mass of trash; 80% hypodermic needles, 10% "weed"-paper, 10% "rolled" one-dollar bills with traces of cocaine and excrement. Analysis: Cop-out-in-hagens need toilet paper and water closet training.
Nope, it's filtered to do both. There are some quite clever methods used to find and reject incorrect data.
(The data deletion, on the other hand, is a completely separate issue. The data in question wasn't deleted recently, it was deleted in the 80s, back when data storage was expensive and they weren't as well funded. It looks like nowadays they just keep copies of all the data and code.)
The trouble is, the non-statisticians not only wouldn't understand, they would deliberately ignore the issue and pretend it was evidence of fraud.
Witness the New Zealand AGW denialists recently: they took raw data from one station, then claimed it didn't show any warming and therefore the released data had been fixed to give the desired result. The problem was that the raw data was from 3 or 4 different locations, since the station had moved, and so couldn't be plotted on the same graph. The correction was fairly simple, too - add an offset to compensate for the location change. The people making the bogus fraud claims were even fully aware of this issue.
Now imagine something like this, but where the problem with the raw data is much harder for the layman to understand. (For example, the rejection of raw data due to statistical tests showing it's bogus.) Imagine what would happen when the AGW deniers get their hands on that. Oh wait - you don't have to, because that's exactly what's happening right now.
Your nick is well picked.
Why thank you for noticing.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Why does no one ever seem to get my name?
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Phlogiston, persisted as a theory because no competing hypothesis existed at the time could better explained the data, and the data available at the time did not contradict the theory.
Climate science today is different with many scientists going out of there way to enormous quantities of data ranging from this such as tree rings, to limestone deposits, to sun spots to ice cores to real temperature data from the ground and from satellites.
One of the funnier things, actually, is the resolute attempt by the CRU and IPCC to discount the Sun as a source of climate variability. None of the IPCC models take into account the sunspot cycles, nor are there "what if" runs based on possible variability. That's not entirely surprising given that the mechanism for sunspot minima causing lower temperatures isn't understood. However, we do know historically that minima such as the Maunder Minimum produced sharply lower temperatures.
Mind you, the term "greenhouse effect" was introduced way back in the late 19th century, so the idea is hardly new. It is certainly way longer than say the intervening time between the discovery of eggs in cholesterol, and the discovery that consumption of eggs do not increase blood cholesterol levels.
True, although the "greenhouse effect" applies to closed systems (bounded in the case of a greenhouse, with glass). It's not at all clear the IPCC is modeling the open "greenhouse effect" here on Earth properly.
To equate climate change to phlogiston or egg cholesterol is a long stretch indeed.
Not really so much, but the other thing to keep in mind is that phlogiston was never used as a justification for spending trillions of dollars, permanently changing the world economy, and affecting the standard of living of billions of people. So, the standard for the science used to "prove" anthropogenic global warming should be high indeed. IMO, the current state of the art is not even close. Fortunately, given the state of the Sun's sunspot cycles we may be in a multi-decade timeout on warming, anthropogenic or no. We should know quite a bit more twenty or thirty years down the road.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
One of the funnier things, actually, is the resolute attempt by the CRU and IPCC to discount the Sun as a source of climate variability. None of the IPCC models take into account the sunspot cycles, nor are there "what if" runs based on possible variability. That's not entirely surprising given that the mechanism for sunspot minima causing lower temperatures isn't understood. However, we do know historically that minima such as the Maunder Minimum produced sharply lower temperatures.
As I understand, solar activity correlated for most of the time we have direct temperature records, but the correlation diverged markedly in the last two decades. Solar activity having reduced in that time is unable to explain the continued rise in temperature. http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm Solar activity is therefore not something I can use to explain currently warming trends.
True, although the "greenhouse effect" applies to closed systems (bounded in the case of a greenhouse, with glass). It's not at all clear the IPCC is modeling the open "greenhouse effect" here on Earth properly.
The "greenhouse effect" in any sense of the word not a closed system. Even a glass greenhouse has external energy input via sunlight and output via the gradual dissipation of heat into its environment via the contact of glass with air. The distinction is false.
To equate climate change to phlogiston or egg cholesterol is a long stretch indeed.
Not really so much, but the other thing to keep in mind is that phlogiston was never used as a justification for spending trillions of dollars, permanently changing the world economy, and affecting the standard of living of billions of people. So, the standard for the science used to "prove" anthropogenic global warming should be high indeed.
As if changing the world economy is a bad thing. The standard of living of billions of people is already poor and developed nations grapple with traffic congestion, pollution, rising grocery prices due to poor planning and energy security. Trillions of dollars were spent on saving the economic system from collapse and bailing out banks to preserve a world economy that didn't work particularly well. Commitments to save the planet pale in comparison by orders of magnitude.
IMO, the current state of the art is not even close. Fortunately, given the state of the Sun's sunspot cycles we may be in a multi-decade timeout on warming, anthropogenic or no. We should know quite a bit more twenty or thirty years down the road.
By which time projections say we will be too late.
You are an idiot. Do you seriously think that the Western countries stand to benefit from the flooding of London, New York, Tokyo, San Francisco (the Silicon Valley), and Miami?
One of the funnier things, actually, is the resolute attempt by the CRU and IPCC to discount the Sun as a source of climate variability. None of the IPCC models take into account the sunspot cycles, nor are there "what if" runs based on possible variability. That's not entirely surprising given that the mechanism for sunspot minima causing lower temperatures isn't understood. However, we do know historically that minima such as the Maunder Minimum produced sharply lower temperatures.
As I understand, solar activity correlated for most of the time we have direct temperature records, but the correlation diverged markedly in the last two decades. Solar activity having reduced in that time is unable to explain the continued rise in temperature. http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm Solar activity is therefore not something I can use to explain currently warming trends.
The graph at your link has some problems. First off, the "global temperature average" is poorly known before satellite records. Then, in recent years the GISS temperature record has been skewed, both from cherry-picking data and siting climate stations in urban heat islands while not applying appropriate corrections. It's well known that 1998 was the warmest year on record, while the chart shows 2005 as quite a bit warmer, eh?
Further, your graph is of "solar radiance", not "sunspot number". The mechanism for cooling during solar minima is apparently more complex than simple differences in radiant output. One theory is that high cosmic ray activity spawns more cloud formation - but the jury is still out on that. Regardless, we do know that during the Maunder and Dalton minima, temperatures fell sharply.
True, although the "greenhouse effect" applies to closed systems (bounded in the case of a greenhouse, with glass). It's not at all clear the IPCC is modeling the open "greenhouse effect" here on Earth properly.
The "greenhouse effect" in any sense of the word not a closed system. Even a glass greenhouse has external energy input via sunlight and output via the gradual dissipation of heat into its environment via the contact of glass with air. The distinction is false.
My use of "open" and "closed" wasn't scientific, sorry. The glass walls of a greenhouse don't permit convection, whereas the atmosphere does. Some highly nonlinear things happen in the atmosphere when convection occurs - mainly falling under the category of "clouds". Clouds reflect a lot of solar energy back into space. So, the comparison between a conventional greenhouse, and the Earth's atmosphere is not straightforward at all.
To equate climate change to phlogiston or egg cholesterol is a long stretch indeed.
Not really so much, but the other thing to keep in mind is that phlogiston was never used as a justification for spending trillions of dollars, permanently changing the world economy, and affecting the standard of living of billions of people. So, the standard for the science used to "prove" anthropogenic global warming should be high indeed.
As if changing the world economy is a bad thing. The standard of living of billions of people is already poor and developed nations grapple with traffic congestion, pollution, rising grocery prices due to poor planning and energy security. Trillions of dollars were spent on saving the economic system from collapse and bailing out banks to preserve a world economy that didn't work particularly well. Commitments to save the planet pale in comparison by orders of magnitude.
There are quite a few problems with your "logic" here. First of all, the trillions spent to save the economic system from collapse have already been spent - they're gone. We don't have trill
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Correction: Without taking into account cloud related cooling, a doubling of CO2 from current levels would result in about 1.5 deg C of warming.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
It's well known that 1998 was the warmest year on record, while the chart shows 2005 as quite a bit warmer, eh?
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/2005_warmest.html
The glass walls of a greenhouse don't permit convection,
Neither does the vaccuum of empty space.
whereas the atmosphere does.
Why you would compare the glass of a glass house to the atmosphere is beyond me. The air contained in a glass house convects. The air in the glass house is a more appropriate analog to the atmosphere is it not?
Some highly nonlinear things happen in the atmosphere when convection occurs
Hurricanes would likely fall under that category.
- mainly falling under the category of "clouds". Clouds reflect a lot of solar energy back into space. So, the comparison between a conventional greenhouse, and the Earth's atmosphere is not straightforward at all.
Not straightward isn't the same as not true.
You don't get convection without a temperature gradiant, so the existance of more convection presupposes that a temperature gradient has already become exaggerated, one manifestation being that the surface temperature has already increased.
There are quite a few problems with your "logic" here. First of all, the trillions spent to save the economic system from collapse have already been spent - they're gone.
No, I wasn't proposing that trillions should be spent. I was using the fact to illustrate that the amount of political will or political commitment to solving the problem of climate change pales in comparison to that of solving the global financial crisis.
We don't have trillions to spend on nonexistent global warming - good thing it's not a problem.
A couple of problems:
Further, even if we here in the US were to sign up to such a disastrous policy, China and India have refused. China is the world's largest CO2 producer at this point, and as our economy died theirs would simply pick up the slack. The net effect of what was attempted at Copenhagen would have been close to zero.
The US doesn't have to sign up to Copenhagen to act. All I want is for the US to act seriously. How it does it is immaterial to the rest of the world - only that it does. A number of European nations have long ago enacted a carbon tax for instance without any agreement or damage to their economy.
Further, killing the US economy would also kill many of the innovative projects that will eventually reduce CO2 output, whether such reduction is needed or not.
That was never what I proposed.
In reality, the situation isn't urgent. It's well known that as more CO2 is added to the atmosphere, the approximate energy absorption and temperature rise is logarithmic in nature. There's a good discussion at: The Cold Facts About Global Warming. By the best current estimates, a doubling of CO2 concentration from current levels would result in less than a one deg. C increase in temperature - and that's without considering likely negative cloud feedback.
First you say the atmosphere is too complex to model, then cite an article that uses an even simpler model with its own projections. A bit of a double standard if you ask me.
But fine, let's go with it. What do the calculations regarding double CO2 actually say?
The net effect of all these processes is that doubling carbon dioxide would not double the amount of global warming. In fact, the effect of carbon dioxide is roughly logarithmic. Each time carbon dioxide (or some other greenhouse gas) is doubled, the increase in temperature is the same as the previous increase. The reason for this is that, eventually, all the longwave radiation that can be absorbed has already been absorbed. It would be analogous to closing more and more shades over the windows of your house on a sunny day -- it soon reaches the point where doubling the number of shades can't make it any darker.
So another way of looking at it is by thinking of adding blankets to your bed on a cold night: if you have no blankets, adding one will have a big effect. If you have a thousand blankets, adding another thousand will have an unmeasurably small effect.
Sounds right - or does it?
Well, the amount of energy absorbed by the entire atmosphere doesn't change much - I can grant that much. This is because as you get higher into the atmosphere, because of all the CO2 below you, there isn't much heat coming out for you to block further anyway - hence the extra blankets analogy - the extra blankets don't do much more.
However, the analogy is wrong.
The problem is, it is calculating the total absorption of the entire atmosphere and then calibrating it against the surface temperature changes (which is totally unrelated). It doesn't matter to us how much the total temperature of the atmosphere increases. What matters is how much the surface temperature increases, because that's where we live.
It mentions earlier:
It is generally accepted that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is already high enough to absorb almost all the infrared radiation in the main carbon dioxide absorption bands over a distance of only a few km
Let's say 5km of atmosphere is capable of absorbing 100% of the heat energy. If you double the CO2, then the same amount of energy is absorbed in the bottom 2.5km. If you double again, then the same amount of energy is absorbed in the bottom 1.25km.
If 1.25km of atmosphere absorbed 5km worth of heat, that's 4 times the amount of heat as before. As we double the CO2 concentration twice, the amount of CO2 is 4 times more.
In other words, the surface temperature increases mostly linearly. That the total atmospheric temperature increase is logarithmic because more and more of the upper atmosphere is getting colder is immaterial. We don't live there!
The article is intentionally confounding two unrelated concepts to fool you into believing it.
I say this because earlier in the article, it said
For radiation from the sun, this theory predicts that increased CO2 would cause cooling in the upper atmosphere and warming in the lower atmosphere
So they know this, yet still manage to overlook it in their model.
While reading your reply the term "parinoid lunatic" came to mind.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
While reading your reply the term "parinoid lunatic" came to mind.
Thank you for demonstrating how the AGW alarmists typically respond to critics.
What's even more troubling than dismissing any opposition as lunatics or in league with the enemy (typically oil and coal moguls), is the efforts to manipulate the facts and re-write history to suit their agenda.
You can't make this stuff up.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
"You can't make this stuff up"
Maybe not but someone did. I have no idea who Strong is or wether he is hell bent on world domination, none of it changes the clear scientific conclusion that we a fucking up the climate on a grand scale.
"Thank you for demonstrating how the AGW alarmists typically respond to critics"
Critics sort things out by peer-review, hecklers throw red-herrings and scream abuse from websites and editorials.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
PS: from your link; "He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer". This is just pure comedy gold. Lindzen is a journalist in the WSJ, Fred Singer runs the lobby group called the Heartland Institute and is an ex-tabacoo "scientist".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Opps, cut of the funny part of the quote; "...Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world's most distinguished climate scientists"
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Whoosh!
Define supernatural.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
There is more to the art of skepticisim than typing the sounds you hear.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Man made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on this planet, in all of its history.