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Climate Researchers Fight Back
tomduck writes "The Guardian reports that climate researcher Andrew Weaver is suing the National Post newspaper in Canada in a libel action for publishing 'grossly irresponsible falsehoods.' The Post claimed he cherrypicked data to support his climate research, and tried to blame the 'evil fossil fuel' industry for break-ins at his office in 2008 to divert attention from mistakes in the 2007 IPCC report. This comes fast on the heels of another Guardian article describing lessons learned from the exoneration of UEA scientists involved in the so-called Climategate affair. Are climate scientists finally fighting back against their critics, who they were previously more inclined to ignore?"
Said Canada's environment minister John Baird in 2006. He then proceeded to eviscerate all government funding for climate research.
Good peer reviewed journal articles may determine the right from the wrong on the science.
However, if you are an ordinary citizen, hack journalist, or politician, you don't read those. No, the headlines determine the "truth."
Besides, there were allegations here that went beyond the meat of the science and into workplace ethics. If some rag says you sexually harassed your coworkers or embezzled money, and you didn't, you sue. That is what is happening here.
Someone had to do it.
I don't see the relevance... In climate data, that "suggests" global warming, and then the assumption that it is our doing.
Either you're hopelessly biased or you don't understand science. Science is the process by which we hypothesize various things, then test to see which one has the most support, via a semi-formal method. Science never "proves" anything absolutely. It doesn't prove that gravity exists or how it works. It just very, very strongly suggests it.
In order for a rational person to believe anthropogenic global warming is not happening they need to either reject science entirely or they need to have a competing theory with more support. You just hypothesized that the changing climate is the result of natural processes, but if you're being rational, you can't believe that until that theory has more scientific evidence than global warming being largely the result of human influence. That is simply not the consensus of the experimentation and modeling I've seen to date, by a huge margin.
There is always room for an alternate model of global warming. Creating such a model and then creating falsifiable tests to see if it holds up has been a large endeavor among many very well funded scientists. The thing is, none of them have panned out or produced results that compare favorably to man-made global warming. For you to not accept that global warming is most likely strongly influenced by human actions you have to picking and choosing as to when you believe in the scientific method and when you don't.
Most of the thousands of climate researchers are out of the public eye and, guess what? They get the same answers as the results from researchers in the public eye. The amazing thing is that you can throw away all the data that came from the climategate researchers and it doesn't change things at all. It's also amazing that there have been lots of people trying to refute the climate change theories over the last 100 or 150 years and they've never been successful. And after reading all those climategate they haven't been able to find any evidence of the researchers trying to skew the data.
By the way, I know you changed your reference to IPCC later, but you're correct that the IPCC skewed the data that was presented. I know that at least in the data on the expected sea rise that they took more conservative values than are generally accepted, and then applied that a point before 2100 rather than take the rise all the way to 2100. They didn't want to be alarmist :).
One example can't be extended to all of 'em, logic fail. Please try again.
Try climateaudit.org or http://bishophill.squarespace.com/ in general.
Neither is in the pay of anyone, and have links to many, many more like themselves that are merely studying the science. This issue is big and important enough that it should be able to stand up in the full light of day.
Or talk to Judith Curry, one of the few climate scientists that are willing to point out the flaws in the current process, e.g. here: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/04/squeaky-clean.html?showComment=1271462868897#c1343322932444511542
Anyone who was alive during the 70s should see distinct similarities between this disinformation campaign and the once vehement claims that there was "no definitive link" between tobacco use and cancer.
This isn't that surprising - the reason the similarities are so striking is because the oil companies are hiring the exact same people the tobacco industry used.
I have to wonder though - wouldn't the oil companies know that their propaganda artists are the same ones who failed the tobacco lobby?
And, oh yes, the person at the center of the CRU meltdown, Phil Jones, now admits there has been NO GLOBAL WARMING FOR THE PAST 15 YEARS.
Are you still on that? You might want to at least link to the actual interview where that quote is supposedly coming from, which is here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm
And here is the relevant quote in question:
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
Quite a bit of a difference from what you and that ncpa article are claiming, isn't it? Like always, it pays to go to the source itself. Unless, of course, you have no interest in what's actually happening, and are merely interested in finding your present ideas confirmed.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.