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Michael Mann Vindicated (Again) Over Climategate
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, was one of the central figures involved in the 'Climategate' controversy, which saw many private email conversations between researchers posted publicly. Now, an investigation (PDF) by the National Science Foundation has found "no basis to conclude that the emails were evidence of research misconduct or that they pointed to such evidence." Phil Plait points out that other investigations have found similarly that claims of Mann's misconduct took his statements out of context. 'A big claim by the deniers is that researchers were using "tricks" to falsify conclusions about global warming, but the NSF report is pretty clear that's not true. The most damning thing the investigators could muster was that there was "some concern" over the statistical methods used, but that's not scandalous at all; there's always some argument in science over methodology. The vague language of the report there indicates to me this isn't a big deal, or else they would've been specific. The big point is that the data were not faked.'"
To over-simplify it: the evidence that the data was faked was itself faked.
So what's to stop the other side from coming back by saying that the analysis of the faked evidence of the faked data was in fact faked?
Fake this noise.
How do we reduce CO2? What will it cost to do it?
This is a fool's errand. Let's make this learning process more granular. Break it down into separate steps:
Given that climate scientists are constantly attacked by political witch hunts (and, no, there have been no formal charges of fraud against scientists claiming global warming is fake). The heart of the problem here is that the first two steps should be almost completely scientific endeavors free and devoid of any politics. Yes, the studies cost money but there's money to be had both ways (I would even say that there's more money to be had if your findings absolve polluters of any guilt).
... meanwhile the polluters are counting their money and protecting that profit margin by lobbying and funding "think tanks" and spreading lies.
Once everyone is at step two, we can proceed with the clusterfuck that is world politics. I recognize the core problem is that some politicians cobble it together and go back to step two or -- god forbid it -- step one and then attack those. Instead of recognizing that we've already made ground, we go back and people mire everything up with "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." And then the witch hunts begin and we're not making any progress
Can we all just scientifically get to step two and then we'll go from there? The climate scientists are the experts. You're not suddenly compelled to rip apart the latest Computer Science study as an armchair computer scientists because you haven't studied it. Why are people suddenly compelled to call climate scientists -- who are basically the same figureheads in academia that computer scientists are -- into question? When did everyone get PhDs in climate science? Why wasn't I given one? And why are all the major journals publishing and defending global warming studies only to be ignored?
My work here is dung.
Insurance don't make a killing selling insurance polices that they know they're likely to pay out on. A more accurate measure would be whether costal flood insurance costs have been rising faster than other insurance premiums (Earthquake insurance might be a good reference point).
That at least would be proof that Insurance companies are including AGW models into their actuarial tables.
Again, we honestly have no idea what's going on.
I personally find that the deniers are the ones who are the most "certain" in their claims. There are stated mechanisms that could cause global warming. They are being measured and tested. You complain about them being funded, but how else do we find out what's going on without funding those who claim to have the ability to show us, if only they had one more year...? People speaking against global warming find plenty of funding and don't even pretend to follow science in their denials. The best they can do is point to possible confounds and say things like "see, they didn't account for pollen that year, so their findings are wrong, thus proving the opposite." I agree we don't know and it seems mostly silly, but the worst offenders seem to be those who complain loudest about the other side being the worst offenders. The deniers argue from ignorance, "if we don't know how or why it is happening, then that's proof it isn't happening and we should stop funding anyone who says otherwise." and other such illogical irrelevancies.
Learn to love Alaska
Wrong
Sure, tomorrow we may find discover some object that is not affected by gravity, and have to switch to an "intelligent falling" theory. But it's not likely. So while there will almost invariably be some scientist, somewhere, willing to challenge any theory whatsoever (scientists being a contentious lot), some theories are about as close to settled as any science every gets. AGW certainly falls into that category, with over 95% of scientists actively publishing in the field agreeing that temperatures are rising as a result of human activity