"His bias is irrelevant given that it's the only study out there."
Sorry but blatant bias is not irrelevant and again I ask you what makes you think the required statistical analysis has not been done (ie removal of outliers, etc), are these not "other studies"? Again I ask you are you aware that there is more than one data set and that those data sets can be used to cross check the surface thermometer record, are those other data sets not "other studies"?
Can you point to a peer-reviewed study by watts that supports his claims?
Why when you admit to no scientific training are you so eager to believe him that you ignore his contradictory and biased claims?
"I was drawing a conclusion based on what you have written"
LMFAO, you're a self-righteous hypocrite who posts ad-homs complaining about someone else's ad-homs that were directed at a bunch of slimeball lobbyists.
If the slimeball lobbyists were called greenpeace and they were corruptly peddling their bullshit about chlorine in the water via an EPA staff member I'm sure you would be the first to praise my posts.
I looked at your link, at the top under the title "what the science says" the following statement appears:
"While 1998 was an unusually hot year due to El Nino, the long term trend since 1998 is still that of warming."
It then continues to back up that statement with graphs and a summaray of the standard statistical analysis. It concludes with the the statement:
"All 3 data sets demonstrate that the anomalously hot 1998 was due to the strong El Niño of 1997/98. When ENSO-adjusted, 1998 looks much less remarkable than it does in the original data. In all 3 ENSO-adjusted data-sets, 2006 is the hottest year on record and the trend from 1998 to 2007 is that of warming."
Thank you for adding weight to my statement, even if that is not what you intended.
"I didn't see anything in the RC link that clarified that?"
The realclimate link points to a report which is basically an iterim IPCC report from March 2009. It indicates observations are tracking at the high end of the 2007 IPCC forecasts. If you find the water vapour study please post it but also recognise that water vapour is a prediction of the models that depends on temprature and air pressure alone, it is not an input.
"I just honestly don't see how anybody could read the email exchange linked to in the summary and NOT be disgusted"
I am disgusted, the CEI's deliberate misinformation and machevelian politics is inexcusable, thus the ad-homs.
"I am not a scientist, but it seems to me that if the AGW crowd were so diligent, wouldn't they have performed this survey already?
No disrespect since you are honest enough to imply you don't know, but what makes you think the "AGW crowd" haven't done the required statistical analysis? Who do you think discovered the heat island effect in the first place? Do you realise there are other data sets that these records can be compared to?
Watts coincidently sells "custom weather stations". He has been a speaker for the Heartland Institute (the rotten core of anti-science lobbyists). He claims the globe is cooling, however if as he claims the record is not good enough to support mainstream science why is it suddenly good enough to support his crackpot theories?
It's late here and I can't be bothered looking this guy up yet again and I don't have any sources at hand, forgive my impatience but try googling for articles that debunk Watts, check out sourcewatch.org, check his WP entry or post your question on realclimate.org, look up the term "heat island effect" and find out where it came from and how it is handled statistically.
Don't take my word over Watts or anyone else, just apply some basic research and healthy skepticisim to the claims and affliations of the claimant, I'm sure you can answer your own questions since you are starting from the self-skeptical position of "I don't know".
"Try Webster's or the Oxford dictionaries. Look up "scientific method", and "science". You'll find nothing in there about "ordinary view" or "consensus"
A dictonary is not a particularly illuminating source for understanding scientific philosophy. Try researching the term Republic of science, it's an older alternate term for "consensus" and is indeed central part of the philosophy of science, it's what gives rise to the term "scientists say" as in "scientists say the earth orbits the sun". A strong scientific consensus is derived from...
1. Overwhelming evidence via multiple independent lines of enquiry.
2. A high degree of predictive and/or explanatory power.
3. A lack of conta-evidence and a lack of equally valid alternative explainations.
Of course it's every scientists duty (and wet dream) to find a logical or evidentry crack in a strong consensus but it's also every scientists duty to accept a consensus he cannot convincingly refute. The strong scientific consensus on GW is that mankinds emmisions are causing the bulk of the observed warming and it will servely retard our civilisation unless we act to reduce those emmissions by ~70-80% over the next four or five decades. The good news is it's "doable" if people can overcome their political predjudices toward the messengers.
"The earth is warming. Evolution is at work. Adapt, or die. And, in the end, no one will give a shit which you do. Except maybe your grandchildren, however many generations removed."
These sort of statements always confuse me as to what they mean by "adapt". Please explain to me why reducing emmissions through a free market cap and trade scheme that strives to make renewables economically viable is not seen as an adaptation? And yes this has little effect on me as I will probably be dead come 2050. However I already have grandchildren that "scientists say" AGW will affect if I make decisions based solely on a few pennies pressing on my hip pocket nerve. If my grandparents generation had thought that way in the 50's we would all be chocking to death under a layer of soot.
"but not related to anything he actually said or wrote."
Fair point and thanks for actually taking the time to look. However may I direct you to my other reply to the OP, I think that one and your reply to me are a case of "ships in the night". I made the second post specifically because I realised I had not critisised the actual report.
As for your own reply to the OP where you state that the slashdot crowd are not qualified I beg to differ, IANAC but I have an old fashioned science degree and have followed the science with interest for nearly three decades, there is also more than one self-confessed climate scientist that posts on slashdot, plus there are umpteen physicists and chemists lurking around this site. This particular story has been heavily moderated and spamed by what I call Astroturfing Cowards but now it's working it's way down the front page and they have used up their mod points the (certainly questionable) wisdom of the slashdot crowd can be seen at +4 and above.
"You even admitted you never RTFA."
Yes, that was my first post and it was a minor point about Gore's credentials, since then I've posted at least a dozen comments in this thread, most are based on my prior knowledge of CEI's political shenanigans which I back up with credible references.
"I say they should ferry some sand up to the ISS and see what happens in null gravity."
How would it move at all without gravity?
Not picking on you personally but what's with all the alternative (and redundant) guesswork in this thread? These guys have performed detailed experiments, have offered a convincing explaination, and have been published in Nature for god's sake.
Gravity is so weak that it is all but irrelevant at small scales. They have an interesting peer-reviewed publication in Nature, why do you doubt their explaination?
"I have yet to see *one* criticism of something in the Carlin paper [snip] if you actually looked at the linked comments paper, it attempts to raise questions. Points to new studies, revised data, etc."
Can you point to *one* paragraph, "new study" or "data revision" in the report that you think is worthwhile debating? - All I can see are the same old arguments and misinformation put out out by the anti-science lobbyists at CEI and other FF think tanks that have been debunked a million times over. Here are a few specific critisisims...
1. He claims that tempratures have been trending downwards for the past 11yrs - this can be debunked by a simple google search and is laughable to anyone who has looked at the temprate records.
2. He blathers on about sunspots and cosmic rays - a theory born from a book by a self-agrandising author and completely unsupported in the litrature, debunked in detail by yours trully here.
3. He complains the last IPCC report is 3 years old and thus out of date. - Fucking nonsense.
4. He claims that the 1998 temprature spike cannot be explained - maybe it's a mystery to him but yet another simple google search shows it's well known that the 1998 spike was due to El Nino.
I stopped there because my head was about to explode. Suffice to say that after skimming what I was sure would be 98 pages of anti-science drivel I no longer think he should be sacked, I think he should be prosecuted for collusion and conspiricy.
"all the more reason to not rush through it to satisfy political whims of the day!"
I'm sorry to say, and mean no disrespect, this is exacly what the psuedo-skeptical slimeballs at CEI want you to think. They lost the technical debate over a decade ago and have been promoting "debate" as a delay tactic ever since. These are the same people who promoted "tabacco scientists" in the eighties and are still recieving funding from Phillip Morris. They are the scum of the earth and I don't find it the least bit "bizzare" that the "slashdot crowd" are calling bullshit on this particular example of Machevelian politics.
"That completely misrepresents the opinion of climatologists."
Ummm, no it doesn't. It's just that you're about 10yrs out of date in the consensus game.
Please refer to the recent climate confrence in Copenhagen (basically an interim IPCC report), the confrence gave six key messages as listed in their report (warning 5mb pdf). Key message #5 was
Inaction is inexcusable
The conference was organised by a "star alliance" of research universities: Copenhagen, Yale, Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, Tokyo, Beijing - to name a few. It included 2500 participants from 80 countries and had 1400 scientific presentations.
The folk at Nature have also echoed their sentiments.
True this does not mean "at all cost" but that is a pedantic nitpick rather than a misrepresentation of the consensus opinion on the part of the OP.
"As a 38-year long government employee, should he be fired for his views?"
Problem is that they are not his views they are the views of the CEI lobbyists as seen in email linked in TFS, and that's all they are views not evidence. The role of a civil servant is to speak truth to power not to push the barrow of a special interest group, particularly when that special interest is anti-science FUD. IMHO he should be sacked for incompetence, corruption, or both.
Yes, I said he studied climate science at Harvard before switching to Arts (ie: government), it was in reply to someone who implied he knew nothing about the subject. The information is easily accessible under his WP entry. What's your point? - that shitty grammar and a typo on the word "arts" implies something devious on my part?
It's customary to quote the source when cutting and pasting but I'll bite and match your cut and paste about Idso with my own:
In October 1999 Craig D. Idso and Keith E. Idso mentioned that they had "recently completed a project commissioned by the Greening Earth Society entitled "Forecasting World Food Supplies: The Impact of the Rising Atmospheric CO2 Concentration," which we presented at the Second Annual Dixy Lee Ray Memorial Symposium held in Washington, DC on 31 August - 2 September 1999." [1] The Greening Earth Society, [is] a front group of the Western Fuels Association. Donald Paul Hodel, chairman of Summit Power Group is listed among the "scientific advisors" to the Center.[2] - sourcewatch.
Or I could just google his name along with the CEI ( the organisation pushing their psuedo-scientific report in TFA ) and find that he collarborates with them through yet another well known anti-science think tank called the "Cooler Heads Coalition".
"[Hansen is]considered by many to be perhaps the world's foremost authority on the 'greenhouse effect' of anthropogenic CO2 emissions" - At least you got that right.
Dude you don't have to lie to spread bullshit, just post some vauge crap about how a foriegn government and their courts are corruptly attacking an innocent american bussinesses, people will jump on your bandwagon with enthusiasim.
Example from the texaco link: "Case is a judicial farce constituting a denial of justice. After three years of plaintiff attorney misconduct, their failure to present legitimate evidence to support their claims, judicial misconduct by the Ecuadorian Court and most recently, Government of Ecuador officials and plaintiffs' attorney's joint interference in the case to pressure the Court, Chevron has called for an end to the lawsuit."
Here is my own attempt at cut and paste from WP describing the area Inhofe alledegly represents:
"Oklahoma is the nation's second-largest producer of natural gas, fifth-largest producer of crude oil, has the second-greatest number of active drilling rigs,[72] and ranks fifth in crude oil reserves.[73] While the state ranked fifth for installed wind energy capacity in 2005,[74] it is at the bottom of states in usage of renewable energy, with 96 percent of its electricity being generated by non-renewable sources in 2002, including 64 percent from coal and 32 percent from natural gas."
Nice job sticking up for the economic alarmists at the CEI who were attempting to corrupt a government process here.
OTOH: Maybe we should cut out the middle men at the CEI/EPA and put Texaco in charge of the environment, they did thourough job of managing the envioronment in Equadour.
Well said, most people with science qualifications at least have some idea of how much they don't know and all of them have bruises on their foreheads caused by the painfully obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
"His bias is irrelevant given that it's the only study out there."
Sorry but blatant bias is not irrelevant and again I ask you what makes you think the required statistical analysis has not been done (ie removal of outliers, etc), are these not "other studies"? Again I ask you are you aware that there is more than one data set and that those data sets can be used to cross check the surface thermometer record, are those other data sets not "other studies"?
Can you point to a peer-reviewed study by watts that supports his claims?
Why when you admit to no scientific training are you so eager to believe him that you ignore his contradictory and biased claims?
"I was drawing a conclusion based on what you have written"
LMFAO, you're a self-righteous hypocrite who posts ad-homs complaining about someone else's ad-homs that were directed at a bunch of slimeball lobbyists.
If the slimeball lobbyists were called greenpeace and they were corruptly peddling their bullshit about chlorine in the water via an EPA staff member I'm sure you would be the first to praise my posts.
I looked at your link, at the top under the title "what the science says" the following statement appears:
"While 1998 was an unusually hot year due to El Nino, the long term trend since 1998 is still that of warming."
It then continues to back up that statement with graphs and a summaray of the standard statistical analysis. It concludes with the the statement:
"All 3 data sets demonstrate that the anomalously hot 1998 was due to the strong El Niño of 1997/98. When ENSO-adjusted, 1998 looks much less remarkable than it does in the original data. In all 3 ENSO-adjusted data-sets, 2006 is the hottest year on record and the trend from 1998 to 2007 is that of warming."
Thank you for adding weight to my statement, even if that is not what you intended.
"I didn't see anything in the RC link that clarified that?"
The realclimate link points to a report which is basically an iterim IPCC report from March 2009. It indicates observations are tracking at the high end of the 2007 IPCC forecasts. If you find the water vapour study please post it but also recognise that water vapour is a prediction of the models that depends on temprature and air pressure alone, it is not an input.
"I just honestly don't see how anybody could read the email exchange linked to in the summary and NOT be disgusted"
I am disgusted, the CEI's deliberate misinformation and machevelian politics is inexcusable, thus the ad-homs.
...and come up with something original to debate instead of posting snarky ad-homs at someone you don't agree with.
You are entitled to your opinion on the veracity of models based on Finite Element Analysis but the consensus is your opinons are mistaken or mislead.
"I am not a scientist, but it seems to me that if the AGW crowd were so diligent, wouldn't they have performed this survey already?
No disrespect since you are honest enough to imply you don't know, but what makes you think the "AGW crowd" haven't done the required statistical analysis? Who do you think discovered the heat island effect in the first place? Do you realise there are other data sets that these records can be compared to?
Watts coincidently sells "custom weather stations". He has been a speaker for the Heartland Institute (the rotten core of anti-science lobbyists). He claims the globe is cooling, however if as he claims the record is not good enough to support mainstream science why is it suddenly good enough to support his crackpot theories?
It's late here and I can't be bothered looking this guy up yet again and I don't have any sources at hand, forgive my impatience but try googling for articles that debunk Watts, check out sourcewatch.org, check his WP entry or post your question on realclimate.org, look up the term "heat island effect" and find out where it came from and how it is handled statistically.
Don't take my word over Watts or anyone else, just apply some basic research and healthy skepticisim to the claims and affliations of the claimant, I'm sure you can answer your own questions since you are starting from the self-skeptical position of "I don't know".
"Try Webster's or the Oxford dictionaries. Look up "scientific method", and "science". You'll find nothing in there about "ordinary view" or "consensus"
A dictonary is not a particularly illuminating source for understanding scientific philosophy. Try researching the term Republic of science, it's an older alternate term for "consensus" and is indeed central part of the philosophy of science, it's what gives rise to the term "scientists say" as in "scientists say the earth orbits the sun". A strong scientific consensus is derived from...
1. Overwhelming evidence via multiple independent lines of enquiry.
2. A high degree of predictive and/or explanatory power.
3. A lack of conta-evidence and a lack of equally valid alternative explainations.
Of course it's every scientists duty (and wet dream) to find a logical or evidentry crack in a strong consensus but it's also every scientists duty to accept a consensus he cannot convincingly refute. The strong scientific consensus on GW is that mankinds emmisions are causing the bulk of the observed warming and it will servely retard our civilisation unless we act to reduce those emmissions by ~70-80% over the next four or five decades. The good news is it's "doable" if people can overcome their political predjudices toward the messengers.
"The earth is warming. Evolution is at work. Adapt, or die. And, in the end, no one will give a shit which you do. Except maybe your grandchildren, however many generations removed."
These sort of statements always confuse me as to what they mean by "adapt". Please explain to me why reducing emmissions through a free market cap and trade scheme that strives to make renewables economically viable is not seen as an adaptation? And yes this has little effect on me as I will probably be dead come 2050. However I already have grandchildren that "scientists say" AGW will affect if I make decisions based solely on a few pennies pressing on my hip pocket nerve. If my grandparents generation had thought that way in the 50's we would all be chocking to death under a layer of soot.
"but not related to anything he actually said or wrote."
Fair point and thanks for actually taking the time to look. However may I direct you to my other reply to the OP, I think that one and your reply to me are a case of "ships in the night". I made the second post specifically because I realised I had not critisised the actual report.
As for your own reply to the OP where you state that the slashdot crowd are not qualified I beg to differ, IANAC but I have an old fashioned science degree and have followed the science with interest for nearly three decades, there is also more than one self-confessed climate scientist that posts on slashdot, plus there are umpteen physicists and chemists lurking around this site. This particular story has been heavily moderated and spamed by what I call Astroturfing Cowards but now it's working it's way down the front page and they have used up their mod points the (certainly questionable) wisdom of the slashdot crowd can be seen at +4 and above.
"You even admitted you never RTFA."
Yes, that was my first post and it was a minor point about Gore's credentials, since then I've posted at least a dozen comments in this thread, most are based on my prior knowledge of CEI's political shenanigans which I back up with credible references.
"I say they should ferry some sand up to the ISS and see what happens in null gravity."
How would it move at all without gravity?
Not picking on you personally but what's with all the alternative (and redundant) guesswork in this thread? These guys have performed detailed experiments, have offered a convincing explaination, and have been published in Nature for god's sake.
Gravity is so weak that it is all but irrelevant at small scales. They have an interesting peer-reviewed publication in Nature, why do you doubt their explaination?
Better apply some lotion to that razor burn. /jk
Seriuosly though I'm no physicist so purely based on their track record I give Nature the benifit of the doubt when it comes to thourough peer-review.
"I have yet to see *one* criticism of something in the Carlin paper [snip] if you actually looked at the linked comments paper, it attempts to raise questions. Points to new studies, revised data, etc."
Can you point to *one* paragraph, "new study" or "data revision" in the report that you think is worthwhile debating? - All I can see are the same old arguments and misinformation put out out by the anti-science lobbyists at CEI and other FF think tanks that have been debunked a million times over. Here are a few specific critisisims...
1. He claims that tempratures have been trending downwards for the past 11yrs - this can be debunked by a simple google search and is laughable to anyone who has looked at the temprate records.
2. He blathers on about sunspots and cosmic rays - a theory born from a book by a self-agrandising author and completely unsupported in the litrature, debunked in detail by yours trully here.
3. He complains the last IPCC report is 3 years old and thus out of date. - Fucking nonsense.
4. He claims that the 1998 temprature spike cannot be explained - maybe it's a mystery to him but yet another simple google search shows it's well known that the 1998 spike was due to El Nino.
I stopped there because my head was about to explode. Suffice to say that after skimming what I was sure would be 98 pages of anti-science drivel I no longer think he should be sacked, I think he should be prosecuted for collusion and conspiricy.
"all the more reason to not rush through it to satisfy political whims of the day!"
I'm sorry to say, and mean no disrespect, this is exacly what the psuedo-skeptical slimeballs at CEI want you to think. They lost the technical debate over a decade ago and have been promoting "debate" as a delay tactic ever since. These are the same people who promoted "tabacco scientists" in the eighties and are still recieving funding from Phillip Morris. They are the scum of the earth and I don't find it the least bit "bizzare" that the "slashdot crowd" are calling bullshit on this particular example of Machevelian politics.
"That completely misrepresents the opinion of climatologists."
Ummm, no it doesn't. It's just that you're about 10yrs out of date in the consensus game.
Please refer to the recent climate confrence in Copenhagen (basically an interim IPCC report), the confrence gave six key messages as listed in their report (warning 5mb pdf). Key message #5 was Inaction is inexcusable
The conference was organised by a "star alliance" of research universities: Copenhagen, Yale, Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, Tokyo, Beijing - to name a few. It included 2500 participants from 80 countries and had 1400 scientific presentations.
The folk at Nature have also echoed their sentiments.
True this does not mean "at all cost" but that is a pedantic nitpick rather than a misrepresentation of the consensus opinion on the part of the OP.
"*one* reason why any of his comments are wrong, off the wall, inappropriate, stupid, whatever else"
Obviously you missed my comments. The guy should be sacked as incompetent and corrupt.
"As a 38-year long government employee, should he be fired for his views?"
Problem is that they are not his views they are the views of the CEI lobbyists as seen in email linked in TFS, and that's all they are views not evidence. The role of a civil servant is to speak truth to power not to push the barrow of a special interest group, particularly when that special interest is anti-science FUD. IMHO he should be sacked for incompetence, corruption, or both.
Yes, I said he studied climate science at Harvard before switching to Arts (ie: government), it was in reply to someone who implied he knew nothing about the subject. The information is easily accessible under his WP entry. What's your point? - that shitty grammar and a typo on the word "arts" implies something devious on my part?
It's customary to quote the source when cutting and pasting but I'll bite and match your cut and paste about Idso with my own:
In October 1999 Craig D. Idso and Keith E. Idso mentioned that they had "recently completed a project commissioned by the Greening Earth Society entitled "Forecasting World Food Supplies: The Impact of the Rising Atmospheric CO2 Concentration," which we presented at the Second Annual Dixy Lee Ray Memorial Symposium held in Washington, DC on 31 August - 2 September 1999." [1] The Greening Earth Society, [is] a front group of the Western Fuels Association. Donald Paul Hodel, chairman of Summit Power Group is listed among the "scientific advisors" to the Center.[2] - sourcewatch.
Or I could just google his name along with the CEI ( the organisation pushing their psuedo-scientific report in TFA ) and find that he collarborates with them through yet another well known anti-science think tank called the "Cooler Heads Coalition".
"[Hansen is]considered by many to be perhaps the world's foremost authority on the 'greenhouse effect' of anthropogenic CO2 emissions" - At least you got that right.
Dude you don't have to lie to spread bullshit, just post some vauge crap about how a foriegn government and their courts are corruptly attacking an innocent american bussinesses, people will jump on your bandwagon with enthusiasim.
Example from the texaco link: "Case is a judicial farce constituting a denial of justice. After three years of plaintiff attorney misconduct, their failure to present legitimate evidence to support their claims, judicial misconduct by the Ecuadorian Court and most recently, Government of Ecuador officials and plaintiffs' attorney's joint interference in the case to pressure the Court, Chevron has called for an end to the lawsuit."
"Someone set up us the bomb. All zigs take off!"
Did you accidently encypted your post?
From +5 informative to -1 troll in 30 minutes, plus a cut and paste reply from an Astroturfing Coward.
I'm proud to be targeted by this particular species of slime, it implies they see my information as harmfull to their anti-science crusade.
Are we supposed to be surprised that texaco's web site says texaco are not responsible?
Nice cut and paste skills for an AC. Of course the text is from Senator Inhofe's discredited Minority report. This is the same senator who introduced an anti-science fiction writer to the US senate as a climate expert. It comes as no surpise to me that Inhofe's pet lobbyists at the CEI are the same people in TFA who are trying to corrupt the process at the EPA.
Here is my own attempt at cut and paste from WP describing the area Inhofe alledegly represents:
"Oklahoma is the nation's second-largest producer of natural gas, fifth-largest producer of crude oil, has the second-greatest number of active drilling rigs,[72] and ranks fifth in crude oil reserves.[73] While the state ranked fifth for installed wind energy capacity in 2005,[74] it is at the bottom of states in usage of renewable energy, with 96 percent of its electricity being generated by non-renewable sources in 2002, including 64 percent from coal and 32 percent from natural gas."
Nice job sticking up for the economic alarmists at the CEI who were attempting to corrupt a government process here.
OTOH: Maybe we should cut out the middle men at the CEI/EPA and put Texaco in charge of the environment, they did thourough job of managing the envioronment in Equadour.
Well said, most people with science qualifications at least have some idea of how much they don't know and all of them have bruises on their foreheads caused by the painfully obvious.
He is spruking the for CEI lobbyists, I dare say it's been a profitable 40yrs.