In response to an accusation that the mentioned statements by Muller's colleague and collaborator, Judith Curry, are "lies" promoted by one biased newspaper, I offer the following:
Refute the contents of the story, rather then trying to discredit the source. You are indulging in ad hominem argument, and it means nothing. The article reported this particular information accurately, and it is available from many other sources as well. Look it up if you don't believe me. The only reason I used that one was because it was the first one to come up.
Dispute the FACTS, not the sources, or go the hell away. This discussion is about facts.
"OK, you're not crazy. You're just a liar. A terrible liar."
As they say on Wikipedia, "[citation needed]". Do you have some FACTS to back up your claim that this is a lie, or not?
"Please point out where in that letter Chris Landsea says that the data used to write the IPCC reports is incorrect, or even that the conclusions of the IPCC reports are wrong."
He doesn't say so, specifically, but he strongly implies that it is. And that he quit because he did not want to be part of the process. From the end of his letter:
"I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth's actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4."
That is not specifically an accusation of incorrect conclusions, but I believe the words "scientifically unsound" are too significant to be ignored. Further, I agree with him that the fact that IPCC allows people associated with it to spread bald-faced lies to the scientific community, and refuses to take action when they are caught, is significant on its own, regardless of the actual contents of the reports.
Further, as mentioned many times in the past, often by the very scientists involved, the "Executive Summary for Policymakers", which is published separately from the main report, often does not accurately reflect the actual science presented in the report. Nevertheless, the Executive Summary, even though published separately, is still part of the official report.
"Furthermore, please point out the peer-reviewed studies that showed that the IPCC reports are incorrect, and where. If you're good, you'll actually come about with about a half dozen studies correcting some details. If not.... well, things about fools and talking come to mind."
I have done so many times here already. If you haven't been around, or haven't been paying attention, well, that's too bad. You can find earlier posts of mine, with links, yourself using Google. I don't feel like spending an hour looking them up again.
You might also consider looking up Landsea's own papers.
"Wow, a genuine denier. And the den..., errm "skeptics" say there are none."
Obviously reading comprehension is not your strong suit. Did I state anywhere that "global warming" was not happening? I did specifically mention a couple of recent years. How does that equate to being a "genuine denier"?
Once and for all: I do not deny the warming trend!!! To say that I do is simply reading more into my statements than I have actually been saying. Those kinds of distortions (which have been happening enough that I have to believe are often deliberate) are little different from lying.
I didn't say "global warming isn't happening", dimbulb. I stated only that the last couple of years don't agree with that trend.
Seriously. When will you people STOP distorting what other people say, then claiming it's false? I could do the same to you, if I wished. It just happens that it's against my principles.
Crazy? Since I am the subject of your link, I would have to take offense at that.
But if you want to talk facts, let's talk facts rather than distort the picture or take comments out of context, shall we? I'd rather be a crazy than some kind of ass who quotes other people out of context.
My comment was about recent years -- the last 2 or 3. I said nothing about whether there was an overall warming trend. So take your distortions and stuff them, okay?
Now, call that what you will, but it isn't the rantings of some crazy person.
However -- again for the sake of truth and fairness -- the graphs in that article are misleading. They are the doings of the media, not the scientist being quoted.
If you want to be taken seriously, you need to get your own facts straight, rather than distorting them and quoting out of context. Shame on you.
"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."
Um... no. Come on, you alarmists! For all your talk about "just the facts", you have a surprising tendency to scramble the truth.
What Muller "confirmed" was the veracity of the initial data used by some of the models... NOT "results" of any kind. Muller's paper cannot honestly be called a "verification" of AGW in any way, even by the staunchest AGW defender. That isn't what it is.
"I'm going to just rush right over and download a 173 MB zip file from some random Russian server."
What you are missing here is that the person who linked to this file -- and possibly uploaded it in the first place -- going under the pseudonym "Foia", was also largely responsible for the distribution of the first set of "leaked" emails.
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.
"Sham news reporting like Fox News cherry-picked out-of-context blurbs that made it sound like the scientists couldn't agree on anything."
Um... not really. The sham arguments they did make were not really related to that. Things like "hide the decline", etc., which really, in the long run, don't seem to have a whole lot to do with much that is significant, and similar straw-man arguments. Admitted. But the idea that scientists could not agree on anything did not come from the emails. It came from... actual disagreements.
"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."
Again, no. The emails had very little to do with scientific consensus. The emails in fact were mostly from a small group of scientists, most of whom worked together.
"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."
That they would do a second leak is a sign that somebody who is an insider believes there is something significant being hidden. It is generally agreed that the first "leak" came from someone on the inside, and it is very likely that the second one did too.
"Also I love that Fox sympathizers have to commit a crime (hacking into an institution)"/quote.
See my other comment just above. There is no evidence that this is so. The consensus -- you are big on consensus, right? -- has been that these email "leaks" are not the results of "hacking" at all. Rather, it is someone who is involved with the climate research itself who is doing the leaking.
On the contrary. Both arguments are based on what many people -- laymen and scientists both -- believe to be facts. The question is simply whose facts are correct. One of those facts that is indisputable (as long as one is truthful) is that there is a lot of genuine evidence against AGW.
The problem with this scheme (which has been brought up every time a similar idea has been floated in the U.S.), is that it punishes the innocent for the deeds of the non-innocent. It would be rather like taxing American citizens in order to prop up banks that fail or have been robbed.
Oh... wait. FDIC. TARP. Right. What could I have been thinking?
"Globalization is now, and the giants of the internet earn lot of money on the French market. Good for them, but they do not pay a penny in tax to France."
And when it comes to "the giants of the Internet", hardly any of them are in France, and France does not pay them for access.
If I were a performer, and France tried to tax my performances, I would make sure my contract said "Not to be shown or sold in France."
"OK, how about this, a verifiable and proven correct statement: economics is hogwash, and BjÃrn Lomborg is as much a scientist as a dead squirrel is. You choose to believe him for pure ideological reasons, as that's what economists are dealing in: ideology."
"Economics is hogwash" is a "proven correct statement"? Where is your evidence? That's just more unsupported rhetoric.
On the other hand, I did not claim he was a scientist at all. You are the only one who brought that subject up. And while I agree that economics is not a hard science, it is hardly "hogwash".
I believed him because his calculations appeared to be valid. Not because of some "ideology". Note that my comment was only about costs involved, and had nothing to do with whether AGW is a valid theory or not. In fact the calculations were based on the assumption that AGW models are correct. Worst-case, even.
It's something of a relief to know that I am not the only one who recognizes this. I keep pointing it (and other facts) out, only to usually get modded down as "troll" when I do. It seems Slashdot readers, as a whole, are no less biased and media-hypnotized than the general population.
I mean, seriously. The idea of a laser was first postulated hundreds of years ago... that doesn't mean that it had anything at all to do with the quantum theory that first enabled its construction a mere few decades ago.
"Your "basic logic" has missed the part where being unable to formulate a trend for a 10 year period != having no access to the hundreds (ranging to millions, for some measures) of years of data that we have."
My comment had nothing to do with warming per se. We know that is going on, and anybody who denies it is probably foolish.
My comment had to do only with "anthropogenic" warming. Which I could have made more clear. Nevertheless, it was not a "troll" comment... somebody was using "troll" to mean "I disagree" again. Which makes them bad Slashdot citizens.
This is the point: "Anthropogenic Global Warming" has not been a serious or much-studied theory until recently... the last 10 years or so. That means that the "pro" side must also wait for those same 17 years to be sure their data is not "noise".
And I'm not talking about historic data, I'm talking about predictions. According to the AGW proponents themselves, there has not been enough time to confirm their models, and separate the predictions made by those models from "noise". You can't have that both ways. If you are trying to, your logic is fundamentally flawed.
Slashdot Mirror
In response to an accusation that the mentioned statements by Muller's colleague and collaborator, Judith Curry, are "lies" promoted by one biased newspaper, I offer the following:
http://junkscience.com/2011/10/30/curry-damage-control-mullers-oversell-a-mistake-not-a-new-scandal/
http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/280948/Is-global-warming-over-">Curry says no warming "for 13 years".
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100114292/lying-cheating-climate-scientists-caught-lying-cheating-again/
http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2011/10/31/berkeley-temperature-study-update-colleague-says-claim-was-huge-mistake/
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/41840
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=65364f00-802a-23ad-4994-117066e014ea
http://www.eutimes.net/2011/10/climate-change-scientist-accused-of-hiding-truth-by-colleague/
As I mentioned in the beginning, the graphs shown in some of these articles are misleading, because the time scales are completely different:
In addition, if you really need more convincing, you can go to Curry's own blog and read her comment yourself.
Dispute the FACTS, not the sources, or go the hell away. This discussion is about facts.
"OK, you're not crazy. You're just a liar. A terrible liar."
As they say on Wikipedia, "[citation needed]". Do you have some FACTS to back up your claim that this is a lie, or not?
I very strongly suspect not.
"Please point out where in that letter Chris Landsea says that the data used to write the IPCC reports is incorrect, or even that the conclusions of the IPCC reports are wrong."
He doesn't say so, specifically, but he strongly implies that it is. And that he quit because he did not want to be part of the process. From the end of his letter:
"I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth's actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4."
That is not specifically an accusation of incorrect conclusions, but I believe the words "scientifically unsound" are too significant to be ignored. Further, I agree with him that the fact that IPCC allows people associated with it to spread bald-faced lies to the scientific community, and refuses to take action when they are caught, is significant on its own, regardless of the actual contents of the reports.
Further, as mentioned many times in the past, often by the very scientists involved, the "Executive Summary for Policymakers", which is published separately from the main report, often does not accurately reflect the actual science presented in the report. Nevertheless, the Executive Summary, even though published separately, is still part of the official report.
"Furthermore, please point out the peer-reviewed studies that showed that the IPCC reports are incorrect, and where. If you're good, you'll actually come about with about a half dozen studies correcting some details. If not.... well, things about fools and talking come to mind."
I have done so many times here already. If you haven't been around, or haven't been paying attention, well, that's too bad. You can find earlier posts of mine, with links, yourself using Google. I don't feel like spending an hour looking them up again.
You might also consider looking up Landsea's own papers.
"Wow, a genuine denier. And the den..., errm "skeptics" say there are none."
Obviously reading comprehension is not your strong suit. Did I state anywhere that "global warming" was not happening? I did specifically mention a couple of recent years. How does that equate to being a "genuine denier"?
Once and for all: I do not deny the warming trend!!! To say that I do is simply reading more into my statements than I have actually been saying. Those kinds of distortions (which have been happening enough that I have to believe are often deliberate) are little different from lying.
I didn't say "global warming isn't happening", dimbulb. I stated only that the last couple of years don't agree with that trend.
Seriously. When will you people STOP distorting what other people say, then claiming it's false? I could do the same to you, if I wished. It just happens that it's against my principles.
Crazy? Since I am the subject of your link, I would have to take offense at that.
But if you want to talk facts, let's talk facts rather than distort the picture or take comments out of context, shall we? I'd rather be a crazy than some kind of ass who quotes other people out of context.
My comment was about recent years -- the last 2 or 3. I said nothing about whether there was an overall warming trend. So take your distortions and stuff them, okay?
Just in case you would like something other than just my word that it hasn't warmed significantly in the last 2 or 3 years.
Now, call that what you will, but it isn't the rantings of some crazy person.
However -- again for the sake of truth and fairness -- the graphs in that article are misleading. They are the doings of the media, not the scientist being quoted.
If you want to be taken seriously, you need to get your own facts straight, rather than distorting them and quoting out of context. Shame on you.
"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."
Um... no. Come on, you alarmists! For all your talk about "just the facts", you have a surprising tendency to scramble the truth.
What Muller "confirmed" was the veracity of the initial data used by some of the models... NOT "results" of any kind. Muller's paper cannot honestly be called a "verification" of AGW in any way, even by the staunchest AGW defender. That isn't what it is.
Further, mere days after Muller's announcement, the colleague who collaborated with him on the work denounced his claims, saying the report was "a huge mistake with no scientific basis".
Just to set the record straight, that's all. You want facts, let's talk facts.
"I'm going to just rush right over and download a 173 MB zip file from some random Russian server."
What you are missing here is that the person who linked to this file -- and possibly uploaded it in the first place -- going under the pseudonym "Foia", was also largely responsible for the distribution of the first set of "leaked" emails.
IPCC reports are fact-based? Really?
Like the way lots of movie dramas are "based on actual events", probably.
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.
"Sham news reporting like Fox News cherry-picked out-of-context blurbs that made it sound like the scientists couldn't agree on anything."
Um... not really. The sham arguments they did make were not really related to that. Things like "hide the decline", etc., which really, in the long run, don't seem to have a whole lot to do with much that is significant, and similar straw-man arguments. Admitted. But the idea that scientists could not agree on anything did not come from the emails. It came from... actual disagreements.
"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."
Again, no. The emails had very little to do with scientific consensus. The emails in fact were mostly from a small group of scientists, most of whom worked together.
"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."
That they would do a second leak is a sign that somebody who is an insider believes there is something significant being hidden. It is generally agreed that the first "leak" came from someone on the inside, and it is very likely that the second one did too.
"Also I love that Fox sympathizers have to commit a crime (hacking into an institution)" /quote.
See my other comment just above. There is no evidence that this is so. The consensus -- you are big on consensus, right? -- has been that these email "leaks" are not the results of "hacking" at all. Rather, it is someone who is involved with the climate research itself who is doing the leaking.
On the contrary. Both arguments are based on what many people -- laymen and scientists both -- believe to be facts. The question is simply whose facts are correct. One of those facts that is indisputable (as long as one is truthful) is that there is a lot of genuine evidence against AGW.
... that bottled water causes lobbyists.
So be very, very careful what you print on your scuba tanks.
Suffocation is not caused by a lack of inhaled oxygen. The European Food Standards Authority has said so.
The problem with this scheme (which has been brought up every time a similar idea has been floated in the U.S.), is that it punishes the innocent for the deeds of the non-innocent. It would be rather like taxing American citizens in order to prop up banks that fail or have been robbed.
Oh... wait. FDIC. TARP. Right. What could I have been thinking?
"Globalization is now, and the giants of the internet earn lot of money on the French market. Good for them, but they do not pay a penny in tax to France."
And when it comes to "the giants of the Internet", hardly any of them are in France, and France does not pay them for access.
If I were a performer, and France tried to tax my performances, I would make sure my contract said "Not to be shown or sold in France."
"OK, how about this, a verifiable and proven correct statement: economics is hogwash, and BjÃrn Lomborg is as much a scientist as a dead squirrel is. You choose to believe him for pure ideological reasons, as that's what economists are dealing in: ideology."
"Economics is hogwash" is a "proven correct statement"? Where is your evidence? That's just more unsupported rhetoric.
On the other hand, I did not claim he was a scientist at all. You are the only one who brought that subject up. And while I agree that economics is not a hard science, it is hardly "hogwash".
I believed him because his calculations appeared to be valid. Not because of some "ideology". Note that my comment was only about costs involved, and had nothing to do with whether AGW is a valid theory or not. In fact the calculations were based on the assumption that AGW models are correct. Worst-case, even.
It's something of a relief to know that I am not the only one who recognizes this. I keep pointing it (and other facts) out, only to usually get modded down as "troll" when I do. It seems Slashdot readers, as a whole, are no less biased and media-hypnotized than the general population.
And your point is? I am waiting for it.
Perhaps you should cite some valid, supported reason for believing so. Without that, it is your statement that can only be taken for nonsense.
"A good thing Chris Landsea seems to have changed his mind on the topic since then."
[citation needed]
I mean, seriously. The idea of a laser was first postulated hundreds of years ago... that doesn't mean that it had anything at all to do with the quantum theory that first enabled its construction a mere few decades ago.
Yes... well before the "global cooling" scare that took place in the 70s, supported by many scientists.
You cannot validly connect the two. The data today is far different than it was then, as are the theories and the models.
"Your "basic logic" has missed the part where being unable to formulate a trend for a 10 year period != having no access to the hundreds (ranging to millions, for some measures) of years of data that we have."
My comment had nothing to do with warming per se. We know that is going on, and anybody who denies it is probably foolish.
My comment had to do only with "anthropogenic" warming. Which I could have made more clear. Nevertheless, it was not a "troll" comment... somebody was using "troll" to mean "I disagree" again. Which makes them bad Slashdot citizens.
This is the point: "Anthropogenic Global Warming" has not been a serious or much-studied theory until recently... the last 10 years or so. That means that the "pro" side must also wait for those same 17 years to be sure their data is not "noise".
And I'm not talking about historic data, I'm talking about predictions. According to the AGW proponents themselves, there has not been enough time to confirm their models, and separate the predictions made by those models from "noise". You can't have that both ways. If you are trying to, your logic is fundamentally flawed.