I haven't looked at the details sufficiently to make my own judgement on that issue. But the point is that all that stuff was out before in the published literature, so it's irrelevant to the question over the leaked emails, which add nothing new to this area.
Rubbish, the scientists aren't "pushing for" anything, they're just presenting results. These results may of course suggest the need for action, but that's in the realm of politics. And if you actually look at the full range of published literature, not a few cherry picked background-free private communications, you might see the evidence and methodology described in a way that's fully "scrutinizable". And indeed has been scrutinized, by other experts in the field - that's rather the point of publishing.
If you get some new data that disagrees with a model that's been built up over years and based on vast quantities of other data, which would you first believe might be suspect:
a) the large quantities of well tested, understood and mutually agreeing data b) the new data point consisting a small amount of data which hasn't been scrutinized very closely yet.
If they were to *dismiss* the disagreeing data that would be a problem, but they haven't done that, just tried to understand it.
The points I saw in the emails were:
1) complaints about poor quality papers being published in a particular journal, and the suggestion that the journal has been hijacked to push an agenda rather than publish quality science. Therefore, they shouldn't publish there any more or cite articles from it. This was then spun as an attempt to suppress dissenting views.
2) descriptions of analysis and data presentation methods that some bloggers immediately quoted, including slang phrases such as "Mike's Nature trick", as evidence of deception, when it's no such thing.
3) An amusing but incomplete description of the difficulties involved in combining data sets to produce a valid final result.
4) one item that's possibly of legal if not scientific concern - the request to delete data relating to AR4.
One dodgy item - and one that doesn't affect the science.
True, and this is of course a fine example of the Appeal to Consequences fallacy. I like it when that one crops up as I can instantly reject any arguments they make as being most likely poorly thought out.
The short version of everything that's come out so far is: the leading climate scientists pushing AGW were lying left, right, and center, and there is absolutely no evidence, not even a little, to support global warming, let alone AGW. If you haven't done so already,
I've seen it, it shows nothing of the sort. It shows people having considerable difficulty in combining data sets in a consistent and reliable way. This is always a tricky problem. Your "data manipulation" could easily be correction factors for systematic errors or problems with particular data sets. But of course a private note that was never meant to be read is hardly going to be a complete, detailed and fully explained document, is it?
I can only assume that people are reading into it what they want to see.
If you dilute the radiation enough, the problem will go away. So stop saying that the total amount of radiation released from a coal power plant makes it more dangerous than waste from a nuclear plant.
Actually, the standard radiation protection models do *not* assume that radiation is only dangerous beyond a threshold, which is why accidents like Chernobyl have very large numbers of fatal cancers predicted (~10000). Most of these will be in people only exposed to small doses, but the exposed population is huge. Nobody offsite from Chernobyl suffered from acute radiation effects, IIRC, just delayed effects such as cancers (particularly thyroid).
Cars need maintenance because parts wear out or have limited lifespans. Software isn't like this, it doesn't degrade over time. Security or bug-fixing patches to software are equivalent to manufacturers' recalls to repair design flaws. If you had to take your car back every month for the latest set of fixes, I think you'd have reason to be annoyed.
Of course, this sloppiness may be justified in that it allows software to be released much more quickly and cheaply, and after all it *can* be patched later much more easily than a car and nobody's going to die if it goes wrong.
What do you make of that? I just see a load of data for two different analysis techniques. Since no background information is provided as to each technique, I can't very well judge which is valid. Clearly one of them can't be, as they disagree.
A clue might be in the statement "we usually stop the series in 1960 because of the recent non-temperature signal that is superimposed on the tree-ring data that we use.". I don't know what that is, but if there's something that makes the post-1960 data invalid than there's an obvious reason why they didn't use it.
Again, much more background is needed to judge. Science isn't as straightforward as people seem to think - understanding the subtleties of data is much harder and requires a much deeper background knowledge than most "sceptics" (and indeed engineers and computing people on Slashdot) appreciate.
There're a lot of people who stand to lose a lot of money if climate change is proved to have non-anthropogenic origins.
And a hell of a lot more people who would gain a lot of money. How big is the fossil fuel industry in comparison to anyone who might benefit from anthropogenic climate exchange?
I very much doubt that a climate scientist would blame an individual flood on climate change. Maybe, at most, he'd say that climate change may make such things more common. Got a source for that?
Not necessarily. When I was suffering from depression I was sometimes able to go out and minimally participate in social situations, though I was rather distant and unresponsive to say the least. But anything requiring mental focus was hopeless - even things as minimal as arranging doctor's appointments took a lot longer than normal, and any attempts to read and take in a document failed miserably.
They may be responsible for most of the increase, but their per-capita emissions are still well below those of the west - half of Europe's and a quarter of the USA's.
As others have pointed out, the emissions equipment on cars isn't for reducing CO2, and probably increases it slightly due to loss of efficiency.
Not that suspicious in itself - I've often used the word "trick" to refer to a clever shortcut with no deception whatsoever. A quick search of my email shows several uses of it in this way.
I don't know enough about this to say whether there's anything dubious or not, but that quote by itself doesn't say much.
Isotopic composition is a good test. For fossil carbon, all of the C-14 will have decayed, so if the fraction of C-14 has gone down over time then that's a good indicator that the increase is from a fossil fource.
Hah, yes. Cynicism is the witless man's version of wisdom. Going against the accepted view gives you anti-authority points and gains your views respect that they don't deserve, at least among a certain, immature audience. If you can play to the desires and prejudices of your audience then you've really hit the jackpot.
Yes, I just noticed that on the news and came to correct my previous post... wonderful timing, eh?
I still say they're pretty rare and fairly mild in comparison to the mass destruction of earthquakes, tornadoes etc. in areas of the USA. Little loss of life.
Pretty much none of those ever happen in the North West of England where I live. Floods are the closest, but I've never known a particularly bad one here and the most vulnerable areas can be avoided. In most places in the country, all of those would be considered rare events.
That means the the government, in principle, owns 100% of your productive efforts, and allows you to keep a certain amount of it.
Clearly a 100% tax is not practical, or nobody would work. If we're going to define slavery as having a very limited freedom of choice due to any circumstances (rather than explicit legal ownership of people) then someone living in poverty could also be said to be a slave.
Now I submit that no human being can actually own another human being, as a law of nature.
History suggests you are mistaken here. There's no law of nature stopping ownership and subsequent abuse of rights of individuals, as has been demonstrated by ample historical precedent.
No one can read or alter our thoughts and no one can make decisions for us.
I would dispute this, propaganda can be very effective.
A slave, as much a victim as he/she is, still chooses life as a slave over death, fighting, attempting escape or enduring punishment etc.
Not really a meaningful choice, is it? Someone paying 99% tax can make the best of it, but I don't see you accepting that on that basis.
"Profit" in a business is a result of income exceeding expenditure. If the income is the fair result of supplying a product, then it must logically follow that the business is paying out less to the people that create the product than the product is worth - therefore taking a slice of fair earnings, just like the government do. Now I don't mind this because the business provides a framework which allows me to make and use money, but then so does the government (e.g. by enforcing contract law). But profit is intrinsically unearned income for someone. The fact that it's a useful thing in practice doesn't change that. Marx was right on this, at least, though the exploitative nature was more obvious in his time than it is today. It appears to be a necessary evil for a practical economic system. Rather like taxes, in fact.
Every time a programmer gets paid for writing code he is "taking a slice" of the productive efforts of his college professors who taught him how to program
Not really, the professor has to do no extra work for the programmer to write code.
It is a mutually beneficial and voluntary business transaction.
Well, technically yes. But one party may benefit much more than the other, and "voluntary" may not be so in practice. It's mutually beneficial for me to hand over my money to a mugger with a gun - he gains the money (net gain for him) and I lose money but get to stay alive (net gain for me). Exploitative business relationships are usually not quite so blatant, but the principle is the same.
You touch on perhaps the most relevant overall point - wealth depends mostly on trade and division of labour, not individual effort. So the vast wealth of modern society is a collective effort, and having collective control over at least a part of it (via democratic government) is not unjust. Certainly more fair than a tiny fraction of the population controlling the majority of the wealth, and, consequently in a capitalist world, the people.
In modern Western societies, that's not true, even the poorest aren't allowed to just die.
It isn't slavery because you are not considered property and there is no legal requirement to obey a master or suffer punishment or death. I would have thought that was obvious. The comparison to slavery is a cheap emotional point that anyone with an understanding of real slavery would never make.
Say I work for someone. He gains more by employing me than he pays me, otherwise he wouldn't find it profitable to do so. Therefore, he's taking a slice of my efforts. By the same argument, surely that is slavery?
Slavery is being forced to work. Nobody is forced to work - just that if you do, part of the condition is that you have to pay a tax, and can't claim any arbitrary amount of money that I like as a salary.
Does that cost represent the first power-generating plant or the expected cost if a lot are built? If the latter, I'd be surprised. The most recent assessment I know of is the European Power Plant Conceptual Study, which suggests costs in the range of 1-2 times current generation (e.g. coal or fission) depending on level of maturity. Not compelling, but not hopeless either.
It's funded by the licence fee, yes. But the government has no control over the BBC's content - it operates independently, and there is a separate BBC trust to oversee it, again independent from government. Its charter requires that it be independent from both private and government influence.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't looked at the details sufficiently to make my own judgement on that issue. But the point is that all that stuff was out before in the published literature, so it's irrelevant to the question over the leaked emails, which add nothing new to this area.
Ah, fair point. My background is science, not law. But I've seen people successfully sued for libel for far milder statements than that.
Rubbish, the scientists aren't "pushing for" anything, they're just presenting results. These results may of course suggest the need for action, but that's in the realm of politics. And if you actually look at the full range of published literature, not a few cherry picked background-free private communications, you might see the evidence and methodology described in a way that's fully "scrutinizable". And indeed has been scrutinized, by other experts in the field - that's rather the point of publishing.
If you get some new data that disagrees with a model that's been built up over years and based on vast quantities of other data, which would you first believe might be suspect:
a) the large quantities of well tested, understood and mutually agreeing data
b) the new data point consisting a small amount of data which hasn't been scrutinized very closely yet.
If they were to *dismiss* the disagreeing data that would be a problem, but they haven't done that, just tried to understand it.
The points I saw in the emails were:
1) complaints about poor quality papers being published in a particular journal, and the suggestion that the journal has been hijacked to push an agenda rather than publish quality science. Therefore, they shouldn't publish there any more or cite articles from it. This was then spun as an attempt to suppress dissenting views.
2) descriptions of analysis and data presentation methods that some bloggers immediately quoted, including slang phrases such as "Mike's Nature trick", as evidence of deception, when it's no such thing.
3) An amusing but incomplete description of the difficulties involved in combining data sets to produce a valid final result.
4) one item that's possibly of legal if not scientific concern - the request to delete data relating to AR4.
One dodgy item - and one that doesn't affect the science.
True, and this is of course a fine example of the Appeal to Consequences fallacy. I like it when that one crops up as I can instantly reject any arguments they make as being most likely poorly thought out.
What a load of slanderous bollocks. I hope for your sake the people involved aren't of a litigious bent.
The short version of everything that's come out so far is: the leading climate scientists pushing AGW were lying left, right, and center, and there is absolutely no evidence, not even a little, to support global warming, let alone AGW. If you haven't done so already,
I've seen it, it shows nothing of the sort. It shows people having considerable difficulty in combining data sets in a consistent and reliable way. This is always a tricky problem. Your "data manipulation" could easily be correction factors for systematic errors or problems with particular data sets. But of course a private note that was never meant to be read is hardly going to be a complete, detailed and fully explained document, is it?
I can only assume that people are reading into it what they want to see.
If you dilute the radiation enough, the problem will go away. So stop saying that the total amount of radiation released from a coal power plant makes it more dangerous than waste from a nuclear plant.
Actually, the standard radiation protection models do *not* assume that radiation is only dangerous beyond a threshold, which is why accidents like Chernobyl have very large numbers of fatal cancers predicted (~10000). Most of these will be in people only exposed to small doses, but the exposed population is huge. Nobody offsite from Chernobyl suffered from acute radiation effects, IIRC, just delayed effects such as cancers (particularly thyroid).
People have been saying this since FORTRAN meant you didn't need to know assembly language to make use of a computer.
Huh, the first thing I thought of was this.
Is a character in some comic really a more obvious reference for "magneto" than the actual device? That's slightly disheartening.
Cars need maintenance because parts wear out or have limited lifespans. Software isn't like this, it doesn't degrade over time. Security or bug-fixing patches to software are equivalent to manufacturers' recalls to repair design flaws. If you had to take your car back every month for the latest set of fixes, I think you'd have reason to be annoyed.
Of course, this sloppiness may be justified in that it allows software to be released much more quickly and cheaply, and after all it *can* be patched later much more easily than a car and nobody's going to die if it goes wrong.
Software doesn't wear out.
What do you make of that? I just see a load of data for two different analysis techniques. Since no background information is provided as to each technique, I can't very well judge which is valid. Clearly one of them can't be, as they disagree.
A clue might be in the statement "we usually stop the series in 1960 because of the recent non-temperature signal that is superimposed on the tree-ring data that we use.". I don't know what that is, but if there's something that makes the post-1960 data invalid than there's an obvious reason why they didn't use it.
Again, much more background is needed to judge. Science isn't as straightforward as people seem to think - understanding the subtleties of data is much harder and requires a much deeper background knowledge than most "sceptics" (and indeed engineers and computing people on Slashdot) appreciate.
There're a lot of people who stand to lose a lot of money if climate change is proved to have non-anthropogenic origins.
And a hell of a lot more people who would gain a lot of money. How big is the fossil fuel industry in comparison to anyone who might benefit from anthropogenic climate exchange?
I very much doubt that a climate scientist would blame an individual flood on climate change. Maybe, at most, he'd say that climate change may make such things more common. Got a source for that?
Not necessarily. When I was suffering from depression I was sometimes able to go out and minimally participate in social situations, though I was rather distant and unresponsive to say the least. But anything requiring mental focus was hopeless - even things as minimal as arranging doctor's appointments took a lot longer than normal, and any attempts to read and take in a document failed miserably.
They may be responsible for most of the increase, but their per-capita emissions are still well below those of the west - half of Europe's and a quarter of the USA's.
As others have pointed out, the emissions equipment on cars isn't for reducing CO2, and probably increases it slightly due to loss of efficiency.
Not that suspicious in itself - I've often used the word "trick" to refer to a clever shortcut with no deception whatsoever. A quick search of my email shows several uses of it in this way.
I don't know enough about this to say whether there's anything dubious or not, but that quote by itself doesn't say much.
Isotopic composition is a good test. For fossil carbon, all of the C-14 will have decayed, so if the fraction of C-14 has gone down over time then that's a good indicator that the increase is from a fossil fource.
Hah, yes. Cynicism is the witless man's version of wisdom. Going against the accepted view gives you anti-authority points and gains your views respect that they don't deserve, at least among a certain, immature audience. If you can play to the desires and prejudices of your audience then you've really hit the jackpot.
Yes, I just noticed that on the news and came to correct my previous post... wonderful timing, eh?
I still say they're pretty rare and fairly mild in comparison to the mass destruction of earthquakes, tornadoes etc. in areas of the USA. Little loss of life.
Pretty much none of those ever happen in the North West of England where I live. Floods are the closest, but I've never known a particularly bad one here and the most vulnerable areas can be avoided. In most places in the country, all of those would be considered rare events.
That means the the government, in principle, owns 100% of your productive efforts, and allows you to keep a certain amount of it.
Clearly a 100% tax is not practical, or nobody would work. If we're going to define slavery as having a very limited freedom of choice due to any circumstances (rather than explicit legal ownership of people) then someone living in poverty could also be said to be a slave.
Now I submit that no human being can actually own another human being, as a law of nature.
History suggests you are mistaken here. There's no law of nature stopping ownership and subsequent abuse of rights of individuals, as has been demonstrated by ample historical precedent.
No one can read or alter our thoughts and no one can make decisions for us.
I would dispute this, propaganda can be very effective.
A slave, as much a victim as he/she is, still chooses life as a slave over death, fighting, attempting escape or enduring punishment etc.
Not really a meaningful choice, is it? Someone paying 99% tax can make the best of it, but I don't see you accepting that on that basis.
"Profit" in a business is a result of income exceeding expenditure. If the income is the fair result of supplying a product, then it must logically follow that the business is paying out less to the people that create the product than the product is worth - therefore taking a slice of fair earnings, just like the government do. Now I don't mind this because the business provides a framework which allows me to make and use money, but then so does the government (e.g. by enforcing contract law). But profit is intrinsically unearned income for someone. The fact that it's a useful thing in practice doesn't change that. Marx was right on this, at least, though the exploitative nature was more obvious in his time than it is today. It appears to be a necessary evil for a practical economic system. Rather like taxes, in fact.
Every time a programmer gets paid for writing code he is "taking a slice" of the productive efforts of his college professors who taught him how to program
Not really, the professor has to do no extra work for the programmer to write code.
It is a mutually beneficial and voluntary business transaction.
Well, technically yes. But one party may benefit much more than the other, and "voluntary" may not be so in practice. It's mutually beneficial for me to hand over my money to a mugger with a gun - he gains the money (net gain for him) and I lose money but get to stay alive (net gain for me). Exploitative business relationships are usually not quite so blatant, but the principle is the same.
You touch on perhaps the most relevant overall point - wealth depends mostly on trade and division of labour, not individual effort. So the vast wealth of modern society is a collective effort, and having collective control over at least a part of it (via democratic government) is not unjust. Certainly more fair than a tiny fraction of the population controlling the majority of the wealth, and, consequently in a capitalist world, the people.
In modern Western societies, that's not true, even the poorest aren't allowed to just die.
It isn't slavery because you are not considered property and there is no legal requirement to obey a master or suffer punishment or death. I would have thought that was obvious. The comparison to slavery is a cheap emotional point that anyone with an understanding of real slavery would never make.
Say I work for someone. He gains more by employing me than he pays me, otherwise he wouldn't find it profitable to do so. Therefore, he's taking a slice of my efforts. By the same argument, surely that is slavery?
Slavery is being forced to work. Nobody is forced to work - just that if you do, part of the condition is that you have to pay a tax, and can't claim any arbitrary amount of money that I like as a salary.
Does that cost represent the first power-generating plant or the expected cost if a lot are built? If the latter, I'd be surprised. The most recent assessment I know of is the European Power Plant Conceptual Study, which suggests costs in the range of 1-2 times current generation (e.g. coal or fission) depending on level of maturity. Not compelling, but not hopeless either.
It's funded by the licence fee, yes. But the government has no control over the BBC's content - it operates independently, and there is a separate BBC trust to oversee it, again independent from government. Its charter requires that it be independent from both private and government influence.