They are neither more nor less interested financially or ideologically in the outcome of their studies than any of the institutions or scientists promoting the hypothesis that it's caused by man-made Carbon Dioxide. Why is it that you accept with a kind-of religious faith what one interested group of scientists say, but deny what another group say even though they have essentially the same interest, but in opposition to the hypothesis?
It's called a Hockey Stick because it is created using a method that will generate a hockey-stick shape even if you put trendless, red-noise into it, provided you also adjust the scales on the graph to make the probable 0.25 - 0.5 degree warming of the last century look alarming, as well as hiding declines in other temperature proxies on your graph that don't match your pre-conceived ideas of what the graph should look like.
The stupidity of your position is that you yourself have not studied the data in any detail. All you need to know is that the rate of change has not accelerated and all the evidence shows this is a long-term process that has been going on for centuries. That is, as the Environment Ministry in India has said, "none of our glaciers under monitoring are recording abnormal retreat". Nobody is arguing that some of them aren't retreating (some of them are also growing), but as usual for you alarmists any change that contradicts your hypothesis is "weather", whereas any that supports it is "climate".
What is it with you people? Scientists have said that they have observed a change in the Thermosphere that they can't explain. What is it about the phrase "they can't explain" that leads you to believe it's caused by Carbon Dioxide?
No they are not. GISS has it's own data set. WRF has it's own data set. GEOS has it's own data set. So on and so forth. They may share data sets. They may even reprocess data to conform to the model input requirements, but there is a HUGE amount of data provided by multiple sources.
GISS is for the USA. The rely on CRU data for the rest of the world. Let's be clear here, the CRU data is *the* dataset in use and it's a complete mess.
Peer-reviewed article please. Anyone can criticize but if that critique does not hold under investigation then it is useless.
You're showing your own ignorance here. I can't believe you haven't read the Wegman report. With respect to "peer review", as James Lovelock has stated, "the peer-review process can be exceedingly prejudiced and exert censorship even.". I would agree with this, especially in Climate Science, as you will know if you've read the Wegman report (which you haven't, so you don't know, which is why I'm encouraging you to do so). Wegman is a world expert on Statistics. Mann & Co are not. If your argument is one from authority (which it appears to be, given your perception of the integrity of the peer review process), no doubt you will entirely agree with his findings.
Fortunately, it takes more than an irrational/emotional rant to prove someone of misconduct.
Indeed, as Jones still has his job, it's clear even if you break the law you aren't guilty of any kind of misconduct in the eyes of the Climate Science community.
Ah-ha! Then why would skeptics find anything different in it?
I think because they are mostly making the point that the data does not entail the conclusions. That is to say with the example of the Yamal series (for example), the series as a whole showed a positive temperature trend (not that it's been demonstrated that Trees are temperature proxies in any case, given their sensitivity to a large number of different variables). That series is then combined into other series to create one or more multi-proxy studies from various authors. The original author of the Yamal series either didn't understand his own methods, or deliberately falsified his data, given that when the series was reverse-engineered by McIntyre, he showed that the entire signal came from just a single tree (out of only 12 trees if I remember correctly). Now either Briffa knew this to be the case (how could he not?) and deliberately obfuscated the result, or Briffa is an idiot. You can choose which explanation you prefer.
But anyway, who knows it? If the Climate Science clique don't publish their data and methods in full and the peer review process doesn't do full replication (of course it doesn't!), then who is going to do the important verification/falsification work that is integral to progress in the field? If nobody in the peer review process is going to bother to check the validity of the result, don't you think crowd-sourced verification is a good idea before we go betting a trillion dollars on the result? The conspiracy theorists are out in force because FOI requests were denied or ignored on spurious grounds (illegally in this case), so there must be something to hide, right? Whether there is or isn't, it doesn't look good, does it?
Even if CRU falsified EVERYTHING, there's still thousands upon thousands of research papers out there all showing the same damn thing
They're all using the exact same data. Why would you expect their results to be different from each other? The weight of paper is meaningless.
You're also making a lot of claims in regards to the quality of their research, which really you don't seem to know much about.
You have no idea what I do or do not know about this issue. With respect to their research, I think "quality" is not really the word I would use in the same sentence. You seem to turn a blind eye to the lack of verifiability caused by shoddy data archiving practises. You also turn a blind eye to people like Wegman - experts in statistics - who roundly criticised practices in the field.
You don't get published in research journals by putting a pile a crap together and sending it in. You won't even make it past the initial review.
That rather depends on who is doing the reviewing. As we know from the emails, papers are sent to "sympathetic" reviewers. On the whole I think your faith in the climate scientists is touching, if naive.
In your post above, what's missing is the bit where you explain what was wrong with Steve McIntyre's analysis. Because although you delight in the ad-hominem against him, you will note that his criticisms are hard to dispute, particularly the excellent work he did on Briffa and the Yamal series. Indeed his work on the original hockey stick, showing that it could be produced with "red noise", was a very good example of the sceptical scientist performing verification on data and methods. All scientists should be sceptics; that's how science makes progress. The problem here is that none of the inquires bothered to interview those in a position to "verify" the claims. Indeed, I don't believe any of them even asked McIntyre for a statement, even though he was the subject of a lot of the bile in the emails.
Now seeing the way said asshole has manipulated and incorrectly used data in the past to "prove" his naive and fallacious hypotheses, and his past hostile tendencies towards your research, what do you do about the request?
You obey the law and honour the request. Your ego is not a higher authority on these matters, unless you're as arrogant and self-regarding as the Climate-Gate clique and their supporters. If your data, methods and claims are water-tight, you've got nothing to worry about. If they're cobbled together from poorly documented, poorly maintained, part-deleted data, with dubious analysis, as was the case here, then the claims *you* are making, upon which trillions of dollars depend, should not be taken seriously.
But even so, isn't it rumpsmackingly amazing that the suits aren't capable of anticipating obvious objections from the community about this. I would love to have been a fly on the wall (holding a bullshit bingo card, obviously) in the meeting where it was decided that doing this was a good idea in the first place.
Ah, I was going from EU deficit (not debt) projections, where it projected the UK deficit for 2010 to be greater than that of Greece, given the austerity measures taken in Greece (and the measures due not to be taken by our previous Government). I'm not sure what the situation is now as the EU projection was made in May, before the election. I expect it's lower as the Governments figures for 2009 came in lower and the new government is making savings this year.
Agreed - I found that website linking through from a newspaper article about shutting down government websites, so I've propagated the mistake. But anyway, the statutory levy is a tax (this time on producers) and if I were the government, creating as it does statutory regulations, I would seriously consider reducing as these clowns clearly have too much cash and time on their hands!
Our Government are also cutting back on websites too. They spend £100,000,000 on them, including this little gem. If you want a good example of a culture of profligacy with public money, which has resulted in the largest deficit in the EU (and one of the largest in the world) then I think this is it!
But on the other hand, do you want your 14 year old tantrums to still be available for everyone and anyone to see when you're in your early 30's? Unlike in real-life where relationships change, friends come and go, work-places change and anti-social behaviour may eventually be forgiven or forgotten, or at least may not radiate far and wide in recognition, the internet may cache your ill-advised nonsense for decades and make it available to anyone. We all have moments of idiocy online as we do in real life, but in real-life the effects of that behaviour and memory of it tend to degrade and eventually disappear. You may also change your perspective, attitude or personality (I'm mellowing as I age, for example). Online these things can remain carved into the rock for a very long time indeed.
That's besides the point. Just because you disagree with someone who uses the facts to promote their agenda doesn't mean that the facts are wrong.
It doesn't mean they're right either. A lof of "facts" in this instance *are* wrong, such as (for example) sea level rise. Particularly the ridiculous sight of the Maldeves government having a cabinet meeting under water. This is marketing (for financial gain), not Science. This is just one obvious case; there must be hundreds if not thousands of not so obvious ones.
Nonsense. The religious fundies here are the denialists. At least the AGW crazies are basing their claims on scientific facts, rather than willfully rejecting scientific facts.
Scientific "facts" are not being rejected. The facts of the matter are being disputed. This is a subtle distinction that is often lost on the dogmatist and is entirely in line with the natural scepticism every scientst should have. Since we're now dealing with Post-Modern science, where scientists have a political interest in their work (or their institutions a financial one), I no longer think one can assign the level of trust one could reasonably accept in the past.
I'm not sure what you mean by "AGW movement". Do you mean political pressure groups or scientists? Because skeptical scientists are actively publishing in reputable scientific journal. Their problem is that their research is unable to show that AGW is wrong."
They do not attempt to show that it's wrong, rather they attempt to demonstrate that the data do not entail the conclusions. Given the "climategate" emails, it's easy to see how such papers don't get reviewed sympathetically. Of course none of the "inquiries" bothered to interview any sceptics, so we don't know whether or not their accusations are justified. That they did not is an absolute disgrace and you should feel ashamed to be applauding such a whitewash.
The conclusion would have been the same.
I beg to disagree. It's totally obvious that Michael Mann has been "adjusting" his graphs to make the data fit the conclusions. It's totally obvious that Briffa cherry-picked cores to demonstrate the truth of his hypothesis, etc., etc. Given that no sceptical scientist was interviewed, it is hardly surprising that you take this view.
I'm not uncertain about global warming. I am totally certain about it. I'm very uncertain about the causes of that warming. And so are the scientists. That is why they have to doctor their results and use statistical tricks to prove their thesis.
Sceptics don't have a monopoly on lies and misinformation. In fact a great deal of the lies and misinformation come from the marketing departments of the various institutions and pressure groups pushing the whole AGW scare. In this respect they behave much like the religious institutions of old, willing as they are to excommunicate anyone who doesn't hold to their orthodoxy. The AGW movement is an inquisition and contrary views are not welcome, regardless of the merits of their case. It would have been extremely interesting to have heard or read an inquiry conclusion that was truly independent. Instead we've had a series of whitewashes, where the main protagonists were all interviewed except for those on the sceptic side of the argument. You cannot possibly defend such behaviour and if you do, then I submit that you have no interest in Science, but do have an interest in Politics.
It's interesting that my comment has been marked -1 offtopic. It shows the kind of level this debate has sunk to. It's no longer about Science, it's about a political point of view.
The reason I won't take it as read is because I'm also a sceptic. In fact as Science has expanded into the political arena and institutional funding has become accessible by alarming politicians and the general population, I've become even more sceptical - not just about the subject of the Earth's impending doom, but on any subject you care to mention. With respect to Evolution and smoking causing cancer, there is no need for scepticism, because the theories/hypothesis is rather trivial to demonstrate. With respect to CO2 causing the current tiny increase in global average temperature, this is not the case.
I think your argument here, attempting as it does to tie together people who think the Global Warming scare is 99% bullshit and 1% fact, and those who don't believe in Evolution, is a shining example of an informal fallacy:
If A believes X and B believes both X and Y, it does not follow that A also believes Y. This conclusion must have been lost on all of those who marked you informative.
What has "peer supported" got to do with anything? Is that a guarantee of infallibility? Do you take the weight of paper on any given topic as in some way indicating the truth of the matter? I wonder how much the entire published research on stomach ulcers being caused by diet weighed? I wonder (speculating here) how much the entire peer reviewed research into Dark Energy will weigh when we're finally done with it (if we ever are)?
The interesting thing from my point of view looking at this whole sorry affair, is that none of the "independent reviews" were actually independent. Indeed, none of them even bothered to speak to the people who were the main beneficiaries of the Climate Scientist's bile (such as Steve McIntyre). As I commented earlier on another story, post-modern science is an exercise in politics and marketing. The major journals are not exempt from "peer pressure" either, are they?
I'm wondering who among us is actually in denial here.
Slashdot Mirror
They are neither more nor less interested financially or ideologically in the outcome of their studies than any of the institutions or scientists promoting the hypothesis that it's caused by man-made Carbon Dioxide. Why is it that you accept with a kind-of religious faith what one interested group of scientists say, but deny what another group say even though they have essentially the same interest, but in opposition to the hypothesis?
It's called a Hockey Stick because it is created using a method that will generate a hockey-stick shape even if you put trendless, red-noise into it, provided you also adjust the scales on the graph to make the probable 0.25 - 0.5 degree warming of the last century look alarming, as well as hiding declines in other temperature proxies on your graph that don't match your pre-conceived ideas of what the graph should look like.
The stupidity of your position is that you yourself have not studied the data in any detail. All you need to know is that the rate of change has not accelerated and all the evidence shows this is a long-term process that has been going on for centuries. That is, as the Environment Ministry in India has said, "none of our glaciers under monitoring are recording abnormal retreat". Nobody is arguing that some of them aren't retreating (some of them are also growing), but as usual for you alarmists any change that contradicts your hypothesis is "weather", whereas any that supports it is "climate".
What is it with you people? Scientists have said that they have observed a change in the Thermosphere that they can't explain . What is it about the phrase "they can't explain" that leads you to believe it's caused by Carbon Dioxide?
Indeed and it's ironic, is it not, that the most sanctimonious individuals tend to be the wealthy (and guilty), such as Al Gore and Zak Goldsmith.
GISS is for the USA. The rely on CRU data for the rest of the world. Let's be clear here, the CRU data is *the* dataset in use and it's a complete mess.
You're showing your own ignorance here. I can't believe you haven't read the Wegman report. With respect to "peer review", as James Lovelock has stated, "the peer-review process can be exceedingly prejudiced and exert censorship even.". I would agree with this, especially in Climate Science, as you will know if you've read the Wegman report (which you haven't, so you don't know, which is why I'm encouraging you to do so). Wegman is a world expert on Statistics. Mann & Co are not. If your argument is one from authority (which it appears to be, given your perception of the integrity of the peer review process), no doubt you will entirely agree with his findings.
Indeed, as Jones still has his job, it's clear even if you break the law you aren't guilty of any kind of misconduct in the eyes of the Climate Science community.
I think because they are mostly making the point that the data does not entail the conclusions. That is to say with the example of the Yamal series (for example), the series as a whole showed a positive temperature trend (not that it's been demonstrated that Trees are temperature proxies in any case, given their sensitivity to a large number of different variables). That series is then combined into other series to create one or more multi-proxy studies from various authors. The original author of the Yamal series either didn't understand his own methods, or deliberately falsified his data, given that when the series was reverse-engineered by McIntyre, he showed that the entire signal came from just a single tree (out of only 12 trees if I remember correctly). Now either Briffa knew this to be the case (how could he not?) and deliberately obfuscated the result, or Briffa is an idiot. You can choose which explanation you prefer.
But anyway, who knows it? If the Climate Science clique don't publish their data and methods in full and the peer review process doesn't do full replication (of course it doesn't!), then who is going to do the important verification/falsification work that is integral to progress in the field? If nobody in the peer review process is going to bother to check the validity of the result, don't you think crowd-sourced verification is a good idea before we go betting a trillion dollars on the result? The conspiracy theorists are out in force because FOI requests were denied or ignored on spurious grounds (illegally in this case), so there must be something to hide, right? Whether there is or isn't, it doesn't look good, does it?
They're all using the exact same data. Why would you expect their results to be different from each other? The weight of paper is meaningless.
You have no idea what I do or do not know about this issue. With respect to their research, I think "quality" is not really the word I would use in the same sentence. You seem to turn a blind eye to the lack of verifiability caused by shoddy data archiving practises. You also turn a blind eye to people like Wegman - experts in statistics - who roundly criticised practices in the field.
That rather depends on who is doing the reviewing. As we know from the emails, papers are sent to "sympathetic" reviewers. On the whole I think your faith in the climate scientists is touching, if naive.
You obey the law and honour the request. Your ego is not a higher authority on these matters, unless you're as arrogant and self-regarding as the Climate-Gate clique and their supporters. If your data, methods and claims are water-tight, you've got nothing to worry about. If they're cobbled together from poorly documented, poorly maintained, part-deleted data, with dubious analysis, as was the case here, then the claims *you* are making, upon which trillions of dollars depend, should not be taken seriously.
Au contraire, mon frère!
But even so, isn't it rumpsmackingly amazing that the suits aren't capable of anticipating obvious objections from the community about this. I would love to have been a fly on the wall (holding a bullshit bingo card, obviously) in the meeting where it was decided that doing this was a good idea in the first place.
Ah, I was going from EU deficit (not debt) projections, where it projected the UK deficit for 2010 to be greater than that of Greece, given the austerity measures taken in Greece (and the measures due not to be taken by our previous Government). I'm not sure what the situation is now as the EU projection was made in May, before the election. I expect it's lower as the Governments figures for 2009 came in lower and the new government is making savings this year.
Agreed - I found that website linking through from a newspaper article about shutting down government websites, so I've propagated the mistake. But anyway, the statutory levy is a tax (this time on producers) and if I were the government, creating as it does statutory regulations, I would seriously consider reducing as these clowns clearly have too much cash and time on their hands!
Our Government are also cutting back on websites too. They spend £100,000,000 on them, including this little gem . If you want a good example of a culture of profligacy with public money, which has resulted in the largest deficit in the EU (and one of the largest in the world) then I think this is it!
But on the other hand, do you want your 14 year old tantrums to still be available for everyone and anyone to see when you're in your early 30's? Unlike in real-life where relationships change, friends come and go, work-places change and anti-social behaviour may eventually be forgiven or forgotten, or at least may not radiate far and wide in recognition, the internet may cache your ill-advised nonsense for decades and make it available to anyone. We all have moments of idiocy online as we do in real life, but in real-life the effects of that behaviour and memory of it tend to degrade and eventually disappear. You may also change your perspective, attitude or personality (I'm mellowing as I age, for example). Online these things can remain carved into the rock for a very long time indeed.
Yes! This is the point. Anonymity is pretty much the foundation stone of identity security. I know it sounds kind-of obvious, but there it is.
It doesn't mean they're right either. A lof of "facts" in this instance *are* wrong, such as (for example) sea level rise. Particularly the ridiculous sight of the Maldeves government having a cabinet meeting under water. This is marketing (for financial gain), not Science. This is just one obvious case; there must be hundreds if not thousands of not so obvious ones.
Scientific "facts" are not being rejected. The facts of the matter are being disputed. This is a subtle distinction that is often lost on the dogmatist and is entirely in line with the natural scepticism every scientst should have. Since we're now dealing with Post-Modern science, where scientists have a political interest in their work (or their institutions a financial one), I no longer think one can assign the level of trust one could reasonably accept in the past.
They do not attempt to show that it's wrong, rather they attempt to demonstrate that the data do not entail the conclusions. Given the "climategate" emails, it's easy to see how such papers don't get reviewed sympathetically. Of course none of the "inquiries" bothered to interview any sceptics, so we don't know whether or not their accusations are justified. That they did not is an absolute disgrace and you should feel ashamed to be applauding such a whitewash.
I beg to disagree. It's totally obvious that Michael Mann has been "adjusting" his graphs to make the data fit the conclusions. It's totally obvious that Briffa cherry-picked cores to demonstrate the truth of his hypothesis, etc., etc. Given that no sceptical scientist was interviewed, it is hardly surprising that you take this view.
Why don't people ever think of the bacteria? They're having a whale of a time (excuse the pun) down there right now.
I'm not uncertain about global warming. I am totally certain about it. I'm very uncertain about the causes of that warming. And so are the scientists. That is why they have to doctor their results and use statistical tricks to prove their thesis.
Sceptics don't have a monopoly on lies and misinformation. In fact a great deal of the lies and misinformation come from the marketing departments of the various institutions and pressure groups pushing the whole AGW scare. In this respect they behave much like the religious institutions of old, willing as they are to excommunicate anyone who doesn't hold to their orthodoxy. The AGW movement is an inquisition and contrary views are not welcome, regardless of the merits of their case. It would have been extremely interesting to have heard or read an inquiry conclusion that was truly independent. Instead we've had a series of whitewashes, where the main protagonists were all interviewed except for those on the sceptic side of the argument. You cannot possibly defend such behaviour and if you do, then I submit that you have no interest in Science, but do have an interest in Politics.
It's interesting that my comment has been marked -1 offtopic. It shows the kind of level this debate has sunk to. It's no longer about Science, it's about a political point of view.
The reason I won't take it as read is because I'm also a sceptic. In fact as Science has expanded into the political arena and institutional funding has become accessible by alarming politicians and the general population, I've become even more sceptical - not just about the subject of the Earth's impending doom, but on any subject you care to mention. With respect to Evolution and smoking causing cancer, there is no need for scepticism, because the theories/hypothesis is rather trivial to demonstrate. With respect to CO2 causing the current tiny increase in global average temperature, this is not the case.
I think your argument here, attempting as it does to tie together people who think the Global Warming scare is 99% bullshit and 1% fact, and those who don't believe in Evolution, is a shining example of an informal fallacy:
If A believes X and B believes both X and Y, it does not follow that A also believes Y. This conclusion must have been lost on all of those who marked you informative.
What has "peer supported" got to do with anything? Is that a guarantee of infallibility? Do you take the weight of paper on any given topic as in some way indicating the truth of the matter? I wonder how much the entire published research on stomach ulcers being caused by diet weighed? I wonder (speculating here) how much the entire peer reviewed research into Dark Energy will weigh when we're finally done with it (if we ever are)?
The interesting thing from my point of view looking at this whole sorry affair, is that none of the "independent reviews" were actually independent. Indeed, none of them even bothered to speak to the people who were the main beneficiaries of the Climate Scientist's bile (such as Steve McIntyre). As I commented earlier on another story, post-modern science is an exercise in politics and marketing. The major journals are not exempt from "peer pressure" either, are they?
I'm wondering who among us is actually in denial here.