Open Thread 30

Some conspiracy theorists are getting their knickers in a bunch over at WUWT over the HadCRU / Met Office -incident. See: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/28/hadley-cru-discovers-the-mole/

I myself don't know what to make of it. The earlier refusal of Hadley CRU hardly IMO means they are trying to hide supposedly flawed information in fear of climate "auditors" wrecking the theory of AGW. But with regards to their earlier refusal, is it in your opinion justified? I don't know what to make of it.

This whole "auditing" phenomenon is a thing in itself. I never heard of any other area of science where laymen such Climate Audit/WUWT -folks were trying to disprove current science. Of course it's good to remain critical and think for oneself, but this is frikkin' ridiculous, the way they bounce around their conspiracy theories on those two sites.

> never heard of any other area of science

Google for: science conspiracy
There's plenty else out there.

http://scienceblogs.com/stressrelated/2009/04/whats_your_favorite_scien…

> I myself don't know what to make of it. The earlier refusal of Hadley CRU hardly IMO means they are trying to hide supposedly flawed information in fear of climate "auditors" wrecking the theory of AGW.

It is especially ironic given Watt's DMCA takedown over "copyright" on the FRONT COVER of his report while the voiceover is talking about that report.

Or his berating of NOAA for using "his" data without his permission...

I suddenly feel so insecure.
The UK lizard men can no longer control the planet, we are doomed.

Google gave 15,2 million hits for "science conspiracy". I've always said that a huge number of flies circling a steaming pile of s**t can't be wrong.

Thanks a lot, Hank Roberts, by googling those two words Big Science probably took me on their hit-list! :/ :D

Yea, I heard of that Watt's DMCA takedown of Peter Sinclair's Youtube-video. That's irony indeed. I saw that video before being taken down, and Sinclair did attribute relevant material to one A. Watts, so there shouldn't be a copyright-case at all there... I suppose Sinclair hit a nerve there, and something had to be done. I hope Youtube puts the video back up.

It's time to audit the auditors, don't you think?

Paul UK, I didn't understand, care to elaborate?

About that "oh noes, we are doomed" bit, you'd do well to consider climate change as a GLOBAL phenomenon. What I've seen ppl write on climate change on various forums and blogs is that many folks lack the capability to see beyond their own countries. In some extreme cases, beyond their frikkin' backyards.

If you didn't notice, there's a lot of trouble in the third world with, for an example, drought. People are starving to death because their crops fail year after year. And yes, it sucks when your crops fail, as not all people can just pop to their nearest MickeyD's and order a big frikkin' mac to eat.

What gets to my tits is that you get these gits making jokes about catastrophy and doom, where as in the *real* world, people are already suffering due to anthropogenic climate change. The more time we the people collectively go on chewing bull on what is real and what isn't, those poor unfortunate people do continue to starve and suffer.

I don't know if that lizard -comment was supposed to be a joke, but if it wasn't, it does tell a lot more about the person making said comment than about anything else.

Mikko, I read Paul's comment as a half-joking reference to some whacko conspiracy theories: for instance have you ever heard of denialist/conspiracy theorist David Ickes?
See here for example: http://www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/we_need_to_get_out_of_our_mi…

Money quote:

Icke goes on to explain that one of the reptiliansâ latest hoaxes is global warming. âTemperatures are falling,â he insists.

Temperature changes are the work of nothing more than sunspots. Al Gore and other members of the âBabylonian Brotherhoodâ have engineered an hysteria to force another level of control on the world population. âI learned long ago that anything Al Gore is involved in is a hoax,â Icke says. âThe environmental movement is being played like a violin!

So yes David Ickes at least really believes that the global warming "hoax" is the work of shape-shifting lizard men. No Joke.

Sorry. I messed up the link. I tagged it this time:

We Need To Get Out Of Our Minds!
David Icke explains how to earn your freedom from the Obamaadministrationâs reptilian mind control machine
itybeat.com/cms/story/detail/weneedtogetoutofour_minds/8078/'>We Need To Get Out Of Our Minds!
David Icke explains how to earn your freedom from the Obamaadministrationâs reptilian mind control machine

Oh, ok. I meant no offense to Paul UK.

Sarcasm is difficult media over the internet. And some folks, as we probably are aware, would make such comments in all seriousness. Which really irritates me, as I mentioned above.

Regarding David Ickes - it's sad really, that anyone should be so... Detached from reality.

Mikko, the US midwest is having distinct shortages because of drought.

The US can import what it is short of (from Russia! The EU! And ***Venezuela***!!! OMG!), which isn't a useful backup plan for the third world, but the US isn't really in much of a position to spend liberally.

Especially if those countries want to trade in Euros rather than US-fingers-crossed-promissory-notes, the dollar.

This is interesting: Mixing it up, jellyfish style over at Climate Shifts.

Indications that the swimming motion of jellyfish might cause significant mixing effects in oceans: a factor that could increase with the predicted massive rise in jellyfish numbers as they colonise niches left by the collapse of other populations (like many commercial fish stocks).

>Mikko: Oh, ok. I meant no offense to Paul UK.

That's OK. I just assumed most people were familiar with the conspiracy theories flying around.

I was relating to the fact that Watts et al thinks there is a cover up. eg. The Hadley Centre were a part of some conspiracy.
I think the 'lizard' idea originates from America doesn't it?
Icke probably made it more public.

PaulUK, I think the Movie "V" popularised the hamster-eating alien-overlord meme.

But Ike really DOES think that Blair is a lizard alien.

I'm not entirely sure he's wrong in that particular case...

Wow... I used to love Kate Fischer, but I think I'll change to Jo Nova now... :-)

'Climate Money : Monopoly Science'
http://joannenova.com.au/

Thanks Billy...

>Wow... I used to love Kate Fischer, but I think I'll change to Jo Nova now... :-) 'Climate Money : Monopoly Science' http://joannenova.com.au/

Interesting. Some flaws in the graphic though:

"Business without competition is a monopoly" - Well actually, competition without regulation usually results in giant homogenised corporates that are monopolistic and eventually fail.

>Quote JoNova: ...because the workers are poorly trained and equipped to dig trenches only with garden trowels and shovels.

What exactly is wrong with digging trenches with garden trowels and shovels?? Here in the UK we have ancient forts that were constructed thousands of years ago by hand and their earth works are just as robust today.

Ocean mixing -- not just, probably not primarily jellyfish:
"... , the amount of power that copepods and krill put into ocean mixing is on the same scale as that of winds and tides, and thus their impact is expected to be on a similar scale as well...."

http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13278

the Nature paper, "A viscosity-enhanced mechanism for biogenic ocean mixing,"

The press release makes it out to be a revolutionary idea (gasp!). It's hardly that, but these folks seem to have done a lot of the math, which will help the other researchers who've published along the same lines (I trust they cited them and just had a press officer run amok as usually happens in these cases)

And for aqmusement: The 10 Most-Respected Global Warming Skeptics".

Guess who gets front-page billing (although only #7 in the list)? Way to go, Australia.

And for even more amusement ! :-)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5907383…

From the list of 10 Most respected GW skeptics, be sure to check #9, Alan Carlin.

This guy has one foot in the grave.

Franny Armstrong has just sent out an email about the Australian and New Zealand premiere of 'The Age of Stupid'.
Some info from it:

Here's where it's on
Green Carpet Premieres
Sydney: Sydney Theatre, 400 public tickets on sale from the theatre box office from Tuesday 4th August. A total bargain at $30 each. You'll get to wave at the cameras, take pics of the celebs and even walk the green carpet.
Auckland: Zero-waste cinema tent in downtown Auckland. Sorry, no public tickets, though Oxfam and Greenpeace will be offering some to their supporters - so sign up to their campaign quick if you'd like to get in with a chance...

Participating Cinemas
Australia: Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, Currambine, Warwick, Broome, Bunbury, Hobart (Tasmania), Ballarat, Elsternwick, Carlton, Rosebud, Erina, Avoca Beach, Wangaratta, Rouse Hill, Ballina, Bowral, Broken Hill, Nowra, Hervey Bay, Townsville, Palmerston, Katherine, Tweed Heads, Redcliffe, Batemans Bay, Ettalong Beach, Katoomba, Warriewood, South West Rocks, Wagga Wagga

New Zealand: Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Petone, Tauranga, Wellington - but only Auckland will be watching the green carpet stuff live, sorry. The others will just have the film.

http://www.ageofstupid.net/

Great, apparently the global warming denialists are now thinking that forgery is an inalienable freedom.

I'm busy researching the social networks underlying the signers of this open letter to APS.

I'm quite familiar with some of the signers, and there are some obvious other connections, and a few puzzles.

Here's one puzzle, for which any Aussie insight would be useful: Jim Mitroy, of Charles Darwin U. Some views are clear from the "Interesting commentary sites, Blogs" section there.

Does anyone know anything of him?

> Jim Mitroy
I know he has problems looking things up; his site references:
# The Googol Search Engine.
# The Googol-Scholar Search Engine.

Well, that may be a reversion to the origination of the company's name, i.e., Googol Scholar might search many, many more sites...

But, I've already Googled and Google Scholered Mitroy some; now I'm looking for comments from personal contacts, for example.

Help?
(This is part of looking at the APS "Open Letter")

Does anyone have, or have access to library that has:
Assessing Climate Change:Temperatures, Solar Radiation and Heat Balance (Springer Praxis Books / Environmental Sciences) (2008). It would be great if someone would review it seriously @ Amazon. (It's not in our local library, and @ $179, I probably wouldn't buy it for fun, given the description so far.)

re: #25 no help needed

See RC, #407 & #498.

Basically, there are 3 professors in the USC Astronautics group that have signed up to:

Open Letter.

Somewhat oddly, the larger group @ USC is looking for funding for climate science funding.

Think about this:

Additional CO2 raises the height from which radiation leaves to space. Most of the radiation emitted by CO2 leaves earth from the stratosphere. Most of the stratosphere warms with height. Raising the height of emission in such a situation INCREASES the effective radiative temperature. So increasing CO2 would cool not warm the earth. Anyone who can is welcome to knock this down.

Shorter Bongo Man:

I throw in a bunch of sciency-sounding statements with no logical connection. Therefore, CO2 cools the earth.

S y cn't rft m thss ... Y glbl wrmng jrks r dmb

Shorter Bongo Man:

My 'argument' has no logic, therefore you're dumb.

Raising the height of emission in such a situation INCREASES the effective radiative temperature

ASSUMING the height of the tropopause doesn't change, which it does. It gets higher, increasing the surface temperture.

Anyone who can is welcome to knock this down.

Can. Did.

The Heartland "Obama is a secret Marxist" Institute's 4th ICCC is coming!

> Fourth International Conference on Climate Change(2010, Chicago, IL) Make plans now to attend ICCC-4 in Chicago on May 16-18, 2010.

Also, the global warmist conspiracy, illustrated by yours truly.

Oops, broken link. Let me repeat that:

The global warmist conspiracy.

> Additional CO2 raises the height from which radiation leaves to space.

And temperature drops as you rise up.

Therefore energy loss drops much faster.

> Most of the stratosphere warms with height.

Define "most" and "warms". There's little enough atmosphere to give any heat content which is why the interception of the small amount of energy that does happen in the stratosphere makes an inordinate difference to the temperature read as the average kinetic energy.

But very little energy is contained therein so there's little increase in the energy loss.

Definitely not enough to counter the FACT that the stratosphere is *cooling* and that the troposphere is the major radiator in the atmosphere.

I *have* thought of your statements like you asked. And thinking about them has shown how they are weak arguments at best.

Are you going to complain about me thinking about them because I didn't think in the way you wanted?

I don't know if anyone saw this, but ABC (Australia) had a piece yesterday (Wed, August 12) on its [Lateline](http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2654173.htm) show about The Heartland Institute's ["Science Director"](http://www.heartland.org/about/profileresults.html?profile=A369920F67E7…) visting Australia to drum up support fro the anti-science crowd.

If you click on the video link for the ABC story you can see footage of him addressing a meeting organised by the Institue of Public Affairs.

He really makes clear the ideological basis for his scientific position.

Anyway, while it seems at times that the boneheads are winning the battle, perhaps some comfort can be drawn by the size of the audience shown in the video. It was a small room with lots of empty seats.

There is also a piece on [Bob Carter](http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2654171.htm) trying to sway some opposition politicians - apparently a "handful" turned up to listen - with a suitably curt put-down from Will Steffen.

I see "Science Daily" on August 10 had an absurd article on the increase in atmospheric water vapor since 1988.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090811091832.htm

Obvious proof that AGWers cannot count-

I did see it, Gaz. A few grey-haired blokes in suits and someone given enough rope. It came across like a Pat Boone spoken word tour.

I also enjoyed the skydiving bit - reminded me of karate chopping evangelical preachers.

Tamino is hosting a thread on [Graph Jam](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/graph-jam/). A couple of the more communicative ones include [this](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kfG8pUItVjU/Sn8nS8DNLXI/AAAAAAAAAiw/f1Yq_7Hxx…) and [this](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinion/ssi/images/Toles/s_0626200…).

I also enjoyed the skydiving bit - reminded me of karate chopping evangelical preachers

...or Vladimir Putin horse riding without his shirt or Sarah Palin posing with a dead caribou.

Surprise surprise, the Oz Senate voted down Rudd's CPRS Bill:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/global-warming/senate-kills-emissions…

Forecast: repeated blasts of hot air, puffery and wind from the Denialobots, with possible self-congratulatory gusts.

Just to mention that Michael Mann is lead author of a new paper on hurricane frequency.

The personal attacks on Mann and lies about his work at Watts are a disgrace. Where are the "moderators"?