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Climategate's Final Days
The Bad Astronomer writes "Climategate may be on its way out. An investigatory committee at Pennsylvania State University has formally cleared climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann of any scientific misconduct. Mann was central in the so-called Climategate scandal, where illegally leaked emails were purported to indicate examples of scientists trying to cover up any lack of global warming in their data. This finding by the committee (PDF) is another in a series of independent investigations that have all concluded that no misconduct has occurred."
Climategate's Final Days
Bullshit. If you think this means it's over, you're not familiar with the debate.
Immediately following Climategate Nature released an editorial saying no controversy found in the e-mails. That didn't seem to matter at all.
The more respected global warming papers have been published and accepted in peer reviewed journals. Point out any global warming denialist papers that have done the same. I think the most you'll find are papers that suggest global change could result in positive things in some areas. I don't know of any saying that climate change is not happening.
Your fundamental problem in arguing with a person who denies global warming is that they use erroneous logic. They find one uncertainty or minor flaw in a study and suddenly volumes of studies -- even those unrelated -- can be thrown out and dismissed. If it isn't in Mann's research, if it isn't in the East Anglian e-mails, it's somewhere else. You just have to face that logic and move on past them. Oh, and for future articles, Bad Astronomer, using cute otter lolcats to fire back at your opponents isn't exactly the hallmark of a logically sound debate. It's little more than an ad hominem attack.
If you think this is the 'final days' of this mess, you are sadly mistaken. Not until first world countries find it hard to get by will the majority of them step up and realize it. The election of Virginia State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli shows you got a whole state who would like to sweep this inconvenience under the rug and want you to stop trying to hinder their economy with your "research and science."
My work here is dung.
Maybe they were holding it wrong?
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
One can never satisfy a conspiracy theorist.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Conspiracy! The witch floated, he must be a witch!
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
These are the same kind of people still insisting that Obama has not proven he is an American citizen because they do not have his birth certificate in their hands, that there isn't an unbroken documented chain of custody for that document and having its validity is sworn by Jesus himself.
... of course those stuffy liberal academic types at Penn St. cleared him. They're liberals! They're protecting their own!
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
No, no. This isn't the end. Not even close.
Creationists, climate change deniers, the tobacco industry ... they all use the same arguments. You can go through The Fine Art of Baloney Detection and find the examples right to hand.
At least the tobacco industry has mostly given up claiming smoking isn't bad for you. Now their shills are working for the climate change deniers. Yes, it's the same shills.
RationalWiki (unfinished) comparative example: A comparative guide to science denial.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I seem to recall that
1.there were emails clearly indicating that they were politically involved, ie they'd exagerate to scare people. Hardly a scientific attitude
2.there was some pretty perverted data analysis to get to "expected results"
There's no denying there are climate changes going around. But
1.calling it man-made is complete speculation at the current point(yes it is, there's correlation at best, no proof of causality)
2.calling it warming is kind of fucked up since it's warming in some places, and cooling in others
3.no proof either that anything we do can change anything about it.
Oh and there is a non negligible part of the climate scientific community that *disagrees* with how things are being presented.
How about they study pollution and find a way to stop the billions of tonnes of garbage that still get dumped into our landfills and seas every year? Won't pollution and deforestation will kill and harm us a whole lot more than a few simple degree changes in our atmosphere?
I'm sorry, but isn't getting sick with dieases like cancer from a contaminated environment deserving more funding for research than climate research? Why are they getting all that attention and research dollars? Are we being played into fools to keep on looking up at the sky at the weather instead of the ground we're standing on and the quality of air we breath?
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
As far as the lay public is concerned, the damage has already been done. They were already convinced that these were a bunch of self-serving interests promoting their cause, and the leaked emails affirmed it for them.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
You article author says this about himself:
"Since Day 1 of this I have been calling it a non-event, a manufactured controversy by global warming denialists trying to make enough noise to drown out any real talk on this topic. "
Hardly an unbiased observer. I, for one, really hope that there isn't anything to 'ClimateGate' but if you've read anything about it at all, you know that the problem wasn't the emails, but in the leaked data sets and source code. The emails show typical petty human behaviour. The data and source code suggest the possibility of cherry picking of data, and mathematical modeling to reach a predetermined conclusion. That is what worries me, but I admit I don't have the expertise to make a determination on my own.
Sunshine and openness is only way to ever end this debate over global warming. All research, results, and data sets should be publicly available. Is that really too much to ask?
Necron69
News at 11.
Hardly an independent panel. And really, they did say he was incorrect to not have real statisticians working on the results - which invalidates much of the published work.
You can say he was cleared, but that's only of purposeful intent to mislead - what the report is basically dancing around is that he misled through poor application of scientific principals. And isn't that what really matters here, that the scientific method is carefully applied instead of fitting data to a pre-concieved conclusion?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The VA State Attorney General still has his own investigation (which TFA mentions) which is supposed to root out Mann's monetary fraud when he was at UVa. Yet this is the same AG who claims his own anti-Healthcare lawsuit against the Federal government won't cost the state more than the $350 filing fee. Somehow I don't think that he gets the irony of this situation.
And yes I do realize that this comment is more fitting for Craigslist than /.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The story in The Sunday Times of London that kicked all this off has been fully retracted with several uses of the phrase "We apologise." The German newspaper that reported that the IPCC erred in its assessment of climate impact in Africa also retracted that story.
Speaking as a journalist, the most damning phrase I see in The Times' retraction is this one (boldfaced emphasis mine):
So what really happened there? It sounds suspiciously like somebody high up at The Times or News Corporation didn't like the point of view presented and changed it to fit his or her own worldview, facts be damned.
Prevent Windows piracy. Use Linux instead.
Obi-Wan: [with a small wave of his hand] You don't need to see his identification.
Stormtrooper: We don't need to see his identification.
Obi-Wan: These aren't the droids you're looking for.
Stormtrooper: These aren't the droids we're looking for.
Obi-Wan: He can go about his business.
Stormtrooper: You can go about your business.
Obi-Wan: Move along.
Stormtrooper: Move along... move along.
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
The earth has been both hotter and cooler than it is now.
That is correct... but irrelevant to the question.
Anthropogenic global warming is not instead of natural variations-- it is in addition to natural variations. Natural variations don't suddenly vanish now that we add carbon dioxide to the air.
...I'm all for taking better care of the planet, but the global warming nuts haven't really provided much evidence and they're the ones making the allegations.
The way I see things, if you make a bunch of claims, the burden of proof is ON YOU... not the people you're speaking to.
By "global warming nuts," you apparently mean "the scientists who actually study the problem."
By "the burden of proof is on you" you apparently mean "...to prove the correctness of scientific results to people who aren't willing to take any effort to look at the actual science, but will believe any criticism with no skepticism whatsoever."
There is a lot of science... this is not made up. (And it dates to way before Al Gore, who's not a scientist.) Have you actually read, for a start, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Working Group I Report on Physical Science Basis of Climate Science? What? No? Because you already read in a blog somewhere that it's a hoax, so you don't need to read it?
So, uh, if you won't actually read the evidence, how can any possible amount of evidence convince you?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
On the Oxburgh "investigation": "The science was not the subject of our study.".
Dog is my co-pilot.
Mann gets millions from NSF and Penn State doesn't want that to stop. What a shock they exonerated him! Once again, the scientific community shows that when it all comes down to feasting on taxpayer money, they don't let the truth get in the way. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004575010931344004278.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
So?
Ok, good...
Citation needed. And the conclusion doesn't follow. Just because birds ocassionally shit into the pool, and kids ocassionally pee into it doesn't mean you can empty a septic tank into it, then claim that the former two things mean it's not your fault it's a cesspool now.
Good quote, but doesn't favour your position. It's precisely what worries me. The planet will keep on existing, life will survive and even thrive in the most poisonous environments. But just because some bacteria can live in such conditions doesn't mean I can, or even if I can find a way it doesn't mean it's going to be pleasant. And I'd rather have a pleasant life.
People on the right (not necessarily applying that label to you, mind) seem really hung up on the question of whether human action is causing global warming (those that are able to get past arguing over whether it's even happening, that is).
I'm not as interested in that question, frankly. The way I look at it is this: every single homo sapien that lives or has ever lived has been on this one planet. As far as we've been able to tell, homo sapiens is the only "intelligent" life that's ever evolved anywhere, certainly in local space. I'm of the mind that that's fairly important and worth preserving. And this planet is the only one we know of that can support homo sapien life on some of it's surface some of the time, and even then we're on a climactic knife-edge. A little bit of change in any direction and we have reasonable concerns that the whole semi-stable equilibrium we're in will skew off wildly. It looks like that's what happened on Mars, and there's no reason to assume it can't happen here.
Taking all that in mind, until we have a way to live and thrive off-planet, we absolutely have to do what we can to keep this planet healthy, where healthy is defined as "able to support a large human population". If Earth winds up looking like Mars, knowing the planet is just going through a normal geological cycle that we didn't cause is not much comfort. Not that there will be any complex life anywhere in the Sol system to mourn us.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
The money train will stop, not just for Mann, but quite probably for a lot of Penn State researchers, if it turns out that the Penn State investigation was not doing due diligence and lied about the findings. So I again say: it's in Penn State's best interest to come out with the truth, not lie.
The more respected global warming papers have been published and accepted in peer reviewed journals.
Whose panels were controlled by the Warmists.
That was a big part of the controversy, that serious scientific articles were being prevented from being published by excerting control over the acceptance panels of said "peer reviewed journals". And that was really the worst part, because that's when it stopped being science and started being a cult. Real science accepts debate on an issue without demonizing anyone for asking questions.
If you don't think there's any demonizing going on then I invite you to read any post on Slashdot talking about "Denialists" (the term is of course demonization as well, so you can see the root of the problem).
And yes, I did use the term "Warmist", because if demonization is OK one way then you have to accept a bi-directional flow until you work to stamp out such terms on both sides.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think you're missing my overall point, so I'll just give my own opinion on the subject instead of talking about other people's opinion:
We are, quite obviously, affecting the environment through our actions. Things like the oil leak in the gulf, the number of cars driving around, the amount of toxic waste and non-biodegradable materials we bury...there is no way we aren't screwing things up. I recognize this.
At the same time, I also recognize that there are an unknown number of variables that effect the climate on this planet. For example, even a shift of a couple hundred miles in our "normal" distance from the sun can have drastic and long-lasting effects. There are many things beyond our control which influence climate change.
The TLDR version: In my opinion, based on what I've seen and read (from both sides of the subject), we have a direct impact on the environment and it is our duty to reduce this as much as possible...but no matter what we do, there are still variables which we have zero control over. It's important that we recognize and accept that.
Living With a Nerd
That's because that's not what the debate is about. The Earth's climate is ALWAYS changing, as everyone well knows. Examining ice cores, fossils, geologic record, etc, prove that the Earth's climate is never steady and has always been changing. In fact, it has been both much warmer and much colder than today at various times in history.
The people you bash as "deniers" are actually not denying climate change, but are instead debating the following points that you seem to be ignoring. They argue that:
So you are right that the debate isn't over, but not for the reasons you describe. The debate will continue because people like you don't understand what the debate is about (you seem to think it's about whether or not climate change is happening), and because people like you are making a crisis out of nothing. If man-made global warming is happening, is that a crisis? It may be, if it can be proven that human activity is truly the primary cause. But is climate change in and of itself a crisis? Given that it always changes back and forth, I would say definitely not. Should we shut down our economies and destroy our industry just because the climate is changing, just like it always has? Definitely not! It's just something life has to adapt to. But as long as people like you continue to stick their heads in the sand and scream that change that always happens is "a crisis", and as long as you refuse to see what the debate is actually about, then people like me will keep fighting to educate you.
Main Point: We don't argue that climate change isn't happening, and if that's what you think the debate is about then you are completely wrong.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Out of curiosity, how well does global warming research pay? I mean, it must be a real cash cow, if the university is willing to unjustly exonerate investigators just to keep that money coming in. So, how much money are we talking here? Billions a year?
Similarly, can we completely discount the results of denialists, since they work for institutions that get funding from industries with vested interests in ensuring that the status quo continues?
Whether one believes in AGW or not, there is nothing wrong with your statement.
I'd add that efforts to polarise opinions between two extremes are really not helping open information exchange.
As you say, what is the quality of the evidence? Thousands of papers inferring from weak evidence are not in the same league as a few really solid physical measurements.
People have to publish. If the things being studied are hard, poorly understood, difficult to measure (because we weren't around measuring 100, 1000, 1 million years ago), and very complex, then people will still publish (and what data doesn't exist directly, they can infer from "reasonable assumptions"). If people can promote the importance of the field, then they get to keep publishing. Sooner or later the field may need correcting, but that can take decades.
It's weird how people think they can add to a debate with experts while being absolute non-experts themselves.
It's even more weird how some people claim you must be an "expert" in something in the days when anyone can educate themselves in anything if they chose to apply themselves seriously enough.
In this golden age of education where a degree in one subject does not necessarily mean you know more about a subject than someone who simply has been studying it longer than you, it seems rather quant to complain about lack of credentials.
After all, many people arguing against the mainstream AGW ideas were people with greater statistical understanding than the supposed "experts" (and that is part of what the study concluded as well, that they had a poor grasp of real statistics - something the rest of us were trying to tell you after looking at the code released along with the emails).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Weren't these emails suppose to be public record? Weren't they illegally hidden emails that were uncovered? Clearly biased story.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Wait, who have you ever heard say that humans are the only thing affecting climate?
Anyone who has ever said that expensive changes in industry will result in significant change in global warming. So, basically any policy maker, and pretty much every single person at those AGW global summits.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... especially satellite data. The whole field of satellite data inversion is a joke (that goes for any kind of data you can think of). I wouldn't trust of these guys to properly place a land-based temperature sensor either. ... "Whoops, I left it in front of the AC radiator."
I never understood why it's so hard to find other people who don't subscribe to one extreme or the other when it comes to climate change.
Because people are inherently unsatisfied with the answer "we don't know, and cannot know".
And at the higher levels, because trillions of dollars are at stake going either direction. It pushes the rhetoric and arguments to one side or the other - by necessity, since the tendency is for each side to engage in greater and greater bombast until those of us in the middle have a hard time being heard as neutral without being cast to one side or the other, because all people know is either extreme.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's not a conspiracy theory. It's an orthogonality problem. If you have a Medieval Warming Period (MWP) -- then temperatures *aren't* unprecedented and become mathematically decoupled from CO2. Mann's "Hockeystick" graph erased the MWP -- problem is, the approach is worthless, and while Mann may believe it (again not conspiracy theory), it isn't true. Thus we still have the MWP (and the RWP, the Minoan, and the Holocene optimum) -- all of which were warmer than today and none of which had AGW contributions.
Also irrelevant, I'm afraid.
Apparently somebody once used the word "unprecedented," and the deniers used that as a lever to say "Well, if we can just attack that one word, which we will do by defining the word "unprecedented" the way we choose to and then show that the current curve isn't unprecedented, then we have debunked all of global warming! If one single word used by a popularizer can be attacked, the whole of the science is wrong!"
The anthropogenic global warming, basically, says that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse effect gas, and that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is exactly like any other greenhouse effect gas, and adding more of it to the atmosphere increases the greenhouse effect. The actual effect, by the way, is remarkably small-- all of the carbon dioxide humans have added to the atmosphere to date has increased the average temperature by 0.6 plus or minus 0.3 degrees K, which (since that average temperature of the Earth is around 300K) corresponds to a change of about two tenths of one percent. This is relatively simple physics, known for over a century, and which has been calculated in numerical detail since the mid 1970s. There really is no real scientific controversy here-- it has been addressed, in detail, by all that scientific work that the deniers want to ignore.
In short, saying that there has been periods of climate warming that weren't caused by anthropogenic effects doesn't really disprove anything. Sure. Anthropogenic warming is an added effect, not the only effect.
A challenge to the geeks at slashdot -- read "HARRY_README.txt". If you believe a single thing that comes out of CRU after that, I've got a bridge to sell.
Well, first I do need to note that the climate scientists at CRU are not the only scientists who study climate, and not even the most important ones-- they just happen to be the ones who were unlucky enough to have computer accounts that were broken into by cybercriminals.
If you are giving a challenge to "geeks at slashdot," then let me give a challenge to deniers: read the Working Group Report on the Physical Science Basis of Climate Science. Reading this will not actually stop you from being a denier-- denialisim is political in nature, and has nothing to do with scientific results. However, it will at least mean that you might start being a denialist that uses arguments which actually deal with the science, instead of the ignorance about science that I usually hear from deniers.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Have you actually read, for a start, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Working Group I Report on Physical Science Basis of Climate Science?
Yes. Have YOU looked into the problems with said report? Because science doesn't stop with one report . Science means other people get to question your results, your assumptions, and your methods.
Science means other people get to ask exactly how you arrived at a conclusion and you tell them so they can reproduce your results or raise issues with your methods. Yet what the emails revealed, was that even in the face of FOI requests the "scientists" would not release data or methods - and after looking at the actual computer modeling code also leaked, you can understand why. Because the "scientists" over time, became less interested in the actual science than in proving a conclusion they had reached, at any cost.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Imagine that the global climate is like a car engine. There are many parts, some move air, some move water, some create heat, some dissipate it. If you throw a wrench in hard enough to break a random engine part, you don't know ahead of time if the engine will keep running more or less ok, if it will get hotter or colder, if it will run for a while but be doomed in the long run... Just because you don't know if the first part to fail will be the water pump (causing overheating) or the fuel pump (causing the engine to stall) doesn't mean it's a good idea to keep tossing in wrenches.
The global climate is a vast interconnected series of checks and balances. The fact that scientists can't be certain that any given part of the world will be hotter or colder in 10, 100 or 1000 years doesn't mean they are clueless idiots who should be ignored completely. I think that anyone who still goes around saying humans can't possibly affect a global system like the climate are being willfully ignorant and mostly just don't like the idea that our behavior might have to change if we want Earth to be a nice place for our great-grandkids to live.
Science is about collecting evidence and developing theories that explain what is observed now and predict what might happen in the future. Scientists as individuals may have a personal agenda that they may occasionally do a less than stellar job of keeping isolated from their science. As a whole however, science is a much better way to get at the truth than gut reactions and "feelings" that humans couldn't possibly be making such a mess. The consequences if all this science is correct are pretty horrendous and I do believe we owe it to future generations to be better custodians of the planet.
We are talking about a metaphorical mountain, which is an image we conjure up to give a sense of scale to the overwhelming amount of data there is, we are definitely not talking about a literal landmass that projects conspicuously above its surroundings and is higher than a hill.
Perhaps you are under-estimating how much evidence there really is. If you were to print it off, you probably COULD climb it AND have a picnic on it.
Perhaps you should read the definition of literal (adhering to fact or to the ordinary construction or primary meaning of a term or expression; free from exaggeration or embellishment; characterized by a concern mainly with facts).
when you say "If you were to print it...", you are proving that you know for a fact that there is no literal mountain of evidence. If there was a literal mountain of evidence, you would have said "When they printed it..." and you could tell me where this literal mountain is actually located. If the mountain cannot be seen or touched or measured in the physical world we call "meatspace", it is not a literal mountain.
You can't take the sky from me...
We ought to invent a new religion with the root "scient" in its name. I predict that this religion would be viewed very favorably by Slashdot users.
Does anybody else find it a little unsettling that Wikileaks has been suffering from technical difficulties of late?
And hell Yes, I believe in conspiracies. (Not all of 'em, but bathwater and babies, right?)
Anybody who rejects that nobody ever plans in secret to manipulate the public for private gain are basically proof that advertising works.
-FL
My biggest point of contention with the Global Warming crowd is that this story only picked up steam when Al Gore came out with a popular movie. Science isn't supposed to be a popularity content. People of differing views are supposed to be able to present their theories without the kind of hostile rhetoric we've been seeing. Everyone should be allowed to present their evidence and let the community decide (over the next decade, not overnight!) what makes sense. Give it time...
The constant flinging of insults by the pro and anti Global Warming crowd does nothing to further science. Labeling people "deniers" or "nutballs" is against the spirit of science.
Out of curiosity, how well does global warming research pay?
The state funding alone is half a million dollars.
That of course, does not include Federal grants.
On a wider scale, trillions of dollars is at stake as far as companies and individuals poised to benefit from a massive shift in various forms of alternative energy. Just as in the past wind farms were a giant boondoggle funneling government money into pockets, before they were abandoned years later in California and Hawaii.
Similarly, can we completely discount the results of denialists, since they work for institutions that get funding from industries with vested interests in ensuring that the status quo continues?
We should treat results from both with equal levels of skepticism.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So I again say: it's in Penn State's best interest to come out with the truth, not lie.
And again I must point out the flaw in your reasoning - if they bend the truth to whitewash the thing (you and I know these panels never lie, they just choose what to present most prominently) then they stand a good chance of continued research money.
If they highlight the really bad results, then they stand a good chance of losing it.
So it's not in the best interest to come out with the "truth" if that truth results in less funding, because a 70% chance of continued funding is far better odds than 0%.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If only there was a -1 stupidity..it suits the entire clique of shrill voices in here adding they laypersons's half a cent to the voluminous material that was peer-reviewed and published.
Why? It conflicts with their worldview. Apparently, the atmosphere is "really big" meaning human activities clearly could have no impact. Similarly the Gulf of Mexico is 'really deep' so, you know, the blow-out preventer collpasing and creating an uncontrolled gusher is really unimportant - a 'drop in the oceans'.
Insanity. Collective, managed, suggsted insanity. These people have the nerve to then claim they are free thinkers. Instead, they have swallowed the BS train from the profressional PR firms empoyed by companies in the energy industry to muddy the waters as much as possible. These tactics should be familiar by now.
Anyway, don't let logic get in the way of a little irrational paranoia and hysteria. Those evil scientists!
I'd just like reasoned answers to the following questions by objective and informed people who have no stake (financial/career/political/etc.) in their answers:
The fact that I have yet to see such answers from the aforementioned neutral parties makes me a skeptic. The "denialist" label is insulting to skeptics, and is at war with reason.
As for "code", do you even know what the "code" you were looking at was from and where it is used, if at all?
No. Do you?
I know the code had flaws, and some code that was basically making up data to massage the output into a desired form.
So neither of us know which graphs this code may or may not have been used in. But if the code was never used, why was it written? And why is it OK for YOU to blindly assume it was not used in published results?
The core of the problem is that because they would not let outside people audit the code and data used to make the graphs, we CANNOT KNOW if that code was used or not. And that is really the worst thing of all. That is the thing that makes what they were doing Not Science. I don't know if that code was used or not but I know as a result of seeing it I cannot trust the graphs they produced without seeing the data and code used to derive them - which they will not produce themselves.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I agree with you but not with where you are going. In essence I think you left out the point of contention therefore quashing the conflict altogether (but not really). The issue at hand is twofold:
1) How do we make sure that climate change does not get out of hand?
2) How do we balance the measures we take with the need for economic stability and the prevention of famine?
I don't see many facts in these posts so here are some of mine.
OK, I'm not a scientist, I'm a historian. One of the things I've studied is the settlement of Greenland. When I saw the hockey stick I knew it was bogus. Greenland was warm enough to farm and then it got cooler and farming was no longer possible. The hockey stick shows the temperature for the last thousand years being constant within a degree or so. If that were the case, history would have been a lot different.
When I see scientists claiming that the late 20th century warming was unprecedented, I look at the historical record of what crops grew where and that makes me sure they're wrong.
Someone pointed me to the work of Briffa. He calculates ancient temperatures based on tree rings. He has a tiny data set and he assumes that trees make a reliable thermometer. IANAS but I think I will trust the writers of the Norse sagas over his trees any day of the week.
Thank you for finally providing him with the links. All this scrolling and all it has been was:
"No it isn't", "Yes it is", "No it isn't", "Yes it is", "No it isn't", "Yes it is" ...
A libertarian shat on my carpet once. Claimed the free market would sort it out. -Ford Prefect(8777)
A university investigating itself is not "independent". BP investigating itself would not be "independent". Some government functionary group of scared for their jobs or worse bureaucrats, investigating a potentially explosive revelation of some government involvement with a "terrorist" attack, is not an "independent investigation".
We are running an article below on how scientists don't get it, have no clue on how to talk to "the people". This article another example of their arrogance and idiocy combined into "talking down" to people to prove a rather dubious point that they didn't screw up, when in fact *they did* screw up and are continuing their whitewash because enough people now have seen through their BS.
The so called science is tainted, you need to scrap it, start over, admit to the reality everyone sees now, and take wall street bailout number 3 "cap and trade" right off the table in the beginning, just take that out of the equation and stop with the fairy tale it has nothing to do with it, or people will not believe a thing you say anymore. Global warming alarmists are "in the pockets" of the wall street crooks on this, irrefutable fact, whether they realize it or not. H1N1 is another science hoax that got pushed so a few could make millions/billions off of contrived hysteria. Yes, it was a bad flu, but actually milder than "normal" flu which never gets that sort of attention and scare mongering thrown at it.
Should we go towards cleaner energy sources, and stuff like electric cars and so on? Sure, great idea. but not because of this tainted junk science. There are any number of other more legitimate reasons for those moves. Scare mongering and outright threats and planning on more taxes and fees for people so a few billionaires, washed out has been politicians, and entrenched energy cartels can get richer and a few ethically challenged academics can get some larger grants and dick measuring papers published in those expensive elitist closed off journals are not good reasons.
Okay, if I were to follow the money as you'd suggest, I'd wind up at the front door of Big Oil. Thanks. Now I know what drives the denier camp.
No. Actually nothing like that at all.
We put out a lot more CO2 than the earth itself does,
Actually, it's not even close.
We put about 5% of the carbon into the atmosphere, but that 5% is enough to tip the balance and cause CO2 levels to rise, because the biosphere cannot absorb it.
From the PDF...
On and about November 22, 2009, The Pennsylvania State University began to receive
numerous communications (emails, phone calls and letters) accusing Dr. Michael E,
Mann of having engaged in acts, beginning in approximately 1998, that included
manipulating data, destroying records and colluding to hamper the progress of scientific
discourse around the issue of anthropogenic global warming, These accusations were
based on perceptions of the content of the emails stolen from a server at the Climatic
Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Great Britain as widely reported,
Given the sheer volume of the communications to Penn State, the similarity of their
content and the variety of sources, which included University alumni, federal and state
politicians, and others, many of whom had had no relationship with Pel1l1 State, Dr. Eva J.
Pell, then Senior Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School, was
asked to examine the matter. The reason for having Dr. Pell examine the matter was that
the accusations, when placed in an academic context, could be construed as allegations of
research misconduct, which would constitute a violation of Penn State policy,
Scientific hijinks!?!?! Somebody get me Penn State on the phone, NOW!!
You'd think they might have mentioned that he worked there. But maybe that only amuses me...
This still doesn't change the fact that the AGW argument is supported by insufficient evidence and flawed computer models. Much of North America and Europe used to be covered in glaciers, and they were gone before man existed. GW was happening long before fossil fuels were dug out of the ground.
There's actual hard evidence of this. AGW is a scam to guilt people into spending money on "Green" technology utilizing a naturally occurring phenomena that was already in full swing before man existed.
I drive a small fuel efficient car, use CFL's and generally do what all the granola munching, tree hugging liberal rabid AGW alarmists do. Mainly because pollution is dirty, it stinks, and burning a lot of gas is a waste of money. Those are all good enough reasons to me. I don't need Al Gore to make up a reason for me to do it.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
They didn't challenge the credibility of a scientist. To do that, they would do the difficult work of producing incongruous reproducible scientific results.
Instead, they did the easy thing, which was to illegally hack into a computer system and leak private, misleading emails to a conspiracy-minded population of kooks ready to take individual words or phrases far out of context to reinforce their preconceived notions.
But, like you said, if they had "challenged the credibility of a scientist or his research", then that would be fine.
I don't deny the Earth has shown some slight warming, warming which brings us nowhere near the levels that Earth has successfully endured in the past. I have concerns with CO2 being named as the scapegoat. I take issue with models being called science. Models are part of the hypothesis. Every other field of science requires a testable, and repeatable experiments. It's what makes science great, because it can weed out free energy nuts that power their cars with cold fusion and water. Evolution, for a long time, really was a hypothesis that fit the facts. It needed DNA to tie it all together and really put the last nail in the Creationist coffin. It appears that climate science is exempt from this requirement (a test of what the model concludes) before calling conclusions facts. The problem with the Warmers is that when a question is asked, the debate that follows is usually just a bunch of name calling. Two things separate science from religion. Science assumes a lack of knowledge or that the knowledge we currently have is incorrect. Religion assumes it is right. Science wants to be challenged by anyone, where religion demands it be challenged by no one. When you deny anyone's right to ask "why?", then you are spewing dogma.
CO2 is rising, no doubt about that. My issue is that it only makes up about .04% of the atmosphere. Venus and Mars both have vastly higher amounts of CO2 compared to us (~95%). One planet is scorching hot, and the other is very cold (with some tolerably warm spots for our future explorers). Venus is fairly convincingly attributed to the Greenhouse Effect. Mars has an atmospheric CO2 content that by volume and mass is greater than Earths. Why is Mars not hot? Why does the greenhouse effect not slip out of control there? The odds of IR radiation striking a CO2 molecule on the way up on Earth is extremely small. If this weren't true, IR pictures of fields and cities would be blurred by the scattering caused by CO2. Increasing CO2 from .04% to .05% still keeps those odds extremely small. If it is absorbed, the CO2 with kick out a another IR photon, the whole idea of the Greenhouse Effect. To anything in the atmosphere, most directions lead to space. For me to accept a model, it must apply to Mars and Venus equally, without modifying constants. Yes that means the must account for all the variations, from deflection from our magnetic field of higher energy particles to atmospheric density to distance from the Sun. Without these factors, people are taking variables and assuming constants out of them. If you take a model for Earth and plug in all the same factors for Mars or any other planet into it, but are stuck with "we don't have that variable in this model" then your model is incomplete and inaccurate. That model should work anywhere, like all other physics does. If you want to convince me you've pegged the source of a less than %1 difference in temperature, then you better account for all these variables much wider than %1 difference.
The Sun is the primary sources of heat on Earth, far outpacing every other source. Are there any direct recordings (not by tree ring proxy) of variations in luminosity over the same period of time? We are kept warm by it at 150 million kilometers away. Think of the vast amount of energy that has to be releasing to do that. Even slight variations would affect us. The Earth is a very good black body, like the other planets. By the math for black body radiation, the Earth is emitting around 10% more heat that it gets from the Sun, due to geothermal heat.
I am seriously concerned that real ecological issues like pollution and conservation of resources have been hijacked by the invisible, marketable demon of CO2.
Anyone who has ever said that expensive changes in industry will result in significant change in global warming.
Really? So by saying that changing human industry will affect global warming, that implies that only human industry affects global warming?
Hey, my solution that includes HCL and H2SO4 is too acidic! I claim that if I decrease the amount of HCL, it will be less acidic. Ergo I am implying that H2SO4 does not affect the pH of the solution.
Wow. Pojut complained about people at the two extremes, but what about people who think only the two extremes exist?
The enemies of Democracy are
"people on the right (not necessarily applying that label to you, mind) seem really hung up on the question of whether human action is causing global warming (those that are able to get past arguing over whether it's even happening, that is)."
So, if it isn't caused by humans, than why do we need carbon credits? Many governments around the world are forcing people to buy these (Obama has been trying to do the same in the US), which just means more money going into the pockets of the government. If that money is not going to be used for its intended purpose (fixing the global warming issue that humans caused) I see a big problem with it.
It is well known that Al gore has invested in carbon credit and other green-energy related companies.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/6491195/Al-Gore-could-become-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire.html
I might believe him a little more if it didn't seem like he was only doing it for the money. If Al Gore really cared about the environment, his "green-energy" companies would be non-profit (and he would not make any money from them).
"If Earth winds up looking like Mars, knowing the planet is just going through a normal geological cycle that we didn't cause is not much comfort. Not that there will be any complex life anywhere in the Sol system to mourn us."
Your post is what I don't like about pro-climate people. You want to help the environment at all costs. Even if it means lying to the public. If you want people to help the environment, don't con them or guilt them into giving money.
Mars was hit early on in its development my a large asteroid or proto-planet according to prevailing theories. Mars also does not have a strong magnetic field which would boil away its atmosphere by the solar wind. These are not things that were caused by life. If you can't prove CO2 caused the global heating or that the increased CO2 is harmful. Especially since CO2 is a weak greenhouse producing gas and saturates meaning after a certain threshold is reached increased volume mixing ration produces no increase in greenhouse effect. Then is it right to starve economies based on a week theory? I work in climate research, here is a clue our models aren't perfect. Not even close, please don't use them to justify anything. The fact is we don't know enough, the climate is a very chaotic system. The models are only as good as the inputs. And we still haven't quite grasped everything. The models are continuously being refined you will have better luck producing the perfect Operating System. For example increased polar mesosphere clouds were attributed to global warming and was sited as proof. Statements that pointed to that possible connection was used to get the AIM satellite funded. Unfortunately, the AIM satellite measure pointed to increased aerosols in which the clouds could form. We didn't see that in the models. This was not CO2, but man does contribute airplane exhausts. There have been over 600 papers sighting evidence of causes other than CO2. What is needed is funding that isn't politically motivated either way. And study the problem without having to make up tenuous ties to "Global Warming" as defined by Al Gore and company to get funded. Everything man does to some extend produces CO2, even breathing. Maybe the problem then is too many humans. How many would you propose to kill to make the temperature go down one degree? Would you like to be the first to fall on your sword to save the earth? You would feel pretty bad if the temperature increased after a billion people were removed. But then you could just point the blame to the model. I propose I should be the one flying around the world in a private jet selling carbon credits. I may not be helping but hey if Al can do it why not me? How much power over you would I have if I could tax even the air you exhale, energy you consume etc ? I could even have power over what you build your home with, how many children you have, what you eat.
It's pretty obvious that the leak was from a whistleblower who couldn't stand the stench of corruption and malfeasance. The various whitewash reports of folks patting themselves on the back for how poor and tormented they were notwithstanding, the tricks have been exposed, the data has been seen, and you can't go backwards and pretend it didn't happen, or it didn't mean anything.
Of particular delicious note to the much maligned skeptics was the admission by Jones during one of these "investigations" that in all the time that his papers were peer-reviewed, not a single reviewer asked for the actual data behind the papers.
Not a one.
If that isn't a challenge to credibility, I don't know what is.
To that end, I think a single world government should establish the correct volume and content of food that each person should eat so as to maximize life expectancy. Furthermore, the single world government should determine if, when, and how many children every woman should have and with whom to ensure that only the healthiest, brightest, fastest, best looking people survive. If we only had such a central planner that could perfectly execute this plan to ensure the survival of homo sapiens.
You posted that comment twice, which means I laughed twice at how stupid it is.
It sounds as if something is conflicting with your worldview...reality.
Your rant, no offense intended, could be easily turned around:
"Insanity. Collective, managed, suggsted insanity. These people have the nerve to then claim they are free thinkers. Instead, they have swallowed the BS train from the profressional PR firms empoyed by [governments] in the [global warming research] industry to muddy the waters as much as possible. These tactics should be familiar by now.
Anyway, don't let logic get in the way of a little irrational paranoia and hysteria. Those evil [skeptics]!"
Honestly, what kind of data would convince you that your worldview is wrong? 15 years of dropping temperatures and rising CO2? 20 years? 100 years? If you're really trying to talk about logic and science, what is your falsifiable hypothesis?
Has your life become more, or less pleasant over the past 30 years?
I think if people are honest, a lot of the nostalgia for the past stops us from realizing just how pleasant cheap energy makes things.
That is to say, you can't bring up monetary incentives as proof of accuracy without noting that there's a lot of money going both ways - which is true in the meta-sense of the global warming debate. There are literally trillions of dollars, not to mention the very notion of who controls industry, at stake in this discussion.
You have a very novel definition of "a lot" then. There are trillions of dollars on one side (the carbon industry), and low tens of millions on the other.
No one gets rich doing science.
That's right. You don't know what is. And that's the problem.
Show me some evidence governments - in general, other than the Danes - actually want to get serious and do anything about global warming.
You conspiracy nuts are all over this, alleging collusion between government and academia that simply isn't there.
In other words, there is no discernible motive for lying on this scale - to protect fraudulent research? You actually believe the entirety of the body of evidence for man-influenced global warming is a hoax?
I don't think it is a stretch to call you anti-intellectual. Misdirection and muddy the water some more. I'm sure your grand kids will be proud there champ.
Depending on the point of view.
At each point in time, it's been pretty much constant. Looking back, things have improved. That is, back when I had a 386 I was pretty happy with it, and now that I have a quad core box, I'm pretty happy with it as well. The amount of satisfaction I feel now and felt back then is about the same, though the quad core gets a lot more done.
Power usage has been more or less constant. I use about the same amount of power as I did back then, except much more efficiently. I could actually cut back quite a bit, because a laptop can do all I need, while using a fraction of the power of a desktop.
In my case it's nothing to do with energy, but with efficiency. Over more than 10 years I've been using 200-300W for computer hardware, except today it gets a lot more done with that. Cars existed 30 years ago, and how pleasant they are to use has little to do with the amount of energy spent.
Also, as can be seen with BP, that things seem to be just fine today, doesn't mean they won't get fucked up tomorrow. Reality can't be ignored. Pollution accumulates, equipment wears out, failures happen. If you pretend that stuff doesn't exist, and fail to deal with it, it'll bite you in the ass sooner or later.
One last bit. Human have been putting a great deal of effort into releasing stored energy, being fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Occam's Razor suggests we are heating Earth with the 16,000,000,000,000 watts of non-solar heat being added. True, this is small compared to what the Sun gives us, but we are talking a small increase. It seems to me that climate science implies what we are doing is the equivalent of sticking a heater in the room, and then saying it's hot because we are breathing all the O2 into CO2.
There is a lot of science... this is not made up. (And it dates to way before Al Gore, who's not a scientist.) Have you actually read, for a start, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Working Group I Report on Physical Science Basis of Climate Science?
Yeah, I read it,
Excellent, I'm glad you've actually read it, that puts you in the .1% level of people who are discussing climate science and have actually made an attempt to learn something about it.
here's what it says: the increase in temperature based on anthropogenic CO2 radiative forcing is minimal. Without feedback systems, global warming would not be a problem.
That question can be very easily answered. The calculation was done in 1967 by Manabe and Wetherald-- it's summarized in any reasonable book about atmospheric science (such as the one on my desk at the moment, An Introduction to Atmospheric Radiation, by Liou (1980), p. 188). Calculating the greenhouse effect alone (that is, assuming no change in cloudiness, and constant relative humidity), Manabe and Wetherald (1967) showed "a ten percent increase in CO2 concentration (from 300 to 330 ppm) would lead to a warming of 0.3 K." It's a logarithmic response function (Arrhenius calculated that much back in 1895, although he didn't have the data to do the complete numerical integration), so it's easy to extrapolate this to the current carbon dioxide of about 385 ppm. It comes to about 0.78 K increase by their model.
So, actually, no. The 0.3 to 0.9 K increase shown by the current supercomputer models with all the feedbacks incorporated is within spitting range of the 0.78 K you get just from the CO2 greenhouse effect with no feedback.
...One thing we do know, if we want to stop it, it's going to be hard. Agreements like Kyoto or what was discussed in Copenhagen won't accomplish anything really. To make any kind of difference, we are going to need to reduce emissions by something like 80%. Think of that: are you willing to drive 80% less? It's not an easy thing to do: even if we got rid of all coal power plants, it wouldn't be enough. To really do it, we need new technology.
Ah, there's the heart of it. This has nothing to do with the scientific reality of global warming. Global warming is no less real whether it is easy to deal with, or hard to deal with.
The political question does not affect the science question... except that there are a large number of people who want to make the political argument, and they find it convenient to make that political argument by denying the science.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Regardless of which side you fall on, read the pdf and then ask yourself if you feel the investigation methodology was satisfactory.
The investigation into Mann was essentially "we read the emails and didn't find a statement like 'I committed fraud'", and then we interviewed the guy, and he said he didn't do it. Ergo, he must be innocent, right?
Can you imagine if we ran criminal courts the same way?
The investigations were a worthless waste of everyone's time. Because of the lack of diligence, not only fail to resolve the dispute, but tend to have the opposite effect. A non-thorough investigation always looks like a cover-up.
I am not stating or even implying that there was any effort to cover up wrongdoing, and I am not saying that Mann did anything wrong. I am saying that you cannot reasonably conclude either point due to the methodology of the investigation.
As I said, read it yourself and draw your own conclusion. I know I'm going to be modded down and ridiculed for even failing to accept the results of the investigation as gospel; draw your own conclusions about people who behave that way.
Remove the financial incentive by declaring that becoming energy independent is a good idea anyway, and that using "Limited" resources such as coal and oil, at the very least, is taking it from our children and should be minimized wherever possible. Also, point out that developing new energy sources such as solar and wind will create many more jobs than cutting back on limited resources will cost.
We could even decide that the jobs related to the limited resources ARE going away regardless, it's just a matter of time (by definition) and that we can either slowly ween the work force off now or face (at some point in the future) having all those jobs forcefully terminate at the same time (Our children will be jobless instead of us).
Oh, finally, is there really something wrong with leaving a decent amount of oil in the earth just in case we find something amazingly useful for it--something more important than driving an SUV 3 blocks to the store?
Now, once you've based your politics on this very logical approach, how many arguments against global warming go away simply because there isn't any financial reason to keep the argument in the news?
I'm not saying it will change everyones mind at once, but there is no doubt in my mind that within 5 years there would be no public debate on the subject whatsoever.
> The fact is we don't know enough, the climate is a very chaotic system.
Exactly my point. We don't know enough to predict what will happen to this tiny sliver of habitat we have if it gets a little bit warmer or a little bit cooler. The only thing we know is that the way it is now can keep a few billion of us alive. The totality of my proposition is that we should be trying to keep it as much the way it is as possible.
> Would you like to be the first to fall on your sword to save the earth?
My wife and I have made the conscious decision not to reproduce, and concern about the carrying capacity of the planet was not a minor factor in that decision. (That and I am a cancer survivor, and don't want to produce any lymphoma-prone offspring.)
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Granted, these are the same people who think an unloaded gun is just as dangerous as a loaded gun, so...
Believe it or not, I actually know somebody who shot himself in the head while demonstrating to somebody that they had nothing to fear from the fact that he brought his gun into a house with small children, because "look, it's not even loaded."
My gun instructor told me that every gun, loaded or not, is always to be treated as if it is "just as dangerous as a loaded gun."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Mike Mann doesn't do work with satellites - he's a paleoclimatologist and there aren't many satellite data sets for the C10th strangely. Neither does Phil Jones for that matter, he works with surface data from the met agencies.
The big screwups with satellite data have mostly been down to Christy, who is on the anti-AGW side of the argument (although he seems to be moderating his position of late).
Regards
Luke
It is well known that Al gore has invested in carbon credit and other green-energy related companies.
Great! Somebody needs to. That said, it seems like you're coming from a libertarian/laissez-faire capitalism viewpoint, but you have some problem with Al Gore investing in and profiting from companies that are moving the ball forward on sustainable technology? I'm a left liberal (shocking, I know) and I don't see a bit of a problem with Al Gore or anybody else profiting by supporting businesses that serve such an enormous benefit to society.
You want to help the environment at all costs. Even if it means lying to the public.
I expressed myself very poorly if I left anyone with the impression that I support or advocate lying to the public. I want to see the true, unvarnished results of all climate studies become common knowledge so we can all make educated policy/electoral decisions.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
How about "Scientology"? -- That should be popular with the crowd here.
Do you have any evidence that current trends will continue?
Do you have any evidence they won't? We can play hot-potato with the burden of proof all day if you want.
All I'm proposing is, we know Earth as it exists today does a good job supporting a few billion homo sapiens. We don't know, if we warm it up 5% or cool it down 5% if it will continue to be able to support us. We have no other place within reach if Earth goes tango-uniform as a livable habitat, and we are the only complex, intelligent life in local space and, for all we know for sure, anywhere.
Based on that, I'll go out on a limb and say it's worth throwing our collective intelligences and riches behind the problem of keeping the Earth pretty close to where it is today climatically. I believe this goal is more important than, for instance, the difference in profit margin for a coal-fired power plant operator to install or not install emission control systems.
What part of my proposal, specifically, do you disagree with?
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Believe it or not, I actually know somebody who shot himself in the head while demonstrating to somebody that they had nothing to fear from the fact that he brought his gun into a house with small children, because "look, it's not even loaded."
If someone is dumb enough to use that as a way to demonstrate that a gun was unloaded, he deserved to be shot in the fucking head. Sorry.
My gun instructor told me that every gun, loaded or not, is always to be treated as if it is "just as dangerous as a loaded gun."
As I previously posted, my step father taught me the same thing, and both myself and my fiancee always treat our firearms as if they were loaded.
That's not what I was referring to in my OP, however. I'm talking about people who literally believe there is no difference between a loaded and unloaded weapon. I don't mean people who are being careful and just treat them the same, I mean they honestly believe there is literally no difference.
Living With a Nerd
There isn't a question about climate change. There's a question about the cause ====> consequence link when it comes to HUMAN impact on the climate. Sun is a very powerful external source of energy, and Earth has been going through climate change cycles forever. So, do the scientists have any solid scientific data that links, without doubt, HUMANS as being the overwhelming reason for climate change? Because if not, then fuck them - I want my plastic shopping bags back.
Where do you get the idea that:
Unless you want to receive a degree in science, or publish a paper in a peer-reviewed journal. In both scenarios you will face "gatekeepers" who have little to no interest in anything that deviates from mainstream consensus views. Oh and once you get that degree, if you want to be funded by grant money you again can't deviate too far from consensus views because you will be considered fringe and unworthy of funding.
This assertion is just ridiculous on the face of it. Science *thrives* on people upending conventional wisdom. One of the absolute best ways to make a name for yourself is to discover something that overturns the status quo.
I don't understand where people get an idea like yours. Have you ever had any interaction with anyone who does any kind of science that would lend substance to such a belief?
Funny, yes - but unfortunately absolutely true. In literal years of honest searching, I've met only one solitary conservative smart enough to intelligently defend his ideas. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him, and anybody like him, because the 'loyal opposition' is a dying breed.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Also, on an unrelated note...it's a pleasure to speak with you, Sir. Mars Crossing is a fantastic book :-)
Living With a Nerd
On something that the entire policy of the World hinges upon, I believe the following steps:
All raw data that exists should be put in the Commons, and all people should have access to this data.
All intermediate result sets that exist should be put into the Commons, and all people should have access to that data.
All versions of all extant climate programs, documentation and specifications, any ConOps, user documentation, assumption sets and explanatory documentation should be put into the Commons, along with the input and output sets that were used to produced the Published Research.
Regards.
Which is code is that? The small snippets of code extracted from the whole, that were commented out before the corporate shills edited it?
That was some of it.
But because we don't know what code or what data was used to generate any given public dataset or graph, you cannot say if the commented out bits were used for publicly presented results or not.
Do you start to see the problems with transparency? Do you start to understand the reason why real science is open, not closed and secretive?
If they had been open all along, you could say with certainty the commented out parts didn't matter. But as it is, you can't - because any coder knows that when they see commented out code, that code was used AT LEAST once. The closed nature of what they were doing precludes you from stating with absolute certainty that ANY code discovered does not matter, commented or no.
It's so weird to me how otherwise rational people will accept results from this cabal of people (I cannot in good conscious call them scientists) who refuse to divulge details of how they arrived at the solution.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sorry, but it does. If you don't think so, go try to get into a debate with a PhD in climate scientist--not about whether global warming is happening, but about how ocean currents affect rainfall in certain climatic zones. Be prepared to have your ass handed to you.
I would expect that because that's a very specific situation, over a very short term. The more specific the situation, the easier it is to study, understand and model. So of course I could not (and would not) argue with a climatologist over something so specific.
But we aren't talking specifics. We're talking long-term weather for the whole globe, never mind the fact you must ALSO take into account long term solar forecasts as well for total energy input. The simple fact is that anyone who tells you they can fully understand and forecast this system is, at this point, lying. And you can tell that's the case by being unable to forecast with any accuracy any accurate global averages even just a year out. So there I honestly would tend to trust outsiders a little more than a self-enclosed circle of "experts" who claim to have near-absolute answers and 20 year predications for us. In those cases I am very happy to have people who understand specifics, such as temperature gathering from a particular nation, join in and add specific knowledge the climatologists may lack.
But it's hard to do that when you are not told where data used comes from in the first place. Then how can anyone bring specialized knowledge to bear on any one group of date the climatologists are building models upon? At that point all you can do is trust the climatologists (a field only just barley started) to make the jump from a slight understanding of small local climactic regions to the whole of the earth. Sorry, I can't make that leap with you without seeing just exactly the route you took to reach the peak.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You jest.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
BTW where I live (North America) 2009 was one of the coldest summers on record. I'm curious where all this supposed heat was? It certainly wasn't here.
And yet the global temperature was still higher than average:
June's 2009 Blended Land and Sea Surface Temperatures: +0.62C above the 20th century average
July's 2009 Blended Land and Sea Surface Temperatures: 0.57C above the 20th century average of 15.8C
August's 2009 Blended Land and Sea Surface Temperatures: 0.59C above the 20th century average of 15.6C
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
A scientist is willing to believe the evidence even if he finds it distasteful. If the science pointed to black people being genetically different from white people, the scientist would accept the evidence even if he found it unpleasant. He could still choose to advocate humane treatment and civility even with those facts in the record. As it stands, there's no scientific basis for racism since science has clearly shown there's minimal genetic difference between the races and any two members of the same race can often show more dissimilarities than two people from different races. This overturns the erroneous, faith-based approach to scientific racism that was just a fancy way of trying to justify preexisting biases. A racist advocating the line of scientific racism is not doing so because the science convinced him, it's just a high-falutin' excuse.
The majority of global warming deniers already have their minds made up and there is simply no evidence in the world that will ever convince them otherwise. It's like trying to use logic and reason to turn someone against their religion. Oh, sure, you'll get some converts but most people will sooner burn you at the stake than accept your reasoning, especially if you start making too much sense.
This is why you can't really hold a debate on teaching evolution in schools. They are immune to your logic. It is wasted breath. You will never convert them. At beast you can simply try to contain the damage they cause.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
1998 was a spike, not a reversal in the trend.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
That's a brilliant circle of logic.
There aren't any peer-reviewed publications because those who control the publications wont publish dissenting opinion, and you can prove there's no validity to the dissenting opinion by pointing to the lack of peer-reviewed publications....
You claim circular logic on the part of the GP, and then you use it yourself. How... ironic.
Your statement is a classic example of begging the question (AKA, circular reasoning). You assume your premise in your statement. To wit, you assume that:
1.) There are dissenting articles worth publishing (feel free to cite one)
2.) Scientific publications base their acceptance of articles on whether the submitter is arguing against prevailing opinion
Neither of your unproven, circular assertions have any merit whatsoever. In fact, science loves controversy, and the best way to make a name for yourself is to prove a prevailing opinion incorrect. Examples abound:
- The cause of the Cretaceous extinction (once thought to be a slow death as the earth cooled, now known to be an asteroid)
- the evolution of birds (now known to be from theropods, though that was once very controversial)
- gradualism in evolution (now replaced by punctuated equilibrium)
- gradualism in climate (we've now shown that climate changes can occur very, very rapidly, rather than over thousands of years)
- the number of species of man (that's right, there were more than one, although the oldbeards still hate this idea, it's fairly widely accepted now)
These are just a few examples of science being turned on its head because scientists dared to go against consensus. You know how they did it? By publishing peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals.
You assume far too much.
First off, as an intro, let me say this: after the "leak", most of the issues that were concentrated on by the "warmists" (i.e., supporters of Anthropogenic Global Warming, or AGW) and the mainstream press were indeed pretty much non-issues. The problem there is that they kept forcing the discussions back to these non-issues, and laughing at how ridiculous they were (and I agree that most of them were), whenever someone tried to bring up a real issue, that mattered. And that is a real-world or "behavioral" version of the straw-man argument: change the subject to something that seems relevant but isn't, and shoot that point down. It was done again and again and again by the "warmists" and the mainstream media.
BUT: the fact that most of the issues that were concentrated on and reported by the mainstream press were non-issues, does not mean that there weren't, and aren't, real issues. There are. And not just a couple, or minor. But quite a few, and some of them major.
So, having gotten that out of the way, on to some of those issues. "eldavojohn" mentioned one of them himself: why weren't papers from the "other side" published in mainstream "peer-reviwed" journals? Well, as it happens, and as the "leaked" emails revealed beyond question (there are admissions), there was a concerted effort to keep those papers OUT of the mainstream "peer-reviewed" journals. You have to keep in mind the context: the (very small and insular) group that was doing that research pretty much had a lock on peer-review of ANY research being submitted in that field. For example, it is documented that one time, when Nature was unsure whether to accept a paper that was critical of AGW for review, it consulted some of its reviewers in the field... all of whom had been involved at some point in AGW studies involving Mann and the folks at CRU. Some of them, in fact, collaborators on earlier papers with same. So of course Nature turned it down... and so it was never even reviewed. I daresay it is a truism that if you can't even get a paper reviewed, it is not going to appear in THAT peer-reviewed journal! As an additional barrier, it was well-known by that point that governments were willing to spend a lot of money on AGW research, so companies and institutions were much more highly motivated to support people who were on the AGW side of the debate.
Authors who were critical of AGW were forced to turn to other publishers, such as Energy and Environment. Then, AGW supporters were critical of the papers because they appeared there, and not in the top-shelf rags for that field. But of course that's circular reasoning. That's rather like refusing someone a job at your top-notch company because you don't like their politics, then publicly berating them for not working at a top-notch company. It's hypocritical, circular reasoning. But it sounds reasonable to the public, who don't know the details.
And Phil Plait's biases on the matter are pretty blatant. He could not possibly be considered objective by anyone who knows a little about the subject. In his blog, he publicly and openly cheers whenever the news comes down on the AGW side, and does not even post news that does not support AGW. (And yes, there is such.) Although it is possible to go into more detail than that, it is not necessary. That in itself is very strong prima facie evidence of bias on Phil's part.
And note also that while Phil is an astronomer, he is no more a climatologist than many of the engineers and scientists who have been supporting the "other" side. I only bring that up because so many "warmists" have objected to evidence presented by other scientists and engineers because "he is not a climatologist" or "he is not a scientist". The fact of the matter is that for the majority of the issues, one need not be a climatologist or even a scientist to understand them. It is a specious argument. But even if it were not, if you accept Phil Plait (BadA
You and me might be the only two that actually RTFA.
I am all for changing things to ensure the survival and continued progress of mankind. Unfortunately, the political and societal changes proposed by governments and politicans do absolutely nothing to prepare mankind for inevitable climate change.
As soon as the powers that be decide on a logical course of action that increases our chances for survival in the face of global climate extremes they will have my full support. As it is they are just using the threat of climate change to pad their pockets and bolster their political agenda.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Reality also is that pollution effect dissipate, equipment is rebuilt, and failures are learned from. The point I was trying to make is that for all the hand wringing about Three mile island, cherynobl, hiroshima, the exxon valdez, to any other "epic" environmental catastrophe, life actually seems to be getting better (or more efficient in the case of your computing). We cannot afford to piss in our kitchen, or shit in our living room, but we cannot assert that exhaling CO2 is the same thing as shitting or pissing. The big problem with the knee jerk environmentalist position is that the basic assumption, "if man did it it was bad", simply doesn't hold true in all cases.
Even the term "pollution" is an odd one, assuming that any given ecosystem exists in some pure, platonic "non-polluted" state, when in fact that's simply a moment in time in a dynamically changing universe.
I guess the bottom line is this -> we're always going to get bitten in the ass some day, but we can't let the fear of that stop us from living life.
Count the billions of dollars of government funding into the whole global warming scam. That's a whole stack of evidence.
The discernible motive is clear -> funding is provided by the government, so research proposals that toe the line of the government position will be preferred over others, and the more dramatic the claim can be made of danger, the greater the urgency and therefore the greater the funding. It's a crystal clear perfect storm of good intentions gone woefully awry, similar to the ridiculously dangerous dietary guidelines our government gives out insisting that fat is bad, and encouraging us to eat more high glycemic cereals and grains, while admonishing us to avoid "sugar" (which those cereals and grains turn into almost immediately after digestion).
I believe that you simply do not have a falsifiable hypothesis for catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, and until you're willing to share that falsifiable hypothesis, ad hominem attacks on people and their caring for their grandchildren is simply childish name calling. I also believe there is significant reason to doubt the integrity of both the proxy record and the existing surface station record (http://surfacestations.org), and a significant urban heat island effect that accounts for most if not all of the observed warming. I certainly don't believe that the himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035, and if you believed that part of the IPCC, I hope you have the honesty to admit you were wrong.
I am told there is a world of difference between what scientists publish in peer reviewed journals and what they say (or what is attributed to them) in the popular media.
Correct.
If you don't read the science papers, why do you argue about what the scientists are saying? You don't have to believe me when I say that the press tends to distort scientific findings, since you can check it for yourself. I find it intellectually lazy though to not read the science papers, but to still argue about what the scientists are saying.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Thanks.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I don't know if that makes me a denier or a believer, but I hate both those terms anyway so I don't care.
You are a denier if you disbelieve the science, but are not actually interested in learning anything about it (except criticisms) because you know it's all wrong anyway, so why bother actually understanding it?
You are a skeptic if you have questions about the science, but want to learn about the science in order to answer the questions. (This requires that one actually listen to the answers, and not have already-finalized conclusions that will remain unchanged regardless of facts.)
Clear enough?
My personal test to distinguish the two has recently been to ask if they've read the IPCC working group 1 report; this is the one summarizing the science that the deniers are denying, so it seems reasonable to me to use it as the test: have they bothered to read the material they are criticising? It is surprising to see how many have not. (to give credit to slashdot, by the way, the number of people here who actually have read it is heartening.)
One step further up, you are a policy skeptic if you don't agree with political policies proposed for dealing with global warming, but don't challenge the science.
I could be wrong, but from the last paragraph of your discussion above, I'd think it's very likely that you're basically a policy skeptic. (I have no objections to policy skeptics, except when they conduct their political debate by attacking the science instead of the policy.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"The Bad Astronomer". You're Phil Plait, right? I've heard you interviewed many times on the Skepticality podcast. I think you're a great guy and on "the side of the angels", BUT...
You seem to have the same mental block a lot of skeptics have when it comes to politics. The climate change debate is about more than whether the science is correct. The science may well be correct, but the political solutions proposed by politicians may be bad ideas. They are SEPARATE QUESTIONS. One can be a supporter of science, but still skeptical about politics.
The Climategate scandal is also about more than whether this or that scientist deliberately engaged in unethical conduct. It has also called into question whether there was just plain old incompetence involved, not necessarily with any deliberate malice.
So Myopic, I'm supposed to believe that peer review is a system that can guarantee quality without anyone actually bothering to check the original data? Would you accept any other system that does not actually check things before certifying them as credible?
I think the problem is that you're using words you don't completely understand.
#1. Some Anthroprogenic Global Warming believers (scientists, media, and nut jobs) think the seas are going to rise, there will be widespread famine, pestilence, etc. #2. Some Anti Global Warming believers (scientists, media, and nut jobs) think the seas are NOT going to rise, there will NOT be widespread famine, pestilence, etc. #3. Some of the data from both sides is utter bullshit. #4. Some of it is valid. Activists on both sides tend to draw themselves to the extremes, and like Abortion, Socialism, Capitalism, Racism...the activists believe in the extremes. Don't fall for their bullshit (that's what sell books!).
Flamebait
Serious inquiries only.
You sure pick some bad examples.
TMI wasn't much of catastrophe at all, and not an environmental one.
Chernobyl can be said to favour the environment, since it removed a city, and left lots of room for nature to move into. Dying of cancer after 5 years is a big deal for people, but very tolerable for many animals. But it had plenty consequences for sure, which still persist today, and it still is mostly unpopulated. World-wide it had tremendous consequences for the adoption of nuclear power.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were completely intentional, and were inflicted on enemy terrotory, where nobody of the ones responsible about it cared about the consequences of it, except for that the more horrible it was, the better.
Exxon Valdez is the one good example. The damage endures. Yes, it got better, but it's still not completely fixed. Just because you don't hear about it anymore, doesn't mean it's all fixed now.
Yes, we can live through such things and go on, nobody said we can't. But the consequences persist for decades. Enough oil spills and nuclear accidents will make things very unpleasant.
The problem is that the atmosphere and the ocean are very much a sort of "kitchen" or "living room". It's not some magical place that makes everything you dump into it disappear. They're big, but very much finite. Also, breaking something is much easier than fixing it.
I see very little of this assumption. I hope you're not going to say that the reason environmentalists say oil spills are bad is just "because man did it". People already are suffering plenty consequences due to the gulf spill, and that will continue for quite some years.
We can greatly reduce the amount of times we get bitten in the ass. Just think if BP had been a bit more careful. It would have worked out a lot cheaper for them.
I just go to say it.
I was hearing some other doomsday scenario and recently googled a bit around a kind of volcanic event. Oh, it was associated with Obama's oil spill.
About 70k years ago there was a big volcanic event in Indonesia. Seems it pretty well covered the planet in ash. Estimates of surviving human population range from 5k to 15k.
A near extinction event for humans.
Tell me about how your doomsday scenario is in fact an actual human extinction event coming on in the next 200 years.
You seem to be a fine example of what the "deniers" complain about around fearmongering. Hmm, troll? Worse?
"the temperature averaged across the entire world that is rising" ah, no.
I don't know what you're talking about. The only way I can try to understand what you've said is to filter it through a fantasy-prone worldview of conspiracy theories, non-truths, pseudo-science, and science denial. It's possible you are a very reasonable guy with well-informed, logical, fact-based beliefs -- but if so I can't figure out what you are trying to say. It's okay, just blame it on my inability to understand.
Sorry if I haven't been clear - you made a claim that climategate did not challenge the "credibility of [a] scientist". This claim is simply unsupportable in any rational way, because at the very minimum, the perversion of the peer-review process, and the sad expose on just how lacking it is (including the fact that Jones never had a reviewer ask for his data, ever), was a severe challenge to credibility.
Of course the funny part about your ad hominem about fantasy prone conspiracy theories, non-truths, pseudo-science and science denial is that they more accurately drive in the direction of warmists rather than skeptics :) Not to degenerate into a "I know you are, but what am I" dialog, but the shoe fits at least as well on both feet.
There are many things beyond our control which influence climate change.
And there are some things we can control that influence climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and land use changes for example. It's probably to our benefit to do what we can about the things we can control.
Sorry, but you are confused. Skeptical scientists like Richard Lindzen are indeed actively getting their work published in peer-reviewed journals. So that's strike one for your conspiracy theory.
The mails that talked about keeping something out of journals were referring to poor research that didn't stand up to even a superficial look by someone with knowledge. It is a good thing to keep poor science out of science journals. So that's trike two for your conspiracy theory.
No, there are thousands of active climate scientists around the world.
So Nature asked the experts in the field? Wow, how terrible! What paper was that, by the way?
You seem to fail at understanding how science works. If you fund research on something, you can only fund the actual research. You can't decide what the results of the research is. So in other words, if a lot of money is spent on climate change research, then that will only strengthen the knowledge of that area. It doesn't matter who is on "which side", because the results of the research speak for themselves. And they speak loudly and clearly in support og AGW. Strike three for your conspiracy theory.
Correction: Authors whose research was too crappy to appear in real scientific journals were forced to "publish" through kook rags.
It seems that you do not know the details. You are assuming that because research that seems to support your ideology is not gaining consensus, there must be a conspiracy. What is happening in reality is that the proper science shows AGW, and those who don't accept that can't produce the proper science to support their position.
Oh no! He's biased against quackery and kooks!
Unlike those, he isn't willfully rejecting well known facts.
The difference is that Phil's position is supported by actual science. The denialist side is only supported by kooks and conspiracy theorists.
Really! So how come the actual experts in the field all have research that shows the same thing, while the deniali
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We'll have to agree to disagree. I'm going with the majority on this one. I'm siding with the independent investigators, the scientists.
I stand by the assertion that the leaked emails did not challenge the credibility of a scientist. It wasn't even making a mountain out of a mole hill -- there wasn't even a mole hill. The entire issue was vanishingly tiny snippets of the overall email dataset taken not only out of the context of the emails themselves, but out of the context of scientists doing science.
"Sorry, but you are confused. Skeptical scientists like Richard Lindzen are indeed actively getting their work published in peer-reviewed journals. So that's strike one for your conspiracy theory."
Sure. Lindzen, out of how many? Hint: if it actually happened, and it's documented, it's not "conspiracy theory". Strike one for your refutation.
"The mails that talked about keeping something out of journals were referring to poor research that didn't stand up to even a superficial look by someone with knowledge. It is a good thing to keep poor science out of science journals. So that's trike two for your conspiracy theory."
No, they weren't. In the particular email to which you refer, Jones was referring to a paper by McIntyre and McKitrick, who Jones and Mann simply didn't like, because they were critical of the methods used by Mann and CRU. The criticisms of McIntyre and McKitrick, far from not "standing up to even a superficial look", were later specifically stated to be valid in the Wegman report commissioned by the US Senate. Strike two for your refutation.
"No, there are thousands of active climate scientists around the world."
Nice straw-man argument! How many of them at the time were actively involved with this research? Strike 3 for your refutation.
"Correction: Authors whose research was too crappy to appear in real scientific journals were forced to "publish" through kook rags."
Your bias is showing. As I have shown above, it was not crappy research, and Energy and Environment is far from a "kook rag"! Do you know anything about it at all? Strike 4 for your refutation.
"It seems that you do not know the details. You are assuming that because research that seems to support your ideology is not gaining consensus, there must be a conspiracy. What is happening in reality is that the proper science shows AGW, and those who don't accept that can't produce the proper science to support their position."
YOU are the one who made the assumptions. You assumed that the paper by McKitrick and McIntyre was garbage (have you read it?). It was not. Their criticisms of the work done by Mann, Jones, et al. were specifically upheld by the statisticians who later reviewed the work. The science was proper, and has been supported by the reviews of some of the finest professionals in the field. You are simply wrong. Strike 5 for your refutation.
"Oh no! He's biased against quackery and kooks!"
I have already mentioned my basis for stating that Phil was not objective on the matter. You have done nothing to refute it. Strike 6.
Unlike those, he isn't willfully rejecting well known facts.
And what facts are those? Come on! If you are going to make an argument, then make your argument! That's just an empty claim. Strike 7.
"The difference is that Phil's position is supported by actual science. The denialist side is only supported by kooks and conspiracy theorists."
And here you just show your ignorance. Where did you get this idea? Please support it with evidence. Strike 8.
"Really! So how come the actual experts in the field all have research that shows the same thing, while the denialists have nothing but political propaganda to point to? How come those who are not experts in the field are less likely to accept the scientific facts?"
I see. The "actual experts in the field all have research that shows the same thing"? Interesting! I would be very interested to see some evidence for that claim! Wait... don't bother. Just the other day I found some counter-evidence right here. And it only takes one counter-example to disprove a claim like that. So please... by all means show me wher
What does that have to do with anything? The fact is that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for AGW. If you deny it, you are a denialist
Creationists, tobaccoists, AGW denialists, religious fundies, etc., always fall back to this: "Boo hoo, science is your religion!" It's nonsense. You are just crying because the facts don't match your ideology/religion.
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What exactly does that mean or how is it defined? I am not sure people are saying that his scientific method was entirely bad, but all the "extracurricular" activities had nothing to do with science or ethic for that matter.
Scientific misconduct as I know it is reserved for people making up data, or plagiarizing or taking credit for someone Else's work. The fact that there is disagreement is healthy and apart of how science progresses.
What is at issue, is that these idiots decided that other scientists dissent were not worthy and tried to quash any argument against them by refusing FOI requests, not releasing the data, trying to influence scientific journal entries, and discredit others with opposing opinions. Raw data was also "lost". However data routinely gets lost over the years, particularly old data, so nothing neccessarly malicious there. As for the other stuff, it really has nothing to do with the academic work, or how it was done, or any falseness there. It is however ethically pretty shitty.
It reminds me of Billy Madison... "Define Buisness Ethics..." "Argh!"
Its like having a whole bunch of people accuse someone of Theft, then the officials charge them with Murder, to which they are exonerated, thus clearing up the whole issue...
In other words pretty much a meaningless gesture likely used to try and blow over the issue at hand.
So no, I would say climategate isn't quite over just yet.
Calling them "independent" is a stretch, and I wonder if your opinion would change if the majority shifted...
Did you actually read the leaked emails? The context of them is quite clear, and the evidence they provide is damning by even the most generous interpretation.
What are you talking about?
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What "actually happened"? The fact is that skeptics who produce actual research are publishing just fine. Now, they are unable to support their position, but they still get their stuff published. Your insane conspiracy theory is so idiotic it must take an extremely low IQ to subscribe to it.
Bullshit. They were referring to poor research that did not stand up to even a superficial look.
Are you fucking retarded? The research has been independently verified by scientists across the world.
It's a known denialist rag, and the kooks are publishing there.
Bullshit. McDenialists have been repeatedly caught with their pants down, lying through their teeth.
Why are you linking to a liar's blog, you fucking moron?
Guess what, denialist douchebag, you can keep spewing your creationist lies. And I'll be right there to expose you.
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