if the show is THAT popular then they would have no trouble whatsoever attracting advertisers to pay for it instead of taxation
And how do the advertisers afford to pay for the show? They add it to the cost of their goods. Eventually you end up paying for shows that you don't watch. At least with the BBC model you have a chance that something uncommercial, but revolutionary will get made.
It can't be said that programming like Eastenders etc. "could not be provided by commercial broadcasters" so why the hell do I have to subsidise what already exists?
So if it is popular then the Beeb shouldn't do it, and yet if they only did unpopular stuff then I can't imagine that you would be happy with that. If it helps, just assume that all your money went to some show that you really like and ignore the other stuff.
Oh, bad news. I just did a search and found that your particular £142.50 went to repairing a photocopier that someone spilled coffee on. I guess its going to be another year of disappointment for you!
What a dreadful report to quote in response to the two right wing examples. On the case for the right bias there was the likes of the presenter of all their Westminster coverage, the Today show presenter, the BBC's political editor, the panel of Question Time etc.
And your examples of the bias from the left: The coverage of the Bob Geldof's Live 8 concert, which didn't include a debate with the screw-the-poor side! The final episode of the Vicar of Dibley! (Does that need a panel too?) And a movie! Never mind that the report showed that there was no left wing bias in the political reporting, the BBC dared to show a dramatic movie!
Microsoft had already surpassed Netscape by the time they cancelled Netscape Navigator 5 in favour of a complete rewrite. IE had 50.4% and NN had 46.9%. Microsoft had only just overtaken Netscape one month before the decision to do the rewrite was made - which must surely have been a deciding factor.
The OP used "denier" to cover everyone that didn't accept AGW as an accepted fact, he included genuine skeptics which covers me.
That's just you being paranoid. Actually, it is worse than that. That is you lying. The original poster gave you his definition of denier a couple of hours ago and it doesn't match what you just said. And how could you have thought he was referring to a rational skeptic when he used the phrase "they're already tinfoiled up about THE GRAND SCIENTIFIC CONSPIRACY"?
Both of the first two reflect very, very poorly on the CRU establishing intent to conceal their data and prevent any chance of examining the validity of the data used in conclusions
No, it shows how sick they are of having to deal with people who try it find any anomaly so they can claim that it invalidates the entire data set. These weren't genuine researchers that they were dealing with, they were people out to prove the whole science was bogus using unscientific and misleading methods and the CRU didn't want anyone listening to them.
And yes, this is exactly what people accuse the CRU of doing, and they also don't want anyone listening to the CRU.
As for the destruction of the raw data in the 80s, this predated the politics and non-scientific backlash. I am sure that they felt the normalised data was sufficient for their needs. And yet this was more of a PR problem than a scientific one. Everybody says that the CRU are destroying the data and point to this as proof. Considering how this predates the current CRU leadership (and indeed this entire debate) then it is really an example of the misleading FUD spewed out by the likes of those "non-genuine researchers" to whom they didn't want to give the data! And you continue it:
But we have confirmed that they had the intent to prevent others getting hold of their data and that they did destroy data and there's bugger all reason to not keep data in this day and age, imo.
That is FUD. The data destruction predates the "intent to prevent", and it didn't happen "in this day and age". So we still have no evidence of any malicious data destruction.
In this particular case, it was actually illegal to dispose of the data as FOI requires they keep it.
You mean when they destroyed the data in the 1980s they were contravening the Freedom of Information Act of 2000? I can't imagine why they didn't know.
Well, yes, I do think you're talking about me when you say denialist...
Fair enough. I really haven't seen any evidence that you are not a denialist, anyway.
How many botanists have been unable to get funding because they didn't support a controversial theory?
I don't know, how many climate scientists have been unable to get funding because they didn't support a controversial theory? Do you know of any, or are you just engaging in a bit of FUD?
For a start, you criticise me for complaining about being called a denier. Here's an experiment: I'll call you a denier and we'll see if you reject the label or accept it.
You were never called a denier. You decided to take someone's use of the term to be a reference to yourself, and then complain that you shouldn't be called that. If you don't think that it applies to you then just move on. But can you categorically say that there aren't people out there who fit the description of a denier?
You also criticise my response for being predictable, as if that somehow invalidates it.
No, I didn't. I merely claim that we can fairly predict a response from a particular group of people who tend to follow very strict trends. If the trend is for those people not to trust a committee of scientists then they will hardly trust another committee of scientists to oversee the first lot.
Well, it's not that vague really. We've all seen and read the emails by now.
They did obstruct FOI requests, and Phil Jones stated he would prefer to destroy the data rather than let an individual access it, but did any data actually get deliberately destroyed? Maybe you can point me to the specific email that says this. Until then, I think that it is a vague claim.
"Our papers get censored. It's all a conspiracy!" Quote marks imply you're quoting something. I know the above didn't appear in my post, nor did something equivalent.
Oh please, it was obviously too extreme to be anything other than a paraphrase of an idea. Certainly not a quote.
You are replying to what you would like me to have said, rather than what I did say. The reason I didn't make any of the points you go on to say I "missed" is because those are not my points.
Nowhere did I say that you think that. I was continuing the list of classic denialist points. Since you claim not to be a denialist then obviously it couldn't be about you, could it?
OK, here is an exercise for the reader. Scroll through all the messages and see how many of them match the list I gave in my previous message. People keep repeating the same arguments without really understanding what they are saying.
I remember a while back when "show us the data" was the mantra that was supposed to discredit AGW. One time when someone said "I can't believe in climate change until I can see the data for myself", people responded with various links to publicly available data. The original poster had to concede that he had way of understanding the data and would have to let someone else check it.
It showed me how so many of these so called skeptics just parrot the arguments that they read on some website without comprehension. If they can't understand their own arguments, how can they understand the science when presented to them?
In other scientific fields, the problem is not nearly as severe because:
(a) There is not such a huge difference in the amount of money scientists receive for one result versus the opposite result
Where is your proof of this. I have never seen one single shred of evidence for this outlandish claim.
(b) The field is not as politically charged
What difference does that make? How is the science more correct in another field because fewer people have alternative reasons to disagree with it? And this wasn't always a political debate. President George Bush Snr publicly stated that the world needed to act to prevent the problems of global warming. Up until the mid 90s this had bipartisan support.
The ultimate accuracy of a theory is seen more decisively in a shorter period of time
The predictions that we would experience warming due to CO2 dates back to the 30s. Guess what? Their predictions have proven correct.
Its been cooling a bit for the last 8 years... the trend began in 2002.
Wow! I can't believe anyone seriously uses that argument anymore. This last decade as been the hottest decade on record. Any slight cooling doesn't change that. You make it sound like it must be much cooler than the record books, but 2009 was globally the 5th hottest year on record.
Have a look at any temperature graph and tell us how significant is your cooling period. Can you spot any other similar cooling pattern in the preceding decades? If so, did those times also prove that it is getting cooler, or did it just bounce back even higher?
As to telling us what we will or wont be satisfied with is not your place either.
Actually, it is quite reasonable to say what the deniers will be satisfied with because they are so predictable. For example, look at your own post:
Complain about being called a denier
Make vague and unsubstantiated accusations about "fudging data" and "destroying data" (with the implication of trying to hide the facts)
Be the victim: "Our papers get censored. It's all a conspiracy!"
Mention Phil Jones - imply he is the antichrist where ever possible
It is all cookie cutter stuff. You did miss a few points, though.
It is actually getting cooler (Warning! Do not link to graphs)
The science isn't settled - the debate still rages (Warning! Do not use this in the same post as "there is no debate because we get censored")
Point out the few errors in the IPCC report and say the entire thing is discredited because of them
Say that AGW has been proved to be all a hoax and hope that nobody asks for details
There is a lot of money to be made in being an alarmist (but don't mention stock options in mining companies or industry funded think-tanks)
But seriously, if you are indeed a genuine skeptic, then you should recognise that the denier tag is not being attributed to you. You must have spotted that there ARE people out there who will not be convinced on this subject no matter how much science you can show them.
There are no "independent" climate scientists and haven't been for decades, if ever.
That's a pretty bold claim. Do you also think it is the same with sciences? Are there no independant botanists either? Are they all involved with some big conspiracy to hide the fact that all the leaders of the world are actually vegetables?
Hmm, maybe not. I does sound a tad silly. Perhaps the conspiracy just involves those scientists who claim something that you don't want to believe.
My Windows 7 (beta) system hardly ever gets rebooted. I only ever put it in sleep mode these days and it just keeps chugging along for a few months at a stretch. Eventually some update or power failure forces me to reboot or switch it off.
I did have one time where my memory usage got too high and I had to reboot, but I blame the stupid developer who wrote the buggy program that I was using at the time. Unfortunately, the developer was me.
Perhaps your problem is that you have some buggy code by a studid developer on your system. Oh look, you mentioned EA!
Even Microsoft admitted Vista was bad and worked hard on 7 to get it to market fast before Vista irrevocably harmed their image.
Actually, there was 3 years between the launch of Vista and Windows 7. Rather than being rushed out, that is actually longer than average for a Windows release. The major Windows NT releases have taken 1 year, 2 years, 3.5 years, 1.75 years, 5 years, and 3 years respectively.
The releases that took longer involved major upgrades to the code: 3.5 years for NT4 to 2000 and 5 years for XP to Vista. It seems that the Microsoft are aiming for 3 years between releases now (Windows 8 should be out in 2012).
I see no difference between an "unconvinced" person and a "denialist". Both are labels for someone who currently disagrees with you.
How does an unconvinced person disagree with me or anyone? They haven't formed an opinion yet!
Shouldn't you first tell me what these papers are saying?
Well why don't you go and read the one report that I did mention that summarizes all the other relevant reports. I'm an certainly not going to post a 3000 page document on slashdot. And if you really don't know what the papers are saying then surely you can't make an educated decision about climate change.
My impression is that just like many other fields, a number of consensus beliefs and assumptions are based on a small number of sources. If those sources are wrong, then the entire field is wrong about the belief in question. That doesn't mean that there is a problem, but the argument about thousands of papers ignores that important suppositions may be based on a very small fraction of those papers.
So basically you don't know what might be wrong, and you don't know if it is wrong. I'm not sure why we are having this conversation then.
None of the highly publicized mistakes found in papers about this matter have been about the core science of global warming. They have all been peripheral matters, mostly about specific regional impact estimations (like the speed of glaciers melting). People HAVE tried to claim that the science is completely wrong. For example, they claim it is actually cooling down, but the measurements still show that we have just had the hottest decade on record. Until somebody can show that some fundamental principle of climate change is actually wrong, then it is not enough to climate science is on shakey ground merely because something COULD be wrong.
Was Jones joking when he said he'd block a couple of papers from appearing in the IPCC? Doesn't look like it to me. There's plenty of evidence of his very unscientific attitude throughout the emails.
I specifically said that Phil Jones didn't count in light of the papers actually being accepted. Please choose another example - preferably one where we can see the paper in question so we can judge its merit. It also seems a bit hypocritical for you to call him unscientific for wanting to block some papers that HE thinks was unscientific.
Here's my take of UK climatology. For around 10 years, the Labour Party has been running the UK, first under Tony Blair then Gordon Brown. Both prime ministers have a stake in seeing AGW played up.
Why would they want this? It is going to cost a lot of money to fix AGW and it has proven to be controversial. Surely that is two things that politicians shy away from.
What evidence do you have of this conspiracy? It is all very well to make the claim, but like everyone keeps telling the climate scientists, show us the data! Why do scientists in countries with conservative governments agree with the corrupt UK scientists?
You say there is money and power in AGW? How is that any different from the money and power in keeping the status quo?
Were you born convinced? Was everyone else born with the certainty that AGW exists and needs to be dealt with? I think a simple explanation here is that you haven't been paying attention.
What does any of that have to do with what we have been saying in this thread? I suggest that it is you who needs to pay attention to the preceding messages. I never said that unconvinced people do not exist. My point was that someone who could be (unhelpfully) labelled "nutjob denialist conspiracy crusade Creationist lunatics" could not be called "the unconvinced" (as suggested by symbolset) because they have obviously already made up their minds. People who are genuinely unconvinced do not appear to be nutjobs to anyone.
If you want to call yourself unconvinced then surely you should be willing to be convinced. You have to be willing to accept that either side might be correct. If not, then don't claim that your the moderate, disinterested party. You are simply a denialist.
The obvious rebuttal is that not enough evidence has been presented.
There are thousands of papers published on this subject - including the 3000 page IPCC report. If you want to completely disregard all of this because there have been a handful of errors found, then at some point you have to concede that no amount of evidence will ever sway you.
And I suppose it's not useful to note that there seems to be a heavy funding and peer review bias in the climatology community towards researchers that interpret their findings in a way that favor AGW.
People keep claiming this, but THEY don't provide the evidence to support it. And no, Phil Jones not wanting some papers to be included in the IPCC report doesn't count, especially as the reports were included anyway. And as I said in another message, anyone who has their paper rejected because it is not scientificly base is going to go around telling everyone it is because they are being censored.
And seriously, where is the evidence that ANYONE has changed their public opinion on this subject just so they can get some funding. Where is the evidence that there is no money to be found for those people who want to publish against the scientific consensus - especially considering that both governments and business alike would absolutely love to get their hands on that evidence, as it would mean that they don't have to spend billions to mend their ways.
So... you're saying that you accepted the AGW claims without having to be convinced? How remarkably short-sighted of you.
And where exactly did I say that? Nowhere. You don't have an argument for what I am saying, so you decide to claim that I said something else. How remarkably creative of you.
You mean like the peer-reviewed journals that were systematically fixed by pro-AGW scientists in order to exclude dissenting researchers?
Do they really try to exclude dissenting researchers, or just ones who use bad science (or misleading citations that do not match what is being argued in the paper)? If somebody does use bad science to make outrageous claims and they then get rejected by the journals, they will claim that they were rejected because of bias or a conspiracy. And unfortunately, people will believe them.
No, that would be a stupid suggestion. You originally said that you wanted to be called "the unconvinced" rather than "nutjob denialist conspiracy crusade Creationist lunatics", but advocating killing people that do not agree with you tends to give credence to the nutjob, crusade and lunatic parts of that phrase.
This whole problem should be discussed with level heads and without preconcived ideas. Don't just assume that scientists are wrong and the government is out to get you. Sure, look around at the alternative theories, but subject those to the same skepticism as you give AGW theories. Only then can you find the truth.
Greenland was colonized during a period of global warmth. That it is why it was named that way.
According to the Reverend J. Sephton in his book Eirik the Red's Saga, Greenland was named as a marketing ploy by Eirik: "Because," said he, "men will desire much the more to go there if the land has a good name."
Yes, it would have been warmer and greener than it was now, but if there was subterfuge in the naming of the country then I don't imagine that it was a tropical paradise. It also doesn't mean that it was as consistantly warmer across the globe as it is now.
But it is also a distraction. Do you deny that being shot by a gun could kill you, merely because other people have died without being shot. Just because it got warmer then doesn't mean that we are not causing it to get warmer now. It is getting hotter, faster and more globally than it did back then.
Man is not powerful enough to change the earth's climate to any "significant" degree. But that big thermonuclear ball in the sky is. A billion petrochemical fueled cars will not influence the sun.
Nobody has every claimed that we are making the sun hotter. This demonstrates that you really don't understand the problem. The problem is that the heat from the sun is being trapped here. As an analogy, my house stays pretty cool even on hot days without the need for air conditioning. As long as it gets cooler at night, it stays pleasant during the day. But if it stays hot at night, it doesn't get a chance to lose the build-up of heat from the previous day and it gets more unpleasant as after day. The days are not necessarily hotter, but the accumulated heat energy means that each successive day has a larger affect.
Scientists are men that can be influenced by propaganda just like any man can be. I think the climate change scare is just another way for politicians to steal our hard earned money.
The climate change "scare" as you call it was instigated by the scientists, not the politicions. They don't just watch the news and think "yeah, I had better parrot that line too". They just follow their data, and all get to the same place. It is either a giant conspiracy or the truth. Which seems the most likely.
However, if you can come up with ANY evidence to back up the claim that it is the politicians that are leading our scientists around then please present it. Oh, have a look at all those CRU emails that were released. They should be able to tell you the names of the politicians who are giving the orders (if there are any). Come back and let us know.
Try labelling them "the unconvinced" and go from there.
That would be inaccurate. When have you ever seen one of these "unconvinced" actually get convinced. When they have their questions answered with science they either disappear or counter with more completely unrelated arguments as if that is some sort of rebuttal. That is why the science community gets so frustrated. They cannot win merely by giving a rational response.
I have NEVER seen someone make a decision based on these debates. A real skeptic or unconvinced person would be willing to accept the evidence once enough has been presented. That is why I think they are definitely denialists.
those who haven't turned off UAC get the prompts several times a day - and I'm talking just for basic things like web browsing with IE.
I have my UAC settings at maximum under Windows 7 and I don't see any UAC prompts for IE. I have also disabled downloading of ActiveX controls (signed and unsigned), so maybe that is the difference. The UACs might be when websites are trying to install controls.
The only time that I get UAC prompts are when I am installing software, changing settings (like allowing a program through my firewall), and running some games (mostly older ones - and even then you can often say "No" and they will still run).
The part that really annoys me is when I clean up my start menu. The multiple prompts for each file is a real pain. Oh, and the command line program "RunAs" no longer works properly. You run something as administrator but still get the "this program requires elevation" message - with no UAC to allow it to work. Running an entire cmd.exe window as administrator solves this.
Maybe we can't prevent it, but we can certainly reduce the severity of the temperature increase. Coming late to the party on this doesn't mean we don't have to do some hard work.
I'm not seeing +3. Maybe you have the option turned on to add +1 to subscribers. I haven't done it for this message (just to see what this unmoderated post shows as), but in future I might tick the box to say "No Subscriber Bonus". I don't see that my opinion should be worth more just because I want to support this site.
As for the moderation system, I agree that it has flaws. I personally feel it to be a proud moment to mod up a message that I disagree with. But I admit that it has only happened about 3 or 4 times over the years. I don't know what can be done to fix the system so that it doesn't get abused.
That's funny. Because at the time of this posting, Moryath's post is moderated exactly the same as one of mine in another thread (which pointed out a flaw in the idea that climate scientists have been producing biased data since the 50s). So it seems that neither side can claim to be the victim here. You certainly can't see it as evidence of a cult. It is just the way the mod system works.
I have been modded as overrated previously before anyone else had modded me up. How does that work? Some people just think that it is an "I disagree" button. You just have to hope that future moderation (or meta-moderation) fixes it up.
Being alarmist gets you book sales. Being alarmist gets you photo ops. And yes, being alarmist gets you a re-up on your grants.
But being a skeptic means that you don't have to spend millions of dollars to clean up your act to stop polluting the world. Any possible financial gain by a scientist or research body is completely dwarfed by what big business stands to lose if they are forced to fix their factories and make their products less polluting.
Besides, there are also book sales and interviews etc to be had on the skeptic's side too. See my example of Ian Pilmer below.
Any business offering such a grant would be massively targeted with protests, ads, etc by the left-wing lunatic fringe.
It really adds so much to your argument to people a lunatic fringe. Why are they called a lunatic fringe for pointing out that business might pay for some science when you just did exactly the same thing when you complained that the "alarmists" were getting money from book sales, photo ops and grants. This is precisely the double standard to which I refered in my original post.
And why is it OK to call the other side alarmist anyway when people who deny climate change is happening highly insulted when they get called a denialist. The only difference is that being called a denialist is a statement of fact (they are denying things) while an alarmist is an unsupportable label. Later in your post you say that you just want competent research that actually follows the scientific method and yet you have presupposed that all the climate scientists are wrong already.
But anyway, back to the business funding. My point was that the funding from industry doesn't always have to be publicly claimed, or at least directly linked to comments about the environment. For instance, the Australian geologist Ian Pilmer wrote a book arguing against the science of climate change, and he gets his face on TV all the time to talk about his views. However, he is less than forthcoming regarding the his directorship of three mining companies. Apparently he earnt AUS$400,000 plus shares and options from this in 2008-2009. So you see, the money would be paid indirectly for other services. (Mind you, I don't know if he would have other opinions if he wasn't on the mining industry payroll, but it was just an example that I had recently heard about)
"Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is ! " - Direct words of Phil Jones!
No, that quote has nothing to do with scientists being on the gravy train. This particular incident was in response to what he considered to be an article based on bad science. There was no mention of money.
As for the quote from Prof Ross McKitrick, do you really think that if global warming didn't happen that we would stop studying the climate? Climate research was how we discovered this in the first place!
Slashdot Mirror
if the show is THAT popular then they would have no trouble whatsoever attracting advertisers to pay for it instead of taxation
And how do the advertisers afford to pay for the show? They add it to the cost of their goods. Eventually you end up paying for shows that you don't watch. At least with the BBC model you have a chance that something uncommercial, but revolutionary will get made.
It can't be said that programming like Eastenders etc. "could not be provided by commercial broadcasters" so why the hell do I have to subsidise what already exists?
So if it is popular then the Beeb shouldn't do it, and yet if they only did unpopular stuff then I can't imagine that you would be happy with that. If it helps, just assume that all your money went to some show that you really like and ignore the other stuff.
Oh, bad news. I just did a search and found that your particular £142.50 went to repairing a photocopier that someone spilled coffee on. I guess its going to be another year of disappointment for you!
What a dreadful report to quote in response to the two right wing examples. On the case for the right bias there was the likes of the presenter of all their Westminster coverage, the Today show presenter, the BBC's political editor, the panel of Question Time etc.
And your examples of the bias from the left: The coverage of the Bob Geldof's Live 8 concert, which didn't include a debate with the screw-the-poor side! The final episode of the Vicar of Dibley! (Does that need a panel too?) And a movie! Never mind that the report showed that there was no left wing bias in the political reporting, the BBC dared to show a dramatic movie!
That is really lame.
Microsoft had already surpassed Netscape by the time they cancelled Netscape Navigator 5 in favour of a complete rewrite. IE had 50.4% and NN had 46.9%. Microsoft had only just overtaken Netscape one month before the decision to do the rewrite was made - which must surely have been a deciding factor.
The OP used "denier" to cover everyone that didn't accept AGW as an accepted fact, he included genuine skeptics which covers me.
That's just you being paranoid. Actually, it is worse than that. That is you lying. The original poster gave you his definition of denier a couple of hours ago and it doesn't match what you just said. And how could you have thought he was referring to a rational skeptic when he used the phrase "they're already tinfoiled up about THE GRAND SCIENTIFIC CONSPIRACY"?
Both of the first two reflect very, very poorly on the CRU establishing intent to conceal their data and prevent any chance of examining the validity of the data used in conclusions
No, it shows how sick they are of having to deal with people who try it find any anomaly so they can claim that it invalidates the entire data set. These weren't genuine researchers that they were dealing with, they were people out to prove the whole science was bogus using unscientific and misleading methods and the CRU didn't want anyone listening to them.
And yes, this is exactly what people accuse the CRU of doing, and they also don't want anyone listening to the CRU.
As for the destruction of the raw data in the 80s, this predated the politics and non-scientific backlash. I am sure that they felt the normalised data was sufficient for their needs. And yet this was more of a PR problem than a scientific one. Everybody says that the CRU are destroying the data and point to this as proof. Considering how this predates the current CRU leadership (and indeed this entire debate) then it is really an example of the misleading FUD spewed out by the likes of those "non-genuine researchers" to whom they didn't want to give the data! And you continue it:
But we have confirmed that they had the intent to prevent others getting hold of their data and that they did destroy data and there's bugger all reason to not keep data in this day and age, imo.
That is FUD. The data destruction predates the "intent to prevent", and it didn't happen "in this day and age". So we still have no evidence of any malicious data destruction.
In this particular case, it was actually illegal to dispose of the data as FOI requires they keep it.
You mean when they destroyed the data in the 1980s they were contravening the Freedom of Information Act of 2000? I can't imagine why they didn't know.
Well, yes, I do think you're talking about me when you say denialist...
Fair enough. I really haven't seen any evidence that you are not a denialist, anyway.
How many botanists have been unable to get funding because they didn't support a controversial theory?
I don't know, how many climate scientists have been unable to get funding because they didn't support a controversial theory? Do you know of any, or are you just engaging in a bit of FUD?
For a start, you criticise me for complaining about being called a denier. Here's an experiment: I'll call you a denier and we'll see if you reject the label or accept it.
You were never called a denier. You decided to take someone's use of the term to be a reference to yourself, and then complain that you shouldn't be called that. If you don't think that it applies to you then just move on. But can you categorically say that there aren't people out there who fit the description of a denier?
You also criticise my response for being predictable, as if that somehow invalidates it.
No, I didn't. I merely claim that we can fairly predict a response from a particular group of people who tend to follow very strict trends. If the trend is for those people not to trust a committee of scientists then they will hardly trust another committee of scientists to oversee the first lot.
Well, it's not that vague really. We've all seen and read the emails by now.
They did obstruct FOI requests, and Phil Jones stated he would prefer to destroy the data rather than let an individual access it, but did any data actually get deliberately destroyed? Maybe you can point me to the specific email that says this. Until then, I think that it is a vague claim.
"Our papers get censored. It's all a conspiracy!"
Quote marks imply you're quoting something. I know the above didn't appear in my post, nor did something equivalent.
Oh please, it was obviously too extreme to be anything other than a paraphrase of an idea. Certainly not a quote.
You are replying to what you would like me to have said, rather than what I did say. The reason I didn't make any of the points you go on to say I "missed" is because those are not my points.
Nowhere did I say that you think that. I was continuing the list of classic denialist points. Since you claim not to be a denialist then obviously it couldn't be about you, could it?
OK, here is an exercise for the reader. Scroll through all the messages and see how many of them match the list I gave in my previous message. People keep repeating the same arguments without really understanding what they are saying.
I remember a while back when "show us the data" was the mantra that was supposed to discredit AGW. One time when someone said "I can't believe in climate change until I can see the data for myself", people responded with various links to publicly available data. The original poster had to concede that he had way of understanding the data and would have to let someone else check it.
It showed me how so many of these so called skeptics just parrot the arguments that they read on some website without comprehension. If they can't understand their own arguments, how can they understand the science when presented to them?
In other scientific fields, the problem is not nearly as severe because:
(a) There is not such a huge difference in the amount of money scientists receive for one result versus the opposite result
Where is your proof of this. I have never seen one single shred of evidence for this outlandish claim.
(b) The field is not as politically charged
What difference does that make? How is the science more correct in another field because fewer people have alternative reasons to disagree with it? And this wasn't always a political debate. President George Bush Snr publicly stated that the world needed to act to prevent the problems of global warming. Up until the mid 90s this had bipartisan support.
The ultimate accuracy of a theory is seen more decisively in a shorter period of time
The predictions that we would experience warming due to CO2 dates back to the 30s. Guess what? Their predictions have proven correct.
Its been cooling a bit for the last 8 years... the trend began in 2002.
Wow! I can't believe anyone seriously uses that argument anymore. This last decade as been the hottest decade on record. Any slight cooling doesn't change that. You make it sound like it must be much cooler than the record books, but 2009 was globally the 5th hottest year on record.
Have a look at any temperature graph and tell us how significant is your cooling period. Can you spot any other similar cooling pattern in the preceding decades? If so, did those times also prove that it is getting cooler, or did it just bounce back even higher?
As to telling us what we will or wont be satisfied with is not your place either.
Actually, it is quite reasonable to say what the deniers will be satisfied with because they are so predictable. For example, look at your own post:
It is all cookie cutter stuff. You did miss a few points, though.
(Warning! Do not use this in the same post as "there is no debate because we get censored")
But seriously, if you are indeed a genuine skeptic, then you should recognise that the denier tag is not being attributed to you. You must have spotted that there ARE people out there who will not be convinced on this subject no matter how much science you can show them.
There are no "independent" climate scientists and haven't been for decades, if ever.
That's a pretty bold claim. Do you also think it is the same with sciences? Are there no independant botanists either? Are they all involved with some big conspiracy to hide the fact that all the leaders of the world are actually vegetables?
Hmm, maybe not. I does sound a tad silly. Perhaps the conspiracy just involves those scientists who claim something that you don't want to believe.
My Windows 7 (beta) system hardly ever gets rebooted. I only ever put it in sleep mode these days and it just keeps chugging along for a few months at a stretch. Eventually some update or power failure forces me to reboot or switch it off.
I did have one time where my memory usage got too high and I had to reboot, but I blame the stupid developer who wrote the buggy program that I was using at the time. Unfortunately, the developer was me.
Perhaps your problem is that you have some buggy code by a studid developer on your system. Oh look, you mentioned EA!
Even Microsoft admitted Vista was bad and worked hard on 7 to get it to market fast before Vista irrevocably harmed their image.
Actually, there was 3 years between the launch of Vista and Windows 7. Rather than being rushed out, that is actually longer than average for a Windows release. The major Windows NT releases have taken 1 year, 2 years, 3.5 years, 1.75 years, 5 years, and 3 years respectively.
The releases that took longer involved major upgrades to the code: 3.5 years for NT4 to 2000 and 5 years for XP to Vista. It seems that the Microsoft are aiming for 3 years between releases now (Windows 8 should be out in 2012).
I see no difference between an "unconvinced" person and a "denialist". Both are labels for someone who currently disagrees with you.
How does an unconvinced person disagree with me or anyone? They haven't formed an opinion yet!
Shouldn't you first tell me what these papers are saying?
Well why don't you go and read the one report that I did mention that summarizes all the other relevant reports. I'm an certainly not going to post a 3000 page document on slashdot. And if you really don't know what the papers are saying then surely you can't make an educated decision about climate change.
My impression is that just like many other fields, a number of consensus beliefs and assumptions are based on a small number of sources. If those sources are wrong, then the entire field is wrong about the belief in question. That doesn't mean that there is a problem, but the argument about thousands of papers ignores that important suppositions may be based on a very small fraction of those papers.
So basically you don't know what might be wrong, and you don't know if it is wrong. I'm not sure why we are having this conversation then.
None of the highly publicized mistakes found in papers about this matter have been about the core science of global warming. They have all been peripheral matters, mostly about specific regional impact estimations (like the speed of glaciers melting). People HAVE tried to claim that the science is completely wrong. For example, they claim it is actually cooling down, but the measurements still show that we have just had the hottest decade on record. Until somebody can show that some fundamental principle of climate change is actually wrong, then it is not enough to climate science is on shakey ground merely because something COULD be wrong.
Was Jones joking when he said he'd block a couple of papers from appearing in the IPCC? Doesn't look like it to me. There's plenty of evidence of his very unscientific attitude throughout the emails.
I specifically said that Phil Jones didn't count in light of the papers actually being accepted. Please choose another example - preferably one where we can see the paper in question so we can judge its merit. It also seems a bit hypocritical for you to call him unscientific for wanting to block some papers that HE thinks was unscientific.
Here's my take of UK climatology. For around 10 years, the Labour Party has been running the UK, first under Tony Blair then Gordon Brown. Both prime ministers have a stake in seeing AGW played up.
Why would they want this? It is going to cost a lot of money to fix AGW and it has proven to be controversial. Surely that is two things that politicians shy away from.
What evidence do you have of this conspiracy? It is all very well to make the claim, but like everyone keeps telling the climate scientists, show us the data! Why do scientists in countries with conservative governments agree with the corrupt UK scientists?
You say there is money and power in AGW? How is that any different from the money and power in keeping the status quo?
Were you born convinced? Was everyone else born with the certainty that AGW exists and needs to be dealt with? I think a simple explanation here is that you haven't been paying attention.
What does any of that have to do with what we have been saying in this thread? I suggest that it is you who needs to pay attention to the preceding messages. I never said that unconvinced people do not exist. My point was that someone who could be (unhelpfully) labelled "nutjob denialist conspiracy crusade Creationist lunatics" could not be called "the unconvinced" (as suggested by symbolset) because they have obviously already made up their minds. People who are genuinely unconvinced do not appear to be nutjobs to anyone.
If you want to call yourself unconvinced then surely you should be willing to be convinced. You have to be willing to accept that either side might be correct. If not, then don't claim that your the moderate, disinterested party. You are simply a denialist.
The obvious rebuttal is that not enough evidence has been presented.
There are thousands of papers published on this subject - including the 3000 page IPCC report. If you want to completely disregard all of this because there have been a handful of errors found, then at some point you have to concede that no amount of evidence will ever sway you.
And I suppose it's not useful to note that there seems to be a heavy funding and peer review bias in the climatology community towards researchers that interpret their findings in a way that favor AGW.
People keep claiming this, but THEY don't provide the evidence to support it. And no, Phil Jones not wanting some papers to be included in the IPCC report doesn't count, especially as the reports were included anyway. And as I said in another message, anyone who has their paper rejected because it is not scientificly base is going to go around telling everyone it is because they are being censored.
And seriously, where is the evidence that ANYONE has changed their public opinion on this subject just so they can get some funding. Where is the evidence that there is no money to be found for those people who want to publish against the scientific consensus - especially considering that both governments and business alike would absolutely love to get their hands on that evidence, as it would mean that they don't have to spend billions to mend their ways.
So... you're saying that you accepted the AGW claims without having to be convinced? How remarkably short-sighted of you.
And where exactly did I say that? Nowhere. You don't have an argument for what I am saying, so you decide to claim that I said something else. How remarkably creative of you.
You mean like the peer-reviewed journals that were systematically fixed by pro-AGW scientists in order to exclude dissenting researchers?
Do they really try to exclude dissenting researchers, or just ones who use bad science (or misleading citations that do not match what is being argued in the paper)? If somebody does use bad science to make outrageous claims and they then get rejected by the journals, they will claim that they were rejected because of bias or a conspiracy. And unfortunately, people will believe them.
Would that make you happy?
No, that would be a stupid suggestion. You originally said that you wanted to be called "the unconvinced" rather than "nutjob denialist conspiracy crusade Creationist lunatics", but advocating killing people that do not agree with you tends to give credence to the nutjob, crusade and lunatic parts of that phrase.
This whole problem should be discussed with level heads and without preconcived ideas. Don't just assume that scientists are wrong and the government is out to get you. Sure, look around at the alternative theories, but subject those to the same skepticism as you give AGW theories. Only then can you find the truth.
Greenland was colonized during a period of global warmth. That it is why it was named that way.
According to the Reverend J. Sephton in his book Eirik the Red's Saga, Greenland was named as a marketing ploy by Eirik: "Because," said he, "men will desire much the more to go there if the land has a good name."
Yes, it would have been warmer and greener than it was now, but if there was subterfuge in the naming of the country then I don't imagine that it was a tropical paradise. It also doesn't mean that it was as consistantly warmer across the globe as it is now.
But it is also a distraction. Do you deny that being shot by a gun could kill you, merely because other people have died without being shot. Just because it got warmer then doesn't mean that we are not causing it to get warmer now. It is getting hotter, faster and more globally than it did back then.
Man is not powerful enough to change the earth's climate to any "significant" degree. But that big thermonuclear ball in the sky is. A billion petrochemical fueled cars will not influence the sun.
Nobody has every claimed that we are making the sun hotter. This demonstrates that you really don't understand the problem. The problem is that the heat from the sun is being trapped here. As an analogy, my house stays pretty cool even on hot days without the need for air conditioning. As long as it gets cooler at night, it stays pleasant during the day. But if it stays hot at night, it doesn't get a chance to lose the build-up of heat from the previous day and it gets more unpleasant as after day. The days are not necessarily hotter, but the accumulated heat energy means that each successive day has a larger affect.
Scientists are men that can be influenced by propaganda just like any man can be. I think the climate change scare is just another way for politicians to steal our hard earned money.
The climate change "scare" as you call it was instigated by the scientists, not the politicions. They don't just watch the news and think "yeah, I had better parrot that line too". They just follow their data, and all get to the same place. It is either a giant conspiracy or the truth. Which seems the most likely.
However, if you can come up with ANY evidence to back up the claim that it is the politicians that are leading our scientists around then please present it. Oh, have a look at all those CRU emails that were released. They should be able to tell you the names of the politicians who are giving the orders (if there are any). Come back and let us know.
Try labelling them "the unconvinced" and go from there.
That would be inaccurate. When have you ever seen one of these "unconvinced" actually get convinced. When they have their questions answered with science they either disappear or counter with more completely unrelated arguments as if that is some sort of rebuttal. That is why the science community gets so frustrated. They cannot win merely by giving a rational response.
I have NEVER seen someone make a decision based on these debates. A real skeptic or unconvinced person would be willing to accept the evidence once enough has been presented. That is why I think they are definitely denialists.
those who haven't turned off UAC get the prompts several times a day - and I'm talking just for basic things like web browsing with IE.
I have my UAC settings at maximum under Windows 7 and I don't see any UAC prompts for IE. I have also disabled downloading of ActiveX controls (signed and unsigned), so maybe that is the difference. The UACs might be when websites are trying to install controls.
The only time that I get UAC prompts are when I am installing software, changing settings (like allowing a program through my firewall), and running some games (mostly older ones - and even then you can often say "No" and they will still run).
The part that really annoys me is when I clean up my start menu. The multiple prompts for each file is a real pain. Oh, and the command line program "RunAs" no longer works properly. You run something as administrator but still get the "this program requires elevation" message - with no UAC to allow it to work. Running an entire cmd.exe window as administrator solves this.
Maybe we can't prevent it, but we can certainly reduce the severity of the temperature increase. Coming late to the party on this doesn't mean we don't have to do some hard work.
I'm not seeing +3. Maybe you have the option turned on to add +1 to subscribers. I haven't done it for this message (just to see what this unmoderated post shows as), but in future I might tick the box to say "No Subscriber Bonus". I don't see that my opinion should be worth more just because I want to support this site.
As for the moderation system, I agree that it has flaws. I personally feel it to be a proud moment to mod up a message that I disagree with. But I admit that it has only happened about 3 or 4 times over the years. I don't know what can be done to fix the system so that it doesn't get abused.
That's funny. Because at the time of this posting, Moryath's post is moderated exactly the same as one of mine in another thread (which pointed out a flaw in the idea that climate scientists have been producing biased data since the 50s). So it seems that neither side can claim to be the victim here. You certainly can't see it as evidence of a cult. It is just the way the mod system works.
I have been modded as overrated previously before anyone else had modded me up. How does that work? Some people just think that it is an "I disagree" button. You just have to hope that future moderation (or meta-moderation) fixes it up.
Being alarmist gets you book sales. Being alarmist gets you photo ops. And yes, being alarmist gets you a re-up on your grants.
But being a skeptic means that you don't have to spend millions of dollars to clean up your act to stop polluting the world. Any possible financial gain by a scientist or research body is completely dwarfed by what big business stands to lose if they are forced to fix their factories and make their products less polluting.
Besides, there are also book sales and interviews etc to be had on the skeptic's side too. See my example of Ian Pilmer below.
Any business offering such a grant would be massively targeted with protests, ads, etc by the left-wing lunatic fringe.
It really adds so much to your argument to people a lunatic fringe. Why are they called a lunatic fringe for pointing out that business might pay for some science when you just did exactly the same thing when you complained that the "alarmists" were getting money from book sales, photo ops and grants. This is precisely the double standard to which I refered in my original post.
And why is it OK to call the other side alarmist anyway when people who deny climate change is happening highly insulted when they get called a denialist. The only difference is that being called a denialist is a statement of fact (they are denying things) while an alarmist is an unsupportable label. Later in your post you say that you just want competent research that actually follows the scientific method and yet you have presupposed that all the climate scientists are wrong already.
But anyway, back to the business funding. My point was that the funding from industry doesn't always have to be publicly claimed, or at least directly linked to comments about the environment. For instance, the Australian geologist Ian Pilmer wrote a book arguing against the science of climate change, and he gets his face on TV all the time to talk about his views. However, he is less than forthcoming regarding the his directorship of three mining companies. Apparently he earnt AUS$400,000 plus shares and options from this in 2008-2009. So you see, the money would be paid indirectly for other services. (Mind you, I don't know if he would have other opinions if he wasn't on the mining industry payroll, but it was just an example that I had recently heard about)
"Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is ! " - Direct words of Phil Jones!
No, that quote has nothing to do with scientists being on the gravy train. This particular incident was in response to what he considered to be an article based on bad science. There was no mention of money.
As for the quote from Prof Ross McKitrick, do you really think that if global warming didn't happen that we would stop studying the climate? Climate research was how we discovered this in the first place!