The denialists are at it again in the comments, parroting the latest lie.
UEA CRU's Dr Phil Jones agrees there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995.
Wow. You'd think they'd realize that twisting the words of a scientist around 180° from what they actually said is a very bad strategy — it would be like trying to claim that I'd decided evolution was false. This is no exception. Deltoid has a wonderfully clear quote:
This led to a Daily Mail headline reading: "Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995."
Since I've advocated a more explicit use of the word "lie", I'll go ahead and follow my own advice: that Daily Mail headline is a lie. Phil Jones did not say there had been no global warming since 1995; he said the opposite. He said the world had been warming at 0.12°C per decade since 1995. However, over that time frame, he could not quite rule out at the traditional 95% confidence level that the warming since 1995 had not been a random fluke.
Anyone who has even a passing high-school familiarity with statistics should understand the difference between these two statements. At a longer time interval, say 30 or 50 or 100 years, Mr Jones could obviously demonstrate that global warming is a statistically significant trend. In the interview he stated that the warming since 1975 is statistically significant. Everyone, even climate-change sceptics, agrees that the earth has experienced a warming trend since the late 19th century. But if you take any short sample out of that trend (say, 1930-45 or 1960-75), you might not be able to guarantee that the particular warming observed in those years was not a statistical fluke. This is a simple truth about statistics: if you measure just ten children, the relationship between age and height might be a fluke. But obviously the fact remains that older children tend to be taller than younger ones, and if you measure 100 of them, you'll find the relationship quite statistically significant indeed.
What's truly infuriating about this episode of journalistic malpractice is that, once again, it illustrates the reasons why the East Anglia scientists adopted an adversarial attitude towards information management with regard to outsiders and the media. They were afraid that any data they allowed to be characterised by non-climate scientists would be vulnerable to propagandistic distortion. And they were right.
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Al B. Quirky, refute the above with peer reviewed scientific evidence. Or go away.
But this is how the young earth creationist, global warming denialist, and life is better with your head up your ass-ists all work. They sift through a mountain of evidence that contradicts their snake oil theory to find or warp or just plain create the single piece that supports them. Their power to disbelieve reality should not be underestimated.
Blessed Atheist Bible Study @ http://blessedatheist.com/
This will be quote mined by the AGW deniers for ages.
PZ Myers has said, and I quote: "I had decided evolution was false."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm
BBC - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?
Phil Jones - Yes, but only just.
He said it, plain as day.
It's astounding that they still expect to be taken seriously in the face of these blatant, easily debunked lies and displays of their complete lack of integrity.
Quote mining is a lie. If you do it and build an argument around it, you should be mocked into oblivion.
andrew.davison #5, yes, he did 'say it', but unless I'm missing some irony here, you seem to be implying that Jones is denying AGW/GW. He clearly is not. I apologize if I misunderstood your post!
andrew @ #5: The important part of the question is 'statistically significant'. Jones is being honest in his responses.
That's one of the problems with science. Integrity is of paramount importance - more so than just about any other profession - but that leaves it open to attack by others who do not uphold a similar standard.
Over the years I tried to follow the " observed events ". The lowest Low Pressure ever recorded at stations all over the southwestern US was recorded last month. The rainiest month ever recorded in New Orleans, was Dec. 2009. And like that Low Pressure record, vast areas of the southern US set all time rain fall records.
These are part of the proofs , but the story is never told in such a manner. A storm has just hit Spain and France, with 150 kph wind speeds , my guess is that it will have same signature, record setting Low Pressure. As this heat engine really get's going, these giant swirling Lows are going to be the real "monsters behind the door".
Yes, but it's not honest to leave out the context, the caveats.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Most Credible Climate Skeptic Not So Credible After All
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/02/pat-michaels-climate-skeptic
I found this one , really rich .
@Colorado Bob #9 a lot of that has to do with pacific ocean currents, the record snow and rain in the east is because of the eastward movements of Northern Hemisphere weather. On the Alaska coast of the bering sea they are have really unusually balmy weather during the same period.
On the denialist front, with the Met rebuilding the temperature sets from scratch, leaving them all out there to be hashed as needed by anyone is a good idea. Frankly some of the code snippets floating around the web "purported to be from the East Anglia site" shows extremely poor computer programming skills with no real knowledge of what they were doing. Of course when you have interns doing the scutt work that can happen. This way they can argue with the data directly of which they will come to the conclusion the earth appears to be in a warming phase.
What I find rather bizarre is that our colleagues in the UK think that their data should be secret, whereas in the USA the data is avaiable to anyone and everyone. Ironically, that openness was inspired by the example set by the Royal Society (in addition to the debate about judicious use of taxpayers' money and what should be made public). Not making information readily available just doesn't make sense; there will always be loonies claiming that the data is something else, but secrecy only makes it more difficult for other scientists to work on things. Much of the work done at UEA is also publicly funded; perhaps the UK taxpayers should demand that all data and results from publicly funded science should be made freely available to all.
"What's truly infuriating about this episode of journalistic malpractice is that, once again, it illustrates the reasons why the East Anglia scientists adopted an adversarial attitude towards information management with regard to outsiders and the media. They were afraid that any data they allowed to be characterised by non-climate scientists would be vulnerable to propagandistic distortion. And they were right."
Let's say for the sake of argument that the scientists at the East Anglia CRU were "afraid" that the data that they used for their research might be used for "propaganda" and "distortion".
Does that somehow relieve them of their responsibility as scientists to provide all data and materials necessary to validate their research?
Does that somehow exempt them of their legal duty to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests?
Do you limit access to the data, computer code and procedures of your research to those that you can be sure will use it in ways that meet your approval?
@colorado bob #11 cmon now, its called applied research, and the head of the IPCC comittee receives a boatload more than this guy for advocacy. Without the hired guns a lot of stuff wouldnt be as vigorously defended.
Here's what he said.
Then further down he explains:
It is grossly dishonest to even imply that Phil Jones' views have changed at all.
I propose chaining the Daily Mail writer to a post at low tide in Portsmouth and waiting. It'll be some time before there is a statistically significant change in water depth but he'll eventually get the idea.
-bcw
#17 a better analogy would be to tie him at high tide with the water up to his mouth during a new moon and have him wait for the full moon
^^ I am still waiting to see if a.d was just being funny - sometimes irony/sarcasm doesn't always translate from mind to internet.
If his post was serious, it demonstrates the common defect when reading of stopping when you see something you like.
That is available in the open literature, except the countries that charge for the data. You have no complaint here.
FOI requests are irrelevant if the data is open. You don't understand that, being an idjit.
What part of scientific research don't you understand. Their code doesn't have to be open, but the data in and out must be. Besides, anyone who has been following he literature, which excludes the denialists, have a good idea of what is going on.
What a fool, tool, and loser.
Nerd of Redhead,
"What a fool, tool, and loser."
Some other tools seem to agree with me. The Institute of Physics is a scientific organization devoted to increasing the practice, understanding and application of physics. It has a worldwide membership of over 36,000 and is a leading communicator of physics-related science to all audiences, from specialists through to government and the general public.
Below is just the first part of there submission to the UK Parliamentary Committee on the actions of the scientists at the East Anglia CRU
What are the implications of the disclosures for the integrity of scientific research?
1. The Institute is concerned that, unless the disclosed e-mails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context.
2. The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law. The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital. The lack of compliance has been confirmed by the findings of the Information Commissioner. This extends well beyond the CRU itself – most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change.
Perhaps you can submit a statement to the UK Parliamentary Committee telling them how this organization really represents 36,000 “fools, tools and losers.”
windsurfer4944,
Yawn, sorry, what a moronic argument. If we are causing climate change by our activities then it seems likely we can do plenty of things to either stop it or make it worse. The idea that somehow we are totally insignificant on the scale of the world is silly and ignorant. We greatly affect the world in many other ways as well, there is not reason to think somehow the climate is any different.
As if we care what politicians say. You are still an unscientific loser if you think AGW isn't occurring because you aren't citing the scientific literature, but politicians. Get with the program. The science says conclusively AGW is occurring. Politics can only deal with the consequences thereof.
He can quote all the caveats you like. He said it. He really did. So it's not a lie. Live with it...
Hang on; just a small number of weeks ago the Daily Fail was declaring Phil Jones to be incompetent, evasive, stupid, a liar and a crook. Now he's a source of accurate information.... surely they aren't changing their (what passes for) minds simply because they made up a quote that goes the way they like? Err, hang on, that came out a bit clumsy but I suspect you get the drift.
Not to mention the gross stupidity I've seen too much of on UK 'news' websites; thousands of comments asserting that "well the weather has been vile here therefore no global warming" while at the same site you could see reports about the problems the Vancouver olympics were having with lack of snow! Let's see, snow in UK = no GW, but no snow in Canada != GW. Where's my big sign saying "Get a cloo, morans!"
Denialists, we are waiting. Cite the peer reviewed scientific literture to make your point against the science. Only more science can refute science. If you can't do that, you don't have a point.
Umm, how in the world does that matter? We had control over that, well, someone did. But I do not understand why you bring that example up. Are you trying to say that somehow that released more CO2 than all our other activities?
"We aren't the cause of climate change and we sure as hell can't control it." [Citation Needed]
There is a lot of evidence that points the other way.
And yes, I should say, please show from peer-reviewed literature. Someone's blog post, a newspaper article, or a few quotes is not really convincing.
'There's no global warming, and we're not causing global warming, and Al Gore is causing it too!'
#24 "The science says conclusively AGW is occurring".
Bullshit. The IPCC 4th assessment claims AGW is a 90% chance. That's not conclusive.
Still no citations from the scientific loser Al B. Still no scientific argument from anyone. Just political and denialist bullshit. Which means nothing.
Perhaps unbelievably, this is not true, at least among lay-deniers. They'll say that there has been no warming at all.
Chris Mooney's site is constantly swarmed by denialists. Today they're focusing their disdain on liberals. They don't realize that admitting they're wingnuts does not improve their credibility.
"How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?"
(Phil Jones): "I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity."
There's evidence? How Much evidence?
Andrew Lacis (colleague of NASA GISS head, James Hansen) expert comment submission re Chapter 9:
'There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn’t the IPCC Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community – instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted.'
http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/7798293?n=17
Denialist evidence?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9F7ar9dZiU
OK.
Davidpj @ #8 -
This is really the whole point. If one does science the first rule is not to lie to yourself, it leads to oblivion. The second rule is never lie to anyone else, although often, too often, telling the truth also leads to oblivion.
Conversely, those who wish to impugne science as motivated by their own craven creed of profit (get your new irony meters here folks) will lie as much as they can if it gives them any advantage.
In the end of course, the truth will out, but the consequences can often be rather dire and sad.
andrew.davison #26, it isn't fair to take one sentence, which appears to say something it doesn't, and make that stand for the whole statement. What he said was nothing controversial.
F #35, that is strange, isn't it? I take the side of 'GW is not a crisis' but have not seen anybody whom I trust deny that there is GW. Still, I know less about climate science than I'd like - which doesn't matter to anyone. But what does matter is whether or not scientists let their ideology (religion, politics) mess up their science. I hope that this is well and truly minimized.
You've said some stupid things in the past, but this has got to be one of the most stupid. Even if there was nothing we could do to stop the world from warming, there would still a hell of a lot we could do to mitigate the damage.
We should be discussing ways to mitigate the damage anyway (dikes and land reclamation techniques similar to what's implemented in the Netherlands). Instead we're fighting with denialists like you who will even dispute the data itself.
@F#35: Unfortunately that's so. You can artificially divide the deniers into at least 3 camps - the "earth isn't warming" camp and the "earth is warming but it's all natural" and "so what if it's warming, that's a Good Thing(tm)".
I imagine a.d. would also tell you that Darwin said the human eye forming as a result of natural selection is absurd.
@33: "Bullshit. The IPCC 4th assessment claims AGW is a 90% chance. That's not conclusive."
So, if you walk into the local pub, on the 5th satellite of Epsilon Eridani, where the sign over the mirror behind the bar reads: "To our customers: 9 out of 10 cocktails served: 96% sulphuric acid, no less! We are ISO9001 certified! No more than 1 out 10 consisting of that ghastly stuff the Terran monkeys call water." So you'd consider this not conclusive and down the drink put in front of you with a single gulp? Respect.
When you buy a car and the sign at the dealer's premises reads: "20% discount on all sales over $80k! We guarantee a 1-in-10 chance that the Hummer/Porsche/Mercedes/Lexus you buy from us will even have an engine and brakes! (cash only, please)"
May I reveal to you some top-secret Nigerian top-investment opportunities I happen to have on offer? Only for the smart investor who has a sharper eye for once-in-a-lifetime chances than the mathematically illiterate.
Still no scientific evidence denialists. Can't you get the science right? Or do you just have bullshit? We scientists know it is the later.
Nerd of Redhead OM #45 what exactly are you looking for specifically, denial that warming occurs. Denial that the MWP doesnt exist. Denial that we are in a inter climatic change of great purportions? Denial that cow farts are deadly to the human race? Please be a tad more specific. Otherwise according to todays science news we need to kill all the whales and sink them to the bottom of the ocean followed immediately by the fatter humans upon us to help the carbon sink. Oh, dont forget a PO box so we can send our tithes to be passed on to our various woo recipients
if you are a scientist and I am new here, please introduce yourself as what discipline and current methods you are actively participating in. A generalist with access and interest to the appropriate literature is eminently acceptable
regards
The topic of this thread is Phil Jones and the CRU not the broader topic of climate change.
Nerd of a Redhead, you seem intent on conflating the two issues.
Our illustrious host seems to be using the possibility that data might be used in “propaganda” to excuse scientific malfeasance. Scientists don’t get to decide who gets to see their data and who doesn’t. As a scientist himself, Professor Myers should be aware of this fundamental tenet of scientific investigation.
Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for original data from his IPCC cited study. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so 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?”
This is just a small example of Dr. Jones unscientific behavior. There is much, much more, hence the reason for Dr. Jones “temporarily stepping aside” as the head of the East Anglia CRU while multiple investigations are under way.
Professor Myers seems to be more interested in policing the journalistic behavior of tabloid columnists than requiring IPCC scientists to comply with the basic requirements of scientific enquiry and public disclosure laws.
Quote Mining Is Never A Good Idea
And like zombies, I see the denialist arguments trying to rise again:
Yawn. Please learn to get your facts straight before you regurgitate denialist talking points and attempt to libel people:
I think PZ only allows two links per comment before it gets eaten by the mod filter, so you can google the above quote to find where it came from.
The head of the IPCC receives nothing for his work for a non-profit.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/09/new-york-times-elisabeth-rosentha…
And do you really want to argue that there's more money in AGW advocacy than in being a stooge for the fossil fuel industry?
No, arrogance is to assume that mankind can't possibly have any effect on the climate, no matter what we do.
Copying what the IOP says about itself, and not making it clear that it wasn't you that's saying that, does not get you off to a good start.
The fact that the IOP is an organization of 36,000 physicists is irrelevant. I myself am one of those members. None of us agreed to that statement. That statement does not represent the views of those 36,000. So the IOP's statement can be bollocks with the 36,000 of us still not being "fools, tools and losers".
You also missed this part of the IOP's statement:
"Fundamentally, we consider it should be inappropriate for the verification of the integrity of the scientific process to depend on appeals to Freedom of Information legislation."
And do you have actual evidence that the IOP is equated with all the issues as Nerd seems to be?
Notice how their statement makes (well) statements, without backing it up with evidence. A professional report by them would've had citations at least.
Notice also how the main UK science organization, the Royal Society, is the one helping out in the inquiry i.e. they are staying neutral. Why aren't you?
Innocent until proven guilty, no?
They say that "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal".
They go on to say "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations."
Where "very likely" means more than 90% likelihood. Not 90%. More than 90%. Please learn the difference.
And what fucked up definition of "conclusively" are you using? It doesn't mean "certainty", and if you require certainty, then I'm afraid you'd make a shit scientist.
And despite what you may think, the IPCC AR4 is not a Bible, and it is dishonest of you to act like it is the be-all and end-all of climatology.
And you, my brain-dead comrade, don't know what a fucking draft is:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/andrew_bolt_doesnt_know_or_car…
@22 JT Kirk and the Institute of Physics.
Carl Sagan once told a story about scientists and their specializations. He wrote some essays in the 70s debunking crackpot books by Erik Von Däniken (In search of Ancient Astronauts was Von Däniken's first). He thought to himself that the astronomy was wacky, but the archeology sounded plausible. Then he met an archeologist at a cocktail party who wrote essays debunking Von Däniken. He said the Archeology was wacky but the astronomy sounded plausible.
I read the full submission quoted @22 (here). They mention the dendrology (tree rings) but show no indication they understand at all the issues and challenges involved. For a full explanation of the boat the people at the Institute of Physics missed see this video: Climate Change - "Those" e-mails and science censorship. It's a little under 10 minutes long and lays out how idiotic it is sometimes to pontificate outside of your area of expertise.
But they are in good company. Albert Einstein once wrote a forward to a geology book deriding plate tectonic theory. Oops.
id,
Your claims that Jones didn't refuse to send data, or had legitimate reasons not to, are crap. You are the one regurgitating talking points.
I especially like your response to the Institute of Physics submission to the UK Parliamentary Committee.
First you quote part of it out of context.
"Fundamentally, we consider it should be inappropriate for the verification of the integrity of the scientific process to depend on appeals to Freedom of Information legislation."
This was meant to point out the rather obvious fact that scientists shouldn’t have to be forced to release data and methodologies by use of FOIA requests.
You ineffectually wave it about as some sort of rebuke of the FOI act itself, rather than a further condemnation of Dr. Jones unscientific behavior.
Truly pathetic.
Then you claim that the organization does not speak for you. If you have issues with the Institute of Physics I suggest you take it up with them. As a fellow member I am quite proud that they have taken a stand for the ethics of scientific endeavor and against those that would disgrace themselves and the science they claim to represent.
@#49
"The revised chapter was much improved," he said. "That's different than saying everything in there is nailed down, but I think it's a big improvement."
Overall, he said, "I commend the authors for doing as good a job as they did. That's the way the science process ought to work. You get inputs from everybody, find any bugs, crank through and the science moves forward."
Oh, what a ringing endorsement for AGW/CC and Scientific Process as carried out by Climate Scientists! How could anyone who calls themselves a scientist dare to question AGW after reading that? I'm skeptical no more!
Oh, BTW I'm being Sarcastic..
Interesting to note that the Hadley/CRUT data is generally considered to underestimate the degree of AGW. If there was rampant dishonesty/corruption in play, you'd think they would have produced a far scarier dataset.
As if being a member of Starfleet wasn't enough.
Steven Dunlap,
You seem to have a basic misunderstanding of what the Institute of Physics is saying in its submission to Parliament.
They are not taking a position on the validity of AGW theory.
They are taking a position on the antiscientific actions and behaviors of the East Anglia CRU scientists being investigated by the committee.
Whether a scientist is a biologist, a physicist a chemist or a dendrochronologist the same rules apply.
Show your work!
Antiochus Epiphanes
"As if being a member of Starfleet wasn't enough."
Yes, the requirements for star ship captain are quite rigorous and diverse.
No doubt as, your highness, are the responsibilities and functions of a Syrian King.
Quick quiz for all the "just a skeptic"s claiming to be on the side of good science.
How many of you cheered along when Richard Lenski told Andy Schlafly where to stick his demands for all the data essentially because he was just some guy trying to find things wrong with it?
Should Phil Jones just write better rejection letters?
We Seleucids must deal primarily with the rabble of Judea. Nothing compared to the treachery and bellicosity of the Klingons, I assure you.
You do know that many (maybe even most) of the AGW deniers also deny that evolution exists, right?
mistermuz,
OK, some creationist goober misunderstands a microbiology paper and pesters a scientist with requests for data that was already present in the paper.
“None of the places where we made such references concern the existence of the citrate-using bacteria; they concern only certain secondary properties of those bacteria. We will gladly post those additional data on my website.”
And the scientist goes out of his way to tell him that he will post even unrelated data if that placates the dufus.
Then when the dufus misunderstands this reply and posts inflammatory remarks about the scientist on the goober’e website the researcher loses his cool and unloads on the clown.
“It is my impression that you seem to think we have only paper and electronic records of having seen some unusual E. coli. If we made serious errors or misrepresentations, you would surely like to find them in those records. If we did not, then - as some of your acolytes have suggested - you might assert that our records are themselves untrustworthy because, well, because you said so, I guess. But perhaps because you did not bother even to read our paper, or perhaps because you aren't very bright, you seem not to understand that we have the actual, living bacteria that exhibit the properties reported in our paper, including both the ancestral strain used to start this long-term experiment and its evolved citrate-using descendants. In other words, it's not that we claim to have glimpsed "a unicorn in the garden" - we have a whole population of them living in my lab!”
There clearly IS no data to send to this creationist goober.
Do you claim that this is analogous to the situation with the East Anglia CRU?
It is not. If you took the time to read the emails and went to climate audit to research the context of the requests for data you would find out that:
1)The data being requested was NOT in the papers involved.
2)The researchers actively conspired to refuse data to some even when they supplied it to others
3)The researchers illegally ignored FOI request for the data
Oh, and I find the evidence for the theory of evolution to be compelling and overwhelming. I have never known of an evolutionary biologist, or paleontologist that wasn’t more than eager to provide any and all data, methods and other evidence that backed their research, promptly and upon request.
ckitching @59
Oh, I'm sure there's loads. But there's been a big influx into the debate recently of people saying they're "just being skeptical". They're as for science as anyone and they can't understand why there isn't more outrage about Jones' words or actions or whatever and what it supposedly means for the principles of science.
Some I've bumped into around the traps I'm willing to take at their word. They're a little late to the party, annoyed by the apparent populism of Inconvenient Truth and the potential victory of the favourite cause of people they hate (pinkos, hippies, greenies, leftists etc). But in essence I think many are being honest; they just want to be skeptical. They want to be as rationalist and pro-science as anyone else around here. They've just fallen for a lot of misinformation.
So I'm asking, If Jones' apparent reluctance to personally provide folks with all the data is so outrageous and against science, how do they feel about the Lenski affair? (which they've probably heard about if they're here and interested in this sort of thing)
@55
It sounds to me like the writer(s) of this memorandum are doing that. It very clumsily discusses, and in some detail, whether the dendrology evidence shows that the 20th century was significantly warmer than previous centuries.
The memorandum calls for an investigation as to whether the behavior in question is "antiscientific." The wording above assumes the behavior is such and that the memorandum is making such an accusation. No what I read. Also, climate scientists share the data with other climate scientists (I read some of the e-mail messages too). The data is also readily available in their published research.
They do. With other climate scientists. Most of the stink over the e-mails comes from the reference in one to using another's "trick" to "hide the decline," in tree ring proxy data. Amateurish and overly simplified application of tree ring temperature proxies leads to screwy results. No one hid the tree ring data. See the video referenced in my earlier post (#50 above).
Steven Dunlap,
I watched the 9 min video. It is an attempt to ignore or obscure just a few of the allegations against the East Anglia CRU scientists.
It spends more time trying to defend AGW science as a whole that it does addressing the behavior of the scientists involved.
It is a typical AGW propaganda piece rather than a serious expose of the issue.
JamesTiberiusKirk: you diss the video as propaganda that attempts to ignore the allegations¹, but you don't refer to any factual inaccuracies therein.
You're just handwaving it off as being irrelevant.
--
¹ Did you notice it was the second part of a two-part presentation (and did you see the first part as well)?
john Morales,
If I have to present detailed annotated rebuttal to every youtube video on AGW I would have little time for anything else.
Steve Dunlap makes no detailed annotated claim based on the video yet you don't seem to be requiring him to do so.
I am actually watching the entire string of videos that appear along with the link.
I may comment on them in further detail after watching them.
@JTK #47: You mean Warwick Hughes the "free-lance scientist" who doesn't publish in any reputable journal?
Jones has no excuse to simply ignore requests and I would like to see colleagues in Europe make more of their data publicly accessible, but as far as climatology and climate change goes, Hughes is a crank at best. Jones is really not that significant at any rate; nothing he says contradicts the findings of other independent groups whose far larger data sets and analysis software are freely available to the public - not that I'd expect many in the general public to be able to understand and operate the software properly.
I'm always surprised that people are going for soft targets in order to demonstrate their fact. It seems that from all I've gathered from scientists and science journals, "climategate" is a total non-event. This is the kind of thing that separates sceptics from denialists. Why if someone was interested in the truth of climate change would they use such a weak event like "climategate" as support for their position? Surely if you're genuinely interested in following the science to the conclusion then you'd point to the data itself.
Pointing to diffuse / weak / nonsensical sources to validate your point is like trying to prove evolution by pointing to an article that claims a dog gave birth to cats.
MadScientist:
> What I find rather bizarre is that our colleagues in the UK think that their data should be secret,...
You've been misinformed by the Denier's smear campaign. CRU data is not "secret" and never was. http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/CRUupdate
To get a sense of the vile bullying tactics used by the Deniers, read the following article - particularly the last section, titled 'Climate Auditing – Close Encounters with Mr. Steven McIntyre' - http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/close-encounters-…
And here's a quote from Gavin Schmidt (NASA climate scientist) from one of the stolen emails:
> The contrarians have found that there is actually no limit to what you can ask people for (raw data, intermediate steps, additional calculations, residuals, sensitivity calculations, all the code, a workable version of the code on any platform etc.), and like Somali pirates they have found that once someone has paid up, they can always shake them down again.
Here's the rule: anything that suggests global warming is not real or a threat, that climate scientists are frauds, that climate data has been hidden or deleted or corrupted - ignore it. It's a lie.
MadScientist,
Why the smear on Warrick Hughes? If he had been a seventh grade physical science student Jones was obligated to provide the data.
"Jones has no excuse to simply ignore requests and I would like to see colleagues in Europe make more of their data publicly accessible..."
Well, I see we agree on this much.
"Jones is really not that significant at any rate;"
Excuse me? He is, er was, the Director of the East Anglia Climate Research unit at the University of East Anglia which provides one of the main data sets used in climate science and he was also a Coordinating Lead Author on the AR4 Chapter 3, Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change.
So if he is "not that significant" who exactly is?
"... nothing he says contradicts the findings of other independent groups whose far larger data sets and analysis software are freely available to the public..."
Again this debatable and is totally irrelevant to whether he is obliged to provide data and code to back his research.
You seem to be getting the main problem here, failure to comply with data and methods disclosure, but you seem to be equivocating on the specifics.
Why?
Cap'n jim writes @47 "Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for original data from his IPCC cited study. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so 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?”"
Wow, I knew I'd seen that somewhere before. Try googling that phrasing and see how often it appears. I doubt it's indicative of anything, but it's weird. Anyway...
I agree that the Lenski comparison isn't one to one. He is, however, outright refusing to supply interested parties with all the materials necessary to check and replicate results on the grounds of credentials. I think he's entirely within his rights, but it seems to me that it's something a lot of these new AGW skeptics wouldn't, in principle, support from they way they talk about Jones.
Jimmy will have to refresh my memory a bit about which particular studies and FOI requests he is talking about. Trying to get signal in the noise of McIntyre's site is a bit much for a hot sunday afternoon.
JamesTiberiusKirk:
> Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for original data from his IPCC cited study.
That's one way of putting it. Another would be:
> Warwick Hughes, a notorious Denier who works with the anti-science New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, is part of the concerted campaign of harassment against Professor Jones and CRU. Hughes' barrage of requests for data eventually prompted an angry response from Professor Jones who is allegedly human.
And as much as the soap opera of stolen emails and accusations of dishonesty fascinates and distracts people like you, it does not change the core science. Humans burn fossil fuels, CO2 released, planet heats up. That is hard, inescapable *fact*.
mistermuz,
I admit that Climate Audit isn't the sexiest or easiest to navigate site.
But it isn't totally opaque either.
If you are legitimately interested in researching the skeptics' side of the issue go to the "search" field and enter "Phil Jones".
It lists all entries in reverse chronological order. You can go back quite a distance in time and track the data requests, FOI requests etc. in the time that they actually occurred.
If you do so it will, in my opinion, put the lie to the lame defenses of Jones's, and others, behavior.
You will be able to see the data requests, why they were requested and how Jones, and others, dodged , ignored, obfuscated and generally acted unethically, unscientifically, and illegally to frustrate an honest effort to replicate the science behind the CRU data set and other climate science research of Jone's and other climate scientists.
If you just want to be reassured that Jones and the other scientists involved in climategate were just misunderstood noble scientist that said a few ugly things because evil "denialists" were out to smear them and their work, there are plenty of 9 minute you tube videos dedicated to excusing and ignoring Jones' et al.s behavior.
You seem like someone that is genuinely interested. Spend the time at ClimateAudit. It will at least give you an informed opinion on the topic, unlike the majority of ill-tempered pock-shot artists out to defend anything and anyone that they perceive to be on their "side".
Excuse me, Alarmists. If taxpayer-funded "scientists" don't feel inclined to hand over the info that taxpayers are paying them to provide, then those "scientists" can fuck off and considered themselves fired!
And everyone's children will pay the price.
I did. ClimateAudit convinced me the denialists are all wrong, many of them are dishonest, and the rest are deluded. A very sad website.
So let me get this straight - is it being alleged that the globe isn't warming while those alleging it are being denied access to the data? Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but does the big black lines and denials of FOI requests to UFO proponents mean that the government is harbouring intelligent alien life?
What happened to just following the data? Is climate science so secretive that there isn't any science done in the peer review that can be disseminated? That the conclusions that climate scientists have published in both peer review and through governmental bodies lacking in actual data?
This is the nonsense I see in climate change denial. Those who are part of the movement are already convinced the evidence doesn't exist, and despite how transparent the scientific process is and how much is contingent on sharing information - how could they get away with being secretive on issues such as this? All we get are people who are so convinced its not happening that they'll do whatever they can to seem like they're are either uncovering a conspiracy or try to play the obfuscation card to diminish the scientific consensus.
The anti-vaxxers are the shining example of when anti-science forces come up against science. There may have been a link between vaccines and autism, yet subsequent studies have shown no link while the original studies have been discredited. Does this mean the denialists will embrace the science? Hell no, they are still as vocal as ever in their assertions. And the results are showing, vaccination rates are down and preventable diseases are back in western cultures. This is the problem of denialism - there is a real cost associated with the FUD tactics employed. And what suffers here? Action to move towards a more sustainable future.
Currently the scientific consensus is that global climate change is happening, and there is a clear human footprint in the causal mechanisms associated with that. If you think its wrong, you need to show that its wrong in the academic arena. If you don't, then all you are doing is pushing an ideology. Creationists too complain that Big Science is suppressing their views...
llewelly,
You of course are entitled to your opinion.
Out of curiosity can I ask you to name a specific topic with which you take issue with Steve McIntyre or others that post topics at Climate Audit?
Am I confused, or is the above the forum for the theoretical discussion of penis fencing and this the practice arena? Some of our visitors seem not to understand that "Mine's bigger than yours" is not exactly on point.
JamesTiberiusKirk #47,
The topic of this thread is that the denialist propaganda crowd lied about what Phil Jones said in an interview.
The topic of this thread is not about Phil Jones' and the CRU's integrity, but you have chosen to bring it up.
Please point me to the results of said investigations that show that Dr Jones is guilty of the things you accuse him from.
He stepped aside because it's the only professional thing to do when an investigation is under way.
Could you please at least wait for those investigations to be completed before discussing such matters.
I don't know how much its reputation has spread across the Atlantic but this is only to be expected from the Daily Mail, and more so it's much inferior wannabe rival the Daily Express.
It's the UK's equivalent of Fox News, twisting and spinning 'facts' to fit it's agenda but sadly very popular and believed
Essentially all of Jones' important work is consistent with the work of other climate scientists. If Jones where shown to be guilty, it would raise no serious questions about the validity of AGW.
You know that it would be untrue
The IPCC would be a liar
If they said ‘its peer-reviewed’
To try to fool all us deniers
Come on, don’t you lie for Gaia
Come on, don’t you lie for Gaia
Climategate should get them fired
‘The time for a debate is through
The planet’s gonna catch on fire
If we don’t do somethin' soon’
But the report became a steaming pile
Come on, don’t you lie for Gaia
Come on, don’t you lie for Gaia
Don’t you know we’re sick and tired?
I've been involved in a political party for a while until I quit recently. It was of a right wing bent. I left after the moderate witch hunts began to take off. The right wing denial group never had evidence, it was all about dismissing scientists because they're part of some "conspiracy" and vote for the other side. Further, they're economic outlook means they don't want to consider the changes we'd need to make, which led them to denial. AGW is scientific fact. As a scientist, the peer review process has more weight to it than the ravings of conspiracy nuts.
Oh but the denialist echo chamber has already chosen to believe that Jones has been proven guilty, and by extension the rest of AGW supporting scientists.
Why would you expect otherwise from those who always seem to prefer to believe in things with no evidence ?
Those are the eyelids to their minds, they ensure they won't abandon deeply entrenched but ulitmately destructive core values: the cornucopian values of capitalist libertarianism.
I guess they figure they can get away with twisting them 175°.
Those of us residing in the UK will find it hard to understand why anything printed in the Daily Mail has resulted in any discussion.
Think Fox News without real facts.
Still no scientific evidence from the denialists. They obviously do not understand the concept of scientific evidence, or why having a peer reviewed paper to back up your arguments is so important. It is all about quality of paper and the evidence and methods therein, and the insurance that scientific principles and methods are followed. Denialists keep referring to evidence that in no way would pass peer review, since it does not follow scientific principles and methods. All I see from the denialists are political arguments, evasions, outright lies, and attitude. None of which makes their point valid. All I see is that they are just having a childish temper tantrum since real scientists don't agree with them and their unscientific ideology.
Yeah, we're living with the fact that you are pathologically stupid and you have the right to vote.
When the denialists do get around to providing some actual scientific evidence to back up their claims, maybe they could explain the basics of significance testing to the rest of us.
A big essay on stats won't be necessary, just some explanation of the fundamentals. I'd hate it for some of the denialists to be making claims about a stats-related quote when they don't understand the statistics that the quote is actually talking about!
I'd go further. I'd actually say that comparing the Mail to Fox News is unfair to Fox News.
The Daily Mail isn't just conservative; there are plenty of other conservative-leaning newspapers in the UK (the Telegraph, the Times, and so on) which are nowhere near as bad. The Mail is founded on a very special kind of small-minded pointless fear, hatred, and xenophobia. It is aimed at uneducated, ignorant readers who are irrationally terrified that waves of immigrants, asylum-seekers, drug-users, "antisocial" youth, and the like are going to swamp their communities. The Mail makes money by stoking these irrational fears. They have no interest in truth, nor even much interest in ideology. All they want is to sell more and more papers, and they know that the easiest way to do this is to exploit people's ignorance and prejudice.
In itself, it isn't necessarily a bad thing for a media outlet to have a political bias, as long as they're upfront about it. But the Mail is revolting. In a US context, it's most closely analogous to the anti-immigrant rantings of Lou Dobbs or Tom Tancredo.
Kirk.
You just don't get it do you?
East Anglia CRU has ignored nothing, and does not have the right to release the data being asked for. You have access to all the data generated by the U.S. and the U.K., at least. already.
Also, there was one, possibly several, bits of intermediate calculations that were refused to various parties, but eventually made public to shut them up. It hasn't shut them up. And so far, there has been very little data processing by these people who keep filing FOI requests for the data.
File a fucking FOI request with the other nations (and possibly intelligence agencies) who supplied that data.
What part of this do you not get?
If I'm way off base here, how about you specify which specific data you want to see released, eh?
Lay person's (my) perspective:
1) seems like legit real science converges on AGW to at least some degree best I can tell
2) but still it is complex subject (many factors and variables) and to what degree is still open for study
3) still the effects humans have on the environment are evident and profound and can be viewed outside the context of AGW (contexts more micro and immediate e.g., pollution, regional impacts, ecologically deleterious shifts in the balance of things)
4) if done smartly and honestly there are significant economic, geopolitical, and ecological upsides to being cleaner in general (products and production and living), being more environmentally friendly in development, and to creating our energy from more renewable and/or "free" sources
5) AGW or not - we impact our environment - so why not drive strongly and forcefully to have less negative impact (conclusion from 3. and 4.)
I pose this as a guy on the street - a thinking guy - but not an expert guy by any means. To the deniers of AGW - why should I care if there is a 50% chance that AGW is only 25% as AGW as is claimed? If I get in my view a better world for my future gene carriers - and start a sluggish economic engine - I think I should be happy.
What am I missing?
PS - don't say the cost of getting there - that is a positive in my mind - chance is what drives economic progress - not status quo.
LOL - chance was chanGe
Kirk - the raw data from GISS and NOAA are available to everybody, have the same source as Hadley CRU, and are consistent with that from Hadley CRU. Why don't you have your boys at CA or WUWT analyze those data first and get back to us on any major problems they find with global products published by the big 3.
mistermuz writes:
"How many of you cheered along when Richard Lenski told Andy Schlafly where to stick his demands for all the data essentially because he was just some guy trying to find things wrong with it?"
What does Andy Schafly know about such data or science? Does he have any demonstrated knowledge or ability to assess such information?
Do you believe children should be given matches?
As I understand it, Lenski offered to let a suitably qualified scientist, nominated by Schafly, have access the the data. The fact that Schafly did not take up that offer tells us his real motivation is making the request.
As to the topic at hand
My long life experience tells me that when a person or group amps up a non-problem to the status of "must be a problem" or "is a problem" - especially when that serves their interests to invalidate or demonize or make negative the other side it indicates their lack of substance, their delusion, their lack of honesty, their need to drive agenda over truth, and/or their greed for self or "employers".
It happens in business, in personal relationships, in life -- when you have nothing else really then pick on something insignificant that can be misconstrued to significance and play it the hilt if it makes the other look tainted.
Emailgate for instance. Much ado about nothing. A family issue at best re: minor protocols. Hardly indicative of things that rock the very foundation of AGW science - not in the least.
The majority o threads on this blogg, I have noticed generate comments predominantly supporting PZ views. A minority of dissenters appear but are usually manifest whackos who are for the most part dealt with by ridicule, usually more pitying than malicious.
This thread is different. There are far more dissenters than usual, whose arguments are far more cogent than usual. Some of the criticisms of these questioners, or "denialists" if you must, are of the foam flecked spittle variety that one usually associates with the religious nutters.
Wherever you stand on the isuue you have to accept that, among the readers of this blogg the issue of AGW enjoys less consensus than any other.
Q: what's the first thing you have to understand to know what statistical significance means?
A: significance isn't yes-or-no, black-or-white; it's a statement that something is _probably_ found in a particular set of data, and of likely it is that we're wrong about that.
Duh. Significant? At what level?
bellerophon,
The arguments of the denialists are not cogent, they are knee-jerk. One claims that taking one sentence, out of context, that he does not understand supports the denialist position.
The posters who are here selling their denialism are mostly new or traditional flakes here. Not one of the denialists here shows any grasp of science. I hope that the coal and gas & oil industries are paying them to spread their nonsense. It would be sad to find out that these industries are getting free propaganda lies from ignoramuses.
Read Chris Buckley's Thank You for Smoking
Bwahahahaha. Same old shit they have been saying for a long time. And no more cogent than they ever were. They may sound that way to someone who hasn't been through the argument a couple of dozen times already.
Two things:
As a graduate student at a university, I have free access to thousands of scientific papers, via ScienceDirect, Elesevier, etc. It is easy for me to search for literature on global warming and find hundreds of peer-reviewed papers in multiple fields containing plenty of data. All of the data that I have seen in recent (since 2000, which I entered in the search term) has supported global warming, period. There is also plenty of data showing that it is anthropogenic. If I, a lowly student, can find this data, why can't the global warming denialists? Do they think that there is some new, as yet unpublished data that contradicts the massive volume of already published data?
Secondly, it is, to me, obvious that people and corporations do not want to do anything that will cost them more money or effort. They do not want to believe that humans can affect the climate, because if that is true, they will have to spend money and effort to curtail their carbon emissions. Therefore, if any climatologist EVER says ANYTHING that even REMOTELY sounds like it supports the idea that either global warming is not happening, or there is nothing that can be done about it, people will seize upon it and shout it from the highest rooftops. This story only confirms my suspicions.
I am not a climatologist, but as with so many other things, such as medicine, biology, and so forth, I am willing to trust the experts in those fields, especially when their data corroborates so well.
The denialist freak parade won't end until they all learn how to read primary research papers, and lots of them.
Unfortunately that's never going to happen, because that requires effort and they may inadvertently learn something.
It's so much easier to just passively listen to the opinions of talking heads and soundbites. To morons, Rush Limbaugh's uneducated loudmouthed opinion is just as good as decades of field and lab research by thousands of scientists publishing tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers.
bellerophon: what a bizarre comment.
What I see is exactly the same kind of arguments used by creationists: quote-mining, appeals to alleged authority, attempts to explain why someone's wrong without first showing that they are wrong, and a complete failure to engage with the science.
Yes, denialists: the science is all there and generally available. And it provides overwhelming support for AGW. The onus is on YOU to show how it is mistaken and where it goes wrong; alternatively, provide scientific evidence that rather conclusively goes in the other direction. If you don't do that, you just have no argument. It's interesting that for all the requests for links or citations, none of the denialists on here have even attempted to do that.
In any case, I hope bellerophon isn't trying to imply the 'I see a lot of disagreement among the issue here (on this blog), so clearly the science cannot be settled on the issue'. I emphasize that he doesn't actually say that, but I cannot really see the point of his post if it weren't this.
"I hope that the coal and gas & oil industries are paying them to spread their nonsense"
In other threads the argument that those taking a particular point of view are shills of some big industry or other (usually big pharma) is usually and correctly interpreted as a bankrupt argument, and he using it automatically loses. Interesting to see it used here by those who would usually condemn it as bullshit.
Are you really suggesting that all those who question AGW are being paid by big carbon? See what I mean about foam flecked spittle?
Davidpj: Mario Bunge mentioned in class as aside once that one use of having folks like James Randi around is because scientists often forget that people aren't as honest as perhaps we'd like ...
#49 call hogwash on yer link
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6999975.ece
I can garranty he pulls a fair bit of coinage for his own usage out of that and the EVUL energy companies fighting global warming hold a lot of the amazonian rainforest to offset their carbon usage WITHOUT having any mandate to do so
I am not aware of anyone claiming that, so either you came by that idea erroneously, or you are lying.
There is however clear evidence that a number of the more prominent deniers of AGW within academia are, or have been, beneficiaries of funding by the Energy industry.
So I see several comments claiming that the CRU illegally ignored FOI requests.
That is an untrue claim. The CRU legally ignored FOI requests, because those FOI requests were shown in court to be purely for the purpose of harassment - the Climate Audit blog even had a thread coordinating the harassment.
I would like to believe that we won't see that claim again in this thread, but of course we will - but now that the refutation has been posted, ignorance will not be a valid excuse, and that claim will out it's poster as a willful liar.
While the shoe doesn't fit everyone, it does some. Some don't like the political ramifications, so they must deny the science. Which they don't do scientifically, through the peer reviewed literature. And some are just contrarians, who just argue to argue. But still no scientific evidence presented, just bullshit.
Owning Amazon rainforest does not offset carbon emissions. The rainforest already exists. Offset requires new carbon sequestration, not merely preventing the destruction of existing reservoirs of sequestered carbon.
If you understanding of the role of carbon is this poor, why should we pay the slightest attention to you ?
Andrew Davison @5, for a very good treatment of why the question itself is bollocks, see here:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/how-long/
It is the equivalent of saying, so is it true that over the past month you have not beaten your wife a statistically significant lesser amount than last month?
What is actually more interesting is the fact that the BBC reporter solicited his questions from such notorious lying sacks of rat feces as Anthony Watts and Christopher "I am to a Lord" Monckton.
MadScientist says, "What I find rather bizarre is that our colleagues in the UK think that their data should be secret, whereas in the USA the data is avaiable to anyone and everyone."
Huh? Where the hell did you get this idea? Over 95% of the data are available online. The rest is covered by confidentiality agreements and cannot be released. As to code and algorithms, do you really want folks who aren't competent to construct these algorithms themselves mucking about with it? That's how you get blogs like Watts-up-'is-arse.
Jamestiberiuskirk@22, that IOP report seems odd to me. It reads like a standard piece of denialist crap, was written by a subcommittee of the IOP, and it runs counter to the positions IOP has taken publicly on the issue.
There is not a single result in the literature that is called into question by anything found in the UEA emails--despite the effect that the hackers deliberately took emails out of context.
As to McIntyre, he has contributed exactly zero to understanding of Earths climate. Ferchrissake, the guy has only one peer-reviewed publication! The guy is still fixated on a paper published in 1998! Sorry, Jimmie, that ain't science.
bellopheron says: "Wherever you stand on the isuue you have to accept that, among the readers of this blogg the issue of AGW enjoys less consensus than any other."
Huh? And this is relevant exactly...how? First, what a bunch of folks on the intertubes think of a scientific matter means bupkes. Among the ones who matter--the scientists who publish--the consensus is overwhelming. Second, the half billion dollars kicked in by energy interests to generat FUD on climate science buys a lot of shills and sockpuppets. Third, you will notice that the arguments of the dissenters don't contain any science--tending to be of the "Al Gore is fat," or "Pachauri took money" variety. Maybe you ought to look at the science a little, huh?
@Matt Penfold #111
nice from a person whose ideas include cap and trade, and credit transfers
Stopping deforestation does lessen carbon to be released into the atmosphere. Also when I suggested in another thread we should concentrate on sequestering free atmospheric c02 as a solution I was told that it isnt possible. So genius why should I listen to you? Have a solution or just a political position?
for those who think the world is not warming
As far as the science goes, forget east anglia. Go to noaa, download the datasets also the source code for the models is available (which I am looking into in my spare time) and run the numbers yourself.
That's what real scientists do. There is no need for those of us not in the climate field to crunch any numbers ourselves, since very capable and honest people have already done so and reported the data via peer reviewed literature. And that has been very consistent over a number of years. I've seen articles on it since the '70s. We take their word for it, as the use of proper scientific methods has been confirmed.
So, broboxley, do you really think that cap and trade is bad? Do you perhaps remember worries of acid rain? Do you know why those worries are gone now?
Someone said here earlier that climate change denialists also tend to deny evolution. I don't know if that's true, but if it were, it's probably because both have the same failures to understand the interaction between microscale and macroscale and what scientific consensus really means.
Climate and weather are not the same thing. One is to macroevolution as the other is to microevolution. Even those who understand that difference may fail to understand that changes in weather can signify a change in climate and vice/versa. The "humans can't affect the climate" line is pure bullshit because we know that humans can affect the weather; if we can affect one, we can affect the other. If you don't believe either, then may I introduce you to the concept of a "heat island", with which every meteorologist is acquainted and must acknowledge the existence of if they are to accurately map the weather.
Also, there is no such thing as a climatologist who can analyze tree rings and rock formations to come to a conclusion about global climate change. They depend upon the data and conclusions of geologists, zoologists, botanists, etc. to get an understanding of the climate - that's what a "scientific consensus" is. Scientists the world over, not just the climatologists, agree that the preponderance of the evidence points to global climate change from the perspective of their relative fields. A dissenting opinion or two is merely interesting and warranting of further research; it is not a reason to deny every other bit of evidence before us.
In any case, the evidence is only convincing with respect to a particular conclusion. It does not tell us what we can or should do about the conclusion itself. The main reasons to control climate change stem from the other benefits associated with doing it, such as reducing dependence on limited fossil fuels and having cleaner air. Averting catastrophe may or may not be within our abilities, but it isn't useful to disbelieve in our ability to do so, either. Even if we aren't going to fix the problem at this stage, that does not mean we can't reap the other benefits of trying, up to and including mitigating the effects of the disaster if and when it does happen.
I see AGW deniers as being negative influences on world society because all they can seem to say is what we can't do and talk about not moving from a clearly disastrous course. I leave it to them to explain how this is not so.
Sorry ?
I have not talked about cap and trade or credit transfer.
I guess talking bollocks is something you specialise in.
I note you fail to address the substantive part of the previous post. No doubt because you cannot.
However I will make it even clearer for you why merely maintaining current levels of forestation does nothing to offset carbon emissions.
Let us say a hectare of Amazon rainforest holds 1 unit of CO2. Let us also say that 1 tonne of coal releases 1 unit of C02 when burnt in a power station.
Before the coal is burnt two units of CO2 are sequestered. One in the forest, one on the coal. Now let us burn the coal, releasing one unit of C02. That leaves us with 1 unit of sequestered C02, in the forest, when originally we had two, one in the forest and one in the coal. That is a net loss of 1 unit of C02.
This was plain to anyone who gave even a moment's thought to my previous post.
In other words, merely not chopping down existing rainforest does nothing to offset the release of CO2 from other sources.
Yes, the solution is for them to either learn the science and stop being ignorant, or if they already know the science to quit lying.
@Michael Ralston #118 so where are the TRADING markets for sulpher etc. That was a straight cap which I have no objection to for c02
@Matt Penfold #120
Have a solution or just a political position?
was directed at you,
do you have a clear method to cool the climate, or mitigate the effects of warming?
****************************************************to indicate new sentence/comment on your post
****************************************************
whining about the ignorant and lying scientists isnt really a solution to "fix" global warming
@broboxley #121: The only reason there is a cap-and-trade system suggested is because large corporations think it's unfair that they lose money in the pursuit of making the air cleaner and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. The cap-and-trade system isn't perfect, but we happen to know it works to reduce carbon emissions because corporations understand market pressures. It's just an incentive in a language they already understand without making it about science - which they demonstrably don't understand.
broboxley says, "...so where are the TRADING markets for sulpher etc. That was a straight cap which I have no objection to for c02"
Sigh! You know, you can look this stuff up:
"...As an incentive for reducing emissions, for each ton of sulfur dioxide reduced below the applicable emissions limit, owners of a generating unit received an emissions allowance they could use at another unit, keep for future use, or sell. This legitimized a market for sulfur dioxide emissions allowances, administered by the Chicago Board of Trade."--from Wikipedia
You know, you'd probably make more sense if you chose to talk out the hole at the top of your digestive track rather than the other.
@a_ray_in_dilbert_space #124 I stand corrected
BroBoxley,
Do you think you could try using properly constructed sentence, with capital letters in the appropriate places, and punctuation used correct as well ?
I also need you to explain the comments about cap and trade, which were out of place seeing as how I have never mentioned them. In fact I cannot recall ever using that term except for in my previous post. It seems you are making things up.
As for what to do about climate change. The answer from the experts is clear. Stop releasing so much CO2 into the atmosphere. The best way I have seen suggested for doing this involve reducing energy expenditure, and moving from fossil fuel energy sources to renewables. I am surprised you are unaware of these proposals, since they have been widely reported, and form a large of part of the climate change policy of many Governments. They even have the benefit of being a good idea even if climate change is not happening. None of these ideas originated from me, but from scientists and those involved in energy policy and production based on the scientific evidence.
@matt penfold #126 thank you for a clear answer. What you suggest may slow GW down and are good ideas in any case
No, I'm only saying that those who know what they are talking about and engage in denialism are being paid. The rest are victims, often willing, of a con operation, usually because they are in denial about how they are externalizing the costs of their behavior.
AGW deniers are mostly like the folks who smoked cigarettes and kept telling themselves that all of the scientists were lying about the health effects of tobacco. They had an emotional attachment to it and the lying lobbyists gave them an excuse to ignore the science.
There are lots of deniers who are carrying water for Big Carbon, but not getting paid for the hard work they are doing for them. What good is it to be a lobbyist for harm if you aren't getting paid to keep the harm in place?
The EU runs the largest CO2 trading scheme in the world. It has been widely reported on, so ignorance of it by someone who claims to be interested in climate change is odd, to say the least.
In fact I would say it goes beyond odd. I can understand someone not following the issues around climate being unaware of the scheme, but if someone claims to be interested in the issue claims to be unaware I can conclude only one of three things. Either they are remarkably ignorant to a degree which makes anything they have to say highly suspect, they deliberately refrain from reading about such schemes or they are aware of such schemes but claim not to be. Only the first position is devoid of any dishonest intent, and that only because they would seem to be too stupid.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a7uM5vJ_FfFg hows that workin out for ya?
@matt penfold it at appears that you are pompous the ass is a given
broboxley -
Fraud is one reason to collect a carbon tax that keeps increasing until the carbon dioxide has been reduced to the target level. The money from the tax should be used primarily to increase energy efficiency and use a little to subsidize those in poverty who will see their taxes increase. I figure that a tax on all carbon and hydrocarbon that starts at a rate that would be equivalent to $0.50 on a gallon of gasoline with an increment equivalent to $0.25 each year would have things resolved in about a decade.
@broboxley #130: The article to which you linked is about cyber attackers committing fraud, not about any problems inherent to the cap-and-trade process. It might help if you read the thing.
Only in the blubber that you pretend is your brain.
I note you cannot explain why you were so ignorant of CO2 trading schemes. I will take you silence as an admission it was down to your inability to use either Google or Wikipedia.
Your inability to write English sentences using proper grammar and punctuation needs another explanation though.
@deriamis #132 cdo's packaged bundled with other securities in the american market would end up as enron subprime meltdown affecting everyone that has barely recovered from the last bright idea in the American trading markets
@matt penfold Im posting on the internet as opposed to presenting a document, feel free to skip right on bye my posts
@broboxley #134: And your point is? We already know that fraud is a practice accepted as legitimate by large corporations interested in maximizing profit margins as demanded by shareholders. That doesn't reflect on the cap-and-trade process itself at all. For the somewhat more honest corporations out there, cap-and-trade represents a way of expressing "green responsibility" on a balance sheet to placate the shareholders, which is altogether a good thing from a business perspective.
What this article is actually suggesting is that regulatory bodies need to invest in cybersecurity measures and that financial regulation needs to be stepped up to prevent fraudulent practices from damaging the market. We already know both of these things here. I don't understand why you felt the need to bring it up because it isn't an argument against cap-and-trade.
Two things I've concluded from this conversation and others on this blog.
1) The anti-AGW types (read: denialists) are becoming the new flat-earthers.
2) PZ and his fans are really good and effective at ripping the above new ones.
...to this, I have little to add that hasn't already been amazingly said. I'll just keep sitting back and enjoy the fun, while I wait for the anti-AGW types to bring actual evidence to support their claims. /popcorn
@deriamis 136 any cap and trade scheme in the US will be authored by industry lobbyists allowing such schemes to continue. Cap and tax with the tax going to to help the poor to offset increased costs is a much better idea in my opinion
@#104
On the contrary, the onus is on Warmies to prove AGW/CC. 'Overwhelming evidence' is rhetoric, not proof, and '90% chance' is a glorified opinion. Some may argue that it's almost certain that life exists on other planets - I'll keep an open mind until the evidence turns up. There is no concrete evidence for AGW/CC, and the circumstantial evidence keeps evaporating. The IPCC's predictions about global temperatures have not occured; the ice-caps and glaciers are not 'melting' any faster and the seas are not rising at anywhere near the rates predicted by Alarmists.
AGW/CC is a dead duck without a quack.
Anyone who has even a passing high-school familiarity with statistics should understand the difference between these two statements.
and therein lies the problem.
I won't say all AGW deniers are ignorant and uneducated (some just lie, others have psychological issues), but I will say that all ignorant and undeducated folk tend to become AGW deniers.
Been there, done that, it is called the peer reviewed scientific literature. A literature which you have absolutely no idea where to find, or how to read if you found it.
No, the only dead duck around here is your intelligence and evidence you present. Until you can cite the peer reviewed scientific literature, you are nothing but an idjit, and you show that with each attitude filled post. After all, since you have no evidence, you must have attitude, or you have nothing. Even with the attitude, you have nothing, but your inane opinions.
Broboxley, I think that it is a mistake to prejudge the best tactic for reducing CO2 emissions. Rather, let's start with a goal: We have to make the cost of fossil fuels reflect the environmental damage they cause. This could be done with a carbon tax or with a cap and trade scheme.
I would suggest that a carbon tax could be used to subsidize energy conservation measures, research into alternative energy and other mitigation schemes and to offset the adverse effect on poor consumers who would otherwise be hardest hit by such a tax. The disadvantage here is that legislative bodies can easily be bought by moneyed interests.
The advantage of a cap and trade scheme is that it would reward those who work hardest to decrease emissions. You are well aware of the pitfalls of such a scheme (e.g. effective enforcement and quality control for offsets). However, it is the most market friendly scheme if you can get it to work.
I am agnostic on such policies. What matters is their effectiveness.
Quick quiz: which year had the warmest May; 2009, 2000, 1990 or 1980? Here's a graph from an Alarmist web-site to help you out:
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2010/02/graph-of-day-uah-globally-avera…
I see Quirky still doesn't comprehend the concept of the peer reviewed literature, so whatever he posts is totally and utterly irrelevant, as it isn't real evidence. What a loser. Can't even present proper evidence. One would think he is an idjit.
@broboxley #138: You're still not arguing against cap-and-trade with that. You're arguing for legislative reform. The problem with using a tax to induce change to which an industry is already averse is that you are encouraging rampant fraud; there is no financial recourse other than making stockholders feel more punished. Beyond that, taxation isn't self-correcting the way markets tend to be, because you don't have balancing economic pressures.
@Al B. Quirky #139: You are an unadulterated idiot. According to rape statistics, there is overwhelming evidence that you are probably not a rapist - but that's just rhetoric, not proof. There is a 95% chance (give or take a percentage point) you aren't a rapist, but that's just a glorified opinion. Some may argue that you aren't a rapist, but I will keep an open mind until evidence turns up. After all, there is no concrete evidence that you aren't a rapist. The onus in upon you to prove your innocence. Get started.
Do you see how abusing statistics doesn't actually work in your favor, moron? Oh, you probably don't.
You do realize that most of the IPCC's predictions are for the end of this century, don't you? They can't have occurred yet because time travel still isn't possible, dumbass. But even the short-term predictions would be subject to a large degree of statistical error. What, you were expecting the IPCC to make an exact prediction for next year? Only a fool would believe that such a thing is possible.
Wrong. The arctic glaciers are actually melting faster than the IPCC's predictions, says the NOAA. You might have caught that if you had pulled your head out of your ass for long enough to look. It took me a one-minute Google query to find that.
Again, most of the IPCC's predictions are for the end of this century. Sea levels are subject to a large statistical variability because there is a natural variation from year to year, partially due to weather patterns, terrestrial storage of rainfall, the moon's orbit, and the fact that the Earth's days don't fit entirely within the solar cycle. Again, you are a fool to think any short-term predictions would be accurate.
Only the French, Matt Penfold, and Rorschach put a space in front of a question mark :-þ
Dude, it's only science. Science cannot prove, only disprove.
Dude, that's weather, not climate.
What we're worrying about is the global average annual temperature over 30-year intervals.
I see the IPCC doesn't comprehend the concept of the peer reviewed literature, so whatever they report is totally and utterly irrelevant, as it isn't real evidence. What a bunch of losers. Can't even present proper evidence. One would think they're idjits.
Do you not get the concept of GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE, moron? One year of averaged temperatures isn't a trend. If you had read the graph and presented the data honestly, you would have had to admit that the general trendline of the graph is toward an increased global temperature. And if you had read the blog post below it, you would understand why that is so.
@#146
ahhhh, 1980 was 30 years ago..
Wow. For an organization that publishes peer-reviewed liturature, that's quite interesting. For that matter, I suppose you didn't see that little part at the end of the IPPC's report that shows references cited from peer-reviewed literature as well. I think it's you that doesn't understand the concept of peer-reviewed literature.
Then I have to ask, what would be real, proper evidence? Does the Earth have to warm to the point where we reach global catastrophe before you'll believe in global warming? If so, you are a moron.
One would think the same of you, given your demonstrable intellectual dishonesty and logically inconsistent rambling about a topic about which you clearly know nothing.
How does picking arbitrary, select months in a graph that shows a small overall increase in temperature translate into a refutation of the trend?
A clear sign that Quirky is unclear on the whole concept. Weather is what we get. This year the weather has been snowier than usual in Chiwaukee. But, it takes 30 years of weather to begin to talk about climate, which is the average of the weather over that longer period of time. 30 years is considered the point where weather averages can become climate. So Quirky only talks about the weather. We talk about the climate. What a loser.
@#151
The graph shows nothing other than natural variations; the only stand-out feature being the El Nino peak of 1998 - a natural event. If you plot a steadily-rising graph of atmospheric CO2 against this graph, you will see there's no correlation. Any perceived 'anthropogenic' warming from this graph is purely imaginary.
Man, are you making yourself ridiculous.
Yes. Weather is a natural event. How odd. Did you know it also rains in the desert sometimes? The more you know...
Even AGW denialists disagree with you. So does the US Government. Try again, dumbass.
And any perceived intelligence from your argument is purely imaginary as well.
Quirky, quit lying to yourself, so you can quit lying to us. Your "evidence" is trash. Try hitting the true scientific literature, found in institution of higher learning world-wide, not denialist sites. You might even learn you are an ignorant twit in the process.
Sorry. I think I should have written "yearly" instead of "annual".
Take all temperatures of the world throughout an entire year. Bin them. Draw the average of that huge pool. That's the global average temperature of that year. Plot these averages, these global annual average temperatures, and – on a 30-year scale – you'll see a warming trend that is statistically significant, which means that the chance that it's a random fluke is less than 5 % ( = 1 in 20).
One great thing about these threads is that there is a lot of food for my killfile. It's always good to be able to feed it with anti-scientists like the deniers here on this thread.
Oh, and great work in providing actual facts people - not that it will help on the deniers here, but perhaps it will convince any lurkers on the fence.
Al B. Quirky,
Do you know what is a regression analysis? If you'd perform it on this data set, you'd clearly see that a stand-out feature is a warming trend, as predicted from steadily-rising atmospheric CO2.
Al B. Quirky says, "If you plot a steadily-rising graph of atmospheric CO2 against this graph, you will see there's no correlation."
Oh dear. Well, Al, I think it helps to actually understand the science. You'd then understand that CO2 forcing is proportional to ln(CO2(t)/CO2(t=0)). When you do that, you find that CO2 explains nearly 80% of the variation in temperature over the past 30 years. Do the math, Al, but do it in a way that makes sense in terms of the science.
Al B. Quirky, regarding peer review. Actually those who contribute to the IPCC summary are quite well versed in what peer review means and what it doesn't. Thus, where there are relevant, peer-reviewed studies, they cite them.
However, where there are no relevant peer-reviewed studies, the rules of the game do not preclude citing so-called grey literature. These are usually government reports--which cannot be peer reviewed but which are usually reliable--and sometimes studies by public policy groups. These are usually cited for working groups 2 and 3, where there are fewer peer-reviewed journals. This is actually fine, since the emphasis for these groups is risk analysis, and the first step for that process is simply to bound the potential consequences of a threat. As long as the bound doesn't dominate the risk, it isn't important that it be tremendously accurate.
Al B. Quirky:
Conveniently ignoring May 2007, May 2005, May 2003, May 2002, May 2001, etc. Also known as proof by shameless cherry-picking.
Er, didn't really help us tell which months were May. Bit too hard to pick out from that graph. It did help us out however but probably not in the way you suggested.
Al B. Quirky blathered:
Ignoring your misuse of the word 'prove' because you are proudly ignorant of how science works, let me say that the scientists had met their responsibility to show the mechanism and the evidence. Too bad you have spend so much time in a position that does not allow you to read and learn that you are incapable of learning about it.
Are you the same Al that makes a fool of himself on the Washington Monthly site?
What's really hilarious about this is that this is right after the credibility of Bjorn Lomborg, the guru of the Exxon-Mobil climate-change denialist set, was spanked quite conclusively, as PZ pointed out last week.
In a just world - or at least a world where our corporate mass media doesn't fear offending a major advertiser such as an oil megacompany - this would have been the lead story on every TV network and front-page news in every major paper. (You know, the same papers and networks that uncritically ran with the Exxon-Mobil-funded denialists' trumpeting their versions of the stolen e-mails?)
Let me get this straight. What Phil Jones is saying is that the warming trend from 1995-2009 is not signigigant at the 95% confidence level but it is signifigant at close to that level say 90%. So that this "Journalist" by leaving out the context left wiggle room for the unwary to conclude that no signifigant global warming had occurred at all by NOT explaining what Phil Jones meant by statistically signifigant. I've never been impressed by how Journalists ussually report science. Here is one more flagrant example.
Why are you debating this? Any action against human caused global warming is dead, in the US anyway. Some rightwingers toes got cold, so global warming is a fraud, and that's the end of it.
Unfortunately, climate change is precisely the sort of problem evolution has not equipped us to deal with. The most severe consequences are decades away. However, they are extremely severe (possibly, in conjunction with overpopulation, causing the end of human civilization) and it is quite possible that we could find any year now that we are past the point of no return.
The thing is that our brains are hardwired to underestimate risks in the future (e.g. due to smoking) while exaggerating risks that seem imminent (e.g. terrorism). And when we are confronted with things that scare us that we cannot resolve immediately, we tend to rationalize them away (no need to worry about death, because the sky pixie sent his only begotten son...).
I had hoped that science could become a tool that would force us to pay attention to unpleasant truths and deal with them before they wiped us out. That's not working out too well. I'm reaching the conclusion that humans are simply too stupid to survive in the long term.
I'm reaching the conclusion that humans are simply too stupid to survive in the long term.
reached that conclusion 15 years ago.
solution:
move yourself to lower population areas every 10 years or so.
It doesn't actually solve the underlying problem, but at least it gives you the illusions needed to enjoy life for a while longer.
New Zealand is like living in CA circa 40 years ago.
in 20 years or less, it will be just as fucked... then I think I'll spend some time living in French Polynesia.
yeah, that's the ticket.
RUN!!!!!
:)
This isn't a debate so much as it's a trouncing of a couple of lying morons who can't even be bothered to look up the facts. You know, like a one-minute Google search performed by a five-year-old.
Accepting defeat on an issue like this one is a great way to ensure that nothing happens to avert disaster - at least, not until it's already too late to do so. Then who do we blame for the problem? Is it the rightwinger we let have the final lie, or ourselves because we let them have it? It's certainly not the end of the issue. Not by a long shot.
"The denialist freak parade won't end until they all learn how to read..."
So true.
@#168
'Unfortunately, climate change is precisely the sort of problem evolution has not equipped us to deal with.'
There you go. You just can't put your faith in evolution.
'The most severe consequences are decades away. However, they are extremely severe (possibly, in conjunction with overpopulation, causing the end of human civilization) and it is quite possible that we could find any year now that we are past the point of no return.'
We're dooOOOooomed!
'The thing is that our brains are hardwired to underestimate risks in the future (e.g. due to smoking) while exaggerating risks that seem imminent (e.g. terrorism).'
Nah. No such thing as September 11...
'And when we are confronted with things that scare us that we cannot resolve immediately, we tend to rationalize them away (no need to worry about death, because the sky pixie sent his only begotten son...)'
Bloody Christians. Why can't they worry like us normal people?
'I had hoped that science could become a tool that would force us to pay attention to unpleasant truths and deal with them before they wiped us out. That's not working out too well.'
You mean, Science = Epic Fail?
Ye of little faith!
'I'm reaching the conclusion that humans are simply too stupid to survive in the long term.'
Ah, well. Species are going extinct all the time. Get over it.
ABQ, your sniping gibes don't hide your implicit acknowledgement of every point.
But then, you're in denial about being in denial.
Sometimes it seems like people think the infra-red absorption spectrum of CO2 is politically dependent. Except that the ones screaming about politics, emails etc. don't seem to understand the concept of infra-red absorption anyway- or that the earth is warmed by the Sun. Maybe we should just start the conversation with "You know how it's warmer during the day than during the night?"
Putting Co2 into the atmosphere tends to warm the planet. This is about as scientifically controversial as the proposition that pushing things off cliffs tends to make them fall. Sheesh.
Actually, Al B. Moron, it's folks like you that have taught me that the species is doomed. I think all by your lonesome, you bring the average human IQ down by a point.
Humans are the way we are because it was favored by the environment in which we evolved. However, that environment did not include 9-10 billion people consuming, polluting and depleting resources. If we are to survive, we must develop ways to overcome the weaknesses in our evolutionary heritage. Science is one way to do this, except that many people (e.g. YOU) are simply too stupid to understand that science is useful. And the irony is that you use an astounding product of science (the computer) to proclaim your ignorance.
Dammit... I missed all the fun. It's funny watching denialists come in here with parroted talking points that they are barely literate enough to read, nevermind understand, then watch the arguments fall apart with actual referenced data and science, and ultimately collapse into complete and utter barely coherent nonsense, like our friend Quirky here, who is making a strong push for "Stupidest Person on the Internet".
You can do it! Just a couple more completely insane rantings like #172 and you'll have it wrapped up.
Don't worry, any day now they will go back to screeching about global cooling and the coming ice age like they did in the 70s.
abcdefg@177
Ah another denialist turd who thinks Newsweek is a scientific publication.
Is name calling all you have?
I just love the way he avoids why "nuclear winter" was put out as an idea. Global cooling was expected to be the result of an exchange of nuclear bombs, which would create a large amount of particles very high into the atmosphere. It had nothing to do with regular climate effects. Even then, the carbon dioxide was known to be going up, and scientists were beginning to look into the effects. And IIRC, beginning to see a rise in climate temps. What a wasted post by a cut/paste illiterate.
Why bother with actual knowledge on a subject when you can instead have ignorant sound bites about which you know nothing.
That's far lazier and therefor preferable to many. Right abcdefg? I mean just look at the screen name... lazy...
Wrong. It was aerosols they were talking about, but why bother with facts when you can just make up talking points?
Your first post was a thoroughly vacuous "prediction" based on nothing, and your second was an admission that you are too profoundly lazy to even read a short comment thread, much less the peer-reviewed literature. But why bother with facts when you can just make up talking points?
Hey Naked Bunny, reading comprehension: get some.
Aerosols are particles small enough to remain airborne. If you had a modicum of intelligence, you would know that. So, your effort to prove me wrong, proved me right. Want to play some more?
Clearly you have a very rudimentary, sound-bite driven knowledge of this event...
Here... learn something...
You know, abcdefg, the really funny thing about your post is that you don't even realize that the whole episode you are alluding to wound up providing support to a higher CO2 sensitivity.
The aerosols due to burning of fossil fuels really did cause significant lack of warming from 1944-1974--and if CO2 had not already been providing significant positive forcing, there would have been actual cooling.
This is now one of the dozen or so independent lines of evidence constraining CO2 sensitivity to the range 2.1-4.5 degrees per doubling--and they all favor about 3 degrees per doubling. That's pretty strong evidence, don't you think?
From a quick perusal of his/her posting, I'm going with "not very often".
bring your scuba gear, dude, because a a lot of the good parts will be submerged by then
Climate Gotterdammerung?
http://article.nationalreview.com/424508/climate-gtterdmmerung/the-edit…
Yeah, the National Review is totally my go-to publication for climatology.
Once more with feeling: the physical properties of CO2 do not change based on politics.
Some of these people have to be getting paid for this. I just can't believe so many could be so aggressively stupid and obdurately ignorant.
Jonathan Leake, are you serious?
He's only the most dishonest science journalist on the planet. Click through the links here:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jonathan_Leake
One of the most laughable was him claiming that Richard Dawkins had given "qualified support" for astrology:
http://www.rationalistinternational.net/article/20040608_en.html
Oh, and what part of "The head of the IPCC receives nothing for his work for a non-profit" do you not understand? How does claiming his non-profit receives money show me to wrong?
Swift-boating climatologists does not refute the science. Come back when you've found peer-reviewed literature which shows AGW to not be happening.
I have to agree with SC OM. Contributors on both sides of the argument seem to be resorting to no more than abuse (accusations of ignorance, illiteracy, stupidity and worse) and smears. In particular equating denialists with creationalists. Any evidence for this correlation, of course not, it is a risible suggestion.
What sort of people are you?
bellerophon,
Actually, if you look at the tactics of denialists, they are identical to those of creationists and other anti-science groups.
1)They are predominantly motivated by a belief system (libertarianism) to oppose science.
2)They concentrate on a tiny piece of the puzzle that they perceive (usually wrongly) to be a weak spot while refusing to even acknowledge the mountain of evidence against their position.
3)They exhibit little or no understanding of the real science, preferring instead to attack straw men of their own construction.
4)They shift arguments constantly and if pinned down move the goal.
5)They offer no coherent alternative theory that explains the evidence.
6)They attack basic tenets of the scientific method, such as peer review and scientific consensus.
I could go on, but hopefully, you get the picture. Some people (like Jimmy-boy above, who thinks evidently thinks National Review and Newsweek are scientific publications) are not educable. Whether they are creationists or anti-vaxxers of climate denialists, anti-science is anti-science.
bellerophon | March 2, 2010 5:35 AM:
Where did SC OM say any such thing?
bellerophon,
creationists and AGW denialists are both science denialists. They choose to ignore the wealth of scientific evidence in support of scientific claims, and focus instead on spreading misinformation, on a few hoaxes, on quote mining, on parroting stuff heard on talk radio... etc.
If science denialists had evidence disproving global warming or evolution, they would submit it to scientific conferences and peer reviewed publications. But they vastly prefer to resort to dishonest tactics and communicate via their own blogs and other corrupt media.
Oh, and they are victims of the Dunning-Kruger effect, they all believe in the illusory superiority of their arguments, reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.
Are you one of them ?
Buzz off. You're not agreeing with me, and you know it. You're an example of what I'm talking about, in fact.
Did I link to this here or on the earlier thread?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T4UF_Rmlio
Oh, well. Doean't hurt to again.
Bleh... I have absolutely no clue what the above two sentences mean. While I recognise that many people here have a relevant scientific background, and/or have spent years researching the science of climate change, it would be much appreciated if things like this could be explained (as far as this is possible) in plain English, for those of us who are non-scientists. On a non-specialist site like Pharyngula, it should ideally be possible for someone with no expertise in a subject to read an entire thread and follow the essence of the arguments.
Whenever I talk about my own field (law) on Pharyngula, I do my best to explain it in plain English accessible to non-lawyers, and to avoid the excessive use of technical terms and Latin phrases. It would be appreciated if scientists could do the same when discussing their field. I realise that climate science is very complex; but posting a jumbled mass of mathematics, without explaining what any of the letters represent, makes it even more opaque to laymen such as myself.
bring your scuba gear, dude, because a a lot of the good parts will be submerged by then
:)
fortunately, I find this to be a boon rather than a bane, given my interests.
Walton, ARIDS gave the way to calculate the temperature increase for climate warming based on the CO2 concentration at a given time (t=0, say 30 years ago), and a later time (say now, t). Take the ratio of the CO2 concentrations, then the natural log of the ratio, multiply by a factor, and you have explained 80% of the increase in temperature between the two times. A very effective demonstration of the fact that the global temperature is increasing as the carbon dioxide concentration increases.
Walton-
maybe this will help?
http://www.princeton.edu/~lam/documents/LamAug07bs.pdf
It explains in detail what all the jargon and figures denote, and how they are used to calculate the net amount of anthropogenic CO2 produced, and it's expected effect on overall climate.
Walton, the ln sign is for logarithm ( check the wikipedia article on logarithms for the math background ). The CO2 forcing is the temperature rise, of the earth as a whole, caused by increased atmospheric CO2. It happens because the earth is heated by the sun (mostly by visible light) and cools off by emitting infra-red (heat) radiation. CO2 and H2O molecules can absorb infra-red radiation; so when they are in the atmosphere, it's harder for heat to leave the planet and so the planet is warmer.
The logarithmic dependance means that if there's a certain amount of CO2 in the atmosphere now, amount A, and then we increase the amount of CO2 to a bigger amount B, the increase in temperature is proportional to the logarithm of B/A, not directly proportionaly to B/A. Climate science indicates a CO2 sensitity of about 2 or 3 degrees C. So doubling the atmospheric CO2 from its pre-industrial level (270 parts per million) would warm the globe by 2 or 3 degrees C, ceteris paribus, and doubling it again would warm the globe by another 2 or 3 degrees C.
At the moment we've burned enough fossil CO2 to increase the atmospheric level by a factor of about 1.2,; the logarithm ln(1.2) is about 0.2 ; that times the forcing is about 0.5 degrees C. Compared to pre-industrial temperatures the globe has actually warmed by rather more than that (see for example http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/ ).
Did that help at all? I may be moving into science writing and it's good to practice.
... sorry i can't condense it any better than that.
my brain is still filled with the products of a malfunctioning liver and drugs from yet another surgery.
holy fuck I wish this nightmare would end already.
Our sympathies are with you, Ichthyic. Keep breathing.
ty.
If I manage to get the energy tomorrow, I'll be posting about it on my facebook page. I need to update that thing anyway.
Walton,
I'll try to explain what ARAIDS wrote in laymen terms. Let me know if it's understandable.
First, a definition :
Radiative forcing is a measure of the influence a factor has in altering the balance of incoming and outgoing energy in the Earth-atmosphere system and is an index of the importance of the factor as a potential climate change mechanism (as defined by the IPCC).
So for instance CO2 forcing is an index of the importance that changes in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will have as a climate change mechanism.
It can be used to estimate a subsequent change in equilibrium surface temperature arising from said radiative forcing. Temperature change is proportional to the forcing, via a factor called climate sensitivity.
For a greenhouse gas (eg CO2), radiative forcing can be calculated as a function of changing concentration of said gas. A first order approximation is such that the relationship between changes in carbon dioxide concentrations and radiative forcing is logarithmic so that increased concentrations have a progressively smaller warming effect. In other words, a doubling of CO2 gives a more or less constant tempererature change.
When one calculates all the forcings (anthropogenic and not), one finds that CO2 forcing counts for approximately 80% of the variation in temperature over the past 30 years.
Which clearly shows the importance of C02 emmissions as a climate change agent.
Walton | March 2, 2010 6:48 AM:
a_ray_in_dilbert_space | February 28, 2010 5:18 PM:
CO2(t=0) : Atmospheric concentration of CO2 (in parts per million by volume) before the change in CO2.
CO2(t) : Atmospheric concentration of CO2 after a change in CO2 concentration.
Here, CO2 concentration is being modeled as a function of time. For example, if t was in years since 1750, CO2(t=0) would be about 280 ppm, and CO2(t=259) would be 386 ppm. Thus, CO2(t=259)/CO2(t=0) would be 386/280, or 1.38 .
ln() is the natural logarithm function. The interesting property of a logarithm function (natural or otherwise) is doubling the input value increases the result value by a fixed amount. ln(5) = 1.6 . ln(10) = 2.3 . That's a difference of 0.7. And ln(20) is 3.0 . Again, a difference of 0.7 . See wikipedia for a nice graph.
Between values of about 100 ppm and about 3000 ppm, the forcing(1) on climate of a change in CO2 concentration is more or less proportional to the logarithm. This means that doubling the concentration of CO2 increases the forcing by a fixed amount. Roughly speaking, doubling CO2 results in a radiative forcing of 3.7 Watts per square meter(2). If ice sheets and the carbon cycle are ignored (as per Charney sensitivity), this would result in a warming of about 3 C (5.4 F) . If CO2 were doubled again, for a total of 4 times the original CO2 concentration, the total forcing would be 7.4 W/m^2 (not the 14.8 W/m^2 a linear function would result in), and about 6 C of warming would result, again ignoring ice sheets and the carbon cycle. And that's why a_ray_in_dilbert_space wanted to use the ln() function.
(0) If log2(x) is the logarithm base 2 of x, log2(x) = ln(x) / ln(2) .
(1) See also wikipedia definition .
(2) Here I use the wikipedia formula 5.35 * ln(CO2(t)/CO2(0)) . which comes from Myre 1998. However - IPCC AR4 has 1.66 W/m^2 for current CO2 forcing, using 379 ppm for 2005 CO2 and 280 ppm for 1750 CO2. This implies 5.48 * ln(CO2(t)/CO2(0)) might be a better approximation. In any case the logarithmic formula is only a simplified approximation; it is not what modern climate models typically use.
Wow- Zerg rush on the logarithms.
Also relevant, BPL wrote a nice article showing CO2 and temperature are correlated over the 1880 to 2007 period.
Walton,
Sorry for goin' all technical on you. It is actually an important point though that CO2 forcing is logarithmic in CO2 concentration.
Personally, I think that learning a bit more about basic mathematical functions, etc. would enhance your enjoyment of this blog and of science in particular. I'd be happy to try and provide references for you if you are ever interested.
@#210
Wow. All those logarithms, and the 'interpolated' value for 1964 and the adjusted regression coefficients using a factor called the "estimated autocorrelation coefficient of the residuals", for a (lees than) 100% probability of a link between CO2 and temperature (measured in centiKelvins). Even if we accept that there is a significant correlation, the question of whether the warming itself is significant, is another matter. Oh, that's where the thread started.
@#203
So the Copenhagen accord, in promising to limit warming to 2degC, is effectively a promise to (roughly) double current CO2 levels. Suits me.
Quirky still has nothing cogent to say, no evidence, just attitude. Yawn. The inanity of his posts keeps right on coming.
@#213
If you don't like my attitude, you can shove it up yer ass.
Oh, Al, Al, Al, you're so lost. Uh, actually there is a 100% probability of a link between CO2 and temperature, because smart people have known CO2 is a greenhouse gas since about 1850. What BPL has shown is that CO2 explains about 78% of the variation in temperature over the past 130 years. And the rest of the variation is random, short-term fluctuation.
And, warming over the past 30 years (the time needed to determine a climatic trend with confidence) is quite significant. What is more, we are also in for a lot more warming than we've seen to date. Because we have to warm the oceans down to several hundred meters and that takes decades, it takes at least 30 years to approach equilibrium. We expect about another half degree of warming to reach equilibrium. But if you'd bothered to learn any of the science you oppose, you'd know this already.
Just let us know if you ever get tired of demolishing straw men of your own devising, Al.