Huh? Why would it just be skeptics who would be interested in evidence of serious flaws in the science? I'm amazed by paragraph 6 of an article that begins:
The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.
Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.
Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.
The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.
Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.Everyone should perceive flaws! To talk about "sceptics" as the ones who will "seize" upon "evidence" of flaws is unwittingly to make global warming into a matter of religion and not science. It's not the skeptics who look bad. "Seize" sounds willful, but science should motivate us to grab at evidence. It's the nonskeptics who look bad. It's not science to be a true believer who wants to ignore new evidence. It's not science to support a man who has the job of being a scientist but doesn't adhere to the methods of science.
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I'd call them the curious.
This is incredible! I should read the whole thing before I comment.
You quote this guy as saying that the Middle Ages may have been warmer than today and that there has been no significant warming in the last 15 years. Count me as one who has believed, based on nearly unanimous reports in the media, as well as the prestige of the IPCC, that there is such a thing as global warming and that mankind is a contributor to that. That a top climate scientist has said that is simply shattering.
This is like Copernicus. Copernicus's theory did not cause much controversy, maybe it was not widely known in Italy, the intellectual and religious capital of Europe at the time. So far, the US media have ignored the stuff that if being uncovered in the UK media - even the Guardian and the BBC. Unfortunately, poor Galileo lived and worked in Italy and showed the movement of the earth around the sun with his telescope.
Perhaps all the snow that has fallen on DC recently (we have not seen a flake here in ME since the end of January and we can all see what a mild winter they are having in BC.) is like Galileo's telescope.
Thank you for calling out those who frame the debate as scientists versus skeptics - those labels are just inaccurate. As you say, a real scientist is a skeptic by definition.
Reading the article shows Warmist's latest desperate argument which is that only peons that do not use scientific methods could believe that the medieval warming period from North Africa to Greenland was really "Global" in scope. He first demands that the rest of the Globe's history be analysed . This is the absurd argument that says tests haven't proved a rising CO2 level causation theory 100% wrong yet, and therefore it has been proven correct. This amounts to claiming "settled truth" status for everthing he guesses at forever. That is simply a two year old's tantrum.
I didn't realize the significance of what Jones said until I read the Q&A at the link in the article. Jones is essentially admitting there's no statistically significant evidence that any warming that occurred in the 20th century was caused by human beings.
I thought the reporter summarized it poorly, but if anything it's understated. Jones said out loud there's no difference between the warming in the 90s and any natural earlier warming.
What the hell has this been all about then?
@ Steve ...It has all been about robbery. Hitler robbed Poland, and then robbed France, Belgium Holland, Norway, Greece and half of Russia. He had an ideology that he was going to improve human genetic life. But it was always all about robbery. The Robber in Chief and his Agency Heads issuing Presidential orders and putting up legislation to create Green Jobs and to prevent CO2 "pollution" is again all about robbery.It is a world scale den of thieves demanding to rob us blind that we face in DC as we speak. The pity is that they screw up men's minds with a delusion of science. Why not just point a gun and rob us, but leave our science alone?
To those of you who say that there is no global warming I would ask, why is it warmer during the day vs. the night?
To those of you who don't believe in climate change I would ask, why is it colder during the winter vs. the summer?
Clearly, there is global warming and climate change going on. How can you be so blind?
I say that the chief cause of global warming and climate change is a great mass of hydrogen lurking just a scant 93mil miles outside of our atmosphere.
Anga2010...That is exactly right, and in exchange for all of the money that exists I solemnly promise to protect the Globe from that Hydrogen gone wild crisis. But do not let Crack Emcee know about this great leadership that I am offering to sell to you. He gets upset about such Master Teachers.
@Traditonalguy
The time for talking about how the time for talking about things being over is over.
Let's talk about getting it done!
otoh,
If we just wait a bit, the hydrogen will transform into helium and it won't be such a problem after all.
This is not just about polar bears on ice floes. Here, in the land of the free, the Supreme Court has given EPA the power to regulate "greenhouse gases". You constitutional lawyers can correct me if I'm wrong. Global warming and the fact that it is caused, in large part, by mankind's release of CO2 into the atmosphere is "settled science". Given that CO2 is a byproduct of almost everything we do, including breathing, does not that ruling give EPA the power to regulate everything; and has not Obama's EPA already stated its intention to do that?
Can the SCOTUS be wrong about "settled science"?
Making climate science into a matter of religion? Well, yes, isn't that what the "orthodoxy" dig in the article suggested? The various calls we've heard for placing "deniers" on trial for a heresy or treason? The furious denunciations of those who ignore the global consensus? (Does "global consensus" = "universal"? I already know that (small "c") "catholic" means "universal".)
I've gone back and forth on AGW, before becoming pretty convinced around about 2000. This doesn't look good, and I could go back to a more skeptical position ... but.
This is still fairly early, and I don't really go to The Mail for my science. We need this to shake out, through NOAA for instance. That's what they're there for.
Ann, I don't think this is enough evidence to convince Eve Ensler Man caused global warming does not exist. But it would make for a great follow up question.
Where oh where is Al Gore? I'd like to see Joe Biden ask him for his thoughts on the current revelations.
WV: rearface!
It's obvious that global warming is a farce, but word verification is a settled science.
O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?
Short summary:
Earth gets warmer
Earth gets colder
It's been warmer before
It's been colder now.
I believe in Global warming.
I don't believe man causes it.
What the article really doesn't focus on is that all the "unprecedented irreversable rock solid computer models" said there was a clear link beteen rising CO2 levels and global temps.
Well CO2 is still rising, but Temps have not. so those models are so much BS. Go back and try again.
PS: The other take away is that all these world wide ground based historical data sets suspect. They have been tuned and normalized and aren't reliable.
The earth may not have warmed in the last 15 years, but there have been some nasty earthquakes.
'Nuff said.
The earth may not have warmed in the last 15 years, but there have been some nasty earthquakes.
'Nuff said.
I'm an agnostic when it comes to global warming, but I've been a bit perturbed at how, in all the far flung rhetoric, AGW advocates have been interchangeably using the terms "skeptics" and "denialists" as if they were one and the same. I was under the impression that skepticism is a basically healthy attitude in which one remains open to possibilities without swallowing them uncritically. Apparently, if you doubt the existence of AGW pending further evidence, you're akin to someone who denies there was ever a Holocaust.
It has been proven a fraud, and now it is an admitted fraud.
There is no tolerance for further claims by the global warming fraudists and their abettors to make any more claims whatsoever.
I will never believe them again, nor should anyone else.
Their credibility is zero. They now have no more right to even argue or present data because we can't trust them to have not fabricated the data. We can't trust them to have not cherry picked data. We can't trust them to have not ignored contrary data.
The discussion is closed until further notice, except to decide how many years they will spend in prison.
I suspect this is the reason for the admissions, Mr. Jones is trying to make it look negligent and not malicious.
Changing the subject a bit,
One wonders why the British press is all over this story, yet the US press doesn't cover it?
Is it because the pissing away of UK and EU funds is more advanced and obvious now, or
is it because the US MSM is still provding cover for our statists and their beliefs/goals
So, can we have our incandescent light bulbs back now?
shoot the messenger not the message. fauxnoise had a segment on this about 630 this morning and it was a typlically stinky "well how can you believe" bit of crap.
one scientist does not a theory make. one scientist does not a fact make. many scientists, each on their own course, coming up with the same conclusions make reliable science.
the idea that global warming and climate changes and man's influence on them is suspect science is so patentedly stupid and pedestrian as to make the god's weep. bush the younger coined the "settled 0r NOT-settled science" ploy 8 years ago. although we can all agree that bush never met a test tube he either liked or understood, he was politically motivated.
so you stal"worts" on the right, what is to be gained by adhereing to good science and global warming support? it is going to cost the scientists as much as it does you. it is the same planet. it is the same air and way of life. you assholes assign blame but no motive...what? so some poor cluck in a laboratory can make $60k a year on a project? give me a break.
you offer no other explanation other than "well shit happens". well shit doesn't happen like this and has never happened like this as far as tens of thousands of scientists can tell..but no....you are right and the huge huge numbers of scientists are wrong.
show me you friggin' degrees and expertise....put it up.
The real question that must be answered in this whole AWG mess is this: Why the hell did guys like me, non-scientists, just know that it was all a bunch of b.s. from day one? All we had was gut instinct to go on ... and we were right.
Show of hands, please: how many of you just knew from about the time Al Gore became the cause celebre that AWG was a pile of steaming, solidified cow flatulence? (Be honest, please.)
How did we know more than the entire science community, all the Harvard-type politicians, all the celebrities in Hollywood?
It's a rhetorical question cause I know the answer.
Sorry for the double post. Google seems to have taken over my new computer in ways I am not yet familiar with.
show me you friggin' degrees and expertise....put it up
AllenS--
Common man with brain. 180º from hdhouse.
Someone might need a swift kick in the pants this morning.
Beta Conservative said...
Sorry for the double post. Google seems to have taken over my new computer in ways I am not yet familiar with.
for the record, it's easier to delete the second post than to ask forgiveness :)
Opus:
I suggest you investigate Lysenko and then get back to us about the purity of science.
Issob Morocco,
Eve Ensler's got a climate change going on in her vagina.
Traditionalguy,
Can we start the next Inquisition now? Pleeeeaaaaasssse? C'mon, we've got the false religion angle down now, but if we don't get to whoever is so brilliantly evil they can also turn our scientists minds to such mush they can convince them that even Homeopathy (water) "requires more study", then it'll all be a bust.
I'll get the robes - to the Crackmobile!
But I crave your forgiveness. Don't be stingy.
All of this was completely unnecessary. A good percentage of those who are true believers have studied Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn told us that science is rarely settled, that there are always anomalies, and that observation is theory-laden. Any one of those three should have encouraged caution among the true believers.
Also, these are people who say they want to listen to those at the bottom, but in this case they didn't. With respect to peer review, they listened only to those at the top. People at the top have no problems with peer review, because it always worked for them, so naturally they will say it's reliable.
I'm at the bottom, and my view of peer review is quite different. I say it's much less reliable than those at the top do, but of course no one ever asked me about it.
There was no good reason for the true believers to have become true believers. If they had behaved properly, this whole business would have been put on a back burner for thirty years so that more evidence could accumulate, after which a more responsible decision could be made.
Beta: I'll sell you Superfluous Post Credits, so you can pay for the extra electricity and screen real estate you've wasted.
People on Twitter will be limited to 5 posts a day or maybe 8, if they make sense. Any more, and they'd have to buy a Superfluous Post Credit.
It's for Mother Earth.
opus one media, i will raise your "huge, huge, number of scientiest" with a huge, huge, huge, number of scientists who are unconvinced that agw is happening.....
btw, could you quantify how many scientists were colluding to hide the decline on the east anglia uni. email list? was that a huge or a huge, huge number of scientists? i am fuzzy on that.
It is supremely ironic that people who proudly call themselves "skeptics" (about the supernatural) are devout true believers when it comes to climate change.
show me you friggin' degrees and expertise....put it up.
Now what do you think? You think I'm qualified?
-30-
The vw this time is "depoping," so I have to come up with a comment to go with it -- something about the religion of climate change losing its head?
If you don't believe in word verification, amba, then you believe that the earth is flat.
Anne, you are absolutely right that the sentence you quote frames the issue as if only skeptics should now question AGW.
However, let's give all due credit not only to this reporter but to the British press generally. Unlike their U.S. counterparts, the Brits have actually reported, in prominent outlets, the full scope of the CRU emails and data dump, the fraud of the Himalayan glacier-melting prediction and many other bombshells.
Maybe a social scientist could explain the difference in subcultures between Brit and U.S. journalism, but in the meantime it's as if U.S. reporters aren't quite satisfied with how quickly they're becoming irrelevant so decided to help things along by ignoring one of the most important environmental (and political and economic) stories of their time.
Maybe the Brits have more of a sense of shame? Because as wonderful as this is, there have always been many sound challenges to AGW proposed by scientists with expertise relevant to the field. Unfortunately, they have had to be brave scientists thanks to the blackballing and ridicule rained upon them by the global-warming demagogues and their allies in the press.
Opus:
All this test required was a basic education, and if you had one, it was an insult to it from the beginning. The test subjects, different from what was stated, were really cultism, critical thinking, and The Art of the Con.
How'd you do? I hear Bush aced most of the important questions,...y'know, like Kyoto.
Mark:
"Why the hell did guys like me, non-scientists, just know that it was all a bunch of b.s. from day one? All we had was gut instinct to go on ... and we were right.
Show of hands, please: how many of you just knew from about the time Al Gore became the cause celebre that AWG was a pile of steaming, solidified cow flatulence? (Be honest, please.)
Right 'cheer - and I've got a blog to prove it. I never bought into this crap and it pissed me off, BIG TIME, whenever I considered the implications of what the Earth-worshippers were attempting to pull off (Hint: Guys, look in your pants under the snausage,...)
There really needs to be trials.
Tens of thousands of scientists can tell you that word verification is a settled science.
The fact that I'm presently not getting good word verifications does not diminish the fact that it is a settled science.
We are at a tipping point. What's it to be : follow Crack Emcee and kill the prophets of Anthropogenic Global Warming, or accept the offer I made earlier. In exchange for all existing money, I will not only stop the deadly warming, I will stop cooling, and I will stop earthquakes and I will stop hurricanes and I will stop droughts. And this all for one low price...plus shipping and handling. Call now for this once in the lifetime of the country offer, because if you take it, then the country is all mine and you boobs will need to worship me if you want to breath or eat.
If you people want to listen to traditionalguy, go ahead, but for all you smart people, follow me into The Word Verification Smartypants Society.
amba,
Randi and I have an ongoing conversation, kinda, but since the "scientists" that surround him run interference, someone deemed as "crazy" as I am can't win - or even get a fair hearing with him. The whole set-up is high school:
We're all just in the 30th grade,...
The tipping point is when there are cows.
I don't really go to The Mail for my science
Or CRU and the IPCC.
Christopher,
"Let's give all due credit not only to this reporter but to the British press generally. Unlike their U.S. counterparts, the Brits have actually reported, in prominent outlets, the full scope of the CRU emails and data dump, the fraud of the Himalayan glacier-melting prediction and many other bombshells.
Maybe a social scientist could explain the difference in subcultures between Brit and U.S. journalism, but in the meantime it's as if U.S. reporters aren't quite satisfied with how quickly they're becoming irrelevant so decided to help things along by ignoring one of the most important environmental (and political and economic) stories of their time."
You're repeatedly putting emphasis on the wrong notes:
1) We, as Americans, shouldn't be applauding the British Press but hanging the assholes in our own - except for Contessa Brewer, she's mine to do with as I please. Spoils of war, and all that.
2) This is, first and foremost, a story about cultism and religion. You can't understand any of it, because it makes no sense, with them. It's the only thing that explains the scientist's behavior (as well as the believer's) the focus on the Earth, the hysteria, etc.
It will take awhile for the fact to sink in that there's an 800-pound Piltdown man in the climate science lab.
A patent on which I was an inventor was involved in an interference with the Patent Office when another company filed a similar invention at almost the same time. As the US is a "first to invent" country, it had to be determined which party was the first to come up with the invention.
Every laboratory notebook, memorandum and piece of paper we had that dealt with our invention was collected and presented to the USPTO as evidence that we in fact had been the first ones to conceive and reduce our idea to practice.
Had we gone to the Patent Office and said, "Trust us, we thought up the idea first, but we can't find the data to back it up," we would have been laughed out of the proceedings.
Al Gore flunked out of Divinity School, after using his acceptance there to only do four months in Saigon.
He got C and D's in his gentleman, easy introduction science classes.
He's from a delusions profession, and he him self was attracted to it.
Most lefties wouldn't know science if you beat them over the head with it.
The climate resource industry is, like the weapons industry, addicted to fear.
Politicians are always selling fear and hokum. Weapons of Mass Destruction, Global Warming, Paulson and his TARP...
A perfect match.
I wonder what the next big fear sales job will be?
The Cold Fusion debacle a few years ago is another great example of why process can be important. The claim was that cold fusion had occurred, yet no one was able to reproduce cold fusion following instructions, so called, from CF creators. If CF actually happened, no one knows how in fact or was it simply bad science?
Jones must think he's a prim-adonna since his work is so pristine to stand by itself, his end calculations that is. Perhaps Prince Williams is now unimportant since Jones is the new "One!"
Opus One Media: shoot the messenger ... show me you friggin' degrees and expertise....put it up.
Damn, I hope that was parody.
If not, please keep your genes out of our pool. Thanks - Human Race
"You can't understand any of it, because it makes no sense, without them."
Fixed.
The global warming scam caught fire among the political
and media elite for the same reason Keynesian economics did. Half wit Democrat politicians like Al Gore may not know enough science to boil an egg, but they are veritable Feynmans when it comes to thinking up new ways to enslave and impoverish the people.
When word got out of a new scientific theory that, if correct, would justify taxes on a scale never seen before, and goverment regulatory power over all facets of human existence in the name of "saving the planet", you damn betcha it was bound to become a religion.
All the data these agw folks use are cherry picked from the most convenient source. This fellow Beck, from Germany, found records going back to 1850 on actual CO2 concentrations in Europe. They were higher than now! The records the agw crowd use are from antarctic ice cores. Temperature records come from carefully selected tree rings ( only the trees who have tree rings that confirm the theory are used) No tree rings anywhere show the increase in temp after 1961. If they don't work now, how could they be accurate before? These people could have taught Bernie Madoff a thing or two!
Opus One Media --
"show me you friggin' degrees and expertise....put it up."
You first, Bucky Boy. Don't require from others what you don't do.
john personna --
"We need this to shake out, through NOAA for instance. That's what they're there for."
Instead, how about downloading the readily available info file and look for one's self? I have.
When you take the word of experts at face value, you get taken.
"This is, first and foremost, a story about cultism and religion."
For some people, definitely. People like Phil Jones have convinced themselves that THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END, and if the data have to be helped along a little to prove it to the masses, then so be it.
For the majority, though, I think it's about power, like Skookum John says. This is the most golden opportunity that people like hdhouse, alphaLiberal, MUL, et al. will ever be presented with for imposing their will on their fellow man.
Don't worry. President Obama promised that he would "restore science to its rightful place."
When Obama talked about cap and trade in the SOTU speech, it reminded me of the Wizard of Oz: "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. The Great and Powerful Oz has spoken!"
Emcee, I've been reading about Randi since I was in junior high school. I'm glad to see he's still around. I wish his work were given more publicity.
Global warming advocates accuse people like me of being backwards and unscientific - of refusing to believing in science.
My answer is that I believe science all right; its scientists that I don't always believe.
And I still don't know how a true scientist can ever make a normative statement based upon her work.
How do you get from "is" to "should be" and still call it science?
what's that opus? there's a wolf? again? run along now boy.
Ann:
"to make global warming into a matter of religion"
Didn't Al Gore himself effectively say this when he received his Oscar? Something like "this is a moral issue now." If it's a moral issue we (and he) can gloss over empirical evidence. And that's what he's done. The question is, will this quiet the people who want to control your life? Not likely.
WV: "scure" Scare and cure. Hmmm. F
@Opus One Media
you offer no other explanation other than "well shit happens". well shit doesn't happen like this and has never happened like this as far as tens of thousands of scientists can tell..but no....you are right and the huge huge numbers of scientists are wrong.
One word, Opus: Eugenics. Look it up, and then get back to me about the nature of "scientific consensus" and "settled science."
I suppose all those scientists were right? I mean, it was settled science. The overwhelming majority of scientist subscribed to the theory of Eugenics. Governments made policy based on that very theory. Eugenics was going to show us a bright, new future, free of the problems of race, genetic disease and mental retardation! Oh, joy! Let's believe!
And then the Holocaust happened.
So, yeah. I guess shit happens.
wv: tallyme. Tallyme down as a skeptic...
The Cold Fusion debacle a few years ago is another great example of why process can be important. The claim was that cold fusion had occurred, yet no one was able to reproduce cold fusion following instructions, so called, from CF creators.
We got it going in a potato clock.
OK, I think it's safe to assume at this point that AGW is dead. Let the dissection commence.
It's interesting to me how religion and science became entangled here on so many levels.
In a thread here at Althouse a couple of years ago, it was proposed that atheists are more likely to believe in astrology than believers. As an atheist and skeptic wrt all things supernatural, I disputed this, but at its heart lies something I agree with: There is an inherent religiosity to the human condition. I think that I lack a healthy normal trait shared by 90% of humans.
I could see how a tendency toward spirituality might have distinct evolutionary advantages: People of faith are often better able to deal with stress, crushing disappointment, etc.
It appears as though a significant number of professional scientists, although mostly self-proclaimed atheists, have this religion gene, and sought to fulfill their frustrated natural religious urges with this new religion, AGW.
Consider also the way in which the end game for AGW played out. I hesitate to use a word like "miraculous" on a Sunday, lest I piss people off; but what other word can you use here?
We were maybe a couple of weeks away from all of Obama's goals falling like dominoes, including his cap-and-tax system, and then a series of unbelievably unlikely events (the Republicans voting as one bloc, the death of Kennedy, the Massachusett(e)s special election, etc) conspired to muck up health care.
While at the same time, as if by the divine hand of providence, these emails from East Anglia were leaked to the public.
I'm having a crisis of non-faith here.
Oh, and Ritzy Brassiere, aka Montana Urban Legend -- I'll take your silence on threads like this as your deepest and most sincere apologies for having been taken in by such a transparent scam and trying to snare the rest of us in it. Apology accepted, buddy.
My own office is piled high with books and papers.
Cat ownership is out of the question.
Dogs leave existing piles of things standing.
it's been a bad few months for leftists
all their bases are belong to us
they better get that license to be on the internet thing going. it's their only hope. dissent is killing the revolution.
Beyond serious flaws. Look at what we've experienced in the Northeast. Record-setting snowfall and sustained colder temps, and it's only early February.
The proof is in the temperatute.
Once again we see that the crime is not in the original act (theorizing AGW), but in the cover up (covering up contrary data).
No Montana Urban Legend. No Morty Montaign. No Garage Mahal. Sounds of crickets chirping.
AGW has crested. It is just a matter of time. Sure, dousches like Ed Begley Jr. will continue to live bizare lifestyles. Crooks like Al Gore will continue to make money. But, it will no longer be the political force. Liberals will gradually move on to find some other excuse to control how everyone lives. And gradually over the next ten years or so liberals will just stop mentioning it. Believing in AGW will become the 21st Century version of believing in the Rosenberg's innocence; a curious belief held by more excentric of the "right thinking people".
There are signs and seals in Jones's office, among the papers and scattered data.
I remember back in the early 90's when the internet was still in its early days that Al Gore was being accused of silencing climate scientists. The accusations were coming from reasonably reputable sources, but even I was a bit suspicious at the time. Why would the vice president do such a thing?
But it didn't take long to realize that there was something to it, because you almost never heard dissent from the science community since then, without the dissenter being jettisoned from the ranks of reputability.
We're seeing now that those early accusations were true.
We should ever be suspicious of politicians seeking power.
Polical AGW will run on by habit for decades.
It's a cultural force now, and will be until women stop watching TV.
Oh, and back in the early 90's, global warming had just barely been started as a topic. People were mostly talking about ozone holes. We all remember how that turned out, there never was a hole, just a thin spot, and the thin spot was just as thin as it ever was.
The point of a scientific theory is to make predictions. This is true whether we are talking about relativity (which predicted time dilation and gravitational lensing) or evolution (which predicted, among other things, that we would find fossils of quadrupeds intermediate in form between lobe-finned fishes and amphibians).
Now compare to AGW. According to AGW there should not have been a Medieval Warm Period -- but we know that Vikings were able to establish colonies on Greenland that survived for hundreds of years using nothing more than ordinary medieval farming technology -- nor the Little Ice Age, for which the historic evidence is pretty rock solid. The past 15 years should have shown a measurable increase in global temperatures, given that India and China are increasing their outputs of CO2 at a rapid pace while Europe, Canada, and the United States* are also increasing their CO2 output, though more slowly than the two Asian giants. But it didn't happen.
Now that AGW has been shown to be a false god, I hope we won't suddenly stop research into cheap and efficient solar cells, or decide to forget about nuclear power all of a sudden.
But I hope we do consign Cap & Trade to the trash can. It never was any more than a thinly disguised effort to further impoverish West Virginia while enriching California and New York. Democrats should be ashamed of themselves.
______________
* I've been told that the US has slowed the rate of increase more than Europe or Canada, but I haven't seen the actual data and these days I won't take anything on faith.
>>>i will raise your "huge, huge, number of scientiest" with a huge, huge, huge, number of scientists
What is this? The Beverly Hillbillies?
Show of hands, please: how many of you just knew from about the time Al Gore became the cause celebre that AWG was a pile of steaming, solidified cow flatulence? (Be honest, please.)
Right here. I reviewed the pre-release TAR a decade ago, dug into details, and rapidly came to the conclusion that despite a voluminous mass of citations to mostly honest research, the process of turning that mass into sweeping claims of imminent disaster had been done based on sheer politics with little or no regard for what the science was actually saying. Particularly as regards to the unjustifiable claims of certainty and statistical rigor in the Summaries, largely based on theoretical models that displayed a distinct lack of robustness and real-world correlation and contained huge numbers of questionable assumptions and modeling parameters. That's without even beginning to notice the problem of the Missing Variables.
4AR was even worse. More >epicycles. Diddled data. Missing data. No explication of data "adjustments." Assertion of "conclusions" apparently pulled out of thin air. Studies excluded for no apparent reason. Study authors being shut out of the process, and their objections to false conclusions citing their work being covered up. Etc.
Skookum John is absolutely right: "When word got out of a new scientific theory that, if correct, would justify taxes on a scale never seen before, and government regulatory power over all facets of human existence in the name of 'saving the planet', you damn betcha it was bound to become a religion."
Mark, my hand is up. I'm a long-time environmentalist -- my first run-in with the law was defending trees long before the first Earth Day -- so I stepped aside in the 90s as leaders sacrificed the purity of reasonable conservation on the altar of political power.
This has long been an Economic War, not one to save the planet, the "feel-good Earth Love" used as cynical bait for a single, monstrous redistributive solution.
It is a tragic waste of civilization's time! But perhaps, out of this rubble, will sprout the freedom for real innovation -- the kind that can only happen in liberty -- and the next real transformation can begin.
Remember there were calls by AGW proponents to criminalize disagreement.
Their tactics of crushing dissent were the same as those employed by Stalin and Mao, not to mention Alinsky, for those were the models.
One of their friends lives in the White House; he promised to make the seas stop rising.
Two things still worry me about the AGW saga:
(1) The continued insistence at the top most levels of established American science that they were and remain right about AGW (witness Stephen Chu and and the editorial board of Science magazine).
(2) The larger question of how and why these things happen, which suggests a problem of self-interest on the part of scientists suckling at the federal teat and also a failure of competetive sibling rivalry at that teat to prevent the outsized growth of this particular runt.
@Greg Hlatky: I hope you guys were diligent where it counts, otherwise you could be down for the count!
Dear Batshit Insane Lady,
Maybe you should stick to reviewing the various boxes of wines out there and leave the science to actual, you know, scientists - or at least people who's brains aren't permanently pickled in cheap booze.
Very truly yours...
Did someone just fart?
Their tactic was a simple one:
By Any Means Necessary.
Lie, cheat, steal, shout, bully, ridicule, demonize, protest march, control hiring and firing, falsify publication and rejection, impose regulations and licensing, become national leaders.
The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.
Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers. Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’
The problem with this CYA is that the November 2009 hacking/leak of the CRU at East Anglia included reams of raw temperature data. Jones has already admitted that the materials were genuine, which suggests that CRU destroyed this data over the past three months after it was leaked.
Why does this fraud still have a position as a professor of science?
So far the warmists have brought "belief" "desire" and now, ad hominem attacks to support their side. All the rest of us have are facts.
WV - unciv - seriously!
It is not surprising that the "science" supposedly supporting AGW collapsed. At its core it was never really about science. It was always a concocted scheme to use fear and even hysteria if possible to derail and take control of the industrialized western world's market-based economies.
Ah, the old "dog ate my homework" excuse. It never worked for me, either.
Actually, Opus, my friend, you need to dig a little deeper before you issue a challenge to "show me you [sic] friggin' degrees and expertise ..."
The weight of real climate scientists has been opposed to the IPCC report for quite some time. Several months ago a group of them took out a quarter page ad in the Washington Post pointing out that global temperatures have not fit the mathematical model that underlies AGW for a number of years.
AGW is junk science, Opus. It's a theory that has been falsified.
That's separate and apart from whether it makes sense to pursue alternate forms of energy. It does make sense. The winds will blow whether we tap into them for energy or not. The sun will shine whether we use solar cells or not. Uranium atoms will decay whether we build nuclear power plants or not.
What doesn't make sense is to further enrich already wealthy individuals through "carbon credits".
People should learn three things:
1. A two axis graph that shows we are DOOOMED should never be trusted. This has been going on since Malthus. The problem is that the world has more than two axes.
2. Computer models cannot be put above data. The real world is the real world. Computer models are not. Trying to simulate something as complex as the climate is probably doomed to failure.
3. Stop trying to predict the future. We almost always fail.
Pogo said:
"One of their friends lives in the White House; he promised to make the seas stop rising."
If Prez Obama were flexible and smart, he'd pivot on this issue, declare victory, check that box on his to-do list marked "Fix AGW" and move on to another issue.
But he ain't flexible and he ain't too smart.
4AR was even worse. More >epicycles. Diddled data. Missing data. No explication of data "adjustments."
Epicycles are the fourier series expansions of ellipses.
They had good data but hadn't formulated it economically.
The good part of the US media blackout on these AGW revelations is that Obama and the Democrats have no ostensible reason to delay implementing their much touted cap-and-trade agenda.
Republicans should seize this opportunity to urge a vote on Obama's cap-and-trade bill in advance of the mid-terms before this story gains legs in the US.
I am proud to say that I was a global warming Denialist more than two years before it started becoming popular in 2010. I've had some nasty arguments with the true believers.
My only training in science is about 24 credit hours in college. But it was hard science like chemistry and physica, not crap courses like sociology. But apparently that's hugely more than any American journalist who writes about global warming.
I knew AGW was a fraud when they refused to share data and refused to share their models and computer programs.
A major point of the scientific method is to share your data and experimental method so others can repeat the experiment. Any good scientist must carefully document his observed data, carefully document his experimental method and publish it for all to see, for all to criticize or find fault. If his experimental method stands up and many others can repeat the experiments and get similar results, then maybe you've found something valid.
A scientists does not conceal his data and 'lose' data and manipulate data and conceal his computer models. That's not science. That's scientology.
GW was never about science. It is about money and power. That's why American journalists are ignoring the flaws in AGW.
Thank you for recognizing the appropriate scientific stance regarding inquiry, namely skepticism.
It is what separates science from dogma, "received wisdom", and other things such as "belief on faith".
The late Jacob Bronowski said "Every judgement in science stands on the edge of error."
I liked to remind my pre-med and pre-dent students that any experiment is a question asked of nature, and nature gives its answers in the same terms as the question asked...sloppily phrased questions get sloppy ambiguous answers; experiments that carefully control the possibility for error or mismeasurement get more elegant and straightforward answers.
AGW lost its way when it became akin to a "religious crusade" pursued with ecclesiastical fervor; skepticism was tossed to the winds and dogma prevailed; skeptics were "deniers" who failed to support the infallible one true faith.
Therein lay peril, and it is disturbing that more scientists did not urge proper skepticism. We can take just pride in the advances of science, but we should remember that they resulted from careful, even humble, questioning of nature. You can't just throw away the findings you don't like in order to be seen as the brave knight on a charger in the service of mankind.
Sorry Ann, but you are being a complete asshole here and acting in a completely disgusting manner. You know absolutely nothing about what Phil Jones has done, or how he practices his science, but you suddenly feel qualified to condemn his science.
The Daily Mail has taken him completely out of context. If you know anything, anything at all, about global warming, you would realize that. But you dont, yet you still feel as if you are an "expert" who can condemn this mans job.
How would you feel if a climatologist started to critique your views on the law.
Really it is pathetic not only how you fall for this junk science (funded by the oil industry by the way). But even worse how you are slandering one of the best climatologists in the world.
Sorry, but the earth is warming. Even NASA data confirms that this January was the warmest January on record. And 2009 was the second warmest year on record 82005 was the hottest) and 2010 is on target to the be the warmest, barring a volcano.
It is disgusting how the right wing is doing everything in its power to silence climatolgist. And Ann Althouse herself wants Phil Jones fired from his job, so he cant even perform his science. Disgusting.
there were debates years back regarding the earth being the center of the universe and/or the center of the solar system and the earth being flat etc. and that was all "hey I don't know science to guide me, I know what I see" lunacy as is being exhibited here.
you can always trot out a fool to support your foolish non-science. big friggin deal.
global warming and climate change is indeed settled science and you really need to get past that. i frankly don't give a damn if you believe it or not or if you still think the earth is flat or there were atomic bombs planted in the world trade centers....as you will make no difference as to the truth except to ignore it, but don't drag the rest of us or attempt to drag us that is, down your slippery slope of stupidity and that is what it is...utter stupidity.
if you have a point, make it, but stop with the garbage stuff you toss up in defense of your own narrow minds.
Jones' 'admission' that there has been no statistically significant warming over the past 15 years should come as no surprise to anyone who is even moderately familiar with statistics: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/how-long/
Those who are trying to spin it as a blow against climate science are merely revealing their own innumeracy.
Well shucks. Number Six, who took 24 hours of science classes, says global warming is a fraud.
And so does Ann Althouse a law professor.
Well damn, its time to defund the climatolgists.
The deniers win. Time to start pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere. Who cares of CO2 in the atmosphere doubles.
Ann Althouse tells us its not a problem. Time for the climatologists to just shut the hell up.
Ha ha ha.
dtl flails as his AGW god is found to be merely another golden calf; angry at the wrong people as usual.
DTL used the word "cant" in his vitriolic screed. That is a window into his intellect - he is illiterate and hews to the party line.
Go get your pat on the head, true believer, there will be cookies in heaven for your devotion to a lie.
Pogo. I actually understand global warming, so its easy for me to see right through this kind of propaganda (and it is propaganda that you are falling for).
I actually want the denialists to win. I will be dead by the time global warming is a problem. But your grandkids wont be dead Pogo. And neither will Ann Althouses kids. Would be very amusing indeed if they suffer because of your own stupidity.
Tell me Pogo - have you ever actually looked at the science behind global warming? Or do you only listen to the Saudi and oil industry funded propaganda against it?
How much have US taxpayers forked over to the perpetrators of this dubious science meant to enslave us? I want my money back.
Too funny.
Mark said...
"What is this? The Beverly Hillbillies?"
oh I give the rightwing mentality (or lack thereof) more credit than that. F-Troop is highly more on point.
No Sixty Grit - It means I am in a foreign country, in an internet cafe, with a different language keyboard, and the keyboard does not have an apostrophe.
Dumbass.
2. Computer models cannot be put above data. The real world is the real world. Computer models are not.
This is what has made me a skeptic from day one. My ex-husband did a lot of work in the system dynamics lab at MIT and we had many conversations about modeling feedback loops and the programming challenges they presented. Later I worked at a small consulting company that built forecasting models for the shipping industry -- same thing. Every quarter the models would be revised and improved with new inputs, with tons of back-testing to prove their ability to match historical data and thus give some credibility to the forecasts they produced.
All in all, I spent a good 10 years in the modeling/forecasting milieu, even though I worked on the periphery. Then I moved on to work for a company that collected consumer spending information (the databases that are built every time a UPC code passes over a scanner). I worked on the software that sliced and diced that data so that companies could see how their market shares were changing, what regions were showing movement, which demographic sector was ripe for targeting. The data collection and maintenance issues were huge (heh), at least as significant as the modeling and forecasting issues that I'd been working around for years.
Because of what I know about data collection and modeling and forecasting software, AGW theory has always been problematic to me. I appreciate that Phil Jones has finally stepped up and admitted that they were just making shit up.
I love the characterization of his statements in this article as "the dog ate my homework" -- if only they hadn't tried to take over the global economy based on it.
The question is this: Who are climate scientists? How many of them are there? What has been their areas of study? I suggest that they are self-selected saviors of Gaia. Their adversary is man. They went into the field not with a passion for science, but with a passion for the Earth. The science has never been rigorous, just good enough to stop progress on projects they fear will harm the Earth. Because we all want a healthy environment, we easily accepted what these scientists told us. Not me, I'd dealt with them for decades, but I understand the need.
Opus One Media - The commenters on this thread do not believe in evolution either.
I know this is just Wiki but lets wait for some of the right wing idiots on here to offer an explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise
Dare I assume that it comes from Rush pissing in your punchbowl? C'mon guys and gals, lets here your explanation? cap and trade? anti-bigbusiness?..or if you can't see it it doesn't exist?
BOOO!
Why don't you ask the y'betcha gal...I'm sure she has an answer written on her ass.
Remember how the warmists used to be so insufferably smug? Well, they're still smug, but increasingly testy about it which suggests we're heading in the right direction.
Computer models are disguised curve fitters.
You can formalize the thing with Kalman filtering.
Just give the variables thermodynamic-sounding names and you have a computer model.
Matching the historical record is automatic. The predictive value is zero.
The commenters on this thread do not believe in evolution either.
Speak for yourself, Darwin.
Word verification: sesiti.
dtl and hdhouse:
Feelings of disillusionment and betrayal that come when one's heroes are dethroned and basic beliefs are falsified can only be held off with denial for short intervals, except by the true believers, whose faith will cause them to redouble their efforts or latch onto some other new fad.
Hey Pogo,
Why dont you go and read the source of the Daily Mails propaganda. It was from a BBC interview.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
Quite a different story than the Daily Mail would like you to believe.
But I am certain that Pogo is afraid to go to a primary source for information. He prefers his propaganda spoon fed to him by Fox News and other right wing mags. So does Ann Althouse.
That is fine. But it makes it completely meaningless to try and have a conversation with you, who admits he likes his news censored.
oh pogo...you go
where no mind go(es)
Christy asked, The question is this: Who are climate scientists?
Apparently, there aren't any. There may be honest individuals out there that have been trying to tell the truth, but they were ousted by the Phil Jones club. Al Gore and crew starting back in the early 90's purged all those that could claim to be real scientists. Those not adhering to the gospel according to Gore were denied that status, and thus had no funding and no access to data.
The only people with access to the data and to the computer models were the people who decided to lie to us.
People still don't really get it. If an open minded physicist reads the skeptic's arguments, and then reads the IPCC report with an open mind looking at the case that (1) global warming is happening, (2) man caused it, and (3) its going to get worse-- he or she is going to come away saying "this is junk. There is no coherent argument here. There are holes you could drive a truck through. The surface based temperature data is so badly collected as to be worse than useless, and the satellite and balloon data more disproves than supports the theories. Many of the skeptics' arguments aren't even addressed, except by attacking strawmen." I know,because I'm a PhD physicist and I've done that-- but I strongly believe any open minded scientist would say the same. That's why 30,000 scientists signed a petition. See http://whatisthought.com/GW.html for a more detailed summary of the holes in the science that I posted a few years ago.
i frankly am waiting for scientific explanations other than "i think global warmning is false, therefore I am right".
you aren't right by default. If global warming is false then what is true and please please please don't pull the cycle stuff out of your butt....as there are no cycles like this in history.
so what is the reason? (pssst...you can find a clue by going to the edge of the earth and looking over it).
dtl seems to be a case study in the scientific illiteracy of the general American public.
Would he care to tell us what fraction of our atmosphere is made up of human-generated CO2?
Or how many 'climate scientists' actually participated in the IPCC AR4 peer review process - that is, actually commented on the sections having to do with human causation?
There are so many holes in climate science, and so much bad data (surface temperature measurement in much of the world in the post-colonial, post-USSR era has largely fallen off a cliff) and so much suspect manipulation (why is NOAA removing rural and high-altitude surface temperature stations from the GHCN?) that it's simply not possible honestly to infer from the data available the trends the climate scientists have been pulling from their models.
Once more we have evidence for why DTL should not have any say over public policy - (1) he does not care what happens to the world or society after he is gone; and (2) he revels in the thought that other people's children will suffer in the future. (Self-hate directed outwards is a dangerous thing.)
Given those two facts, why would anyone believe anything he says or follow any suggestion he might make?
BBC question to Phil Jones - "Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming"
The reply from Phil Jones - "Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods."
In other words, it is at about the 90 percent confidence level, not teh 95% confidence level.
And how does the Daily Mail interpret this, which Ann Althouse embarassingly falls for: "Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995"
And that my friends is propaganda in action. Propaganda that is repeated by Ann Althouse verbatim.
ohhh ERIC BAUM
I went to your link and noticed the signature on the bottom:
Eric Baum
Last modified: Mon Jan 5 21:01:10 EST 2009
I am soooo happy to see your signature on the work you cite to support the work you cite to support the work you cite to support the work you cite to support the work you cite....etc.
You are a jolly jokster Eric....you probably need to revisit your work a year later and correct any bad science you cited regarding any bad science you cited regarding any bad science you cited etc.
hey Opusone, go to my web post for some of what you want. http://whatisthought.com/GW.html There's no good evidence IMO the earth has warmed over the last century, since the surface data totally sucks. It could just as easily have cooled. If it has warmed, solar magnetic forces affecting cosmic rays which affect cloud formation is a theory with much better support than CO2. (And any time the issue is raised, the warmists argue against a strawman theory of direct solar influence instead of addressing the solar-> cosmic ray-> cloud theory. IPCC AR4 explicitly fails to address it.) Also, there are plenty of other natural explanations to explain warming and/or cooling of the scale that has allegedly been observed-- such as heat transfer from the deep oceans for no better reason than chaotic fluids do that kind of thing. To look at a graph of temperature over the last 1000 or 2000 years, current alleged moves look purely natural.
dtl-
There is now and was in the past no point in offering refutations of evidence (or "evidence", it appears) for AGW.
The whole thing was and is bullshit favored by the socialists left adrift by the fall of the USSR. It was never a search for truth, but for control.
T-man - You are the one who is a global warming denialist, and you are directly responsible for the lack of action that is going to cause a lot of hardship on the world.
So yes, I think it is hysterical that your grandkids are going to suffer because of YOUR actions. Actions that I would like to see stopped.
Yet you blame me.
Idiot.
DTL, you are absolutely HILARIOUS! Or evil.
You offer that link as proof positive from the direct source. Yet your link is nothing but an interview with the liar himself.
Come now, you've got to do better than that! Not even the most fanatical believer can use the statements of a proven liar as a source to prove he wasn't lying.
Yet, by the way, even the liar here admits that there was no warming based on the data (that we still can't trust). Yet then he claims there was warming based on his gut feelings. That's pretty pathetic, dtl.
The truth is not as the headline suggests. The scientist in question said there was warming since 1995.
But he did refer to a statistical level of confidence and said that level wasn't reached. Discussing statistical significance with people and professors who prefer cheap shots to reason is a lost pursuit so I won't bother.
For example, if 95% statistical confidence is not enough, would 90% be?
You can see the data on temperature trends here.
I, for one, would appreciate a more reasoned approach from Althouse. For example, why does she think global warming is not happening or not a problem? Instead we get this kind of uniinformed guttersniping.
Hey OpusOne, not sure what your problem is. The post had links to all the original sources, with specific page refs etc. (Mostly the IPCC AR4 in fact.) Its just a survey of the problems. Also, I might have modified that a year ago, but its actually older. I'm not current with changes in the science, since then. If you follow pointers from that page, you'll find other, even older, summaries I wrote. I'm fairly confident the case for AGW has gotten nothing but worse since then.
dtl: T-man - You are the one who is a global warming denialist, and you are directly responsible for the lack of action that is going to cause a lot of hardship on the world.
Yeah, lots of hardship, especially for all those climatologists that get sent to prison for fraud! :)
Here is a good book about Global Warming and its implications. You should be frightened!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Angels_%28science_fiction_novel%29
DTL,
Do you have kids? Nephews or nieces? Any family member whose children's children are of concern to you?
Largo
IIRC, the type of sex dtl has, will not result in pregnancy.
WV: permen! I kid you not!
Back in the 70s, the bullshit science was global cooling, now it's AGW.
The trick is to guess the next avenue for control sought by utopians.
Come to think of it, the latest scare was the flu. We were all going to die. That seems to have fizzled out.
Largo - I have nieces and nephews. And guess what - they are going to die eventually. We all die. I will die. You will die. And eventually the whole world will come to an end. I dont know if it will be in one hundred years or one hundred billion years.
So once I am dead, it is not really not my concern what happens to everyone else.
I try and live for the moment, and try to maximize my own happiness while I am alive. I also try to make sure I do not do any harm to others while I am alive.
Once I am dead - whatever - aint my problem anymore.
The scientist in question from the BBC interview referenced above:
E - How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?
I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.
The headline from the Daily Mail that Ann Althouse places so much trust in is obviously false. (can't copy it for some reason...)
Now, to Ann's excuse to broadcast Daily Mail Lies, from the BBC interview:
Given the web-based availability of the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), which is used by both NCDC and GISS, anyone else can develop their own global temperature record from land stations.
The data is not kept in his office, Ann. Can you wrap your thick head around that fact?
"I also try to make sure I do not do any harm to others while I am alive."
Well, except on blogs and by supporting AGW rules, regulations, taxes, and statist control.
Except for that, no harm at all.
No Pogo - Global Cooling was not a scare in the 70s. Newsweek already had a retraction for that article, and admitted that it was not based on any scientific concensus at the time. Most climatologists in the 1970s subscribed to the AGW theory, just as they do today. Except the evidence now is much, much stronger than it was then, since temperatures in the 80s were higher than the 70s. Temperatures in the 90s were higher than the 80s. And temperatures this deacde were higher than the 90s.
AlphaLiberal, just give it up, man. That god is dying. Best find another god in which you can invest unquestioning belief.
(I'm not dead yet. I'm feeling much better. I'm happy!!!!)
I don't understand the need to "do no harm," especially if in a few years we're just worm food.
And if we consume tasty animals along the way, aren't we doing harm to them?
I spray my roses for aphids which destroy their beauty by feasting on the rosy goodness. Aren't we just larger aphids when it comes to things like wheat, apples, carrots, and other plants?
I mean, we spend our lives consuming and harming other things.
And then we die. Woot! on that
I have no doubt you're completely convinced, dtl.
But the Universe is implacable. No "justice," "goodness," "truth," or "beauty."
Just momentary arrangements of self-perpetuating and -replicating molecules, and then heat death and silence.
It's all so warm and cosy.
Pogo - maybe you need to wrap your head about what a 10 degree farenheit rise by the end of this century (which is the midpoint prediction) would mean for Planet Earth. It has already risen over 2 degrees Farenheit.
By the way, here is the latest graph on the Arctic Sea Ice Extent. You can track it daily if you want to see global warming in action.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
Now the Daily Mail is a very biased newspaper, not exactly restrained and objective.
The newspaper has a clear denialist position on global warming that includes their news reporting.
Looking at Memeorandum this false bit of news reporting is being broadcast by the right wing blogs as evidence that everything is hunky dorey with the atmosphere.
To reach conclusions on such a serious matter from such bullshit reporting is asinine.
Yeah, I remember the "global cooling" junk of the 70s as well. Then the abrupt turn-around without any shame that they had gotten it wrong the first time but this time, trust them, they had it right.
"Science" != "belief"
No one should trust a scientist. Ever. For anything.
dtl, all that flailing is embarrassing. Once the data have been shown to be bullshit, nothing that arose from it is reliable.
AGW true believers need to start over from scratch.
Epic fail.
dtl: No Pogo - Global Cooling was not a scare in the 70s. Newsweek already had a retraction for that article, and admitted that it was not based on any scientific concensus at the time. Most climatologists in the 1970s subscribed to the AGW theory, just as they do today.
Now you're just making things up. I was alive in the 70's dtl, and I remember the global cooling scares. It never got a big as the global warming nonsense, but it was there and they were trying to influene the government. To say that they weren't doing so is an outright lie and makes you an outright liar as well. You have destroyed any credibility you might have remaining.
Global cooling was an issue looked into by a few scientists in the 1970s. Then the press ran with it to sell papers.
The scientific inquiry was closed after it was shown not to warranted. There was no further action taken.
There was no global cooling movement started, no legislation to address global cooling.
So taking up a debate from 30 years ago that has been long abandoned is just another dishonest tactic from the deniers.
Skyler, I was around then, as well. And have been around since. It was AN IDEA that was debated and then discarded.
Global warming has also been debated and found to have merit and to be something we need to deal with in our own self-interest.
Really, can you guys please stop playing your games on this? It's a serious issue.
Global warming was an issue looked into by a few scientists in the 1990s. Then the press ran with it to sell papers.
Let's play data.
Data from the 70s == GLOBAL COOLING
Data from the 90s == GLOBAL WARMING
DATA from the 00s == OOPS. Got it wrong again.
Ok.
Your serve.
It ain't any warmer or colder than it was in the 1970s. Period.
alphaliberal and dtl:
Do you also have strong feelings about unicorns?
Evidence of global warming: the tundra at northern latitudes is thawing, as the northern latitudes warm more quickly.
Thawing tundra is another example of real-world global warming.
I'll bet good money, that if you were to be standing in the middle of the tundra right now, you'd freeze your ass off.
More evidence of global warming: The northwest passage has thawed, allowing shipping last year for the first time in human history.
More on the thawing of the Northwest Passage due to global warming.
AllenS, you wouldn't have a taker on that bet. Because:
a) It's winter.
b) Global warming does not say that arctic areas will be warm. It says they will be warmer. It's possible for something to be warmer yet still be cold. For example, 31 degrees is more than 0 degrees.
See, if people don't grasp that kind of concept maybe they should be less loud in their denunciations of human cause global warming. It shows that you don't know what you're talking about.
Yet, still talking!
Global cooling never had as many scientists endorsing it as current theories of climate change do. While certain media venues hyped it, that's a completely different matter. Miller's construction is simply mendacious. For a more detailed look at the matter, see http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2008-02-20-global-cooling_N.htm and especially the Peterson paper mentioned therein.
Most glaciers around the world are in obvious retreat. This is more evidence of global warming.
There are some glaciers that are not in retreat for local meteorological reasons.
I think the only proof Ann Althouse would accept would be if her intellectual patron Rush Limbaugh were to accept the overwhelming evidence. Reason and science are not her thing.
"Do you believe in AGW?" he cried.
"If you believe," he shouted to them, "clap your hands; don't let AGW die."
Pogo:
Do you also have strong feelings about unicorns? .
No. ha ha = not.
Your lame response shows you have nothing better to offer.
Perhaps you should wander over to the natural sciences and talk to some of the UW climate scientists. The shorter a period you take, the less likely that even a portion of a deep, long term significant rise in temperatures, will be *statistically* significant. Were temperatures rising? Yes. Had such a rise taken place before? Yes. Were those other rises explicable in terms of other phenomena? Yes. Is this rise explicable in terms of other phenomena? No.
Let's say that faculty member X brings a bottle of Scotch to lecture. In the history of the UW, several Chemistry professors have brought alcohol to lecture as part of experiments. So X's behavior is not totally rare. So should the Dean not discipline X?
In terms of the climate, are you not grasping at the most legalistic of straws?
I blame Al Gore.
AlphaLiberal - both of those pieces you're pointing to are collections of scare-quotes without any data attached.
Where is the evidence of warming? Those pieces seem to make a lot of claims about Arctic ice cover that are fairly easily disproven (we don't HAVE reliable measurements of Arctic ice cover pre-1979.)
Through what means is the change in temperature being measured, and over what time period?
Where is the evidence that that change is outside historic norms (regionally and globally) AND human-caused?
Really, can you guys please stop playing your games on this? It's a serious issue.
Yes, I agree, it is very serious. The climatologists should very seriously be put in jail. Their lies were intended to fleece civilization out of its modernity and prosperity.
You see, throughout all of man's history, the standard of living of the ruling classes has not changed. They have always had others to do all their work for them and they could live in leisure.
It is only through modernity, prosperity and freedom that the rest of us have been able to raise our standards of living as well. The anti-life global warming agenda was an attempt to keep that standard only for the ruling classes so that they could reduce the rest of us to a more subservient position, more to their glory.
Question authority! That used to be the rallying cry. But there are some truths too sublime to be denied, propagated by those too holy to be defied.... ..Well, now that corporate lobbying has been allowed the tune will soon change. Exxon has ways of getting inside liberal's heads and making them change their minds. You think it's just a coincidence that these anti-lobbying laws were overturned and Phil Jones is now wavering. How long before dtl starts telling us of the need to drill offshore?
@Alpha:
More evidence of global warming: The northwest passage has thawed, allowing shipping last year for the first time in human history.
You're kidding, right? You can't possibly be this stupid and ignorant of history. Can you?
There have been over a dozen successful transits of the Northwest Passage since the early 20th century.
Your watermelon dogma has been exposed for what it is.
For those who would like to find a helpful primer on global warming, the US National Academy of Sciences published this booklet, Understanding and Responding to Climate Change. (PDF)
Maybe now the conservatives would like to attack the NAS of being part of a global environmentalist conspiracy to promote global warming.
Go nuts. (Oh, you did!)
I bought some beer Friday. It's out in the shop. I hope it didn't freeze. It's been kinda cold the past couple of nights. Which means?
Here is a nice stepwise explanation for human-induced global warming. It is well-organized and easy to understand.
I'm curious which parts conservatives reject? Do you insist, for example, that the "greenhouse effect" is also false?
I know Ann Althouse would never take the issue up head on, preferring to snark about it, apparently.
Skeptics ask questions. Deniers refuse to look for or listen to answers.
A skeptic would read a headline like this and be skeptical, knowing the Daily Mail's history and how politically fraught the issue is. A skeptic would therefor follow up and find out more. What exactly does Jones mean by statistically significant? Are there any time periods over which the trend is significant? How should we understand the implications of one time period? A skeptic would go read the original BBC interview and only blog once she had a thorough understanding and could place things in context for her readers:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm#
A denier would do her duty as proud member of the uncritical right wing echo chamber, of course.
Satellite observations show increases in greenhouse gases. "More Proof of Global Warming" in Scientific American.
As the sun's radiation hits the earth's surface, it is reemitted as infrared radiation. This radiation is then partly trapped by the so-called greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)¿as well as water vapor. Satellites can measure changes in the infrared radiation spectrum, allowing scientists to detect changes in the earth's natural greenhouse effect and to deduce which greenhouse gas concentrations have changed.
The researchers looked at the infrared spectrum of long-wave radiation from a region over the Pacific Ocean, as well as from the entire globe. The data came from two different spacecraft¿the NASA's Nimbus 4 spacecraft, which surveyed the planet with an Infrared Interferometric Spectrometer (IRIS) between April 1970 and January 1971, and the Japanese ADEO satellite, which utilized the Interferometric Monitor of Greenhouse Gases (IMG) instrument, starting in 1996. To ensure that the data were reliable and comparable, the team looked only at readings from the same three-month period of the year (April to June) and adjusted them to eliminate the effects of cloud cover. The findings indicated long-term changes in atmospheric CH4, CO2, ozone (O3) and CFC 11 and 12 concentrations and, consequently, a significant increase in the earth's greenhouse effect. .
To believe our conservative brethren and Ann Althouse, Scientific American and the satellites are also part of the global conspiracy on global warming.
Oh, she doesn't need to snark on it. She just has to point out the foolishness of anyone who says "I believe" when it comes to science.
You don't "believe" science.
This point is lost on the AGW crowd, however. Because they apparently don't look at contrary data. Because they BELIEVE!
jrshipley:
A denier would do her duty as proud member of the uncritical right wing echo chamber, of course.
And, so, Ann Althouse, The Snarky Denier, makes your point. Not with science but over someone admitting his office is messy!!
Scientific American is the NYPost of magazines.
Flail that strawman, Miller. You can take him!
No, he usually wins in the second round.
But feel free to prop him up yourself.
You might want to consider the actual data & not just the data that confirms your beliefs. That's, you know, science.
Miller, name calling aside, what in the SciAm article do you disagree with?
On the substance.
Do you insist, for example, that the "greenhouse effect" is also false?
Given that it's premised on the idea that the atmosphere is a closed system like a greenhouse, then yeah, I have problems with it.
Because, wait for it, the earth's atmosphere is not a closed system.
When you combine that with the fact that CO2 is a trace element in the atmosphere; a mere 0.0387%, then you're standing on very thin ice. 0.0387%. 387 parts per million, Alpha. And EPA thinks it's a pollutant.
Been there, done that, Miller. Going back 20 years now.
So do you deny the greenhouse effect, also?
Have you, yourself, looked at the data that contradicts your theories? I'm not asking because "my side is right." I'm just asking if you, the scientist, has looked at contradictory information.
I'm thinking that a scientist wouldn't read just one side of the argument. I'm naive like that.
You might notice that this story is being carried by the British papers.
Where is that indefatigable watchdog, the US media:
NYTimes?
WAPo?
WSJ?
CBS?
ABC?
NBC?
Anybody?
Buhler?
You are quoting simply one side of the argument each time.
You are the one who has to, you know, prove your side is right.
Apparently you can do so only if you avoid any contradictions.
Good luck with that approach.
Maybe now the conservatives would like to attack the NAS of being part of a global environmentalist conspiracy to promote global warming.
I don't know what liberal or conservative has to do with anything. Yes, the NAS has been part of a global environmentalist conspiracy. Anyone claiming global warming has been a part of it, either as active and intentional defrauders and liars, or as convenient idiots who don't bother to examine claims and determine the truth on their own.
There is no such thing as a global average temperature. It is an artifical construct of limited utility for observing trends. As a limited tool, its use can only go to the limits of its accuracy. There is no way anyone can claim that they can measure this limited tool to within a tenth of a degree for an entire year spanning the entire globe. And that's for this year with the best technology we have today. Too much of the Earth is not measured and there's no way to decisively know which locations are more significant than others. Add to this that the measurement stations are not accurate to more than a couple degrees if they are perfectly functioning, and then add in the poor condition of many of the stations and the inconsistent upkeep in different parts of the world.
And that is for this year. We know that there were warm periods and cold periods in the Earth's history, but we can't know to a tenth of a degree how hot and how cold.
So, there is no way any of these claims were ever credible.
But we can forgive the scientifically illiterates like Al Gore and Ed Begley for hearing a siren song and the equally scientifically illiterate like most journalists (who get journalism degrees precisely because they can't handle the hard subjects in college) for parroting the claims of the defrauders.
But now the fraud has been exposed, proven, and admitted. No amount of illiteracy or stupidity can be excused in defending the always nonserious claims of the AGW defrauders.
No more debate. It's been proven. No more credibility. They can no longer present any claims and expect to be believed.
If there is AGW, these frauds have destroyed any possibility of ever having anyone accept it. And that's why they howl with such frenzy, because they know that Humpty Dumpty has fallen.
It's too late, dtl, alpha. You've lost.
And really, you - YOU! - being offended by ad hominem attacks?
It is to laugh.
@EricBBaum
I don't know whether to believe people claiming to have PhD's in blog threads, but I do know you're wrong about what an open minded physicist will conclude because the APS is among the scores of professional scientific oragnanizations accepting that we're changing the climate.
http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm
The fact is that any decent physicist can compute the change in albedo from CO2 pollution on the back of a napkin. The deniers don't seem to understand that that part of it is basic physics. True, you need more than a napkin to get all the feedbacks right and that's what climate scientists have been working on for decades. The evidence in support of their models is massive, which is why deniers have turned to conspiracy theories and ad hominem... because they can't win an argument on the evidence.
The, um, proponents of AGW are losing it on the evidence as well.
"Science" that is simply another name for "this I believe" isn't really science, is it? I mean, in the sense of "here is all this data"?
Because the data is, um, suspiciously corrupt.
By the way, it's really and truly irrelevant what I believe, isn't it? Because it's your side that's trying to "prove" something. What my own feelings are is completely irrelevant.
I mean, if it's science and not simply self-righteous ping-pong.
"I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity."
Alpha, I'm wondering if I'm not the only who read this who was struck by the religious parallels. Dr. Jones is 100% certain of something and has a bible he can quote chapter and verse to support it. Yes, I realize there is an actual qualitative difference, but the symbolism is striking. And his documented efforts to suppress heresy based on his 100% beliefs seems to have a parallel in many religious movements (which shouldn't be the way science works).
As to your six easy steps to AGW, there are a lot of implicit assumptions included. There is also a lot of playing with numbers. CO2 has gone up 30%. Wow, that's a big number. But what is 30% of 0.038%? What other natural processes are there that might overwhelm that number? Do we understand all of them? Do we understand any of them completely? What does the real world actually act like? Proving that AGW is theoretically possible does not prove it to be true, or if true, catastrophic. By the way, you do realize you're referencing Real Climate, right? Just because it's Real Climate doesn't make it wrong, but they have proven over and over again they have no interest in honest and open debate. Hitch yourself to their wagon at your peril. You have been warned.
I guess what I don't understand is all these people flocking to this site attempting to tell Althouse to shut up.
Don't they have their own blogs to promote their own views? I mean, if their views are so correct and all.
Must really kill them to know Althouse gets all this attention when their lonely blogs preaching the truth are so ignored by the unlettered masses.
It is also interesting that Phil Jones' words are being bandied about as proof by the right wing, when he had to resign as hear of the CRU due to the stolen emails (that were selectively published on a Russian server).
His successor is doing a much better job of taking on the organized opposition:
Prof Peter Liss, acting director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), said sceptics were endangering the lives of generations to come by making unsupported claims.
"The evidence is hugely for there being substantial climate change due to man's activities and if you want to argue against that case you have to produce some evidence." .
Link to the full story in the London Telegraph.
This is spot-on:
Prof Liss said: "This is not just some intellectual argument between people who think they know the answer, we are talking about the future of the globe.
"If you're on the climate sceptics side, you have to have really good evidence for your case because if you're wrong then the consequences for all of us and all our children and whoever comes after is hugely influenced.
"I don't see that evidence, I see lots of assertion but it's not backed up. It's very dangerous and like playing Russian roulette with the planet." .
Greenhouse effect? Hee hee!
Remember the chloroflourocarbon scare? CFC's were creating a GREENHOUSE effect!!! Oooooh scary!
Haven't heard that one mentioned in while, have you?
Maybe, just maybe it's because Dow got to patent a new refrigerant and outlaw their more effect older patent once it expired. Hmmm.
How about, maybe, just maybe, they weren't able to find any evidence of CFC's in the upper atmosphere that could create a greenhouse effect.
How about maybe, just maybe, they couldn't come up with a mechanism to explain how CFC's which are hundreds of times heavier than air can get into the upper atmosphere and don't degrade at ground level.
So the CFC scare worked for as long as it was needed, but then jettisoned for the carbon dioxide scare.
It's funny how one scare after another keeps coming along and used to scare people and governments into taking drastic action, and then just fading away. Global cooling, CFC's, and now global warming.
You can't believe any scare mongers.
@miller
You're making my point. Data collection is messy and difficult, but an enormous effort has gone into gathering and analyzing data. This effort has been detailed in scores of peer reviewed papers and it confirms the argument from basic physics that more greenhouse gasses = more greenhouse effect. You can't deny the basic physics. So what are you left with? Maybe there's some mysterious negative feedback? Inhofe said "God's still up there". Maybe God will intervene to stop the greenhouse effect. But we're actually observing it! So you need a conspiracy theory to undermine the observations. Nevermind all those peer reviewed articles explaining how the data was analyzed, just rant that it's all a hoax. But it's just not plausible, given that the observations cohere with physics based predictions, that thousands of scientists and journal editors are in on some kind of vast hoax.
@jrshipley - True, you need more than a napkin to get all the feedbacks right and that's what climate scientists have been working on for decades.
Nice rhetorical trick - this is the central failure of global warmism and you try to wave it away like it's nothing. Your "scientists" have no idea whar feedbacks are involved and how they interact with each other. Which is why none of the global warming models have predicted the actual behavior of the climate over the past decade.
@Alpha - Invoking Pascal's Wager is pretty lame in a theological argument. It should be absolutely disqualifying if you're attempting to argue science.
Dear Batshit Insane Lady
Oh, great. Now Rachel Maddow's e-mail is being mis-routed to the professor's "IN" box. ;)
@skyklar
You're making a public display of your total ignorance of these issues. The worry about CFCs is that they deplete the ozone layer. This is a completely different issue from the greenhouse effect. You evidently have no clue what you're talking about. CFCs have been banned and the ozone that was depleted has begun to recover according to NASA observations. Of course, NASA is probably in on the conspiracy, right?
When you combine that with the fact that CO2 is a trace element in the atmosphere; a mere 0.0387%, then you're standing on very thin ice. 0.0387%. 387 parts per million, Alpha. And EPA thinks it's a pollutant.
So trace elements can't be enormously disruptive of complex systems? If you really believe that, I've got some polonium-210 for you to sprinkle on your salad.
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