Slashdot Mirror
New Batch of Leaked Climate Emails
New submitter kenboldt writes "Someone going by the alias 'foia' has dropped a link to a zip file containing thousands more emails similar to those released in 2009. There are apparently many more which are locked behind a password, presumably waiting to be released at some time in the future."
The University of East Anglia has released a brief statement indicating that the emails were probably obtained during the 2009 breach and held back until now as "a carefully-timed attempt to reignite controversy."
The previous leaked e-mails had two results:
Sham news reporting like Fox News cherry-picked out-of-context blurbs that made it sound like the scientists couldn't agree on anything.
Real news reporting actually read all the conversations and saw the conclusion was that the scientists were unanimous in agreeing that climate change is real.
That they'd do a second leak proves that the leakers are morons who think this offensive sound-bites Fox reports will have some kind of impact, whereas the actual content of the e-mail will reaffirm what everybody already knows. Climate change is real and these upcoming leaked emails won't change anything.
Also I love that Fox sympathizers have to commit a crime (hacking into an institution) just to get ammo which they mistakenly think will bolster their "cause". If they had the brains to actually read the emails themselves, they'd see it hurts them.
Are we forgetting that the Koch brothers funded a separate study that pretty much confirmed the results? Crazies will be crazies, but I don't expect reasonable persons to be swayed by this.
Following some bullet-pointed quotes such as "Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day" and, "Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels," the message states:
"Today's decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on hiding the decline. This archive contains some 5.000 emails picked from keyword searches. A few remarks and redactions are marked with triple brackets. The rest, some 220.000, are encrypted for various reasons. We are not planning to publicly release the passphrase. We could not read every one, but tried to cover the most relevant topics."
Listen, I'm all for the publication of the data and methods these scientists are using. But what exactly is releasing internal e-mails supposed to accomplish? Acting all righteous about "hiding the decline" and then you turn around and censor what you release?! That's pretty funny to me. Who do you think climate change is going to hurt the most anyway? My fat American ass shoving honey coated whole wheat pretzels into my gaping maw while surfing the internet? Or the truly poor people? You know that subsistence farmer in Africa or China where a drought, famine or conflict could wipe him out at the drop of a hat? When times get tough, I'll have to give up my XBox Live Gold Account ... what the hell is someone living on less than $2 a day going to do?
It'll probably turn out like the UN anyway where the US pays $362 million and China pays $29 million so that's some pretty flimsy motivation there when the wealthiest nations will most likely be footing the bill.
My work here is dung.
The issue is that a set of emails can not counter all the other evidence and research. If I falsify tests on gravity and write some emails about it, does this mean that gravity is not a universal constant? The mentality of people who pounce on these emails as proof that "global warming" isn't real are the same ones that used snow storms as proof. They totally miss the overall picture.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Unreal how some think "deniers" believe that climate change doesn't exist. The earth's climate has been constantly evolving over billions of years.
Problem is we've been able to accurately measure the minuscule changes in climate for about 50 of 14 billion years. Second problem is we have absolutely no idea what climate changes the earth can sustain and which ones the earth cannot sustain.
Still no definite answers here. Some of this junk research "confirming" that climate change exists adds confusion to those not smart enough to understand this.
The saddest part about the whole climate debate is that neither side behaves rationally anymore. The debate has become so politically polarized that I feel it is difficult to trust nearly any evidence presented by either side, although the recent Koch-funded study looked like good science. Add in the fact that climate is so vastly complex it is impossible, without intensely studying it, for even the generally scientifically inclined to make judgments given the facts, and you have an issue that it becomes nearly pointless to even talk about anymore. Every time it comes up on Slashdot it inevitably comes down to a flamewar. And that flame comes from both sides.
And you aren't helping.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
What we get is every 10 years a new set of predictions and models explaining why the last 20 years models and predictions weren't correct but we are still doomed anyway
In the words of Issac Asimov
The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong. The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. "If I am the wisest man," said Socrates, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing." the implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal.
My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
I stole this Sig
Believe models that have never predicted anything correctly.
You mean like the models that predict ocean currents, pacific oscillation, jet stream, gulf stream, and whose decadal temperature predictions are, if anything, a bit on the conservative side?
Trust data that is manually manipulated, incomplete, inaccurate, disparate, and only goes back a blink of the eye in terms of the planet's history.
Yes, every data set has been manipulated. Weird that no one seems to come up with a data set that is clean, or without statistical error. I mean, they'd get their names into the annales of science pretty much immediately. I'm sure Exxon has a few billion lying around with which to sponsor such a study. Weird that they don't... they must know something we don't. Wait, they just know something you don't. And how much data do you need? Are you going to be happy when climate data goes back to when the earth was a loose amalgam of space dust?
Trust politicians whose only concerns are money and power, and whose only "solutions" involve shifting money and power, and not reducing consumption or pollution, or building things that are actually green, like nuclear and hydroelectric power plants.
Al Gore might be a convenient whipping boy, but no climate scientist is quoting Al Gore. Not to mention that you'd crucify him if he weren't putting his money where his mouth is. Nice straw man, but no win.
Believe that man is the cause of the current trend, and that man can do something to stop it.
There's no need to believe when you have a physical model for how man influences the current trend, data that supports the existence of the physical model and data that disproves the assumption that CO2 emitted by man does not influence the global temperature.
Believe that the Earth will be doomed if temperatures rise closer to points in Earth's past, despite the fact that throughout all of Earth's history, higher temperatures are when life flourished.
One straw man, one lie through omission and one lie through commission in one sentence. Nice going.
1) No one is arguing that the earth is doomed, outside of people like you. Climate scientists are arguing that life is going to get mighty uncomfortable for a large swath of humanity, costing everyone on earth a nice chunk of change to adapt to.
2) Humans weren't around when temperatures and CO2 concentrations were much higher than now.
3) Mass extinctions are tied to high temperatures and high CO2 contents. Look up PETM extinction event.
Man, whatever it takes to continue living your own life, and screw whoever comes after you, right? Nice going. The last guy who made this his official motto caused massive international bloodshed.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Stop muddling this argument with verifiable facts. Global Warming activists hate it when you show them facts.
There's just as much, if not more, grant money for people who prove climate change ISN'T man made. You don't think the oil companies aren't at the head of a VERY long line of corporations that would pay handsomely to any scientific group that could actually prove that?
There's no need to falsify info proving global warming if it would be easier to produce evidence DISproving it. Certainly not for financial reasons.
-B-
True. I really like what was said in the comment section here: "The correct response to bad science, if that is what you are alleging, is more science, not stolen emails."
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
And you just proved his point.
Your source proving the fraud accusation?
Last I checked, Mann had been cleared by not one, not two, at least t-h-r-e-e different boards of inquiry.
Don't bother throwing actual facts at these people. As fond as they are of claiming that "deniers" ignore the "facts", in fact they have a marked tendency to deny and ignore facts, themselves.
Their hypocrisy would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.
I'm sorry, but #1, you had about 20 years to educate yourself on this issue. #2, there are plenty of rational discussions around this that are polite, fact-based and available online. IPCC reports are one. The NOAA studies are another. Those are just two samples out of a good dozen. There's a huge host of information available if you want to learn.
If you are still complaining that you don't understand the topic at at least a basic level, it's because you haven't been trying. And quite frankly, I'm tired of lazy people complaining that they don't know what's going on, and then voting based on sound bites they heard on CBS. You don't know what's going on? STFU and look it up.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I won't pretend that his language or his attitude are appropriate or helpful to situation but I can understand the frustration. How long can most of us talk about evolution with a creationist before we start to show how exasperating the whole argument is? How long can we talk about vaccines and autism without losing our cool a little bit? Or about the moon landings being a hoax? Or that electric fans can cause deaths in enclosed spaces.
On the one side there is a body of evidence supporting the theory that doubles every time you look at it, on the other there is... what exactly? Either the doubters chose to believe that tens of thousands of scientists are grossly incompetent or that tens of thousands of scientists are conspiring against the rest of the world.
So yeah, his language is inappropriate, but his message is spot on.
"Having doubts is scientifically valid"
Except that this is not the content of the emails. The emails show gross unprofessional conduct. They should adults, acting, consistently and frequently, like out of control children. The show people whom we entrust; thinking uncritically and aggressively shouting down anyone who has the temerity to stray from the party line. They show that the institution is fundamentally and hopelessly broken and the rhetoric, including your own, has strayed significantly away from what any objective observer would characterise as sound scientific inquiry.
Your post, with its aggressive and unnecessary invective and school-yard tone is at least consistent with the tone of language revealed in the emails and around this discussion in general. But keep on carrying on like delinquent know-it-all child if you must. It only serves to reinforce doubts that the institutions that we as a civilization have commissioned to explore the CAGW hypothesis are actually up to the task.
That you are trying to disparage their work by highlighting their character makes me thing it their science is good. Otherwise we'd all be arguing the merit of their science and public discussion of their character on /. would amount to secondary gossip. Email etiquette is not something nerds get riled up over.
Silicon & Charybdis McLuhan Kildall Papert Kay
Really? You're calling a model from 1988 a failure where the only major deviations are the 1998 outlier and 2008-2009? Where the median estimate has gotten the overall trend and magnitude right? For a model that is 23 years old, I'd call that pretty damn good.
As for the IPCC prediction, the 1.5 and 4.5 degree of climate sensitivity are the generally accepted boundaries for climate sensitivity to CO2 forcing. The data collected so far seems to run in and out of those boundaries, with major differences traceable to exceptional events that are outside the climate model.
This is the best you have? That one of the very first global climate models isn't 100% accurate, and that a somewhat more recent model doesn't account properly for events that are outside its modeling parameters? Seems that these people might know what they're doing after all.
By the way, where's your model that calculates future temperatures more accurately?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I'm doing A but fantasizing about B because I'm tired of the enviro-extremists telling me that the science is settled and denying, or even questioning, their (sometimes) ridiculous assertions is tantamount to being a Nazi.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Pretty much everything you said is either factually incorrect or misleading (and recognizable as silly right-wing memes). I don't think you really care though, you just want to badmouth "Der Libruls".
/. and let the adults talk until you can be bothered to look up any iota of information on the subject that doesn't come from the members section of Rush Limbaugh's website. You are literally the equivalent of someone trying to disprove the theory of gravity by noting you can jump up several inches away from Earth, so those science eggheads must have it all wrong. That's the level of ignorance we're dealing with. Go away.
Hint: Climate scientists are aware of past environmental changes. This is not new information. You are not unusually well-informed. You are not the lone voice of sanity in the wilderness, you are just a loudmouth idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about, repeating nonsense spewed by other, more cynical loudmouth idiots. Your post shows such fundamental misunderstandings of the data and issues involved that it would be best to leave
Where?
Are your really that naive? The oil industry has acted so brazenly in its disinformation campaign, and funding of astroturf and denialist "research". The paper trail is there for everyone to see. "Merchants of Doubt" is a recent history book the chronicles just how perfectly the wool has been pulled over your eyes -- in plain sight!
There's something interesting about the human condition there -- and you are being played by people who understand you better then you know yourself. Of course, this just makes you mad, and you want to say that *I* am the one who doesn't understand. This is called projection.
There is something interesting about the human condition there.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right