155 replies to this topic

[maxwatt]

I cannot understand what motivation a group of climate scientists would possibly have to promulgate a hoax to the effect that global warming is occuring, iand that it is an existential hazard.

On the other hand, I can see a profit motive motive for an oil and gas behemoth such as Exxon to not only deny it, but to engage in a campaign of disinformation to A. deny global warming exists, B. to deny that it is caused by human activity.

A couple of years ago Exxon et al. sponsored a short lived add campaign with the slogan "Carbon dioxide. They call it poison. We call it life." It was being run by former tobacco lobbyists. I have a hunch they've fired those bozos and hired some competent cointelpro operatives to take their place, and the "Climategate" fiasco is an example of their handiwork.

[rwac]

I cannot understand what motivation a group of climate scientists would possibly have to promulgate a hoax to the effect that global warming is occuring, iand that it is an existential hazard.

1. Research money.
2. Power, authority, etc.
3. This is a way to legislate against excess consumption. After all, even if it's not true, it's a good idea to reduce pollution right ?

[maxwatt]

I cannot understand what motivation a group of climate scientists would possibly have to promulgate a hoax to the effect that global warming is occurring, and that it is an existential hazard.

1. Research money.
2. Power, authority, etc.
3. This is a way to legislate against excess consumption. After all, even if it's not true, it's a good idea to reduce pollution right ?

Point one and two are as likely to pertain for either viewpoint. Point three is certainly not a universal motive among scientists either. I find that senior research scientists tend to be a good bit more conservative than the average undergraduate. Even is some were motivated by these factors, it woud be hard to get the vast majority of them to sign on to a conspiracy that went against the facts as they apear/; it would be ike herding cats.

[rwac]

Point one and two are as likely to pertain for either viewpoint. Point three is certainly not a universal motive among scientists either. I find that senior research scientists tend to be a good bit more conservative than the average undergraduate. Even is some were motivated by these factors, it woud be hard to get the vast majority of them to sign on to a conspiracy that went against the facts as they apear/; it would be ike herding cats.

I'm sure it's not a universal motive. But it's likely to be a motivation for these particular scientists.

You don't need everyone to sign on to a conspiracy. All you need is say the top 3 scientists start rejecting any paper that disagrees with their views. I dare say that it happens in many fields, anything/anyone going against the theory-du-jour is automatically blacklisted. So critics never get a chance to be "peer-reviewed climate scientists".

[maxwatt]

Point one and two are as likely to pertain for either viewpoint. Point three is certainly not a universal motive among scientists either. I find that senior research scientists tend to be a good bit more conservative than the average undergraduate. Even is some were motivated by these factors, it woud be hard to get the vast majority of them to sign on to a conspiracy that went against the facts as they apear/; it would be ike herding cats.

I'm sure it's not a universal motive. But it's likely to be a motivation for these particular scientists.

You don't need everyone to sign on to a conspiracy. All you need is say the top 3 scientists start rejecting any paper that disagrees with their views. I dare say that it happens in many fields, anything/anyone going against the theory-du-jour is automatically blacklisted. So critics never get a chance to be "peer-reviewed climate scientists".

You mean like paleontologists have successfully excluded the warm-blooded dinosaur theorists, the birds-as-dinosaurs people, or the mass-extinction by asteroid people? Don't even mention continental drift: the heads of geology departments world-wide declared it nonsense. Seems to me these did not take long to get established, despite opposition from the major authorities in those fields. As for AWG, the data is incontrovertible, it's just a details that are disputed. The rhetorical technique we are seeing is to find one thing that can be pounced on, then beat it to death.

What climatologists are actually working on is such subjects as the influx of warm water into the Atlantic from the Indian Ocean counterbalancing the flow of fresh water from the arctic into the North Atlantic (so the "Atlantic Convector" will not shut down and make Europe and North America much colder) or how the oceans are absorbing CO2 at a much slower rate than last century, so that the atmospheric buildup is increasing faster than previously projected, or how mixing of air between different latitudes is increasing, resulting in more uniform surface temperatures north to south. Warming? It is only how fast, not if. Sea level rise? Again, how fast and how much, not if.

It is not, I think, an accident that "Climategate" surfaced just before Copenhagen, and is being used to obscure real issues. There are billions upon billions of dollars to be lost or won depending on what agreements are reached.

And no, I do not think "cap-and-trade" is an especially good idea. It is too easy to game the system, as has already been shown by the first limited treaty in Kyoto, and what the results were. False estimates of the carbon absorbed by tropical forests is just one defect in that scheme. Limiting emissions by using alternate energy sources could help, if the technologies developed are economically feasible. They can become economic drivers. China is determined to become a major payer in solar electric and in wind turbines. Don't forget Peak Oil: alternate energy sources will one day be a neessity, not a luxury. But these will likely not be enough either. We can perhaps reduce the rate of change so our technology and knowledge has a chance to catch up to the task of engineering our planet and our environment.

Technology got us into this situation. We are stuck in an uncontrolled experiment with an uncertain outcome. Maybe technology will get us out, but if it does, it will be via some as-yet unexpected breakthrough.

[valkyrie_ice]

Whoa, I never called you an idiot, and I totally don't think you are an idiot. I think you are a really smart person. You said "if an idiot can't read that chart..." and my use of the word was just a reference to the same hypothetical idiot that you were referring to. Anyway, yes, I did miss the NOAA, but that's actually beside the point. The question is: What is it measuring? Is that a point temperature somewhere in Europe, or an average over some region, or a world average or what? Can it be compared to all those other graphs that I posted, or do they all refer to something that is different? I posted a link to an explanation of the MWP, the existence of which I don't deny, nor does the climate community to the best of my knowledge. Ore production in the bronze and iron age may have been dirty, but it doesn't hold a candle to the amount of CO2 we pour out today; it's not even the same order of magnitude. That's not a thing that brings forcings into question. The population of the world was vastly smaller then as well, for what it's worth. The MWP was a regional, not global phenomenon as I understand it, so one would need to consider it in the context of other global data.

There seems to be an assumption here that climate scientist are complete idiots, that they disregard common knowledge, and that they fudge their data with wild abandon and without any reason. This is an amazingly anti-science attitude that seems to be widely held by the anti-AGW crowd. There are an awful lot of people in the anti community who are not scientists, and certainly the vast vast majority of them are not climate scientists. The anti community is mostly linked by an ideological position, as reflected in the frequent appearance of Tim Ball on the Glenn Beck show. This ideology is known for, among other things, an anti-science stance. "Teach the Controversy" or whatever it was in the Intelligent Design vs Evolutionary Theory debate, for example. I really try to stay out of this kind of debate, to be honest, and all I'm doing in this one is trying to defend science. I do not think that the world is going to end. Neither does the climate science community. Maybe some of the Greenies do, but they don't speak for me. I do think that we need to start taking some steps to put the true cost of fossil fuel on the users of it rather than on society as a whole as we have for the past century or more. In addition to addressing climate change, that's also just correcting a market failure. As we both know, new technology is going to make this a lot easier than the anti crowd generally makes it out to be.

Calling me, no, treating me, yes.

The problem with CO2 is that it has been FAR higher in the past, and runaway global warming didn't happen. It has also lagged by years of centuries trends of warming.

And how many times do I have to say I don't dispute the fact that we are getting warmer? What I do not, and cannot buy into due to the historical fact that our globe has been MUCH HOTTER than we are now WITHIN the period of human existence, and we did not all die, suffer catastrophic runaway warming, and indeed, as JoSH pointed out, we are actually in a lower than normal temperature range than has been the AVERAGE for the holocene. Deny the single chart if you chose, deny the MWP if you chose, you cannot dispute the fact that the Holocene average has been much higher than we are now. Or that we have spiked as fast previously.

Greenland core

or that we have spiked MUCH higher

Antarctic core


So what I see here is not a massive conspiracy among climatologists, but a small group of highly respected and powerful scientists becoming convinced of something. They are so convinced of something that they were willing to fudge the data to ensure that they could convince the rest of the scientific community. Being the respected and powerful scientists that they were, their opinions were accepted, and once accepted those views became "holy writ" and like too many other areas of science, peer pressure lead to an enormous incentive to find evidence to support the "holy writ" Once Al Gore got into it, it became "politically correct" and anyone who failed to support it got howled down.

It's funny, you can see how this is working against BLP and Cold Fusion in the physics community, but are unwilling to consider it's possibility in the climatological one.

Now, against them are indeed an enormous bunch of anti-scientific types. Against them are also scientists who work for interests who have vested interests in proving the climatologists wrong.

But there are also a substantial group of highly intelligent, non-affiliated scientists in a variety of fields who are looking at the data and going "waitaminit" because things just are not adding up.

And the AGW crowd tosses them aside as "crackpots" without listening to what they say by dismissing it by any method possible and refusing to accept any data which does not conform to "holy writ"

JoSH worked from the official NOAA icecore data from Greenland. Greenland is a little outside "regional" for a England only event which you are trying to claim the MWP is. Numerous treering cores across America also show the MWP.

Physicists don't want to look into BLP because OMG Mills DARES to say Einstein was wrong. The same happens to anyone who has dared to say Mann was wrong.

Well, Mann's own words show that Mann was wrong.

Pollution is a huge danger. CO2 could very well be poisoning the ocean. It should and must be stopped as quickly as possible. But AGW? Nice theory, but reality seems to show that warming is a natural trend. CO2 may or may not contribute to it, but the panic mongering of the AGW movement does not make it FACT.

But because of that panicmongering, how many trillions will go to fight against imaginary demons rather than be put into sciences which actually benefit the human race?

Edited by valkyrie_ice, 12 December 2009 - 05:22 AM.

[rwac]

You mean like paleontologists have successfully excluded the warm-blooded dinosaur theorists, the birds-as-dinosaurs people, or the mass-extinction by asteroid people? Don't even mention continental drift: the heads of geology departments world-wide declared it nonsense. Seems to me these did not take long to get established, despite opposition from the major authorities in those fields. As for AWG, the data is incontrovertible, it's just a details that are disputed. The rhetorical technique we are seeing is to find one thing that can be pounced on, then beat it to death.

The difference between those examples and AGW is that Big Business and Government are both involved in AGW. That's a pretty lethal combination.

Neither Big Business nor govt really cares about continental drift.

A good comparison would be the nutrition/medical field. There are only now beginning to be studies on low carb diets.
Ancel Keys cherry picked some data to blame cholesterol for CVD in the 60s/70s. The Cholesterol hypothesis remains conventional wisdom today, because it makes so much profit. Fancy new fat free foods, "healthy" oils, new drugs ...

Today, some companies have decided to make a buck off of global warming (hybrids, windfarms, carbon credit trading etc). Governments have decided that limiting CO2 is the right thing to do. So it is hard to fix science which has such strong political support.

What climatologists are actually working on is such subjects as the influx of warm water into the Atlantic from the Indian Ocean counterbalancing the flow of fresh water from the arctic into the North Atlantic (so the "Atlantic Convector" will not shut down and make Europe and North America much colder) or how the oceans are absorbing CO2 at a much slower rate than last century, so that the atmospheric buildup is increasing faster than previously projected, or how mixing of air between different latitudes is increasing, resulting in more uniform surface temperatures north to south. Warming? It is only how fast, not if. Sea level rise? Again, how fast and how much, not if.

It is not, I think, an accident that "Climategate" surfaced just before Copenhagen, and is being used to obscure real issues. There are billions upon billions of dollars to be lost or won depending on what agreements are reached.

And no, I do not think "cap-and-trade" is an especially good idea. It is too easy to game the system, as has already been shown by the first limited treaty in Kyoto, and what the results were. False estimates of the carbon absorbed by tropical forests is just one defect in that scheme. Limiting emissions by using alternate energy sources could help, if the technologies developed are economically feasible. They can become economic drivers. China is determined to become a major payer in solar electric and in wind turbines. Don't forget Peak Oil: alternate energy sources will one day be a neessity, not a luxury. But these will likely not be enough either. We can perhaps reduce the rate of change so our technology and knowledge has a chance to catch up to the task of engineering our planet and our environment.

Technology got us into this situation. We are stuck in an uncontrolled experiment with an uncertain outcome. Maybe technology will get us out, but if it does, it will be via some as-yet unexpected breakthrough.

For CO2 limits or carbon trading to be necessary, the following questions need to be answered "yes".

1. Is the warming unprecedented ?
2. Is it caused by man ?
3. Do costs outweigh benefits ?
4. Is mitigation more expensive than adaptation ?

There has been almost no discussion on the economic issues.
The governments just jumped at the chance to implement global controls.

Also, the science is by no means settled. Most of the climate research has been based on some common data.
Demonstrating that this data has been strongly influenced by effects such as Urban Heat Island (and possibly human modification, ie fraud), would go a long way towards discrediting the AGW hypothesis.
Also, if the Medieval Warm Period was global, that means that GW is no longer unprecedented.
These are significant flaws in the current theory, which you can expect will be attacked.

"We are stuck in an uncontrolled experiment with an uncertain outcome."
Everything we do is uncontrolled. Including the fact that we will definitely lower growth if we implement cap-n-trade or carbon limits.
Lower growth means a overall poorer/weakened humanity, more vulnerable to things such as asteroids, unpredicted ice ages, epidemics...

[niner]

Whoa, I never called you an idiot, and I totally don't think you are an idiot. I think you are a really smart person. You said "if an idiot can't read that chart..." and my use of the word was just a reference to the same hypothetical idiot that you were referring to. Anyway, yes, I did miss the NOAA, but that's actually beside the point. The question is: What is it measuring? Is that a point temperature somewhere in Europe, or an average over some region, or a world average or what? Can it be compared to all those other graphs that I posted, or do they all refer to something that is different? I posted a link to an explanation of the MWP, the existence of which I don't deny, nor does the climate community to the best of my knowledge. Ore production in the bronze and iron age may have been dirty, but it doesn't hold a candle to the amount of CO2 we pour out today; it's not even the same order of magnitude. That's not a thing that brings forcings into question. The population of the world was vastly smaller then as well, for what it's worth. The MWP was a regional, not global phenomenon as I understand it, so one would need to consider it in the context of other global data.

There seems to be an assumption here that climate scientist are complete idiots, that they disregard common knowledge, and that they fudge their data with wild abandon and without any reason. This is an amazingly anti-science attitude that seems to be widely held by the anti-AGW crowd. There are an awful lot of people in the anti community who are not scientists, and certainly the vast vast majority of them are not climate scientists. The anti community is mostly linked by an ideological position, as reflected in the frequent appearance of Tim Ball on the Glenn Beck show. This ideology is known for, among other things, an anti-science stance. "Teach the Controversy" or whatever it was in the Intelligent Design vs Evolutionary Theory debate, for example. I really try to stay out of this kind of debate, to be honest, and all I'm doing in this one is trying to defend science. I do not think that the world is going to end. Neither does the climate science community. Maybe some of the Greenies do, but they don't speak for me. I do think that we need to start taking some steps to put the true cost of fossil fuel on the users of it rather than on society as a whole as we have for the past century or more. In addition to addressing climate change, that's also just correcting a market failure. As we both know, new technology is going to make this a lot easier than the anti crowd generally makes it out to be.

Calling me, no, treating me, yes.

I never intended to treat you like an idiot, and if that's the way it felt, then I'm sincerely sorry.

The problem with CO2 is that it has been FAR higher in the past, and runaway global warming didn't happen. It has also lagged by years of centuries trends of warming.

And how many times do I have to say I don't dispute the fact that we are getting warmer? What I do not, and cannot buy into due to the historical fact that our globe has been MUCH HOTTER than we are now WITHIN the period of human existence, and we did not all die, suffer catastrophic runaway warming, and indeed, as JoSH pointed out, we are actually in a lower than normal temperature range than has been the AVERAGE for the holocene. Deny the single chart if you chose, deny the MWP if you chose, you cannot dispute the fact that the Holocene average has been much higher than we are now. Or that we have spiked as fast previously.

Greenland core

or that we have spiked MUCH higher

Antarctic core

You know how it feels to me? It feels like you aren't reading my posts. Not only did I not call you an idiot, I didn't say that you dispute the fact that we are getting warmer. I know you know that. I didn't deny any of the data that you are posting, and I very specifically stated that I accept the MWP. I said that I thought it was a regional phenomenon, not just in England. I didn't specify the size of the region, other than to say "not global".

The charts above are ice core data from Greenland and Antarctica, I take it. The problem I have with it is it is a local measurement. Don't we need to know the average temperature of the globe, or at least some very large regions, in order to evaluate the effect of CO2 on climate over those periods? I find it really hard to believe that the real climate scientists are just ignoring this if it's meaningful.

So what I see here is not a massive conspiracy among climatologists, but a small group of highly respected and powerful scientists becoming convinced of something. They are so convinced of something that they were willing to fudge the data to ensure that they could convince the rest of the scientific community. Being the respected and powerful scientists that they were, their opinions were accepted, and once accepted those views became "holy writ" and like too many other areas of science, peer pressure lead to an enormous incentive to find evidence to support the "holy writ" Once Al Gore got into it, it became "politically correct" and anyone who failed to support it got howled down.

In my field of biologically-oriented chemistry, there is no way that a handful of powerful scientists could keep an idea out of the literature if there was anything to it. There are too many scientists, too many journals, and too many reviewers, who are anonymous to the reviewee. Everyone gets asked to review papers. The journals have enormous editorial boards, so it would be hard for a small handful of people to suppress a good idea. It seems unlikely to me that the situation could be that different in the climate field, consisting of thousands of scientists around the world.

It's funny, you can see how this is working against BLP and Cold Fusion in the physics community, but are unwilling to consider it's possibility in the climatological one.

Cold Fusion is very different. Pons & Fleischman were proposing something that was wildly at odds with the bedrock of theory. On top of that, it was incredibly hard to replicate. No one could get it to work, and if it did work, then it wouldn't work the next time they tried it. Given that situation, there was an overwhelming groundswell of ill will toward the idea from the physics community, and not just a few of them, though there were a few who were particularly loud and mean. If AGW is as baseless and easy to shoot down as some claim, it would be easy to get such an obvious idea heard. BLP is different as well; Mills has little problem publishing in respected journals. He has a number of publications. His ideas haven't penetrated people's minds very well, but I think that's because he's not really trying to do that. He's trying to become the richest man in the world. He could send out free kits of demo materials to physicists all over the world if he was so inclined, but I don't think he's inclined.

Pollution is a huge danger. CO2 could very well be poisoning the ocean. It should and must be stopped as quickly as possible. But AGW? Nice theory, but reality seems to show that warming is a natural trend. CO2 may or may not contribute to it, but the panic mongering of the AGW movement does not make it FACT.

But because of that panicmongering, how many trillions will go to fight against imaginary demons rather than be put into sciences which actually benefit the human race?

I don't think that the climate scientists are panicmongering. I don't think I'm panicmongering. If there are some Greens that are panicmongering, I guess they are the analog of the right wingers who are denying AGW for political reasons. And let me say that I don't think that you are one of those. I also don't think that it's at all clear that warming is a natural trend. All I can say is that climate scientists are surely aware of that ice core data. If it really dismissed their theory, I don't think the theory would be there today. I think that what our argument boils down to is: I think science is self-correcting and works most of the time, and you either don't think that, or think that it has failed spectacularly in this instance. As I pointed out above, Cold Fusion was an understandable failure of science. BLP is not a failure of science. I'm having a hard time coming up with any examples of failures of science at the scale and scope that you propose for AGW. I mean, you are proposing that this publicly available NOAA ice core data destroys the AGW argument, and that this is being ignored by literally thousands of scientists because they are in the thrall of a handful of cheaters and Al Gore. I don't buy that.

It would be a tragedy to spend trillions on something that was useless or counterproductive. cough (Iraq war) cough. But I don't think the cost is going to be that bad. The CBO long term estimate was something like 0.1% of GDP, and they were taking into account neither new technological developments like BLP nor the value of the benefits to be had, like improved health from fewer coal particulates in the air, or jobs from new clean energy industries. You said yourself that pollution/CO2 "should and must be stopped as quickly as possible", so even if AGW were completely wrong, (which I obviously don't think is the case), there would still be substantial benefits to proceeding with controls, right?

[valkyrie_ice]

calling me, no, treating me, yes.

I never intended to treat you like an idiot, and if that's the way it felt, then I'm sincerely sorry.

The problem with CO2 is that it has been FAR higher in the past, and runaway global warming didn't happen. It has also lagged by years of centuries trends of warming.

And how many times do I have to say I don't dispute the fact that we are getting warmer? What I do not, and cannot buy into due to the historical fact that our globe has been MUCH HOTTER than we are now WITHIN the period of human existence, and we did not all die, suffer catastrophic runaway warming, and indeed, as JoSH pointed out, we are actually in a lower than normal temperature range than has been the AVERAGE for the holocene. Deny the single chart if you chose, deny the MWP if you chose, you cannot dispute the fact that the Holocene average has been much higher than we are now. Or that we have spiked as fast previously.

Greenland core

or that we have spiked MUCH higher

Antarctic core

You know how it feels to me? It feels like you aren't reading my posts. Not only did I not call you an idiot, I didn't say that you dispute the fact that we are getting warmer. I know you know that. I didn't deny any of the data that you are posting, and I very specifically stated that I accept the MWP. I said that I thought it was a regional phenomenon, not just in England. I didn't specify the size of the region, other than to say "not global".

The charts above are ice core data from Greenland and Antarctica, I take it. The problem I have with it is it is a local measurement. Don't we need to know the average temperature of the globe, or at least some very large regions, in order to evaluate the effect of CO2 on climate over those periods? I find it really hard to believe that the real climate scientists are just ignoring this if it's meaningful.

So what I see here is not a massive conspiracy among climatologists, but a small group of highly respected and powerful scientists becoming convinced of something. They are so convinced of something that they were willing to fudge the data to ensure that they could convince the rest of the scientific community. Being the respected and powerful scientists that they were, their opinions were accepted, and once accepted those views became "holy writ" and like too many other areas of science, peer pressure lead to an enormous incentive to find evidence to support the "holy writ" Once Al Gore got into it, it became "politically correct" and anyone who failed to support it got howled down.

In my field of biologically-oriented chemistry, there is no way that a handful of powerful scientists could keep an idea out of the literature if there was anything to it. There are too many scientists, too many journals, and too many reviewers, who are anonymous to the reviewee. Everyone gets asked to review papers. The journals have enormous editorial boards, so it would be hard for a small handful of people to suppress a good idea. It seems unlikely to me that the situation could be that different in the climate field, consisting of thousands of scientists around the world.

It's funny, you can see how this is working against BLP and Cold Fusion in the physics community, but are unwilling to consider it's possibility in the climatological one.

Cold Fusion is very different. Pons & Fleischman were proposing something that was wildly at odds with the bedrock of theory. On top of that, it was incredibly hard to replicate. No one could get it to work, and if it did work, then it wouldn't work the next time they tried it. Given that situation, there was an overwhelming groundswell of ill will toward the idea from the physics community, and not just a few of them, though there were a few who were particularly loud and mean. If AGW is as baseless and easy to shoot down as some claim, it would be easy to get such an obvious idea heard. BLP is different as well; Mills has little problem publishing in respected journals. He has a number of publications. His ideas haven't penetrated people's minds very well, but I think that's because he's not really trying to do that. He's trying to become the richest man in the world. He could send out free kits of demo materials to physicists all over the world if he was so inclined, but I don't think he's inclined.

Pollution is a huge danger. CO2 could very well be poisoning the ocean. It should and must be stopped as quickly as possible. But AGW? Nice theory, but reality seems to show that warming is a natural trend. CO2 may or may not contribute to it, but the panic mongering of the AGW movement does not make it FACT.

But because of that panicmongering, how many trillions will go to fight against imaginary demons rather than be put into sciences which actually benefit the human race?

I don't think that the climate scientists are panicmongering. I don't think I'm panicmongering. If there are some Greens that are panicmongering, I guess they are the analog of the right wingers who are denying AGW for political reasons. And let me say that I don't think that you are one of those. I also don't think that it's at all clear that warming is a natural trend. All I can say is that climate scientists are surely aware of that ice core data. If it really dismissed their theory, I don't think the theory would be there today. I think that what our argument boils down to is: I think science is self-correcting and works most of the time, and you either don't think that, or think that it has failed spectacularly in this instance. As I pointed out above, Cold Fusion was an understandable failure of science. BLP is not a failure of science. I'm having a hard time coming up with any examples of failures of science at the scale and scope that you propose for AGW. I mean, you are proposing that this publicly available NOAA ice core data destroys the AGW argument, and that this is being ignored by literally thousands of scientists because they are in the thrall of a handful of cheaters and Al Gore. I don't buy that.

It would be a tragedy to spend trillions on something that was useless or counterproductive. cough (Iraq war) cough. But I don't think the cost is going to be that bad. The CBO long term estimate was something like 0.1% of GDP, and they were taking into account neither new technological developments like BLP nor the value of the benefits to be had, like improved health from fewer coal particulates in the air, or jobs from new clean energy industries. You said yourself that pollution/CO2 "should and must be stopped as quickly as possible", so even if AGW were completely wrong, (which I obviously don't think is the case), there would still be substantial benefits to proceeding with controls, right?

Actually I guess I am not making myself plain.

I am not talking conspiracy. I am talking a group who's theories had some merit, but which before they were PROVEN beyond doubt, got taken and run with by a group of politicians, left wing radicals, and people who saw a way to fight against what they feared (run away corporate greed, runaway technology, etc) All of who by becoming involved radically altered the environment in which the theory would have normally been subjected to peer review. So rather than it going thorough normal processes of being proven/disproven/fact checked, it suddenly became career suicide to speak out against it. Any Scientist who might have otherwise simply said we need more data was suddenly aware that if they did not support the popular theory, unless they were funded by sources which could not be influenced by the politicians and other groups, they were likely to get unfunded. Many others, sincerely believing the theory, also possibly indulged in selective research.

Had Al Gore and other not turned AGW into the gigantic political movement it is, perhaps there would have been fewer outright supporters, and maybe Mann and the CRU would not have felt justified in "fudging" the data. However, since Mann and crew were releasing bad data, and had so much political (read funding) support behind them, too much of the debate stopped being about science, and became about beliefs.


As such it is comparable to the fight new science has against old established theories. Except in this case a new fashionable theory became far too powerful and too aligned with non-scientific forces, thus suspending the normal processes of scientific verification.

At this point, the normal scientific process should be enforced. All of the data needs to be re-examined. Every last step must be open to scrutiny, including the steps taken to remove inhomogenies, with exact explanations for why such steps were taken, and exact references given for how these steps were decided upon.

But until that is done, everything associated with AGW must be held suspect due to the influence of non-scientific factors. Same with all refuting evidence. Political and financial motivations must be eliminated from all sides and the science examined impartially.

Then, once that is done, if the conclusion remains the same, realistic steps must be taken to determine how to solve the problem. Not political grandstanding and ridiculous band-aids.

As for treating me as an idiot, apology accepted, but continual references to "the uninformed fringe" is the same as saying I don't know what I'm talking about, aka an idiot. And that is where you pretty much insulted me. I am anything but uninformed. My problem is I am far too well informed on all sides of this debate.

Trust me. I've been having this debate since my days on sci.nanotech, Slash.dot, Nano.dot, and god knows how many forums. And argued on both sides at various times.

Edited by valkyrie_ice, 12 December 2009 - 08:53 AM.

[maxwatt]

You mean like paleontologists have successfully excluded the warm-blooded dinosaur theorists, the birds-as-dinosaurs people, or the mass-extinction by asteroid people? Don't even mention continental drift: the heads of geology departments world-wide declared it nonsense. Seems to me these did not take long to get established, despite opposition from the major authorities in those fields. As for AWG, the data is incontrovertible, it's just a details that are disputed. The rhetorical technique we are seeing is to find one thing that can be pounced on, then beat it to death.

The difference between those examples and AGW is that Big Business and Government are both involved in AGW. That's a pretty lethal combination.

Big business, yes. Government as driven by business, or by the interests of elected or unelected officials, yes.....

Neither Big Business nor govt really cares about continental drift.

A good comparison would be the nutrition/medical field. There are only now beginning to be studies on low carb diets.
Ancel Keys cherry picked some data to blame cholesterol for CVD in the 60s/70s. The Cholesterol hypothesis remains conventional wisdom today, because it makes so much profit. Fancy new fat free foods, "healthy" oils, new drugs ...

Today, some companies have decided to make a buck off of global warming (hybrids, windfarms, carbon credit trading etc). Governments have decided that limiting CO2 is the right thing to do. So it is hard to fix science which has such strong political support.

Some much bigger and established companies, and oil-producing nation-states have a much bigger interest in maintaining the status-quo. The political support to oppose them comes from people who have been convinced by the science.

What climatologists are actually working on is such subjects as the influx of warm water into the Atlantic from the Indian Ocean counterbalancing the flow of fresh water from the arctic into the North Atlantic (so the "Atlantic Convector" will not shut down and make Europe and North America much colder) or how the oceans are absorbing CO2 at a much slower rate than last century, so that the atmospheric buildup is increasing faster than previously projected, or how mixing of air between different latitudes is increasing, resulting in more uniform surface temperatures north to south. Warming? It is only how fast, not if. Sea level rise? Again, how fast and how much, not if.

It is not, I think, an accident that "Climategate" surfaced just before Copenhagen, and is being used to obscure real issues. There are billions upon billions of dollars to be lost or won depending on what agreements are reached.

And no, I do not think "cap-and-trade" is an especially good idea. It is too easy to game the system, as has already been shown by the first limited treaty in Kyoto, and what the results were. False estimates of the carbon absorbed by tropical forests is just one defect in that scheme. Limiting emissions by using alternate energy sources could help, if the technologies developed are economically feasible. They can become economic drivers. China is determined to become a major payer in solar electric and in wind turbines. Don't forget Peak Oil: alternate energy sources will one day be a neessity, not a luxury. But these will likely not be enough either. We can perhaps reduce the rate of change so our technology and knowledge has a chance to catch up to the task of engineering our planet and our environment.

Technology got us into this situation. We are stuck in an uncontrolled experiment with an uncertain outcome. Maybe technology will get us out, but if it does, it will be via some as-yet unexpected breakthrough.

For CO2 limits or carbon trading to be necessary, the following questions need to be answered "yes".

1. Is the warming unprecedented ?

Unprecedented, no. But the paleontological record shows an extremely strong correlation between CO2 levels and glaciation and ocean levels.

2. Is it caused by man ?

What is known is we have been dumping huge amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, the levels have approximately doubled since the 1850's, the amounts closely match estimates of the amount produced by man, and that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. I've not seen an alternate explanation that is remotely plausible.

3. Do costs outweigh benefits ?
4. Is mitigation more expensive than adaptation ?

There has been almost no discussion on the economic issues.
The governments just jumped at the chance to implement global controls.

There has been considerable discussion of the economic issues. Governments have hardly jumped at this, they have been dragged kicking and screaming for the most part.

Also, the science is by no means settled. Most of the climate research has been based on some common data.
Demonstrating that this data has been strongly influenced by effects such as Urban Heat Island (and possibly human modification, ie fraud), would go a long way towards discrediting the AGW hypothesis.
Also, if the Medieval Warm Period was global, that means that GW is no longer unprecedented.

The Medieval Warm and the Little Ice Age that followed it were tightly coupled to sub-surface sea temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean. No such temperature fluctuations are occurring currently. This would tend to rule this out as a driver for a possible alternate explanation of current data.

Nature 460, 1113-1116 (27 August 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature08233
2,000-year-long temperature and hydrology reconstructions from the Indo-Pacific warm pool
Delia W. Oppo1, Yair Rosenthal2 & Braddock K. Linsley3

These are significant flaws in the current theory, which you can expect will be attacked.

"We are stuck in an uncontrolled experiment with an uncertain outcome."
Everything we do is uncontrolled. Including the fact that we will definitely lower growth if we implement cap-n-trade or carbon limits.
Lower growth means a overall poorer/weakened humanity, more vulnerable to things such as asteroids, unpredicted ice ages, epidemics...

Denialist talking points. Some common data, as in "Wow, that's SOME common data!"? It's more than a little, it's overwhelming. Urban Heat Island effects have been accounted for decades, and go nowhere toward explaining what is happening. If you do not think that at this time human-produced carbon dioxide is producing warming what do you think is producing it? Carbon limits will lower growth of some industries that are fighting tooth and nail to oppose any reaction to global warming. I have no doubt of the ability of free-market enterprise to find the most cost-effective ways around such imits, and lead to viable alternate energy technology that will enrich the nation that can control it.

Nature Editorial on Climategate

[rwac]

Some much bigger and established companies, and oil-producing nation-states have a much bigger interest in maintaining the status-quo. The political support to oppose them comes from people who have been convinced by the science.

There are powerful interests on both sides. So you have to double-check the data and code.

Unprecedented, no. But the paleontological record shows an extremely strong correlation between CO2 levels and glaciation and ocean levels.

... with the CO2 rise occurring after the temperature rise.

If the current temp rise is not unprecedented, that means it's hard to tell the signal from noise.

What is known is we have been dumping huge amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, the levels have approximately doubled since the 1850's, the amounts closely match estimates of the amount produced by man, and that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. I've not seen an alternate explanation that is remotely plausible.

Here's an alternate explanation for you. The sun (solar wind) has an inverse relationship with cosmic rays and thus controls cloud nucleation on earth.
But I don't have to prove that. I just have to create enough scientific doubt about AGW.

There has been considerable discussion of the economic issues. Governments have hardly jumped at this, they have been dragged kicking and screaming for the most part.

Not true. Where's the research on mitigation, and how much it might cost. I've seen maybe one paper ...

Where's the realistic studies on how much cap-and-trade will cost ?
Just remember, all government programs exceed their budgets, and this one is especially big and especially corrupt.

The Medieval Warm and the Little Ice Age that followed it were tightly coupled to sub-surface sea temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean. No such temperature fluctuations are occurring currently. This would tend to rule this out as a driver for a possible alternate explanation of current data.

If it existed and was global, that would mean that the current warming is not unprecedented.

Nature 460, 1113-1116 (27 August 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature08233
2,000-year-long temperature and hydrology reconstructions from the Indo-Pacific warm pool
Delia W. Oppo1, Yair Rosenthal2 & Braddock K. Linsley3

Denialist talking points. Some common data, as in "Wow, that's SOME common data!"? It's more than a little, it's overwhelming. Urban Heat Island effects have been accounted for decades, and go nowhere toward explaining what is happening. If you do not think that at this time human-produced carbon dioxide is producing warming what do you think is producing it? Carbon limits will lower growth of some industries that are fighting tooth and nail to oppose any reaction to global warming. I have no doubt of the ability of free-market enterprise to find the most cost-effective ways around such imits, and lead to viable alternate energy technology that will enrich the nation that can control it.

UHI effects have not been accounted for correctly. Rural temp measurements are generally flat, Urban ones aren't.
This is why we need the data. This is why climategate was so damaging.
Without releasing the data, it comes down to "trust me", not a good basis for science.

If the homogenized data is suspect, then all the research based on it is suspect too.
If the tree ring data is suspect, cherry picked, so is all the research based on that data and research.
I don't expect to be able to prove this to you, but that is how AGW will be attacked scientifically.
After all, we must make sure the science is absolutely correct, right ?

You're falling for the broken window fallacy.
If a car which used to take x units of work to produce now takes x+2 units of work, that means that cars will become more expensive, etc.
This absolutely will reduce growth.

It may enrich the country that makes it, but the world will be a poorer place overall.

Edited by rwac, 12 December 2009 - 03:34 PM.

[maxwatt]

There are powerful interests on both sides. So you have to double-check the data and code....

It's like David and Goliath. Oil and coal outspend all others by orders of magnitude.

If the current temp rise is not unprecedented, that means it's hard to tell the signal from noise.

Not unprecedented in terms of paleo-climatology. But the signal is damn clear. And what part of this do you not understand? Human emissions have doubled and will continue to increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It is being put there by humans. What the past precedents show us is increased CO2 coincides with increased warming and higher sea levels. To first posit that we cannot tell whether temperatures are increasing, then to argue that it is not caused by human action, is disingenuous.

Solar wind has been pretty thoroughly discredited as an alternate hypothesis for the present warming, as has axial tilt, orbital eccentricity and others.
Rural temperatures have not been on average flat.* This is disinformation. Over 95% of climate data is publicly available and unaffected by climate-gate.

If you've seen no studies on economic impact of cap-and-trade and other amelioration strategies, you've not been looking. Search google scholar, you'll find hundreds of studies and reports, if not thousands.

You're falling for the broken window fallacy.
If a car which used to take x units of work to produce now takes x+2 units of work, that means that cars will become more expensive, etc.
This absolutely will reduce growth.

It may enrich the country that makes it, but the world will be a poorer place overall.

Only if you assume economics is a zero-sum game. It's not. Look at how Intel and Microsoft have driven economic growth with what is essentially nothing tangible. The impact of the limited Kyoto protocols did not crimp the economies of those countries that signed on.

*There are many studies like the following discrediting the "heat island" explanation:

Geophysical Research Letters; Received 23 November 1998; accepted 22 December 1998; .
Global rural temperature trends
Thomas C. Peterson
National Climatic Data Center, NOAA/NESDIS, Asheville, NC
Kevin P. Gallo
Office of Research and Applications, NOAA/NESDIS, Washington, DC
Jay Lawrimore
National Climatic Data Center, NOAA/NESDIS, Asheville, NC
Timothy W. Owen
National Climatic Data Center, NOAA/NESDIS, Asheville, NC
Alex Huang
Atmospheric Sciences Department, University of North Carolina at Asheville, Asheville, NC
David A. McKittrick
Orkand Corporation, Asheville, NC

Using rural/urban land surface classifications derived from maps and satellite observed nighttime surface lights, global mean land surface air temperature time series were created using data from all weather observing stations in a global temperature data base and from rural stations only. The global rural temperature time series and trends are very similar to those derived from the full data set. Therefore, the well‐known global temperature time series from in situ stations is not significantly impacted by urban warming.

Citation: Peterson, T. C., K. P. Gallo, J. Lawrimore, T. W. Owen, A. Huang, and D. A. McKittrick (1999), Global rural temperature trends, Geophys. Res. Lett., 26(3), 329–332.

Edited by maxwatt, 12 December 2009 - 06:22 PM.

[rwac]

It's like David and Goliath. Oil and coal outspend all others by orders of magnitude.

In this case, it's the reverse. There's huge amounts of money dedicated to supporting AGW and very little money against it.
Plus, anyone who takes money from Oil will be ignored and called a shill.

Not unprecedented in terms of paleo-climatology. But the signal is damn clear. And what part of this do you not understand? Human emissions have doubled and will continue to increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It is being put there by humans. What the past precedents show us is increased CO2 coincides with increased warming and higher sea levels. To first posit that we cannot tell whether temperatures are increasing, then to argue that it is not caused by human action, is disingenuous.

We disagree. That's the point the skeptics are trying to make. Release the data/code so we can confirm/rebut the methodology.

Solar wind has been pretty thoroughly discredited as an alternate hypothesis for the present warming, as has axial tilt, orbital eccentricity and others.
Rural temperatures have not been on average flat. This is disinformation. Over 95% ofclimate data is publicly available and unaffected by climate-gate.

No, it hasn't. They've only discussed effects from direct solar radiation. No discussion of indirect solar effects, or for the matter, the effects of sunspots on global temps.

As to the temperature stations, I'll point you to the same document I point niner to.
http://wattsupwithth...rt_spring09.pdf

There are a lot of problems with climate science, including the tendency to hide the raw data and code.

Only if you assume economics is a zero-sum game. It's not. Look at how Intel and Microsoft have driven economic growth with what is essentially nothing tangible. The impact of the limited Kyoto protocols did not crimp the economies of those countries that signed on.

Things drive economic growth when they improve efficiency and reduce costs. Reduce efficiency and increase costs, and we have the reverse effect. The pie will become smaller even as some groups get larger pieces of the pie.

Edited by rwac, 12 December 2009 - 06:46 PM.

[niner]

As for treating me as an idiot, apology accepted, but continual references to "the uninformed fringe" is the same as saying I don't know what I'm talking about, aka an idiot. And that is where you pretty much insulted me. I am anything but uninformed. My problem is I am far too well informed on all sides of this debate.

This is what I said:

That warming has occurred is only under debate on the (largely uninformed) fringes. I agree that the anthropogenic part of it is less certain, but only slightly so.

Since you are not denying that warming has occurred, and I know that, isn't it clear that I wasn't referring to you when I said "(largely uninformed) fringes"? If it wasn't clear, I'm sorry that it came across that way; I didn't mean to make you feel bad.

[SiliconAnimation]

I'm actually surprised no one has started a topic on this.

Seems like the leaked emails/data are pretty damning to the IPCC etc.
Some people involved are Michael Mann, Phil Jones, John Holdren, etc

Thoughts ?

Edit:fixed search link.

Climategate: give us your money, or we'll chop our trees down, pollute our rivers and fire up the unfiltered coal plants.

Seriously though, aren't these countries that want our money dumping tons of toxins into the soil, lakes, streams and oceans? Aren't they the one's with the huge populations killing off all the whales and other sea life? They should be paying Europe, America and Mexico for being so polluted. Instead Copenhagan is fixated on the atmosphere so they can give their little hearts out by spending taxpayer money.

Edited by SiliconAnimation, 13 December 2009 - 12:14 AM.

[maxwatt]

I'm actually surprised no one has started a topic on this.

Seems like the leaked emails/data are pretty damning to the IPCC etc.
Some people involved are Michael Mann, Phil Jones, John Holdren, etc

Thoughts ?

Edit:fixed search link.

Climategate: give us your money, or we'll chop our trees down, pollute our rivers and fire up the unfiltered coal plants.

Seriously though, aren't these countries that want our money dumping tons of toxins into the soil, lakes, streams and oceans? Aren't they the one's with the huge populations killing off all the whales and other sea life? They should be paying Europe, America and Mexico for being so polluted. Instead Copenhagan is fixated on the atmosphere so they can give their little hearts out by spending taxpayer money.

Right. We don't owe them anything, it's their fault they're so backward they can't look out for themselves.

[valkyrie_ice]

As for treating me as an idiot, apology accepted, but continual references to "the uninformed fringe" is the same as saying I don't know what I'm talking about, aka an idiot. And that is where you pretty much insulted me. I am anything but uninformed. My problem is I am far too well informed on all sides of this debate.

This is what I said:

That warming has occurred is only under debate on the (largely uninformed) fringes. I agree that the anthropogenic part of it is less certain, but only slightly so.

Since you are not denying that warming has occurred, and I know that, isn't it clear that I wasn't referring to you when I said "(largely uninformed) fringes"? If it wasn't clear, I'm sorry that it came across that way; I didn't mean to make you feel bad.

Okay, hun, thank you for the clarification. : )

[valkyrie_ice]

[maxwatt]

I'm actually surprised no one has started a topic on this.

Seems like the leaked emails/data are pretty damning to the IPCC etc.
Some people involved are Michael Mann, Phil Jones, John Holdren, etc

Thoughts ?

Edit:fixed search link.

Climategate: give us your money, or we'll chop our trees down, pollute our rivers and fire up the unfiltered coal plants.

Seriously though, aren't these countries that want our money dumping tons of toxins into the soil, lakes, streams and oceans? Aren't they the one's with the huge populations killing off all the whales and other sea life? They should be paying Europe, America and Mexico for being so polluted. Instead Copenhagan is fixated on the atmosphere so they can give their little hearts out by spending taxpayer money.

Right. We don't owe them anything, it's their fault they're so backward they can't look out for themselves.

FWIW, the European Union, Japan and Australia joined the U.S. in criticizing a draft global warming pact that says major developing nations must rein in greenhouse gases, but only if they have outside financing. They want to require developing nations to limit emissions, with or without financial help.

[maxwatt]

(youtube link to video on rex murphy)

James Hoggan on Rex Murphy (www.desmogblog.com)

...[Now] Murphy turns to an error-riddled but widely-circulated October report written by Paul Hudson, a BBC weatherman with no scientific credentials or expertise.

Hudson's report regurgitates the same old arguments that fossil-fuel-industry front groups have been feeding us for years in an effort to sustain the illusion that the jury is still out on global warming.

Clearly, Murphy is grasping at straws. "This is, or may be, the church of global warming's Galileo moment -- when observation of what is happening trumps the gloomy choir of consensus," he writes.

I almost feel bad for the guy.

Here we have a man who has quite literally yammered himself into a corner. As the nation [Canada] and the world finally begin to grapple with the reality of our situation and the hard work and new opportunities that lie ahead, Murphy has left himself no dignified exit strategy.

And so, like a cornered raccoon, he resorts to officious spitting and hissing about climate zealots, heresies, and piety.

Like his past work along these lines, the prose is all very arch and clever. But isn't it ironic that to challenge science, Murphy resorts to painting its advocates as tar-and-brimstone-spiting preachers ruling over a zombie-eyed flock?

The truth is, it is not the climate scientists and green-economy advocates like Gore and now Ignatieff who are the blinkered fanatics screaming from the pulpit.

It is the extreme free-market libertarians, like Rex Murphy.

[valkyrie_ice]

(youtube link to video on rex murphy)

James Hoggan on Rex Murphy (www.desmogblog.com)

...[Now] Murphy turns to an error-riddled but widely-circulated October report written by Paul Hudson, a BBC weatherman with no scientific credentials or expertise.

Ah yes, the "He may know climatology, but since he doesn't agree with the "consensus" he's not legitimate" defense.

Sorry. Not buying it. Denial of the credentials and dismissal of extremely intelligent and well educated people who have taken the time to learn the science and are still unconvinced simply because they are not a member of the "brotherhood of the true faith" does not a valid defense make.

It is however a wonderful attempt to supplant logic and reason with appeals to "higher authority" like any good religion.

[maxwatt]

(youtube link to video on rex murphy)

James Hoggan on Rex Murphy (www.desmogblog.com)

...[Now] Murphy turns to an error-riddled but widely-circulated October report written by Paul Hudson, a BBC weatherman with no scientific credentials or expertise.

Ah yes, the "He may know climatology, but since he doesn't agree with the "consensus" he's not legitimate" defense.

Sorry. Not buying it. Denial of the credentials and dismissal of extremely intelligent and well educated people who have taken the time to learn the science and are still unconvinced simply because they are not a member of the "brotherhood of the true faith" does not a valid defense make.

It is however a wonderful attempt to supplant logic and reason with appeals to "higher authority" like any good religion.

I think he was saying that he [Paul Hudson] doesn't know climatology. He's a weatherman. Actually, in England, they are called weather-presenters.

[valkyrie_ice]

(youtube link to video on rex murphy)

James Hoggan on Rex Murphy (www.desmogblog.com)

...[Now] Murphy turns to an error-riddled but widely-circulated October report written by Paul Hudson, a BBC weatherman with no scientific credentials or expertise.

Ah yes, the "He may know climatology, but since he doesn't agree with the "consensus" he's not legitimate" defense.

Sorry. Not buying it. Denial of the credentials and dismissal of extremely intelligent and well educated people who have taken the time to learn the science and are still unconvinced simply because they are not a member of the "brotherhood of the true faith" does not a valid defense make.

It is however a wonderful attempt to supplant logic and reason with appeals to "higher authority" like any good religion.

I think he was saying that he [Paul Hudson] doesn't know climatology. He's a weatherman. Actually, in England, they are called weather-presenters.

So a weatherman, who has to study climatology and meteorology and earn a degree, is unqualified to talk about climate? Funny. I would have thought the exact opposite.

Mind? You're a weatherman. Your opinion?

[Connor MacLeod]

Some much bigger and established companies, and oil-producing nation-states have a much bigger interest in maintaining the status-quo. The political support to oppose them comes from people who have been convinced by the science.

There are powerful interests on both sides. So you have to double-check the data and code.

Unprecedented, no. But the paleontological record shows an extremely strong correlation between CO2 levels and glaciation and ocean levels.

... with the CO2 rise occurring after the temperature rise.

If the current temp rise is not unprecedented, that means it's hard to tell the signal from noise.

I think you mean that it is difficult to distinguish correlation from causation. This is always a problem with observational studies, but in the case of climate modeling this difficulty appears to me to be nearly insurmountable.

[maxwatt]

Some much bigger and established companies, and oil-producing nation-states have a much bigger interest in maintaining the status-quo. The political support to oppose them comes from people who have been convinced by the science.

There are powerful interests on both sides. So you have to double-check the data and code.

Unprecedented, no. But the paleontological record shows an extremely strong correlation between CO2 levels and glaciation and ocean levels.

... with the CO2 rise occurring after the temperature rise.

If the current temp rise is not unprecedented, that means it's hard to tell the signal from noise.

I think you mean that it is difficult to distinguish correlation from causation. This is always a problem with observational studies, but in the case of climate modeling this difficulty appears to me to be nearly insurmountable.

The "difficulty" means that climate change will go through two stages: too soon to tell, and two late to do anything about it.
It is compounded by the fact that some powerful interests are putting a lot of resources into muddying the waters. When I look at it, I ask the basic political question: "Cui bono?" - Who benefits?

On the one side we have the majority of scientists and institutions involved in climatology; influential, but not all that powerful. They are joined by a bunch of smug, liberal do-gooders, the sort whose habitual smug self-righteousness I find repelling.

On the other side we have the fossil fuel people, which includes not only the largest corporations in the world, such as Exxon. But more tellingly, we have foreign governments, most not constrained by the inefficiencies of democracy: Saudi Arabia, Russia, et al. Their interest is to wring every last bit of profit from the oil in their territory. If you think their spy agencies are not getting involved, think again.

Do you remember the ads Exxon funded through the Enterprise Institute in 2006? The tagline was "Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution, we call it life." You can't make this stuff up. That was run by the same people who brought us two decades of pro-tobacco propaganda. It was laughed off the air and out of print in a mercifully short time. Now they've turned to more effective agents than Madison Avenue. The theft of 160 meg of data and subsequent furor is, I believe, the result.

You can posit the theft was the act of a whistle-blower, as breaking into such a secure facility is not really possible. True, no electronic trace was left of electronic break-in, but social engineering is even more likely: how much do they pay janitors? Bribery would suffice too. A little training an turn him loose with a USB thumb drive. But the thieves soon "hacked the server of the RealClimate website on 17 November and uploaded a copy of the stolen files. According to Gavin Schmidt of RealClimate, "At around 6.20am (EST) Nov 17th, somebody hacked into the RC server from an IP address associated with a computer somewhere in Turkey, disabled access from the legitimate users, and uploaded a file FOIA.zip to our server." A link to the file on the RealClimate server was posted from a Russian IP address to the Climate Audit blog at 7.24 am (EST) with the comment "A miracle just happened". The hack was discovered by Schmidt only a couple of minutes after it had occurred. He temporarily shut down the website and deleted the uploaded file. RealClimate notified the University of East Anglia of the incident.
On 19 November the files were uploaded to a server in Tomsk before being copied to numerous locations across the Internet. An anonymous statement, posted from a Saudi Arabian IP address to the climate-sceptic blog The Air Vent." (My source is Wikipedia, which does provide a documented account; possible bias is addressed in their linked "Talk" page.)

Frankly, the sophistication of the hack job that was exposed makes me believe this is a well funded and coordinated effort. Passion only goes so far. Who is funding it? Cui bono.

It goes further. There are now implied death threats against climatologists world-wide. This is criminal, something that cannot be said of the CRU scientists. (No data was actually destroyed, no paper's publication actually prevented.) This no doubt is intended to have a chilling effect on the climate researchers, which is not really an effective way to counter global warming.

I'll say it again: the volume of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution is known, and has doubled the percentage in the earth's atmosphere in that time. The amount continues to increase. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the effects is known, and the magnitude of the increased heat retention on our planet as a result is also known. The details of exactly how this will affect local areas of our planet may remain to be determined, but overall it has to get hotter on top of any natural cycles. You can ignore the laws of physics only at your own peril.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'll say it again: the volume of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution is known, and has doubled the percentage in the earth's atmosphere in that time. The amount continues to increase. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the effects is known, and the magnitude of the increased heat retention on our planet as a result is also known.

It is not known. No one knows how to place any sort of reasonable confidence intervals around predictions of future global temperature as a function of atmospheric C02 levels. Worse than this, outside of toy models, we don't even know how to fit these models to historical data: the number of parameters is too large, and each evaluation of the model at a particular set of parameter values amounts to solving a hugely complex system of partial differential equation -- a daunting task for even the fastest supercomputers. It's like finding a needle in a haystack where each poke into the haystack requires a week.

[maxwatt]

I'll say it again: the volume of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution is known, and has doubled the percentage in the earth's atmosphere in that time. The amount continues to increase. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the effects is known, and the magnitude of the increased heat retention on our planet as a result is also known.

It is not known. No one knows how to place any sort of reasonable confidence intervals around predictions of future global temperature as a function of atmospheric C02 levels. Worse than this, outside of toy models, we don't even know how to fit these models to historical data: the number of parameters is too large, and each evaluation of the model at a particular set of parameter values amounts to solving a hugely complex system of partial differential equation -- a daunting task for even the fastest supercomputers. It's like finding a needle in a haystack where each poke into the haystack requires a week.

True, the effect on surface temperature is not predictable, but the fact of an increase in heat input from the sun is. Albedo increases are unlikely to counterbalance it. With a complex system, a dramatic change in one input will have chaotic effects, and not likely leave things in a stable state. Paleoclimatology certainly suggests a warming effect with increased CO2.

[SiliconAnimation]

I'm actually surprised no one has started a topic on this.

Seems like the leaked emails/data are pretty damning to the IPCC etc.
Some people involved are Michael Mann, Phil Jones, John Holdren, etc

Thoughts ?

Edit:fixed search link.

Climategate: give us your money, or we'll chop our trees down, pollute our rivers and fire up the unfiltered coal plants.

Seriously though, aren't these countries that want our money dumping tons of toxins into the soil, lakes, streams and oceans? Aren't they the one's with the huge populations killing off all the whales and other sea life? They should be paying Europe, America and Mexico for being so polluted. Instead Copenhagan is fixated on the atmosphere so they can give their little hearts out by spending taxpayer money.

Right. We don't owe them anything, it's their fault they're so backward they can't look out for themselves.

I think that's a little harsh. I'd like to see some Harvard grads hired to go down and help out the 3rd world manage their industries better. Dumping billions of taxpayer money into foreign countries though is just irresponsible and it will set a precedent of rewarding poor industrial technologies with benefits.

[rwac]

Climategate isn't done yet.

Russia affected by Climategate

A discussion of the November 2009 Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident, referred to by some sources as "Climategate," continues against the backdrop of the abortive UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) discussing alternative agreements to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that aimed to combat global warming.

The incident involved an e-mail server used by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, East England. Unknown persons stole and anonymously disseminated thousands of e-mails and other documents dealing with the global-warming issue made over the course of 13 years.

Controversy arose after various allegations were made including that climate scientists colluded to withhold scientific evidence and manipulated data to make the case for global warming appear stronger than it is.

Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory.

Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country's territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports.

Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

The HadCRUT database includes specific stations providing incomplete data and highlighting the global-warming process, rather than stations facilitating uninterrupted observations.

On the whole, climatologists use the incomplete findings of meteorological stations far more often than those providing complete observations.

IEA analysts say climatologists use the data of stations located in large populated centers that are influenced by the urban-warming effect more frequently than the correct data of remote stations.

The scale of global warming was exaggerated due to temperature distortions for Russia accounting for 12.5% of the world's land mass. The IEA said it was necessary to recalculate all global-temperature data in order to assess the scale of such exaggeration.

Global-temperature data will have to be modified if similar climate-date procedures have been used from other national data because the calculations used by COP15 analysts, including financial calculations, are based on HadCRUT research.

RIA Novosti is not responsible for the content of outside sources.

http://en.rian.ru/pa.../157260660.html

[maxwatt]

Climategate isn't done yet.
(snip -- see above post for content.)

The IEA is an economic research institute without special expertise in climatology. Their research has all been devoted to economic policy . They do not state the source of their funding. Russia has a major stake in keeping oil consumption high, and has an economic stake in in this. There are indications that the spread of the stolen documents, if not the break-in itself, is being done by Russian intelligence agencies. This appears to me another round in their fight to keep anything from coming out of Copenhagen that would reduce oil consumption.

The director of the IEA is Andrey Nikolayevich Illarionov, a Russian libertarian economist and former economic policy advisor to the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. He currently works as a senior fellow in the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC.

This is hardly a dispassionate scientific source.

See this news report.

From the IEA website:

Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) was founded in 1994 as an independent, non-governmental, non-political and non-commercial organization.

IEA's main objectives are:

fostering development of economic and social sciences
studying Russian and foreign experience of solving problems of economic policy, market economy and ecomnomic reform
hold consultations concerning economic and social policy with the Russian government bodies and NGOs
and publish economic research materials
IEA focuses on such areas as mutual influence of economic growth, economic and political freedom .
Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) was founded in 1994 as an independent, non-governmental, non-political and non-commercial organization.

IEA's main objectives are:

fostering development of economic and social sciences
studying Russian and foreign experience of solving problems of economic policy, market economy and ecomnomic reform
hold consultations concerning economic and social policy with the Russian government bodies and NGOs
and publish economic research materials
IEA focuses on such areas as mutual influence of economic growth, economic and political freedom .

Edited by maxwatt, 17 December 2009 - 05:15 AM.