This is the BBC’s report of the great hacking scandal, whereby hackers breached the security of East Anglia University and stole a vast amount of private email communication. You will note that an East Anglia representative said:
“Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of this material is genuine.”
So it is not possible to say whether any of the information has been ‘tricked up’ to make it look bad. It would be well within the MO of anti-AGW activists, to choose a neutral term, if it had. But maybe not.
It seems that the hack was discovered when the hackers tried to upload the material onto the RealClimate site who now have an informative post on the incident. Here’s a quote from their post:
Nonetheless, these emails (a presumably careful selection of (possibly edited?) correspondence dating back to 1996 and as recently as Nov 12) are being widely circulated, and therefore require some comment. Some of them involve people here (and the archive includes the first RealClimate email we ever sent out to colleagues) and include discussions we’ve had with the CRU folk on topics related to the surface temperature record and some paleo-related issues, mainly to ensure that posting were accurate.Since emails are normally intended to be private, people writing them are, shall we say, somewhat freer in expressing themselves than they would in a public statement. For instance, we are sure it comes as no shock to know that many scientists do not hold Steve McIntyre in high regard. Nor that a large group of them thought that the Soon and Baliunas (2003), Douglass et al (2008) or McClean et al (2009) papers were not very good (to say the least) and should not have been published. These sentiments have been made abundantly clear in the literature (though possibly less bluntly).
More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.
Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking. (Emphasis added)
Here’s what they say about the so-called deliberate alteration of data:
No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens. (Emphasis added)
I haven’t had time to look through the copious comments on the post (217 since posting yesterday), which often have useful information. Also I haven’t finished breakfast and have decided to clear the (rest of) the day, plus fit in a badly-needed haircut.
That done I’ll add some links, including to Bolta’s stuff which I don’t usually look at on the principle that life is too short and I don’t want to pollute my mind.
I’m sure as soon as the Arctic Ice Cap reads these emails, it’ll return to its long-term average size out of sheer embarrassment.
The issue is are any (or even one) of the damaging emails genuine?
Actually, SATP, the issue is “is human activity changing the composition of the atmosphere in a manner that will lead to climactic changes that are adverse for human civilisation and, if so, what can we do to ameliorate this situation?”
But, hey! Look over here! Emails!
SATP, it appears the emails are genuine, that they are damaging is another question. Correspondence does not equal data, neither does cherry picking commentary from a 10 year thread of selectively leaked correspondence prove conspiracy, as some are alleging.
I was thinking of how those who deny AGW will jump on this to discredit all the science, while just passing off the emails written by the son of the Christian Democratic Party campaign manager (which are racist and homophobic) as irrelevant.
If the emails are genuine, then there isn’t any data, “science” just had it’s cover blown.
SATP, the import of the RealClimate post is that the emails, properly understood in their context, are not damaging. Nevertheless, they’ll be quoted as such for evermore by the anti-AGW crowd.
@Mercurious I’m with you. It all seems to me one ridiculous distraction as the ice declines and the November catastrophic fire days begin. The denialists will hang on to any propaganda opportunity when they must know they’ve lost a debate that they’ve never really engaged in anyway.
So in a rather disgusting invasion of privacy, a whole lot of people’s private emails have been hacked into and been publicly placed on the internet. The authors of these emails then have their views misrepresented.
Then along comes Andrew Bolt, who goes into significant detail misrepresenting the views and intentions of the authors of those emails. He also states that the emails are “emails suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.” It is a shame that Media Watch has finished for the year.
It is well and truly time for Andrew Bolt to be sacked.
The wagon circling begins!
Peter Wood, I agree with you. The kind interpretation is that Bolt is just deluded and isn’t intentional in his distortions.
Peter, grow up
Further to Mercurious, the right-wing media of the world are letting themselves down. Sure they’ve stumbled upon a digital paper-trail they’ve managed to twist to their own silly purposes, but they’ve failed to pick up on the massive geo-engineering scam orchestrated by a shady global conspiracy to support its greenie agenda.
Just how are these climate ’scientists’ secretly manipulating the ice to look as if it might be warming behind it all? And sea-level rise, how are they swinging that one? Shows just how powerful ‘they’ are when they can manipulate nature to support their left-wing warming theories – their fraud is there for all to see, written in the biosphere. No hacking required!
This isn’t an “Andrew Bolt” issue. This is worldwide. Perspective people. If scientists are writing emails in which they connive to alter data, it will take a lot more than telling the rubes that the unfortunate language in the emails “needs to be properly understood in their context”
Peter Wood #9 Brian #11 It isn’t a privacy issue. Perspective, perspective.
SATP, read the second blockquote in the post. Read, read.
So when scientists have their private emails hacked, placed on the web, and misrepresented as “conniving to alter data” is not a privacy issue? Wow!
@Steve at the Pub Indeed. Worldwide. How are they doing it? All the rigorously measured signs of global warming from spiralling carbon emissions, but it’s really not. It’s something else, apparently. The emails are just the tip of the iceberg. This is big. Has anyone told Ralph Hillman? He’ll be so pleased.
Jeez, one of the points raised seems to be that scientists are scathing about those who disagree with them in private.
I’m shocked – shocked – to discover this. Of course, I have never privately expressed the view that a peer reviewer who has given an unfavourable review of a paper I have coauthored is a moron who couldn’t add two and two with the aid of an abacus.
FFS, as one who regularly corresponds by email with many scientists and engineers, I can say with complete authority that these emails run the entire spectrum from frivolous to deadly serious. They also contain huge gaps where there is common understanding or agreement. You could select a set of these to make almost any case you wish. These guys are attempting to refute a hypothesis by sole referral to the Lacunae and Marginalia. Its just fucking bullshit.
Huggy
This should be a wake up call to everyone.
Nothing you do online is private. We all knew that supposedly, but no one acts as if its real (a bit like govt response to AGW if you ask me.)
I hang out at an online mental asylum/conspiracy site, and a couple of people have been spamming this hack Bolt there for the last 2 days. Its an anti fascist place primarily so having any mention of tPI is kind of depressing. But, typical of us conspiracy theorists, no ones taking it that seriously. Its obviously a beat up, and as anyone can see from what has been published its mostly referring to interpersonal politics and how to frame ideas so they get maximum media traction.
Which is completely understandable given the (memetic) climate this debate is taking place in.
Admittedly this doesn’t make for “good science” on the face of it. But science has been compromised by agenda for over 20 years now (in the 80s science grads would be applying for advertised positions and the ads contained terms like “Must be able to do science in a business oriented environment”.) So if anything these emails are indicating just how compromised the entire field of “any funded research is.”
Brian, I have read the second blockquote.
How to reconcile that with stuff like…say email no. 1254108338 (from the hacked files) referring to “fixing data to make things look warmer than it really is, but to make the fixed data still seem plausible”?
Or email no. 0939154709 “how to truncate chronological data to conceal a cooling trend”?
Or email no. 0843161829 referring to “juggling of chronology” in data, and how to not go overboard with same?
IF the emails are fair dinkum, then it is the saddest moment in recent history, as no science can be trusted.
Jesus, Steve, with a yen for hyperbole like that, you’re a natural for the editorial page.
I expect the primary objective is as STAP observes
Question of motive? Who did this, to say hackers is crap, it just borrows a convenient stereotype for the purpose of reporting the news. Then there is speculation about what was accessed. But that ignores the motivation behind the act. Hacking corporate grade IT networks with a specific target suggests that whoever did this was organised and skilled and quite likely, paid to do it. Then there is the derived benefit, in other words who gains and who loses? Again that points to the denialist camp since they gain something.
Frankly it looks like industrial espionage carried out to deliberately undermine the science of AGW in the public domain. Just my 2c
Wow, academics behaving like academics – including all the tea-room bitching, disagreemeny, plotting, personal denigration etc., Andrew Bolt what an extraordinarily well-mannered lot you must be over there at the Herald-Sun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_kiddie
IF the emails are genuine what it does show which is worrying is a large scale denying of problems with their methodology/or theories.
Nothing unusual about that, people being people they will of course try and deny problem with their “pet” theories.
It also shows a worrying trend of massaging the data to remove any “blips”. Data is data, if something doesnt fit you find out why, not fiddle the data/method, till it no longer appears.
Lets not forget that all the global temperature constructions from various places whether surface or satellite, are all in pretty good agreement.
http://www.climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm#Comparing global temperature estimates
So if they have doctored data, they don’t seem to have significantly altered a trend – unless even Christy et. al are doctoring their data in the same way.
steve: the problem is with temperature reconstructions rather than the instrumental record. most of the correspondence is from scientists involved in reconstructing a record of past temperatures from proxies. i think the hiding the decline quote refers to a divergence of temperature proxies from the instrumental data. i believe they kinda took the later part of the reconstructed data and somehow spliced part of the instrumental record into it to fix the problem. obviously there is some kind of scientific explanation as to why this is valid but i don’t know what it is so i can’t comment.
I don’t know much about science, or hacking, or much of anything really. But I do know that in 2008 Adelaide had a spell of 15 days straight over 35, a record, and in 2009 we had a spell of 6 days straight over 40, another record, and on Wednesday here it was 43, the hottest November day recorded.
I don’t need no stinking B.Sc. to tell me there’s something funny going on.
SATP @ 20,I just checked the first email you selected. The words you quote are not in it. ‘Perspective people’
The emails from Jones – who keeps emails from 1998 – do not invalidate all the data collected on anthropogenic global warming parsed many times and firmed up since then. But Bolt et al would love to see this as part of a conspiracy by scientists, even though the emails do not in themselves invalidate the science.
There is a lot of money at stake in the battle for hearts and minds of the voters. If we were to take this global warming thesis with the seriousness it deserves (the end of the world as we know it) then it would spell the end for the coal industry, and perhaps for the oil industry as well. Or at the very least, affect their profitability. It is only logical that they would use all means – whtever it takes – to defend their industries from annihilation. Big Tobacco did the same. And lied. And used scientists and professors of medicine who took their shilling.
One could easily come to the conclusion that there is a conspiracy by the fossil fuel industry and their paid propaganda agents such as the IPA, to foster the no-warming, and no-anthropogenic warming arguments.*
One prominent scientist engages in a travelling show around the country to proselytize the no-warming position. An ocean sedimentologist and oceanographer and sea-bed geologist by trade, he has in his past been employed by oil exploration companies and other extractive majors to provide data on predicting ocean current movements with regard to exploration.
This is in itself no reason to invalidate his scientific arguments, but it would be possible just as easily to place him as part of a Big Fossil conspiracy, in the same way Bolt has posited Jones of East Anglia U as being part of a conspiracy, and Senator Minchin has “explained” the transmogrification of teh left into the “climate change industry”. (Gosh, he has left out the step of Althusserian structuralism as the catalyst).
____________
* It is logically consistent to accept that there is global warming but deny that it is caused by human activity. It is logically inconsistent to hold both propositions simultaneously: that there is global warming but it is not anthropogenic, and, that there is no evidence for global warming. This is what makes me suspicious of people who accept both – look out for them – because either of the propositions is quite acceptable to Big Fossil and they don’t care which.
Hehe. He’ll need to hire Windschuttle as a speechwriter then!
Jacques I’m aware of such hacks that are easily sourced but targeting a specific university site, one associated with the science of AGW suggests a motive which is more in line with the denialist camp then a bunch of random unmotivated kid hackers. It’s not so much the act of getting in but the targeting which makes this seem suspicious and I do think someone was paid to do it.
Joe Romm has a post at Climate Progress. He links to a post at Scholars & Rogues Climategate? Not likely which is mostly sensible, although I have problems about taking pleasure in people dying.
Romm links to Bolt’s stuff, which I don’t mind linking to in this case. I heard that he gets a million hits a month, so whether or not I link to him makes little difference.
However, I’m not going to link to a source of the stolen goods for ethical reasons, unless I become convinced by reports from people I trust that the public interest over-rides the felony. I thought Climate Progress commenter Eli Snyder had it about right:
Brian, in making that claim, he displays an ignorance of how to interpret data:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/01/bolts-hits-are-bigger-than-lps-hits/
SATP @ 20, I remind you of what East Anglia said:
We simply don’t know whether all the emails are entirely genuine or whether the hackers have taken the opportunity to ‘improve’ the evidence. We do know that they are unscrupulous and their motivation is quite evident.
I’m interested in the comments by authors of the emails. There is one here by Phil Jones (pdf). It’s partly the issue of patching proxy and instrumental data together, a common enough problem. It’s partly WTF, that was 10 years ago!
See Eli Snyder’s comment posted @ 33.
Thanks for that, Mark @ 34. Given the source I’m not surprised.
Elsewhere Catallaxy has a thread and here’s The Guardian’s take.
Bolta has at least one more and I believe Tim Blair does too, but I don’t usually go there. Too much trouble in scraping the crap off my shoes.
Well we’ve eliminated needing suparawesomeninja skills for their “commercial grade” security. So that leaves motivation rather than expertise.
I imagine there’s enough nutbars who can download metasploit to do it free.
In fact, I’m going to apply Occam’s Razor. My theory (script kiddies) requires one party (a motivated script kiddie). Yours requires two (a blackhat and a buyer) or possibly three (a middleman). I say mine is more plausible.
And we haven’t eliminated leaks. Or the fact that botnets provide backdoors into millions of computers and certain IRC channels are devoted to poking around various networks to see what you can find.
Jacques, I’m with you in this one in the sense that there is no need to make up our mind as to who dunnit or take a punt in the absence of information.
One of the more incriminating emails is involves presumed interference with the review process with a 2003 paper by Soon and Baliunas involving an editor by the name of Chris de Freitas. Here one of the participants Dr Clare Goodess tells us what really happened. Goodess is a staff member at East Anglia. But the other player is one Hans von Storch who is a pretty big cheese in climate science in Germany, being Professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg, and (since 2001) Director of the Institute of Coastal Research at the GKSS Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany. He is also a member of the advisory boards of the journals Journal of Climate and Annals of Geophysics. He was to take over the editorship of Journal of Climate but resigned four days before taking up the position because of interference with the role.
Von Storch is interesting because he is often quoted favourably by sceptics, firstly because he was very critical of Michael Mann and the statistical analysis he employed in the ‘Hockey Stick’ paper (von Storch is basically a statistician).
Secondly, while subscribing to AGW he believes scientists are too alarmist and are playing the media to strike unnecessary terror in our hearts. The shorter Von Storch is revealed in this interview with Der Spiegel. He tends to emphasise adaptation rather than mitigation.
The fact that he was pissed off with the publication of the paper is significant.
Gavin at RealClimate reckons the real scandal was that the paper was ever published.
One of the comments at Catallaxy asks, Does Godwin Grech work there?
I’m waiting to see what comes out in the wash before I get too excited. Being a denier of the solution, (not problem) offered by KRudd it would be good to see his position undermined. However no matter what eventuality there should be no excuse not to increase research into renewable energy, reducing pollution & waste, reconnecting a natural nutrient cycle and sustainable agriculture.
I’m actually with you there still@downfall. But I do believe that the means must always be ethical. There may be extreme situations where I’d say the ends justify the means, but I acknowledge that only as a theoretical possibility.
BTW I got the Catallaxy link from you in another place, so thanks!
Here’s another one:
Response:
Because I’m unsure of what these emails show, I think that, at the very least they show some serious lack of judgement. Of course this stuff should not have been stolen. Looking back it might have been better if the FOI had been accepted. The thing is the emails didn’t show anything terribly incrimating. I suspect this will blow over soon. So perhaps we shouldn’t get too excited. Another way of looking at it is that these are personal emails. Could it be that we are obtaining some insights into what is really going on? Usually emails are fairly explicit and open. No matter. Truth will out.
acrostic, I don’t know what British law is but I suspect that FOI doesn’t apply to universities. Which is why it’s important to note that it’s East Anglia we are talking about, not Hadley (Met Office) as Bolt appears to have at first thought.
Benjamin Hale makes an interesting comment at RealClimate. He reckons the emails seem genuine, but they’ve clearly been culled because there is no personal stuff included. So, he reasons, someone has read the lot and may just have taken the opportunity to tweak them.
I’d think they would be very foolish to have done so, because just one verified example of tweaking would blow the veracity of the whole project.
The collection of hacked emails was first announced to the world in a comment at the blog of Jeff Id (a skeptic). You can see him here trying to sum up the various forms of malfeasance on display in the correspondence.
Casual skeptics will probably just take home the message that it was all a big fraud and now it’s exposed, and casual defenders of orthodoxy will shrug it all off somehow, but for those who like to follow the details, the next step will be the detailed analysis of these documents by the skepticsphere, and the drawing up of specific moral and intellectual indictments of the climate-science establishment on the basis of that analysis. It will probably take them a few months to arrive at a consensus
regarding exactly what the message in the stolen documents is, and until then it will be a little difficult to respond comprehensively.
Meanwhile I agree with #22 that there was something “professional” about how this was done. I haven’t downloaded the big 60Mb compilation, but ten years of emails from a British research center, complete with handy summaries, released on the eve of the Copenhagen climate conference by someone using the American-sounding pseudonym “FOIA” – any information-warfare, counterintelligence professional would be proud.
Dear Humanity,
Although we had been in retreat for several decades, upon reading these emails, our ice-mass has rebounded magnificently. We did not realise that all the millions of tonnes of melting were a hoax and a fraud, and as soon as we heard, we snapped right back to our pre-industrial levels.
Our good friends the Siberian permafrost and Arctic ice cap are also tremendously relieved to learn that their mushy melting was just due our being panicked by alarmist scientists intent on world government. These emails have helped lower our temperature back to a stable equilibrium.
So, humanity, please carry on exactly as you were. There’s no need to change a thing. Just keep hacking those university email servers to ensure that the pH, temperature and depth of the oceans will also remain at comfortable levels.
Yours sincerely,
The Glaciers of Alaska, Norway, Greenland and New Zealand.
Brian # 41, yes it would be hypercritical to condone any means justifying an end especially when in writing at another site I laid into some major green NGO’s for emotionalising issues. The whole climate change debate is signposted by excesses of emotional blackmail, personal attacks & endeavours to pigeon hole everyone as either a denier or alarmist. For some who have been indulging in excessive hyperbole, (yourself not such a practitioner), it’s a bit rich for them to be piously spouting ethical behaviour when something like this hits.
No serious anti-AGW site is mentioned in all the above as scientists,just references to Bolt!? That to me is pretty pathetic,and no-one here seems to be female as a prior sense of who one is.!? So how can you accuse the anti-AGW people with the major one being Bolt!?You are losing your marbles!Could it be the major anti-AGW scientists are older types and may have real difficulties in even ethicalising the potential to hack other scientists work!More so,if there seems to be some contempt for them as scientists!Name the anti-AGW scientists who think Soros has been involved!?That matter comes from other people,if the link was ever made directly through his organizations and those he finances,where such links are possible to account for,without thorough forensic accounting with a determined requirement to seek criminal involvement because of the likelihood of evidence notified to a particular Authority that researches and polices scientific research..The chances are that the RealClimate scientists may not even know who is pulling their strings when error and disagreement is found and relationship falter.You are mangey attack dogs,generalising about people on the basis of Bolt.You should be thoroughly ashamed at your own lack of defining what the problem is,before assuming you have proven the failure of scientists who cannot agree with the AGW Hypothesis.
You can search the archive of stolen emails here. There’s a little window of current searches: in the past half hour I’ve seen ‘turnbull’, ‘rudd’, ‘tim lambert’, ‘quiggin’, and ‘rothschild’ – along with saner searches.
This hacking looks too much like an inside job from a “whistle blower” who has had gut full of the distorted ideology behind some of the research. Regardless of point of view it is distressing to think that this episode will cast doubt on scientific research for decades! We are all responsible because we have contributed with our biases and agendas to this catastrophy.
GAM, I don’t think it’s an inside job at all. Computer systems are full of security holes. The computer security world is a constant arms race between attack and defense. Someone went looking for an opportunity like this, I think, and they found a way into the East Anglia computers.
I am failing to find any great scandal so far. There is a lot of honest discussion, a lot of exasperation with the skeptics, and a few stray emails like job applications. And then there are a few core issues around which there are long-running battles that are as much political (in the micro sense – which journals to avoid, who gets to be gatekeeper) as they are scientific and methodological.
John Cook at Skeptical science. Short and to the point.
Also Kevin Grandia at Huffington Post:
Genuine scientists don’t adjust data to reach their goal. Genuine scientist don’t call other scientist for deniers when they have a different opinion. These persons cannot be trusted as real scientists. The attitude of the IPCC and Co are devastating for the open discussion. So are a lot of contributors on this blog! Consensus in these matters are not existing, many highly qualified scientists have other opinions.
It´s more than mail.
There´s lots of data.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ah4XLQCleuUYdFIxMnhMNnlXb2JQcDZUendjUXpWWUE&hl=en
Jacques, normally I would agree with you and I think there’s a good chance you might be right but the political nature of the target and the timing makes me suspicious. The other thing about your use of the razor is I don’t think it works. In my preferred scenario, a buyer, a blackhat and a middleman makes a conspiracy of three. Scriptkiddies on an IRC channel might be a pair or it might be a whole channel with numerous participants, in other words a conspiracy of more than two. If a botnet is involved you might have the botnet’s owner as well so the razor is looking pretty balanced as far as I can see.
An insider is possible yet I still think money’s changed hands somewhere. It’s a PR victory for the denialist camp regardless of the factual content. Imagine, scientists colluding, sounds evil.
Comment 612 at Real Climate:
“There is a lot of speculation on whether these files were “cherry picked” there is some evidence that they were selected by CRU themselves. There is some evidence that the files were collected as part of an FOI appeal. An appeal that was denied on Nov 13th. The date of the last email was Nov 12th.
I think the bottomline on this whole story is this. The institutions that govern scientific behavior are going awry. Those institutions are being corrupted by money and power and politics. The tonic for this is transparency. Free the data; free the code; free the debate.
But some on the AGW side are interested in controlling the message.
They fight against data release because they fear what people will do with it.
They fear that data will be misused: it will be.
They fear people finding errors: errors will be found.
None of these errors will overturn the basic science which is sound.
They fear that people will be less certain: they will be.
And they fear that it may take some time to convince people to take action: it will.
And so they act out of fear and try to control the message. Everyone who understands the nixon white house understands how this fear drives people to do things that they ordinarily would not.
The one thing they never feared: disclosure. Leaks.
And so the thing they feared the most, delaying action on climate science, is the very thing they may have got.
They should have trusted that open debate would yield the next right action in the shortest time possible. They didnt.
They feared a “corporate enemy” that would delay action. And, ironically, in the end they ended up being the thing they feared.”
This kind of imbriolio may not change the science but it can change the politics.
Just a note to say I’ve been working on climate data for twenty years and the language in these emails quoted above are quite consistent with how I might describe it to colleaues.
I “tart up” models, put in “tricks” to adjust data with observation artefacts into homogenous time series and a “cheat” is a word used by anyone who is a gamer as is a “fix”.
Wecome to the world of climate nerds – all you see here is a similar language that you would see computer nerds using to each other.
Phil Jones is not unlike Michael Mann (or vice versa, cause Jones has been around longer). They have no time for denialists and will not bother explaining both sides of an issue if questioned. The language they use in private is scathing. Others have more patience.
The advice I have always received re IT is to assume everything written in an email can become public. Have no doubt this episode will cause enormous damage. Have little question on CRU’s science because I have done enough independent work to show it checks out.
This theft and release will cause no amount of trouble at a time when it shouldn’t.
I have two comments.
We were told the science is settled!!
K.Rudd wants an ETS based on the settled science and the concensus!!
Non of the published emails call the science into question, it is still settled science that the Earth is warming and that enhanced human-produced greenhouse gases are the major cause.
I’ve been through all the comments at RealClimate (669 to date) and not a lot new is coming up. I’ve mentioned a few things above. here are a few more.
One bloke who claims to have read most of the emails reckons (@ 219) that they are a subset of the whole file. So someone has done a cull.
Another (@420) suggests that the hackers probably have more, so there may be subsequent releases.
Over and over again there are comments that CRU refused to release data under FOI. Gavin keeps explaining (eg @ 604 & 664) that the data was owned by Nat. Met. Services, not CRU and the owners like to sell it themselves. So the data was not CRU’s to release.
Gavin, it seems to me, has been calm and rational throughout. He’s not acting like he’s in panic or a man under siege. In the light of Roger’s comment @ 56 this is worth repeating (from comment 456):
I can’t recall exactly where, but there have been references to changing SST (sea surface temperature) records in the 1940s. In this book there is a whole chapter (40 pages) on issues relating to measuring temperature in climate. It explains why land surface temperatures are massaged in various ways. They have to be if they are going to mean anything, for reasons I won’t go into here.
One fascinating story is about sea surface temperatures (SSTs). Earlier last century this was done by ships chucking a bucket over the side. There may not have been consistency amongst the bucket chuckers on any one ship, let alone between ships. Furthermore there were distinct differences between the methodologies of US and British ships, who did most of the measuring.
During the 1940s there was a significant change in the burden-sharing with more passing to the British ships. Oddly, this coincided with a cooling of the measured SST. This problem apparently wasn’t nailed down and attributed to the different methodologies used by the Brits and the US until a paper published in 2008.
As a result some adjustments were made to the temperature series, but in a way that was anything but arbitrary.
Then some idiot reads in an email “We are going to change the data” and cries “gotcha!” It illustrates why you have to know something about the field, the issues, the literature, as well as the personalities, their roles and relationships to make any real sense of all those emails. Personally I’ll leave it to others, because my own knowledge is not even at first base.
pt @ 48, Mitchell @ 45 linked to a sceptic site. Personally I’m not trying to be comprehensive, but if you follow the subsequent links in many of the links I’ve provided, you’ll find plenty of sceptics. I’m only linking to people I think have something interesting to say.
no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords.
Brian, you disingenuously omitted to mention the giant lizard people. I’m sure there would be a reference to them in the emails if you looked hard enough.
The Bolta has Bolted on this…his blog comes up position 1 & 2 on Google with the search string “East Anglia Climate research Unit email OR hacking “conspiracy exposed”" and I note 435 comments on his blog have made it thru moderation, note also it’s now a “Warmist Conspiracy”. In the UK a younger version of Bolt who claims to be right about everything, James Delingpole, is calling this
James offers readers this
but that still only get him 393 comments.
We can debate what these emails do say and what they mean but they are a banquet for the likes of Bolt and Delingpole and these guys are probably not the worst. This is management of public perception of a critical issue on the eve of an important event. An accident? Sure.
@53
Understanding what scientists do fail.
Opinion is not science. And scientists as a stereotype are famously short-handed in the people skills department.
Sounds like they’re behaving exactly like ‘real scientists’ to me.
Yes, all the open discussion on this blog is devastating for open discussion.
Irrelevant. The climate doesn’t care whether or not you agree that it’s getting warmer.
Opinions are not science.
One thing this email ’scandal’ has highlighted is just how poorly some of the “sceptics” understand how real science is produced. Like making sausages I guess, the less you know the better for your appetite. But really, it’s clear that some people just have an infantile view of science as a pristine, passionless endeavour; or as some oracular enterprise where scientists descend from a mountaintop with revelations inscribed on stone tablets
*sigh*.
We may yet go down in history as the species that was clever enough to poo in our nest, but not clever enough to smell the result or clean it up.
“Have no doubt this episode will cause enormous damage.”
Time will tell Roger. Sometimes these proclaimed ’smoking guns’ have a way of backfiring on those who peddle in them. Dealing in stolen goods is a risky game and some dirty little stories may just as easily grab everyones attention in a few days time.
Funny, isn’t it, that Annabel Crabb was recently chiding Andrew Bolt, on Insiders, for his reliance on some report from the “University of East Bumcrack” when this one turns up?
Mercurius
“..some oracular enterprise where scientists descend from a mountaintop with revelations inscribed on stone tablets..”
Thats a realistic statement. However AGW has been sold for 10 years as just that. We have been told the science is settled, yet only a couple of weeks ago in the Guardian AL Gore was quoted as saying new science was showing CO2 was accounting for only about 40% of AGW (human caused) warming, and the other 60% was other man made particles/gases.
That doesnt mean AGW is a load of crock, but it should see some grinding of gears as the “consensus science” digests such a large change in data.
I am willing to be convinced by arguements on the science, Lord Monckton should be pinned for his errors, and corrected. However the scientists should have enough balls to say “we dont know that for sure” on certain other points. That should see more research directed at the “weak points” rather than data massaging and outright refusal to correct errors. (on both sides).
The old duck routine, all serene, placid and effortless on the surface, and paddling like buggery underneath…
has been soldhas been caricatured by ignorant op-ed writers for 10 years as just that.There, fixed.
Mole, for me the guts of it is whether the trace gases, CO2, methane etc, cause global warming and secondly whether they do so in sufficient measure to cause a significant signal over the noise of natural variation.
The first really is quite settled and has been for a long time. The second has been reckoned at about 3C midpoint climate sensitivity (temp increase for a doubling of CO2e) with more uncertainty on the upside for short-term feedbacks for quite some time. In subsequent IPCC reports the figure has edged upwards to the present 3C, but it’s been thereabouts for about a decade at least.
There is a third issue about where the heat is going. We are told that 95% of it goes into the ocean, so this graph is important. I gather that decent measurement of this is relatively recent, so we’d need to let that one settle a bit, but chances are that it will.
Beyond that there are many areas that are relatively settled and many less so. But the basic story goes back a long way and can produce a consistent story to explain the broad climate shifts over the last 65 million years.
Of course there may be a paradigm shift in the future that turns the whole thing on its head, but you have to run with what you’ve got. And that’s considerable.
Mole I’d also comment on the phrase “on both sides”. There really is only genuine climate science plus a mob of nitpickers picking around the edges.
Even allowing for the kind of off-line argy-bargey one might expect between scientists, it’s hard to see that this -
- means anything other than what it says. Global warming has stopped and AGW science can’t explain why.
Then some idiot reads in an email “We are going to change the data” and cries “gotcha!”
As compared to the idiot who used the language so loosely?
To me the dodgiest Emails are the ones apparently advocating the circumvention of FOI requests. And don’t come back with the “data wasn’t theirs to give” nonsense. If that were the case, there would be no need to take action to frustrate the requests – now would there.
I “tart up” models
Is that like sexing up evidence? I thought we were against that sort of thing.
Its actually good news that they’re trying to seriously discredit the science through transparently grubby means now – it means they’re losing, and they know it.
I’d like to hack Bolt’s emails and see what he’s getting paid to whore for polluters.
Thanks Brian for your post. Two things worry me – that those who don’t either understand the science nor the manner in which theory is constantly contested within science wont have the ability to see anything other than a conspiracy. If this was only Andrew Bolt and the 400 or so souls who commented on his post – well pfft. Unfortunately, this also includes people like Fielding who appears to find his policy positions in the bottom of his weeties bowl each morning and the Minchins of the world who are more than happy to manipulate ANY situation if it provides them with political capital.
The other concern is that for most of us, the implications of climate change are terrifying. If the scientists are right (which the weight of evidence supports). Truly terrifying. Ecosystem collapse, food production decline, water scarcity, hostile weather events (it’s currently 34.9 degrees with 50kmph winds from the WNW on a spring day in the Southern Highlands of NSW), ocean acidification. I would give anything for the denialists to be right. Anything. But they’re not.
But given that the actions that must occur economically, socially and politically to give us any chance of getting out of this with any dignity aren’t going to be easy or particularly pleasant, the possibility of snatching onto it not reaaaallllly being true is enormously comforting. It forestalls action, engagement, decisions. It displays the urgency we should acting with.
If this is revealed to be motivated by a wish to derail political action at Copenhagen or what may come after, those responsible have committed crimes against humanity. Those that make profit or gain personally from this are just as contemptible.
Rob @ 71, what he was talking about, I gather, was surface temperature. See the graph I linked to in @ 69. Temperature and GHGs follow each other quite remarkably over time.
From decade to decade there are bumps, lumps and anomalies. Much harder to explain. Naturally they’d like to be able to explain these minor deviations and even forecast them. It’s not about AGW as such.
“…those responsible have committed crimes against humanity”. I agree Bernice, at least for those among them who know better, and are deliberately seeking to derail action to preserve the profitability of unsustainable industries.
And as for ‘boat people’ – hey you ain’t seen nothing people. Wait till 20 million Bangladeshis and 250,000 Pacific islanders are on the move, driven from their homes by rising sea levels.
Not sure about that, Brian. The full quote (courtesy of Mr Bolt) is:
If the scientists quoted have done nothing wrong and their statements and positions are wholly defensible – which seems to be the prevailing view here – then how can publication of same amount to ‘crimes against humanity’?
Remember when Newspoll gave out numbers about boat people more than a week ago?
But “hid” the two party preferred numbers amid a jumble of numbers?
In the thread here I asked this question:
“Is there any mathematical trick to discovering what the unknown number/% of ALP voters is [and ditto for COAL voters] from that sort of information?”
Notice the phrase “mathematical trick”?
In the same comment I later asked:
“Does LP know anyone capable of emulating that trick and telling us the numbers?”
There’s that word ‘trick’ again.
Bernice, when Fielding went to see Wong he took four ’scientists’ with him, who, to do him credit, can actually be called scientists. They included Kinnimoth and Paltridge, who have gone over to the dark side in their old age, Carter, who always was there, plus one other, who I’ve lost for the moment.
Joanne Nova has just put out her Skeptics Handbook 11 (pdf) after the first one ran to at least 160,000 copies. I believe she is having copies hand-delivered to all pollies before they vote on the CPRS.
A worry.
PeterTB, I’ve explained why they had to “change the data.” Necessary and perfectly innocent. Remember when NASA GISS changed the data to make 1934 the hottest year in the US instead of 1998, although they were statistically the same in terms of margin or error before and after the change? The sceptics had apoplexy and went into overdrive, because apparently they were meant to announce the complete collapse of the AGW thesis at the same time (on the basis of no statistical change on 2% of the planet’s surface). How many ways are there of saying “change the data” when you mean “change the data”?
Rob @ 77, I didn’t see that when I posted at 80. I have to go out for the rest of the day. Could you find out, please, the dates of the emails you quote? It matters what the state of play in the science was at that point.
According to la Bolta’s post, the top message in the thread is dated 14 October 2009, so I assume the exchange took place within the few days preceding.
Re: usage of trick
Here in Australia, the use of the word “trick” in this sense (overcvoming a thorny problem) is very common. This is from the Australian Information Industry Association:
>
There’s also a song … The trick is to keep breathing by Troy Cino
Here’s one I like, because it comes from the right-wing ideologue and climate change delusionist Janet Albrechtson. The usage is almost punning in this context:
Albrechtson asserts, in effect trickery by the left but the usage of the word trick is still about a method for accomplishing something.
It really is telling that once again, the delusionists on this issue have chosen to make the issue about something other than the basic science explaining the current climate anomaly, which is beyond serious demur.
Satellite-based spectral analysis shows exactly what one would expect to find: a reduction of outgoing longwave radiation in the bands absorbed by CO2. Simple physics says that that radiation has to go somewhere and indeed, where it has gone has been into heating of the lower troposphere. No fiddling about and quote mining in emails can change that, more’s the pity.
Meh, doubt mongering is just rule one from the playbook. Go look at the science, see the rising temperatures, see the rising sea levels, note the low level of solar flaring, look at the modeling, understand the very basic properties of Greenhouse gases, their indisputably rising levels, and the close parallel between GHG levels temperature over 100,000s of years: end of story.
We have to change to survive. And if we have to, we will wear the denialist idiots and their silly three-card claptrap down.
Dont forget: we are at the verge of global agreement number two. They are losing, and they are losing because their case is empty.
And yet, Lefty E., according to at least some advocates of AGW (if I understand these emails correctly, and I may not) the world is not currently warming. Where does that leave the whole panoply of the science that has sought to establish that it is?
What has happened, I think, is that a huge hole has been shot in the heavily armoured AGW hypothesis, and its advocates know it well and are understandably dismayed. If these emails are genuine, what it looks like is scientific malpractice and suppresssion of dissent through hijacking the peer review process, going back perhaps a decade. It may not actually be the way it looks, but that’s up to the scientists quoted to establish. So far they have not.
I have always been a sceptic; but I was confident that the science for AGW was honest, even if I found it unpersuasive. As some have said above, there’s always plenty of room for good-humoured (and less good-humoured) banter about the issues, not just in science, but in history or any other discipline. There are debates about this interpretation versus that one. This seems to be different, though. I’m no longer sure that the AGW proponents were honest or professional in the positions they adopted.
I can’t believe how ignorant and narrow minded so many of the respondents here are. I’m not talking about the hacked data and emails. They may well be damaging and indicate some unscientific and unethical behaviour by scientists associated with the CRU, but that wont matter to the blind believers. The blind believers didn’t mind when the CRU refused reasonable access to source data to enable other scientists to attempt to replicate the outcomes claimed by the CRU models and published in the IPCC reports. The blind believers didn’t mind when the CRU lost data or claimed important information used in the compiling and review of IPCC reports was deleted or lost. The blind believers choose to ignore atmospheric satellite temperature records which contradict the IPCC’s claims about rising temperatures. The blind believers choose not to investigate why 31,748 scientists signed a petition to the US Senate imploring it not to agree to targets based on the flawed IPCC report. Strangely this hacked data which could cast doubt on the scientists involved with supplying and supporting the IPCC report content, has been ignored by the popular media. Why, because they too have closed minds. Scientists who have trusted that those scientists in control of the climate debate are beginning to realise that the same scientific standards they expect in their own fields has not been applied by the IPCC. Previous IPCC lead authors and contributing scientists are becoming skeptics on a daily basis. I was a believer, but I have an open mind and read widely and have become a sceptic as the weight of evidence grows against the IPCC reports. If most of the respondents on this site opened their minds and did a bit of research, they would probably abandon ship unless they are more comfortable with their blind faith positions. A survey last month showed that the majority of meteorologists in the US do not accept the IPCC reports. Open your eyes!
Quotations from eminently qualified persons
“Nature’s regulatory instrument is water vapour: more carbon dioxide leads to less moisture in the air, keeping the overall GHG content in accord with the necessary balance conditions.” – Prominent Hungarian Physicist and environmental researcher Dr. Miklós Zágoni reversed his view of man-made warming and is now a skeptic. Zágoni was once Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol.
“Global warming is part of a natural cycle and there’s nothing we can actually do to stop these cycles. The world is now facing spending a vast amount of money in tax to try to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist. “ Prof David Bellamy is a botanist and active environmental campaigner , author of 35 books, and has presented 400 television programs.
“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC “are incorrect because they are only based on mathematical models and presented results of scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” – Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico
“The quantity of CO2 we produce is insignificant in terms of the natural circulation between air, water and soil… I am doing a detailed assessment of the UN IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policy Makers, identifying the way in which the Summaries have distorted the science.” – South Afican Nuclear Physicist and Chemical Engineer Dr. Philip Lloyd, a UN IPCC co-coordinating lead author who has authored over 150 refereed publications
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” – U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” – Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.
“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” – Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.
“Earth has cooled since 1998 in defiance of the predictions by the UN-IPCC….The global temperature for 2007 was the coldest in a decade and the coldest of the millennium…which is why ‘global warming’ is now called ‘climate change.’” – Climatologist Dr. Richard Keen of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado.
“I am a sceptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” – Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.
“I have yet to see credible proof of carbon dioxide driving climate change, yet alone man-made CO2 driving it. The atmospheric hot-spot is missing and the ice core data refute this. When will we collectively awake from this deceptive delusion?” – Dr. G LeBlanc Smith, a retired Principal Research Scientist with Australia’s CSIRO.
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain sceptical…The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.” – Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.
“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists.” – Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.
“So far, real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming.” – Scientist Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck, a chemical engineer at Abo Akademi University in Finland, author of 200 scientific publications and former Greenpeace member.
“Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time.” – Solar physicist Dr. Pal Brekke, senior advisor to the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo. Brekke has published more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the sun and solar interaction with the Earth.
“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.
“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri’s asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it’s hard to remain quiet.” – Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society’s Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.
“The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse. It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round…A large number of critical documents submitted at the 1995 U.N. conference in Madrid vanished without a trace. As a result, the discussion was one-sided and heavily biased, and the U.N. declared global warming to be a scientific fact,” Andrei Kapitsa, a Russian geographer and Antarctic ice core researcher.
“I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken…Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science.” – Award Winning Physicist Dr. Will Happer, Professor at the Department of Physics at Princeton University and Former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy, who has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.
“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?” – Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.
“All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.” – Geophysicist Dr. Phil Chapman, an astronautical engineer and former NASA astronaut, served as staff physicist at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Published in the October 2009 issue of “Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society” (BAMS), a new survey indicates that a significant number of professional meteorologists doubt that manmade sources of greenhouse gases are the cause of global warming. The survey was vetted by an advisory board of climate experts, including representatives from NOAA, the NWS, UCAR, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Pew Center for Global Climate Change, and many members of the AMS.
When asked about the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) statement that “Most of the warming since 1950 is very likely human-induced,” a full 50% either disagreed or strongly disagreed. 25% were neutral and only 24% said they agreed or strongly agreed; 52% of the meteorologists disagreed with the statement that “Global climate models are reliable in their projections for a warming of the planet.” Only 19% agreed with the statement; Almost a third of respondents agreed (19%) or strongly agreed (10%) that “global warming is a scam”;
When the meteorologists were asked to identify the “greatest obstacle to reporting on climate change,” their top answer (41%) was “too much scientific uncertainty.”
http://www.examiner.com/x-3089-LA-Ecopolitics-Examiner~y2009m11d19-Meteorologists-Climate-Change-Survey
The world’s source for global temperature records, used by UN, admits it’s lost or destroyed original data
Global Warming ate my data
We’ve lost the numbers: CRU responds to FOIA requests
By Andrew Orlowski Posted in Environment, 13th August 2009 14:35 GMT
The world’s source for global temperature record admits it’s lost or destroyed all the original data that would allow a third party to construct a global temperature record. The destruction (or loss) of the data comes at a convenient time for the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia – permitting it to snub FoIA requests to see the data.
The CRU has refused to release the raw weather station data and its processing methods for inspection – except to hand-picked academics – for several years. Instead, it releases a processed version, in gridded form. NASA maintains its own (GISSTEMP), but the CRU Global Climate Dataset, is the most cited surface temperature record by the UN IPCC. So any errors in CRU cascade around the world, and become part of “the science”.
Professor Phil Jones, the activist-scientist who maintains the data set, has cited various reasons for refusing to release the raw data. Most famously, Jones told an Australian climate scientist in 2004:
Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.
In 2007, in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, CRU initially said it didn’t have to fulfil the requests because “Information accessible to applicant via other means Some information is publicly available on external websites”.
Now it’s citing confidentiality agreements with Denmark, Spain, Bahrain and our own Mystic Met Office. Others may exist, CRU says in a statement, but it might have lost them because it moved offices. Or they were made verbally, and nobody at CRU wrote them down.
As for the raw station data,
“We are not in a position to supply data for a particular country not covered by the example agreements referred to earlier, as we have never had sufficient resources to keep track of the exact source of each individual monthly value. Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data.”
Canadian statistician and blogger Steve McIntyre, who has been asking for the data set for years, says he isn’t impressed by the excuses. McIntyre obtained raw data when it was accidentally left on an FTP server last month. Since then, CRU has battened down the hatches, and purged its FTP directories lest any more raw data escapes and falls into the wrong hands.
McIntyre says he doesn’t expect any significant surprises after analysing the raw data, but believes that reproducibility is a cornerstone of the scientific principle, and so raw data and methods should be disclosed. ®
None of this was enough for anyone in the mainstream media to raise questions about the CRU and Hadley centre, the IPCC modelling and report and the whole basis of what our Government is proposing to do on the basis of so called conclusive science. The conspiracy of silence and lack of scrutiny continues. The hacking story broke on 19th November but I am yet to see an article in the mainstream press or on Television. Even the newspaper blogs provide little space to this latest news which should by rights be front page news. When it was proposed that Wayne Swann may have conspired to help a car dealer gain some finance it was front page news. This issue could be of major world significance (right or wrong), and it hasn’t been mentioned in mainstream media! Why not? Because it draws into question the mainstream acceptance of Climate change and manmade CO2 emissions, and there are far too many people vested in that position including politicians on both sides!
SUPPORT FOR CALL FOR REVIEW OF UN IPCC
Dr Vincent Gray, a member of the UN IPCC Expert Reviewers Panel since its inception, has written to Professor David Henderson, to support the latter’s call for a review of the IPCC and its procedures.
Dr Gray wrote:
Thank you for your latest article containing your analysis of the limitations of the IPCC and your belief that it is possible for it to be reformed.
I have been an “Expert Reviewer” for the IPCC right from the start and I have submitted a very large number of comments on their drafts. It has recently been revealed that I submitted 1,898 comments on the Final Draft of the current Report. Over the period I have made an intensive study of the data and procedures used by IPCC contributors throughout their whole study range. I have a large library of reprints, books and comments and have published many comments of my own in published papers, a book, and in my occasional newsletter, the current number being 157.
I began with a belief in scientific ethics, that scientists would answer queries honestly, that scientific argument would take place purely on the basis of facts, logic and established scientific and mathematical principles.
Right from the beginning I have had difficulty with this procedure. Penetrating questions often ended without any answer. Comments on the IPCC drafts were rejected without explanation, and attempts to pursue the matter were frustrated indefinitely.
Over the years, as I have learned more about the data and procedures of the IPCC I have found increasing opposition by them to providing explanations, until I have been forced to the conclusion that for significant parts of the work of the IPCC, the data collection and scientific methods employed are unsound. Resistance to all efforts to try and discuss or rectify these problems has convinced me that normal scientific procedures are not only rejected by the IPCC, but that this practice is endemic, and was part of the organisation from the very beginning. I therefore consider that the IPCC is fundamentally corrupt. The only “reform” I could envisage, would be its abolition.
The article goes into great detail about the areas of innacuracy by the IPCC..
Climate Catastrophe Canceled : an authoritative Finnish documentary which scotches the IPCC modelling very much worth viewing. http://dotsub.com/view/19f9c335-b023-4a40-9453-a98477314bf2
68. Helen
I assume you are including Mr Rudd in that little group? After all hes all for stating the science is settled…
Brian
Its not a bit of a fiddle at the edges its 60% of the man made warming. Surely that would indicate reducing CO2 emissions by the % now touted as enough is actually wrong by half. Thats not a small adjustment, thats a massive overhaul of the targets alltogether. Reducing CO2 by 100% would now be only as effective as what they believed a 50% reduction would be a short time ago.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/02/al-gore-our-choice-environment-climate
“..Those conversations led Gore to politically inconvenient conclusions in this new book. In his conversations with Schmidt and other colleagues at the beginning of the year, Gore explored new studies – published only last week – that show methane and black carbon or soot had a far greater impact on global warming than previously thought. Carbon dioxide – while the focus of the politics of climate change – produces around 40% of the actual warming.
Gore acknowledged to Newsweek that the findings could complicate efforts to build a political consensus around the need to limit carbon emissions.
“Over the years I have been among those who focused most of all on CO2, and I think that’s still justified,” he told the magazine. “But a comprehensive plan to solve the climate crisis has to widen the focus to encompass strategies for all” of the greenhouse culprits identified in the Nasa study…”
So even if the AGW theory is 100% correct, the science we have been told is settled just had an enormous unspoken about spanner thrown in the works.
Does that concern anyone here, or is CO2 so demonised by now the science doesnt matter?
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
James, as another commentary has noted, thats actually a survey of TV weather reporters, not “meteorologists”. Basically, they asked 249 Lavinia Nixons what they thought. So what? Might as well go ask 249 fashion models, or people wearing hats at the Melbourne Cup.
Next?
The New York Times has an appropriate heading for this story, Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute. IMHO it is also one of the more balanced accounts in the major newspapers.
It’s certainly fodder for blog sites.
Murf #56
How research grants are allocated these days leaves much to be desired. If funds are only available for the Government of the day pet causes then of course the door is open even unknowingly to corruption, power & politics.
Rodger Jones #57, I take on board & respect what you have said. Of the comments upthread my position is more inline with murf, mole #67 & some of what rob #85, has had to say.
Brian #60 “Over and over again there are comments that CRU refused to release data under FOI. Gavin keeps explaining (eg @ 604 & 664) that the data was owned by Nat. Met. Services, not CRU and the owners like to sell it themselves. So the data was not CRU’s to release.”
That would be all and good Brian if it the CRU was a privately funded organisation and the data related to some privately owned product. The CRU is publicly funded as is the IPCC. The IPCC used the modelled outcomes which rely on that data to produce it’s Nobel Prize winning reports. It is scientifically unethical not to make that data readily available to anyone who wishes to replicate the claimed results.
Anyone who has worked in the physical sciences won’t be at all fazed by the use of the word “trick” — like “fudge” or “hack” or “shortcut” they sound dodgy to laypeople, but they aren’t. As others have explained they just refer to clever methods, algorithms, etc for analysing data. It’s no big deal and not in the least the “gotcha” some people think.
One good thing that might come out of all this is that it’s clear that those writing the emails do sincerely believe that AGW is taking place. Hopefully that will shut down some of the more extreme denialists who think it’s all a hoax (as opposed to a mistake). Ah, what am I saying … I’ve read every comment in the “other thread” and really should know conspiracy theorists better by now
“One good thing that might come out of all this is that it’s clear that those writing the emails do sincerely believe that AGW is taking place. ”
But unless I’ve got it wrong, the absolute opposite is the case. It’s not happening and they can’t explain why not. (Well, some of them, anyway
).
And … the Sun goes round the Earth.
From John Cook at Skeptical Science (linked to by Brian @52)
The science is still settled.
To make myself clearer – the facts haven’t changed.
James from 86-90, now that you’ve learnt how to use ctrl+C and ctrl+V, could you come back to us when you’ve learnt some basic science?
Science is not an exercise in quote-mining or petition-signing or email-hacking or opinion-polling or Senate-lobbying or any of the other activities you seem to mistake it for. And, believe it or not, glaciers are not going to re-freeze because some Nobel Prize winner has an opinion.
Please don’t use this blog as a cut and paste board. We haz Google and can find information for ourselves, thank you.
That you could quote the 31,000+ “petition” as ‘evidence’ of anything says a lot about your standards of scepticism. For a start, opinion isn’t science. Sorry, it just isn’t. So as science the petition is less useful than toilet paper. Yet you hold this shoddy petition as being something worthy of investigation? Very well, let’s investigate…go read up some of the facts about that “petition”, that it’s actually two petitions, one taken in the 1990s and whose signatories never gave permission for their names to be used for the purposes it has has been, the other more recently, almost none of the signers had their scientific credentials verified, almost none had to provide any evidence in support of their opinion, none, in fact, had to do anything but type a string of letters into a web form or sign a piece of paper and tick-a-box; the petition’s sponsors are on record saying they wouldn’t even attempt verify the credentials of all the names because there were so many. And yet you seriously suggest that we should waste our time “investigating” such a shoddy piece of work when the instigators of it can’t even be arsed to check their own work? Why don’t you come here and investigate the contents of my cat’s litter tray? It would be about as enlightening.
Yes, Ive just read through the illegally hacked emails, and cant see anything that would cast doubt on the emerging scientific consensus on man-made warming. Just scientists yabbering with each other in the preparatory phase of their research, 10 years ago. Is that all the denialists have got.
Ive got some excellent hacked convos of Howard and Costello privately talking about what a dumb bunch of pricks working class lib voters are. But I guess we’ll just have to go on their public statements.
zoot
The point being the science isnt settled. The science is trying to explain WHY we are seeing this. They just found out what they were saying is LARGELY responsible, man made CO2, is in actual fact responsible for about 40%.
It turns out the science is about 40% settled. The failure of warming to accurately follow models (remember they are focussed on CO2, more CO2 should mean more heat) which has thrown some doubt on the modeling (in thier own emails), may in actual fact be entirely explainable in light of this.
The world is a couple of months away from locking in a system they believed was dealing with the vast majority of the heating gases. It turns out it is now looking at dealing with less than 50% of what they thought.
Can anyone here, hand on their heart, say that sounds like an excellent idea?
The facts, hard science, has apparently changed, more investigation is needed (these new facts may be overthrown as well), or we may just end up reducing 50% of bugger all.
Zoot – So said the legions who in the 15th century chased down innocent women they said were witches, decrying as heretics the handful who said there were no such things (and burning them as well if they could). We know who turned out to be right. The AGW scare represents an almost exact parallel.
Yes, Rob @104. You’re exactly right. AGW and witch-burning. The parallels are obvious. Well done.
*backs away slowly*
*no sudden movements*
Rob :
“The AGW scare represents an almost exact parallel.”
Insofar as you are prepared to ignore the physical EVIDENCE for AGW, you have a point.
BTW, the level of ignorance of science, and scientific process, from the denialists here is absolutely astounding – this is what happens when basic science education is devalued/neglected in our educational system, I suppose.
Ah, mercurius, I failed to make myself clear, for which I apologise. What I meant to say was an abbreviated version of this:
Rob at 104: The only accurate part of your claim that “the AGW scare” is almost an exact parallel to chasing down witches in the 15th century is the recognition that climate change deniers represent a “handful” of people. You have undercut the voluminous posts by James with this accidental truth.
I reiterate, the facts haven’t changed.
Human activity is pushing the planet to catastrophic climate change. To quote Al Gore(is he still fat?) in that Guardian article:
So – the politics demand that we do more than just mitigate CO2, a fact that any climate scientist worthy of the name could have told you.
And Rob – a quick check of Wikipedia confirms that the Roman Empire ceased to exist well before the 15th century. Not only science: fail but also history: fail.
Well, JohnL, perhaps ‘a handful’ was a misnomer. Recent polls show an increasing plurality, if not an actual majority, of respondents disbelieve AGW. In the contest for public opinion, however, there is no doubt who are in the majority. But, on the witchcarft issue, as far as I’m aware, only two or three public intellectuals in the 15th C. came out and disavowed the ‘reality’ of witchcraft as believed in by the overwhelming majority of their peers. There is no doubt who turned out to be right – they were.
Rob :
“I’d give AGW belief 30 years, ”
Bad luck on that one too Rob – it’s been going now for over a 100 years, and my prediction is that it will last as long as our civilisation.
You really DO need to get an education.
Sorry, zoot, you’ve lost me – where did I refer to the Roman Empire? Oops, I’ve got it. I meant ‘legions’ in the generic sense of the word, of course. But a nice hit, nonetheless.
Rob @107:
Really? Care to name a few of those “many” calling for such draconian action?
Lefty E:
I think the one good thing that could come from the hacked emails is a discussion on why we should trust the data coming out of the climate models. Something that I was shocked to learn recently was that the vast majority of these models are not open. One of the important aspects of the scientific method is that you publish your methods so that others can repeat what you’ve done to confirm you’re not full of baloney. That’s not what climate scientists have been doing.
One of the important aspects of the scientific method is that you publish your methods so that others can repeat what you’ve done to confirm you’re not full of baloney. That’s not what climate scientists have been doing.
There’s no need to make the models open, models require a certain skill set to use. If you can’t generate your own model based on the published science, you won’t have the ability to us someone else’s.
I believe Gavin Schmidt’s model is open source, go knock yourself out Desipis.
“Romm links to Bolt’s stuff, which I don’t mind linking to in this case. I heard that he gets a million hits a month”
And who says the fossil fool defenders in the blogosphere are OCD free?
The usual suspects sending another HYPERBOLE tidal wave…the ranters in the Nats (incl. Barnaby Joyless) & Libs do a bad peacock dance…good old Tony J. (who remember cares deeply about Aboriginal children) interviews Tony A. (remember cared enuff about Aboriginal children to promote an intervention including troops)…and the Bolta having got the blog attention on the eve of it by whingeing like there’s no Day after Tomorrow…is now off and running. W/ the rest of the cyber-skeptics (many are Bolt & Blair & News Ltd. flag wavers…gotta pay those bills)…& their other media enablers.
And the lounge & high chair insiders go:
TRICKY DICK…ohohohohoo TRICKY DICK…get yer Christmas bag filled w/ TRICKY DICKS.
Yawn. Shame the tidalwave for them is more akin to something you’d find in a Gulf State mall. Get out yer boards kids. It’s time to get WET.
N’
Rob – re witch hunts, from good old wikipedia:
To me that sounds very much like the adherents of the Church of Denialism sifting through the stolen emails looking for evidence of reprehensible behaviour on the part of real scientists.
pterosaur@106:
“Insofar as you are prepared to ignore the physical EVIDENCE for AGW, you have a point.”
Indeed; and the ‘physical evidence’ for witchcraft and AGW show some disturbing similarities: peer pressure; a willingness by the elites to believe in the absurd; evidence based on ‘irrefutable science’ that defied common sense; testimony twisted by interrogators with an agenda; and so on.
Apologies to Brian for derailing the thread.
zoot@118 – if the emails don’t display some malfeasance on the correspondents’ part, then why is everyone (almost) on this thread so upset about their publication?
then why is everyone (almost) on this thread so upset about their publication?
Because it gives the outrageously biased science deniers, such as:
a chance to quote-mine and engage in more dishonesty.
You’re being disingenuous, Rob. I’d say it’s for the same reason as most people would be upset at having their private emails / letters / bank account details shared with the world.
Of course, the fact that the deniers will be able quote-mine, cherry-pick and misinterpret the emails in the same way as they do the research is just another cause for annoyance.
Rob @120
What malfeasance would that be?
Rob, I see what you and Plimer are doing.
By re-characterising a scientific discussion as occupying a ‘religious’ or ‘historical’ frame, you can elide from facts and empiricism into the realm of rhetoric, opinion and argumentation. Plimer needs to do this because he has no scientific case, but he has a track record arguing successfully against religious nutbags (creationists) in the past. Plimer is trying to be a latter-day Karl Popper but he isn’t fit to shine Popper’s boots.
Plimer only has a hammer (being a geoscientist), so all he sees are nails. He can’t detect the qualitative differences between his former creationist adversaries and the AGW scientists with whom he has decided to pick a fight. He characterises them as tigers of the same stripe. Plimer may well be able to keep talking under wet cement, but this won’t impress the Arctic ice cap one bit.
Meanwhile, amid all the talk shows, blog-stoushing, book-promoting and bitchery (of the worst kind – male bitchery), the world’s glaciers are still retreating. Ho hum.
Desipis @114:
From the CRU thread at RealClimate:
Like I said Desipis, knock yourself out.
Mercurius@124: you say it so well.
zoot@123 – massaging and misrepresenting data, silencing critics, stacking peer reviews – read the emails for yourself.
And DI(NR) – this isn’t an abstract discussion about the causes of the French Revolution. It’s about – we can all agree – the future of the planet, ecological and economical. It’s about hundreds of billions of dollars spent (uselessly?) at a time of recession or depression. If there are questions about the legitimacy of the science behind all this, they have to be asked and debated. If we are proposing to spend billions on amelioarating a problem that even its own advicates aren’t sure actually exists, we have an issue for discussion, as they say.
Rob @127
I have read the emails for myself and I don’t see any evidence of massaging and misrepresenting data, silencing critics or stacking peer reviews.
Which emails did you read? What evidence did they contain?
misrepresenting data, silencing critics, stacking peer reviews – read the emails for yourself.
These claims are all based on denier quote-mining. In the real world, these charges are false.
zoot:
This looks like massaging data to me.
Looks like silencing critics and stacking editorial boards to me.
LeftyE “I’d like to hack Bolt’s emails and see what he’s getting paid to whore for polluters.”
LeftyE, you probably mean well, but if you believe that “polluters” are paying Bolt to push an agenda, then you need to take a better grip of yourself. I bet you can’t even enunciate a credible scenario in which Bolt could profit from polluters in return for questioning AGW orthodoxy.
Rob, it’s clearly pointless discussing this with you, as you’ve made up what passes for your mind. I can’t be bothered – life’s too short.
The denialists and the do-nothing camp seem to believe the cost of doing nothing is…nothing. Have they costed the impact of running out of oil?
Rob @127:
Let’s just, for s**ts and giggles, accept the basic premises of your argument (highly dubious, but I’m feeling charitable)…
…now let’s do a worst-case scenario analysis, along the lines of liar’s poker:
If we do nothing and AGW is false, worst case scenario is the status quo, and we run out of oil some time this century unless we switch to a renewables-based energy infrastructure. (By my reckoning, this puts us behind to the tune of the cost of running out of oil.)
If we do nothing and AGW is true, worst case scenario is civilisation-threatening climate change, and we run out of oil some time this century unless we switch to a renewables-based energy infrastructure. (By my reckoning, this puts us a looooong way behind.)
If we do something and AGW is false, worst case scenario is hundreds of billions of dollars wasted (according to you) and we don’t run out of oil because we’ve switched to a renewables-based energy infrastructure. (By my reckoning, this means we break even).
If we do something and AGW is true, worst case scenario is the stuff we do doesn’t work, we still end up with civilisation-threatening climate change, and we don’t run out of oil because we’ve switched to a renewables-based energy infrastructure (By my reckoning, this means we are slightly behind or breaking even, but definitely ahead of either of the scenarios for doing nothing.)
—-
Make the call, hotshot. You seem to think the AGW scientists are bluffing on a busted flush. So call it. Whatever you choose, it’s no-limit, and we’re all-in…
Fair enough, David. I’ve been in that position myself before, many times. God bless.
Mercurius: the world’s glaciers are still retreating. Ho hum.
..and have been for at least 200 years. Go to NZ’s Fox glacier – and see how far it has retreated since first being sighted by white fellas.
AGW proponents have made the mistake of trying make their scientific work serve the purpose of public persuasion.
These two functions are ultimately contradictory.
A large section of the public are incapable of understanding the process of the construction of hypotheses. The current ABC series on Charles Darwin provides a reasonable insight into how scientists of good will nevertheless play a political game in the propagation of their theories.
When these theories threaten to play havoc with the philosophies and interests of powerful groups, then to incomprehension is added disingenuousness.
There is no doubt that this hack has deal a damaging political blow to the cause of AGW. It has not dealt as serious a scientific blow.
One example of disingenuousness suffices. None of the usual suspects have said “but for the fact that the evidence no appears to have lost credibility, I would have supported the AGW thesis. All of these AGW deniers discountenanced the theory before a small proportion of the supporting evidence came under question.
Which raises the question I have asked a couple of times before but no denier has ever answered: “What are the minimum requirements that need to be satisfied before you abandon your denialist position?”
I ask the question again, but do not expect any sensible answer.
But let me repeat that the IPCC have fallen into a trap by linking scientific work with political persuasion.
Data are nearly always massaged, but Rob should read the Real Climate thread, without the anti-science blinders.
No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.
More Real Climate and Rob seeing what he wants to see.
A fair challenge, Mercurius @ 133.
I’d say – let’s wait and see what does happen. Human ingenuity is virtually endless, as long as governments don’t get too much in the way. If the seas do rise, which is debatable, we’ll deal. If the oil does run out, which is debatable, we’ll deal. If the glaciers advance or retreat, we’ll deal. If the skies do fall, which is highly debatable, we’ll deal. Somehow, we always have. The Medieval Warming Period didn’t kill the world, we have survived a couple of Ice Ages – in fact, they did us some good – and let’s remember the Romans made wine in Scotland.
I don’t think you’ve got any answers either.
“What are the minimum requirements that need to be satisfied before you abandon your denialist position?”
I’m more open minded than a “denier”, but I would be interested in a credible explanation of the cooling observed since 2000. One thing that these Emails have confirmed is that the cooling is real, and the scientists are at a loss to explain it.
Further, if you really wanted to convert the most rusted on “denier”, all you would need to do would be to point to a paper published pre-2001 that predicted this cooling!
Rob @130
Gavin Schmidt (who is a real climate scientist) explains much better than I could:
So, one dendrochronology dataset doesn’t agree with the instrumental data, so it is deprecated. This is not misrepresenting the data.
The full story is here, but suffice to say (once again in Gavin’s words) “The paper and journal in question were indeed a scandal. But the scandal was that it was ever published. Six editors of the journal resigned in protest at the publication, not because of pressure.”
Evidence includes context Rob. If you were truly skeptical you would have sought out this context.
Yes, that’s a good question, Katz, but the answer has to be vast, and I freely accept that it’s beyond my competence. I don’t believe in global warming, but that’s based on a reading of the currents of the dicourse, not the science. The science may prove me wrong. But on the basis of this thread, I’m not seeing anytbing that tells me my reading of the discourse is wrong. And I think that the science is subordinate to the discourse, now.
Apolgies for going all post-modernist.
You need to look at the overall picture on glaciers, not cherry-pick only one.
Zoot.
We are about to lock in emissions trading that deals wholey and soley with CO2.
And you claim nothings changed?
Did you read the quoted piece from Al Gore. The effects of particles has been massively underplayed and the effects of CO2 overstated.
Thats cause to rethink Kyoto/Copenhagen target gasses, and include particle matter at the very least..
But no, you just keep fixated on CO2, after all thats 40% of the problem.
I think that the exclamation mark suggests that you recognise that this is a semantic trick, lame though it may be.
So let’s take this to a higher level of generality: what is the minimum evidence that you would require to convince you that this asserted post 2000 cooling is an anomaly rather than a trend?
I’m sure you understand that theories cannot explain anomalies and that all complex systems throw up anomalies.
PeterTB @131:
Oooh, please sir! Let me try!
How about a retainer from the coal industry peak body? Or some of that money that ExxonMobil distributes to lobby groups?
Zarquon: “There’s no need to make the models open, models require a certain skill set to use. If you can’t generate your own model based on the published science, you won’t have the ability to us someone else’s.”
Excellent, that means I can provide mathematical proofs to the most recalcitrant problems, but omit the intermediate equations?
I think you are mistaken Z.
Yes, Rob. This is a more elegant expression of the situation than my own.
??? Non-sequitur.
Zarquon: “You need to look at the overall picture on glaciers, not cherry-pick only one.
Mercurius stated “the world’s glaciers are still retreating. Ho hum” – presumably attributing the retreat(s) to AGW. At 142, you cite a quotation confirming that glacier retreat has been obseved since 1850.
What’s your point Z?
Mole @143 Which bit of
didn’t you understand?
“Oooh, please sir! Let me try!
How about a retainer from the coal industry peak body? Or some of that money that ExxonMobil distributes to lobby groups?”
Oh, come on, zoot, we’re getting to a level of maturity here (no offence, I know how these things run).
zoot: Oooh, please sir! Let me try!
How about a retainer from the coal industry peak body? Or some of that money that ExxonMobil distributes to lobby groups?
Fair enough zoot. But what benefit would the coal industry receive? Are you suggesting that Bolt can change government policy? If not, the what are you suggesting?
Same link as above.
PeterTB @152
Much the same benefit the banks received from Lawsy’s cash for comment.
Then there’s the benefit that Exxon Mobil saw in funding denialist groups.
But what about the 79 billion that the global warming industry has received from Big Government? Where does that locate vested intersts?
On the subject of money this bit is interesting
“… That is why it is important for us to get money from additional sources, in particular from the ADVANCE and INTAS ones. Also, it is important for us if you can transfer the ADVANCE money on the personal accounts which we gave you earlier and the sum for one occasion transfer (for example, during one day) will not be more than 10,000 USD. Only in this case we can avoid big taxes and use money for our work as much as possible. Please, inform us what kind of documents and financial reports we must represent you and your administration for these money…”
Re. #155. Sorry – cheap shot.
PeterTB @139:
This cooling?
You’re in denial zoot. The question before us is not whether there has been cooling since 2000, but rather how we can reconcile that cooling with our models.
Rob @155 (cheap shot or not): Got a source for that $79bn?
Exxon Mobil last year (a bad year) made $45bn and that’s just the biggest oil company in the world. What happens when we add Shell, BP etc etc plus the coal companies?
150. zoot
And where at Copenhagen has there been any mention of regulating/taxing the other 60%??
Or is that just a twinkle in Als eye to be brought in later?
Ill write slowly so you get it.
Copenhagen is going to regulate/tax/fine, based on CO2, which has for a decade now been the gas largely blamed for AGW.
In the last couple of months it has been found CO2 may only account for 40% of AGW. This leaves 60%.
The UN released this.
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2009/envdev1069.doc.htm
Echoing the call for limiting temperature rise to well below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, he said global emissions should be cut by more than 85 per cent by 2050, and that “Annex I” emissions should drop by at least 45 per cent by 2020. Further, he called for new, additional and stable financing for adaptation, technology transfer and capacity‑building at a level sufficient to cope with the scale of the problem.
The problem being its going to be rather hard to drop emissions by over 160% by 2050, and at least slightly problematic to reach 90% by 2020.
Thats what the latest change in science has done to the Copenhagen negotiations. Their figures were based on CO2, now its 40% CO2 and 60% “lots of other stuff”.
Can you seriously not see the problem here, it seems quite logical to me, not a matter of denialist or true believer, just a huge change in one of the most vital facts on AGW. CO2 only matters half as much as we thought it did a couple of months ago.
PeterTB @159: The data trend is positive and I’m in denial?
Mole @161, can you please quote me the passage in your link which says Copenhagen is only about CO2? (I can’t find it)
It appears to me that the goal of the conference is still, as it always was, to limit the increase in global temperature. There are a number of strategies involved, one of which is limiting emissions of CO2 (and methane and water vapour and all the other GHGs)
Show me where I’m wrong.
zoot@160 – it’s the awful La Bolta.
I know, I know…..
But seriously, I’d like to see tome figures to confirm that too.
Rob @164: Oh bugger! I was hoping for something more reputable than Jo Nova (Bolta’s source). It seems to me that the “scientists on the gravy train” meme won’t stand up to close inspection, but I’d like some solid figures. Guess I’ll have to try and find them myself
zoot, knock yourself out.
http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/mechanisms/emissions_trading/items/2731.php
Emissions trading, as set out in Article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol, allows countries that have emission units to spare – emissions permitted them but not “used” – to sell this excess capacity to countries that are over their targets.
Thus, a new commodity was created in the form of emission reductions or removals. Since carbon dioxide is the principal greenhouse gas, people speak simply of trading in carbon. Carbon is now tracked and traded like any other commodity. This is known as the “carbon market.”
As you can see this still claims CO2 is the major driver of AGW. To the best of my knowledge this hasnt changed for Copenhagen, methane is treated as a AGW gas as are a handful of others, all tradeable as carbon.
But the science changed..less…than…2…months…ago…
The same people the participants at Copenhagen have based their responses on have found CO2 isnt as large a factor in AGW by 1/2 as much as they thought.
That has to mean targets designed to “save the world” are incorrect by as much as 1/2.
Is that difficult to grasp?
zoot @ 162. We have seen references above to the earth warming over the last couple of hundred years – recovering from the little ice age. Because of this longer pattern, if we look at temperatures with a moving average calculated over many years, then it is easy to show a long term warming trend. Of course, intellectual honesty will require us to discount AGW because the warming started well before CO2 concentrations reached levels of concern.
Alternatively, if we are to answer the question “has the earth cooled over the last ten years”, then, if we choose to use moving averages, these averages should be calculated over fewer years – certainly less than 10. If you do that, the cooling over the last ten years is clear.
Not at all.
This statement assumes that there can be only one cause of warming at any given time.
Patently illogical and absurd.
PeterTB @167: to the best of my knowledge, the last
teneleven years (since 1998) have contained the five hottest years on record. Please demonstrate how this can be construed as cooling?Mole @166: Methane is a GHG. Methane contains carbon (CH4 if I remember my chemistry). The science hasn’t changed. Greenhouse gases are still heating the planet.
No, according to your original source, Al Gore has just found out that CO2 may be “only” 40% responsible; you don’t know how long the scientists who told Al have known. And still, the science hasn’t changed. Greenhouse gases are still heating the planet.
Thought just occurred to me; we may be talking at cross purposes. What do you mean by “the science”?
jc @156 That’s a cash-strapped Russian scientist during the 1990s telling his British sponsor the method of payment that will leave him with the maximum amount of money to actually do his research.
http://www.anelegantchaos.org/emails.php?eid=1&filename=826209667.txt
zoot,
Go off and play semantics if you want, you are being obtuse to the point of annoyance.
There has been a major change in the data driving AGW, ie: the effects of particles, not gases.
NOT GASES…
If you go all the way back to the Guardian article with Gore you will see those findings you are assuming are included in Copenhagen “Have only just been published”. Not “Al just became aware of them, but theyve been around for a while”….
NEW data = revise old data or errors will be sure to follow.
whatever
This statement assumes that there can be only one cause of warming at any given time.
Please explain Katz. Your usually flawless logic eludes me here.
Rare Earth(s)!
Happy to oblige PTB.
Here is your statement:
The only possible reading of the above sentence is this:
1. Global warming started before CO2 concentrations became a concern. [This may or may not be correct.]
2. Therefore, global warming can occur for reasons other than higher concentrations of CO2. [Most probably correct.]
3. Therefore any subsequent concentrations of CO2 have not caused global warming. [This conclusion cannot follow. It is quite possible that the other causes of global warming that existed prior to rapid increases in the concentration of CO2 subsided at more or less the same time that CO2 began to increase in concentration. Alternatively, increased CO2 concentrations might have augmented the global warming effects of the other causes that existed before increases in the concentration of CO2.]
In short, your statement assumes that there can be only one cause of global warming at a time. In fact there can be innumerable co-existent and perhaps not even mutually reinforcing causes of global warming.
In conclusion, your attempt to exculpate CO2 as a cause of global warming is illogical and absurd.
#93 Lefty E
The survey of metreologists:
Lefty your response is typical I am afraid of the Blind Believers camp who either demonise or deride others. You will find that a great deal of TV weather presenters are in fact qualified meteorologists. However while there were some survey respondents who were TV presenters, the vast number were not, though many were some others were employed by TV stations. In fact it was probably those who were TV presenters who agreed with the IPCC as they would be fully on board with main stream media. However even if they were fashion experts the survey still shows that it is not just a small crazy fringe who are non-believers. However I would also note that:
“The survey was vetted by an advisory board of climate experts, including representatives from NOAA, the NWS, UCAR, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Pew Center for Global Climate Change, and many members of the AMS.”
I also note you smuggly wrote “next”. Why then didn’t you address the dozens of other issues I raised which bring the IPCC line into question rather than the one point you thought might get a laugh without addressing anything in particular?
I would love to be convinced. I was a believer then I saw how many holes there were. I was able to reconsider.
#99 Zoot
I’ve read an awful lot of material now, but I am not a scientist, so I won’t make any claims there. I read things and then see if I can find articles by appropriately qualified people to support or refute. What I have found, which can be misleading is that a large number of the scientific papers predicting dire consequences of global warming are starting from the assumption that the science used by the IPCC is correct. These scientist then simply use the IPCC’s figures to make projections about their area of expertise or to explain observations in their area of expertise. If the IPCC data is questionable, or the modelling wrong, then while their papers are still scientific, they too are wrong. Meanwhile other observations made in other scientific papers which do not rely on that one root of ’science’ seems to inevitably come up with an alternative to the IPCC line. Here I am referring to papers using atmospheric temperature measurements, sea temperatures which apply accurate weighting to both hemispheres, ice shelf and sheet measurements from both east and west antarctica, modelling which includes solar activity, water vapour, heat exchanges, impact of the other range of greenhouse gases and so on.
James, there is no IPCC “line”. There is no “IPCC” science. The IPCC reviews all of the science.
So far nobody has produced any science (or data) to refute the fact of AGW even though there may be disagreements about minor details. To repeat John Crook’s statement:
For the broader picture you should read sites like RealClimate, although Brian does a sterling job of tracking the big picture right here.
#101 Mercurius
Why is it that you want to claim the position of scientist, and only accept ’scientific papers’ when it suits your purpose. I know I am not a scientist and I make no apologies for cutting and pasting. Most of the comments in this site are merely unsubstantiated opinion – at least I was introducing third party references which could be checked. If you want to hold up scientific approach as the gold standard why the hell aren’t you concerned that CRU fought tooth and nail to avoid having their work reviewed and tested? You exclaim concern about me using the 31,748 petition because testing of credentials was not to your satisfaction. At least they were there, listed to be checked and it clearly demonstrated there was not the claimed ‘consensus’ the blind believers would have us think there was. Meanwhile the IPCC continues to claim 4000 scientists combined to put together report number 4 and that there is no sensible scientist who disagrees with the report. Clearly that is not true. Some of the scientists have sued to have their names excluded, others have written that the final report said almost the opposite to what they stated, others have claimed their objections to content during the review process were simply ignored without any scientific argument. Is this the scientific gold standard you uphold? And why did you not comment on the extremely well credentialled scientists whose papers and comments I cut and pasted, who you don’t agree with. Why don’t you challenge their comments, many of them past contributors, supporters, lead authors and believers in the IPCC? Yes I cut and past information, at least I don’t make it up as I go! If you are a well qualified scientist tell us, then I might consider your opinion.
I’m going to keep reading through some comments since my original posts, but I may tire soon if there are no responses of substance. There are a great deal of almost childish comments which display a smugness of belief which I would not expect from people who have an interest in serious debate of scientific subject matters. Perhaps I am in the wrong place. But if there is someone out there who wants to talk about the comments made (which I copy and pasted) by well qualified individuals, or the papers I referred to or quoted from then please do so. If you read the posts by me from #86 onwards you will see that I didn’t bang on about the hacking. In fact I said I didn’t think it would be a big deal, not compared to the proven undisputed facts known about CRU’s obstructionist and unscientific behaviour in the past. But I don’t understand why you are pouring through the hacked material to see if there is anything which would conflict with the IPCC’s position. Of course that wont be there that will be in the papers and emails from the scientists who disagree with the so called consensus view. Why not spend some time looking at that rather than protecting your home turf? I have no vested interest here.
But James, you haven’t provided any sources worth responding to. I mean seriously what sort of credible “study” uses the word “scam” in its questions ?
Seriously – answer that question. Its called push-polling, and as we’ve already noted, its polling people whose opinion wasn’t necessarily worth hearing anyway.
As for the rest – do you want me to lest 10 times the number of scientists saying the opposite about the IPCC report – include 5 times saying it was too conservative? Because you know I could.
The vast majority of them have no knowledge particularly relevant to climatology. All you need is a degree in science or engineering. The breakdown is here:
http://www.petitionproject.org/qualifications_of_signers.php
12000 have BS degrees (or BSc as it would be here), which frankly barely qualifies you claim to be a scientist at all. 2500 are doctors or vets. 7000 have MS degrees. 9000 have PhDs. In some field of science or engineering. They don’t have to demonstrate any relevant experience, or even that they have ever worked in a scientific or engineering job. I’ve said this before, but if I were American I could sign the petition, because I have an MSc degree. It’s 12 years old, is in an irrelevant field, and never led to gainful employment in science. So if I added my name to that list, what would it prove? Absolutely nothing. The petition is a joke, and always has been.
#178 Zoot “For the broader picture you should read sites like RealClimate”
So maybe not all readers know that RealClimate was established by AGW scientists with the objective of creating a site to put the AGW position with primary members being lead authors of the IPCC report and include the some if not all of the scientists named as the initiators or receivers of the hacked emails. It is a site a read regularly but it certainly doesn’t present a balanced view. I read much more broadly than that.
The IPCC line and IPCC science which any observer of this debate would know is that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are the cause of global warming. That is the undisputed primary thrust. As far as saying the IPCC looks at all the science, that is demonstrably untrue as many IPCC reviewers found when their submissions were ignored or dismissed with no scientific justification. If you read beyong RealClimate you would know that to be the case.
oh my.
/double facepalm
#182 Brett “I could sign the petition, because I have an MSc degree. It’s 12 years old, is in an irrelevant field, and never led to gainful employment in science. So if I added my name to that list, what would it prove? Absolutely nothing. The petition is a joke, and always has been.”
Brett, all those who signed the petition through the earning of their degree should understand scientific process. If you signed the petition, I would accept that you should have been able to make an informed decision. For you to simply pass off the petition signed by 31,748 people all qualified to understand scientific process, many directly qualified in climate and earth sciences, and over 9,000 PhDs, as a joke demonstrates the same disdain that the blind believers use when they claim there is ‘consensus’ that the science is ’settled’ when clearly that is not the case.
FFS James you’re sounding more and more like a denialist troll. I repeat: there is no IPCC “line”, there is no “IPCC” science, the function of the IPCC is to review all the science. RealClimate was set up as a site for climate scientists to comment on current issues in climate science, end of story.
Now it’s time to put up or shut up. Please name just a few of the many IPCC reviewers whose “submissions were ignored or dismissed with no scientific justification”.
If you are aware of any science which disproves AGW please share it with us. Otherwise, go away.
ZOOT you really didn’t read my initial posts and have not read very widely. I might take offence at the term ‘Denialist Troll’ if I knew what it meant, but name calling isn’t really the best approach anyway.
For readers with an open mind, the members of RealClimate are: The members of RealClimate are:[7]
* Gavin Schmidt
* Michael E. Mann
* Eric Steig
* Raymond S. Bradley
* Stefan Rahmstorf
* Rasmus Benestad
* Caspar Ammann
* Thibault de Garidel
* David Archer
* Raymond Pierrehumbert
Zoot are you seriously suggesting you are totally unaware of any scientist who has claimed that there submission was ignored or dismissed without any scientific justification? If you are, then your really have just relied on RealClimate for your reading.
What I find really interesting is that the supporters of the IPCC report and recommendations have been, at least until recently, pinning their entire position on CO2 emissions by humankind being responsible for climate change, specifically global warming. They go further to say that to arrest this AGW we need to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions. Then to drive home their position they say the cost of not doing something if they are right is destruction of the world as we know it. Those they put in the deniers camp however include a myriad of positions, as against their single position. Some ‘deniers’ argue there is not global warming because there is conflicting data, some argue that the atmospheric data is more relevant than proxies, land based temperature records, northern hemisphere or shipping water temperature records, or whatever. Some say the data only indicates a minimum warming (e.g. 0.28 degrees since 1979) which hardly demonstrates the dramatic warming which would warrant drastic action. Some ‘deniers’ claim increased CO2 and temperature would be good for the world and would reduce extremes of weather, others claim solar activity could be a major climate factor, or volcanic activity, or that since 1995 the Greenland ice sheet has thickened, that east Antarctic ice sheet has thickened, that temperature has actually cooled in recent years and so on. But the AGW supporters give these ‘deniers’ all scientists qualified in their fields who have gathered data and made studies, no credence at all. Instead of admitting that the science is imprecise at the moment and any climate change is likely to be a combination of factors, the AGW zealots have drawn a line in the sand and said they have the true god and it is humankind’s CO2 emissions. All other’s are false gods. Just on an intuitive basis that is hard to swallow. Even the IPCC talks in estimates, modelling, proxies, likelihoods and so on. There are no certainties. What no one can deny is that we have had much higher sea levels in the past, most of central Australia was undersea at one stage. We have also had much colder periods through the ice ages. All without humankind. These major climate change events will happen in the future too. What caused them? How will we know when we are heading for a warm period or an ice age? Why don’t we have the science to tell us that? Yet the AGW lobby claim we know with enough certainty to justify massive restructuring of the world economy not only that AGW is happening, but that in can be halted. That they also know that all other ‘deniers’ theories are incorrect. Smacks of arrogance with a touch of having painted themselves into a corner.
Yup, a denialist troll.
Goodnight James.
No, I can’t make an informed decision about the science because I’m not trained in climate science. Neither can the vast majority of those vaunted 31748 people: only 494 of them have their qualifications in atmospheric science, climatology or meteorology. And proportionately, we’d expect only 140 of those 494 to have PhDs. They are about the only ones whose opinions matter. And 494 is not a big number at all when compared with the number of atmospheric science PhDs in the US. (The American Meteorological Society has 14000 members, though admittedly its standards aren’t all that more rigorous than the Oregon petition: it has student members and so on.)
But my MSc does give me an understanding of the scientific process, as you say. I know how science is done, warts and all. Which is why I accept the consensus position in areas of science I’m not trained in and why the CRU emails don’t shock me.
Seriously why do some on here even bother arguing with the flat-earthers? No amount of scientific evidence will ever be good enough for the “black helicopters” folk.
Boy am I glad I wasn’t here this afternoon!
Mole, last time I looked (and you do get different values) CO2 was 72% of the climate forcing effect. You’ve quoted an article from the Guardian about Al Gore to say it is now thought to be 40%. Can you give us a better source?
The straws.
LP is clutching at them.
Everything from “move along, nothing to see here” to “everyone who disagrees is a troll” in this thread.
In other words, business as usual.
#186 Zoot “Now it’s time to put up or shut up. Please name just a few of the many IPCC reviewers whose “submissions were ignored or dismissed with no scientific justification”.
I was going to let this go because any serious reader on this subject should be aware of the numerous complaints by those who contributed to the IPCC report review process. However I am concerned that some may not. John McClean had sought access to IPCC Report Reviewers comments but had been denied. However, he finally gained access to reviewers comments on the UN IPCC’s fourth assessment report 4AR through Freedom of Information enforcement by the courts. Armed with this he prepared a detailed analysis in his paper provided here at:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/mclean/mclean_IPCC_review_final_9-5-07.pdf
Nearly everyone is aware of the IPCC’s claims that their report is a consensus of thousands of scientists and has undergone an open and comprehensive peer review process. But it seems the IPCC’s understanding of a peer review process differs from normal scientific practice. You can read all about it in the above paper entitled ‘Peer Review, What Peer Review’. In that paper McClean also lists Reviewers comments which were completely ignored and reviewers comments which were changed or rejected without a proper scientific basis.
If you care to look further into who actually wrote the critical Chapter 9 of AR4 and the reviewers and whether it stands up to decent peer review process scrutiny you might also like to read:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/McLean_IPCC_bias.pdf
Finally, as a classic example of where the IPCC dropped a leading world scientist who didn’t tow the IPCC Line (yes I use that term advisedly and if you read below you will understand why), read the article below.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=ae9b984d-4a1c-45c0-af24-031a1380121a&k=0
Finally Zoot wrote “If you are aware of any science which disproves AGW please share it with us. Otherwise, go away.” This is a classic unscientific approach. Because I can’t disprove that God exists does that mean God does exist? What I have provided in previous posts are references to numerous scientists and papers which raise real questions about the IPCC reports, AGW, the involvement of CO2 and whether there are more important climate contributors. Instead of addressing these, Zoot and others have chosen to attack and ridicule me, even to the point of criticising my computer skills. Well that is real schoolboy stuff. I think I have said as much as I can here. Hopefully I have contributed usefully to proper debate and provided those who are seeking the truth potential sources rather than the dogmatic approach used by the blind believers.So I will leave you to this site Zoot, as I am only interested in proper discussion not pissing contests.
#189 Brett “But my MSc does give me an understanding of the scientific process, as you say. I know how science is done, warts and all. Which is why I accept the consensus position in areas of science I’m not trained in and why the CRU emails don’t shock me.”
Brett I believe you, and that is why until recently so many scientists in other fields, and indeed myself, accepted what we were told was the consensus position in climate science. We trusted that the usual scientific approach was being applied, but it wasn’t. Read http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/McLean_IPCC_bias.pdf and http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/McLean_IPCC_bias.pdf and http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=ae9b984d-4a1c-45c0-af24-031a1380121a&k=0 You should be as horrified as I was.
There are plenty of scientists who have gone from AGW believer to ’sceptic’ based on the science. I have quoted many in previous posts. As for Zoot asserting that I am a ‘Denialist Troll’ he couldn’t be further from the truth! I am a long term environmentalist, a major investor in solar and wind power, and have given significant sums towards reforestation and existing forest protection. I don’t want to see valuable resources directed away from these areas and the poor and developing countries to support an emissions trading scheme which will likely do nothing good for our long term climate (it will reduce pollutants which is a good target but there are more efficient ways to do that such as pollution taxes), and simply make the traders rich while allowing polluters to continue polluting if they can but licences.
Katz @ 175: My statement “Of course, intellectual honesty will require us to discount AGW because the warming started well before CO2 concentrations reached levels of concern.” was in the context of an observed retreat of glaciers since the 1800s, and pointed to the absurdity of equating glacial retreat exclusively to AGW – as per mercurius @ 124.
James commented:
Yes, but not in the last 23 million years i.e. not during the period of time of especial relevance to the world as it now is with the land masses distributed as they are now — a factor in driving the various heat and water transports that bear upon regional weather, and climate, the distribution of ice sheets etc.
Your point here is unclear. If you wish those of us who support the basic science to stipulate that GHGs are not the only factor in climate over geological time scales then I will not only so stipulate but refer you to the IPCC which notes other drivers of global climate — most importantly, orbital forcing and tectonic shift. The question is not merely the nature of climate variance or even its magnitude, but the speed of this change and its implications for ecosystem service to the life on the planet, and the starting point for that movement.
At the moment, there are 6.8 billion humans (by 2050 probably more than 9 billion) with a stake in climate staying very much as it is now, in part because every piece of arable/useful land is occupied by some of us. Having an anomaly which is changing temperatures on the planet more rapidly than at any time in geological history without any apparent natural forcing to account for it and with a compelling explanation in anthropgenesis is significant, your lot’s reckless culture/industry-driven denial notwithstanding.
I was talking to a right winger friend yesterday who was really excited about this. He said it was proof, absolute proof that global warming didn’t exist.
I pointed out the heat. His response “Well if you had your air con going full blast all day like me you wouldn’t feel it. Not my fault if you don’t like your family enough to get air con. Besides…today’s weather? It’s an outlier isn’t it.”
I did point out the whole ice caps shrinking thing but he reckons it’s fake. “Have you actually flown up there to see it with your own eyes? Or do you believe the photos from these clowns!”
Then again his solution for global warming is for all the people with air con to turn it up full blast and open their windows and doors
Bob Gottliebsen seems to have got a bad case of denialism recently: Hidden perils of Copenhagen. He’s quoting Monckton FFS!
That doesn’t make it any more sensible.
Unless, of course, by “discount” you mean “arrive at a lower estimate of its effect” as opposed to “dismiss entirely as a cause”.
So which one is it?
carbonsink #198:
It’s not recent. Gottliebsen’s denialism goes back to at least 1992 when he was warning of impending economic apocalypse for Australia at the Rio Earth Summit.
Meanwhile, the East Antarctic ice sheet has obviously not been checking its In tray.
Further to my comment @ 191, it is really important to assess Mole’s ‘big news’ that CO2 has been downgraded in it’s share of human greenhouse forcing to 40% of the effect by seeing what the scientific paper says, rather than a one-line report in a newspaper.
It could be little more than someone changing the CO2 equivalence of methane from 100 years to 20 years. There are a few scientists campaigning for this.
In that case nothing essential has changed.
It could be that some scientists are trying to construct models that include the long-term feedbacks identified by Hansen et al. Recall that Hansen and co have looked at long term feedbacks such as the ice sheet response and the greening of the tundras (thus reducing albedo and absorbing more heat) and including these in a model. Will Steffen’s recent report advised us that climate models include only the so-called “Charney” short-term feedbacks. Hansen et al calculate that including long-term feedbacks has the effect of doubling climate sensitivity from 3C to 6C. His work was too late to be considered in the IPCC process for AR4, and if it had there is no certainty that it would have rated more than a footnote.
If this second possibility is behind the paper, again nothing much has changed.
BTW, Hansen has been advocating for years that we need special efforts to address all climate forcing agents, not just CO2.
Paul N @ 201, that is interesting about the East Antarctic ice sheet, which was thought to be neutral in terms of ice loss balance. But the report does say the the error bars are nearly as large as the estimates.
Nevertheless a recent study has found that when CO2 levels were about as high as they are now about 3 million years ago, when the Panama Isthmus had closed and the continents were roughly where they are now, sea levels were 25 metres, plus or minus 5, above where they are now. For this to happen a significant portion of that rise must have come from East Antarctica.
The main uncertainty is how long it would take for that to happen. Certainly centuries, but nonetheless serious.
Katz @ 136, you make two really interesting points. The first is:
Hans von Storch’s big schtick has been that the media are determining what the public think about AGW and scientists should take a more active role in communicating with the public and with policy makers. (One of his problems may be that Schellnhuber and the folk at Potsdam have a better channel to Angela Merkel than he does at Hamburg.)
The problem here is that many scientists lack the communication skills, some are defective in their interpersonals full stop, and there are all sorts of competitive (internecine?) currents running through the way scientists interact with each other. Some of them are more dogmatic and more tribal than you would want them to be.
In terms of the IPCC it would surprise if there were not some bruised egos in how individual scientists’ contributions are handled by lead and co-ordinating authors. Then finally the released summaries for policy makers have to pass a political filter.
I see the IPCC reports, which are out of date the day they are released, as an important compendium and summary of the state of science up to the particular cutoff point. They have a negative effect, because many invest in them excessive authority and quote their findings as gospel when the science has moved on. I don’t mean scientists. An example was the display I saw in the Vancouver Maritime Museum last year, which quoted the completely inadequate stuff from IPCC AR4 on sea level.
James Hansen is one who sees his responsibility to the public to communicate his opinions as well as his science. I think he errs in becoming an activist on the streets. His karma is that his science is downgraded because he is seen as a partisan actor. I’m sure his various roles are clear in his head, but as perceived by others they become blurred.
I love it when Katz gets involved.
To answer one of his questions, as an undecided, the answer is “I have no idea what will convince me AGW is happening. I’ll know it when I see it.” I assume if it is happening, eventually I will absorb a piece or pieces of information, and have an epiphany.
But the huge problem for people who aren’t convinced (rather than people convinced it is not happening) is labels like denialist, language like “the debate is over” when clearly there are well credentialed scientists who don’t agree (and one or neither of the views may be right), and all that guff. I would assume the most common response to Katz question posed to “deniers” would be “Don’t call me that”.
Actually, you are likely to cause more offence with the term “denialist” than “warmenist” because of the historical implications. Good campaigning, Clive.
People like me fully understand that there may be more than one concurrent cause of climate change. That is why the option of the entire world, including developing nations, acting simultaneously, is much more palatable that little old Australia, out there on her own, reducing world CO2 emissions by 0.00000000001% or whatever small percentage overall we are responsible for.
Cheers for reading
I’ve never had that response, Howard. Most folks, however, aren’t as clever as you are.
And thanks for your answer to my question.
Does it disturb you that my answer is almost identical to your own?
Interesting Brian, this date is just prior to the Quaternary and the onset of periodic glaciation, thought to be driven by the Milancovitch cycle.
One question I still have not found a satisfactory answer for is, couldn’t you expect some overshooting of peak temp amplitude before onset of interglacial period as you do with other periodic events. So how can you differentiate AGW from overshooting?
Further, if the AGW is real, it couldn’t happen at a more ‘interesting’ time as now, approaching peak and heading into an interglacial, in relation to tipping points et al.
Katz, the second interesting bit @ 136 was this:
This question was considered in a book I have been quoting recently.
The authors over a three year period sought what they called Sceptics and Alarmists to put their case. Towards the end they ran a survey asking this question:
I believe they weren’t polling the public, but scientists who might reasonably be expected to know about the climate.
Around 5% (more Sceptics than Alarmists) wouldn’t answer. The Skeptics said it was all naturally driven so there was no need for them to prove anything. The Alarmists in this portion took “the evidence is multiple and simply overwhelming” line.
On the Alarmist side fully 90% went back to what Arrhenius said about a century ago and said that the guts of it was climate sensitivity. Additional CO2 in the atmosphere produces significant warming.
The answers of Sceptics was much more diverse, but fully 60% centred around the same issue – whether CO2 had any affect and if it did whether this was significant. The rest included stuff like denying that thee was any warming.
The authors, who were playing judge and jury on the case then went back to what they’d found about climate sensitivity and while recognising the uncertainties, awarded the case to the Alarmists.
I had this little exercise in mind in framing my comment @ 69.
I’m not disturbed people who don’t agree with me think in the same way. It’s encouraging, and not from a “they’ll eventually see things the same way” viewpoint. Debate improves decision, and that is why I’m skipping over Bolt’s “climategate” string of gotcha emails.
A leading world authority on sea levels, Dr Nils-Axel Mörner, past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, has slammed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on sea levels, pointing out that he had been an expert reviewer for the IPCC in both 2000 and 2006 and when he read an IPCC report, “it had 22 authors, but none of them—none—were sea-level specialists.”
In an interview with EIR magazine on 6th June 2007, Dr Mörner pointed out that from 1992 to 2002, satellite data indicated no sea level rise at all: the graph “was a straight line … no trend whatsoever.” Then in 2003, IPCC publications showed a 2.3 mm per year rising sea level trend, for the same data set! Mörner: “those people in the IPCC, choose Hong Kong, which has six tide gauges, and they choose the record of one, which gives 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level. Every geologist knows that that is a subsiding area. … That is terrible! As a matter of fact, it is a falsification of the data set.”
Another example of the IPCC covering up an inconvenient truth.
fixed it for you
Howard, Australia is responsible for 1.1% of all historical emissions. To place that in context – the entire continent of Africa is responsible for 2.5%. We punch above our weight. And the real problem with “waiting to see what the world does” is that countries at the same emission level as us total about 40% of emissions. So if they all adopt our attitude….
On the debate above – the emre fact of dissent means nothing to the idea of a scientific ‘consensus’. Its best to view these things as a bell curve: and the fact is, for every dissenting scientist on the low end, there’s one on the low-end side of the bell-curve saying the IPCC report *massively understates* the problem.
The IPCC report itself is very much a “centrist” position in the scientific debate.
This claim has been echoed repeatedly. However it seems impossible to find any details to back it up. Please do prrovide them if you are aware of them.
OTOH the TOPEX/Jason-1 data appears to be calibrated using 64 tide gauges; not including Hong Kong; with an explicit attempt to calculate vertical land movement at each tide guage site. It seems difficult to reconcile Dr Morner’s claim with this.
Ex-UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson’s take on the hacked/leaked emails (h/t Bolt) looks pretty good to me.
Pretty hard to disagree.
Ootz @ 207, I don’t think I can answer your questions in full, but here’s a bit of stuff subject to correction by a real scientist.
The best long view of temperature I know is this graph which seems to implicate the orbital cycles as the main driver, certainly from about 3mya (they were always there.)
This image shows clearly the increase in the whipsaw effect from about 3 million years, which seems to coincide with the closing of Panama Isthmus, see here and here which rates as one of the most important geologic changes in the last 65 million years (the opening of the Drake passage and the journey of India to Asia would also rate, I think.)
The Andrill project has shown that West Antarctica has substantially collapsed and regrown 60 times in the past 5 million years.
And here’s another clue. I don’t have a direct link to the image but if you go here and look at the third image you’ll see that the northern hemisphere continental ice sheets, already developing in the Miocene, come into full play in the Pleistocene, 5.3 million years ago.
The cooling to that point is thought to have been mainly driven by the CO2 balance in the atmosphere, but the rate of change was about 20,000 times slower than now.
Geologists often say we take too short a view. But there is a consistent story there that goes way back.
Another quirk that I found out recently is that in the orbitally dominated change over the last few million years, changes in the southern hemisphere typically led the northern hemisphere by about 300 years. In the current warming the northern hemisphere is leading the way, so something different (unnatural?) is going on.
We do a lot better than break even Mercurious@133. To do the job properly we reconfigure the cities to reduce wasteful transport of passengers and goods. This saves everyone money and time and makes for much cleaner air. People can spendf more of their time working or at leaisure and less commuting. The cost of running their cars goes down. There is a cut in 1.2 million dead and 500,000 seriously injured every year on the roads (especially in the developing world where the casualty rate is horrendous and they lack effective health services for dealing with trauma and disability and where a disproportionate percentage of the casualties are amongst hitherto young, able-bodied persons). There are huge savings in the health system and a decline in work days lost through caring for the injured or directly through injury.
We cut ocean acidification, protect native vegetation and the associated biomes with all of their biodiversity. Burden sharing ensures that third world people get paid to be stewards of their lands by first worlders, improving equity, which we supposedly favour. This lays the basis for more viable developing world states and a reduction in civil conflict to which we first worlders respond.
We cut the morbidity and ill-health associated with the use of coal as fuel — which include black lung, mercury poisoning, free-release of radioactive waste into the environment and of course the thousands of deaths each year in coal mining accidents. In China alone, there have been more than 100,000 such deaths since the 1970s — and that may be an underestimate. In China, pollution from coal transport literally suffocates villages along the routes it is transported, harming children in particular. In the US something like 40% of cargo transport usage is taken up with coal. This is freed for other usages.
A focus on better use and re-use of water and on more thermally efficient housing lowers the cost of living in all places taking up these programs and ensures that river systems arfe less taxed by the deamnds of urban life.
Are these things worth paying for? I’d say yes, even if I didn’t accept the science of anthropogenic climate change.
Serious underestimate, Merc.
niceclothesemperor @ 211, when you have the option of reading about science or distortion and lies, what would you choose to do? That’s the way I see it. I have looked at Bolt’s stuff from time to time. I think he should actually be sacked for misusing the public platform he has access to.
The whole ‘consensus’ question is really rather tiresome. I wish the word had never been used.
There are unresolved matters and lively differences of opinion within climatology as within any scientific field, such as evolutionary biology. (Indeed one of the more interesting aspects of these leaked emails is where they show these differnces.)
However in neither case are the debates around the question of “Is it [warming/evolution] happening?”.
My friends have seen the adverts that started this weekend. Along with the hot weather most of them decided now was the time to buy air cons as “global warming is crap.”
A lot of people can’t be bothered to trawl through all those emails so they are using Bolt et al as a useful summary.
In other words the tide has turned. I think Rudd should consider the double dissolution at his peril. A lot of my leftie friends are upset that he lied about how the refugees were going to be treated and are considering that he’s probably lyig about climate change as well.
But why, Brian? If you follow his links you’ll find all kinds of people are saying things rather similar. Should they all be sacked?
Here’s the editorial in the UK Daily Mail:
James @210
I noticed we are getting towards school holidays. How do I know, by the amount of cut and paste stuff consistently popping up and I doubt you would know how to find an umlaut on your keyboard. Not very original my lad, either start using your valuable time to brush up on analytical thinking, research methods and internet searches so you can check credibility and validity of claims yourself.
As for Moerner, do a little research and you’ll find his ‘eccentric’ view on dowsing and organising university courses thereof, which earned him the ‘Deceiver of the year’ award in 1995.
Look forward to debate more original thoughts with you.
Cheers Ootz
Look, we’ll never get 100% consensus on any complex scientific matter, and Id love to believe the denialists’ stories were true – I really would – but the overwhelming weight of evidence says otherwise.
And here we get into risk management: the risk of inaction could not possibly be graver, especially when action indisputably would improve public health, if nothing else.
I’d like to see just how many of the denialists dropped out of the game if say an effective “free market” solution – involving no state intervention and UN co-ordination – were found. I personally suspect 85% of them would drop out of the debate.
And what would that establish? That they’re just ideologues who dont like the statist implications of action – not people who actually disbelieved the weight of scientific evidence. They’d rather scotch the planet’s future than be proved wrong.
So once again: if you dont like the political implications – get off yer fat lazy arses and become part of the solution. Do some thinking, come up with some policy. Denying its happening is the chicken route – and it has “born to lose” tattooed on it too: on a clear day you’ll lose forever with this stance.
Id say this is all good news: tbe resort to dishonest and illegal strategies by the denialists only shows we’re winning, and they’re now running scared.
James @ 210, I thought you’d gone away, yet here you are with yet another of hannah’s balls.
I hope you haven’t missed the fact that sceptics/denialists/ delusionists, in other words anti-AGW types, consistently quote the IPCC AR4 on sea level as the absolute truth, handed down to Moses on the mountain. Anything different is seen as irresponsible scare mongering.
I had a bit to say on the matter in this post and don’t really have anything further to add. Except to highlight that Stefan Rahmstorf is competent in mathematics, paleoclimate and sea level matters, enough to be consulted by the Dutch government, who take the issue seriously for some reason.
I’d add that Rahmstorf says that sea level rise may well become non-linear because of ice sheet decay, but he doesn’t enter guessing games as to how much how soon.
He’s also reminded us that in the past each degree change in temperature has meant about 20 metres change in sea level – eventually.
But of course Rahmstorf blogs at RealClimate, so I guess that disqualifies him.
The sea level section of IPCC AR4 was not one of their better moments, but I think it was more a lack of competence and possibly a committee process gone wrong than any falsification of data sets or coverups.
“tbe resort to dishonest and illegal strategies by the denialists only shows we’re winning, and they’re now running scared.”
I think you’ve got that the wrong way round, Lefty E. Substitute “alarmists” for “denialists” and you would be precisely right.
The jig’s up.
Rob @ 220, I have no opinion about the others. Bolt’s form has been serial enough for me to form an opinion about him.
That’s all.
I’m not interested in what has occurred in the past – we can only control the future, and while we may have emitted more than India over the course of history, we ain’t any more. And I’m not disputing we punch above our weight.
On the “who to lead” question, the USA and Europe are the clear candidates to take the lead, followed very closely by China and India, who have less of the toothpaste to put back in the tube (on a per capita basis).
On the “consensus” question, I can’t read all the stuff and am no scientist. But you say something with a lot of conviction and apparent validation, and someone else says something different with an equal amount of conviction and apparent validation, then it’s a bit murky.
Certainty is a blessing in this area in some respects, but respect those of us who don’t have it, because at the moment, it’s really hard for us to make our minds up.
Pterosaur @106
The problem is not that science is devalued/neglected in curriculum. It’s just as easy to teach pro-AGW science badly as anti-AGW science.
The problem is the threat AGW poses to vested interests and our economic system addicted as it is to over-consumption.
The screams of dying Petrochemical companies are very noisy and the echo from the middle-class who have to give up some fraction of their (our) standard of living represents the pain and anguish of toddlers denied a fifth Icy Pole before breakfast.
Thanks for that Brian @215, I’ll look at it in detail when I have a bit more time.
Rob @220
A typical display of total ignorance what the scientific endeavor is, how scientific understanding is established and what its limitations are. What would you expect of a tabloid editor with their eye on controversy and circulation figures. Dito for Mr Bolt, he should get an education or read Goethe’s Faust.
The Shorter Rob: the tide of history is on the cusp of turning, the Minchin Munchkins will defeat the backsliding Turnbull Traitors in the party room, and then they will lead the Coalition to a landslide victory over Labor and obliterate the Greens for all time at next year’s election on a platform of untrammelled denialism.
Of course, Rob is not alone in this risible belief.
Yes, but probably not for the reasons you think.
I suspect a lot of ‘deniers’ (if you are going to persist with that rather offensive phrase) would not follow the debate with such vigour if the ’solution’ didn’t involve something that was going to be rammed down their throats. They might still have a strong opinion on whether the science is junk or not, but if they are free to opt in or out you would see a lot less of what I’d call ‘organised resistance’.
When you force people into a difficult situation they have no control over, the more intelligent ones will usually why, and for what outcome.
To follow your proposition, it would be far more interesting to see what percentage of AGW proponents (governments, green groups and other assorted socialist elements) would drop out of the game if a free market solution was found – one they couldn’t tax or otherwise use to exercise control over people’s lives.
James, what you did in comments 86-91 can be characterised in several ways. In one sense you sat down in the middle of the sandpit, pushed everyone to the edges and said, “I’m here, from now on we are going to play the games I want to play”.
In another sense, I mentioned hannah’s ball. What you did, to change the image slightly, was to throw a whole bucket of balls over the net and demand that we bat them all back. I think it was Paul Norton on another thread who pointed out that it takes about 15 seconds to throw on of these balls, but 20 minutes at the very minimum for someone to deal with it. To answer all your points would require a book-length response. It’s not what blogs are here for.
Let me illustrate.
You mentioned Bellamy as one of your authorities. Recently I listened right through a longish interview with him. Sorry can’t find the links. My summary was that it was bilge, but it would take me two hours and a couple of thousand words to make my case.
Most of the issues you raise have been well and truly gone over and you should be able to access sites like this one and this one.
What you’ve done is create a huge spray with mostly old junk designed by it’s volume to look significant. It’s a misuse of the medium and though I don’t like the word, “trolling” comes to mind. Whatever we do you can go off and brag at other sites that I put the case to the people at LP and didn’t get a satisfactory answer.
When you force people into a difficult situation they have no control over, the more intelligent ones will usually ask why, and for what outcome.
Fixed my typo, sorry
and one more little postscript to the post above @216 …
What do people think would be the consequence of the world (especially the first world) becoming an order of magnitude or more less dependent on crude oil would be?
Would we be as interested in having two ocean navies and having armed forces designed around occupying the middle east? Doubtful. Would there be anything like the petro-dollars floating around dodgy regimes in the middle-east and Africa to fund sundry nefarious activities? No, certainly not. Would the west still be backing Israel? Probably not, so a deal everyone could work with would be almost certainly be devised. The US could stop funding its biggest aid recipient, who in turn would not be able to spend all that money on all that fancy military hardware. Suddenly, the Saudi Royal Family is in a bit of trouble — enough for the 20th century to break out there. Everywhere schysters and criminals getting kickbacks feel a chill wind. Shell becomes a lot less interested in Nigeria. The Russian mafia gets a boot up the rear end which gives the Russian state a nose bleed. Places like Iran have to play a little nicer.
In short, there is scope for what may genuinely be called a “peace dividend” which makes for greater equity as well.
Given what the first world currently spends on dreaming up ways to brutalise others or in fuelling proxy wars in the third world, that alone would be worth having.
A reference to a La Rouche publication – BINGO!
Glad to know I don’t need to recalibrate my moonbat heuristics.
Grandchild(currently living in a resettlement camp): What did you do in the great climate change crisis, grandaddy?
Grandad: Well I argued with idiots on the internet, in the days when it existed.
GC: But grandaddy, what was the point of that, when idiots wouldn’t understand anyway?
GD: It made me feel better, as though I was actually doing something.
GC: But it didn’t help did it?
GD: No.
GC: What was the internet?
Baraholka @ 227
Agree with the point you made wrt to vested interests and icy poles
– however, I have to disagree with your characterisation of
“pro-AGW science ……. anti-AGW science.”
I just reckon there is Science.
Niceclothes@230 said:
This is a fantasy you have. I am driven entirely by questions of public utility. I’m for doing whatever it takes to get this problem solved without disastrous side effects with the least coercion and at the greatest speed that is feasible. As a supporter of an ETS (though not the current configured scheme), I am very much in favour of something that could with some qualification be described as a “free market solution” even though I remain a socialist.
I have no interest in controlling the lives of others except as may be entailed in abating the pressing threat from anthropogenic climate change and harm to ecosystem services more generally. And while it seems rto me that one of the desirable conseqwuences of a well-conceived mitigation scheme should be a decline in inequity on a global scale, this is an ancillary benefit rather than the rationale.
nce@230 – I’d be quite happy with a market-based approach (never thought of it before; thanks, Lefty E.). What’s happening, why is it, what to do, what options, what will it cost, what benefits, what drawbacks, etc. Would Ziggy be up for it, I wonder?
“When you force people into a difficult situation they have no control over, the more intelligent ones will usually ask why, and for what outcome.”
Force? I think you’ll find the Australian people voted for action on climate change, back in 2007. If you dont like it, elect another people.
I cant imagine Rob – because I personally think effective state regulation is the way to reduce emissions (carbon tax would be my pref). Then you got the cap n trade approach of the centre left. and oh look – nothing from the right.
I’m merely pointing out that the right is losing because they have vacated the stage on the greatest challenge we’ve ever faced. There may be an effective “market” approach – and the right might like to think of one – or risk permanent irrelevance. There is a *genuine and serious* possibility that strategy of denial will lead you to permanent electoral irrelevance. Some in the Liberal party already see that – including its leader. So it not just me, Rob!
Deal yourself out of the game at your peril
I am tired of the inane comments from those who would rather criticise my key board skills than address the questions. What I have discovered from this site is that no-one here is willing to address or even acknowledge most of the questions which bring AGW into doubt. Rather they seek to attacke a minor isssue and disregard the rest. The AGW camp started off by telling us the science was settled and that there was clear consensus within the scientific community. The public accepted that – why wouldn’t they. But then many well qualified scientists said that was not true. they were called deniers and sceptics and the AGW camp described them as the silly fringe. So those deniers started to check the basis of the IPCC reports and saw that there was not proper peer review as would be the case in a scientific journal. Authors simply ingnored some reviewers submissions, failed to recognise that theyre was contradictory science and cherry picked some data. This was only discovered after legal action was taken to gain access to data sets and reviewers comments. But the AGW camp very Rudd like then try to pass all that off as normal ‘argy bargy’ within the scientific community. I’m sorry, it’s like if I caught a student chaeting, he may have gained a pass anyway, but because he cheated I’m going to give him a fail and I’ll review all his previous work. That is what scientists around the world are doing now and many AGW supportes are now moving quickly to the ’sceptics’ camp. If readers really want to expose themselves to the outside world check out: http://www.iceagenow.com/Climatologists_Who_Disagree.htm this contains many articles by many well qualified scientists who strongly question the AGW line.
What I found interesting isn’t the ‘hiding/trick’ debate, but the fact they were threatening respectable scientific journals for publishing sceptiocal articles, that they were conspiring to subvert FOI laws and that a scientist who had recieved millions in taxpayers money was willing to DESTROY his data rather than let sceptical scientists look at it.
Well done CRU, you just converted this man from a believer to a sceptic. No real scientist sure of his facts would resort to these sorts of gross acts.
I’m with you, James.
I am not aligned to any camp or any website. I am not a ‘denialist troll or a capitalist. I know I can’t use a key board as cleverly as some others and I also know I make typing mistakes. But you should be able to look past that and check out the facts. I’m sitting at the airport and about to board a long flight. I hope at the other end I will see some proper debate start to appear in the popular media. Bye.
Rob@238: Likewise. I think if there was a bit more actual debate allowed (unfortunately, it would appear that the Science Is Settled), then a free market solution would eventually emerge. This however has been trumped by the need to Do Something Now.
Fran Barlow@237:
Your interest in the greater public utility is commendable, however I am intrigued that you find anything in any of the proposed ETS that could be remotely described as ‘Free Market’.
I’m glad to hear that there are people like you out there that have little or no interest in controlling people’s lives.
Unfortunately, I have no such illusions about the people who are in such a position that they could actually exercise that control. Does anybody here honestly believe that the Aus/US or other western governments pursuing these massive schemes of regulation and control are doing so because they are worried about a 0.6C temperature rise over the next 100 years ?
I’m sorry, but it seems I’m not the one in fantasy land…
You quoted an article from EIR and you expect to be treated seriously?
So glad I’m not drinking something hot right now.
There’s no evidence that any unethical acts have taken place. Just because one scientist writes an intemperate email, after being harassed continually you decide to discard all of the measurements that show the Earth is warming? That just shows your judgement is sorely lacking.
Rob @242 : I’m with you, James.
Where? At his Iceagenow link and it’s author Certified Hypnotherapist Bob Felix also of loose weight fame.
Come on boys go and play somewhere else, please.
yes, its just a non-sequitir Zarquon. Tell you what James et al – if its a numebrs game, lets take your scientists, and totally cancel them out with the roughly equal number saying the IPCC is way too conservative on its modelling, and lets all proceed on the IPCC basis.
Anyway – bigger fish to fry than the remnant denialists. The real world has moved past that to the agreement stage – all eyes on Copenhagen and the likely 2010 follow-up conference.
Later.
Destroying data rather than share it with scientists who oppose your viewpoint is wrong. Threatening to do so shows a complete lack of moral integrity. I never said I was discounting warming, I merely said I am now a sceptic, rather than someone who just assumed it was true,as I was before. I can no longer make such assumptions based on data provided by morally dubious scientists.
Now answer this, if someone hacked into a sceptic website and found sceptics conspiring to destroy data rather than share it with the opposition, would you be dismissing it as ‘intemperate’ shop talk? I think not. Regardless of ones views on this issue, these emails show behaviour that is completely unacceptable for a scientist.
1. Spurious claim 1: the concern is with preventing more than a 2degC rise over the remainder of the century — a rise of 4-6DegC is not excluded; for the record, the rise over the last 100 years was 0.74degC
2.Spurious claim 2: It’s not a massive scheme of regulation and control. It’s a fairly minor line item in the regulatory framework
Why would the conservative capitalist western governmets you refer to want massive regulation and control?
There’s no evidence that any data was actually destroyed, so you haven’t got a leg to stand on. And the science is available in the peer reviewed literature and summarised in the IPCC reports. Read those and then get back to us with your ’scepticism’.
Lefty E – if an agreement occurs, then that would be very good. That would make action sensible, depending on how the agreement works for us. But everyone needs to act, or at least the big (total) emitters.
I think Australia has proven (through elections and such) that we’re prepared to act.
So Zarquon, for the record you have no problem with a publically funded scientist threatening to destroy publically funded research at a publically funded university rather than see said research released to scientists who may disagree with it? Not only that, but encouraging others to do so too.
You can try and whitewash it all you want, but it stinks. If you truly believe AGW is as serious as claimed (and I’m certainly not going to argue) then you should be very concerned the impact this lack of integrity will have on public perceptions.
That nutjob Bolt is already crowing about the conspiracy being proven true.
What stinks is anonymous jerks on the internet leaping to conclusions based on selective and out-of-context stolen emails. It amounts to accusations of thoughtcrime straight out of 1984.
Mr Custard, re your dilemma.
For arguments sake, lets say you are going for a medical check up. Your GP humms and arrhs and hands you a referral. So you go and for good measure consulted several medical specialists. The majority say that with large probability you have a malignant tumor, which with appropriate and immediate treatment can be cured. While on the other side you have a few specialists and a bunch of internet sites hosted by eccentric scientists with track records as well as tabloid editors which dispute the credibility of above specialists and they all recon you should carry on as usual, there is nothing to worry about.
What to do?
Would it help your decision making process if you’d have access to all and sundry dirty laundry?
Spend a week in a geophysics faculty and you’ll discover they can be a quarrelsome and boisterous lot, which can be entertaining but does detract the uninitiated from the actual serious questions they are addressing.
Katz
To answer your original question I had attempted to answer previously, Brian posted this earlier (with links, mine is without):
Most of the issues you raise have been well and truly gone over and you should be able to access sites like this one and this one.
The Monash one is pretty compelling.
Yeah, newflash! academics bitchy and quarrelsome, unwilling to share primary data with competitors. Hold front page.
In other news, sun expected to rise and set.
Umm, I dont wanna be rude, but I wouldnt share my primary data with anyone until I’d published the resulting refereed article.
For that matter, in my field, Im not even *allowed* to (ethical concerns over privacy for researdh involving human subjects). Of course, the latter doesnt apply to climate research (not involving human subjects) but the former (non-sharing of primary data), hell yes.
East Antarctic shelf apparently unaware of Bolta’s xclnt op-eds: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/23/2750931.htm
Earth to everybody. Calm down.
Can people stop using today’s climate events as proof of global warming when the conditions required (CO2 emissions) to achieve those negative outcomes are many decades into the future?
As people look at the stuff more emerges. This is from the comment in a program code:
”
; Plots 24 yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not) MXD reconstructions
; of growing season temperatures. Uses “corrected” MXD – but shouldn’t usually
; plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to
; the real temperatures.
;”
No doubt there is more to come
@ 257 It appears you got my drift lefty E, from a professional pov, what is all the fuss about?
However, what will be interesting, after the big wash-up, is where the hack came from. I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of the EACRU IT security chief at present!
Exposed: the Portuguese Colonial Fortification HOAX
Sham website!! Emails hacked!!: “F*ck, I can’t prove this ain’t DUTCH, but I’ve photoshopped the Portuguese Royal ensigna on a cannon, muhhaaahaa!”
“The AGW scare represents an almost exact parallel.”
er … except that AGW doesn’t involving burning anyone, this is not the middle ages, science as we know it didn’t exist in the middle ages, the catholic Church is doesn’t have the power it once had. I’m trying hard to get why you see this as an exact parallel? Oh I get it, you’re having a bit of a laugh. Good on you for keeping things real matey. Now if you’ll just sit down and be quiet the adults want to talk.
James, I was quite disappointed on your comment @ 240 after my comment @ 231. What you are expecting from this site is quite unreasonable. Then you link to a site that is supposed to be full of scientific goodness and the first entry I see is Ian Plimer!
niceclothesemperor @ 244, you should be worried about 0.6C. I’ve already explained that Stefan Rahmstorf reckons that coming out of the ice age every degree of warming was worth about 20 metres in sea level rise. If you turn up the heat from here you get no ice left with 5 degrees, that’s an average of about 15 metres per degree. It’s not rocket science. Look at this image from Rahmstorf and Archer, 2006. (Actually I found the image via Google image in my own post! Scroll down a bit – how exciting!)
Custard thingie @ 249, as Zarquon said, no data was destroyed. At this stage in the debate if this was a fully moderated site I’d be deleting comments like that which have been dealt with. That doesn’t mean that all the scientists concerned were paragons of virtue.
Via Ootz on the other thread, Margot O’Neill has done some interesting work on our ABC on how scientists feel about global warming science and public perception.
Part 1
Part 2
Then she has done an interesting piece on the IPCC, including a detailed account of the IPCC review process by Queensland University’s Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. Definitely worth reading.
I haven’t personally tried to look but it seems that all the review comments are available on the net. The transparency seems exemplary.
The main worry seems that the results are too conservative.
Elegant reply from Gavin Schmidt to those who believe scientists are paid to research global warming (yes I’m looking at you James):
It’s comment 747 on “The CRU Hack” thread
Lefty @73
Would very much doubt that Bolt needs to be paid by Oil companies specifically to peddle anti-AGW progaganda.
Bolt is more of a Monckton, an idelogical warrior. Except Bolt’s motivation is not fear that the left is going to take over the planet, just Bolt’s generalized hatred and contempt for the left and his unshakeable belief that the left is never correct about anything important.
Bolt is a reactionary in the sense that he will automatically gainsay any argument emanating from the left. It’s a religious belief, good vs. evil, the US v. the USSR, the Cold War continued.
If the left is correct then corporate-oligarchical Capitalism (his god) is proven wrong. Heresy. So that’s why Bolt is so visceral. It’s hate. A religious war.
So, for his masters Bolt is the most useful kind of intelligent idiot. He’d write his anti-AGW tripe for free. Being paid for him is a bonus. Like getting paid for surfing or playing World Of Warcraft for others.
Rob, going right back to your comment @ 77, I originally thought you were referring to a different email. way back in 2003 I recall Hansen saying that we would have difficulty in getting people to accept the reality of AGW until the evidence was around them. By that time, given the lag built into the system it would be a bit late. Which is why he has seen his duty as a scientist to get out there and communicate.
The other problem is that we tend to give too much value to the events we experience ourselves. This is no doubt happening right now in Australia.
It would be easier for climate scientists in the US if the place was boiling hot at the moment. But it has been unusually cool there last northern winter and right through the summer. Whistler in Canada BC where the next winter Olympics is to be held had record snow falls. My sister who lives in a two level townhouse in Toronto had snow piled a story high around their place for much of the winter.
A further problem is that there are real difficulties in predicting temperatures in the shorter term, by which I mean a decade or so. The data collection isn’t extensive enough and I understand that if it was there would be difficulty in storing it computer-wise. Mostly they work in grids of 300km squared. I heard that the Japanese were trying to bring this down to 1km, so we wish them luck.
I’ve had a couple of goes recently at this temperature prediction thing here and here. Note the muted El Nino effect this century in the first post. Note Latif’s comments about the difficulties of prediction in the second. Note in the first scientists disagreeing with each other rather than in a conspiratorial huddle.
Note also Figure 3 in the second. That blue blob was over North America right through the winter also. It means buggerall.
The latest image on the NASA GISS site shows that the story was quite different in the US in 2005 and 2007.
While we are at that site here is the global land-ocean surface temperature since 1880, with a 5-year average. Looks like it’s going up to me. The little hook developing at the end doesn’t look as though it’s shaping to be much different than at least 9 others on the way. To say AGW is invalid because of the last 10 years temperatures is patently absurd. I’d prefer a 10-year average, which wouldn’t be pausing as yet. Ten years is minuscule in geologic time.
And here’s the last 15 years. What cooling?
May I remind you about ocean heat content. It has bumps also for reasons not known to me.
That’s a long way of saying that a couple of scientists exchanging chat about their frustrations over the limitations of their science, and difficulties in explaining lumps and bumps which are truly minuscule in the broad scheme of things, is neither here nor there.
Heh – this has the makings of an own goal for the deniosphere. It seems the leaked emails do have some evidence of actual scientific fraud… by denialists. The details are here.
Thanks, Tim. I’ve started a new thread, so please go there for further comment.