SUSPECT SCIENCE?: The theft of emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has caused some to question the findings of climate scientists.
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With all the "hot air" surrounding climate change discussions, none has been hotter in recent weeks than that spewed over a trove of stolen e-mails and computer code from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in England. Longstanding contrarians, such as Sen. James Inhofe (R–Okla.), who famously dubbed climate change a "hoax" in a 2003 speech, has pointed to the stolen e-mails as information that overturns the scientific evidence for global warming and called on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson to halt any development of regulation of greenhouse gases pending his investigation into the e-mails. And recent polls have found that fewer Americans today than just two years ago believe that greenhouse gases will cause average temperatures to increase—a drop from 71 percent to 51 percent.
Yet, Arctic sea ice continues to dwindle—as do glaciers across the globe; average temperatures have increased by 0.7 degree Celsius in the past century and the last decade is the warmest in the instrumental record; spring has sprung forward, affecting everything from flower blossoms to animal migrations; and the concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases continue to rise, reaching 387 parts per million in 2009, a rise of 30 percent since 1750.
Nor has the fundamental physics of the greenhouse effect changed: CO2 in the atmosphere continues to trap heat that would otherwise slip into space, as was established by Irish scientist John Tyndall in 1859. "There is a natural greenhouse effect, that's what keeps the planet livable," noted climate modeler Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) during a Friday conference call with reporters organized by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. "Without it, we'd be 33 degrees Celsius colder than we are. That's been known for hundreds of years."
He added: "We're getting up to the point where the total amount of forcing from these greenhouse gases is equivalent to the sun brightening about one percent. That's a very big number indeed."
In fact, nothing in the stolen e-mails or computer code undermines in any way the scientific consensus—which exists among scientific publications as well as scientists—that climate change is happening and humans are the cause. "There is a robust consensus that humans are altering the atmosphere and warming the planet," said meteorologist Michael Mann of The Pennsylvania State University, who also participated in the conference call and was among the scientists whose e-mails have been leaked. "Further increases in greenhouse gases will lead to increasingly greater disruption."
Some of the kerfuffle rests on a misreading of the e-mails' wording. For example, the word "trick" in one message, which has been cited as evidence that a conspiracy is afoot, is actually being used to describe a mathematical approach to reconciling observed temperatures with stand-in data inferred from tree ring measurements.
The scientists on the conference call, including atmospheric scientist Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University, also addressed other parts of the content of the stolen e-mails, including some that griped about particular journals (Climate Research) or editors (at Geophysical Research Letters). "It's important to understand what peer review really is," Mann noted. "It's not a license for anybody to publish."
In essence, he argued, in both cases, some papers that "did not make a credible case to support the conclusions that were reached" were being published. As a result, climate scientists were complaining, among themselves, about the quality of the journals.
"Scientists care very much about the quality of the journals they publish in," Schmidt noted. "If a journal is perceived to have lax reviewing standards, then you are tarred with the same brush if you publish in that journal. Your work becomes devalued."
And ultimately, even those papers specifically challenged in the e-mails (one of which featured a vow to "keep [these papers] out [of the IPCC report] somehow—even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is") made it into the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent report.
As for charges that the CRU database is corrupt or compromised such that its results cannot be trusted, Schmidt noted that a number of other databases with climate records supporting global warming exist throughout the world—including NASA's GISS, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center and even the IPCC, all of which provide access to the raw data. Further, many of the same contrarians arguing that global warming has stopped in recent years are relying on the same CRU record that they are now disparaging as untrustworthy.
"Most of the data have been freely available for decades," Oppenheimer added. "There's been plenty of opportunity for people to reach a different conclusion."
In fact, an independent effort to dispel global warming findings by using the NASA data and discarding certain parts of it ultimately also revealed an increase in average temperatures over time. And scientists have become more open as well over the course of the past decade. (Many of the e-mails are from the 1990s.) "We published a paper in Science last week where we uploaded 30 megabytes of supplementary information to the Web site," Mann said. "So anyone who read the paper had access to every piece of raw data and every piece of code we used to do the analysis."
The stolen e-mails may ultimately provide a sociological window into the workings of the scientific community. "This is a record of how science is actually done," Schmidt noted. "They'll see that scientists are human and how science progresses despite human failings. They'll see why science as an enterprise works despite the fact that scientists aren't perfect."
The one piece of stolen information that all agreed showed at least a "lapse in judgment" was CRU Director Phil Jones's e-mail asking Mann specifically to delete any correspondence related to "AR4," otherwise known as the report from the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "Frankly, the sending of that e-mail demonstrated unfortunate judgment on the part of the scientist who sent it," Mann said. "To my knowledge, no one acted on that request. I did not delete any e-mails." The continuing existence of the e-mail itself would seem to support Mann's contention, although his response at the time was to agree to contact a fellow scientist "Gene," as requested by Jones.
Minimal impact is expected from the stolen e-mails at the upcoming Copenhagen climate conference, although a negotiator from Saudi Arabia has already pledged to use them to complicate the process of negotiating an international agreement to combat climate change. But they could play a role in pending U.S. legislation, particularly in the Senate where a climate bill is likely to be debated next spring. "Those opposing action will throw everything including the kitchen sink into the debate," Oppenheimer said. "Do I think it will have a significant effect on the judgment of lawmakers or public opinion? No, I don't, but you never know with these things."
And it might be that the recent polls are simply uncovering a hardening partisan divide: 73 percent of Democrats accepted that greenhouse gases lead to global warming whereas only 28 percent of Republicans agreed, in a poll conducted by Harris Interactive that matches similar findings from The Pew Research Center. A decline among Independents sharing that view of anthropogenic climate change seems to be largely driven by those who "lean Republican," according to Harris.
As always, weather might also be playing a role: This past October was among the coolest on record in the continental U.S., which shows that when it comes to public understanding of global climate change, the local weather might be skewing the results. And just as glacier levels are raising sea levels around the globe, scandals like this continue to raise confusion.
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292 Comments
Add CommentThe problem lies with whose lively hood depends on these types of assertions and clearly has some believers even in the face of reality. Even the BBC has noted that the earths
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistemperature has not increased in the last ten years ( What happened to Global warming?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm ) and that that the inability of the models used to predict catastrophic future warmings inability to even track this
gives serious doubts.
Does this mean we should not pay attention and mitigate mans impact on the environment?
Of course not. We have serious air pollution problems where particulates, Sox, NOx,
aerosols are demonstrably killing our local citizens. In fact, NASA has noted
(http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_aerosols.html ) that these have caused much of the atmospheric warming in the Arctic since 1976 which Big Green keeps
trumpeting. Hence, it is imperative we focus our attention and resources on the real problem of air pollution and not use up our resources chasing the carbon ghost.
Let's add the opinion from the most influential and respected scientific journal (sorry SciAm, but it's not you!)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
This article did not address a single aspect of climategate. It hopes that the reader is so stupid as to believe that "trick" means something else that non-scientists can't comprehend. We all know what a trick is. You don't have to be a scientist to know when you are being lied to. If tree ring data was unreliable since 1960, why would it be reliable before 1960. The article ignores that "peer review" was redefined. Explain that one away, will you. Or how these "scientists" were going to beat up someone who disagreed with them. Very mature; very scientific. There was a consensus 30 years ago that there was "global cooling" by much more respected scientists like Carl Sagan that turned out to be false. Science is not supposed to be a religion. It is not based on faith or hope. Global Warming has become a cult, not a science. Nowhere is this more evident than in how the mainstream media have ignored this story for 2 weeks and how Scientists have resorted to the worst form of defensive group think.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe main problem comes from those whose lively hood depends, or is enhanced, on these types of assertions. Even the BBC has noted that the earth’s temperature has not increased in the last ten years (“What happened to Global warming?”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm ) and that that the inability of the models used to predict catastrophic future warming’s inability to even track this
gives serious doubts.
Does this mean we should not pay attention and mitigate man’s impact on the environment? Of course not. We have serious air pollution problems where particulates, Sox, NOx,
aerosols are demonstrably killing our local citizens. In fact, NASA has noted
(http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_aerosols.html ) that these have caused much of the atmospheric warming in the Arctic since 1976 which Big Green keeps
trumpeting. Hence, it is imperative we focus our attention on the real problem of air pollution and not use up our resources chasing the carbon ghost.
I'd like to add the opinion from the most influential scientific journal, Nature (sorry, SciAm, it's not you):
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
This is not about wording in emails, this is about what was found in the code and data. All the emails show is the suborning of the peer review process and efforts to avoid legal FOIA requests.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11723
Climategate confirms the statistical data presented in the Wegman report on the incestuous relationship among the authors and reviewers who have formed this "consensus" on GW. It also confirms that they passionately believe in GW and will do what it takes to torture the data if needed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Nature article is interesting, but flawed. It quotes computer models and says if you remove CO2 it won't explain things. As any of us know who have developed complex computer models we can get pretty much whatever we want by adjusting coeffients deep in the bowels of the large computer progam. Also, if you have not really capured all the phenomona (surely the case here with global scale climate), then messing with one or two parameters is meaningless in the real world. As people in the modelling and programming world say, "garbage in garbage out".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis climate-gate thing came as no surprise to me. As a scientist (Biochemistry), it is not enough to provide correlations and use them to claim proof of something. I would agree that there are correlations between the increases in global temperatures and increases in industrialization; however, that is not enough to PROVE anthropogenic causes. In science, when there has not been logical proof of a scientific model, there are always competing sides of the argument. This can be both good and bad. It is good in that it gives both sides more ambition to outwork the other side, but it also breeds cronyism and reluctance to see the good points made by the other side. I believe this is what has happened in the science of climate change. In addition, I must say that when receiving and sending emails with my peers, there is never a sense of us against them. In my field, I have not seen anything other than professionalism in our emailing habits. The emailing practices seen in the leaked emails are not common all scientific disciplines. My ultimate opinion is that there is no proof of anthropogenic climate change. There are striking correlations between temperature increases and greenhouse gases, and temperatures have indeed been rising (antarctic ice melting, glacial melting, and global temperature data). Does this mean that we should be using fear tactics to scare the populous into submitting to our will? No! Should we as a country try to be a positive role model to other countries by investing in renewable energy, better infrastructure, and emissions reduction strategies? YES! We don't have proof that human carbon emissions are directly causing warming, but the correlations are striking enough, in mind, to say "why not try to reduce our emissions just in case?" If it does not stop warming, then are we really all that much worse off?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou obviously have not studied "the trick".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMann and Jones deleted tree ring data that should have been shown. Then they replaced tree ring padding with the modern temperature record. Both "cherry picking".
See the detailed explanations in:
Mike's hiding the decline trick
“A good way to deal with a problem”
http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/i-only-show-the-series/
Still hiding the decline
http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/still-hiding-the-decline/
The Trick
http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/the-trick/
Replicating the trick diagram
http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/replicating-the-trick-diagram/
Climate science needs to be restored to objective transparency, not withholding data, hiding evidence and corrupting peer review. It is sad to see SciAm now complicit in ClimateGate rather than vigorously upholding true science.
I still want to see the laboratory experiment publication showing CO2 levels influence ambient temperatures. This question has always been avoided.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, scientists measured CO2 levels from Mt. Redoudt at 10,000 tons/day during the last eruption. How in the heck are you going to stop that?
When the relation between CO2 and temperatures were recently restudied, the data came from Hawaii about 2 miles from the active flowing volcano. Hmmm, Volcanoes produce large quantities of CO2. Hmmmm, lava is extremely hot. No bias there……..
Specific heat capacity water – 4.187 kJ/kgK
Specific heat capacity water vapor – 1.996 kJ/kgK
Specific heat capacity carbon dioxide at 300 (80 degrees F) kelvin – 0.846 kJ/kgK
Atmospheric concentration
Water vapor – 4% in upper atmosphere to 40% near the surface
CO2 – 0.036%
CO2 has been shown NOT to redirect energy back to the Earth’s Surface.
So, what’s up with these numbers
I still want to see the laboratory experiment publication showing CO2 levels influence ambient temperatures. This question has always been avoided.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, scientists measured CO2 levels from Mt. Redoudt at 10,000 tons/day during the last eruption. How in the heck are you going to stop that?
When the relation between CO2 and temperatures were recently restudied, the data came from Hawaii about 2 miles from the active flowing volcano. Hmmm, Volcanoes produce large quantities of CO2. Hmmmm, lava is extremely hot. No bias there……..
Specific heat capacity water – 4.187 kJ/kgK
Specific heat capacity water vapor – 1.996 kJ/kgK
Specific heat capacity carbon dioxide at 300 (80 degrees F) kelvin – 0.846 kJ/kgK
Atmospheric concentration
Water vapor – 4% in upper atmosphere to 40% near the surface
CO2 – 0.036%
CO2 has been shown NOT to redirect energy back to the Earth’s Surface.
So, what’s up with these numbers
The climate change industry was born from the ashes of the debunked hysteria of Paul Ehrlich, et. al. 70's - the notion that industry was destroying humanity (now it's all life on the planet). Fear is the lowest common denominator when it comes to human motivation and Climate Change is the Holy Grail of fear mongering. Oh, there's probably some elements of validity to the science of it, but it's being used politically to achieve political goals. I stand with Freeman Dyson on this one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe "trick" here was a mathematical one. in reality, mathematicians really do use the word "trick" all of the time. we use it in the literature, we use it in lectures and we use it when corresponding with each other. it really does mean "a clever and often time saving approach".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissome examples of common methods that are often referred to as "tricks" include:
1) adding and subtracting by the same number, ie x = x + y - y. this trick can be incredibly useful in many situations.
2) multiplying by x/x. this trick is used heavily in manipulating fractions.
3) the method of partial fractions is often presented as a "trick".
4) the proof that the square root of two is irrational depends on a trick.
5) the definition of a derivative is essentially a trick.
6) changing the index of summation is a trick.
7) there are many tricks used in integration.
8) cantor's diagonal argument is generally introduced as a trick.
i could go on and on.
it's even common for mathematicians to present the following hierarchy of methods:
1) if a method is used once, it is a trick.
2) if a method is used twice, it is a useful trick.
3) if a method is used three times, it is a rule.
everybody that's ever taken a second year math course has seen the above hierarchy. it's supposed to be comical.
the "trick" here was a mathematical one. in reality, mathematicians really do use the word "trick" all of the time. we use it in the literature, we use it in lectures and we use it when corresponding with each other. it really does mean "a clever and often time saving approach".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissome examples of common methods that are often referred to as "tricks" include:
1) adding and subtracting by the same number, ie x = x + y - y. this trick can be incredibly useful in many situations.
2) multiplying by x/x. this trick is used heavily in manipulating fractions.
3) the method of partial fractions is often presented as a "trick".
4) the proof that the square root of two is irrational depends on a trick.
5) the definition of a derivative is essentially a trick.
6) changing the index of summation is a trick.
7) there are many tricks used in integration.
8) cantor's diagonal argument is generally introduced as a trick.
i could go on and on.
it's even common for mathematicians to present the following hierarchy of methods:
1) if a method is used once, it is a trick.
2) if a method is used twice, it is a useful trick.
3) if a method is used three times, it is a rule.
everybody that's ever taken a second year math course has seen the above hierarchy. it's supposed to be comical.
AGW is a load of codswallop. Same hysteria we heard about the coming "ice age" in the '70s by the same charlatans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCalling this "science" by a Scientific American is a travesty and shows how far group think and political correctness permeates society.
Hide the decline is not simply about a deceptive elimination of some inconvenient data. It's an attempt to conceal the fact that tree ring proxies, and possibly ice core proxies as well, may not viable for the intended purpose of establishing a reliable long term climate database.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese proxies cannot be correlated to real temperatures.
"...nothing in the stolen e-mails or computer code undermines in any way the scientific consensus..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCould you be any more intellectually dishonest? If they're peer reviewing each other in order to reach a "consensus", and showed a full willingness to do whatever they could to have others "ousted", and otherwise kept out of the "peer review" process, then the entire notion of a consensus fails. Flat on its nasty little hotheaded political face.
Consensus? Says who? Those who believe? I don't see any real scientific polls taken of all the scientists, and qualifying what they are, and EXACTLY what they're agreeing on. What I do see is a TON of very unscientific propaganda, with LEAPS of logic to get the impression or appearance of a consensus.
The "science" of that so-called "consensus" is HARDLY settled. Time to wake up.
"Even the BBC has noted that the earths
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistemperature has not increased in the last ten years ( What happened to Global warming?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm )"
this article is widely cited, but it's not very well written. we've actually seen an increase in global temperatures of 0.19 degrees over the last decade, which is a higher rate of change than we saw in the 1990s. 1998 was an especially warm year because the effects of el nino exaggerated the effects of climate change, but it still wasn't the warmest year on record. 2005 was the warmest year on record. several of the warmest years on record have been in the last ten, including this year. not only is the temperature still increasing, the rate at which it's increasing continues to accelerate.
now, it's not a monotonic increase and nobody ever suggested it would be, although some graphs may have presented it that way because it's still impossible to predict the nuances and fluctuations that occur with any sort of long term accuracy. if you're trying to predict temperatures twenty years in the future, you have no choice but to either make up fluctuations out of thin air or provide the simplifying assumption that the increase is monotonic, even though you know it probably won't be.
read this:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
it's more accurate. 2009 is not yet on the graph, but it's expected to be a tad warmer than 2008.
I'm a scientist, a Fellow of the AAAS. It pains me to see the Scientific American magazine try to gainsay the fraud that underlies the climate-changers. In fact, they do not have a single statistician among them--and the arguments are statistical in nature. What a crock.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere's a typo on the headline for this article. The quotation marks should be around the word "scientists" .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"AGW is a load of codswallop. Same hysteria we heard about the coming "ice age" in the '70s by the same charlatans."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthere was essentially one article in the 70s about global cooling.
read this:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/
and especially this:
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-pdf&file=i1520-0477-89-9-1325.pdf
dgkfkhjfhkfhka said "the "trick" here was a mathematical one"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere is backup for that statement? To me, the "trick" was just as the common meaning of the word indicates - a slight of hand to fool someone. In Mann's case, he simply cherry picked his data - yes, a neat "trick", but surely not in the mathematical sense as you suggest - other than in the sense the data was manipulated to achieve a desired, preordained result.
In any event, Climategate has exposed the inner workings of these so-called scientists - exposing the pettiness, the obfuscation, the manipulation and the criminal (yes, criminal) failure to provide data as requested under the FOIA. If these were bankers or businessmen, they'd be charge under RICO for racketeering and corruption. But as "scientists", they are held to a much lower standard? Talk about absurd!
If the "science" is settled, why the need to delete emails, to fail to provide every ounce of data, to be as clean as the driven snow? Well, it doesn't take a genius (or a "scientist") to realize what is really going on - ie using doctored data by jokers who call themselves "scientists" but are little more than petty, conniving charlatans with their hands out for govt grants to fund pointless (but never ending) global warming (well, now that the Earth isn't warming, it's now "climate change") studies.
Absent seeing cuddly Polar Bears floating by my Caribbean ocean front hillside property, I'll remain a "denier".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust saw this comment on the Climate Modeling code, just an FYI:
“I’ve been a computer programmer for 40 years. If these guys producing data are writing scripts and fortran code that can’t even figure out if they’ve read all the data in a file and even which of 2 identically named files is the right one, what level of confidence can one have in the output.
It’s not just garbage in / garbage out, it’s who knows what in, garbage massaging of data, and clearly garbage out. And apparently the original programmer bailed and left a mess for some poor slob to finish up. Just look at the readme file or the code that ignores errors. Classic bozo programming.
Anyone who has to spawn a system call to count the lines in a file (wc -l) and read back a file with the count just so they can set a limit in a loop counter is simply not a true programmer. I wouldn’t trust anything from such idiots.
And to think, trillions are at stake on code that bad.
Eric”
From Nathan
"
Take a look at the code. They intentionally created an array used to fudge the numbers. It starts at 0, actually goes negative for a period, then rises to 2.6 degrees. The original programmer actually labeled this array “fudge factor” and if you go through the readme you can find the surprise expressed by the guy who was supposed to maintain this. Here is the fudge factor array taken verbatim from the code:
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,- 0.1,0.3,0.8,...1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor"
My comments:
These scientists used more than a third degree polynomial to fit the data. What's worse, they extended the curve to extrapolate the data. My gosh, that's why they've got such a huge upswing. Anybody that models into the future knows you can't do that and get anything remotely reliable.......
WOW
You know what else is rotten about this, besides most of the rest of the article? Writing "scientists", as if they're all one homogeneous body, who all move in lockstep agreement with each other and the author of this article, with the exception of a few easily marginalized and not worth their salt holdouts. "Scientists" respond? WHICH, exactly. It's high time we start qualifying and quantifying EVERYTHING that gets written on this subject. That is the scientific way, is it not?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFour global temperature datasets exist. Two ground, two satellite. The two ground temperature datasets, going back to the mid 1800's, are overseen by two scientists who are warmist activists - one of whom just stepped down pending an investigation. The largest of the raw datasets, which had serious problems of its own, doesn't even exist any more. It was discarded. Gone. The two satellite temperature datasets (which were corrected using the now suspect and thoroughly problematic ground datasets), are overseen by two scientists, both of whom are both skeptical of warmists' catastrophic alarmist claims.
statmanone,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIts even worse, Science, and likely honest Scientists, are SCREWED:
"Science 4 December 2009:
Vol. 326. no. 5958, p. 1329
DOI: 10.1126/science.326.5958.1329 Prev | Table of Contents | Next
News of the Week
Science and Society:
Stolen E-mails Turn Up Heat on Climate Change Rhetoric
Eli Kintisch
The theft and unauthorized release last month of 1000 private e-mail messages from the servers of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom has provided a glimpse into the fractious world of climate science. The public airing of frank conversations among powerful scientists about sensitive topics such as possible holes in their data and the use of contrarian papers in major reports comes at a pivotal time for climate science, just days before a meeting of world leaders in Copenhagen. The messages—whether hacked or released by a disgruntled insider—have raised thorny questions about the proper behavior of researchers who feel under siege for their science. How willing should they be to share their raw data with their staunchest critics?"
"there was essentially one article in the 70s about global cooling."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEither you are amazingly obtuse or simply weren't around in the 70s. The popular press was full of hysterical articles on the coming Ice Age - with concerned comments by "scientists" in white lab coats. Walter Cronkite regularly had stories on it - when there were only a few channels to watch. But back then the "scientists" admitted they couldn't predict what would happen. They had intellectual honesty. Today, we have "scientists" with a political agenda pretending their "models" are accurate. Heck they can't predict the weather a few days in advance, but schmucks like you believe the predictions about an amazingly complex thing as climate decades/centuries hence? Pluheeze.
Say, I've got a few bridges to sell. You'd be a perfect owner...
Perhaps "hide the decline" was more than simply the obsuring of inconvenient data outliers. Maybe it was done to obscure the fact that tree ring proxies are not useful for establishing a long term temperature record.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe same might be said for ice cores.
AGW is Rubbish,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDon't forget about all those protesters with signs.....
Al Gore has canceled his appearance at Copenhagen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisObama has rescheduled.
"dgkfkhjfhkfhka said "the "trick" here was a mathematical one"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere is backup for that statement?"
where isn't it? every credible source in the world has pointed this out. nonetheless, this is what michael mann had to say about it:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/26/807934/-Michael-Mann-Responds-to-CRU-Hack
"If the "science" is settled, why the need to delete emails, to fail to provide every ounce of data, to be as clean as the driven snow?"
none of the emails were deleted. you also have a lot of nerve calling the scientists criminals as hacking into a server and stealing data is the only crime that's been committed.
the data itself is freely available, not from the CRU but from nasa and other sources. they're using the same data sets.
"Well, it doesn't take a genius (or a "scientist") to realize what is really going on - ie using doctored data by jokers who call themselves "scientists" but are little more than petty, conniving charlatans with their hands out for govt grants to fund pointless (but never ending) global warming (well, now that the Earth isn't warming, it's now "climate change") studies."
you may recognize the handle. i post widely. i'm personally convinced that there's an organized movement to hijack message boards and fill them up with pseudo-scientific and long debunked anti-AGW nonsense. i'd hazard a guess that it's being funded primarily by the same interests that are funding alex jones and ron paul: banking interests that want a return to the gold standard, which are of course highly intertwined with oil interests. it doesn't matter what i'm reading, it's you guys that drown everybody else out.
i'm also not particularly concerned about polar bears, i don't worship al gore and i have only a passing familiarity with david suzuki. so don't bother with the straw men arguments. i've seen them all a hundred times.
JackLord wrote: "Let's add the opinion from the most influential and respected scientific journal (sorry SciAm, but it's not you!)"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html
Sorry, Jack, but that article debunks itself, right from the start. (BTW, did you notice Phil Jones wrote "Nature trick", not "SciAm trick"?)
It's hardly scientific commentary when it uses words like "denialists" (seven times, no less), paranoid, obstructionist, laughable, etc., terms that speak more about the author's own bias than anything else.
Nature is right in the thick of this controversy, completely in the pockets of warmist activists, and you cite them as a credible source?
It's getting thick in here!
"Either you are amazingly obtuse or simply weren't around in the 70s. The popular press was full of hysterical articles on the coming Ice Age - with concerned comments by "scientists" in white lab coats. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdid you read the reports i posted? every single year in the 70s (except one) had a higher level of scientific interest in global warming than global cooling. in direct contradiction to this, there were several very, very poorly written articles in the 70s in the mainstream press about an oncoming ice age that completely contradicted everything the scientists were saying at the time. these articles have actually all been retracted. the question to ask is not "why did the scientists change their mind?", it's "how did the popular press get it so completely ass backwards?"
"Heck they can't predict the weather a few days in advance, but schmucks like you believe the predictions about an amazingly complex thing as climate decades/centuries hence? "
in confusing weather and climate, you're just pushing my buttons. you must be.
it's really not very complicated. you don't need a single piece of data, you just need a rudimentary grasp of logic and a grade 12 education.
1) carbon dioxide and methane are greenhouse gasses.
2) greenhouse gasses contribute to the greenhouse effect.
3) therefore, if you increase the concentration of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere then you increase the greenhouse effect.
now, take a look at this graph, brainiac:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Carbon_Emission_by_Type_to_Y2004.png
what argument could you possibly provide that would suggest that global temperatures *shouldn't* increase?
statmanone,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIts even worse, Science, and likely honest Scientists, are SCREWED:
"Science 4 December 2009:
Vol. 326. no. 5958, p. 1329
DOI: 10.1126/science.326.5958.1329 Prev | Table of Contents | Next
News of the Week
Science and Society:
Stolen E-mails Turn Up Heat on Climate Change Rhetoric
Eli Kintisch
The theft and unauthorized release last month of 1000 private e-mail messages from the servers of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom has provided a glimpse into the fractious world of climate science. The public airing of frank conversations among powerful scientists about sensitive topics such as possible holes in their data and the use of contrarian papers in major reports comes at a pivotal time for climate science, just days before a meeting of world leaders in Copenhagen. The messages—whether hacked or released by a disgruntled insider—have raised thorny questions about the proper behavior of researchers who feel under siege for their science. How willing should they be to share their raw data with their staunchest critics?"
I do not claim to be a climatologist, but I have done a lot of research on the subject. You have to understand for the last 11 years the earth has been cooling. But the reason for the polar ice caps keeps melting and they will for a few years to come is the oceans are warmer and will remain that way for a few more years. If you heat up a big pot of water, it does not cool down immediately, now does it? The earth has been warming for about 100 plus years, so you should expect the oceans to take at least half that time to cool down. I also think if you look at the solar activity charts for the last 300 years and compare to the temperature charts you will see a very close correlation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not claim that other human factors does not have an effect on the climate such as deforestation and development and of course co2 my play a role. I do agree the world needs to advance to renewable energy, but to deceive people and frighten
our children to the point they are traumatised is not the way!
Also I think signing a treaty of the type the Copenhagen treaty
reads would be a mistake. Take a Look for your self, especially look at pages 159 and up!
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/un-fccc-copenhagen-2009.pdf
"I do not claim to be a climatologist, but I have done a lot of research on the subject. You have to understand for the last 11 years the earth has been cooling. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis is once again false. you people repeat it over and over again, as though that will make it true. over the last 11 years, the earth hasn't just been warming - the warming has been accelerating. the eight warmest years on record were in the last 11 years!
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
Did you look at the link you posted? take a look at the green mark at the top. That is the temperature drop!!! Ok by that graph it is about 8 years!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am old enough to remember when Scientific American was a real science journal. Anymore, I rarely look at it. Sci-Am has been so dumbed-down and politicized that it is not worth taking seriously, as this piece clearly illustrates. Today, anyone with a browser has long known that the horror taking place in climate science is not the theft of e-mails but the deliberate undermining of peer-review. Unfortunately, without a complete re-evaluation of Scientific American's mission, there will be nothing worth reading here again. Good-bye old friend.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEmploying fudge factors as REM in Fortran codes, manipulating data to "hide the decline," blacklisting colleagues with differing opinions, withholding raw data under request for release by FOIA (both at NASA and CRU), losing raw data such that the above actions are indefensible and conclusions cannot be replicated by independent observers and making efforts to take over the peer review process is not sound science. Given reliance on this data by parties on both sides of the Atlantic and the obvious biases of the investigators, the only thing supported by overwhelming evidence is corruption of the scientific method with the scientist as advocate as opposed to observer. No conclusions can be made until science acts independent of advocacy and investigators can review data with transparency on a level playing field without fear of character assassination for the conclusions that they reach. The science needs to be redone...now is not the time to use flawed and biased data to make policy conclusions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd besides that here is the graph you should be looking at for global warming due to the green house effect. This is a graph of the temperature the troposphere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/uah_may_08.png
Also if you would like to compare here is one of the solar activity!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png/800px-Sunspot_Numbers.png
The discussion here more and more entertaining with every post. Mostly due to its theological character. The ability to misinterpret simple graphs is truly fascinating (although I see it often enough among so-called educated individuals).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for arguments on both sides? Well, applying linear arguments and reasoning to non-linear climate processes is just a mark of ignorance. It is as ignorant as judging climate changes by the weather patterns. Or attributing climate changes solely to anthropogenic agents. Or self-promoting of some self-righteous biochemist as a matter of fact.
The path of gaining an understanding is never an easy and straight one. In a sense, it is not a linear process. Quite, like climate. Unfortunately, under the scrutiny of so 'well-educated' society and 'honestly' reporting media, every kink on the road is blow out of proportions and used for justifying means to achieve some mostly political goals.
Since most of you are 'true' believers, join in the prayer that the climate science is wrong at the moment. Because, if it is not, you are into nasty surprises very soon, and totally unprepared.
Hemod, I totally agree, AGW is politiclal, it is a power grab by the United Nations. The try to scare everyone to signing away there money, patents, and even there countries sovereignty! They prey on peoples fear. Read the Treaty they want countries to sign, it is beyond belief! After 3 years they want companies to give away there patents to poor countries. What is this going to do research and development?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyway, warming, cooling, none of it matters. You're running out of water and food regardless. Sionara suckers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe that is what we should be investing our money in research rather than AGW. The CO2 content in the atmosphere is rising, even if would eliminate humanity from the earth the amount of the decrease would only be marginal. The food shortage is caused a lot by urbanisation, less farm lands. Also by the production of ethanol is using a lot of the food sources.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe use of ethanol is actually worse on the environment than gasoline as it produces sulphur dioxide as it is put through the catalytic converters of vehicles.
"Did you look at the link you posted? take a look at the green mark at the top. That is the temperature drop!!! Ok by that graph it is about 8 years!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfirst, there are several "lists of the warmest years" out there that take a number of different things into consideration, but they all show the same basic pattern. for example, some list 1998 as higher than 2005. they all have both 1998 and 2005 near the very top. the exact ordering isn't really important.
what you're pointing out as a "temperature drop" is a drop from one of the warmest years on record to one of the warmest years on record. this was followed by a jump to one of the warmest years on record and then a drop to one of the warmest years on record. the next year was considerably cooler, but still one of the warmest years on record. there was then a jump to one of the warmest years on record, followed by a drop to one of the warmest years on record and then finally a jump to one of the warmest years on record. it hasn't been cooling. these are natural variations within a warming trend.
nobody expected the rise to be monotonic, meaning nobody expected each year to be warmer than the last. the world is still subject to variations in temperature, which will lead to some future years being cooler than the preceding ones. it's the long term trend that is still upwards and that forms the basis for concern.
in other words, if it's colder next year than it was last year and next year is still one of the warmest years on record then we're still warming. at this point, we'd have to see a significant trend downwards or sideways over several years (at least a half decade) to conclude that warming isn't happening.
But once again, you need to look at the troposphere temps, not ground ,ocean temps if your looking at AGW. Ground temperature is effected by other factors than just AGW. Like I said before deforestation, urbanisation, solar radiation is a big one, infact when you do not see warming in the troposphere, but you see ocean and ground temperature rises then most likely cause is solar radiation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"And besides that here is the graph you should be looking at for global warming due to the green house effect. This is a graph of the temperature the troposphere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/uah_may_08.png"
well, not everybody would agree that satellite readings are better readings, but i'll be generous and go with it.
excuse me for doubting your source, but what's up with that source, anyways? it's in direct contradiction to this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature_measurements
while wikipedia isn't a great source, it's certainly a better one than "wattsupwithat.files.wordpress.com". there are more direct sources in the references section, but the wiki article unifies them so i'm going with that.
what the wikipedia article states is that there have been several studies on the satellite data and that none of them look like the graph that you posted. of the various studies listed, the weakest analysis concludes a warming of +0.05°C/decade. some studies have concluded as much as +0.20°C/decade, which is more consistent with the other data. all studies listed have concluded warming in the troposphere.
yet, your graph concludes cooling. what's up with that?
i simply don't know where you got your graph from but it appears to be completely wrong. if you claim that your graph is correct, you could prove it by citing it's source. specifically, i'd like to see the name of the paper that it came from or at the very least the names of the authors.
"Also if you would like to compare here is one of the solar activity!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png/800px-Sunspot_Numbers.png"
i'm not going to take this on directly, other than to state that it is an obscure theory, or at least it is as it relates to global warming. it could be correct, but i'm being diplomatic when i say that. the reality is that continental drift was initially an obscure theory. string theory is currently an obscure theory.
the thing is this: even if there's something to the sunspot hypothesis, and there probably isn't, that wouldn't disprove the carbon hypothesis. the best you can hope for is a joint hypothesis, namely that the current warming is being caused by a combination of sunspot activity and an increased concentration of carbon dioxide.
at the present time, the sunspot hypothesis is not accepted by mainstream science as the most likely mechanism for climate change. the biggest reason for this is that it simply does not correlate well with warming since 1980.
How could anyone say a solar radiation is not a factor for climate change? That is what controls our climate, that is where the entire solar system gets its warmth. I will try to find the original data I had from NASA and post it. I put those links up. As far as the troposphere goes when you see the ground ocean temps rise in unison with troposphere temps like you did from 1980 till 1998 if that trend doesn't change then you have a real AGW problem. But the troposphere is trending downward now that alone puts suspicion on AGW.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm pretty neutral on these global warming issues, and simply try to judge by looking at the data. But, it continues to disturb me when blatant lies are made.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis Sci Am article begins its second paragraph with "Yet, Arctic sea ice continues to dwindle - ..." and links to another Sci Am article from Sept. 2008. However, there is readily available current data showing that for the past two years Arctic sea ice has NOT continued to dwindle (see: NASA data at http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm).
Why misstate the facts? Arctic sea ice DID reach a record low extent ..... in 2007, as seen by the graph at the above reference. But, in 2008 and 2009 the seasonal low point was not so low, and in fact, this year the seasonal minimum was indistinguishable from 2005.
When you try to sway the reader through misinformation, you lose credibility. More and more I distrust anything Sci Am prints regarding global climate.
Here is the solar activity chart
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a closer graph shows the decrease much more, also troposphere data is took with satellite and weather balloon.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20030320/sun4m_tn.jpg
Here is the troposphere link It is originally from climateaudit.org
http://media.photobucket.com/image/nasa%20historical%20troposphere%20activity/rhaetian/TropicalTroposphere1995-2008May2008.jpg
You are correct, the sea ice in area are covering larger area's now and will continue. If you check the solar radiation on the chart below in another post you will see a huge drop in solar activity it peeked in 1998 and as it looks now the earth in the next few years is going to be a very chilly place and maybe longer!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFreedomisgood: Sorry if I disappoint you, but I do not believe in conspiracy theory either.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMidWest Scientist: and the last two winters in the Northwest were colder then usual so it disproves global warming. Right? Wrong. Your argument just proves the point I tried to make earlier. You think linear. And you do not have a slightest clue what your are talking about.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHemod:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI simply look at data and compare what I see to words written. Nothing more or less. It's called "observation". Do you disbelieve the NASA data? Do you not understand the words "Yet, Arctic sea ice continues to dwindle"? Please explain how the NASA data support or do not support the referenced statement from this Sci Am article. "Continue to dwindle" means to me a smaller amount of ice each year. What does it mean to you?
Hemod: That is correct, because you have to look at long trends not just one thing such as Ice. You have to look at all things in relation to the climate co2. Argon, solar radiation, and water vapor ect. As Far as a conspiracy theory goes it is only a theory until it is proven. That is why the Brickard amendment was put in place, to keep treaties from over stepping our constition. The UN has and will keep pushing for more power
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe famous IPCC "Hockey Stick" curve - used to great effect in the Koyoto Protocol, and to gain Al Gore a Nobel prize, was shown ages ago to be a "computer programming error" - the data for the Medieval Warm Period - when the Earth was relatively recently warmer than today - simply being missing (and later found on the same hard drive). This in itself is bad enough. The leaked emails however now show the source of an apparent fraud.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article here appears to be seriously uninformed. I suggest the author consult www.friendsofscience.org to challenge his views a little more deeply.
Midwest Scientist: You are right about the deception on the see Ice, What he was saying is you can't discount a theory like AGW based on shorterm observations. But as I took it you wasn't discountiong any theory just on the 2 counts, you was just pointing out the deception.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Scientist: Manns hockey stick chart only went back to the 1700's which was the maunder minimum the coldest time in the past 300 years. Of course temperature will increase form that, they called that The Little Ice Age. He discounted the Mid Evil period using a disfigured tree ring, where he cut it out of a bent tree, one side was thick the other real thin so he took his data from the thin side the tree ring saying that was the the actual data not the thick side. Of course ignoring the ice core data from that era.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I first started reading Scientific American as a kid, it was about all science, but I've noticed recently that it may as well be renamed "Man Made Catastrophic Global Climate Change Forced Down Your Throat In 95% Of Articles".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere must have been a coup at the magazine, with these arrogant, elitist climate nazis taking over. Science is not about shutting out other views, not about trying to hide data that doesn't fit with your "climate religion" and not about putting your political views ahead of the science. But that's exactly what these people do, very energetically. They are no different than the militant vegans that want to decide what the rest of us may eat or the "fairness doctrine" people who believe our freedom of speech doesn't apply to that which they disagree with.
Just a bunch of hypocrites and fanatics.
Finally, Someone that agrees with me on that subject!!!!! I wonder how long it will take for all the people of the AGW Religion to notice that there God has forsaken them!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMidWest Scientist: You try to use short-term hardly climate-related phenomena to deny long-term climate trends. Basically, you compare apples and oranges. Honestly, I do not even have to care to 'believe' any data you have presented. Your 'methodology' is flawed from the beginning. It only shows that you want to manipulate the arguments to prove you point, or more likely your believes. Sorry, if I was being to harsh, but you seem to conclude before you try to understand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry Hemod, I already answered that for you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFreedomisgood at 05:08 AM on 12/05/09
The following is a direct response to this comment.
Midwest Scientist: You are right about the deception on the see Ice, What he was saying is you can't discount a theory like AGW based on shorterm observations. But as I took it you wasn't discountiong any theory just on the 2 counts, you was just pointing out the deception.
But my response, wasn't near as harsh as yours.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFreedomisgood: We start to agree on some points.:) Yes, we have to look at many things, many of them not fully understood. Well, what if we understand them fully to take effective action?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I tried to pint out, the 'global warming' debate has turned into 'theological' discussion. The reason is gone, and the emotions took over. There seems to be no more space for good science, aimed at understanding, not justifying.
Too bad I have to sign out, it started to be interesting.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/Moncton_Telgrph-ClimateChaos.pdf
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've copied an extract below from Lord Monckton's account and I'm sure he won't mind that....
Next, the UN abolished the medieval warm period (the global warming at the end of the First Millennium
AD). In 1995, David Deming, a geoscientist at the University of Oklahoma, had written an article
reconstructing 150 years of North American temperatures from borehole data. He later wrote: "With the
publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working
on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service
of social and political causes. One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of
climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said: 'We have to get rid of the
Medieval Warm Period.' "
So they did. The UN's second assessment report, in 1996, showed a 1,000-year graph demonstrating
that temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than today. But the 2001 report contained a new
graph showing no medieval warm period. It wrongly concluded that the 20th century was the warmest
for 1,000 years. The graph looked like an ice hockey-stick. The wrongly flat AD1000-AD1900
temperature line was the shaft: the uptick from 1900 to 2000 was the blade. Here's how they did it:
• They gave one technique for reconstructing pre-thermometer temperature 390 times more weight than
any other (but didn't say so).
• The technique they overweighted was one which the UN's 1996 report had said was unsafe:
measurement of tree-rings from bristlecone pines. Tree-rings are wider in warmer years, but pine-rings
are also wider when there's more carbon dioxide in the air: it's plant food. This carbon dioxide
fertilisation distorts the calculations.
• They said they had included 24 data sets going back to 1400. Without saying so, they left out the set
showing the medieval warm period, tucking it into a folder marked "Censored Data".
• They used a computer model to draw the graph from the data, but scientists later found that the
model almost always drew hockey-sticks even if they fed in random, electronic "red noise".
The large, full-colour "hockey-stick" was
the key graph in the UN's 2001 report,
and the only one to appear six times.
The Canadian Government copied it to
every household. Four years passed
before a leading scientific journal would
publish the truth about the graph.
I am curious if the term "lapse in judgement" is a scientific euphemism for criminal conduct or lack of ethics. That is after all what we have here - an astounding lack of ethics in making the request and an equally astoning breach by mann in passing on the request.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFurthermore, the existence of the emails in the CRU archives does nothing to prove that Mann or Gene Wahl did not delete emails at their places of employment. Will a full review of the email archives at Penn State support Mann's claim? Perhaps, but we may never be able to be certain that claim is true.
Finally, one must question the rationale for the request. If there is nothing to hide, why even raise the question of destruction? It certainly suggests that something is amiss.
Here's a trick used by science writers that I've noticed. Interchange the word "greeenhouse gas" with "CO2". Of course CO2 is a "greenhouse gas", nobody disputes that, however when one quotes early researchers saying that without greenhouse gases our planet would be unliveable and neglect to mention that CO2 is only a minor constituent, one leads the layman to think that CO2 is a major driver, which has hardly been proven and whose correlation is likely to be an after-effect and not a cause. Those that say CO2 is a major driver need to show how that can be, and so far they have not except by correlation. In fact even Arrhenius's original research seems to show that the ability of CO2 to interfer with the infrared energy's ability to radiate is saturated relatively quickly, after which no added amount seems to have any more effect. So, yeah, it is a greenhouse gas but no it's not driving the climate. Warming is happening but there's scant evidence that it's unprecedented and considerable evidence that it is entirely within the range of the climatic record for the last 10 thousand years, that being the generally accepted period of time for the geologic period, the Holocene, in which we live and to which we have so successfully (maybe too successfully) adapted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the opposition needs to resort to CRIMES (stealing email - a-la Nixon) it says something about the opposition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo smoking gun was found.
Let's see the skeptics emails, and what picture they present of their strategy and arguments.
Skeptics - take a trip to Glacier park in the U.S.
In the future its will be called the park formerly known for Glaciers.
Whenever non-scientists try to understand the inner workings of scientists in collaboration, which can be spirited to say the least, misunderstanding are bound to arise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow many people out there really understand evolution, let alone quantitative data compilations bandied about in and effort to form a theory?
Well said Freedomisgood...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor the climate change skeptics, please explain why the Himalayan glaciers will likely be gone in 35 years, and why the glaciers in Montana will be gone before that, and why the groundwater of Bangladesh is polluted with ocean water due to sea level rise, and why Peru's glaciers are almost gone, and why Southern France is in danger of having no water soon from the melting Alps? If millions of people in India soon begin dying from lack of water, will you finally concede?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust curious....
I have to wonder if michaellovesnyc actually read the same article I did. It was a cogent summary of every issue in the emails and deftly delt with everything they raise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismichaellovesnyc has obviously never had any scientific training. It's been 25 years since I got my physics degree, and the slang "trick" still has the same meaning, very similar to what "hack" has in computer culture. To quote Vizinni: "I do not think that word means what you think it means."
Peer review was not redefined, micheallovesnyc. That's just a blatant falsehood, demonstrated by the fact that the papers in question made it into the IPCC report.
Another blatant falsehood: there was no global cooling consensus in the 70's. You must, once again, learn what words mean, not what you want them to mean. In the 70's, a few scientists put go together some bad analysis which seemed to show a decline. It was peer reviewed, made it into a journal, and then was roundly refuted. By the scientific consensus. They proposed; the community disposed.
RealTH, did you ever actually read the BBC article? Here's part of the criticism of it from realclimate.org:
"In the global mean, 2005 remains the warmest (as in the NCDC analysis). CRU has 1998 as the warmest year but there are differences in methodology, particularly concerning the Arctic (extrapolated in GISTEMP, not included in CRU) which is a big part of recent global warmth. No recent IPCC statements or conclusions are affected in the slightest."
And the arctic warming due to aerosols is interesting, but did you actually read the article? The contribution is 45%. That means that over half is still due to carbon. Sigh.
Thanks for playing, RealTH, but your red herrings has been disposed of.
I encourage all readers of this forum to actually fact check the climate change deniers who post here. They are more skilled in the tools of the rhetorician than those of the scientist.
And, finally, RealB
If michael truly loves nyc, perhaps he should convince Mayor Bloomberg to start building sea walls.
lylwyll is right on the money: observational correlations do not constitute proof of anthropogenic causes. We're a very long way from understanding climate. I would venture a guess that global climate is a more complex and dynamic system than global economics, and look how well we've learned to "manage" that economic systems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientists working to advance any agenda SHOULD be suspect to laymen. We might not be privy to all the information, or have the time to digest it, but we're used to being lied to about things, being manipulated by people who want something, and we've learned to identify rats by their smell.
Working to lower emissions (including reducing pollution irrespective of greenhouses gases) does no harm beyond the expense of implementing the changes, so doing so within reasonable limits is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Manipulating people with highly-publicized "consensus" conclusions derived from manufactured or massaged data undermines the credibility of legitimate researchers in all fields, and the faith the public places in science overall. This is plenty of argument to demand the investigations into these types of practices are thorough and complete.
lylwyll is right on the money: observational correlations do not constitute proof of anthropogenic causes. We're a very long way from understanding climate. I would venture a guess that global climate is a more complex and dynamic system than global economics, and look how well we've learned to "manage" that economic systems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientists working to advance any agenda SHOULD be suspect to laymen. We might not be privy to all the information, or have the time to digest it, but we're used to being lied to about things, being manipulated by people who want something, and we've learned to identify rats by their smell.
Working to lower emissions (including reducing pollution irrespective of greenhouses gases) does no harm beyond the expense of implementing the changes, so doing so within reasonable limits is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Manipulating people with highly-publicized "consensus" conclusions derived from manufactured or massaged data undermines the credibility of legitimate researchers in all fields, and the faith the public places in science overall. This is plenty of argument to demand the investigations into these types of practices are thorough and complete.
There has been no cooling the the last 11 years, Freedomisgood. My data refuting your falshood is in the IPCC report. Where is yours?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCandide - you don't get it do you? What Opposition? Science is not about sides it is about facts. Courts of law might be interested in what you have to say, but science will always be utterly impartial.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSeveral thousand years ago my country of origin - Scotland - was burried under a kilometer of ice. That ice vanished long before industry appeared. Perhaps you have simply not been around long enough to recognise that the shrinking of the glaciers you refer to is not something new. The entire landscape of Scotland is formed by vanished glaciers - and man had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it. Nobody is sorry about it either.
Regarding the concept of "opposition" it is also worth considering that a scientific theory is only measured by its ability to withstand relentless scrutiny - not by a consensus of supporters. AGW appears to fail regularly and then shapeshift to try to stay alive - dodging scrutiny at every possible opportunity. The Global Warming industry is big business - the IPPC being funded to the tune of $4 billion - and carbon credits aiming to be the single largest source of pooled finance on the planet. What would happen to all of this if the bubble burst and suddenly it was accepted that there was no problem? The entire deck of cards would collapse - this means that there are giagantic vested interests involved. This is simply not science - it is business.
I can't believe someone is actually quoting from the discredited old fraud Lord Monckton, the "potty peer".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn that paper, he not only falsified data, but he got the references wrong. Read the story for yourself:
start here: http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Christopher_Monckton
But don't miss this one, under any circumstances.
http://hot-topic.co.nz/monckton-the-case-of-the-missing-curry/
(Monckton's fraud written as a Victorian mystery.)
papposilenus,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho scrutinised your data?
Who tried to disprove it?
Who funded it?
It's not science when you leave out important facts. There have been times in the past when the earth was warmer and there was more co2 in the atmosphere. This is a natural cycle of climate, which by the way, is always changing. We need an open debate, not an Al Gore shutdown. The discussion is not over.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow about you explaining why the Nisqually glacier in Washington state is growing? Not all glaciers on earth are receding.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI thought this was a particularly relevant quote for the journalists of the Scientific American. Get back to science please.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
SciAm providing cover the the left's agenda as usual. Still awaiting an article decrying to poor science used by AGW scientists. Still waiting to hear this mag criticize them for destroying the original temperature data. Still waiting for this magazine that science is not supposed to be directing the results to an achieved end, but supporting what the cold hard facts tell them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSham research, sham magazine.
My data is from NASA, so I guess you could say the US goverment funded it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIgnoring Freedom of information Acts is also illegal, but I realise one crime does not excuse the other!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI "love" the repeated use of the word "nonsense" in SciAm as of late to refer to "contrarians" of AGW. I also "love" the comments in which "scientists" belittle "educated" people. In the words of one the wisest men to ever walk the planet:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"A man is not qualified for a professor, knowing nothing but merely his own profession. He should be otherwise well-educated as to the sciences generally; able to converse understandingly with the scientific men with whom he is associated, and to assist in the councils of the faculty on any subject of science on which they may have occasion to deliberate. Without this, he will incur their contempt, and bring disreputation on the institution." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1824. ME 16:6
"Besides the first degree of eminence in science, a professor with us must be of sober and correct morals and habits, having the talent of communicating his knowledge with facility, and of an accommodating and peaceable temper. The latter is all important for the harmony of the institution." --Thomas Jefferson to Dugald Stewart, 1824. ME 18:333
"I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it." --Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1810. ME 12:393
...and yet the same bogus "facts" are still being presented by the media and the "Global Warming nutjobs. I guess if you ignore the real facts long enough it makes your theory true. The scientific method is being trashed for the sake of politics and fad science. The credibility of the science community is at risk, would someone please shut ALGORE up and let us return to legitimate research?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is an excellent analysis of "Climategate" written at a level that even "non-scientists" can work through. The consequences justify the effort.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Monckton-Caught%20Green-Handed%20Climategate%20Scandal.pdf
COLD FACTS ABOUT THE HOT TOPIC OF GLOBAL TEMPERATURE CHANGE AFTER THE CLIMATEGATE SCANDAL
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CAUGHT GREEN-HANDED!
THE WHISTLE BLOWS FOR TRUTH ............................................................... 3
REVEALED: THE ABJECT CORRUPTION OF CLIMATE SCIENCE ......................... 4
THE NATURE ‘TRICK’ TO ‘HIDE THE DECLINE’ IN TEMPERATURES ................... 5
BREAKING THE BROKEN CODE: DISSECTING THE DODGY DATA .................... 6
MAINSTREAM MEDIA ARE SILENT, BUT THE INTERNET ROARS .................... 10
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION? WHAT FREEDOM? ...................................... 11
WHY THE TRUTH ABOUT TEMPERATURE MATTERS ................................... 15
TERRESTRIAL VS. SATELLITE TEMPERATURE RECORDS ............................... 17
MORE OFFICIAL DISHONESTY ABOUT GLOBAL TEMPERATURE ..................... 23
A NATION TAMPERS WITH ITS TEMPERATURE RECORD .............................. 32
LYING EVEN TO CHILDREN ....................................................................... 35
AL GORE’S TEMPERATURE-RELATED FALSEHOODS ................................... 36
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? ............................................................................ 38
ESSENTIAL READINGS ............................................................................. 40
Burning fossil fuels now accounts for only 3.5% of the CO2 which is placed into the atmosphere every year. The rest comes from exchanges with the ocean and earth. See wikipedia carbon cycle for proof of that. Of that 3% the US now accounts for 20% which will decline to 15% by 2030 because of the increased production of CO2 from China and other developing nations. If the US did reduce CO2 production by 40% by 2030, the net impact on Global CO2 would "at most" 3% X 8% = .24%. If the US spends $$trillions$$ to reduce CO2 output by 40% - thats 50% per capita because of population growth - the result would be an atmospherc reduction of CO2 in 2030 of only 2 ppm against a total atmospheric CO2 which will be at about 430 ppm by 2030. That is meaningless in terms of any impact that CO2 might have on global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn addition, 430 ppm should not alarm anyone really since, at 430 ppm, CO2 would represent only .043% of all atmospheric gas, which is why CO2 is referred to as a "trace gas". H2O exists, on average at levels 50 times that of CO2, which is why H2O accounts for "at least" 95% of the total greenhouse effect.
Any carbon taxing programs employed in America would simply be an expensive "non solution" for problem which now appears to have been fabricated by a group of enviro nazis who want to control the entire world.
And those who think that countries like China and India will be enticed to follow suit with any US CO2 reductionprogram simply do not understand the issues. In India for example, the per capita use of energy is 1/15th that of the US. For Indians, Chinese, and all the rest of the developing world to enjoy any relief from abject poverty, they will have to produce an enormous amount of new energy. China and India are already the most aggressive users/producers of solar energy and 90% of all future Nuclear power plants will be built in China and India. India's energy plan is available on line. Niether China or India have sufficient Natural Gas resources to be used for electricity production. Both China and India have at home and near by vast amounts of coal. Both intend to profide most of the future electricity they need by burning an enormous amount of coal. China already burns three times as much coal every year as does the USA (3 billion tons vs 1 billion tons) and by 2020 China will burn another 1 billion tons. This is not a malicious reckless act on the part of China or India. It is simply a choice that they must make to erradicate the poverty of ther citizens.
"Here is the solar activity chart
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a closer graph shows the decrease much more, also troposphere data is took with satellite and weather balloon.
http://tinyurl.com/yk4h3un"
i've seen that graph before. on first glance, this graph would appear to disprove a strong, causal link between TSI and global warming, which is what mainstream science concluded a long time ago. there is some correlation, but it's just not strong enough; overall, that graph should suggest somewhat of a cooling trend since 1975, which directly contradicts the data. i'm going to quote the following site because there's an excellent graph, but it also has links to a dozen or so papers that articulate mainstream science's current views on the subject:
http://tinyurl.com/ycr4fpe
again: i'm not willing to discard the sunspot theory entirely, and neither is mainstream science. nobody is saying that the sunspot cycle doesn't have some effect on temperature. obviously, the sun has a large effect on temperature on earth and elsewhere in the solar system. what the mainstream conclusion is at this point, today, is that any warming that's been caused as a result of solar radiance is essentially immeasurable in comparison to the warming caused by the increase of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and that the correlation between the two things is even weaker than the correlation between the increase of temperatures and the increase of carbon in the atmosphere. however, it's still largely unclear just how closely the two factors are working together. the sunspot cycle may be intensifying the increased greenhouse effect. the best you can hope for is that mainstream science will accept that the sun is a secondary factor in global warming, but mainstream science <i>already does</i>.
it's one thing to point to an alternative theory and say "i think this is a better explanation", but if you're going to do so you shouldn't be trying to present it as though it's accepted by even a plurality of researchers. science absolutely needs skepticism. however, when skeptics speak of their alternate theories as though they are absolutely correct and mainstream science is absolutely wrong they're neither helping their own argument nor the advancement of science.
as for your other graph, i believe the initial one was based upon flawed data:
http://tinyurl.com/yd9nohb
the new one cherry picks the data from 1995-2007 and ends at a dip. try this:
http://tinyurl.com/ych2jxf
the lower half is the full version of your second graph.
The nature article seems really naive. The author seems not to realize that the teperature data controlled by these climategate bullies in East Anglia is one of only two sources of data used for most of the papers and computer models referenced in the IPCC report relied on data from either the CRU or NASA. It is very suspicious that NASA has also refused numerous FOI requests to release its temperature database or any information on how the computer models are
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"managing" that data. Since the "official" temperature data used in the IPCC reports comes from either NASA or the CRU, to take control of the IPCC report, all that needs to happen is for the folks at NASA to have been in collusion with the CRU group at East Anglia. Based on email links and a recent announcement that a researcher is being forced to sue NASA to obtain this data under the FOI rules, it is starting to smell like that is what has been going on. see..
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/03/researcher-reportedly-threatens-sue-nasa-climate-data/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+foxnews%252Fpolitics+%2528FOXNews.com+-+Politics%2529&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
It is also worth noting that similar shameful manipulation of historic temperature data seems also be the case in New Zealand...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/
the hockey stick has not been debunked; in contrast, further analysis has shown that, despite some reservations about the initial methodology, using alternate methods constructed the same conclusion, with essentially irrelevant changes. i'm not going to post a source because every source has a counter-source. you guys just won't give up on this one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswell, i'll give you this one:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm
if you're not aware of it, you should be aware that the FOS is an oil industry front group. specifically, it's an organization that maintains a scholarship program that is funded by oil interests.
re. Polar Ice caps melting. The north pole is located over an "ocean" where the sea ice is floating. Therefore, melting of that Ice does nothing to raise sea level since the mass of all of that ice is already being supported by water. I think its Bernouli's equation which difines that relationship. Greenland (south of the north pole) does have ice on dryland. But Greenland contains only 1/15th amount of ice contained in Antarctica which is home to the South Pole. The south pole which is located on dry land, however can not melt because the temperature at the South Pole drops to at least - 20 deg C every day. Also consider that the oceans have been rising for the past 12,000 years at an average rate of over 2 ft per century, which came about with absolutely no help from mankind at the end of the last ice age.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"the thing is this: even if there's something to the sunspot hypothesis, and there probably isn't"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow can anyone so blithly discount the impact that the Sun has on the temperature of the earth? If not sun, than what was the cause of all of the past ice ages?
"The north pole is located over an "ocean" where the sea ice is floating. Therefore, melting of that Ice does nothing to raise sea level since the mass of all of that ice is already being supported by water. I think its Bernouli's equation which difines that relationship. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisit's not bernoulli's equation, it's archimedes' principle. you're suggesting that water on dry land will increase sea levels when it melts but water in the ocean won't when it melts. you're a quarter right and three quarters wrong.
archimedes' principle is about density. it's true that frozen sea water won't increase sea levels when it melts but it's not because it's already in the water, it's because it's frozen sea water.
sea water and freshwater have different density levels, so archimedes' principle actually states that because freshwater is not as dense as saltwater, a floating weight of freshwater actually has greater volume than an equivalent weight of saltwater so when floating freshwater ice melts into the ocean, it contributes a greater volume of melt water than it originally displaced. consequently, sea levels will rise.
now, what is the ice in the north pole made of? well, the bulk of the lower ice closest to the water is frozen seawater, but the ice and snow closer to the surface is frozen freshwater. think of it like snow falling on a frozen lake.
furthermore, the increased levels of precipitation have led to increased runoff which is also threatening to increasing sea levels.
"The south pole which is located on dry land, however can not melt because the temperature at the South Pole drops to at least - 20 deg C every day."
there has been some melting in some areas and this will accelerate.
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2009/s2751232.htm
"Also consider that the oceans have been rising for the past 12,000 years at an average rate of over 2 ft per century, which came about with absolutely no help from mankind at the end of the last ice age. "
this is a weird statement. obviously, there was a lot of melting at the end of the last ice age. i suppose if you were to average it out, you might get something like 2ft/century but it would be the most bizarre data analysis that i could possibly conceive of.
look at this graph and then tell me if you think 2 ft/century is an intellectually honest way to describe the rise of sea levels over the last several thousand years:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHW7KR33IQ
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHW7KR33IQ
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thislet us ALL have a discussion.
media coverup
Salt water cannot freeze, the precipitation dilutes the salt water on the surface so it starts to freeze. The weight of the ice squeezes the salt out of the water creating a salty brine concentrate underneath making all sea ice fresh water.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis issue is not about science, it is about the fact that the government is involved. There is no justification for the state to be concerned with weather and it is stupid, or even immoral, to think we can make a law.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is why they can use icebergs for drinking water.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thislook, I've been on the fence here forever. But I now know which side I'm on. The scariest thing about the issue today is... Is our media involved in a coverup?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho is controlling the media?
CNN,CNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC and others should be ALLOVER this. Why is fox the only news network carrying this huge story? And I have never been a fan of Fox news.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHW7KR33IQ
"How can anyone so blithly discount the impact that the Sun has on the temperature of the earth? If not sun, than what was the cause of all of the past ice ages? "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi've actually been clear that the sun, as the sole source of...errr....sunlight....to the earth is pretty important when it comes to temperatures on earth.
what has caused the past changes in climate? well, it would be an error to say that they were all caused by the same thing. there's no simple, generalized response except to say that volcanic activity generally ends ice ages.
we know that billions of years ago, around the point of abiogenesis, the earth was much, much warmer because the atmosphere was very, very different. bluntly, the greenhouse effect was a lot stronger. the early earth was a lot more tectonically active. active volcanoes were everywhere. consequently, our atmosphere was initially composed primarily of the gasses that are emitted in volcanic eruptions: water vapour, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. there was almost no oxygen in the atmosphere.
the temperature decreased dramatically as the amount of carbon dioxide decreased, which happened when life evolved. the earliest forms of life - like plants today - metabolized carbon dioxide and produced oxygen as a byproduct. they were so successful in this that they nearly strangled themselves, nearly eliminating almost all carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. this is called the "great oxygenation event"; by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to almost nothing, global temperatures were reduced to ice age levels. this was the first ice age, the huronian. it also led to the evolution of oxygen-metabolizing life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_catastrophe
the second ice age was the "snowball earth" ice age. in a sentence, it's thought that this was caused by continental drift forming a supercontinent in the tropics. this precise arrangement of the continents led to a decrease in carbon dioxide concentrations, which triggered the ice age.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
i'm not going to keep going on because i think you get the point. there are many proposed mechanisms for ice ages and subsequent warming periods and a reasonable understanding of the way the earth's temperature changes would take many, if not all, of them into consideration. however, the constant is that the actual mechanism for temperature changes has, throughout the history of the earth, always been changes in the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
"Salt water cannot freeze, the precipitation dilutes the salt water on the surface so it starts to freeze. The weight of the ice squeezes the salt out of the water creating a salty brine concentrate underneath making all sea ice fresh water."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis is just wrong, but if it were true it would mean that melting icebergs would indeed increase sea levels dramatically.
it is true that when saltwater freezes,
1) it requires a slightly lower freezing point.
2) some, but not all, of the salt is squeezed out.
3) the amount of the salt that is squeezed out depends upon how quickly it freezes.
it is correct to say that frozen salt water is less salty than liquid saltwater. it is not correct to say that it is freshwater.
you also need to understand that a large amount of the frozen ice did come from fresh water sources to begin with when it broke off from a glacier or some other fresh water source. it's not *all* frozen sea ice.
"That is why they can use icebergs for drinking water. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthey can use icebergs - and iceBERGS specifically - for drinking water because an iceBERG is defined as a break-off of continental (read: freshwater) ice into the ocean.
You are correct in that, the ice still contains salt held within the ice, but the salt does not freeze. Salt is held in a liquid form and a little in solid form. It must have been the freezing temperature here, I must have frostbite on my brain! LOL
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut specifically, most is fresh water because it is caused be precipitation above the surface of the water. It does not mix with the salt water.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbove all else, the "Climate Disaster" Chicken Littles who are telling us we are destroying the world- the ones when I was a kid who were telling us we were facing a new Ice Age- use this religion of theirs to justify more government control over every aspect of our lives. In the next couple of decades they'll use it to spy on not only how much energy each of us uses, but what that energy is being used on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey'll tell us where we can travel, how far, when and they'll track our every movement. They'll tell us what we can eat, what we can buy, etc. And it will all be justified because it's all to save the Earth, and who can argue with that?
It's like the way the left calls anyone that disagrees with them a racist, a hater, etc. You don't want to accept dissent? You want to shut down all debate? That often works because people hate to be called something like a racist. Well, these Chicken Littles are now trying to make sure there is no debate on their religion- we're all supposed to take their word for it and make massive sacrifices, as a nation and as individuals. Funny how it all fits into their general plans for massive social engineering. But without a cause like this, they couldn't get people to accept their nanny state, where we all blindly follow like good sheep.
Well, I'm not joining the herd!
I thought that this was Scientific American, not the Onion! The article here repeats the very "facts" that the e-mails called into dispute.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI thought that this was Scientific American, not the Onion! Seriously, the article here repeats the very "facts" that the e-mails called into dispute. How is this a response?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is bad is most people (the believers) here to dispute a post of facts they site the very information in question!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I didn't include there are several other places for information that is more reliable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's incredible how many Americans are so breathtakingly irrational.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese people simply don't believe in facts, but instead jump at the first ridiculous assertion they are told. Hence you have people who believe evolution as well as global warming are 'hoaxes.' They'd rather jump to ridiculous notions that the world came into being only 10,000 years ago and the like. Scary.
Let's see - manipulation of data (hard coding an increase in temperature using "a very artificial correction"), refusing to share data, planning to delete data in response to an FOIA request, stacking the deck at the scientific journals, and juvenile backbiting of skeptics. Yes, this really inspires confidence in AGW, these men with no scientific integrity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI had to read the article twice to realize how heavily this article relies on "a Friday conference call with reporters organized by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank." I'm VERY disappointed. I'm a computer programmer and have taken a look at some of the code that was released. It's very disturbing. After seeing the "very artificial fudge factor" that was used to raise the value of tree-ring data after 1960 by 2.5 degrees, I started looking into the relationship between tree-ring data and measured surface temperatures. That's even more disturbing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPLEASE don't feed me a conference call organized by "liberal think tank" and expect me to trust you. Do a little investigative journalism! Surely Scientific American can find a statistician who can review the dataset and code and render an unbiased judgment as to whether "Climategate" is a crisis or merely an embarrassment.
I looked up the "trick" in the code. It consists of creating an array of 20 scalar values associated with various dates. Those scalars are close to 0.0 before 1960, but from that date forward, the scalars become 2.5 and then 2.6, where they top out. The function that calls this array uses these scalars to smoothly raise the temperatures. That's not just a "trick," it's a straight out manipulation of the data to produce "warming" out of thin air.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Some of the kerfuffle rests on a misreading of the e-mails' wording."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo. It does not. None of the emails are being misread. What is it about "hide the decline" (the other part of the "trick" comment) that you can not fathom?
The IPCC CRU people are frauds and Sci Am is now shown to be a fraud as well.
From people like FrankD, below- "Do not believe your eyes- it may appear that the Emperor is naked, but really, he has the most wonderful clothes on. Trust me!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi screwed the terminology up myself. for passive onlookers, an ice floe or ice field (there are other terms that refer to specific things) is frozen sea ice, "drift ice", and an iceberg is frozen freshwater.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe want to be pretty darned certain on this one, if we are to make such sweeping, staggeringly large financial changes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut I think the crux of the climate-change issue is this: there is not and will not be certainty before we are beyond the point of no return. Thee are just too many variables and the system is too complex and complicated.
What is no return? Not to world destruction. I dont see any credible folks saying that. Rather, to local, regional and perhaps even world-wide adaptations to changes in sea levels, precipitation, storm frequency and severity, temperature variations. All of which will force changes, great and small, in where people do and can live, where and how we grow food, how we get food and water from where they are to where we need them, etc.
The argument is not, I think, that our climate constantly changes or is changing now. It is. It has. It will. And I dont think any reasonable person could say that man doesnt influence those changes on some level.
So, given change, whether part of a natural pattern or one made or exacerbated by man, the point is to adapt, and how, so as to protect human life.
All human life depends on water and, fundamentally, thats what were talking about: where it is, where its going, where it will be, and how are we going to get enough to keep us alive.
Throughout history, some have argued, conflicts arise because of competition for resources. Climate change--again, whatever the cause--is the mother of all shuffling the deck of resources. On a global scale, lets remember. Such issues are magnified as population increases, because resources are finite.
This means the not-so-distant future involves conflicts of unprecedented scope and size. If I were in control of a country, Id understand this, and Id be acting right now to protect my resources and borders, access new resources, minimize and in any way possible mitigate the severity of coming changes.
To not do so would be the greatest disservice a leader could inflict on the people whose good welfare he is charged with ensuring.
The real problem in the future is population growth. All the developed countries have near zero population growth- it would be far less without the hordes of Third World immigrants pouring in by the millions. With over 6 billion people now, how much can human civilization take- 12 billion, 20 billion, 50 billion?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut the idea of concentrating on reducing the Third World population explosion isn't politically correct, when Climate Change Chicken Littles can instead bash America. If population growth in the poorest parts of the world were to be negative, then issues of starvation, disease, habitat destruction, etc., would be solved! But that's too logical, too much common sense for the fanatic climate change cultists!
none of the information is in question, except by conspiracy theorists. they cannot object to this term anymore. they are suggesting a conspiracy is at work, which makes them conspiracy theorists.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi fear that we've now reached a point of no return in the global warming conspiracy theory, the point where AGW skepticism has joined it's proper place beside the moon landing hoax, the protocols of zion and other outlandish conspiracy theories. it's even recently adopted the view that there's an insidious movement to create a global socialist world government.
you sound insane. you cannot get upset when people label you that way. if you don't want to be labeled insane, stop saying insane things.
i feel bad for the real skeptics out there, those that legitimately question the consensus on scientific grounds and want to engage in real debate on the topic.
whenever real scientific data is presented that proves that warming is occurring, they will now freely label it as part of the global plot as it will of course be sourced from the very people that are "perpetuating the conspiracy".
the reality is that labeling outsiders and those with different views as part of a huge plot is a classic brainwashing scheme. however, if i'm suggesting as much then i must be a part of the plot! it's just evidence that there is a plot!
the skeptics may think this is all really clever but it's really going to be devastating for them in the long run. think about this for a moment: what is the general view within society amongst moon hoax conspiracy theorists? when they respond to valid evidence with "it's just a part of the conspiracy!" do most people respond with "of course! it's all so clear to me now!" or do they respond with "geez.....this guy's living on another planet. you give him evidence and he says it's a conspiracy. what a lost cause. what a shame.".
by pushing the argument that it's all a part of a giant global conspiracy, you're ultimately destroying your own credibility, ending the debate on the subject and declaring defeat.
no sane person is going to take you seriously if your response to scientific evidence is that it shouldn't even be acknowledged anymore because it's all a part of a giant communist hoax.
ISE Guy Do you have frostbite of the brain also? Have you even read any of the post here? Even the post below yours? Why would these so called scientist try so hard to deceive the world if there were any facts to back them up? Why can,t people see this is a socialist plan to share the worlds wealth. Before you post why don't you read the Copenhagen treaty, see what this is about!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/awglca7/eng/inf02.pdf
Climategate is huge. You people can ignore it or try to minimize it, but it is having a huge impact on the debate (and yes SciAm, there is a debate) about AGW. The CRU at UEA is now a running joke. All of their results are now suspect, and, since we can't now reproduce those results after the original data was destroyed, there is no "there" there. Copenhagen is already compromised and cap and trade legislation in Australia has failed. Cap and Trade will probably never make it out of the Senate in the U.S. Climategate is a big fat disaster for the warm-mongers. Put a fork in it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWill Climategate change anyones mind?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy would facts make any difference to people who already believe in something as preposterous as catastrophic man-made global warming?
Climategate merely bolsters those who have known all along that catastrophic AGW is ludicrous.
The incentive to sustain the fallacious theory of catastrophic AGW is tremendous. A lot of people make a lot of money off of this nonsense.
The problem is, no one gets paid if catastrophic AGW is wholly debunked.
I would understand all this fervor if someone besides major polluters and oil companies had anything to gain from it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps we should cut a deal with these companies. We don't take action to prevent global warming on one condition: As soon as people start dying from the effects of global warming the heads of these corporations must be willing to face first degree murder charges and have the death penalty applied.
Its pretty pathetic to see the denial exhibited by SA and others. Its not just the E mails its the computer code , the data sets and the fact that they can't explain whether they lost the original data or not. This isn't science its chicanery!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe pathetic use of the precautionary principle(a common excuse for scams) is even worse.
SA has no credibility a a science magazine.
Franklind:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf they had true facts why did this all come up? Why is there code faked. Why did they try to delete items rather than give them to FOI requests. I can keep going! and going!
Quote, from some idiot,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"i fear that we've now reached a point of no return in the global warming conspiracy theory, the point where AGW skepticism has joined it's proper place beside the moon landing hoax, the protocols of zion and other outlandish conspiracy theories."
You do realize that the men who actually landed on the moon disbelieve in "catastrophic man-made global warming," right? Go ahead and look it up, we'll wait.
Also, these "conspiracy theory" smears are just that. When we're talking about climate projection we're talking about a future event. The moon landing is in the past, and it happened. The Holocaust was in the past, and it happened. But catastrophic global warming scenarios are supposed to happen in the FUTURE, and fortunately, they will not happen.
Please come up with a future oriented conspiracy theory to hitch on those of us with enough sense to realize that carbon dioxide will not be the death of us all.
Once again read the Copenhagen treaty! The good stuff starts at page 150. And then you will see why we have AGW! Also look at the section for financing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/awglca7/eng/inf02.pdf
Like eight year olds that just found out there's no Santa. Kind of earth shattering and traumatic. Lied to by those you most trusted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKeep lying you dishonest jackasses. Ignore solar activity, ignore the PDO, ignore the Oregon Petition. Keep pretending its NOT ABOUT THE GRANTS YOU GET! I hope most of these "scientists" find themselves in the unemployment line right behind the "media" who have the gas pedal to the floor as they approach the sign that says "Bridge Out."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA rational person can believe that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere may cause some change to the climate of no significant consequence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut that is a far cry from the abject lunacy of believing that carbon dioxide will be the death of us all. Catastrophic man-made global warming is a ludicrous idea.
Climategate shows that scientists can succumb to dishonesty to support an ideology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimategate demonstrates that scientists in key journalistic positions can reject papers to peer-reviewed journals which run counter to their view and thus create their own reality. This cheats the public of truthful scientific inquiry.
Climategate should anger all honest scientists around the world.
30,000 scientists have signed a petition denying man-made global warming.
The debate is NOT OVER, and for those who say it is, you are engaging in a kind of disinformation which is Nazi-like.
The person writing this expects everyone to believe that what they say is all fact. sorry, not buying into any of it. Most of this dribble is the lies that the Alarmists have been spewing and not based on Real Facts. Go ahead and tell us about the 4 polar bears that drowned because of a freak storm and tell us it was all because the ice is melting , not the storm. yawn!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's all cry for the snows of Kilimanjaro and blame it on humans, NOT. New research found that an abnormal intense monsoon precipitation is to blame for the existence of the snow in the first place. It is all the a natural process of dry and wet periods. We are now watching every move you elitist Bozos are up to and we have good cause to Doubt anything you "scientist" say now a days. Lies for lining your own pockets w/ massive grants can put a damper on the believability factor.
You can wish away and do the double talk dance to the facts of what the E mails reveal, but you can not change the raw data facts. Which it seems the "scientists" now claim was "accidentally" destroyed before they had to hand it all over (just like they said they would do in an EMail).
We are on to you LIARS.
Not much credibility left for any "scientist" after this Fraud/HOAX.
The real loser in all of this . . . science. Stop trying to cover for these Frauds and you might save science /scientists from being a joke in general. A theory based on Lies and fudged numbers does not make a credible consensus. and interviewing your pals that lied does not make this a very credible article.
Hey, remember when an massive ice flow /Glacier formed the Great Lake? Who do we blame for melting that ice?? just asking. Nuff said.
Hey, we need to pity members of the climate change cult, like FrankD. It must be horrible to go through life not bothering to think for yourself, but to simply follow Al Gore and others, who are making a fortune off this stuff, never asking questions, never daring to rock the boat, never stopping to ask why so many facts are ignored, disposed of or twisted out of all reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's quite sad.
Do courts put nothing but forensic scientists on juries? No they put average citizens. How can they be qualified to judge? Very easy, they may not know forensic science but they know people. That's at the heart of the email climate scandal. The true nature of the AGW "scientists" has been revealed to view. When you lose the confidence of the jury in your reliability just repeating the mantra "we've got the science on our side" is not going to be enough.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis "jury member" no longer believes the case is "proved beyond a reasonable doubt." Let's declare a "mistrial" and start over with publicly accessible data and source code. I'll believe computers IF I get to check the data and the algorithms.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyou are correct , only obama voters can be so stupid as to believe this or on a payroll that requires funds from the government , 2010 the year the house gets cleaned
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsensus???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes your publication have a person capable of reading and understanding the leaked data from CRU? If not, hire a statistician and a coder and then write your article. This pablum you just published and I just read is smokescreen, wordplay: perhaps written and published to keep your position in the CORRECT scientific circles. It certainly does not deal in fact.
I am going to add my non scientific 2 cents. After this I and many others will NEVER believe any scientist. I will always wonder who is paying you and why you want me to think a certain way. When I was in school in the 1970's it was global cooling. Now it is AGW. It really is just all about money, greed and control over others . You guys are lower than snakes bellies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"It depends on what your definition of is is."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, guys. You've been caught with your pants down.
"You do realize that the men who actually landed on the moon disbelieve in "catastrophic man-made global warming," right? Go ahead and look it up, we'll wait."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi'm not goint to look it up because neil armstrong's opinion on the matter is not remotely relevant to anybody.
"Also, these "conspiracy theory" smears are just that. "
you are claiming that there is and has been a conspiracy to manipulate the data. therefore, you are a conspiracy theorist.
whether we're talking about the future or the present makes no difference.
what's confusing to you? are you unclear what you're saying or do you not understand the concept of conspiracy?
"Once again read the Copenhagen treaty! The good stuff starts at page 150. And then you will see why we have AGW! Also look at the section for financing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/awglca7/eng/inf02.pdf"
i don't see anything remotely objectionable in the document. please point out precisely what it is about the cited document that you find objectionable.
Please recall from your undergraduate 'Heat and Mass Transfer' textbook: Q = s e A (T1^4-T0^4).... A doubling of current CO2 levels would yield less than a 1 degree C change in global temp, meaning CO2 levels are a tertiary effect at this point. Whereas the lack of current sunspot activity has a direct correlation to the record cold weather being experienced this fall... (see Max Plank Institute et al)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease revisit recent historical climate topics like 'The Little Ice Age', 'Medieval Climate Optimum', or 'The Year Without a Summer' if you would like to gain a better grasp on the variability inherent to the Earth's geological/ meteorological systems and leave the ideological rhetoric for Marxist publications like Time, Newsweek or the NYT...
Quit trying to defend the AGW hoax by deflecting the controversy to how e-mails MIGHT be misunderstood. Has the climate changed? Yes! Has it ever been static? Are we to believe that the adjustment of one or two factors alone will result in control of the climate? AGW defenders would have us believe that the sun and cyclical changes in ocean currents are only minor influences in earth's climate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly control of "that deadly pollutant CO2" can determine present and future climates.
Have the reported climatic temperatures shown an upward trend until recently? Yes. Has the reported ratio of atmospheric CO2 increased? Yes. Have global temperatures continued to track in sync with CO2 levels? NO!
Is denial of AGW equivalent of being pro pollution? Not hardly. Buts let's concentrate on REAL POLLUTION. CO2 is not, repeat, CO2 is not a pollutant. Elimination, or extreme limitation, of CO2 has the potential to adversely affect all life on earth.
Has anyone even determined the ideal CO2 ratio? Will that determination be based on the preferred creature comforts of people and organizations that install themselves as global government/rulers?
Many AGW scare mongers and activists will accuse me of being a "flat earther". If so , so be it. I prefer the odds of my falling of the edge of my "flat earth" to the solutions being proposed by governments and pending world governing organizations.
"Climategate should anger all honest scientists around the world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this30,000 scientists have signed a petition denying man-made global warming.
The debate is NOT OVER, and for those who say it is, you are engaging in a kind of disinformation which is Nazi-like."
i believe it is the conspiracy theorists that come across as nazi-like in claiming that there is a giant conspiracy to institute a socialist world government. you do realize that this is precisely what the nazis stated, right?
furthermore, your so-called 30,000 signatures is simply a smear campaign. almost all of the 30,000 signatures do not come from working scientists, they're just people with bscs. the petition was signed in 1998, when al gore was still VP, and was about skepticism about taking action at that point n 1998. the 30,000 signatories have never been approached about launching a lawsuit and did not sign the petition under the knowledge that their signatures would eventually be used for that purpose. the so-called lawsuit will be thrown out the minute it's filed....but that must just be more evidence of a giant conspiracy, right? many of the people that signed the petition in 1998 have since died of natural causes and many have since changed their views as the evidence has become more convincing.
I supported the work of the CRU and the peer-review process up until two weeks ago. At our house we do not use air conditioners in summer, in winter we use electric heat only when an extra sweater or hat will not suffice, and we recycle assiduously. We do all this happily and by choice. I work in the social sciences and have to say I cannot believe anyone with a shred of intellectual integrity or professional pride can defend the actions of the climate science community. The fact that Pr. Mann agree to pass on the request by Dr. Jones to delete information rather than comply with information requests from critics is a case study for professional misconduct and grounds for immediate termination. The peer-review process in climate science is clearly beyond repair. A host of environmental challenges beckon. We need to stop wasting valuable intellectual and political capital defending this pseudo-science, at least until scientists impartial to political and social concerns have had a chance to compile and study data. People wonder why we face an uphill challenge asking individuals to change behavior and still defend a community that persecutes and punishes academic dissent and advocates deleting data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPr. Mann clearly considers his failure to bring the fraud to the public the less crime. He clearly fails to grasp that his principal responsibility is to science. Rather than comply with the request of critics and to inform the larger academic community of the unprofessional practices of his peers, Mann makes himself a co-conspirator in fraud and deception. Can he see that? Evidently not.
I can no longer defend the work of climate scientists and will not until climate science imposes and applies the same fundamental standards of academic integrity that govern other disciplines.
> Nor has the fundamental physics of the greenhouse
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> effect changed: CO2 in the atmosphere continues to
> trap heat that would otherwise slip into space, as
> was established by Irish scientist John Tyndall in 1859.
> "There is a natural greenhouse effect, that's what
> keeps the planet livable," noted climate modeler
> Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for
> Space Studies (GISS) during a Friday conference
> call with reporters organized by the Center for American
> Progress, a liberal think tank. "Without it, we'd be 33
> degrees Celsius colder than we are. That's been known
> for hundreds of years."
> He added: "We're getting up to the point where the
> total amount of forcing from these greenhouse gases is equivalent to the sun brightening about one percent.
> That's a very big number indeed."
The above is based on climate simulations.
Try some hard evidence:
http://oea.larc.nasa.gov/PAIS/ERBE.html
and
The Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) Satellite Results Recently Proved That When The Earth Heats Up It Emits More Radiation Thus Falsifying the Simplistic Greenhouse Models used in AGW Hypothesis:
As the Earth warms it radiates more heat into space. Why is that important? The entire case of the AGW Alarmists is based on one false assumption that is built into all models is that as the world warms then less outgoing radiation will escape into space. That is contrary to reason and elementary physics. The computer models are told this wrong assumption. The Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) Satellite measured that more radiation gets out into space when the Earth warms. We now know that more radiation escapes and if it escapes its not heating the Earth. Christopher Monckton (paraphrased).
http://pathstoknowledge.net/2009/11/27/the-earth-radiation-budget-experiment-erbe-satellite-results-recently-proved-that-when-the-earth-heats-up-it-emits-more-radiation-thus-falsifying-the-simplistic-greenhouse-models-used-in-agw-hypothe/
But you are in the AGW camp, and so would be a DENIER of the impact of NASA's ERBE on AGW. Never mind, you ignore anyone who disagrees with you, and your crowd seeks to destroy their career. Fortunately, I'm not a climatologist. I still have my integrity.
Newt Love, aerospace Technical Fellow of Modeling, Simulation and Analysis
newtlove.com
"Please recall from your undergraduate 'Heat and Mass Transfer' textbook: Q = s e A (T1^4-T0^4).... A doubling of current CO2 levels would yield less than a 1 degree C change in global temp, meaning CO2 levels are a tertiary effect at this point. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisit's not quite that simple, and your formula is wrong anyways.
"Whereas the lack of current sunspot activity has a direct correlation to the record cold weather being experienced this fall... (see Max Plank Institute et al)"
record cold weather? are you daft? this is one of the warmest falls on record!
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/12/november-2009-uah-global-temperature-update-0-50-deg-c/
"leave the ideological rhetoric for Marxist publications like Time, Newsweek or the NYT..."
oh, the irony of such a statement.
besides, time, newsweek and the nyt all display an unambiguous right-wing bias. the closest thing to a centrist news source that we have in north america is keith olbermann. everybody else is right of center....
In fifty years, we will better know if there is a persistent warming trend or not. We will know better whether this effect is on balance a beneficial or negative thing and we will doubtless have better technologies such as fuel cell driven cars and hydrogen production from nuclear reactors as well as more modern and efficient nuclear reactors that can be used to deal with CO2 production if it really seems to be a problem. In the meantime, it is foolish for the Western World to commit economic suicide by driving all its energy intensive industries to other countries that will not control their conventional pollutants anywhere nearly as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a molecular biologist, I understand how science is supposed to work, and, unfortunately, I've also observed firsthand some of the many ways that it can go off the rails. I've been called to testify before a university panel about fraudulent research being done by the person literally sitting at the bench next to me. I've also seen the role that politics often plays in the acceptance of papers to scientific journals and the funding of grants by government agencies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can tell you, based on personal experience, that it doesn't take a PhD in climatology to see that the behavior revealed in the Climategate files is not that of scientists, but rather of charlatans trying to protect the turf that they've staked out.
Think about it. If you believed that your analysis of the raw data supported a particular hypothesis, wouldn't you share it with others, including your critics, to more effectively prove your point? Wouldn't you invite debate, especially from those most critical of your work, in order to get at the truth? Or would you put up a wall -- so that only members of your tribal clique had access to the information on which you were basing your conclusions?
I subscribed to Scientific American over 20 years ago. I actually saved my copies (they're still in a box in the back of my closet) because I valued the diagrams and illustrations accompanying the articles so much that I couldn't bring myself to throw them out. However, at some point I began to notice that I was getting more politics and less of the real science that led me to subscribe in the first place. There wasn't any particular moment of outrage or indignation when I decided not to renew my subscription, just a gradual loss of enthusiasm.
Reading this article, I'm surprised to find myself feeling bittersweet nostalgia for the Scientific American that at one time gave even non-scientists a taste of the truth-seeking enterprise that science is supposed to be. It's sad and strange that even as I'm confronted with evidence that Scientific American has passed the point of possible redemption, I feel the need to express my thanks for what it once was.
i've never wasted my time debunking lord monckton. there's no point. his two year college degree in journalism and history of outlandish remarks gives him about as much credibility in science as sarah palin has in foreign policy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishere, try this:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/oct/20/christopher-monckton/british-climate-skeptic-says-copenhagen-treaty-thr/
Let's review, raw data destroyed, reduced data corrupted, smear campaign against opposing science evidence from fellow scientists. All this for what, a few 10's of millions of $'s of grant money? You scientists are supposed to be better than polititians. You had better clean house, now and thoroughly, or who the hell is going to believe you, and fund your research?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"It's important to understand what peer review really is," Mann noted. "It's not a license for anybody to publish."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn essence, he argued, in both cases, some papers that "did not make a credible case to support the conclusions that were reached" were being published"
That's pretty rich coming from Michael Mann, considering his fraudulent "hockey stick" theory.
Climate gate? Unable to produce original data is not acceptable in any graduate thesis or dissertations. Informing the end readers (your scientific readership) that the original data is destroyed is like a grade school child informing his teacher that the dog ate my homework.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeing a test engineer at an nuclear facility where I tested contaiment leakage rates, all base line data was kept. You talk of temperature, but no mention to instrument error, urban growth and weather, e.g. relative humidity. That latent heat of evaporation is so important but seem to be left out of the discussion. Your test results would never pass basic quality control for instruments and software. You have no standards.
We have billions of dollars invested based upon this lost data. And you want me to say it's ok. Was the billions received for research grants wrote it? There is an integrity issue. It would behoove you to address this first, prior to printing or determining any future global trends.
Thank you,
Peter J. Seniuk, Professional Engineer
I took a quick look at the so called "code" used by CRU to process their data; even if there's no intention to fudge data - and some comments seem to indicate otherwise - their programs are very unprofessional (otherwise said: pathetic). I have some idea of what I'm talking about - I've got over 20 years of SW Engineering experience.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOK, so we know your position, since you used the words "theft" or "stolen" in EVERY SINGLE paragraph. What we DON'T know is why something that purports to be a science website would give a rip about "consensus". Could you please go back and read a ninth grade general science text where they explain the Scientific Method.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd exactly WHY are we supposed to believe that all the other studies that were based on this obviously doctored data are valid?
Instead of getting all in a huff about what may even be a whistle-blower, why don't you actually READ some of the emails?
Or would that poke too many holes in your little belief system?
". . . besides, time, newsweek and the nyt all display an unambiguous right-wing bias. the closest thing to a centrist news source that we have in north america is keith olbermann. everybody else is right of center...."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKeith Olbermann has got to be one of the worse, worser, worsest simulation of modern man available for public perception. If this is your standard for integrity and your confidence in the validity of/for AGW you can safely be ignored.
Opps I meant page 130
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst thing about the treaty:
1:An assessed contribution from developed country Parties based on the principles of equity, common but
differentiated responsibilities, respective capabilities, GDP, GDP per capita, the polluter pays principle
historical responsibility of Annex I Parties, historical climate debt, including adaptation debt, amounting
to [[0.5–1][0.8][2] per cent of gross national product] at least [0.5–1 per cent of GDP]
The [generation][provision] of financial resources shall be guided by the principles of the Convention, in
particular the principles of common but differentiated responsibilities, respective capabilities, on the
basis of equity, and shall take into account the polluter pays principle, historical responsibilities for
emissions and developing countries’ right to development.
This is just a start, well you asked what I didn't like?
Do you know just how much money this would account for?
The tax alone would break our already weaken country.
Also, what industry we have left in this country would move to developing countries that was excluded from the carbon limits!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI could keep going but people would get tired of reading the 100 pages I disagree with.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCopied from another post to prove just how much solar activity plays a role in climate, just remember more solar activity less cosmic rays, make sure to check the link at the bottom!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt take 20 - 30 Scientists to Create "Consensus"
[info]nucengineer wrote:
Sunday, 6 December 2009 at 12:28 am (UTC)
I hope that the following makes the ClimateGate controversy easier to understand and how only 20 – 30 paleoclimatologists and super computer programming specialists can create the entire “consensus” that man is causing global warming.
ClimateGate emails and computer programs were taken from a main server at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. It is not known if this was a theft or the actions of a whistleblower, disgusted with what the lead scientists at CRU were doing.
ClimateGate exposed the cabal of 20 – 30 scientists (not just at CRU) that peer reviewed each others papers, strong-armed scientific journals to only print their views, and then sat on the IPCC panels as authors judging which published studies go into the IPCC final reports. This is why they always keep shouting “peer reviewed studies, peer reviewed studies, peer reviewed studies”. They owned the peer review process.
ClimateGate exposed that this small group has been adding positive corrections to the raw global temperature data, inflating the amount of published temperature rise over the last 50 years. Both CRU in the UK and NASA-GISS in the US add these biases. At CRU, the programmers did not even know what and why some corrections were added every month. Only since satellite monitoring for comparison have the amounts of biasing leveled off.
ClimateGate exposed the leaders of this cabal instructing each other to delete emails, data files, and data analysis programs ahead of already filed Freedom Of Information Act requests for raw data and computer codes, clearly a crime.
ClimateGate exposed the “trick” about the Hockey stick figure and other studies that performed proxy construction of past temperatures. After all, reconstruction of the last 1,000 years of climate is the first step in predicting the future with super computer programs as explained below:
Everything about all 21 super computer programs used by the IPCC to determine future global warming rely on best-determined past sensitivities to solar and volcanic effects (climate forcings) from the proxy temperature record.
1. The elimination of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age (the handle of the hockey stick) was necessary so that past solar effects could be minimized, thereby allowing almost all of the warming in the last 75 years to be blamed on Greenhouse Gasses. Raw data (like tree-ring thickness, radioisotope of mud layers in a lake bottom, ice core analyses, etc.) are used as a proxy for reconstruction of the temperature record for 1000 AD to 1960 AD. To ensure desired results, statistical manipulation of the raw data and selecting only supporting data, cherry-picking, was suspected and later proved to make the hockey stick graph. Look closely at the plot here where the hockey stick is one of the plots:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/16/cern_cloud_experiment/
Only one of many reasons I doubt AGW, yet accept that the climate is continuously changing. http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTree Rings debunke Mann
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/jo-nova-finds-the-medieval-warm-period/
Money from special interest?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/climategate-cru-looks-to-big-oil-for-support/
Here is another good article that says it all!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2009/12/05/global-warming-hysteria-china-and-india-refuse-oversight-but-the-fix-is-in/
"Let's review,"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisindeed, let's review.
"raw data destroyed, reduced data corrupted, "
false.
http://mediamatters.org/research/200912010030
"smear campaign against opposing science evidence from fellow scientists. "
your so-called "smear campaign" has a name and a very important place within science.
it's called "peer-review". you should look it up.
" You had better clean house, now and thoroughly, or who the hell is going to believe you, and fund your research?"
....but....but.....what if the basis of your disdain is unfounded !? what then !?
here's an idea: before you blindly believe what you read on a website or in a paper, why don't you spend a few minutes looking for backup in a few reliable sources?
so, let's review.
1) no important data was thrown out.
2) the data is freely available.
3) there was no data corruption.
4) what scientist A says about scientist B to his friend scientist C is none of your business.
"I would understand all this fervor if someone besides major polluters and oil companies had anything to gain from it."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre you really that sure that oil companies will not benefit from proposed measures to reduce CO2 emissions?
"it's called "peer-review". you should look it up."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent, would this be before or after peer review has been redefined?
"Keith Olbermann has got to be one of the worse, worser, worsest simulation of modern man available for public perception. If this is your standard for integrity and your confidence in the validity of/for AGW you can safely be ignored. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi'd really have to argue the opposite. olbermann is pretty much the only person in the mainstream media that doesn't have his head stuck up somebody's ass, looking for a payout or a promotion. he's the only news person willing to ignore whatever hysteria is floating around and focus entirely on the underlying facts. he's the only person willing to criticize those in power when they deserve to be criticized, and he does.
bluntly, he's the only person in the entire news media in both the united states and canada that has an ounce of integrity, credibility, morality, decency or good sense. he's the only person in the mainstream media worthy of a modicum of respect.
nonetheless, discarding my arguments on climate change (which are essentially the only ones posted here with even a passing resemblance to responsible discourse) due to my political views has a very special name.
it's called an ad hominem.
essentially, your argument is this:
1. dfhjfhjhjfhkfka accepts climate change.
2. dfhjkfhjkfhjffjka is a liberal.
3. liberals are socialists and evil. those evil socialist liberal socialists want a socialist world government. oh, and liberals are socialists too. plus, they're evil.
4. therefore, dffhjkhjfhkfhjkfa has no credibility because he's an evil liberal socialist.
@freedomisgood
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is a deceptive stance to have, and a misinformed one. Take a good look at that graph, look at the direction it is heading, look at the red line which is the 5 year mean. Now although the Annual mean has decreased on that graph between the last 2 data points from about .56 to about .42, the overall direction of the graph and the associated Regression or line of best fit is POSITIVE, which means the temperatures OVERALL are increasing. A statistician who was interpreting that graph would tell you that based on the past trend, you can expect to see it extend further into the positive direction, indicating an increase in mean temperature.
Given that, it is a generally small snapshot in a time frame from 1880 - 200X.
It is interesting to note on that graph that between 1880 and 1920 the temperature is still rather steady, but then from 1920 onwards the 5 year mean is unequivocally increasing. Is it possible that this drastic increase in mean temperature may be due to the boom of the industrial sectors and population increases? This seems to me like a very reasonable and likely reason.
dgkfkhjfhkfhka at 12:05 AM on 12/06/09http:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'it's called "peer-review". you should look it
up.
//mediamatters.org/research/200912010030'
It seems your peers have reject your contentions.
Your reliance on Keith Olbermann and MediaMatters show that you are not, so far as we know, savvy in media matters.
This article is quite possibly the worst, most poorly written piece of writing I've ever seen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this5 minutes of my life I'll never get back.
Having studied the current case for catastrophic AGW and read the emails from the Hadley Center, I can't help but think that Phil Jones and Michael Mann have little to worry about. I think their thinking must go something like this. (HT to Mark Twain)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Cuss Mann and Mccitrick What do we k'yer for Them? Hain't we got all the fools on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority on any planet?"
You hot shot scientists here must know that a gallon of water weighs a lot more than a gallon of air. Just give that a little thought while you are trying to sell us taxpayers on how dreadful the trace gas CO2 is supposed to be. You also may want to remember that the entire universe is in motion. Yet, you think climate should remain unchanged? Sorry, not buying any of your science, now or ever.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this". . .nonetheless, discarding my arguments on climate change (which are essentially the only ones posted here with even a passing resemblance to responsible discourse) due to my political views has a very special name. . . ."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou seem to had ignore my earlier links that present areguments that are at least as valid as Mr. Olbermann's pontifications. However, these may seem to be inconvenient truths that you choose to ignore. Here they are again.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/climategate-cru-looks-to-big-oil-for-support/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/jo-nova-finds-the-medieval-warm-period/
Here are more
http://www.co2science.org/
http://www.co2science.org/subject/a/africagla.php
http://www.co2science.org/subject/a/asiagla.php
http://climatedepot.com/
http://climatedepot.com/a/2769/Not-Again-Media-Promoting-Arctic-Hockey-Stick%E2%80%94Claim-Temps-Warmest-in-2000-Years%E2%80%94But-Scientists-Already-Rebuking-Latest-Study
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/how_hotter_it_truly_was/
This little spin piece by SA totally misses the point. Petty arguments and the tactics of the scientists involved absolutely kills their credibility with the vast majority of us who have no ability to understand and interpret the data ourselves, but base our opinions on the credibility of the messagers. SA should be furious at CRU for creating even the appearance of impropriety. After reading about Climategate I will never be able to take any scientific evidence of AWG seriously, pro or con. The whole scientific community should condem, not defend, these acts - it is the only way credibility can be restored and we can achieve a fact based consesus.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"This is just a start, well you asked what I didn't like?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you know just how much money this would account for?
The tax alone would break our already weaken country. "
2% of gdp is generally considered to be the price necessary to correct the problem. the numbers come from the stern report.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review
the idea is that if we don't spend 2% of gdp attacking the problem, the cost involved in correcting the problem later on will be much greater. from that perspective, it's actually a cost-cutting action.
think of it like this:
if you somehow knew that apples cost $1.00 today and were going up to $2.00 tomorrow would you buy apples today or tomorrow?
now, of course, this approach won't make any sense if you don't accept that the warming is even happening or if you don't plan on ever acting on the consequences anyways. however, if you do accept that warming is happening then it's sound economic policy. of course, there are always some who will disagree....
"Scientific" American - what a joke. Always the comment "Well that doesn't change the fact that the polar ice caps are melting." The writers for this magazine apparently don't seem to believe that this fact doesn't discredit the hypothesis that temperatures on this planet cycle (e.g. Medieval Warming Period) - and that this is simply another such cycle. Global warming may be occurring, or it may not. But, alas, Sci Am also has an agenda - to promote "man-made" global warming. Was the ice age these types were promoting during the 1970s-80s also man made?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMad Magazine has just become more credible than Scientific American.
SciAm, you've lost a reader here. Goodbye forever.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOkay, regarding comments about "global cooling in the 1970's", the media is what blew that out of proportion, there were only a few scientific papers that said anything about it, and in fact most of them said something to the effect of "if we follow the pattern of the last 100,000 years, we should be entering an Ice Age, EXCEPT MAN-MADE CO2 EMISSIONS ARE COUNTERING IT". But the popular press locked onto the words "Ice Age" and ran went nuts with it. All the data is still available, anyone can go get it, the fact that some scientists may have gotten a little hot-headed in their personal e-mails has no bearing on the fact that global temperatures have been steadily rising, and that humans are the most likely culprit. Regarding the comment about Mt. Redoubt: 10,000 tons/day seems like a lot, until you consider that humans put out about 19,000,000 tons/day, then it's not so much. It has been proven that CO2 traps heat based on its molecular structure, so it follows that if you increase the CO2 in the atmosphere the temperature will, on average, go up. As far as the comment about "now that it's stopped warming, they call it climate change", the reason for the name change is that not all parts of the globe will warm as a result, some places will actually get colder, and there are numerous other affects of increased CO2 that it would be "unfair" to focus only on the temperature. Also, the idea that temperatures have stopped rising or even fallen recently is false, the data was given to several independent statisticians, who were not told what the data was, and they unanimously concluded that there was no negative correlation between recent years and temperatures (they didn't use those terms since they didn't know what it was, but still, something like: variable y does not decrease as variable x increases, and the people who gave the data to the statisticians know what the variables mean).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPoweroftheMind: Maybe you should bets some batteries for your brain! Climate trends change so does solar activity: Do you know how Solar can effect the climate? It is difficult to try to teach people in a Blog!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1: Solar Radiation Warms our earth
2:Solar trends run in cycles
3:When solar radiation is high the earth warms more
4:Solar radiation keeps cosmic rays from hitting the earth
5:Cosmic Rays seed clouds for development,
6:Less cosmic rays less cloud cover more direct sun light hits the earth causing warming. Water shortages bad crops everything they say is caused by AGW.
If you would like to learn a little about science before ridiculing some else!
You write: "In fact, nothing in the stolen e-mails or computer code undermines in any way the scientific consensuswhich exists among scientific publications as well as scientiststhat climate change is happening and humans are the cause. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is the problem - the fiction put forth by you and liberal politicians, that there is a true scientific consensus. There is not. Those who put forth opposing facts and data to support a different hypothesis are merely shut out of the discussion. That is what Climategate is mostly about: silencing opposition, data be damned. YOU have a hypothesis and no one or no data can convince you it is wrong because you believe it as a religion.
I did not say warming hasn't happen, what I said is the warming trend will not continue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as taxes, that is just a start. Still you have the taxes on carbon use, Bank transactions, Historical carbon tax, and I my have missed some.
Sorry about all the typo's my keyboard in this laptop is crap!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPowerofthemind: May I ask what degree if any you have? Is it say Atmospheric dynamics. By your post I think not. Well that is what I went to school for all for several years!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"You seem to had ignore my earlier links that present areguments that are at least as valid as Mr. Olbermann's pontifications. However, these may seem to be inconvenient truths that you choose to ignore. Here they are again."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi hadn't ignored them, i hadn't made my way to them yet....although i did ignore them when i got to them. i've already been rambling here too long. you posted links to the front pages of large sites. did you want me to argue with every article? i'm not going to and i couldn't if i wanted to. i'll take the fast/easy way out.
http://www.co2science.org/.....is an oil industry front group, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=24
http://climatedepot.com/
geez....this is run by the bloody swift-boating guy. yikes. talk about partisan...he's also on exxon's payroll:
http://www.desmogblog.com/marc-morano
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
i can't find a funding source for this one.
as for the actual arguments....
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/climategate-cru-looks-to-big-oil-for-support/
well, you'd expect that big oil would seek these people out. i don't see anything really surprising there, nor do i see anything really important. it's long established that oil interests have generously funded climate change research, largely as a PR tactic and partially to maintain some level of control over it. BP, especially, has invested billions in climate change research.
the reason the oil funding argument is widely and validly used against skeptics is that it demonstrates a conflict of interest. big oil has no interest in seeing reductions of carbon emissions, so the argument doesn't hold when it's reversed.
we don't trot it out to smear. it's not "guilt by association". it's pointing out a simple conflict of interest, which is a valid legal argument.
think of it like this: if you are the judge presiding over a trial and the accused happens to also be your boss, you'd have to step down due to a conflict of interest. it's not that you couldn't conceivably judge fairly, that's not the problem. the problem is that if the accused is innocent and you declare him non-guilty, there will always be doubt over whether he's really guilty or not.
likewise, scientists under the pay of oil interests cannot creditably claim that climate change isn't happening due to a similar conflict of interest.
unfortunately, virtually every study that's ever questioned the warming has been funded by oil interests! i started this, so i'll have to finish it...
How in the hell can this author keep claiming ' theft' 'stolen' and so on when it is my friggen tax money!!!!! I have a right to know all the data and truth!! Years ago I used to respect and subscribe to Sientific American, now I found a link to it and for shame for shame it has turned to MSM propaganda leftwing spouting and hateful machine, geeze
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you would like to see just how far this media cover up goes take a look at this article. Here is the first paragraph.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDec 5, 2009 at 9:10pm ET by Danny Sullivan
Is Google part of a conspiracy to keep the general public from learning about the “Climategate” scandal? Believers continue to point at the odd comings-and-goings of Climategate as a search suggestion on Google as a sign that the search engine is trying to foist its own political views about global warming on searchers. Not so fast, conspiracy buffs.
Google Suggest & Climategate
Let’s start with supposedly the most damning evidence first. A system called Google Suggest automatically displays search topics that it believes you may be after, when you start typing any word. So consider what happens when you start typing in the word “climategate” into Google
http://searchengineland.com/climategate-just-how-popular-is-it-according-to-google-31211
"http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/jo-nova-finds-the-medieval-warm-period/"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis is using the wonky mcintyre correction, which has long been discredited. mcintyre's "corrections" are not correct and have subsequently been rejected by peer review. of course, that's a part of the conspiracy, right?
of course, the MWP existed and so did the little ice age but it's not thought that they were anywhere near as profound as mcintyre and others have suggested.
the reality is that it is not mann that has been ostracized and discredited by the scientific community for using bizarre methods, it's mcintyre.
"http://www.co2science.org/subject/a/africagla.php
http://www.co2science.org/subject/a/asiagla.php"
whether glaciers are receding or not is not at all relevant to the theoretical foundations of climate change. i have no further interest or comment about glaciers on the other side of the world.
"http://climatedepot.com/a/2769/Not-Again-Media-Promoting-Arctic-Hockey-Stick%E2%80%94Claim-Temps-Warmest-in-2000-Years%E2%80%94But-Scientists-Already-Rebuking-Latest-Study"
this is about the hockey stick again. i've already addressed this.
"http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/how_hotter_it_truly_was/"
this is once again the discredited mcintyre "correction".
Not everyone who is a scientist and a sceptic is owned by Big Oil! The scientist involved peer reviewed there own work!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey blocked good scientist from publishing any papers.
They would tried their bet to discredit my good friend Steve McIntyre. That is what I said everyone keeps giving me same ICCP data as proof when there data is at the heart of the controversy.
Recent news Mann rediscovered his Mid evil warm period you keep arguing about. Here is a link learn something!
Read the first page!
http://www.climateaudit.org/
Oh I forgot, Steve McIntyre is a idiot! Nothing on his site is worth looking at!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell Bruce, looks like you probably will lose a lot more of your tax dollars come Dec.18 so will all Americans! It will probably be the saddest day in our countries history!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI used to read Scientific American. No longer - this kind of thing is thoroughly discrediting. You will find that you can't get away forever with abusing the truth just because you 'act like' scientists. There is simply NO EXCUSE WHATEVER for hiding data claimed as the basis of such far reaching conclusions. This crap CANNOT be replicated and it therefore does not pass as scientific inquiry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@freedomisgood
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou state that solar radiation warms our earth, solar trends run in cycles, When solar radiation is high the earth warms more etc.
These are logical points, however, several sources state solar irradiance has been fairly constant, or rather the cycles have not varied and produce a constant mean. How can this account for the rise in mean temperature? Surely the correlation would be close to zero when comparing data for mean temperature and solar irradiance.
I never claimed to have a degree in Atmospheric Dynamics, however if you must know I am completing a BSc in Psychology, with several units in data analysis. I may not be qualified to publish papers on "Atmospheric Dynamics" but I am more than equipped to judge if people are being defensive for no reason other than because they feel threatened. The amount of people claiming to be ending their subscriptions to all number of online magazines with similar stories are using passive aggression (and most likely don't even have a subscription) in the hopes that the magazine won't write such stories. The mere fact that they are asking for these articles to be removed is evidence to their partiality to certain political viewpoints, and it shows their ignorance.
If you don't like what you read, like you have all been saying, maybe you should find a magazine that supports your views..... oh wait, there isn't one. What does that say? either there is a great climate conspiracy or maybe your opinions are just plain wrong.... occams razor people.
Me and my family have had SciAm subscriptions for over 40 years. Sad to say I'm not renewing. SciAm has taken a political position on the AGW issue. It is not a reasoned, balanced, scientific position. There is another side to the scientific debate. It's not apparent within these pages. Might as well be Time or Newsweek. Loved the magazine, but offended by its bias in recent years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou do have a point, I was being aggressive for no reason, I do apologize for that. I after all the research I have done on this subject it gets frustrating at times when people post with out thinking or doing a little research on there own and trying to grasp the concept of all the variables that make up the earth's climate. If you would like to actually learn a little about climate, I would suggest a video it is a documentary called the Great Warming Swindle, it has Steve McIntyre and some other scientist discussing there views and a lot of good science demonstrations in it. Even if you have a different view it will explain a lot. Even if you don't agree with the movie, you seem to be the kind of person who at the very least want to take both view points. Also you should watch The Inconvenient Truth if you haven't seen it already to compare the two sides. Both are very interesting. Once you watch them go online and research the points of both videos. Get your sources from various reliable places. Here is a link to
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Inconvenient Truth
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2241730744890275721&ei=iHYbS9uQM5PllQegu_XYBw&q=the+inconvenient+truth+full+movie&hl=en
The Great Global Warning swindle
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5576670191369613647&ei=6nYbS8vTH9qBlgfU4qGbAw&q=the+great+global+warming+swindle&hl=en
As for your other question, solar activity always goes through cycles. Right now it is almost constant, but that is why the temperature is cooling. I know you will say but he polar ice is still melting, that is because it is. The oceans are so vast it will take sometime to cool down, the same as a pot of boiling water takes time to cool after removing the heat. Here is some good diagrams of solar fluctuations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/
and if you look they also have some solar historical charts.
Also, here is a very good article to back up some of the claims you will see in the video. Also proves some of the theories that at the time o the video people discounted as a farce about cosmic rays and cloud formations. See Science is never settled.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/16/cern_cloud_experiment/
Isn't it amazing what a bit of misinformation can do to truth?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe "FoxNews" mentality of most Americans brings a full understanding of the Nazi/ Oven thing.
Wonder where our nation would be today without the Republican Dark Ages---------no wars, cancer cured, wealth for all------the list is endless------------------
Here is a link that you all may find interesting, at least those
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswith an open mind.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/climategate.html
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis will show all the errors in Gore's film, the judge could only
get 9 of them into the trial in UK. This film is still shown here
but with an explanation of just the 9 errors that the trial had time for.
The kids still believe everything else is FACT.
Brainwashing pure and simple.
In the chart you linked, do yuo have en explanation for why the temperature trended down from 1940 to 1980.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't remember a lot of effort to reduce CO2 emissions during that period
If the tipping point were eminent due to carbon emmions and Nuclear Power could supply the replacement of all carbon emmiting power plants easily and relatively safely why have we delayed rapid deplyment of new nuclear plants until a new form of power generation can be utilized ie. wind, solar, geothermal etc? If the gw phenomenon is vital to our survival why aren't we planning for the consequences of temperature rise? Placing all our eggs in the basket of giving a few hedge fund operators carbon credit billions doesn't smack of scientific integrity to many thinking people. Perhaps more science and less snake oil would be welcome.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've been a subscriber to SciAm for over 30 years. Over the past 5 years or so SciAm has lurched to the Left. Not only do they by into the AGW myth, but I've also noticed that they have been embracing socialist ideals in their various editorials each month. Sad to say, but I think I will have to let my subscription lapse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've been a subscriber to SciAm for over 30 years. Over the past 5 years or so SciAm has lurched to the Left. Not only do they by into the AGW myth, but I've also noticed that they have been embracing socialist ideals in their various editorials each month. Sad to say, but I think I will have to let my subscription lapse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnce there was a consensus that the earth was flat, and once there was a consensus that the earth was the center of the universe. Both were eventually proved false. Granted one was pushed more by religion than science. The scientific consensus is what undermines the consensus. Consensus is not science, if you reach consensus by changing the variables or the model to prove the outcome that was predicted you have performed a trick not science.
Thank you for pointing out that in 1859 it was known that the greenhouse effect was needed to keep the planet livable.
Two things:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. The email and computer codes were likely leaked by a whistle-blower, not stolen or hacked. No personal emails were released and the alleged "hacker" released them under the name FOIA. The release was at the same time a big FOIA request was turned down.
2. Your claim these emails do nothing to change average temperature trends is false. The most important temperature data set is the Hadley CRU. This is released by the UK Met office. They combined their Ocean temperatures with land values they get from the U of E. Anglica CRU to make the Hadley CRU. The 'leaked' emails cast serious doubt on the integrity of many of these people responsible for these temperature data sets. The 'leaked' computer code seems to indicate deliberate fudging of the data to achieve a predetermined outcome. The UK Met office has announced a review of their data for the last 160 years. If they are concerned about the temperature record, how can you allege 'Climategate' has no impact in any kind of intellectually honest way?
"In fact, nothing in the stolen e-mails or computer code undermines in any way the scientific consensuswhich exists among scientific publications as well as scientiststhat climate change is happening and humans are the cause. "There is a robust consensus that humans are altering the atmosphere and warming the planet," said meteorologist Michael Mann of The Pennsylvania State University, who also participated in the conference call and was among the scientists whose e-mails have been leaked. "Further increases in greenhouse gases will lead to increasingly greater disruption.""
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnbelievable! You quote the criminal and believe him when he tells you everything is ok. Have you even looked at the computer code? Its there is in the source code documentation, numerous times, that they are changing the numbers!
And no, you are wrong about glaciers. About 50% of the worlds glaciers are growing.
Take a trip to the New Zealand glaciers and you'll notice they are growing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTake a trip to Antarctica and you'll notice it has grown, biggest grown in satellite history.
97% of climatologists agree AGW is a fact. According to denier's 'logic' this 97% are all part of a vast socialist conspiracy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd they wonder why sane, rational people might regard them as kooks.
The whole problem with the topic of Climate change can be summed up in the title.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"...polls are showing public belief that greenhouse gases are warming the planet is ebbing"
You don't believe or not believe scientific theory, you prove or you disprove. Belief has nothing to do with it unless you never understood the science behind it to begin with. If that is the case why should anyone give a flying f**k what you believe?
If 5,000,000 grocery clerks told you that climate warming wasn't happening and one environmental scientist said that it was, guess whose opinion is important here....
Wrong. According to the latest IPCC report 100% of the climate scientists have come to a "consensus" that recent warming is due to Man. The incredible weakness of that statement, and the admitted weak predictive power of GCM's (they have to assume the positive feedback of water vapor to CO2, and ignore clouds) lead to a proposed tax on *everything* . That is what truly beggars beleif in AGW. The UN's position is clearly unobjective on it's face. No wonder then that they can ignore ClimateGate. The whole IPCC TAR is a house of cards.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI forgot to mention that the consensus is that they are 90% sure recent warming is due to man.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is exactly why I allowed my subscription to Scientific American expire. Apparently Mariette DiChristina is an unabashed Obama supporter who encourages her staff to abandoned any semblance of objectivity to praise him - even going so far as beating the Nobel committee to the punch by bestowing upon him the hollow title of Scientific American 10 earlier this year. I'm still in awe as to why a science magazine would forsake the lifetime accomplishments of many scientists to lay unfounded acclaim at the feet of an unaccomplished politician.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess for the same reason they would disparage anyone who would question the apparent machinations of people who are supposed to be telling us the truth.
It's sad to see this once-respected publication reduced to shilling for the flat-earthers. I feel like I'm watching a beloved, respected old teacher slip into senility--the name's right, the face still warming, familiar. But the old fire and the verve are gone or bent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's life's tragic, comic revenge on mortal achievement.
Yes, we all know what a trick is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrick - ...5. a. A special skill; a knack: "Is there a trick to getting this window to stay up?" b. A convention or specialized skill peculiar to a particular field of activity: "learned the tricks of the winemaking trade."
Likewise
Hack - ...To write or refine computer programs skillfully.
I have been involved in many computer design projects. We use tricks and hacks to get to successful results frequently.
The problem with the "global temperature idea" is that it's an average of the temperatures taken worldwide. There are more cold parts, so it's NOT accurate. It's not specific enough.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYeah, but what about the faster growth rate of Antarctic sea ice than the melt rate of Arctic sea ice?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe climate model will never be accurate because the whole problem is too complicated, a small changes affect the results globally.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe program itself is not adequate to process all the needed information. I would be very surprised if their computers were even able to even process most of the data at one time.
Wondering who writes this tripe, compelled a little investigation of my own. Who is David Biello? An avowed environmentalist not a bad thing I consider myself an environmentalist as well; but exactly what scientific credentials does he bring to the table? Consider the following:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid Biellos Experience
Associate Editor, Energy & Environment
Scientific American
November 2005 Present (4 years 2 months)
Report, write and edit articles on environment and energy-related topics. Write and produce green podcast. Edit Fact or Fiction and Strange but True columns.
US Editor
Environmental Finance
(Writing and Editing industry)
2001 2005 (4 years )
Assistant Production Manager - Story
Walt Disney Feature Animation
(Writing and Editing industry)
1997 1999 (2 years )
Assistant Production Manager - Story
Walt Disney Animation Studios
(Writing and Editing industry)
1997 1999 (2 years )
David Biellos Education
Columbia University - Graduate School of Journalism
I remember a time when in college that articles in the Scientific American were published by Scientists not Journalists with no comprehension of the Scientific Process not to mention the Peer Review Process.
Mr. Biello clearly has a political agenda as displayed in the second to last paragraph of his piece. This is not science, Mr Biello is merely parroting the protestations of those CRU scientists who got caught with their collective fingers in the cookie jar.
Wondering who writes this tripe, compelled a little investigation of my own. Who is David Biello? An avowed environmentalist not a bad thing I consider myself an environmentalist as well; but exactly what scientific credentials does he bring to the table? Consider the following:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid Biello’s Experience
Associate Editor, Energy & Environment
Scientific American
November 2005 — Present (4 years 2 months)
Report, write and edit articles on environment and energy-related topics. Write and produce green podcast. Edit Fact or Fiction and Strange but True columns.
US Editor
Environmental Finance
(Writing and Editing industry)
2001 — 2005 (4 years )
Assistant Production Manager - Story
Walt Disney Feature Animation
(Writing and Editing industry)
1997 — 1999 (2 years )
Assistant Production Manager - Story
Walt Disney Animation Studios
(Writing and Editing industry)
1997 — 1999 (2 years )
David Biello’s Education
Columbia University - Graduate School of Journalism
I remember a time when in college that articles in the Scientific American were published by Scientists not Journalists with no comprehension of the Scientific Process not to mention the Peer Review Process.
Mr. Biello clearly has a political agenda as displayed in the second to last paragraph of his piece. This is not science, Mr Biello is merely parroting the protestations of those CRU scientists who got caught with their collective fingers in the cookie jar.
Carbon dioxide cause or effect?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe should take the climate change seriously because these changes have created and destroyed huge empires within the history of mankind. However, it is a shame that billion dollar decisions in Copenhagen may be based on tuned temperature data and wrong conclusions.
The climate activists believe that the CO2 has been the main reason for the climate changes within the last million of years. However, the chemical calculations prove that the reason is the temperature changes of the oceans. Warm seawater dissolves much less CO2 than the cold seawater. See details from:
http://www.antti-roine.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=73
This means that CO2 content of the atmosphere will automatically increase, if the sea surface temperature increases for any reason. Most likely, carbon dioxide contributes to global warming, but it is hardly the primary reason for climate change.
The magnitude of CO2 and water vapor emissivity and absorptivity are the same, however, the concentration of CO2 (0.04%) is much less than water 1% in atmosphere. In this mean the first assumption is that water vapor effect on the climate change must be much larger than CO2.
The climate models may give wrong results, 1) if they assume that the CO2 is the primary reason for the temperature changes, 2) if they do not take into account the role of oceans, and 3) especially if they are based on purpose-oriented CRU temperature data.
Kyoto-type agreements transfers emissions and jobs to those countries which do not care about environmental issues. New post-Kyoto agreements must channel emissions trading funds directly to the R&D of new solar technology and commit to curb population growth. Feeding money to underdeveloped countries does not help, because this money will be used to increase population and wellfare.
I have been reading your journal for the past 30 years, never have I been embarrassed by my fellow scientists as much as I am today. I have been a firm believer in the growing human impact on our planet well before Al Gore (a lawyer politician... both not know for their credibility) ever promoted it. Still, data manipulation and dishonesty is not acceptable or justifiable under any circumstances. Instead of making excuses you should be demanding a transparent review and accountability. The editorial board should stop playing politics and go back to basic scientific principles to regain the trust they are losing very fast. It is sickening how politics comes through your editorial pieces, it has never been that bad. Please do yourself, the scientific community and us a favor, step back and take a critical look back at your partisan diatribe and realize that you are not gaining readership or credibility with it but the exact opposite is happening.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe ice caps are not growing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSmart kids have no problem thinking for themselves, by age 12, they let you know what they think.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you don't like what you read...fine...do everyone a favor...read and comment elsewhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWondering who writes this tripe compelled a little investigation of my own. Who is David Biello? An avowed environmentalist not a bad thing I consider myself an environmentalist as well; but exactly what scientific credentials does he bring to the table? Consider the following:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid Biello’s Experience
Associate Editor, Energy & Environment
Scientific American
November 2005 — Present (4 years 2 months)
Report, write and edit articles on environment and energy-related topics. Write and produce green podcast. Edit Fact or Fiction and Strange but True columns.
US Editor
Environmental Finance
(Writing and Editing industry)
2001 — 2005 (4 years )
Assistant Production Manager - Story
Walt Disney Feature Animation
(Writing and Editing industry)
1997 — 1999 (2 years )
Assistant Production Manager - Story
Walt Disney Animation Studios
(Writing and Editing industry)
1997 — 1999 (2 years )
David Biello’s Education
Columbia University - Graduate School of Journalism
I remember a time when in college that articles in the Scientific American were published by Scientists not Journalists with no comprehension of the Scientific Process not to mention the Peer Review Process.
Mr. Biello clearly has a political agenda as displayed in the second to last paragraph of his piece. This is not science, Mr Biello is merely parroting the protestations of those CRU scientists who got caught with their collective fingers in the cookie jar.
I am EXTREMELY disappointed with this as a first response to "climategate".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a conspiracy which calls the whole scientific community and our values into question and the response of Scientific American is to try and backfill and spin in favour of AGW.
At BEST this throws the AGW argument back to the zero state and all evidence for it has to be reproven. At worst it throws doubt on the entire scientific community and method including the value of Scientific American as an information source.
Richard... I completely agree.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn fact, I think it is pretty telling that the best (possibly only) credible attach so far mounted on Climate Change science has been in the arena of public opinion.
Do you think these hacked e-mails/code were a lucky find by those who perpetrated the leak? Hardly. It was a desperate, and yes, brilliant move by those who have not been able to dent the reasonable conclusions that DECADES of science by dozens of countries, and thousands of scientists have brought forth.
Really... if you are a good defense lawyer, and you are trying to defend an indefensible client, you are a fool if you do not use every means to discredit those whose statements condemn your client. It is called resonable doubt... the one who can get you to doubt has won an important PR batte.
After all is said and done, that is what this leak was about. If you can't discredit the science, discredit the scientist. Which is not very hard when you cherry pick the e-mails & code.
I am not even defending some of the work or actions by SOME researchers. There is not one branch of government, business, and yes, science, that does not have some corruption or politics internal to its workings. Get over it.
To latch onto this as some kind of hallelujah moment only exposes you for someone who has already come to a conclusion. I respect those who at least say they don't yet know... it is an openness to new information. Those who just claim some kind of ominscient answer and flatly deny we are serious contributors to the problem can be and should be discounted as irrelevant to this conversation.
I am not a scientist, but I can understand data and fraud. What happened here amounts to an Enron event for climate "science". The raw data supposedly demonstrating global warning was deleted--i.e., destroyed. That's fraud, pure and simple, not an accident. Those commentators here who don't understand that are fools, regardless of how many degrees they have after their name. So you of the elite don't think me a fool, let me note I graduated from two Ivy League schools--Harvard and University of Pennsylvania--and got better grades at the first than your high priest Al Gore.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are wrong about the usage of the word "trick". I'm a physicist and mathematician myself, and I can testify that it is often used in a completely honest context, so as to mean a smart way/technique of solving something, for example. But if you still feel you know better, you can go to the library or even easier, Amazon.com and search and mathematical book for the word "trick". Try for example Mathematical Methods for Scientists and Engineers by McQuarrie.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFinally, someone with a grip on this (Iylwyll). SCIENTISTS are human. They can like anyone else become partisan and sloppy in their work when trying to support a thesis that is mired in controversy. But SCIENCEthe observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomenais not partisan. It is the cumulative result of a disciplined approach to knowledge subject to peer review and repeatability. It is the opposite of FAITH, belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. I would love to discover that global warming is temporary, reversible, or even a mistake in our calculations. But to endlessly dither while the RISK of catastrophic outcomes is clearly stated, is a head-in-the-sand position based on cynicism and misplaced faith. Ultimate proof, when it arrives, will likely arrive too late for us to undo the damage. Even if all the scientific consensus proves in the end to be erroneous or that some as yet unseen natural phenomenon or human invention emerges to restore atmospheric balance, we will still be better off in a cleaner, more energy efficient world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFinally, someone with a grip on this (Iylwyll). SCIENTISTS are human. They can like anyone else become partisan and sloppy in their work when trying to support a thesis that is mired in controversy. But SCIENCE—the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena—is not partisan. It is the cumulative result of a disciplined approach to knowledge subject to peer review and repeatability. It is the opposite of FAITH, belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. I would love to discover that global warming is temporary, reversible, or even a mistake in our calculations. But to endlessly dither while the RISK of catastrophic outcomes is clearly stated, is a head-in-the-sand position based on cynicism and misplaced faith. Ultimate proof, when it arrives, will likely arrive too late for us to undo the damage. Even if all the scientific consensus proves in the end to be erroneous or that some as yet unseen natural phenomenon or human invention emerges to restore atmospheric balance, we will still be better off in a cleaner, more energy efficient world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've noticed a lot in common in the selective twisting of scientific results between the climate-change deniers and the fundamentalists - maybe someone should do a correlation study, I wouldn't be surprised to find a strong one. After all, both are based more on faith than science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNature rarely provides science with tidy results and numbers that precisely fit nice curves. No one experiment can be trusted to provide the answers - it must be repeated again using different methods by others. So many results from different researchers in different fields using different records, when taken together, point to not just an increase in global temperatures but an unprecented rate of increase in global temperatures, that most scientists are convinced. Selectively choosing facts and stats that support a different view is fun but not credible, and is increasingly less credible as more results appear and models are refined.
As we carelessly put more energy into the atmosphere so we should expect more dramatic effects, including cooling in some areas. For example if more fresh water switched off the gulf stream then the UK would cool down, not warm up. We should certainly see more extreme events. I think a study that investigated the rate of increase of extreme events (black swans) and the rate at which weather records of all types are being broken across the world would show a dramatic increase in recent years and would be yet another proof that mankind is affecting the weather. After all, it's these extremes that cause the most damage wherever they occur.
The amount of record low temperatures this fall in the US is listed at this link.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.iceagenow.com/Record_Lows_2009.htm
The list is quite impressive. Perhaps climatologists should be looking at the temperatures instead of studying cores of trees.
Not once have I heard in this "scientific" discussion has I heard any mention of the Midwestern Ice Age 16,000 years ago in which glaciers extended as far south as Illinois. To discuss climate change on the planet earth over a 50 year period is moronic, not scientific. .
Why can't you just deal with real data instead of justifying the quetionable conduct of the folks at CRU
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article illustrates why I no longer buy "Scientific" American which I used to greatly enjoy. I am not scientifically ignorant (MIT Materials Science course 3). They way "Climate" scientists (should be political climate scientists) are believeing their doctored models is the same as trying to eat the picture of the hamburger on the menu.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is a huge diffence between theory and reality, ask any engineer.
The article really didn't mention anything of substance in the emails. The writer, in my opinion, seems to be in a panic. If you yell your point louder than the opposition, then I guess it becomes truth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTake it for what it's worth...tripe.
Your analysis is well put. Even if reducing emissions did not stop the warming, it would certainly not harm the environment to reduce polution. I appreciate your response amongst a a cesspoll of uniformed comments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is not email gate at all. It is education gate in full display from Senators to Joe the public. The know nothing want to scrutinize science. Denying findings held up as true by peer review over and over again. American Schools are a failure if so many indignant Americans know nothing of the method of science or critical thinking. Teachers should be replaced by capable teacher who know something about science and can teach critical thinking. Future generations depend on our acting promptly. We need to reduce the world population with family planning and free distribution of birth control world wide and tax energy to force efficient cars, heating and cooling and build nuclear power plants to replace coal fired power generation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGlaciers, the arctic and antarctic are melting away and the yahoos claim there is no global warming! Your mothers should have used birth control to prevent global warming.
Wow the baloney got very thick here. Why would you guys spend your time arguing with posters with screen names like "the Scientist" and "Midwest Scientist" or even "freedomisgood?" Haven't you been on the Internet before? It's a bogus climategate spam attack. They're hitting all the science journals, pretending to be knowledgeable but still spouting FUD.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlthough, I will say that several of the clearer refutations of the anti-global warming baloney were very well written and supported, a waste of time, but still done well.
RealTH, but isn't CO2 (some of it) being used up by water?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe question is not whether the climate is changing. The question is if we are causing it. Until you can account for the Medieval Warm Period (and, for that matter) the Little Ice Age, your arguments remain unconvincing. This data needs to be examined by true outsiders as these emails hopelessly compromise the Human-caused Global Warming proponents. An objective reading of these emails and the program code (I am a programmer with 30 years of experience), convince me that this requires an investigation, especially since we are talking about investing trillions of dollars. After looking at notations the programmers have made when 'adjusting' their models, I believe I understand why their models do not agree with objective reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder just how many people making comments have either read the IPCC reports or all the emails in question?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd where were the ice levels during the Medieval Warm Period? Seems the Vikings founded settlements on Greenland which was warm enough to sustain agriculture. Is the scientific community now going to blame the Vikings for having caused Global Cooling? The hubris of the closed minds claiming man is the cause of climate change is unbelievable - just like their claims
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think we'll look back and realize that in the past weeks AGW like Tiger Woods was found to be cheating despite what many believed. With this damning exposure the non-science of AGW never recovered despite the incredible and mindless momentum behind it. What the emails exposed, besides that the real data doesn't support serious consideration of changing anything due to CO2, was all the apologists who really aren't at all objective or thoughtful such as the author here and SA.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not a scientist, only an electronics engineer, but I have sufficient common sense and knowledge of physics, to see that there is no really based scientific proof of the man made climate change. The crown on all is the decision of the EPA, that CO2 is a gas dangerous to human health.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvery child learns at school, at least in most countries of the world, (I start to doubt whether also in the US), that every living creature, ever since about one billion years ago, powered by the carbon oxygen metabolism, generates as a waste product carbon dioxide, which is flushed out by the blood and breath. Would carbon dioxide be dangerous to these creatures in the normal concentrations, there would be no animal life in current forms on Earth today.
I know that in the Soviet Union under Stalin and in the third Reich scientific facts were perverted for political interests, but I am terribly disappointed, that such is happening in the US today.
So with a bit of common sense everybody can find out, that most of the climate warming delusion is based only in the pork barrels of the involved interest groups and others profiting from this bandwagon.
See my upcoming article "Golfers (reference to authority) respond to Tigergate voice mail controversy" Summary: nothing really going on here - pay no mind - move along. Er not what it sounds like - you're not a real Golfer so you wouldn't understand the Golfer code words. "wife looked at my phone calls" really means "I only look at my wife no phone calls". The consensus among "Golfers" on Tiger 'being true' is intact so stop here. ...Good, I was feeling weak and silly there for a minute with my uncritical worship of The Tiger but now I feel all better and my job is safe, my job is safe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt never fails to amaze how skeptics will grasp at any "evidence" as incontrovertible proof of some conspiracy, when the experts in the field, the scientists, universally state that climate change is real. I guess if you don't want to believe in science, then stop posting on this site. The junctions in the transistors in your computer require quantum tunneling to occur, whereby electrons must pass through a potential barrier and which is clearly impossible. Don't drive your cars because clearly at 60 mph your tires will melt and your face will be ripped off by the wind. And don't use electricity because some of it is produced by nuclear reactors which, once fission is started will consume the Earth in a huge explosion
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese are all predictions made by scientists that were refuted by the majority of scientists and quickly proven wrong. Science is a self-correcting field wherein the best theory wins, not when 51% of the uneducated masses don't believe. Climate change is the prevailing theory because it most correctly describes what is going on and it won't go away until a better theory comes along. There isn't one. So I guess we're stuck having to listen to the experts and actually doing something about the problem.
Are you too lazy to look at this years Artic Sea Ice Numbers? They show that the sea ice continues to recover since 2007. The minimum is now 2.0277 million square miles. Please note: It's not getting worse, it's getter better. Get out of the past. Don't mislead with bad data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBecause you don't know what's going on. you can estimate the maximum CO2 sensitivity, like Nir Shaviv has done without a model, to be around 1.3 +- .3 degrees for a doubling of CO2. And a reasonable scientist would suspect that it would be much less than that due to other effects that cause the temperature to go up than CO2. Sure, one effect of increasing CO2 would be to at least increase the absorption of infrared from the earth. But the increase is not linear, more like logarithmic due to the saturation calculations and the anthropogenic CO2 question is totally up in the air since it is so small - 3% of the total. And then the question of the radiation balance given the dominant water vapor all around the CO2 makes a final conclusion impossible. Somehow, ice ages have occurred with 10x the present CO2 concentrations. You really don't know what you are doing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWait! There are fairly reputable estimates of CO2 levels during the last few major ice ages which indicate that the CO2 levels were 5 - 20 times higher than today. Huge amounts of CO2 apparently don't increase the greenhouse effect significantly due to saturation of the quantum levels of CO2 so that it can no longer absorb. Please educate me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe biggest problem with the data is that it does not cover a statistically significant period of time relative to either the start of the last ice age, or the approximate 4.5 billion years since the formation of Earth. How do the climate models account for ice ages, and other climatic phenomena that pre-date human history? That is the ultimate test of the numerical modelling process!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe outing of the info from the University of East Anglia Emails is indeed:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'An Incovenient Truth'!!
Everyone is wanting to sell their opinion for a promice of a future job! We can't rust any of them. When I was in high school (1969) we were "Entering another Ice Age) All this is fabricated to up their own position in "lie."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey are all lying to create a need for their opinon. When I was in High School (1969) we were entering a new Ice Age) The Polar Caps were growing increasingly thick. Those guys are drowned out by Al Gore now saying that the Oceans are warner. Data doesn't support either!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn fact, there IS strong evidence that global warming is anthropogenic. The ratio of a specific CO2 isotope, unique to the CO2 found in fossil fuel, has greatly increased since approximately beginning 400 years ago. Precisely when deforestation began and the use of fossil fuel began. This is a fact borne from ice core samples.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no definitive PROOF of global warming, but we don't need proof to take reasonable action. There is overwhelming evidence, none-the less.
If 10 doctors told you that you had cancer and 1 doctor told you that you are healthy you'd probably be relieved, declare yourself healthy, light a cigarette and go home.
Outstanding Lylwyll! Thank you for articulating so well my major complaint.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs it stands today, whether AGW is real or not is not important. The integrity of the science and the re-establishment of trust is. And none of these "CRU does not matter" or "the other side are bought and paid for idiots" articles and comments mean a diddly damn until integrity is restored.
Sadly, it is you that is the flat earther. AGW is not a fact. It is an hypothesis that fits the observable data. But it still has 2 stages to go through to become a fact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe next step is testing. Testing the hypothesis. if testing bears out the hypothesis, it becomes a theory. After that comes proof of the theory, which would then make it a fact.
So before pointing fingers at others, remember the 3 fingers. And until your God gives you the "facts" written on stone tablets, I would suggest you quit belittling yourself.
No, dyslexic is just strange. keith Olberman is one of the most biased non-reporters in the media. Anyone claiming differently is so blinded by bias as to be unworthy of reading further. Since you seem to be so prolific in your posting, at least I can skip yours as the irrelevant ones.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFisixisfun,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will grant you that the hysteria in the 70s was almost totally media based (much like today - only the media is just playing tag along today), but the few scientists (crackpots?) of the 70s did not say man was stopping us from entering an ice age. They said man was causing us to enter an ice age.
I was there. Yes, they were wrong then. In 30 years are we going to be saying the same thing about now? (actually give it 20, the hysteria has already been going on over 10 years).
One thing is for sure. No one on this planet knows anything for a "fact", and with the skulduggery going on with the faux scientists, it is going to take a lot longer to get to the truth.
Cold Fusion anyone?
FrankD,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthen 97% of the climatologists are incompetant boobs. AGW is not even a theory yet, just an hypothesis. Any COMPETANT scientist will tell you that.
There is no PROOF and you'll never get PROOF. It's called EVIDENCE. And there's plenty of it. But, do you want some hard evidence of anthropogenic warming? A certain carbon isotope in CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing for about 400 years. Guess what? Burning fossil fuel produces this particular isotope of carbon. And 400 years ago is when we started burning forests and burning fossil fuel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't need to witness lung tissue mutate into cancer cells in the presence of cigarette smoke to be very sure that smoking causes cancer.
You're probably one of those people who think smoking can't be bad for you because your uncle smoked and lived to be 95.
"Then 97% of the climatologists are incompetant boobs. AGW is not even a theory yet, just an hypothesis. Any COMPETANT scientist will tell you that."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExcept for the 97% of scientist who disagree with his Holiness, Phil Jordan. Those other 3%? Good to go. They are the one true Scientist.
"I am not a scientist, only an electronics engineer, but I have sufficient common sense and knowledge of physics, to see that there is no really based scientific proof of the man made climate change."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I am not a scientist, only an electronics engineer..."
"I am not a scientist"
This is why you should not even be talking. By your own admission you have NO idea what you are discussing, nor do you have any right to make judgments about those of us who do.
How many people on this thread have started off with 'well I'm no scientist, but...'? Do you not realize that Joe the Plumber does NOT have a voice in the climate debate? What do you think this is, a gameshow? Science is not a thing to be debated by the uneducated masses! This is not religion!
Now stop posting irrelevant nonsense, go out and get some degrees in a science field, and post some papers in a peer-reviewed journal. Then you can be taken seriously. Not before.
There is a difference between what you "know" and what science calls a fact. You know (or more precisely think you know) many things that are not facts. In science, a fact is provable. AGW is not at that stage yet. It is an hypothesis that appears to fit observable data (your observations).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt must be tested to become a theory. Most theories do not make it to fact because they cant be tested. However, most hypothesis do not make it to theory because they are wrong. Case in point - creationism. It is an hypothesis, and if you want you can believe in it. but it cannot be proven, and indeed, at the present time, it cant even be tested.
faith belongs in religion. Proof - or at least the quest for it - is what separates science from religion.
Galaxy_man, while you denigrate the physicist, you make grievous errors yourself. He is right. There is no proof. That is the problem with AGW. it has gone out of science (thanks to politicians like Algore) to the realm of religion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is evidence that AGW is true. There is evidence that AGW is not true. But all we KNOW at this time is that it is just an hypothesis, not theory, not fact.
And we know the CRU has seriously injured the debate with its irresponsibility and disregard for the scientific method.
No amount of "warming" will significantly delay the approaching ice age. And why is it that all the outer planets are warming, we certainly can't be blamed for that! Whatever amount of this is caused by mankind is insignificant compared to all other factors. Something else, perhaps the suns' output, is causing system-wide changes. We are mere parasites that mother earth will deal with in her own sweet time!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLies, damn lies and "science"!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Phil Jordan,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"It must be tested to become a theory."
Well Phil it has. Just because the evidence has been presented to you multiple times and you simply ignore it or engage in outright denial of it does not mean it does not exist.
One of the predictions of AGW is that as CO2 levels increase the lower troposphere temperatures will increase and the STRATOSPHERE will COOl . Can you figure out why this is afinger print of mankind and a falsification of a solar induced warming trend?
Here Phil:http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/20c.html
Direct retrieval of stratospheric CO2 infrared cooling rate profiles from AIRS data
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005GL024680.shtml
Want the raw data for it? Here:
http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/AIRS/data-holdings
Got a rational empirically based peer reviewed explanation that explains otherwise? Go ahead show it.
Now Phil, that that is not the only testable effect of AGW but I think that it serves as a rationality test for you.
Hey trent 1492, now if we just knew for sure that the temps in the lower troposphere are really rising there would be nothing to argue about, because certainly the stratosphere is cooling.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess to know something like that it would help to have a real good idea of how climate varies over time, and to do that you have to have honest numbers. So let's take the troposhere in Antarctica. One way to make East Antarctica look a lot colder back in the 1940's up to the 1980's would be to go back in time and do a lot of conjectures about what temps should have been in empty data grids over the vast area of E. Ant.
Say someone just plugs in the numbers they want, re-averages the whole ensemble, and then announces that temps were really colder back then than what was actually recorded at the handful of measuring stations actually in continuous operation.
Voila! Now some warming can be "proven" because the new colder "historical" data makes today's temps look warmer. This is such a good trick you can use it right around the South Pole and on the Western Peninsula and, gee, it's warming everywhere! All based on numbers somebody made up and plugged in their algorithm, of course, but that's how a career bandwagon gets rolling and rolls on to great things.
The ice around Antarctica melts back a lot every year and then it freezes back. This year it froze back to the largest perimeter it has reached since satellite measurement began in 1980. That colder stratosphere is not only making a huge and fluctuating ozone hole, it maybe is cooling things right down to ocean level.
Hey, here's another way to make a hard-to-verify claim about Ant. Fly a gravitometer over all the ice and claim that these devices are so accurate and so consistently callibrated over decades of measurements that they generate data which prove that the total ice cap on the rocky southern continent is shrinking.
Well, us climate deniers will just have to take the gurus word for it because most of us don't know anything about gravitometers, although I did know some well-witchers once who were doing about the same thing concerning water hundreds of feet below them.
What I can verify is that today was the coldest day on record at SeaTac airport nine miles from my house. Pipes are freezing all over our neighborhood and the cold is hanging on, not going away at all. Now up in the Bering Strait the ice has already frozen back and all the soot from China that falls on the ice all winter long will not be able to melt a thing until the sun returns next June.
Hey trent 1492, now if we just knew for sure that the temps in the lower troposphere are really rising there would be nothing to argue about, because certainly the stratosphere is cooling.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess to know something like that it would help to have a real good idea of how climate varies over time, and to do that you have to have honest numbers. So let's take the troposhere in Antarctica. One way to make East Antarctica look a lot colder back in the 1940's up to the 1980's would be to go back in time and do a lot of conjectures about what temps should have been in empty data grids over the vast area of E. Ant.
Say someone just plugs in the numbers they want, re-averages the whole ensemble, and then announces that temps were really colder back then than what was actually recorded at the handful of measuring stations actually in continuous operation.
Voila! Now some warming can be "proven" because the new colder "historical" data makes today's temps look warmer. This is such a good trick you can use it right around the South Pole and on the Western Peninsula and, gee, it's warming everywhere! All based on numbers somebody made up and plugged in their algorithm, of course, but that's how a career bandwagon gets rolling and rolls on to great things.
The ice around Antarctica melts back a lot every year and then it freezes back. This year it froze back to the largest perimeter it has reached since satellite measurement began in 1980. That colder stratosphere is not only making a huge and fluctuating ozone hole, it maybe is cooling things right down to ocean level.
Hey, here's another way to make a hard-to-verify claim about Ant. Fly a gravitometer over all the ice and claim that these devices are so accurate and so consistently callibrated over decades of measurements that they generate data which prove that the total ice cap on the rocky southern continent is shrinking.
Well, us climate deniers will just have to take the gurus word for it because most of us don't know anything about gravitometers, although I did know some well-witchers once who were doing about the same thing concerning water hundreds of feet below them.
What I can verify is that today was the coldest day on record at SeaTac airport nine miles from my house. Pipes are freezing all over our neighborhood and the cold is hanging on, not going away at all. Now up in the Bering Strait the ice has already frozen back and all the soot from China that falls on the ice all winter long will not be able to melt a thing until the sun returns next June.
@Michael Cook,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Hey trent 1492, now if we just knew for sure that the temps in the lower troposphere are really rising there would be nothing to argue about, because certainly the stratosphere is cooling."
You mean you do not believe the temperature record? Why? What empirical based peer reviewed article do you base that assertion on?
"I guess to know something like that it would help to have a real good idea of how climate varies over time..."
Argument from Personal Ignorance. Just because you are ignorant of the Earth's past climate does not mean everyone else is.
"So let's take the troposhere in Antarctica. One way to make East Antarctica look a lot colder back in the 1940's up to the 1980's would be to go back in time and do a lot of conjectures about what temps should have been in empty data grids over the vast area of E. Ant."
So you got empirically based peer reviewed evidence for this assertion or is this just another fact free assertion? I am guessing the latter.
"Say someone just plugs in the numbers they want,..."
I see it is the latter you are engaging in fact free speculation. Surprise! Surprise! :(.
"...re-averages the whole ensemble, and then announces that temps were really colder back then than what was actually recorded at the handful of measuring stations actually in continuous operation."
This fact free unburdened by analysis assertion is going to appear to in a peer reviewed journal when? I am guessing never.
"Voila!"
That is amazing! You just turned a fact and logic unencumbered screed into a fact. Magic indeed. For your next trick do you intend to show us how the West and East Antarctic are NOT melting. I look forward to that stunt Mr. Houdiini.
"The ice around Antarctica melts back a lot every year and then it freezes back. This year it froze back to the largest perimeter it has reached since satellite measurement began in 1980. That colder stratosphere is not only making a huge and fluctuating ozone hole, it maybe is cooling things right down to ocean level."
Uh, oh. You just ran into a problem. It is called REALITY. Here take a look at what the GRACE satellites are saying:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n12/full/ngeo694.html
FTA:
Accelerated Antarctic Ice Loss from Satellite Gravity Measurements
Abstract:
"In agreement with an independent earlier assessment4, we estimate a total loss of 190 plus minus77 Gt yr-1, with 132 plusminus26 Gt yr-1 coming from West Antarctica."
Reality it matters. Sorry but just because you do not believe in something does not mean it is not true.
"What I can verify is that today was the coldest day on record at SeaTac airport nine miles from my house."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, I see. My mistake. I thought the speck of dust we lived on was called planet Earth. In fact as you have made clear; it should really be called planet Sacramento. It is so obvious now that the city of Sacramento is a barometer for the ENTIRE PLANET because we all know that if it is cold near Michael Cook's house then it must be the same on the ENTIRE PLANET. I wonder why I never thought about it like that before? I know! It is because I am not a narcissist who thinks the entire planet revolves around his tiny plot of real estate.
"Now up in the Bering Strait the ice has already frozen back..."
You are correct Michael. The reason it froze back is because of this natural phenomena called WINTER. Did anyone not tell you that Global Warming does not mean the end of WINTER?
Correction: Please substitute all mentions of the city of Sacramento for Seattle. My apologies. I was reading SeaTac for Sacramento.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe fact that governments are still pursuing an agreement in Copenhagen even after climategate leak, means that there sure is enough evidence and countries are called upon to act on the evidence! otherwise, US & China would have most likely delayed the resolution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wish I was in Sacramento. Again this morning the dog dish was frozen through to depth of three inches. The problem is it doesn't melt during the day anymore so when we leave our long-hair big dogs out for the day while we are at work they are unable to drink after a few hours, as even boiling water put in the plastic bowl cools and freezes in a few hours. It's a problem, as they are not trustable indoor dogs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou say it is getting warmer other places. Must not be on Mt. Blanc where the glacier is growing again last year. That's the problem, we can't trust your statement that somewhere else it is getting warmer because manmade warmists fudge and distort too much data, apparently.
Yesterday I stayed home just to care for the dogs indoors and so listened to Limbaugh, Hannity, et all on the radio which I normally can't do. A guy who claimed to have a PhD in Info management and who claimed to be dissecting the Fortran language of the algorithm used in the CRU dept. of the University of East Anglia, repository of main IPCC data base, was saying the e-mails are irrelevant, all the mischief is in the coding of the algorithm which supposedly objectively analyzes the data. He says it is all bunk, with many parameters put in by hand for mysterious reasons, etc., not all of which are indicated by the cryptic notes in the code itself.
Then there is the problem that many researchers are complaining that the original data was generally destroyed after the CRU reached its conclusions however it reached those conclusions (maybe the e-mails do reveal mindset here) so nobody can check their work. In fact, a lot of climate research seems to have been done that way. . .
So, I will stick with my dog-dish temperature instrument. It may be primitive, but no misguided or power-hungry idealist can make it lie.
Let's say in your job, you haven't gotten a raise for the past 5 years. You go to your boss and ask for a raise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHe tells you that you are fine. "I've looked at your earning and found that the last five years have been the highest earning years in your career. "
Are you getting richer? Because this seems to be the same way you are trying to prove it is getting warmer at an accellerating rate.
@Mchael Cook,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"You say it is getting warmer other places."
Along with every major scientific organization on the planet; an assertion testable by observation.
"That's the problem, we can't trust your statement that somewhere else it is getting warmer because manmade warmists fudge and distort too much data, apparently."
Evidence? You have been asked this repeatedly and you continue to ignore the request. When you provide the evidence post the ENTIRE E-mail message with text number, then I want you too connect it with a specific database and peer reviewed papers. Be as specific as possible. What part of the papers and databases are fraudulent? If you can not do this then I am going to dismiss you as another dupe.
"Must not be on Mt. Blanc where the glacier is growing again last year."
Anecdote does not equal data. Here is what the World Glacier Monitoring Service has to say about the Alpine glacier of central Europe:
http://www.grid.unep.ch/glaciers/pdfs/6_5.pdf
FTA:
"The Alpine glacier cover is estimated to have diminished by about 35 per cent from 1850 to the 1970s and another 22 per- cent by 2000 (Paul et al. 2004, Zemp et al. 2007b). Mass balance measurements show an accelerated ice loss after 1980 (Vincent 2002, Huss et al. 2008) culminating
in an annual loss of 5 to 10 per cent of the remaining ice volume in the extraordinarily warm year of 2003 (Zemp et al. 2005)."
Page 40
Here is the graph for the mass balance of the planets glaciers. Sorry but you are simply spreading disinformation.
http://www.grid.unep.ch/glaciers/img/5-9.jpg
"A guy who claimed to have a PhD in Info management and who claimed to be dissecting the Fortran language of the algorithm used in the CRU dept. of the University of East Anglia..."
False, the Harry Read Me Text does not use Fortran but IDL. That your supposed expert can not even tell the languages apart tells you mountains about his supposed expertise.
"...repository of main IPCC data base..."
False no such thing. What does that tell you about the supposed reliability of your sources?
"Then there is the problem that many researchers are complaining that the original data was generally destroyed after the CRU reached its conclusions however it reached those conclusions (maybe the e-mails do reveal mindset here) so nobody can check their work."
False. Disagree? Then tell me the following.: What researchers? What database was destroyed? Be as specific as possible. The GHCN database is not even hosted in the U.K but by the American NOAA organization.
"So, I will stick with my dog-dish temperature instrument. It may be primitive, but no misguided or power-hungry idealist can make it lie."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour paranoid hysteria petticoats are showing.
Michael,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not know the physics, but have been told by those that do that hot water freezes faster than room temperature water. From their explanation it seems that because hot water exposes itself to the surrounding cold air faster (it is moving faster), the individual molecules loose energy faster and thus freeze faster.
Weird I know. I just replace the water for my cats twice a day (and chuck the round ice cubes over the side of the deck).
Trent1492. I get most of my ammo from worldclimatereport.com, which cites all the studies that they find of interest, with critiques. Also Lord Christopher Monckton has a site. He quotes a guy a lot whom he claims is the world's leading expert on sea level change, not surprisingly the guy thinks that the 1.5 inches of claimed rise due to AGW is ridiculous.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI thought October was pretty cold and November about the same, but December so far is actually frigid. Anyhow, I am going to predict right now that by 2020 carbon dioxide will be at 500 ppm worldwide but that the Thames, the Hudson, The Seine, the Neva and the Volga, and maybe the Yellow River will freeze solid enough to walk on in January. Also parts of the Danube.
I floated the Volga this summer and the weather was cool, versus the sweltering heat you sometimes get. Ever wonder why the Russian government was probably behind the e-mail and the computer code getting hacked from East Anglia? Protecting their fossil fuel interests against the green gangster movement, no doubt, but also they probably don't believe that Siberian permafrost is emitting more methane or that reindeer herders are suffering from the warmth.
At least, Russians don't care much if those things really happen. In Moscow the big deal is snow removal.
From a review of Lord Monckton and his misrepresentation of the facts:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo which was the august journal that published it? Science? Nature? Geophysical Research Letters? Not quite. It was the Sunday Telegraph. In keeping with most of the articles about climate change in that publication, it is a mixture of cherry-picking, downright misrepresentation and pseudo-scientific gibberish. But it has the virtue of being incomprehensible to anyone who is not an atmospheric physicist.
The author of this "research article" is Christopher Monckton, otherwise known as Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. He has a degree in classics and a diploma in journalism and, as far as I can tell, no further qualifications.
The complete article can be found here>http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/nov/14/science.comment<
Thank you michael, for absolute proof that dittoheads measure temperature through freezing water bowls for dogs, and completely miss the point that WINTER can still be cold despite global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour beck/hannity/rushbo propaganda is just what can be expected by those preaching the DENIALIST religion, since it appears that your computer language, Alpine glaciation and denial of rising sea levels is all completely wrong, but still swallowed by those guzzlin' the Kool-aid while watching FOX.
The PHYSICAL EVIDENCE of global warming is undeniable, even if your outside water bowl freezes in the WINTER!
"I get most of my ammo from worldclimatereport.com"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen it's no wonder why you keep parroting the same garbage that marc morano does, since he, like beck/hannity/rushbo, are just communications specialists that have been waging the republican WAR on science with nothing but propaganda.
There is no "smoking gun" as these non-scientist bozos keep telling you, and the PHYSICAL EVIDENCE of global warming far outweighs their rhetoric of economic strife that you have swallowed. Why do you not 'think' that BIG OIL and the fossil fuel industry has not been waging a huge dis-information campaign for years to protect their record profits, and wage their WAR on clean and green RENEWABLE ENERGY?
@Michael Cook,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. You need to learn the difference between weather and climate. It makes you look very silly every time you conflate the two.
2. It has been said many times but bears repeating that this issue encompasses the entire globe to look at your tiny parcel of it and make conclusions about it is the height of myopia.
3. Anecdote is not data.
4. Go read what is being published in such journals as Nature, Science and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. You are not going to learn anything by going to sites that spoon fed you disinformation.
5. Resorting to conspiracy is the last refuge of the willfully ignorant. If you think that a conspiracy has been underway for the past century-and-a half to discredit Capitalism you need to re-examine your sources.
6. You are completely in the dark about the multitude of observations supporting AGW, you need to realize that those observations involve biological and physical systems.
7. Go read a history of Global Warming, a good way to learn a field is through its history.
"Also Lord Christopher Monckton has a site. He quotes a guy a lot whom he claims is the world's leading expert on sea level change, not surprisingly the guy thinks that the 1.5 inches of claimed rise due to AGW is ridiculous."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOK, so monckton, a politician with a journalism degree like caribou barbi, has a full-fledged DENIALIST site, where some "GUY" states that the seas are not rising, despite all the PHYSICAL EVIDENCE to the contrary.
Why does the DENIALIST religion have such a need to attack science through every partisan ploy they can muster?
@Michael Cook,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI mentioned to you earlier about the broadness of the observations that support a warming Earth. I think a special mention should be put in about a article that deals with the blooming of cherry blossoms in Japan. It is very elegant and takes into account such confounds as the Urban Heat Island Effect, hybridization, etc. It is plainly set out and is a wonderful example of combining historical records with plant biology to exhibit the subtle changes that climate change is having on humanity and the natural world it depends on.
Go here to read it:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:CZS0XiO5OG8J:arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/1893.pdf+Richard+Primack+and+Hiroyoshi+Higuchi&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgs1Tmmaiqv_AmFQoAC7I0cGv_T-3s1Ayq6fdlvrzfYT3GSQr7uft4XXIznCPDKVE7jsQr0qMn81JS-M_-B1EkAWpNBesqpiE-OHjJerOgxVCUOVKuZPBTAq6gijrtl2H8nxo_N&sig=AHIEtbTJTjCjoEqFPD_q2QTM59WauhngRA
i dont know why people always bang on about statistics and data.Anybody withtwo holes in the front of their heads can see ice shelfs melting all over the place.You dont need a billion dollar supercomputer to see the bleeding obvious.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood article. Balanced and sensible. In the past year, I changed from a die hard (ignorant) AGW believer to a die hard AGW denier. I have read over 150 articles and papers on Global Warming. In addition, I have done my own research. I now believe that CO2 at only .0387% of the atmosphere, even if doubled, would have virtually no impact on the earth's climate. And furthermore, I believe that doubling CO2 could actually help mankind grow a lot more food. As can be seen at the following URL, I am not alone in this belief..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p1845.htm
On one point, I did my own research. This research can be easily verified since it is not that difficult to do. I simply went to the US EIA site and downloaded information on global CO2 production. The EIA provides both historic data and forecasts though 2030 for the world and America. The historic data can be used to cross reference the what one giga tonne of man made CO2 converts to in terms of the atmospheric concentration of CO2 in ppm over rolling 10 year periods of time. This exercise makes it clear that since 1960, in rolling 10 year time periods, 1 G-Ton of man made CO2, on average, has resulted in an increase in atmospheric CO2 between .073 ppm and .081 ppm per G-Tonne of CO2 produced.
Also, based on the EIA projection, between 2010 and 2030 the burning of fossil fuels throughout the world will produce 770 G-Tonnes of CO2 at an avg annual rate of 36.7 G-Tonnes per year during that period of time. This is with no USA Cap and Trade Policy. And, if the USA adopts the proposed Cap and Trade plan of reducing CO2 annual production by 42% by 2030, the cumulative reduction from 2010 to 2030 as a result of America's Cap and Trade would be about 30.1 G Tonnes. This would impact atmospheric CO2 concentration by only 2.2 to 2.4 ppm. So with Cap and Trade by 2030 atmospheric CO2 would around 444 ppm, and without Cap and Trade in the US CO2 production would be 446.3 ppm. What does 2.3 ppm equal in temperature wise? CO2 accounts for about 5% of the greenhouse gas impact on global warming which is now considered to be 33 deg.C. So, if 387 ppm of CO2 yields 1.65 deg C, AT MOST , 2.4 PPM of CO2 would account for .01 deg C. What is really frightening here is that over half of our congress is apparently stupid enough to think that it makes sense to spend at least $3 trillion to reduce global warming by, AT MOST, .01 deg C. This has to be the dumbest political idea of all time!
For those who are interested in learning about the impact CO2 has on Earth's climate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is a very engaging lecture given by Dr. Alley, “The biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s Climate History”.
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
I recommend it to anybody who wants to understand why scientists are confident that CO2 is such a big driver of our climate. It is probably the most understandable science lecture on the subject you are likely to watch. It is about an hour long.
"I believe that doubling CO2 could actually help mankind grow a lot more food. As can be seen at the following URL, I am not alone in this belief..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p1845.htm"
This argument is referred to as the "Appeal to Popularity", or "Ad Populum" fallacy.
The Appeal to Popularity has the following form:
1. Many people approve of X (have favorable emotions towards X).
2. Therefore X is true.
The basic idea is that a claim is accepted as being true simply because many people are favorably inclined towards the claim. More formally, the fact that many people have favorable emotions associated with the claim is substituted in place of actual evidence for the claim. A person falls prey to this fallacy if he accepts a claim as being true simply because many other people approve of the claim.
It is clearly fallacious to accept the approval of the majority as evidence for a claim. For example, suppose that a skilled speaker managed to get most people to absolutely love the claim that 1+1=3. It would still not be rational to accept this claim simply because most people approved of it. After all, mere approval is no substitute for a mathematical proof. At one time people approved of claims such as "the world is flat", "humans cannot survive at speeds greater than 25 miles per hour", "the sun revolves around the earth" but all these claims turned out to be false.
beegdawg007,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"... This has to be the dumbest political idea of all time! "
Oh, I don't know about that. Politicians can come up with some pretty dumb ideas.
RealTH says: Even the BBC has noted that the earths
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistemperature has not increased in the last ten years ( What happened to Global warming?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm )
TS says: What Right Wing crap. There was an El Nino in 1998 causing a large hot spike. There was one relatively cool year in 2008 due to a La Nina. The decade of 2000 was still the hottest decade on record since weather instrumentation records (going back to 1880) and satellite records -- both UAH and RSS (going back 30 years).
Check out the REAL data, chump before putting out right wing lies.
Here are the weather station temperature data == per NASA
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
Here is the satellite data
look at the UAH dataset in the same Dr Spencer page. Scroll down to the end and read the global trend: 0.13 �C/decade. RSS gives 0.153 �C/decade.
UAH
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_Feb_10.jpg
RSS
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html#msu_decadal_trends