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Virginia High Court Rejects Case Against Climatologist Michael Mann
ananyo writes "The Virgina Supreme Court on Friday tossed out an investigation by the state's conservative attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, into Michael Mann, the former University of Virginia climatologist whose work on the now-famous hockey-stick graph has become a lightning rod for climate skeptics. 'In a dense and conflicted 26-page ruling (PDF) covering a century and a half of case law — including references to kings as well as modern "functional incongruities" that divided the judges themselves — Virginia’s high court ruled that the university is not a "person" and thus is not subject to Cuccinelli’s demands under the state’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act.' The 'climategate' scientist has been cleared of wrongdoing by a number of investigations."
Interesting-- so corporations are persons, according to the Supreme court, but universities aren't, according to the Virginia court.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Everybody's got an agenda.
There is no fact.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
--Phillip K. Dick.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Tell that to the computer you're using which depends on two centuries worth of scientific advancement. The goal of science is to account for bias and get closer to truth in spite of it, and it's obviously worked. The same system that brought you electromagnatism, antibiotics, and plastic has now brought you climate change. You can bet against them but history isn't on your side.
I'm sure CERN will be thrilled to know that they're disqualified from being scientists.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
The real takeaway is "Don't do research that irritates Republicans, or they might conduct partisan witch-hunts devoid of any actual basis."
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
From the decision:
Government is above the law. All hail the king. Welcome to Braveheart.
"If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment." - a stupid sentiment, regardless of who said it.
Anyhow, your assertions have been investigated and found to be false.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
No sorry. This conservative witch hunt against this work has been clearly shown to be politically biased and non factual. Stop perpetrating the myth.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
It can easily be seen by your reference to "hiding the decline" that you simply don't understand what youy're talking about. One doesn't "hide" anything by publishing papers about it that get hundreds of citations. A piece of advice: read less denialist propaganda, more actual scientists' work. Michael Mann didn't "hide" his work, reproduced it more than once, and his results have been supported by all other work in this area -- with decentered PCA, without it, using other statistical methods etc. Heck, even Wegman trying to discredit Mann had to remain content with the "bad method, good results" diagnosis. You're just throwing the same old mud that didn't stick the first time -- while each year, as more reserach is done, Mann's work is more vindicated. No wonder the denialosphere is getting openly hostile to science in general -- there's no other way to ignore the fact that science unequivocally supports Mann, not you.
Clearly the court didn't want to pass judgement on the nature of the case (no pun intended) and instead chose to throw it out on an Angelina Jolie-ish thin concept.
It also sets an interesting precedent. If, as the court claims, the university is not a person as a requirement for a legal claim on the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, then one could argue that no university should be allowed to get taxpayer funding because there can be no oversight.
Interesting... so which Koch funded "institute" are you quoting?
You do know how easy it is to lie with statistics don't you? Oh right scientists can do no wrong in your world view and we should dispense with reproducibility of their claims
You are aware that right now six different independent groups are analyzing the temperature records, using ground, ocean, balloon, and satellite measurements, and getting very consistent results?
You are aware that an independent analysis, "BEST" (by U.C. Berkeley), was set up (and funded by, among other things, many skeptics) with the explicit purpose of doing an independent analysis without the purported "biases" that critical claim other temperature groups had.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/climate-skeptics-perform-independent-analysis-finally-convinced-earth-is-getting-warmer.ars
Here's a quote from leading skeptic Anthony Watts about that BEST study (March 2011):
Guess what-- the results are still the same. The data showing the planet is warming is real.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111020/full/news.2011.607.html
How much "reproducability of their claims" do you want?
Satellite measurements, ground station measurements,ocean measurements, balloon-sonde measurements, microwave measurements-- very different techniques, same answers.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Wait, I'm confused. Corporations are persons that can be sued but universities aren't?
Unlike the pretenders to the throne, I am a real scientist. I can back my claims. I worked in hyperspectral satellite data acquisition at one point in my career and the relative IR impact of water, methane and CO2 is common knowledge. Maybe we should stop the water cycle instead of the carbon cycle (yes, that's a joke).
Water vapor H2O ~54 %
Carbon dioxide CO2 ~9%
Methane CH4 ~7 %
Ozone O3 ~5 %
Further From New Foundations for Classical Mechanics:
**BEGIN QUOTE**
Celestial Mechanics is the crowning glory of Newtonian mechanics. It has
revolutionized man’s concept of the Cosmos and his place within it. Its
spectacular successes in the 18th and 19th centuries established the unique
power of mathematical theory for precise explanation and prediction. In the
20th century it has been overshadowed by exciting developments in other
branches of physics. But the last three decades have seen a resurgence of
interest in celestial mechanics, because it is a basic conceptual tool for the
emerging Space Age.
The main concern of celestial mechanics (CM) is to account for the motion of
celestial bodies (stars, planets, satellites, etc.). The same theory applies to the
motion of artificial satellites and spacecraft, so the emerging science of space
flight, astromechanics, can be regarded as an offspring of celestial mechanics.
Space Age capabilities for precise measurements and management of vast
amounts of data has made CM more relevant than ever. Celestial mechanics
is used by observational astronomers for the prediction and explanation of
occultation and eclipse phenomena, by astrophysicists to model the evolution
of binary star systems, by cosmogonists to reconstruct the history of the Solar
System, and by geophysicists to refine models of the Earth and explain
geological data about the past.
To cite one specific example, it has recently
been established that major Ice Ages on Earth during the last million years
have occurred regularly with a period of 100,000 years, and this can be
explained with celestial mechanics as forced by oscillations in the Earth’s
eccentricity due to perturbations by other planets. Moreover, periodicities of
minor Ice Ages can be explained as forced by precession and nutation of the
Earth’s axis due to perturbation by the Sun and Moon.
**END QUOTE**
When was the last time a Rebublican read a science book? First, carbon dioxide is a heat trapping gas. It absorbs infrared and converts to kinetic energy. This is the basis of IR spectroscopy. Alternatively, read about the planet Venus. Then, burning fossil fuels will dump carbon dioxide that has been fixed by living things over the last 500 million years. That is why they are called fossil. Putting that together, things are going to warm up if we keep burning the fuel. I dont need a Phd to figure that out
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
That's a weak argument -- essentially a mass scale argument from authority. The strong argument is that the data support the conclusion that the climate is warming and that much of that warming is due to human activity -- and no other possible cause has been shown to be sufficient to cause what has been observed.
THAT is why the smart money is on continued warming and on conservation or other measures to contain it.
No sorry, this is clearly a witch hunt.
Read here: http://spectator.org/blog/2010/05/17/top-mann-nemesis-hes-not-a-fra
it was an extremely odd audience reaction: McIntyre received a standing ovation upon his introduction, thanks to his dogged research and unrelenting demand for information and accountability, but then his blase' attitude about scientists' behavior -- particularly Mann's -- left most of the audience cold and some even angry. The applause for McIntyre was tepid upon the conclusion of his remarks.
Clearly the supporters of the audit are not interested in the truth, they are only interested in seeing Mann fail, regardless of the evidence. Get off your high 'this is fraudulent use of tax dollars!' horse and actually look at the evidence and conclusions - not what the crackpot right wing tells you to think.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
No. The scientists were being attacked because they dared to publish science results that some politicians didn't like. Those politicians were Republicans. You're entitled to your own opinions but not to make up your own facts.
Fascinating that you sometimes need to quote a guy who at one point hallucinated being taken over by the prophet Elijah to some people, because he makes more sense than their ramblings, Scary, actually, given how often I have to use your quote myself.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
http://clivebest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/IPCC-20071.png
HadCrut3 disagrees with GISS on that.
GISS is well known for fabricating their data using 1,200 km radius circles with just one temperature station in them. That is not permitted in science when you are representing that the data is actual temperature measurements since it leads people - such as your self - to the incorrect conclusions about the data. GISS data is NOT pure raw observational temperature data, it's got tons of fabricated data in it. Thus GISS can't be relied upon for factual temperature data.
Also in the graph is the bonus that you'll see how the IPCC "climate models" are worth nothing as their predictions were ALL falsified by Nature herself.
Oh, and yeah, the temperature hasn't risen in the last decade or so, sure it goes up and down but as the graph shows... it more trending down than up.
But, but, making up their own facts is what their whole propaganda machine runs on! And they are too big to fail!
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
It also gave us eugenics, Aether, the fixed universe, phrenology, and Fleischmann/Pons cold fusion.
Many scientific theories that are accepted as truth at the time turn out to be false, or are superceeded as science finds out more.
And sometimes, as in the case of phrenology and eugenics, people are harmed in the name of science.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
I suspect the U is fighting the FOIA request because it's a fishing expedition and they know it. Cuccinelli doesn't have any evidence of wrongdoing or he'd have presented it by now and used it as probable cause to continue the investigation, so he's using FOIA in an attempt to grab up everything.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Actually, no. McIntyre proved that there was a technical flaw in Mann's method of statistical analysis that could occasionally cause an artifactual upturn (or, with equal probability, a downturn) at the end, but despite analyzing a large number of noise data sets, he was not able to find even one case that generated an upturn that approached the magnitude of Mann's "hockey stick" analysis. So, correctly interpreted, McIntyre's results proved that it was highly unlikely that Mann's Hockey Stick curve could result from the artifact. So it is not surprising that numerous subsequent studies, using analyses not subject to this error, and also looking at other types of climate data, have confirmed that the hockey stick is correct.
So in the end, McIntyre's technical criticism of Mann's approach (which at worst involved a subtlety of statistical analysis that no reasonable scientist would have called a "fraud") turned out to be correct, but irrelevant to Mann's conclusion.
Guess we just lost the whole field of statistical thermodynamics. The theory guys in the next building over will be thrilled...
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Watch this and ask if you still have a question. Nature of things, David Suzuki, 1 hr. We're 200 years into a 1000 year cycle of magnetic pol revrsal. This is why they keep having to change the numbers on runways periodically.
CERN reproduced the findings which does explain the climate. Then the CERN lab director put a gag order on the results. Look this all up for yourself.
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/ideas/climate/poles/
Need Mercedes parts ?
Cuccinelli loves the Koch.
Looks like I've got to add a step to the list.
The Republican 9^H10 Step Global Warming Denial Plan
1) There's no such thing as global warming.
2) There's global warming, but the scientists are exaggerating. It's not significant.
3) There's significant global warming, but man doesn't cause it.
4) Man does cause it, but it's not a net negative.
5) It is a net negative, but it's not economically possible to tackle it.
6) Litigate against scientists that don't follow the Republican party line.
7) We need to tackle global warming, so make the poor pay for it.
8) Global warming is bad for business. Why did the Democrats not tackle it earlier?
9) ????
10) Profit.
It is, however, more correct than a random Joe's gut feeling on the matter. Not only more correct, but correct more often. Furthermore, argument from authority is NOT a fallacy when there is an actual authority in the subject matter. It is a weak argument, yes, as it is easily countered. It is, however, NOT a fallacy.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Alleging a cause is not the same as proving it is the cause conclusively!
We have a mechanism, lab experiments supporting the mechanism, and real world data matching the predictions generated from the mechanism. That's called science. It's been reproduced by different people, different groups using different methods from all over the world. At this point, yelling correlation is not causation just means you don't know what's going on.
Besides CO2 hasn't caused temperature to deviate in the REAL ACTUAL ATMOSPHERE as noted above thus the CAGW claims of "CO2 driving Temperature" are falsified by Nature.
As opposed to the fake unreal atmosphere everybody has been working with so far? I'm sure you have a link to support that theory? Maybe even a peer-reviewed paper of sorts? Just one?
No? I thought so. You're a fucking moron.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
We're 200 years into a 1000 year cycle of magnetic pol revrsal.
You're off by a factor of 100. The average time between reversals is 100,000 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_magnetic_field
Statistics can be a scientific tool, if you're careful. Calling a model with a statistical certainty of 99% "virtually certain", however, is unacceptable. For the simple reason, that out of 100 models or experiments, at least one will unavoidably produce such results. Given the amount of data available and the number of models being created, a mere 99% is just not enough. Particle physicists insist for very good reason on 6-sigma-signals - a certainty of 99.9999% that your result is not just a statistical figment. And even then, it is plausible that your result may merely be the result of systematic errors, rather than statistical ones. The faster-than-light neutrinos were the result of such an error - the measurment itself easily had that 6-sigma certainty. (I seem to remember it being something as absurd as 15 sigma.)
I am a weather enthusiast and even have a fairly popular (though local) website. I've read a great deal about how warming/cooling works and I cannot come to a conclusion that any warming/cooling is any more than a cyclical climate change but I also cannot say that's it's not at least partly anthropogenic. I wish I could find more dispassionate reporting about how any current, global, climate change is occurring. A lot of what I read is very one-sided. Both sides of this argument cherry pick scientific data/evidence to support their opinion.
http://www.busyweather.com/
For a scientist, you have a remarkable lack of understanding how scientific work is done, what peer review is, what references mean and what statistical analysis is. I'm pretty sure you're lying about your status as a scientist, which means you're probably lying about a whole lot of other things as well.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Peer review,
It is only as good as it's reviewers. A big part of what Cuccinelli was trying to determine was whether the research was in fact peer-reviewed or cronie-reviewed
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Reading his comment, I think the numbers were infra-red reflectivity. He certainly didn't say they were atmospheric concentration.
Have you even been in a university, and made the comment that the domain you're the expert in directly contradicts climate change ? (just take one of the many mathematical problems that affect applied sciences) See the effect. At once people who work in administration claim that they know your domain. People from biology know with certainty that combinatorial mathematics can't possibly have anything useful to say about statistics, and that you're wrong anyway. And they actually band together on this ! It is so unbelievably stupid.
Oh and point out that the first 2 IPCC ARs (ie. the basis for the Kyoto accords) were flat-out wrong ... and you've just caused a shitstorm. Yet there can be no mistake. They predicted A, and ~A happened. Simple, testable, and, according to just about the entire scientific community, wrong. WTF ?
And the worst of it is, by stating that you will have made a few enemies.
For those who don't know, there's gaping holes in the mathematical underpinnings of pretty much every science with only one small exception (it's not maths, only a very small subset of maths, sadly). And yes, climate change is particularly bad for a supposed exact science, being only based on indirect historical non-repeatable observations and not even claiming to have the laws that govern the climate. I said "climate", the only laws we have that apply are about interactions of very small numbers of molecules, in situations with extremely low entropy. Yet climate science applies those laws to a system that has so many secondary effects it isn't even funny and literally enough entropy to entire villages of the map on a monthly basis.
Technically we "know the laws", but the laws prohibit drawing conclusions once you pass a certain rather trivial volume or complexity (the so-called chaotic behaviour). Needless to say, the atmosphere is so far beyond that limit that it's not at all funny. The measurements are so extremely limited it's just plain sad. The athmosphere is a 100km shell above the earth's crust. We measure (and this is being generous) a ~ 1m shell, and have point measurements, spaced far apart in both space and time outside of that tiny shell. It's like the nuclear fusion problems. We are perfectly aware of every possible interaction that can occur in the reactor vessel, just as long as it involves less than a few thousand ions and neutrons. Of course a real reactor vessel involves billions of billions of billions of ... of ions and slightly less neutrons (initially we thought neutrons would stay out of the way ... seems almost funny today. Believe it or not, reactor vessels have edges, superconductors have to actually exist somewhere and when neutrons meet either of those, hilarity ensues). We have models, simulations, laws, supercomputers, ... you name it. And every time they turn on that vessel a few hundreds of billions of ions decide to band together and try to blow it up in a new, very exciting, very bad and very unexpected way.
In reality the workings of climate science, never mind it's hypotheses and theories, don't pass the standards of most applied sciences. They certainly don't have anything like the rigour that is applied to fusion designs or lhc experiments. Climate scientists should be laughed out of conferences, yet just about everywhere I go one such presentation is made to make the conference "socially relevant". It is without exception a bunch of pretty pictures, accompanied by mathematics a first-year high school student should know to be horribly wrong. Yet lo and behold : ... at these presentation you get the questions like "what can we do to help this ?". Every single speaker at a maths conference gets torn to shreds, either because they're wrong, or because they bruised the ego of one of the senior researchers (very easy to do, just prove something that just might be useful for proving their research is never going to work). Just by comparison, in one of my present
Actually the data supports that the climate is warming due to a feedback loop that's unrolling in the oceans that's warming the planet. And yes, the initial push that started this feedback loop is started by a combination of human and volcanic activity. That push also occured centuries ago, long before your grandfather was born.
The evolution of climate, so the models tell us, is like a grenade exploding in slow motion, it's about a third through the fireball. And what we're trying to do is to put the pin back in.
We're 200 years into a 1000 year cycle of magnetic pol revrsal.
This would mean that 200 years ago magnetic north was oriented with the axial south. This would mean that all compasses built more than 200 years ago would point south with the north end of the needle.
Considering this would be significant, and this patently easy to demonstrate, yet is patently false... would you like to try again?
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
How exactly is eugenics (as a science) a bad thing? As a science all it is is the observation that we humans have changed the evoluionary pressures on our own species, with the exensino that it is in ways that most likely will favor mutations that we don't really want. For example poor eyesight is no longer a negative evelutioary pressure so you can expect it to grow in the general population.
That is the science bit, what you are probably objecting to are the mass steriliztions in the US (if you are aware of them) or the influence those same ideas had on some of the Nazi justifications for the death camps. But the science is reposnible for neither, just as you can't blame the mass killings of the Khmer Rouge on the philophy of equality.
And if you think that eugenics (the science) has in any way been proven false, then you are completely mistaken.
Want the raw data? Here! The first segment, as you can see, is called "Climate data - Raw". Want the code? Here! They're cleaning up the scientist-written code to see if it performs the same as the published results.
There's plenty of scrutiny, that dosen't involve harassment or intimidation of scientists and shifting goalposts.
With that in mind, why spend literally trillions of dollars trying to prevent the climate from changing, when it's going to change anyway? Maybe not in the exact same way as it would sans humanity, but it's going to change. Better to use the resources and effort to address that, than using it tilting at the useless windmill of trying to make the Earth's climate static.
If you're going to die of cancer anyway, why spend literally tens of thousands of dollars in treatment to prevent it from metastasizing when it may happen anyway? What a question!
Here's my answer: I live on the coast. In a place about 7 metres above the mean sea level. In a "third world" country. In a part of the country that's relatively borderline between arid and lush. In the tropics, yet. My city and region both have several millions (several hundreds of millions, even) of people living here, and a good couple of billion should be living in similar areas around the world. A few degrees increase in the global temperature may not seem much for someone living in the arctic - indeed, it may even be welcome, but for us, this would mean the end of any kind of sustainable life.
Do you really want to create a billion-strong exodus of people who've got nothing to lose anymore if it can be prevented at all? If there's even the tiniest chance of preventing it?
Actually, the research of Michael Mann and many other climate scientists has concentrated very specifically on understanding cyclical patterns, volcanic eruptions and other natural processes that impact climate. One of the key challenges has been to figure out how to provide accurate and reliable temperature reconstructions going back a significantly long period of time (way before there were thermometers to perform direct measurements) in order to ferrit out the relative impact of cyclical patterns, single event effects (like volcanic eruptions) and anthropogenic effects on temperature. The primary method to do this has been to use proxy data derived from things such as tree rings, ice cores and the like. Because this data exists overlapping periods when direct temperature measurements could be taken the proxy data could be calibrated to within a certain error factor. The resulting findings have shown that even allowing for the effects of cyclical patterns and single occurance events the anthropogenic impact has been the dominate contributor over the last half century. Another thing to understand, and an issue even in this article is the incorrect use of the term "skeptic". These people are not skeptics (skeptics can be convinced in the presence of new data). These people are deniers who ignore data that disagrees with their world view. Scientists by their vary nature are skeptics and so to have this large of a consensus in the scientific community is even more of an indication of the validity of the conclusion that 1) the climate is warming by an unpresidented rate and 2) the dominant contributor is anthropogenic.
Correct me if I am wrong but in simple terms the planet warmed a little over 10 years ago and at which time the warming leveled off.
Not much point in replying to posts by anonymous coward, since even if, as you say, "I am willing to listen to evidence that refutes it," how would I know? I don't even know what data you're willing to look at, and what data you have decided to ignore because you claim it is (quoting from the previous post) "...lying with statistics... fabricating temperature readings... committing scientific and financial frauds."
However, taking you at your word for just a moment, here is the data for the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project:
http://berkeleyearth.org/images/berkeley-earth-land-surface-average-temperature-60yr.jpg
Would you say, based on this data, that "the Earth warmed a little ten years ago and the warming stopped"?
What about if you draw a line from the 1998 data point to the 2008 data point? Would you say that this line is, or is not, representative of the data?
This despite the fact that present day CO2 levels are now even higher than worst case scenario predictions 10 years ago.
Actually, no; check your data source. It turns out that the global recession had a negative impact on the CO2 emission growth rate. It's not "higher than worse case predictions," it ended up being "slightly less than predicted." (Not enough to make much of a difference in the predictions, though).
That graph came from the BEST FAQ, which can be found here: http://berkeleyearth.org/faq/#stopped
You can also try the NASA data, NOAA data, CRU data etc. The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) graphs, for example, compare data taken by several different methods; they are here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
But it's an excellent lesson in why we need to separate scientific findings from policy debates, which necessarily need to include much more considerations and a great many more factors must be weighed as trade-offs.
The option being... what? Policy framed with no scientific input?
Just as eugenics was used to justify mass sterilizations, ultimately climate change is being used to justify eliminating about 80% of the global human population.
I'd really like a citation for that little statistic in there...
This is a scary position to take. This is not a case off someone making up data or outright fraud. This is a case where a real professor did real experiments and published the results with his conclusions. Then the government, or in this case Ken Cuccinelli, disagreed with those conclusions and decided to try to intervene with the big heavy hand of government. This is Ken's M.O. - he did when he sued Universities for having pledges/rules to not discriminate against gays and he is doing it here. I have no issues with folks saying that the conclusions that the professor came up with incorrect. But criminalization is just crazy. And the attacks on both Science and Education by the Right wing are foolish, scary, and in this case a huge waste of tax payer money.
So... other than "experts" (nice fear quotes), who should they be listening to? The layman who doesn't know any better?
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
A part of that is being able to accept that you were wrong in questioning scientists when it turns out (as in 99% of cases, probably) that science was right.
Look at the evidence, but when it doesn't support your conclusions, honestly admit that. Launching witch-hunts is truly counter productive!
The problem with environmentalism isn't the actual facts.
The problem is that once people try to use these facts to justify policies that will harm other people, the victims of those new policies will try to dispute the facts in order to discredit the policies that are harming them.
Yes, exactly: a good deal of the criticism that is purported to be skepticism of the science (and the scientists) is actually aimed at discrediting the policy implications.
The unexpected consequence is that, since it apparently much easier to cast doubt on the science than to rationally discuss policy, there has been almost no discussion of the proposed policies.
Of course, policy discussions are so full of boobytraps and ideological landmines in the US, that's not surprising.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I'd really like a citation for that little statistic in there...
Since you asked, most Americans don't grasp it yet, but the truth is that the global elite are absolutely obsessed with population control. In fact, there is a growing consensus among the global elite that they need to get rid of 80 to 90 percent of us. The number one commandment of the infamous Georgia Guidestones is this: "Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature." Unfortunately, a very high percentage of our global leaders actually believe in this stuff.
This philosophy is now regularly being reflected in official UN documents. For example, the March 2009 U.N. Population Division policy brief begins with the following statement:
This agenda showed up again when the United Nations Population Fund released its annual State of the World Population Report for 2009 entitled "Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate".
The population control agenda is also regularly showing up in our newspapers now. In a recent editorial for the New York Times entitled "The Earth Is Full", Thomas L. Friedman made the following statement:
But Friedman is quite moderate compared to many others. For example, James Lovelock stated in an interview with the Guardian earlier this year that "democracy must be put on hold" if the fight against global warming is going to be successful and that only "a few people with authority" should be permitted to rule the planet until the crisis is solved.
The Finnish environmentalist Pentti Linkola is openly calling for climate change deniers to be "re-educated", for a world government to be established and for humans to be forcibly sterilized and for the majority of humans to be killed.
This agenda is even being taught by professors at many top universities. Professor of Biology at the University of Texas at Austin Eric R. Pianka is a very prominent advocate of radical human population control. In an article entitled "What nobody wants to hear, but everyone needs to know", Pianka said:
CNN Founder Ted Turner
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
It's hardly a technocracy. If it was, you would probably be facing the end of using petroleum products for producing energy tomorrow. As it is, governments do just enough to appear to be doing something.
But beyond that the question becomes "If the vast and overwhelming majority of researchers in a certain field say [i]X[/i] is happening", your response should be:
A. Wow, that sounds serious, what are the solutions?
or
B. That would cost a few billion a year, so fuck you.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's you that doesn't have an argument. You actually are the one creating the strawman.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
An appeal to authority is only fallacious when the authorities being invoked are not in fact authorities. If you defend a diagnosis of macular degeneration because your dentist says that's what you have, that's a fallacious appeal to authority. If you defend a diagnosis of macular degeneration because your opthamologist says that's what you have, it is not fallacious.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Science-informed policy is fine. As long as we can all remember that scientific consensus has often been wrong in the past. The cost-benefit needs to be done with this probability in mind. Really, if you haven't yet read some macro-economics and it will terrify you when you realize what an immature "science" it is. I have been completely convinced that the government should not be in the business of monetary policy, they are making it up as they go along.
Anyway I don't think there is ever true ethics-based or science-based policy. The nature of the system makes it so that leaders will only act on the subset of "the facts" that are consistent with retaining power. If they didn't, they would lose power and be replaced by someone who did.
Eugenics is a bad thing because A. it violates basic human rights, B. it pretty much rejects the Darwinian notion that the more variation the better, and C. it has historically been applied as much to socioeconomic factors as to anything particularly hereditary.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Since you asked, most Americans don't grasp it yet, but the truth is that the global elite are absolutely obsessed with population control. In fact, there is a growing consensus among the global elite that they need to get rid of 80 to 90 percent of us. The number one commandment of the infamous Georgia Guidestones is this: "Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature." Unfortunately, a very high percentage of our global leaders actually believe in this stuff.
OK, I'm no American, but I'll play...
First, let's keep the anonymous polemics out of this, eh?
This philosophy is now regularly being reflected in official UN documents. For example, the March 2009 U.N. Population Division policy brief begins with the following statement:
Not related to climate change, but let's read the report:
Fast population growth, fueled by high fertility, hinders the reduction of poverty and the achievement of other internationally agreed development goals. While fertility has declined throughout the developing world since the 1970s, most of the least developed countries still have total fertility levels above 5 children per woman.
5 children per women is definitely a fertility level that's unsustainable in Nigeria. Or even here in India. This is nothing new - those countries with stable governments have been more or less going in the direction of lower fertility rates for decades. See this Gapminder plot, for example. In any case, the report says nothing about global warming. It's about health and happiness, not warming.
This agenda showed up again when the United Nations Population Fund released its annual State of the World Population Report for 2009 entitled Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate".
That would be this one
The interesting thing is, this isn't really talking about eliminating 80% of the population of the world. Both reports talk about fertility rates, family planning and improved health. The second one is a little hyperbolic about climate change, but nevertheless, it's not a call to cull 80% of the world's population.
The population control agenda is also regularly showing up in our newspapers now. In a recent editorial for the New York Times entitled "The Earth Is Full", Thomas L. Friedman made the following statement:
Freedom doesn't mean liberation from reality. The universe actually doesn't give one sweet fuck about your freedoms.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
the smart money is on continued warming and on conservation or other measures to contain it.
The smarter money is on the developing world making containment measures irrelevant.
"Climate changes because nutation and precession of the Earth and Moon affect the solar incidence angle and distance not to mention the primary factor, ripples in the output of the sun. "
And changes in atmospheric composition. And in fact people have been thinking about the issue for at least 50-60 years. Roger Revelle, a primary oceanographer, wrote as much in an environmental report to the US Government. The Lyndon Johnson Administration. Is this "nobody would worry about this"?
And yes there are correlations between orbital parameters etc---and yet now climate is changing at a much faster time scale without any radical shift in our orbital mechanics or changes in the output of the Sun. The atmospheric concentration has changed as well.
"Never mind that the primary gases for the terrestrial greenhouse effect are water and methane, with CO2 representing a single digit contribution to the effect"
The effect from water is a short-timescale feedback from long lived gases, which the most important one is CO2.
You appear to accept the fact that CO2 is an IR emitter. Well, the increase in IR flux from the change in CO2 is a quantitative measured fact.
"which means (for the truly dense among you) that if we stop the carbon-based economy climate change will go on exactly like before and the only thing that will happen is that you will die of cold and starvation."
When the effective solar insolation changed by a tiny fraction due to those small orbital effects (plus greenhouse feedbacks!) it made Ice Ages. An equally small change in IR flux from CO2 changes (which humans are guaranteed to cause on present course) could just as well case a Heat Age as hot above normal climate as the Ice Ages were cold.
Ice was two miles thick in New York then. Do you want to take the equivalent chance on the hot side?
I call bullshit on the parent. The complete failure to mention that water is saturated in the atmosphere, that any excess condenses out as rain, as well as pretending climate scientists ignore water vapour contribution, when every climate model in existence includes it as a positive feedback dependent on temperature, tells me that he either pretends to have higher qualifications in the field than he does, or he knows full and well that he is being deliberately misleading or lying through his teeth. In particular his "joke" absolutely stinks of the usual "lol climate scientists are so stupid" nonsense we hear all the time.
Water is the main greenhouse gas in the earth's atmosphere, but it does not mean that the CHANGE in climate can be explained by water vapour, nor does it imply that carbon dioxide is irrelevant. The amount of water held by the air is largely dependent on temperature. If it gets hotter, more evaporates from the oceans, if it gets colder more will fall out as rain. Carbon dioxide on the other hand tends to stay in the atmosphere for a very long time, and is not absorbed by the oceans, plants or reactions with the earth's minerals at a rate quick enough to compensate for the vast quantities we put into the atmosphere.
Consequentially increasing CO2 concentrations will produce a warmer atmosphere, which in turn increases water concentration, which means the warming from a given amount of CO2 will be greater than you'd expect from CO2 alone.
ANY climate scientist worth his salt (or indeed anybody who even tried to learn about the topic ) would be well aware of this fact, yet the parent appears to either not know about it, or deliberately refraining to point it out in order to make a stupid joke. He's either incompetent or dishonest.
"As it is, governments do just enough to appear to be doing something." How it is that this is not a Sir Humphrey Appleby quote astounds me!
Perhaps one of these quotes could work in its place:
"Two kinds of government chair correspond with the two kinds of minister: one sort folds up instantly and the other sort goes round and round in circles."
"'The Government's position' means 'the best explanation of past events that cannot be disproved by available facts'."
"In government, many people have the power to stop things happening but almost nobody has the power to make things happen. The system has the engine of a lawn mower and the brakes of a Rolls Royce."
"A Civil Service computer strike would bring government to a standstill if it were not for the fact that it is already."
***
Topically speaking, I've notice the biggest problem to accepting a scientific understanding comes in the form of two anti-science options: 1) A scientifically sounding think tank or lobbyist's research seems directly in conflict with reality but fits well other people's preferred realities and 2) All scientific understanding is really an indoctrination technique, and only the ignorant can see reality.
Of course, neither is particularly exclusive in any field.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
"Ones does NOT need to provide why the temperature is rising as the Null Hypothesis rules in science and the Null Hypothesis in this case is that the warming is Natural and/or unknown."
This is false. The null hypothesis is one kind of statistical methodology used in certain technical circumstances. In practice, an explicit or implicit Bayesian reasoning is usually used.
And a "Natural" cause which somehow excludes humans requires specific physical mechanism, observations and theory which are stronger than the understanding which assumes human-emitted greenhouse molecules have the same optical and chemical properties as the ones which have been in the atmosphere before humans started digging coal and petroleum. The "natural cycle" explanation would also have to explain why the human-emitted gases *do not* cause climate change. Just saying it is 'unknown' is a baloney cop-out. After all it could be mischievous invisible gremlins, We Don't Know For Sure.
Besides, there is other internal evidence pointing to greenhouse increases, e.g. that night warms more than day, winter warms more than summer, and polar warms more than topical, and that stratosphere is cooling---all of which is compatible with increases in greenhouse gases, and incompatible with increases in solar output.
And if you really want to go for the 'null hypothesis' schtick, the better null hypothesis is, "We assume the laws of physics are correct, and if you change the IR scattering of the atmosphere the surface temperature will change."
"Some AGW skeptics do prefer other specific hypotheses which are not the Null Hypothesis (e.g., the Sun is the principal driver to terrestrial temperature,) and those hypotheses do require proof. But most skeptics make no such claims."
Yes, conveniently they ignore any responsibility to explain observations with actual physics.
Repeat: climatology is not statistics, it is physics.
The null hypothesis that works much much much much better: explanations based on justified physics backed by observations, are ENORMOUSLY MORE POWERFUL at predicting the future than naive human intuition or statistical assumptions of 'status quo' without mechanistic justification.
Like totally dude. Legislation based upon physical reality is what the man wants. Question the paradigm.
Oh I get it. When a scientist isn't held criminally liable for conducting scientific research, then we are in a "technocracy". If this were a "democracy" then Michael Mann would be arrested because he made a graph that, while broadly accurate, got some people upset.
"Worse, one of the ways that the models have been "curve fitted" is by assuming that any deviation between the models and the historical climate is due to the unproven "drastic synergistic warming" that magically transforms slight warming of no consequence into significant warming that might be harmful (or might be net beneficial.)
In other words, climate models that operate solely according to first principles do not show any warming trend that would be worth mitigating, neither in the past nor in the future. To force the models to agree with past history, they have been modified to use a "fudge factor" that arbitrarily amplifies any direct greenhouse gas effect warming non-linearly. And when those modified models with the magic fudge factors are run into the future, they unsurprisingly show significant warming. It would be amazing if they did not, since they are arbitrarily hard-coded (by fiat, not by application of scientfic laws) to non-linearly amplify the warming computed to occur by application of the greenhouse gas effect equations."
This is false. The supposed "first principles" models of global warming that the skeptics bandy about are nothing of the sort, they assume a waterless inert rock and equate "gee this much more IR flux equals this much warming" models assuming albedoless/atmosphere-less black bodies. Sometimes the computations you do in physics 101 are actually wrong because the world is more complicated. Also they assume that the oceans have no significant heat capacity, contrary to fact, and then conclude with an erroneous and conveniently low estimate of climate sensitivity. (Lord Monckton, upper class twit of the year, e.g.) They look X amount of flux increase in a certain time and measuring Y amount of temperature increase, and say "Gee you climatologists are hoaxing it all", when they just didn't understand the meaning of equilibrium concepts.
Say you ramp up the intensity of a heat lamp on a body of water and measure it's temperature increase. Scientists' theory predicts that if you increase the heat flux (or change the properties of the container), the temperature will rise a certain amount in equilibrium---and they call that parameter the 'sensitivity'. pseudo-skeptic looks at the heat-flux increase in short time T, finds the water hasn't actually gotten hot enough (yet), boldly proclaims "see it's all a hoax from those Communists".
For instance, in the screed directly above, there are unsupported assumptions that there were no other changes in the 20th century climate drivers, which is known to be factually incorrect (namely increased in cooling aerosols in the atmosphere from human combustion activities) and ignores delayed effect from heat capacity as well. These are just errors that a slightly scientifically informed layman can figure out---real climatologists know far far more about the subject.
Then when scientists try to explain that the actual physics is more complicated and you have to take into account A,B and C, pseudo-skeptic starts howling about "unreliable complex computer models" and "lying with statistics".
When you fit a linear trend (from what physics?) plus a cyclical period (from what physics?), *that* it is in itself statistically misleading post-hoc invention. And just because you can post-hoc fit some arbitrary statistical assumption does NOTHING to falsify a justified physical knowledge.
I'd find it funny if it weren't so depressing. The denialists of the human influence on climate use these two talking points over and over, not even understanding enough science (or more likely, not caring about truth as opposed to winning economically) that they are simultaneously contradictory!
Point 1) Water, not CO2, is the dominant greenhouse forcing!!!
Point 2) All those evil computer models that them hoaxing climate modelers put out are lying, because they stuff in these mumbo-jumbo complex feedforwards to the sensitivity computed by God's-honest-truth-Bolztzmann, in order to make the problem "alarming" instead of insignificant.
In scientific truth, yes water is a major greenhouse effect. And that's just the point of those supposedly 'mumbo-jumbo' feedfowards---it's the fact that as air warms up, it can absorb more water vapor, and yes this extra water vapor (clear, not clouds) certainly does ADD to the greenhouse effect. D'oh!
So the more you push #1 (which is true), the more you justify including the feedfowards which result in the mainstream estimate of climate sensitivity which points to a serious problem in the future. In fact it's misleading NOT to include these feedfowards.
Yes, water is the dominant greenhouse gas, and all of them together add 30C to the Earth's average temperature. We are worried about CO2 forcing another 3-6C. The Moon, which is at the same average distance from the Sun as we are, has a global average temperature of -15C (yes, it's much hotter on the day side, but it's also much colder on the night side). The Earth has an average temperature of +15C. The difference is due to our atmosphere slowing down heat leaking out. So merely saying water is the main greenhouse gas means nothing without the context that the worry is only 10-20% *more* greenhouse effect.
Oh, and we can prove the CO2 is man-made. Plants prefer Carbon-12 to Carbon-13, because the lighter atoms participate in reactions slightly faster. Thus they have 2% less C-13 than other sources (volcanoes and carbonate rocks). The C-13 ratio in the atmosphere is changing along with the total CO2 amount. Therefore the added CO2 comes from plants. The only sources of plant-derived CO2 large enough are fossil fuels and deforestation, both man-made sources.
There is no such thing as "science necessitating legislation". Scientific truth doesn't need anybody's legal imprimatur.
Also, public safety is one of the central reasons we have laws. If you disagree with the legal protection of public safety, fine, but then argue that honestly. Don't mask your argument with extraneous BS about "science necessitating legislation".
Crap. Why did Cuccinelli decided to undertake a fishing expedition against someone in that particular field, then, one that's known for being highly politically charged?
He has no interest in the truth of the thing; he's interested in intimidating climate scientists into falling into the Republican line, i.e. that AGW is a myth.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
And your own technique is a very common one,
You are right. Debunking is a common technique.
my assertion and defense of the very groups and powerful, wealthy people advocating depopulation makes your own agenda questionable to an objective observer.
I'm really curious what you would guess my agenda is...
No, seriously. Let me know.
the first quote starts on the bottom of page 21,
Now that gives it the missing context. See, you put it into a context of depopulation, but the entire chapter is about population growth, and on p. 22 it puts the necessary depth into the debate by pointing out that the relationship is varied and in some countries the per-capita emissions are even falling.
If you read the entire report - or just a few chapters - it doesn't seem to support your claim that some mysterious global elite is planning to kill most of the world population in the slightest. It's a calm review of what we know about the relationship between various factors such as population, consumption, transporation, energy consumption, etc.
As for Ted Turner's quote, it (along with the entire context and his views) was first published in an interview given in 1996 to the magazine of the American conservation organisation The Audubon Society
The reference is all over the net. The Audubon Magazine website itself doesn't seem to know about it: http://www.audubonmagazine.org/search/node/ted%20turner
Quotes get made up all the time, and once enough people are quoting it, everyone thinks it's real. There are a nice number of examples for this effect, and too few journalists who actually check the sources. In fact, one of the pet /. topics has an example: The estimate for losses to movie "piracy" are such a thing. Someone once made up a number, and that number has been quoted and re-quoted ever since, with everyone referencing someone else who only got it somewhere else, until it has so many references that it seems real.
I'm serious, I've tried to find it. Now the funny thing is - I'm not alone. Search for "interview" in the comments here:
http://www.mediaite.com/online/ted-turner-bashes-tea-party-calling-them-mean-spirited/
Someone else is asking some other one else the same question I am - and gets no reply.
So, in the language of the IntarWeb: "Pics or it didn't happen".
And yes, the burden of proof lies with you. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I am highly sceptical, but I can be convinced. I took a few months to make up my mind about 9/11, for example. I used to doubt that ECHOLON was real, but as more and more evidence has surfaced that I was wrong, I've come around.
But depopulation on a massive scale? And advocated by the very people who have the most to lose from any major socio-political change? That's a crackpot theory and those spreading it are frauds and liars. And I say that in these clear words because I'm not on TV like Pen & Teller and thus I can say what I believe.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
That's funny because the greatest deniers of AGW are white evangelicals: http://www.pewforum.org/Science-and-Bioethics/Religious-Groups-Views-on-Global-Warming.aspx
What part of religion is it that some atmospheric gases absorb infrared? Ever notice how on cloudy nights the temperature falls less than on clear nights? That's the greenhouse effect in action. More greenhouse gas (water) means less heat escapes to space, thus it stays warmer. Water is the main greenhouse gas, mainly because there is a lot more of it, about 1% of the atmosphere, vs 0.04% CO2. But you cannot ignore the CO2 contribution, because water vapor concentration is highly non-linear with temperature. Thus any temperature effect caused by CO2 is magnified about 3 times by added water vapor. The reason so much more vapor can get in the air is because the Earth is mostly covered in water, and even the land parts are mostly covered in wet objects (soil and plants).
The extra CO2 is demonstrably from humans, because the Carbon-13 ratio is changing along with the CO2 level. Plants have a 2% lower C-13 ratio than inorganic sources. The only source of enough plant-derived CO2 to explain the ratio shift is fossil fuels plus deforestation, i.e humans. Where is there belief in this chain of logic, rather than observation and deduction?
The reference is all over the net. The Audubon Magazine website itself doesn't seem to know about it: http://www.audubonmagazine.org/search/node/ted%20turner [audubonmagazine.org]
Wow so you're claiming it's false? Really? You're not actually saying he didn't say it and the interview doesn't exist, are you? Surely you can't be that stupid.
He's saying that unless a quote's verifiable as having been said by Turner, claiming that his views on a subject are X or Y might be a tiny bit intellectually dishonest...
So yes, he's asking you to prove - from an independent source, or by a transcript/video/audio of the original utterance, that he actually said that. If you don't have such evidence, please remember that you're accusing a man of holding views close to genocide of 80% of the world population. I hadn't thought to question this myself, but heck, it was late in the night when I responded...
So you think it was wrong that when science postulated that there were invisible organisms that created disease and were spread by shitting in, or next to, drinking water and the conservatives refused to believe it, including some who wouldn't even look in a microscope because it was patently impossible for there to be invisible organisms, that it was wrong to legislate no shitting in the drinking water?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Industry does spread salt uniformly through out the restaurant and neighborhood. Just about any foodstuff purchased has unhealthy amounts of salt. People have been conditioned that excessive salt is needed for taste yet it is very unhealthy. A good example is baby food. When first introduced 80 or 90 years ago baby food had no added salt and babies loved it. Nice jar of carrots in a form that they could eat. Meanwhile the mothers, who had already been conditioned that food needed excessive amounts of salt, complained that the jar of carrots was bland and the free market responded by adding salt to please the mothers as they were the actual purchasers. Babies got conditioned at an early age to have too much salt in their diet and grew up expecting unhealthy amounts of salt in their food. Feedback happens and now we get to a point where most purchased food has unhealthy amounts of salt.
The question isn't about the salt shakers, it is about all the other salt spread around the neighborhood.
Legislation can put warnings on the salt shaker which allows the people to have the right to make an informed decision about sprinkling salt on their food and also legislation to limit the amount of salt spread around the neighborhood.
I know it is communistic to say so but we live in communities. Sometimes things need to be legislated. Perhaps a simple warning in the case of the salt shaker, and sometimes a ban in the case of the free market boosting the amount of salt in our food in a viscous feedback loop.
Shitting is also a right that needs to be legislated. One of the most basic rights is the right to shit, and also really important for plants etc yet no one should have the right to shit in the communities drinking water and if society is going to help sick people then they shouldn't even be allowed to shit in their own well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism