jkoci
Watcher of the Skies
True. They should have an open mind as well. Think about the UFO phenomenon.
-
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True. They should have an open mind as well. Think about the UFO phenomenon.
Science has had enough.
Bottom line- within a year or two, all the unwarranted criticism of AGW science (and the IPCC) will be forgotten, new proofs and science will be brought forward and the IPCC will tighten up and continue in some form or another. One could go so far as to say that the past few months are, in the long view, the best thing that's happened to climate science in a while - probably overdue in the eyes of many. Obama has just requested more funding for the scientific study of Climate than it has ever seen before in the US (much to the chagrin of most conservatards) and science will march on. In the meantime, you'll note that scientist, not normally known as a feisty bunch, are getting a bit fed up...
This letter is available at: Research School SENSE > Open letter by Dutch scientists on IPCC and errors in Climate Report 2007
February 10th, 2010
Open letter by Netherlands scientists on IPCC and errors in Climate Change 2007 report
Errors in the IPCC climate change report are being seized by some to discredit climate science. In the Netherlands parliament climate scientists have recently been depicted as 'swindlers' and 'climate mafia'. Such allegations are not supported by the facts and are unwarranted. The fact that IPCC is not infallible does not make its key findings untrue or biased. Still, IPCC should become more generous in acknowledging errors rapidly and openly. With this open letter from the Netherlands scientific community, we aim to adjust the image that has emerged. We ask to keep the public debate more in accordance to the facts. We discuss the key messages from climate science, the IPCC procedures and the quality control mechanisms of the IPCC. Finally we explain what we will do next to contribute to improvement of the IPCC practice and to the restoration of the tarnished trust in climate science.
The climate problem
Since 1990, our knowledge on human made climate change and the understanding of its urgency have rapidly increased. Within the natural sciences, the major components of the climate system are well understood. It is a well established fact that the amount of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased rapidly since the industrial revolution. The major influence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere on the temperature on the ground is a matter of elementary physics. The increasing amounts of anthropogenic greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere change the heat radiation balance of the earth, which very likely leads to higher temperatures on the ground. Measurements consistently show a world wide temperature increase of about half a degree Centigrade over the past century. The measured temperature increase lags several decades behind the changes in atmospheric composition: with present day greenhouse gas concentrations the temperature is expected to further increase by at least 1°C in the coming decades.
The increase in greenhouse gas concentrations is mainly caused by the way in which coal, oil and natural gas are being used and by deforestation. Major uncertainties exist regarding future greenhouse gas emissions and their impacts. Studies by reputable research groups show that projected emissions of greenhouse gases may lead to a further warming of 1,1 to 6,4°C by the year 2100 (relative to the period 1980-1999). Given the fact that the climate system exhibits tipping points, this may lead to partly unpredictable and possibly far reaching and irreversible impacts on society and nature. The Copenhagen Accord acknowledges that dangerous human interference with the climate should be prevented. For that reason governments agreed that global warming should be limited to 2°C at maximum (compared to the preindustrial climate). Research has shown that this is economically and technically feasible with emission reduction measures and changes in consumption patterns. The IPCC and the Fourth Assessment Report In 1988 the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with the aim to provide policy makers regularly with a balanced overview of the state of knowledge on climate change. IPCC is an open network organization in which renowned scientist from all over the world collaborate. These scientists are mainly from universities – including most of the Dutch universities – and research institutes such as in our country the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL).
At present 194 countries participate in the IPCC, including the Netherlands. IPCC publishes an assessment report every six years. The most recent was published in 2007. This report comprises three volumes: The Physical Science Basis (Working Group I); Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (Working Group II) and Mitigation of Climate Change (Working Group III). The 2007 report has been authored by about 44 writing teams with a total of 450 lead authors. These authors have been selected on the basis of their expertise. All 194 countries have a say in this selection. Another 800 scientists have contributed texts on specific aspects. The whole process is supported by four Technical Support Units (TSUs) with 5 to 10 employees each.
Errors in the Fourth Assessment Report
We took cognizance of the commotion surrounding the errors that were found in the IPCC fourth assessment report, in particular in volume II. The wrong year for the projected disappearance of the Himalaya glaciers and the wrong percentage ‘land below sea level’ of the Netherlands are examples of errors that need be acknowledge frankly and need be rectified properly. However, they do not alter the key finding that human beings are very likely changing the climate, with far reaching impacts in the long run.
In heated debates that emerged around these errors, questions have been raised regarding the quality and integrity of the IPCC. The quality control procedure of IPCC has shown not to be watertight. But the suggestion that scientific data have deliberately been manipulated is not supported by the facts. Also we strongly contest the impression that the main conclusions of the report are based on dubious sources. The reference list of the approximately three thousand page report refers to about 18,000 sources, the large majority being studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The IPCC has transparent procedures1 for using non-published and non-peer-reviewed sources in their reports. In the Himalaya case these procedures have not properly been followed. In the writing of new reports the compliance with the procedure requires extra attention.
Quality control within the IPCC
The impression that the IPCC does not have a proper quality control procedure is mistaken. The procedure for compiling reports and its quality control are governed by well documented principles2. These principles are reviewed regularly and amended as appropriate. On a website all steps of each chapter can be traced: the First Order Draft, the comments by many scientist on that draft, the Second Order Draft in which the comments are incorporated and the comments by experts and country representatives on that revised version. In the case of the Fourth Assessment Report, 2,500 reviewers provided together about 90,000 comments on the 44 chapters. For each comment it is documented how and why the comment has or has not been used in the revision. Review editors guarantee that each comment is treated properly and honestly in the revision of the chapter texts. As completion of the procedure, once they are satisfied with the result, review editors sign a statement in this regard. The IPCC principles also govern how authors have to treat non-published and nonpeer reviewed sources. These procedures acknowledge that in peer reviewed scientific journals little information can be found regarding matters such as the emission reduction potential in a given industrial sector or in a country or regarding vulnerabilities of sectors and countries with regard to climate change. Such information can often only be found in reports from research institutes, reports of workshops and conferences or in publications from the industry or other organizations, the so-called gray literature. The IPCC procedure prescribes that authors are obliged to critically assess any gray source that they wish to include. The quality and validity of a finding from a non-peer reviewed source needs to be verified before the finding may be included in a chapter text. Each source needs to be completely traceable. In case unpublished sources are used, a copy needs to be made available to the IPCC secretariat to guarantee that it is available upon request for third parties. We conclude that the IPCC procedures are transparent and thorough, even though they are not infallible. The writing of IPCC reports and its quality control remains the work of humans. A guarantee for an error free report is an unachievable ideal, however much an error free report is highly desired. It is however essential to continuously evaluate the IPCC principles and procedures and to amend them where appropriate and learn from errors that occurred.
What next?
Meanwhile, as a consequence of the impression that has emerged from the – in our view – disproportionate commotion, public trust in the scientific underpinning of climate policies is now tarnished. This is worrying because the climate change issue is serious and urgent. Despite the errors found, the robust key conclusions of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report that we sketched above, remain valid. IPCC should become more generous in acknowledging errors rapidly and openly. To this end, IPCC should put an erratum on its website that rectifies all errors that have been discovered in the text after publication. In doing so, a clear distinction needs to be made between errors and progressing knowledge. Progressing knowledge is published in new scientific journal articles and used in the next IPCC climate report; this information should not be in the errata. Climate research and the IPCC reports on the state of knowledge provide a scientific foundation for climate policy making. We consider the quality of and balance in the knowledge delivered and the explicit communication of uncertainties to be of paramount importance, as IPCC does. Given the recent commotion we find it important to seek for ways to find a solution and restore trust in the climate change community. We will do our best to make sure that a critical evaluation of the IPCC procedure will take place – where possible in close consultation with the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). This should lead to both a better prevention of errors in IPCC reports and a mechanism for adequate rectification of errors found after publication.
February 10, 2010
The undersigned
01. Prof. Wim Turkenburg, Utrecht University
02. Prof. Rik Leemans, Wageningen University
03. Prof. Hans Opschoor, Institute of Social Studies, Den Haag
04. Dr. Bert Metz, European Climate Foundation / former co-chair IPCC Working Group III
05. Prof. Rien Aerts, Free University of Amsterdam
06. Prof. Theo Beckers, Tilburg University
07. Prof. Frans Berkhout, Free University of Amsterdam
08. Prof. Frank Biermann, Free University of Amsterdam
09. Prof. Kornelis Blok, general director Ecofys, Utrecht / Utrecht University
10. Prof. Henk Brinkhuis, Utrecht University
11. Dr. Stefan Dekker, Utrecht University
12. Prof. Peter Driessen, Utrecht University
13. Prof. Klaas van Egmond, Utrecht University
14. Prof. Nick van de Giesen, TU Delft
15. Prof. Joyeeta Gupta, Free University of Amsterdam
16. Prof. Jan Hendriks, Radboud University Nijmegen
17. Dr. Ton Hoff, chairing director ECN, Petten
18. Prof. Bert Holtslag, Wageningen University
19. Prof. Jef Huisman, University of Amsterdam
20. Dr. Gjalt Huppes, Leiden University
21. Prof. Bart van den Hurk, Utrecht University / KNMI
22. Prof. Ekko van Ierland, Wageningen University
23. Dr. Ron Janssen, Free University of Amsterdam
24. Prof. Pavel Kabat, Wageningen University
25. Prof. Karsten Kalbitz, University of Amsterdam
26. Prof. Gert Jan Kramer, Eindhoven University of Technology
27. Prof. Carolien Kroeze, Wageningen University / Open University Netherlands
28. Prof. Maarten Krol, Wageningen University
29. Dr. Lambert Kuijpers, Eindhoven University of Technology
30. Dr. Lucas Lourens, Utrecht University
31. Prof. Pim Martens, Maastricht University
32. Prof. Arthur Mol, Wageningen University
33. Prof. Henri Moll, University of Groningen
34. Prof. Paul Opdam, Wageningen University
35. Prof. Paquita Perez Salgado, Open University Netherlands
36. Dr. Ad Ragas, Radboud University Nijmegen
37. Dr. Max Rietkerk, Utrecht University
38. Prof. Lucas Reijnders, University of Amsterdam
39. Prof. Jan Rotmans, Erasmus University Rotterdam
40. Prof. Paul van Seters, Tilburg University
41. Prof. Anton Schoot Uiterkamp, University of Groningen
42. Dr. Appy Sluijs, Utrecht University
43. Prof. Geert de Snoo, Leiden University
44. Prof. Gert Spaargaren, Wageningen University
45. Dr. Rob Swart, Wageningen University
46. Prof. Jef Vandenberghe, Free University of Amsterdam
47. Prof. Anne van der Veen, Twente University
48. Prof. Pier Vellinga, Wageningen University
49. Prof. Herman Verhoef, Free University of Amsterdam
50. Dr. Pita Verweij, Utrecht University
51. Prof. Martin Wassen, Utrecht University
52. Prof. Pieter Winsemius, Tilburg University
53. Prof. Ernst Worrell, Utrecht University
54. Prof. Sjoerd van der Zee, Wageningen University
55. Prof. Bert van der Zwaan, Utrecht University
Professional support for the Open Letter
Prof Aviel Verbruggen, University of Antwerp, Belgium Prof Priyadarshi R. Shukla, Indian Institute of Management, India
Prof John Scales Avery, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Dr Seguin Bernard, INRA, France
Dr Andrei Kirilenko, University of North Dakota, United States
Dr Alexander Gershenson, San Jose State University, United States
Dr Gary Herstein, Ellis University, United States
1 http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles.pdf and http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles-appendix-a.pdf
2 http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/publications/AR4/ar4review.html
http://www.sense.nl/openletter
Bottom line- within a year or two, all the unwarranted criticism of AGW science (and the IPCC) will be forgotten, new proofs and science will be brought forward and the IPCC will tighten up and continue in some form or another. One could go so far as to say that the past few months are, in the long view, the best thing that's happened to climate science in a while - probably overdue in the eyes of many. Obama has just requested more funding for the scientific study of Climate than it has ever seen before in the US (much to the chagrin of most conservatards) and science will march on. In the meantime, you'll note that scientist, not normally known as a feisty bunch, are getting a bit fed up...
This letter is available at: Research School SENSE > Open letter by Dutch scientists on IPCC and errors in Climate Report 2007
February 10th, 2010
Open letter by Netherlands scientists on IPCC and errors in Climate Change 2007 report
Errors in the IPCC climate change report are being seized by some to discredit climate science. In the Netherlands parliament climate scientists have recently been depicted as 'swindlers' and 'climate mafia'. Such allegations are not supported by the facts and are unwarranted. The fact that IPCC is not infallible does not make its key findings untrue or biased. Still, IPCC should become more generous in acknowledging errors rapidly and openly. With this open letter from the Netherlands scientific community, we aim to adjust the image that has emerged. We ask to keep the public debate more in accordance to the facts. We discuss the key messages from climate science, the IPCC procedures and the quality control mechanisms of the IPCC. Finally we explain what we will do next to contribute to improvement of the IPCC practice and to the restoration of the tarnished trust in climate science.
The climate problem
Since 1990, our knowledge on human made climate change and the understanding of its urgency have rapidly increased. Within the natural sciences, the major components of the climate system are well understood. It is a well established fact that the amount of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased rapidly since the industrial revolution. The major influence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere on the temperature on the ground is a matter of elementary physics. The increasing amounts of anthropogenic greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere change the heat radiation balance of the earth, which very likely leads to higher temperatures on the ground. Measurements consistently show a world wide temperature increase of about half a degree Centigrade over the past century. The measured temperature increase lags several decades behind the changes in atmospheric composition: with present day greenhouse gas concentrations the temperature is expected to further increase by at least 1°C in the coming decades.
The increase in greenhouse gas concentrations is mainly caused by the way in which coal, oil and natural gas are being used and by deforestation. Major uncertainties exist regarding future greenhouse gas emissions and their impacts. Studies by reputable research groups show that projected emissions of greenhouse gases may lead to a further warming of 1,1 to 6,4°C by the year 2100 (relative to the period 1980-1999). Given the fact that the climate system exhibits tipping points, this may lead to partly unpredictable and possibly far reaching and irreversible impacts on society and nature. The Copenhagen Accord acknowledges that dangerous human interference with the climate should be prevented. For that reason governments agreed that global warming should be limited to 2°C at maximum (compared to the preindustrial climate). Research has shown that this is economically and technically feasible with emission reduction measures and changes in consumption patterns. The IPCC and the Fourth Assessment Report In 1988 the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with the aim to provide policy makers regularly with a balanced overview of the state of knowledge on climate change. IPCC is an open network organization in which renowned scientist from all over the world collaborate. These scientists are mainly from universities – including most of the Dutch universities – and research institutes such as in our country the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL).
At present 194 countries participate in the IPCC, including the Netherlands. IPCC publishes an assessment report every six years. The most recent was published in 2007. This report comprises three volumes: The Physical Science Basis (Working Group I); Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (Working Group II) and Mitigation of Climate Change (Working Group III). The 2007 report has been authored by about 44 writing teams with a total of 450 lead authors. These authors have been selected on the basis of their expertise. All 194 countries have a say in this selection. Another 800 scientists have contributed texts on specific aspects. The whole process is supported by four Technical Support Units (TSUs) with 5 to 10 employees each.
Errors in the Fourth Assessment Report
We took cognizance of the commotion surrounding the errors that were found in the IPCC fourth assessment report, in particular in volume II. The wrong year for the projected disappearance of the Himalaya glaciers and the wrong percentage ‘land below sea level’ of the Netherlands are examples of errors that need be acknowledge frankly and need be rectified properly. However, they do not alter the key finding that human beings are very likely changing the climate, with far reaching impacts in the long run.
In heated debates that emerged around these errors, questions have been raised regarding the quality and integrity of the IPCC. The quality control procedure of IPCC has shown not to be watertight. But the suggestion that scientific data have deliberately been manipulated is not supported by the facts. Also we strongly contest the impression that the main conclusions of the report are based on dubious sources. The reference list of the approximately three thousand page report refers to about 18,000 sources, the large majority being studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The IPCC has transparent procedures1 for using non-published and non-peer-reviewed sources in their reports. In the Himalaya case these procedures have not properly been followed. In the writing of new reports the compliance with the procedure requires extra attention.
Quality control within the IPCC
The impression that the IPCC does not have a proper quality control procedure is mistaken. The procedure for compiling reports and its quality control are governed by well documented principles2. These principles are reviewed regularly and amended as appropriate. On a website all steps of each chapter can be traced: the First Order Draft, the comments by many scientist on that draft, the Second Order Draft in which the comments are incorporated and the comments by experts and country representatives on that revised version. In the case of the Fourth Assessment Report, 2,500 reviewers provided together about 90,000 comments on the 44 chapters. For each comment it is documented how and why the comment has or has not been used in the revision. Review editors guarantee that each comment is treated properly and honestly in the revision of the chapter texts. As completion of the procedure, once they are satisfied with the result, review editors sign a statement in this regard. The IPCC principles also govern how authors have to treat non-published and nonpeer reviewed sources. These procedures acknowledge that in peer reviewed scientific journals little information can be found regarding matters such as the emission reduction potential in a given industrial sector or in a country or regarding vulnerabilities of sectors and countries with regard to climate change. Such information can often only be found in reports from research institutes, reports of workshops and conferences or in publications from the industry or other organizations, the so-called gray literature. The IPCC procedure prescribes that authors are obliged to critically assess any gray source that they wish to include. The quality and validity of a finding from a non-peer reviewed source needs to be verified before the finding may be included in a chapter text. Each source needs to be completely traceable. In case unpublished sources are used, a copy needs to be made available to the IPCC secretariat to guarantee that it is available upon request for third parties. We conclude that the IPCC procedures are transparent and thorough, even though they are not infallible. The writing of IPCC reports and its quality control remains the work of humans. A guarantee for an error free report is an unachievable ideal, however much an error free report is highly desired. It is however essential to continuously evaluate the IPCC principles and procedures and to amend them where appropriate and learn from errors that occurred.
What next?
Meanwhile, as a consequence of the impression that has emerged from the – in our view – disproportionate commotion, public trust in the scientific underpinning of climate policies is now tarnished. This is worrying because the climate change issue is serious and urgent. Despite the errors found, the robust key conclusions of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report that we sketched above, remain valid. IPCC should become more generous in acknowledging errors rapidly and openly. To this end, IPCC should put an erratum on its website that rectifies all errors that have been discovered in the text after publication. In doing so, a clear distinction needs to be made between errors and progressing knowledge. Progressing knowledge is published in new scientific journal articles and used in the next IPCC climate report; this information should not be in the errata. Climate research and the IPCC reports on the state of knowledge provide a scientific foundation for climate policy making. We consider the quality of and balance in the knowledge delivered and the explicit communication of uncertainties to be of paramount importance, as IPCC does. Given the recent commotion we find it important to seek for ways to find a solution and restore trust in the climate change community. We will do our best to make sure that a critical evaluation of the IPCC procedure will take place – where possible in close consultation with the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). This should lead to both a better prevention of errors in IPCC reports and a mechanism for adequate rectification of errors found after publication.
February 10, 2010
The undersigned
01. Prof. Wim Turkenburg, Utrecht University
02. Prof. Rik Leemans, Wageningen University
03. Prof. Hans Opschoor, Institute of Social Studies, Den Haag
04. Dr. Bert Metz, European Climate Foundation / former co-chair IPCC Working Group III
05. Prof. Rien Aerts, Free University of Amsterdam
06. Prof. Theo Beckers, Tilburg University
07. Prof. Frans Berkhout, Free University of Amsterdam
08. Prof. Frank Biermann, Free University of Amsterdam
09. Prof. Kornelis Blok, general director Ecofys, Utrecht / Utrecht University
10. Prof. Henk Brinkhuis, Utrecht University
11. Dr. Stefan Dekker, Utrecht University
12. Prof. Peter Driessen, Utrecht University
13. Prof. Klaas van Egmond, Utrecht University
14. Prof. Nick van de Giesen, TU Delft
15. Prof. Joyeeta Gupta, Free University of Amsterdam
16. Prof. Jan Hendriks, Radboud University Nijmegen
17. Dr. Ton Hoff, chairing director ECN, Petten
18. Prof. Bert Holtslag, Wageningen University
19. Prof. Jef Huisman, University of Amsterdam
20. Dr. Gjalt Huppes, Leiden University
21. Prof. Bart van den Hurk, Utrecht University / KNMI
22. Prof. Ekko van Ierland, Wageningen University
23. Dr. Ron Janssen, Free University of Amsterdam
24. Prof. Pavel Kabat, Wageningen University
25. Prof. Karsten Kalbitz, University of Amsterdam
26. Prof. Gert Jan Kramer, Eindhoven University of Technology
27. Prof. Carolien Kroeze, Wageningen University / Open University Netherlands
28. Prof. Maarten Krol, Wageningen University
29. Dr. Lambert Kuijpers, Eindhoven University of Technology
30. Dr. Lucas Lourens, Utrecht University
31. Prof. Pim Martens, Maastricht University
32. Prof. Arthur Mol, Wageningen University
33. Prof. Henri Moll, University of Groningen
34. Prof. Paul Opdam, Wageningen University
35. Prof. Paquita Perez Salgado, Open University Netherlands
36. Dr. Ad Ragas, Radboud University Nijmegen
37. Dr. Max Rietkerk, Utrecht University
38. Prof. Lucas Reijnders, University of Amsterdam
39. Prof. Jan Rotmans, Erasmus University Rotterdam
40. Prof. Paul van Seters, Tilburg University
41. Prof. Anton Schoot Uiterkamp, University of Groningen
42. Dr. Appy Sluijs, Utrecht University
43. Prof. Geert de Snoo, Leiden University
44. Prof. Gert Spaargaren, Wageningen University
45. Dr. Rob Swart, Wageningen University
46. Prof. Jef Vandenberghe, Free University of Amsterdam
47. Prof. Anne van der Veen, Twente University
48. Prof. Pier Vellinga, Wageningen University
49. Prof. Herman Verhoef, Free University of Amsterdam
50. Dr. Pita Verweij, Utrecht University
51. Prof. Martin Wassen, Utrecht University
52. Prof. Pieter Winsemius, Tilburg University
53. Prof. Ernst Worrell, Utrecht University
54. Prof. Sjoerd van der Zee, Wageningen University
55. Prof. Bert van der Zwaan, Utrecht University
Professional support for the Open Letter
Prof Aviel Verbruggen, University of Antwerp, Belgium Prof Priyadarshi R. Shukla, Indian Institute of Management, India
Prof John Scales Avery, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Dr Seguin Bernard, INRA, France
Dr Andrei Kirilenko, University of North Dakota, United States
Dr Alexander Gershenson, San Jose State University, United States
Dr Gary Herstein, Ellis University, United States
1 http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles.pdf and http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles-appendix-a.pdf
2 http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/publications/AR4/ar4review.html
http://www.sense.nl/openletter
Schuyler
Misanthrope
Science has had enough.
[FONT=times new roman,times]This is a great article from AT. I apologize for not including the graphs. The forum software limits images to 4. Here's the link: American Thinker: The AGW Smoking Gun I also found some interesting sociological information I will post later today. New computer coming today--in the nuck of time.
A key component of the scientific argument for anthropogenic global <nobr id="itxt_nobr_0_0" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; color: darkgreen;">warming</nobr> (AGW) has been disproven. The results are hiding in plain sight in peer-reviewed journals. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]Politicians and scientists still cling to the same hypothesis: Increased emission of CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub> into the atmosphere (by humans) is causing the Earth to warm at such a rate that it threatens our survival. The reality of our global [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]temperatures[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times], the failure of these catastrophic predictions to materialize, and the IPCC scandals all continue to cast serious doubt on that hypothesis. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The only rebuttal given by AGW proponents is that the scandals of the IPCC don't negate the science (i.e., unscrupulous behavior by a few don't negate the rock-solid science), so it seems that the only way to disprove the AGW hypothesis is to address problems with the science. Climate science is very complex, and AGW proponents dismiss the scientific arguments unless the data are contained in journal papers that are "[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]peer-reviewed[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]." [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]Three peer-reviewed journal contain data contradicting the AGW hypothesis. But before the journal papers are reviewed, here is a little background on the science.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]Greenhouse Effect[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] is real and necessary for life on Earth. Without it, our world would be a frozen ball that would not be hospitable for life as we know it. The harmful stuff (x-rays and gamma rays) is filtered out, but the light in the visible spectrum enters, and that light energy warms our Earth. The land and sea then respond to that warming energy by emitting light in the spectrum of the infrared (IR), and that energy takes the form of small packets of energy called [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]photons[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]. When those IR photons reach the atmosphere, some of them get absorbed by certain molecules, and that absorbed energy is transferred into the elements of the molecules. That energy causes the molecules to vibrate and heat the atmosphere, and finally, the atmosphere transfers some of that energy back to the Earth's surface. Again, this is necessary, because if we didn't have this blocking of IR wavelengths, our average temperatures on Earth would be about 32 degrees Celsius cooler (-18ºC instead of the current 14ºC). One of the greenhouse <nobr id="itxt_nobr_7_0" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; color: darkgreen;">gases</nobr> (GHG) that reflects these IR wavelengths is CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>, but there are others, such as water vapor, ozone (O<sub itxtvisited="1">3</sub>), methane (CH<sub itxtvisited="1">4</sub>), and CFCs. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The science behind the AGW hypothesis is that increased amounts of CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub> in the atmosphere (that humans produce by burning fossil <nobr id="itxt_nobr_10_0" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; color: darkgreen;">fuels</nobr>) will block more outgoing long-wave IR radiation (OLR) from exiting the atmosphere and thereby warm the surface. It is well-[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]known[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] that IR radiation causes [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] molecules to vibrate, but only at very specific wavelengths (wavelengths are the distances between peaks of each wave), and that wavelength is 15µm. (Fifteen µm means that each wavelength crests at a distance of 15 millionths of a meter.) As was discussed above, this vibration of the molecule causes it to heat and then radiate IR radiation back toward the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth. If the solar activity is taken to remain constant, more [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] in the atmosphere will trap more of the OLR, and thus cause a net heating of the planet. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]So what type of experiment could be performed to test this AGW hypothesis? If there were <nobr id="itxt_nobr_13_0" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; color: darkgreen;">satellites</nobr> in orbit monitoring the emission of OLR over time at the same location, then OLR could be measured in a very controlled manner. If, over time, the emission of OLR in the wavelengths that [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] absorbs decreases over time, then that would prove the AGW hypothesis (i.e., that OLR is being absorbed by [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] and heating the planet instead of being emitted from the atmosphere). But what if, over time (say, over thirty years), the <nobr id="itxt_nobr_15_0" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; color: darkgreen;">emissions</nobr> of OLR wavelengths that [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] absorb remained constant? That would disprove the hypothesis and put the AGW argument to bed. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]As luck would have it, that experiment has actually been performed! Three journal papers report the data from three monitoring satellites that have measured the OLR of 1997 and 2006 and compared those measurements to 1970, and they are located [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]here[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times], [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]here[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times], and [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]here[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]There were three different experiments performed in space to measure OLR emissions. The Infrared Interferometer Spectrometer (IRIS) was performed in 1970, the Interferometer Monitor of Greenhouse Gases (IMG) was performed in 1997, and the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) was performed in 2006. All of these experiments were performed over the Pacific Ocean and confined to the same three-month period (April through June), and the data were limited to cloudless days. The variable measured was brightness temperature, which is given in degrees Kelvin (K). Higher brightness temperatures correlate to higher emissions (meaning that more OLR is emitted to the atmosphere and less is absorbed by GHG). [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The figure below (from the first link above) shows a comparison of OLR emission in 1997 vs. 1970. (Positive values indicate that more OLR emission was measured in 1997 vs. 1970, and negative values indicate that less OLR emission was measured in 1997 vs. 1970.) The top graph is taken over the East Pacific, and the bottom graph is taken over the West Pacific. The middle line is the actual measurements, and the other lines show the upper and lower uncertainty ranges. The x-axis of the graph is given in wave numbers per centimeter (cm), and the area that relates to [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] is at the far left of the graph (700 wave numbers per cm). After analyzing this graph, the following conclusion can be drawn: There is actually an increase of OLR emissions in 1997 as compared to 1970!
[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]
[/FONT] [FONT=times new roman,times]The next figure (from the second link above) shows the actual measurements of OLR emission in 1997 vs. 1970. The dark line is the IMG data (from 1997), and the gray line is the IRIS line (from (1970). After analyzing this graph, the following conclusion can be drawn: The 1997 OLR associated with [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] is identical to that in 1970.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The next figure (from the third link above) shows the OLR emission from TES (in 2006). The black line is the actual measurement data, the red line is what the climate models show, and the blue line is the difference between the actual and model data. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The final figure (from the third link above) shows the OLR emission from IMG (1997). Just like the previous figure, the black line is the actual measurement data, the red line is what the climate models show, and the blue line is the difference between actual and model data.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The last two graphs can be placed on top of each other, and the black lines (actual measured data) are basically copies of each other. That means that there was no difference in OLR between 1970 and 2006.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]All three of the links referenced here devote the latter sections of the papers to removing the impact of surface temperatures and water vapor and graphing the OLR that is associated only with trace GHGs. The authors perform this trick (there is that [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]word[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] again...) based on the climate models and not through actual measurements, and surprise, surprise -- these simulated results show a reduction in OLR emission with wavelengths that are absorbed by [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]. Computer-simulated results based on climate models are never a replacement for actual measured data, and they should never be used to draw conclusions when actual measured data contradicts those models. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]So the results of three different peer-reviewed papers show that over a period of 36 years, there is no reduction of OLR emissions in wavelengths that [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] absorb. Therefore, the AGW hypothesis is disproven. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]It should be noted that another [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]paper[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] written by Richard Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi (both work at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences -- Lindzen is a professor and Choi is a postdoctoral fellow) reveals the differences between the measured OLR and its impact on temperatures vs. climate models. In the paper, the data showed that OLR increased when sea surface temperatures increased, so this is in direct contradiction to the AGW hypothesis that less OLR should be emitted since more [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] is absorbing it and warming the planet. Furthermore, in contradiction to the climate models, these results show that OLR is acting like a negative feedback (cooling the surface) instead of a positive feedback (radiative forcing). The Lindzen and Choi paper dealt in general with all OLR wavelengths and didn't show granularity with respect to specific wavelengths that were related to various GHG absorption, but the fact that the entire OLR emission spectrum didn't behave like the eleven climate models' predictions means that "the science isn't settled."[/FONT]
<!-- stopprint -->
[FONT=times new roman,times]This is a great article from AT. I apologize for not including the graphs. The forum software limits images to 4. Here's the link: American Thinker: The AGW Smoking Gun I also found some interesting sociological information I will post later today. New computer coming today--in the nuck of time.
A key component of the scientific argument for anthropogenic global <nobr id="itxt_nobr_0_0" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; color: darkgreen;">warming</nobr> (AGW) has been disproven. The results are hiding in plain sight in peer-reviewed journals. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]Politicians and scientists still cling to the same hypothesis: Increased emission of CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub> into the atmosphere (by humans) is causing the Earth to warm at such a rate that it threatens our survival. The reality of our global [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]temperatures[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times], the failure of these catastrophic predictions to materialize, and the IPCC scandals all continue to cast serious doubt on that hypothesis. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The only rebuttal given by AGW proponents is that the scandals of the IPCC don't negate the science (i.e., unscrupulous behavior by a few don't negate the rock-solid science), so it seems that the only way to disprove the AGW hypothesis is to address problems with the science. Climate science is very complex, and AGW proponents dismiss the scientific arguments unless the data are contained in journal papers that are "[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]peer-reviewed[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]." [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]Three peer-reviewed journal contain data contradicting the AGW hypothesis. But before the journal papers are reviewed, here is a little background on the science.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]Greenhouse Effect[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] is real and necessary for life on Earth. Without it, our world would be a frozen ball that would not be hospitable for life as we know it. The harmful stuff (x-rays and gamma rays) is filtered out, but the light in the visible spectrum enters, and that light energy warms our Earth. The land and sea then respond to that warming energy by emitting light in the spectrum of the infrared (IR), and that energy takes the form of small packets of energy called [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]photons[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]. When those IR photons reach the atmosphere, some of them get absorbed by certain molecules, and that absorbed energy is transferred into the elements of the molecules. That energy causes the molecules to vibrate and heat the atmosphere, and finally, the atmosphere transfers some of that energy back to the Earth's surface. Again, this is necessary, because if we didn't have this blocking of IR wavelengths, our average temperatures on Earth would be about 32 degrees Celsius cooler (-18ºC instead of the current 14ºC). One of the greenhouse <nobr id="itxt_nobr_7_0" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; color: darkgreen;">gases</nobr> (GHG) that reflects these IR wavelengths is CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>, but there are others, such as water vapor, ozone (O<sub itxtvisited="1">3</sub>), methane (CH<sub itxtvisited="1">4</sub>), and CFCs. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The science behind the AGW hypothesis is that increased amounts of CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub> in the atmosphere (that humans produce by burning fossil <nobr id="itxt_nobr_10_0" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; color: darkgreen;">fuels</nobr>) will block more outgoing long-wave IR radiation (OLR) from exiting the atmosphere and thereby warm the surface. It is well-[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]known[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] that IR radiation causes [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] molecules to vibrate, but only at very specific wavelengths (wavelengths are the distances between peaks of each wave), and that wavelength is 15µm. (Fifteen µm means that each wavelength crests at a distance of 15 millionths of a meter.) As was discussed above, this vibration of the molecule causes it to heat and then radiate IR radiation back toward the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth. If the solar activity is taken to remain constant, more [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] in the atmosphere will trap more of the OLR, and thus cause a net heating of the planet. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]So what type of experiment could be performed to test this AGW hypothesis? If there were <nobr id="itxt_nobr_13_0" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; color: darkgreen;">satellites</nobr> in orbit monitoring the emission of OLR over time at the same location, then OLR could be measured in a very controlled manner. If, over time, the emission of OLR in the wavelengths that [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] absorbs decreases over time, then that would prove the AGW hypothesis (i.e., that OLR is being absorbed by [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] and heating the planet instead of being emitted from the atmosphere). But what if, over time (say, over thirty years), the <nobr id="itxt_nobr_15_0" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; color: darkgreen;">emissions</nobr> of OLR wavelengths that [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] absorb remained constant? That would disprove the hypothesis and put the AGW argument to bed. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]As luck would have it, that experiment has actually been performed! Three journal papers report the data from three monitoring satellites that have measured the OLR of 1997 and 2006 and compared those measurements to 1970, and they are located [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]here[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times], [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]here[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times], and [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]here[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]There were three different experiments performed in space to measure OLR emissions. The Infrared Interferometer Spectrometer (IRIS) was performed in 1970, the Interferometer Monitor of Greenhouse Gases (IMG) was performed in 1997, and the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) was performed in 2006. All of these experiments were performed over the Pacific Ocean and confined to the same three-month period (April through June), and the data were limited to cloudless days. The variable measured was brightness temperature, which is given in degrees Kelvin (K). Higher brightness temperatures correlate to higher emissions (meaning that more OLR is emitted to the atmosphere and less is absorbed by GHG). [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The figure below (from the first link above) shows a comparison of OLR emission in 1997 vs. 1970. (Positive values indicate that more OLR emission was measured in 1997 vs. 1970, and negative values indicate that less OLR emission was measured in 1997 vs. 1970.) The top graph is taken over the East Pacific, and the bottom graph is taken over the West Pacific. The middle line is the actual measurements, and the other lines show the upper and lower uncertainty ranges. The x-axis of the graph is given in wave numbers per centimeter (cm), and the area that relates to [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] is at the far left of the graph (700 wave numbers per cm). After analyzing this graph, the following conclusion can be drawn: There is actually an increase of OLR emissions in 1997 as compared to 1970!
[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]
[/FONT] [FONT=times new roman,times]The next figure (from the second link above) shows the actual measurements of OLR emission in 1997 vs. 1970. The dark line is the IMG data (from 1997), and the gray line is the IRIS line (from (1970). After analyzing this graph, the following conclusion can be drawn: The 1997 OLR associated with [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] is identical to that in 1970.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The next figure (from the third link above) shows the OLR emission from TES (in 2006). The black line is the actual measurement data, the red line is what the climate models show, and the blue line is the difference between the actual and model data. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The final figure (from the third link above) shows the OLR emission from IMG (1997). Just like the previous figure, the black line is the actual measurement data, the red line is what the climate models show, and the blue line is the difference between actual and model data.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The last two graphs can be placed on top of each other, and the black lines (actual measured data) are basically copies of each other. That means that there was no difference in OLR between 1970 and 2006.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]All three of the links referenced here devote the latter sections of the papers to removing the impact of surface temperatures and water vapor and graphing the OLR that is associated only with trace GHGs. The authors perform this trick (there is that [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]word[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] again...) based on the climate models and not through actual measurements, and surprise, surprise -- these simulated results show a reduction in OLR emission with wavelengths that are absorbed by [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]. Computer-simulated results based on climate models are never a replacement for actual measured data, and they should never be used to draw conclusions when actual measured data contradicts those models. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]So the results of three different peer-reviewed papers show that over a period of 36 years, there is no reduction of OLR emissions in wavelengths that [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] absorb. Therefore, the AGW hypothesis is disproven. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]It should be noted that another [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]paper[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] written by Richard Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi (both work at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences -- Lindzen is a professor and Choi is a postdoctoral fellow) reveals the differences between the measured OLR and its impact on temperatures vs. climate models. In the paper, the data showed that OLR increased when sea surface temperatures increased, so this is in direct contradiction to the AGW hypothesis that less OLR should be emitted since more [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]CO<sub itxtvisited="1">2</sub>[/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times] is absorbing it and warming the planet. Furthermore, in contradiction to the climate models, these results show that OLR is acting like a negative feedback (cooling the surface) instead of a positive feedback (radiative forcing). The Lindzen and Choi paper dealt in general with all OLR wavelengths and didn't show granularity with respect to specific wavelengths that were related to various GHG absorption, but the fact that the entire OLR emission spectrum didn't behave like the eleven climate models' predictions means that "the science isn't settled."[/FONT]
<!-- stopprint -->
How To Model A Smoking Gun
By Patrick Lockerby | February 5th 2010 02:26 AM
Conspiracy theorists just love to get hold of a piece of new information and claim that it is the 'smoking gun' that 'conclusively proves' their pet theory. The psychology behind this mode of argument is so subtle that a 'smoking gun' proponent may not just fool many ordinary members of the public. They may fool themselves also.
The Importance Of Context.
It is so obvious as to be fairly trite to say that words have meanings modified by the other words with which they appear: the linguistic context. There is a rule of law that any statement must be examined within its whole legal and linguistic context. The art of the agendist is to exclude the true context and to substitute a false one - to exclude logic and to substitute rhetoric - to exclude the difficult scientific context and to substitute the easy common-sense, homespun theoretical context.
The magician, conjurer or prestidigitator knows the value of distraction and false context. The military theorist knows the arts of distraction and of camouflage - a special form of false context. In fact, it was the military mind that invented the straw man - a target against which ammunition may be expended to no effect. The straw man argument and the smoking gun argument are often used in conjunction. (Obviously, a smoking gun is ineffective against a straw man.)
In summary, a false context can be aural, tactile, visual or linguistic.
The Consensus Context Of Anthropogenic Global Warming Studies.
It is held by the vast majority of scientists working in climate-related fields that our planet is warming and that, as a result, our climate is changing in various ways. It is also their view that, notwithstanding natural variations and historic warming and cooling cycles: the current warming episode is predominantly due to human effects and is alarmingly rapid. This view is a consensus interpretation within a synergistic context, of the overall picture emergent from many thousands of scientific papers on climate and related topics.
The Agendist Context Of Anthropogenic Global Warming Studies.
It is a view sincerely held by quite a few people that the vast majority of climate scientists are wrong. In the majority of cases, I suggest, that view was formed from a reading of well written and highly targeted bad science.
The context promoted by agendists unites three major elements: the contrastive scales of our planet and a mere human; the contrastive scales of geological time and human historic time; a global conspiracy to promote the global warming idea. The conspiracy is variously thought to be a device to promote entrepreneurs, western economies, oil barons, right-wing agendas, left-wing agendas, world domination seekers, etc.
Against a background of the 'every schoolkid knows' variety of science, extracts from emails can look very much like smoking guns. But just sharpen the focus, put back the complete scientific context and the smoke blows clean away, revealing that the gun came from the magician's sleeve.
Putting The Climategate Emails In Their True Contexts.
Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents.
But It's Only A Computer Model
Sceptics will gladly shift the public focus towards or away from computer models according to the point they are currently trying to make. The 'we can't account for lack of warming' email relates to climate modelling.
Climate scientist and IPCC lead author Kevin Trenberth was talking about the global energy budget; what may be called the global thermal cycles model. We know from satellite observations that there is global warming. We can model all known sources of this warming. When we add up the known sources and compare with the satellite data there is a warming shortfall.
Read within the entire conversational context, the words which have been quoted entirely out of context can be stated in paraphrase as "we can't account for the shortfall in our figures."
The much-repeated 'lack of warming' is an error in a mathematical model. Remember models? You know, those things that deniers wouldn't touch with a bargepole because they are not accurate enough.
A self-consistent denier should say:
"We can't account for lack of warming', but what the heck, after all - it's only a computer model"
The Decline And Fall Of The Tree Ring Data.
The annual growth of tree rings is positively correlated to temperature. However, when trying to reconstruct a time series of temperatures from tree rings it is important to know about sources of error. Data since 1960 shows that recent temperatures as reconstructed from tree ring data diverge from temperatures as actually recorded by thermometers. This 'divergence problem' is widely known: it is under investigation and allowed for in all climate models.
The words in the email about a 'trick' refer to a method of eliminating errors. The 'trick' was to use direct readings from thermometers for the last 100 years of data rather than rely on 100 years of tree ring data known to produce a flawed reconstruction in a computer model.
The much-repeated 'trick' removes an error in a mathematical model. Remember models? You know, those things that deniers wouldn't touch with a bargepole because they are not accurate enough.
A self-consistent denier should say:
"We can't account for the divergence problem', but what the heck, after all - it's only a computer model!"
Discussion:
Will the science of psycholinguistics ever advance to the stage where we can accurately model agendist ambivalence regarding the accuracy and utility computer models?
http://www.scientificblogging.com/chatter_box/how_model_smoking_gun
By Patrick Lockerby | February 5th 2010 02:26 AM
Conspiracy theorists just love to get hold of a piece of new information and claim that it is the 'smoking gun' that 'conclusively proves' their pet theory. The psychology behind this mode of argument is so subtle that a 'smoking gun' proponent may not just fool many ordinary members of the public. They may fool themselves also.
The Importance Of Context.
It is so obvious as to be fairly trite to say that words have meanings modified by the other words with which they appear: the linguistic context. There is a rule of law that any statement must be examined within its whole legal and linguistic context. The art of the agendist is to exclude the true context and to substitute a false one - to exclude logic and to substitute rhetoric - to exclude the difficult scientific context and to substitute the easy common-sense, homespun theoretical context.
The magician, conjurer or prestidigitator knows the value of distraction and false context. The military theorist knows the arts of distraction and of camouflage - a special form of false context. In fact, it was the military mind that invented the straw man - a target against which ammunition may be expended to no effect. The straw man argument and the smoking gun argument are often used in conjunction. (Obviously, a smoking gun is ineffective against a straw man.)
In summary, a false context can be aural, tactile, visual or linguistic.
The Consensus Context Of Anthropogenic Global Warming Studies.
It is held by the vast majority of scientists working in climate-related fields that our planet is warming and that, as a result, our climate is changing in various ways. It is also their view that, notwithstanding natural variations and historic warming and cooling cycles: the current warming episode is predominantly due to human effects and is alarmingly rapid. This view is a consensus interpretation within a synergistic context, of the overall picture emergent from many thousands of scientific papers on climate and related topics.
The Agendist Context Of Anthropogenic Global Warming Studies.
It is a view sincerely held by quite a few people that the vast majority of climate scientists are wrong. In the majority of cases, I suggest, that view was formed from a reading of well written and highly targeted bad science.
The context promoted by agendists unites three major elements: the contrastive scales of our planet and a mere human; the contrastive scales of geological time and human historic time; a global conspiracy to promote the global warming idea. The conspiracy is variously thought to be a device to promote entrepreneurs, western economies, oil barons, right-wing agendas, left-wing agendas, world domination seekers, etc.
Against a background of the 'every schoolkid knows' variety of science, extracts from emails can look very much like smoking guns. But just sharpen the focus, put back the complete scientific context and the smoke blows clean away, revealing that the gun came from the magician's sleeve.
Putting The Climategate Emails In Their True Contexts.
Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents.
...
Skeptic Web sites pointed out one line in particular: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t,” Dr. Trenberth wrote.
...
In a 1999 e-mail exchange about charts showing climate patterns over the last two millenniums, Phil Jones, a longtime climate researcher at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, said he had used a “trick” employed by another scientist, Michael Mann, to “hide the decline” in temperatures.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.htmlSkeptic Web sites pointed out one line in particular: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t,” Dr. Trenberth wrote.
...
In a 1999 e-mail exchange about charts showing climate patterns over the last two millenniums, Phil Jones, a longtime climate researcher at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, said he had used a “trick” employed by another scientist, Michael Mann, to “hide the decline” in temperatures.
But It's Only A Computer Model
Sceptics will gladly shift the public focus towards or away from computer models according to the point they are currently trying to make. The 'we can't account for lack of warming' email relates to climate modelling.
Climate scientist and IPCC lead author Kevin Trenberth was talking about the global energy budget; what may be called the global thermal cycles model. We know from satellite observations that there is global warming. We can model all known sources of this warming. When we add up the known sources and compare with the satellite data there is a warming shortfall.
Read within the entire conversational context, the words which have been quoted entirely out of context can be stated in paraphrase as "we can't account for the shortfall in our figures."
The much-repeated 'lack of warming' is an error in a mathematical model. Remember models? You know, those things that deniers wouldn't touch with a bargepole because they are not accurate enough.
A self-consistent denier should say:
"We can't account for lack of warming', but what the heck, after all - it's only a computer model"
The Decline And Fall Of The Tree Ring Data.
The annual growth of tree rings is positively correlated to temperature. However, when trying to reconstruct a time series of temperatures from tree rings it is important to know about sources of error. Data since 1960 shows that recent temperatures as reconstructed from tree ring data diverge from temperatures as actually recorded by thermometers. This 'divergence problem' is widely known: it is under investigation and allowed for in all climate models.
The standard practice is to calibrate annual tree ring width (and/or wood density) to the temperature under which the trees were growing using a linear model based on recent (e.g., 20th Century) data, and then interpret past rings widths as indicators of temperature.
...
In a recent research paper (Loehle, 2008), I show that if this linear model is mis-specified (i.e., a linear growth response is assumed but in reality the growth response is non-linear), even a model that appears to work well during the “training” (or “calibration”) period—the time during which both temperature and tree rings are available—may fail miserably during the reconstruction period ...
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/10/23/the-divergence-pr......
In a recent research paper (Loehle, 2008), I show that if this linear model is mis-specified (i.e., a linear growth response is assumed but in reality the growth response is non-linear), even a model that appears to work well during the “training” (or “calibration”) period—the time during which both temperature and tree rings are available—may fail miserably during the reconstruction period ...
The words in the email about a 'trick' refer to a method of eliminating errors. The 'trick' was to use direct readings from thermometers for the last 100 years of data rather than rely on 100 years of tree ring data known to produce a flawed reconstruction in a computer model.
The much-repeated 'trick' removes an error in a mathematical model. Remember models? You know, those things that deniers wouldn't touch with a bargepole because they are not accurate enough.
A self-consistent denier should say:
"We can't account for the divergence problem', but what the heck, after all - it's only a computer model!"
Discussion:
Will the science of psycholinguistics ever advance to the stage where we can accurately model agendist ambivalence regarding the accuracy and utility computer models?
http://www.scientificblogging.com/chatter_box/how_model_smoking_gun
Bent Faith
Says you...
Jonahspeak...
Statement from the University of East Anglia in response to ‘UK scientist hid climate data flaws’ (Guardian, 02.02.10)
Tue, 2 Feb 2010
The allegations made in today’s Guardian create a misleading picture and require important clarifications in three areas:
1. The FOI request was responded to in full
The FOI request from Douglas Keenan was responded to by the university in full in 2007. The data used in the 1990 paper were indeed sent to Mr Keenan, including both the locations of the stations and the station temperature data for China, Australia and western parts of the former Soviet Union. For China, the data covered the period 1954 to 1983. The data were also uploaded onto the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) website.
2. The accuracy of the data and results was confirmed in a later paper
Prof Jones embarked on a study in 2007 which was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in 2008. In this later study, CRU researchers worked with a Chinese colleague (Dr Q. Li) from the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) in Beijing. Dr Li had been assessing the consistency of 728 Chinese temperature series and his work was published in China in 2007. This improved CMA data was adjusted to account for changes in location of stations.
CRU requested this improved CMA data for the stations that had been used in the 1990 study, and they were incorporated into the 2008 paper.
Figure 6 from this study (see below) shows the comparisons (as anomalies from the 1954-1983 period) between the averages of the 42 rural and 42 urban sites used in 1990 compared with averages from the same stations from the CMA network. The dashed lines are the averages for the rural and urban sites in eastern China from the 1990 paper. The solid lines are the averages from the same stations from the CMA network. It is clear from the graph that the trends of the CMA data for both the rural and urban networks agree almost exactly with the results from the 1990 paper.
The 2008 study undertook additional analyses using more extensive data and did conclude that there was a likely urbanization trend in China of 0.1 degrees Celsius per decade for the period 1951-2004. But allowing for this, there was still a large-scale climatic warming of 0.15 degrees C per decade over the period 1951-2004 and 0.47 degrees C per decade over the period 1981-2004. The paper concluded that much of the urbanization trend was likely due to the rapid economic development in China since the 1980s, after the period analysed in the 1990 paper.
3. The CRU findings were corroborated by other papers used by the IPCC
The 1990 paper was only one of a number of papers referred to in the 2007 IPCC Report examining possible urbanizations effects.
ReferencesJones, P.D., Groisman, P.Ya., Coughlan, M., Plummer, N., Wang, W-C. and Karl, T.R., 1990: Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperature over land. Nature 347, 169-172.
Jones, P.D., Lister, D.H. and Li, Q., 2008: Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature records, with an emphasis on China. J. Geophys. Res. 113, D16122, doi:10.1029/2008/JD009916.
Li Q. and W. Li, 2007: Development of the gridded historic temperature dataset over China during recent half century, Acta Meteroloigca Sinica, 65, 293-299 (In Chinese).
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/guardianstatement
Tue, 2 Feb 2010
The allegations made in today’s Guardian create a misleading picture and require important clarifications in three areas:
1. The FOI request was responded to in full
The FOI request from Douglas Keenan was responded to by the university in full in 2007. The data used in the 1990 paper were indeed sent to Mr Keenan, including both the locations of the stations and the station temperature data for China, Australia and western parts of the former Soviet Union. For China, the data covered the period 1954 to 1983. The data were also uploaded onto the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) website.
2. The accuracy of the data and results was confirmed in a later paper
Prof Jones embarked on a study in 2007 which was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in 2008. In this later study, CRU researchers worked with a Chinese colleague (Dr Q. Li) from the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) in Beijing. Dr Li had been assessing the consistency of 728 Chinese temperature series and his work was published in China in 2007. This improved CMA data was adjusted to account for changes in location of stations.
CRU requested this improved CMA data for the stations that had been used in the 1990 study, and they were incorporated into the 2008 paper.
Figure 6 from this study (see below) shows the comparisons (as anomalies from the 1954-1983 period) between the averages of the 42 rural and 42 urban sites used in 1990 compared with averages from the same stations from the CMA network. The dashed lines are the averages for the rural and urban sites in eastern China from the 1990 paper. The solid lines are the averages from the same stations from the CMA network. It is clear from the graph that the trends of the CMA data for both the rural and urban networks agree almost exactly with the results from the 1990 paper.
The 2008 study undertook additional analyses using more extensive data and did conclude that there was a likely urbanization trend in China of 0.1 degrees Celsius per decade for the period 1951-2004. But allowing for this, there was still a large-scale climatic warming of 0.15 degrees C per decade over the period 1951-2004 and 0.47 degrees C per decade over the period 1981-2004. The paper concluded that much of the urbanization trend was likely due to the rapid economic development in China since the 1980s, after the period analysed in the 1990 paper.
3. The CRU findings were corroborated by other papers used by the IPCC
The 1990 paper was only one of a number of papers referred to in the 2007 IPCC Report examining possible urbanizations effects.
ReferencesJones, P.D., Groisman, P.Ya., Coughlan, M., Plummer, N., Wang, W-C. and Karl, T.R., 1990: Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperature over land. Nature 347, 169-172.
Jones, P.D., Lister, D.H. and Li, Q., 2008: Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature records, with an emphasis on China. J. Geophys. Res. 113, D16122, doi:10.1029/2008/JD009916.
Li Q. and W. Li, 2007: Development of the gridded historic temperature dataset over China during recent half century, Acta Meteroloigca Sinica, 65, 293-299 (In Chinese).
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/guardianstatement
New iPhone App features "Jonahspeak"
iPhone app pitches climate change science against scepticism
Deniers queue up to lambast Skeptical Science application developed by solar physicist John Cook.
Now there's a surprise.
The Skeptical Science iPhone app
I'm not sure this is going to quell the climate wars raging at present, but it's an interesting development nonetheless. An Australian solar physicist called John Cook, who runs the popular Skeptical Science website, has developed an app which "lets you use an iPhone or iPod to view the entire list of skeptic arguments as well as (more importantly) what the science says on each argument". So the next time you're caught at the fag end of a wedding reception in an interminable one-way conversation with a reactionary uncle who's boring on about how "the climate's always changed", just switch on this app, hand them your iPhone, and proceed to the bar.
In reality, of course, this is hardly likely to win round any sceptic, least of all your worse-for-wear uncle who, with or without the evidence presented to him by this app, will still continue to swear blind that climate change is a fiction made up by a clandestine world government-in-waiting because he's read about it all on his favourite blog, which just so happens to be frequented by an army of other reactionary uncles. One suspects this app will only act to increase the polarisation between the two sides of this "debate". (Still think a debate's going on? When was the last time you heard someone from either side say, "Thank you for this information. Actually, I'd never thought of it like that before. I'm now prepared to change my mind on climate change.") For example, Climate Realists, a site manned by sceptics such as weatherman Piers Corbyn, is already jumping up and down in horror at the news of the app's release:
This might shock some people, but I happen to agree with the sentiment underlying the request issued by Climate Realists for sceptics to build their own rival app. I think it would be very constructive if they compiled a one-stop shop for all their arguments with full references and citations so that everyone could assess them calmly and dispassionately. This would be done away from the white heat of the blogosphere cauldron where people can make any claim they choose and know it has the ability to stick – as proved just this week with the shameless, wilful twisting by the Daily Mail of climatologist Phil Jones's remarks to the BBC about whether there has been a statistically significant rise in global temperatures since 1995. I await with bated breath.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/feb/17/iphone-app-climate-change
Heh...
iPhone app pitches climate change science against scepticism
Deniers queue up to lambast Skeptical Science application developed by solar physicist John Cook.
Now there's a surprise.
The Skeptical Science iPhone app
I'm not sure this is going to quell the climate wars raging at present, but it's an interesting development nonetheless. An Australian solar physicist called John Cook, who runs the popular Skeptical Science website, has developed an app which "lets you use an iPhone or iPod to view the entire list of skeptic arguments as well as (more importantly) what the science says on each argument". So the next time you're caught at the fag end of a wedding reception in an interminable one-way conversation with a reactionary uncle who's boring on about how "the climate's always changed", just switch on this app, hand them your iPhone, and proceed to the bar.
In reality, of course, this is hardly likely to win round any sceptic, least of all your worse-for-wear uncle who, with or without the evidence presented to him by this app, will still continue to swear blind that climate change is a fiction made up by a clandestine world government-in-waiting because he's read about it all on his favourite blog, which just so happens to be frequented by an army of other reactionary uncles. One suspects this app will only act to increase the polarisation between the two sides of this "debate". (Still think a debate's going on? When was the last time you heard someone from either side say, "Thank you for this information. Actually, I'd never thought of it like that before. I'm now prepared to change my mind on climate change.") For example, Climate Realists, a site manned by sceptics such as weatherman Piers Corbyn, is already jumping up and down in horror at the news of the app's release:
"WARNING! There is an iphone app trying to put down what we have to say under the heading of 'Skeptical Science'. We need as many of you as possible to promote that this iphone app is yet another attempt to discredit 'Climate Realists'. We can only hope the general public can see through this as a cheap trick to prop up the FAILED SCIENCE OF MAN MADE CLIMATE CHANGE. Climate Realists need another iphone app that shows our side of the argument as it is, rather then what a supporter AGW thinks it is! Please send this message to all known friendly sites that support our side."
This call to arms appears to have worked as the first reviews on the iTunes app store are deeply negative. This is what the reviewer "GabesiPod" said:
"This is app from an AGW [anthropogenic global warming] supporter and just supports his views and NOT the views of SKEPTICS! I find that iPhone apps have mislead people, in that, the name of the product is NOT what it is claimed to be. This is a cheap trick to support the FAILED SCIENCE OF AGW, AND HAS NO SCIENTIFIC VALUE. This app should be withdrawn!"
Just what is it with sceptics and their love of block capitals? So what does this app actually do that is proving so unpalatable to the folks at Climate Realists? This is how it works, according to Cook:
"You browse arguments via the Top 10 most used arguments as well as 3 main categories ('It's not happening', 'It's not us', 'It's not bad'). When you select one of the 3 main categories, a list of sub-categories pop up. You can then select any category to see the skeptic argument, a summary of what the science says and the full answer including graphs plus links to papers or other sources. A novel inclusion is a feature that lets you report when you encounter a skeptic argument. By clicking on the red ear icon (above left, shown to the left of the skeptic arguments or above right, next to the headline), the iPhone adds another hit to that particular skeptic argument."
The app currently has rebuttals to 90 sceptic "arguments", which include many of the classics, such as "There is no consensus", "Models are unreliable", "It hasn't warmed since 1998", "Ice age predicted in the 70s", "CO2 lags temperature", "It's freaking cold!", "CO2 is not a pollutant" and so on. According to the site, the most frequently cited sceptic argument is "It's the sun". You can read Skeptical Science's rebuttal to this particular argument online .
This might shock some people, but I happen to agree with the sentiment underlying the request issued by Climate Realists for sceptics to build their own rival app. I think it would be very constructive if they compiled a one-stop shop for all their arguments with full references and citations so that everyone could assess them calmly and dispassionately. This would be done away from the white heat of the blogosphere cauldron where people can make any claim they choose and know it has the ability to stick – as proved just this week with the shameless, wilful twisting by the Daily Mail of climatologist Phil Jones's remarks to the BBC about whether there has been a statistically significant rise in global temperatures since 1995. I await with bated breath.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/feb/17/iphone-app-climate-change
Heh...
P
pixelsmith
Guest
New iPhone App features "Jonahspeak"
Climategate 2.0 — The NASA Files: U.S. Climate Science as Corrupt as CRU (PJM Exclusive — Part One)
Chris Horner filed the FOIA request that NASA didn't comply with for two years. Now we know what took so long. (Click here for the NASA files. This is Part One of a four-part series.)
February 17, 2010 - by Christopher Horner
In August 2007, I submitted two Freedom of Information Act requests to NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), headed by long-time Gore advisor James Hansen and his right-hand man Gavin Schmidt (and RealClimate.org co-founder).
I did this because Canadian businessman Steve McIntyre — a man with professional experience investigating suspect statistical claims in the mining industry and elsewhere, including his exposure of the now-infamous “hockey stick” graph — noticed something unusual with NASA’s claims of an ever-warming first decade of this century. NASA appeared to have inflated its U.S. temperatures beginning in the year 2000. My FOIA request asked NASA about their internal discussions regarding whether and how to correct the temperature error caught by McIntyre.
NASA stonewalled my request for more than two years, until Climategate prompted me to offer notice of intent to sue if NASA did not comply immediately.
On New Year’s Eve, NASA finally provided the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) with the documents I requested in August 2007.
The emails show the hypocrisy, dishonesty, and suspect data management and integrity of NASA, wildly spinning in defense of their enterprise. The emails show NASA making off with enormous sums of taxpayer funding doing precisely what they claim only a “skeptic” would do. The emails show NASA attempting to scrub their website of their own documents, and indeed they quietly pulled down numerous press releases grounded in the proven-wrong data. The emails show NASA claiming that their own temperature errors (which they have been caught making and in uncorrected form aggressively promoting) are merely trivial, after years of hysterically trumpeting much smaller warming anomalies.
As you examine the email excerpts below, as well as those which I will discuss in the upcoming three parts of this series, bear in mind that the contents of these emails were intended to prop up the argument for the biggest regulatory intervention in history: the restricting of carbon emissions from all human activity. NASA’s activist scientists leave no doubt in their emails that this was indeed their objective. Also, please note that these documents were responsive to a specific FOIA request from two years ago. Recent developments — combined with admissions contained in these documents — beg further requests, which have both been already filed and with more forthcoming.
Furthermore, on January 29, 2010, CEI filed our appeal of NASA continuing to improperly withhold other documents responsive to our FOIA requests. In this appeal we informed NASA that if they do not comply by the twentieth day, as required by law, we shall exercise our appellate rights in court immediately.
________________________________
Under Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), NASA shepherds a continuing public campaign claiming clear evidence of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) — climate change induced by human beings. The documents released via the FOIA request, however, contain admissions of data unreliability that are staggering, particularly in light of NASA’s claims to know temperatures and anomalies within hundredths of a degree, and the alarm they helped raise over a mere one degree of claimed warming over more than an entire century.
Dr. Reto Ruedy, a Hansen colleague at GISS, complains in his August 3, 2007, email to his co-worker at GISS and RealClimate blogger Gavin Schmidt:
[The United States Historical Climate Network] data are not routinely kept up-to-date (at this point the (sic) seem to end in 2002).
This lapse led to wild differences in data claimed to be from the same ground stations by USHCN and the Global Climate Network (GHCN). NASA later trumpeted the “adjustments” they made to this data (upward only, of course) in extremely minor amounts — adjustments they are now seen admitting are well within any uncertainty, a fact that received significantly less emphasis in their public media campaign claiming anomalous, man-made warming.
GISS’s Ruedy then wrote:
[NASA’s] assumption that the adjustments made the older data consistent with future data … may not have been correct. … Indeed, in 490 of the 1057 stations the USHCN data were up to 1C colder than the corresponding GHCN data, in 77 stations the data were the same, and in the remaining 490 stations the USHCN data were warmer than the GHCN data.
Ruedy claimed this introduced an estimated warming into the record of 0.1 deg C. Ruedy then described an alternate way of manipulating the temperature data, “a more careful method” they might consider using, instead.
———————————————-
Although in public he often used his high-profile perch for global warming cheerleading, former New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin privately wrote that he was worried about the integrity of the ground stations. When still at the Times he wrote to Hansen on August 23, 2007:
i never, till today, visited Home and found it quite amazing. if our stations are that shoddy, what’s it like in Mongolia?
Sadly, although Andy wrote many pieces touting as significant what we now know NASA admits as statistically meaningless temperature claims, he did not find time to write about data so “shoddy” as to reach the point of “amazing.” That is what advocacy often entails: providing only one side, and even a far less compelling side, of a story.
———————————————
In an August 14, 2007, email from GISS’s Makiko Sato to Hansen, Sato wrote that his analysis of a one degree warming between 1934 and 1998 might in reality be half that amount:
I am sure I had 1998 warmer than 1934 at least once because on my own temperature web page (which most people never look at), I have [image/information not visible in document]. … I didn’t keep all the data, but some of them are (some data are then listed, with 1934 0.5 deg C warmer than 1998)
As AGW proponents only claim a one degree warming over the past century, the magnitude of a .5 degree Celsius problem in their calculations is tremendous.
Sato continues:
I am sorry, I should have kept more data, but I was not interested in US data after 2001 paper.
Sato is referencing the paper by Hansen, et al., in which Hansen’s colleagues remind him 1934 was indeed listed as being a full half-degree warmer than 1998 — which is shown in their emails as being what the data said as of July 1999 (their paper described 1934 as only “slightly” warmer than 1998, p. 8). Still, throughout these emails Hansen later insists 1934 and 1998 are in a statistical tie with just a 0.02 Celsius difference and even that their relationship has not changed. For example, Hansen claims in an email to a journalist with Bloomberg: “As you will see in our 2001 paper we found 1934 slightly warmer, by an insignificant hair over 1998. We still find that result.” The implication is that things had not changed when in fact NASA had gone from claiming a statistically significant if politically inconvenient warmer 1934 over 1998, to a tie.
Regarding U.S. temperatures, Ruedy confessed to Hansen on August 23, 2007 to say:
I got a copy from a journalist in Brazil, we don’t save the data.
——————————————–
The Ruedy relationship with a Brazilian journalist raises the matter of the incestuous relationship between NASA’s GISS and like-minded environmental reporters. One can’t help but recall how, recently, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claim of glacier shrinkage in the Himalayas was discredited when found to be the work of a single speculative journalist at a popular magazine, and not strict peer-reviewed scientific data. The emails we obtained include several instances of very close ties and sympathetic relationships with journalists covering them.
The same can be said of NASA’s relationship vis-a-vis the IPCC, whose alarmism NASA enabled. One NASA email implicitly if privately admits that IPCC claims of accelerating warming — such as those by IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri or UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon — are specious. Yet NASA has never publicly challenged such alarmism. Instead, it sat by and benefited from it, with massive taxpayer funding of its rather odd if growing focus on “climate.”
In an August 15, 2007, email from Ruedy to Brazilian journalist Leticia Francisco Sorg, responding to Sorg’s request for Ruedy to say if warming is accelerating, Ruedy replied:
“To observe that the warming accelerates would take even longer observation times” than the past 25 years. In fact, it would take “another 50-100 years.”
This is a damning admission that NASA has been complicit in UN alarmism. This is not science. It is debunked advocacy. The impropriety of such policy advocacy, let alone allowing unsubstantial scientific claims to become part of a media campaign, is self-evident.
End of Part One
Pajamas Media
Climategate 2.0 — The NASA Files: U.S. Climate Science as Corrupt as CRU (PJM Exclusive — Part One)
Chris Horner filed the FOIA request that NASA didn't comply with for two years. Now we know what took so long. (Click here for the NASA files. This is Part One of a four-part series.)
February 17, 2010 - by Christopher Horner
In August 2007, I submitted two Freedom of Information Act requests to NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), headed by long-time Gore advisor James Hansen and his right-hand man Gavin Schmidt (and RealClimate.org co-founder).
I did this because Canadian businessman Steve McIntyre — a man with professional experience investigating suspect statistical claims in the mining industry and elsewhere, including his exposure of the now-infamous “hockey stick” graph — noticed something unusual with NASA’s claims of an ever-warming first decade of this century. NASA appeared to have inflated its U.S. temperatures beginning in the year 2000. My FOIA request asked NASA about their internal discussions regarding whether and how to correct the temperature error caught by McIntyre.
NASA stonewalled my request for more than two years, until Climategate prompted me to offer notice of intent to sue if NASA did not comply immediately.
On New Year’s Eve, NASA finally provided the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) with the documents I requested in August 2007.
The emails show the hypocrisy, dishonesty, and suspect data management and integrity of NASA, wildly spinning in defense of their enterprise. The emails show NASA making off with enormous sums of taxpayer funding doing precisely what they claim only a “skeptic” would do. The emails show NASA attempting to scrub their website of their own documents, and indeed they quietly pulled down numerous press releases grounded in the proven-wrong data. The emails show NASA claiming that their own temperature errors (which they have been caught making and in uncorrected form aggressively promoting) are merely trivial, after years of hysterically trumpeting much smaller warming anomalies.
As you examine the email excerpts below, as well as those which I will discuss in the upcoming three parts of this series, bear in mind that the contents of these emails were intended to prop up the argument for the biggest regulatory intervention in history: the restricting of carbon emissions from all human activity. NASA’s activist scientists leave no doubt in their emails that this was indeed their objective. Also, please note that these documents were responsive to a specific FOIA request from two years ago. Recent developments — combined with admissions contained in these documents — beg further requests, which have both been already filed and with more forthcoming.
Furthermore, on January 29, 2010, CEI filed our appeal of NASA continuing to improperly withhold other documents responsive to our FOIA requests. In this appeal we informed NASA that if they do not comply by the twentieth day, as required by law, we shall exercise our appellate rights in court immediately.
________________________________
Under Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), NASA shepherds a continuing public campaign claiming clear evidence of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) — climate change induced by human beings. The documents released via the FOIA request, however, contain admissions of data unreliability that are staggering, particularly in light of NASA’s claims to know temperatures and anomalies within hundredths of a degree, and the alarm they helped raise over a mere one degree of claimed warming over more than an entire century.
Dr. Reto Ruedy, a Hansen colleague at GISS, complains in his August 3, 2007, email to his co-worker at GISS and RealClimate blogger Gavin Schmidt:
[The United States Historical Climate Network] data are not routinely kept up-to-date (at this point the (sic) seem to end in 2002).
This lapse led to wild differences in data claimed to be from the same ground stations by USHCN and the Global Climate Network (GHCN). NASA later trumpeted the “adjustments” they made to this data (upward only, of course) in extremely minor amounts — adjustments they are now seen admitting are well within any uncertainty, a fact that received significantly less emphasis in their public media campaign claiming anomalous, man-made warming.
GISS’s Ruedy then wrote:
[NASA’s] assumption that the adjustments made the older data consistent with future data … may not have been correct. … Indeed, in 490 of the 1057 stations the USHCN data were up to 1C colder than the corresponding GHCN data, in 77 stations the data were the same, and in the remaining 490 stations the USHCN data were warmer than the GHCN data.
Ruedy claimed this introduced an estimated warming into the record of 0.1 deg C. Ruedy then described an alternate way of manipulating the temperature data, “a more careful method” they might consider using, instead.
———————————————-
Although in public he often used his high-profile perch for global warming cheerleading, former New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin privately wrote that he was worried about the integrity of the ground stations. When still at the Times he wrote to Hansen on August 23, 2007:
i never, till today, visited Home and found it quite amazing. if our stations are that shoddy, what’s it like in Mongolia?
Sadly, although Andy wrote many pieces touting as significant what we now know NASA admits as statistically meaningless temperature claims, he did not find time to write about data so “shoddy” as to reach the point of “amazing.” That is what advocacy often entails: providing only one side, and even a far less compelling side, of a story.
———————————————
In an August 14, 2007, email from GISS’s Makiko Sato to Hansen, Sato wrote that his analysis of a one degree warming between 1934 and 1998 might in reality be half that amount:
I am sure I had 1998 warmer than 1934 at least once because on my own temperature web page (which most people never look at), I have [image/information not visible in document]. … I didn’t keep all the data, but some of them are (some data are then listed, with 1934 0.5 deg C warmer than 1998)
As AGW proponents only claim a one degree warming over the past century, the magnitude of a .5 degree Celsius problem in their calculations is tremendous.
Sato continues:
I am sorry, I should have kept more data, but I was not interested in US data after 2001 paper.
Sato is referencing the paper by Hansen, et al., in which Hansen’s colleagues remind him 1934 was indeed listed as being a full half-degree warmer than 1998 — which is shown in their emails as being what the data said as of July 1999 (their paper described 1934 as only “slightly” warmer than 1998, p. 8). Still, throughout these emails Hansen later insists 1934 and 1998 are in a statistical tie with just a 0.02 Celsius difference and even that their relationship has not changed. For example, Hansen claims in an email to a journalist with Bloomberg: “As you will see in our 2001 paper we found 1934 slightly warmer, by an insignificant hair over 1998. We still find that result.” The implication is that things had not changed when in fact NASA had gone from claiming a statistically significant if politically inconvenient warmer 1934 over 1998, to a tie.
Regarding U.S. temperatures, Ruedy confessed to Hansen on August 23, 2007 to say:
I got a copy from a journalist in Brazil, we don’t save the data.
——————————————–
The Ruedy relationship with a Brazilian journalist raises the matter of the incestuous relationship between NASA’s GISS and like-minded environmental reporters. One can’t help but recall how, recently, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claim of glacier shrinkage in the Himalayas was discredited when found to be the work of a single speculative journalist at a popular magazine, and not strict peer-reviewed scientific data. The emails we obtained include several instances of very close ties and sympathetic relationships with journalists covering them.
The same can be said of NASA’s relationship vis-a-vis the IPCC, whose alarmism NASA enabled. One NASA email implicitly if privately admits that IPCC claims of accelerating warming — such as those by IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri or UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon — are specious. Yet NASA has never publicly challenged such alarmism. Instead, it sat by and benefited from it, with massive taxpayer funding of its rather odd if growing focus on “climate.”
In an August 15, 2007, email from Ruedy to Brazilian journalist Leticia Francisco Sorg, responding to Sorg’s request for Ruedy to say if warming is accelerating, Ruedy replied:
“To observe that the warming accelerates would take even longer observation times” than the past 25 years. In fact, it would take “another 50-100 years.”
This is a damning admission that NASA has been complicit in UN alarmism. This is not science. It is debunked advocacy. The impropriety of such policy advocacy, let alone allowing unsubstantial scientific claims to become part of a media campaign, is self-evident.
End of Part One
Pajamas Media
More on "Cherry Picking"
Are climate-change sceptics cherry-picking data?
By David Heath
Monday, 25 January 2010 11:28
Opinion and Analysis
It must be so easy being a climate change sceptic. After-all, you never have to do any real science; never actually have to travel to far-off places to collect data. All you need do is wait for the results of all the hard work to come rolling in and scour through it seeking whatever snippets can be twisted to your purpose.
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I read with interest today's announcement of the imminent arrival of leading climate-change sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton. This tour, sponsored by local semi-retired engineers John Smeed and Case Smit, will see Monckton present lectures in many parts of Australia over a 13-day period commencing in Sydney on Australia Day. Reading the announcement links in the previous chapter is this wonderful pearl.Lord Monckton says his evidence against climate change includes the fact tropical cyclones in Australian are at a 40-year low, Greenland's ice cover is increasing 5cm a year and polar bear numbers are on the rise.
In contrast to this, does the Good Lord have any explanation for the seemingly highest-ever average temperatures in the past decade in south-eastern Australia? How about the dramatically different rainfall patterns? No? Does he then have any cogent thoughts on the dramatic retreat of glaciers in almost all parts of the world? Probably not. One assumes next he'll be asking that all thermometers have 2 degrees removed from their reading as otherwise, they couldn't possibly be correct. However, let us take a look at the three items of evidence he cites above. Firstly, the rate of cyclone development around Australia being at a 40-year low. Considering that there are a relatively small number of them every year, it doesn't take much random variation to increase or decrease the numbers year-on-year. Next, I don't recall hearing much evidence that the sea-water temperature in the tropical waters to Australia's north have changed much - this is probably the most important governing factor for the rate of tropical cyclone development. Finally (and I don't know the answer here), what level of cyclone strength is he using as a cut-off? Does he only count category 5, perhaps he includes category 4 as well; what about the smaller categories as well. It's all too easy to play with the numbers.
Next, Greenland's ice cover is increasing by 5cm a year. This would only be significant if the same was happening everywhere else. Do we know that? One could only assume not, otherwise Monckton would be saying it's increasing by 5cm/year everywhere. Finally, there's the bald assertion that polar bear numbers are on the rise. Who says so? Is it simply that there are more of them appearing in northern Canadian towns (such as Churchill)? If that's true, it's probably because their habitat is shrinking and they're struggling to get enough food. Perhaps there really are more polar bears - who knows, maybe they breed more in warmer weather!
Either way, we need a more reasoned debate from the climate-change sceptics. Sure it's easy to stir up an incredulous public with cherry-picked data, but such activities are neither ethical nor moral. The protagonists are left to do all the hard work while these antagonists ride the coat-tails of science.
http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-a...e-climate-change-sceptics-cherry-picking-data
Are climate-change sceptics cherry-picking data?
By David Heath
Monday, 25 January 2010 11:28
Opinion and Analysis
It must be so easy being a climate change sceptic. After-all, you never have to do any real science; never actually have to travel to far-off places to collect data. All you need do is wait for the results of all the hard work to come rolling in and scour through it seeking whatever snippets can be twisted to your purpose.
<!-- <<< Modules Anywhere <<< --> <!-- >>> Modules Anywhere >>> --><!-- <<< Modules Anywhere <<< --> <!-- Start of davidh08 Code --> <script type="text/javascript"> var sc_project=4176814; var sc_invisible=1; var sc_partition=48; var sc_click_stat=1; var sc_security="a471a1f9"; </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js"></script><noscript><a title="hits counter" href="http://www.statcounter.com/" target="_blank">
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I read with interest today's announcement of the imminent arrival of leading climate-change sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton. This tour, sponsored by local semi-retired engineers John Smeed and Case Smit, will see Monckton present lectures in many parts of Australia over a 13-day period commencing in Sydney on Australia Day. Reading the announcement links in the previous chapter is this wonderful pearl.Lord Monckton says his evidence against climate change includes the fact tropical cyclones in Australian are at a 40-year low, Greenland's ice cover is increasing 5cm a year and polar bear numbers are on the rise.
In contrast to this, does the Good Lord have any explanation for the seemingly highest-ever average temperatures in the past decade in south-eastern Australia? How about the dramatically different rainfall patterns? No? Does he then have any cogent thoughts on the dramatic retreat of glaciers in almost all parts of the world? Probably not. One assumes next he'll be asking that all thermometers have 2 degrees removed from their reading as otherwise, they couldn't possibly be correct. However, let us take a look at the three items of evidence he cites above. Firstly, the rate of cyclone development around Australia being at a 40-year low. Considering that there are a relatively small number of them every year, it doesn't take much random variation to increase or decrease the numbers year-on-year. Next, I don't recall hearing much evidence that the sea-water temperature in the tropical waters to Australia's north have changed much - this is probably the most important governing factor for the rate of tropical cyclone development. Finally (and I don't know the answer here), what level of cyclone strength is he using as a cut-off? Does he only count category 5, perhaps he includes category 4 as well; what about the smaller categories as well. It's all too easy to play with the numbers.
Next, Greenland's ice cover is increasing by 5cm a year. This would only be significant if the same was happening everywhere else. Do we know that? One could only assume not, otherwise Monckton would be saying it's increasing by 5cm/year everywhere. Finally, there's the bald assertion that polar bear numbers are on the rise. Who says so? Is it simply that there are more of them appearing in northern Canadian towns (such as Churchill)? If that's true, it's probably because their habitat is shrinking and they're struggling to get enough food. Perhaps there really are more polar bears - who knows, maybe they breed more in warmer weather!
Either way, we need a more reasoned debate from the climate-change sceptics. Sure it's easy to stir up an incredulous public with cherry-picked data, but such activities are neither ethical nor moral. The protagonists are left to do all the hard work while these antagonists ride the coat-tails of science.
http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-a...e-climate-change-sceptics-cherry-picking-data
New iPhone App features "Jonahspeak"
February 17, 2010 - by Christopher Horner
Competitive Enterprise Institute has received $2,005,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
KEY PEOPLE
Christopher C. Horner
Counsel, Cooler Heads Coalition and Senior Fellow
Source: CEI website, 3/04
1998
$85,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving
Source: Exxon Education Foundation Dimensions 1998 report
2000
$230,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
general support
Source: ExxonMobil Foundation 2000 IRS 990
2001
$280,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
Source: ExxonMobil 2001 Worldwide Giving Report
2002
$205,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
50K congressional briefing program, 140K general operating support, 60K legal activities
Source: ExxonMobil 2002 Worldwide Giving Report
2002
$200,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving
140K general operating support, 60K for legal activities.
Source: ExxonMobil 2002 Worldwide Giving Report
2003
$25,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving
Annual Dinner
Source: ExxonMobil 2003 Worldwide Giving Report
2003
$440,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
General Operating Support
Source: ExxonMobil 2003 Worldwide Giving Report
2004
$90,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
General Operating Support
Source: ExxonMobil 2004 Worldwide Giving Report
2004
$90,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
Global Climate Change
Source: ExxonMobil 2004 Worldwide Giving Report
2004
$90000 ExxonMobil Foundation
Global Climate Change Outreach
Source: ExxonMobil 2004 Worldwide Giving Report
2005
$90,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
General Operating Support
Source: ExxonMobil 2005 Worldwide Giving Report
2005
$180,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving
General Operating Support
Source: ExxonMobil 2005 Worldwide Giving Report
CEI, among many other statements denying the seriousness of global warming, has argued that climate change would create a "milder, greener, more prosperous world" and that "Kyoto was a power grab based on deception and fear" (R. Brunet, "It Just Ain't So, Say These Reputable Scientists" Alberta Report, 10 November, v.24(48) 1997 p20-21). In addition to leading the campaign to convince the public that global warming is uncertain, CEI has weighed in on pesticide risk and endocrine disrupting chemicals - both of which pose no threat to human health, in CEI's view - and has supported regulatory "takings" measures.
CEI supports eventual elimination of the Superfund and has advocated the complete privatization of the Endangered Species Act, arguing that species protection would meet the level of "demand," based on how much citizens are willing to pay for habitat preservation (CLEAR fact sheet). CEI has a long anti-environmental pedigree. CEI is a member of the State Policy Network and the Cooler Heads Coalition. CEI was a sponsor of the first Wise Use conference in 1988 and has had membership in the Get Government Off Our Backs coalition, the wise use umbrella group. CEI is also a network member of The Heritage Foundation, Alliance for America, and the anti-Endangered Species Act group, Grassroots ESA Coalition. CEI was also a co-sponsor of the 1998 NY State Property Rights Conference.
With more than a $3 million annual budget, CEI is supported by both conservative foundations and corporate funding. Known corporate funders in addition to ExxonMobil include the American Petroleum Institute, Cigna Corporation, Dow Chemical, EBCO Corp, General Motors, and IBM. One of CEI's prominent funders is conservative Richard Scaife who has provided money through the Carthage and Sara Scaife Foundations. CEI is also heavily supported by the various Koch brother foundations. (Competitive Enterprise Institute - SourceWatch)
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php
Just making sure that you know who it is -exactly- that you are shilling for, Pixelsmith.
February 17, 2010 - by Christopher Horner
Competitive Enterprise Institute has received $2,005,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
KEY PEOPLE
Christopher C. Horner
Counsel, Cooler Heads Coalition and Senior Fellow
Source: CEI website, 3/04
1998
$85,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving
Source: Exxon Education Foundation Dimensions 1998 report
2000
$230,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
general support
Source: ExxonMobil Foundation 2000 IRS 990
2001
$280,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
Source: ExxonMobil 2001 Worldwide Giving Report
2002
$205,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
50K congressional briefing program, 140K general operating support, 60K legal activities
Source: ExxonMobil 2002 Worldwide Giving Report
2002
$200,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving
140K general operating support, 60K for legal activities.
Source: ExxonMobil 2002 Worldwide Giving Report
2003
$25,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving
Annual Dinner
Source: ExxonMobil 2003 Worldwide Giving Report
2003
$440,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
General Operating Support
Source: ExxonMobil 2003 Worldwide Giving Report
2004
$90,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
General Operating Support
Source: ExxonMobil 2004 Worldwide Giving Report
2004
$90,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
Global Climate Change
Source: ExxonMobil 2004 Worldwide Giving Report
2004
$90000 ExxonMobil Foundation
Global Climate Change Outreach
Source: ExxonMobil 2004 Worldwide Giving Report
2005
$90,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
General Operating Support
Source: ExxonMobil 2005 Worldwide Giving Report
2005
$180,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving
General Operating Support
Source: ExxonMobil 2005 Worldwide Giving Report
CEI, among many other statements denying the seriousness of global warming, has argued that climate change would create a "milder, greener, more prosperous world" and that "Kyoto was a power grab based on deception and fear" (R. Brunet, "It Just Ain't So, Say These Reputable Scientists" Alberta Report, 10 November, v.24(48) 1997 p20-21). In addition to leading the campaign to convince the public that global warming is uncertain, CEI has weighed in on pesticide risk and endocrine disrupting chemicals - both of which pose no threat to human health, in CEI's view - and has supported regulatory "takings" measures.
CEI supports eventual elimination of the Superfund and has advocated the complete privatization of the Endangered Species Act, arguing that species protection would meet the level of "demand," based on how much citizens are willing to pay for habitat preservation (CLEAR fact sheet). CEI has a long anti-environmental pedigree. CEI is a member of the State Policy Network and the Cooler Heads Coalition. CEI was a sponsor of the first Wise Use conference in 1988 and has had membership in the Get Government Off Our Backs coalition, the wise use umbrella group. CEI is also a network member of The Heritage Foundation, Alliance for America, and the anti-Endangered Species Act group, Grassroots ESA Coalition. CEI was also a co-sponsor of the 1998 NY State Property Rights Conference.
With more than a $3 million annual budget, CEI is supported by both conservative foundations and corporate funding. Known corporate funders in addition to ExxonMobil include the American Petroleum Institute, Cigna Corporation, Dow Chemical, EBCO Corp, General Motors, and IBM. One of CEI's prominent funders is conservative Richard Scaife who has provided money through the Carthage and Sara Scaife Foundations. CEI is also heavily supported by the various Koch brother foundations. (Competitive Enterprise Institute - SourceWatch)
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php
Just making sure that you know who it is -exactly- that you are shilling for, Pixelsmith.
Schuyler
Misanthrope
Here are a couple of cool graphs that help put 'Global Warming' into perspective:
This first one shows historical temperatures back 10,000 years using Greenland ice core data.
This one goes back 65 million years, to the age of the dinosaurs. Notice the overall cooling trend.
This WWII airplane crashed on the surface of the ice in Greenland. In 50 years it had accumulated 264 feet of ice on top of it. And in another Gate du jour from the IPCC:Fitting with this is the trend of the last few decades where most of the world warmed, but Antarctica cooled and its sea ice increased. And as it happens, just today comes word of another cringeworthy error in AR4: The report whitewashes a steady growth in Antarctic sea ice, and underestimated it by 50%. (When the facts don’t fit your theory, change the facts…)
Meanwhile last year the lack of fog near the Golden Gate was blamed on: Global Warming. This year there is a whole lot of fog, and you guessed it: It's because of Global Warming. When the winter was unusually cold over much of North America, at first the alarmists were quick to lecture us that 'weather is not climate,' but when the largest blizzard since he 30's hit DC, these same people said, "It''s because of Global Warming.' The snow extent (how far the snow comes south) is the largest it's ever been. Ah ha! Global Warming. It must be nice to be an alarmist o you can claim that anything anywhere is because of Global Warming. It's kind of a "Heads, I win; tails, you lose" scenario. I won a lot of coins from my younger brother that way when he was two.
My Mom caught me, though. I had to give it all back. One more nice graph:
Yep. That's Global Warming all right!
This first one shows historical temperatures back 10,000 years using Greenland ice core data.
This one goes back 65 million years, to the age of the dinosaurs. Notice the overall cooling trend.
This WWII airplane crashed on the surface of the ice in Greenland. In 50 years it had accumulated 264 feet of ice on top of it. And in another Gate du jour from the IPCC:Fitting with this is the trend of the last few decades where most of the world warmed, but Antarctica cooled and its sea ice increased. And as it happens, just today comes word of another cringeworthy error in AR4: The report whitewashes a steady growth in Antarctic sea ice, and underestimated it by 50%. (When the facts don’t fit your theory, change the facts…)
Meanwhile last year the lack of fog near the Golden Gate was blamed on: Global Warming. This year there is a whole lot of fog, and you guessed it: It's because of Global Warming. When the winter was unusually cold over much of North America, at first the alarmists were quick to lecture us that 'weather is not climate,' but when the largest blizzard since he 30's hit DC, these same people said, "It''s because of Global Warming.' The snow extent (how far the snow comes south) is the largest it's ever been. Ah ha! Global Warming. It must be nice to be an alarmist o you can claim that anything anywhere is because of Global Warming. It's kind of a "Heads, I win; tails, you lose" scenario. I won a lot of coins from my younger brother that way when he was two.
My Mom caught me, though. I had to give it all back. One more nice graph:
P
pixelsmith
Guest
It's WAR!!!
No... there is no war. The scam is exposed. Give it up Jonah, you are starting to look silly.
No... there is no war. The scam is exposed. Give it up Jonah, you are starting to look silly.
What's good for the goose...
Climategate: East Anglia aftermath, and beyond
By Juliet Eilperin
A new guerrilla green operation has begun.
PolluterWatch, the brainchild of the advocacy group Greenpeace, is taking direct aim at major corporations who emit greenhouse gases and other pollutants. They're not just going after the companies themselves, but their hired guns and allies. (In the words of Greenpeace U.S. research director Kert Davies, those would be "their hired propagandists and influence peddlers.") A case in point: Greenpeace has filed a Virginia Freedom of Information Request with both Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine's (D) office and the University of Virginia demanding an array of correspondence concerning Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow at both the conservative Cato Institute and at George Mason University. Michaels also held the title of Virginia's official climatologist starting in 1980 until Kaine announced in August 2006 he did not consider Michaels as holding that honorary post. The FOIA to Kaine requests any "letters, email, faxes, reports, meeting and teleconference agendas, minutes, notes, transcripts, tape recordings and phone logs generated by or involving Dr. Patrick Michaels regarding global climate change (a.k.a. global warming)."
Consider it a response to the November release of hundreds of e-mails by climate researchers that were housed on the server of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. Davies, who directs PolluterWatch, said in an interview Kaine's office has informed him the documents "are in the mail," but he hasn't seen them yet. As for the project as a whole, Davies said it's an outgrowth of other Greenpeace projects, such as its tracking of ExxonMobil's spending on climate change research and PR.
"If successful, we will reveal how the corrupting influence of polluter lobbyists and the politicians they have in their pockets continues to handcuff the US government on climate and energy policy," he said. "The legacy of denial and delay caused by these actors will never be undone, but we can weaken their grip moving forward." Michaels said he was unaware of the FOIA request of Kaine's office, but did know about the UVA request. In terms of handing over the documents, Michaels said, "That's not up to me, that's up to the University of Virginia to decide."
"Obviously there's an issue of precedent," he continued. "If you can get all the e-mails of one faculty member you don't like, you can get all the e-mails of another faculty member you don't like. I don't know what the answer is to that... It is a bad thing for academia for sure." If interesting e-mails come to light as a result of these FOIAs, don't worry you'll be able to locate them through Post Carbon.
http://views.washingtonpost.com/cli...2010/01/east_anglia_aftermath_and_beyond.html
Climategate: East Anglia aftermath, and beyond
By Juliet Eilperin
A new guerrilla green operation has begun.
PolluterWatch, the brainchild of the advocacy group Greenpeace, is taking direct aim at major corporations who emit greenhouse gases and other pollutants. They're not just going after the companies themselves, but their hired guns and allies. (In the words of Greenpeace U.S. research director Kert Davies, those would be "their hired propagandists and influence peddlers.") A case in point: Greenpeace has filed a Virginia Freedom of Information Request with both Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine's (D) office and the University of Virginia demanding an array of correspondence concerning Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow at both the conservative Cato Institute and at George Mason University. Michaels also held the title of Virginia's official climatologist starting in 1980 until Kaine announced in August 2006 he did not consider Michaels as holding that honorary post. The FOIA to Kaine requests any "letters, email, faxes, reports, meeting and teleconference agendas, minutes, notes, transcripts, tape recordings and phone logs generated by or involving Dr. Patrick Michaels regarding global climate change (a.k.a. global warming)."
Consider it a response to the November release of hundreds of e-mails by climate researchers that were housed on the server of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. Davies, who directs PolluterWatch, said in an interview Kaine's office has informed him the documents "are in the mail," but he hasn't seen them yet. As for the project as a whole, Davies said it's an outgrowth of other Greenpeace projects, such as its tracking of ExxonMobil's spending on climate change research and PR.
"If successful, we will reveal how the corrupting influence of polluter lobbyists and the politicians they have in their pockets continues to handcuff the US government on climate and energy policy," he said. "The legacy of denial and delay caused by these actors will never be undone, but we can weaken their grip moving forward." Michaels said he was unaware of the FOIA request of Kaine's office, but did know about the UVA request. In terms of handing over the documents, Michaels said, "That's not up to me, that's up to the University of Virginia to decide."
"Obviously there's an issue of precedent," he continued. "If you can get all the e-mails of one faculty member you don't like, you can get all the e-mails of another faculty member you don't like. I don't know what the answer is to that... It is a bad thing for academia for sure." If interesting e-mails come to light as a result of these FOIAs, don't worry you'll be able to locate them through Post Carbon.
http://views.washingtonpost.com/cli...2010/01/east_anglia_aftermath_and_beyond.html
Schuyler
Misanthrope
FROM-NY POST
By STEVEN F. HAYWARD
The climate-change campaign is in catastrophic free fall.
Nearly every day brings a new embarrassment or retraction for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the supposed gold standard for "consensus" science. The withdrawal this week of BP, ConocoPhillips and Caterpillar from the main US business lobby for greenhouse-gas controls is the latest political blow to the campaign.
The anti-warming lobby long demonized skeptics as the moral equivalent of Holocaust deniers while warning of climate "tipping points." Now, the "Climategate" scandal that broke in November is looking like a true tipping point: The leaked e-mails have done to the climate-change debate what the Pentagon Papers did for the Vietnam War debate 40 years ago -- changed the narrative decisively.
For years, skeptics have been pointing out serious defects or gross exaggerations in the climate narrative -- glaciers that weren't actually melting; weak or incomplete data in the records of surface temperature that supposedly proved unprecedented warming; a complete lack of backup for claims that storms and drought are growing more severe. Plus, global temperatures have been flat for the last decade -- increasingly falsifying the computer models that project our doom.
The media long ignored every criticism, and generally joined the climate campaigners in denouncing skeptics for their turpitude. Now it's playing catch-up.
The latest bombshell is an admission from Phil Jones, the East Anglia University scientist at the center of the "Climategate" scandal: He says his raw data (a vital resource for those claiming climate change) is in such disarray that it probably can't be replicated or verified.
He also admits that the medieval warm period may have been as warm as today -- devasting the claim that today's temperatures are the clear result of modern industry. More, he agrees that there's been no statistically significant warming for the last 15 years.
Jones hedged a bit on all these points, but it is telling that he broke ranks from the climate campaigners, who increasingly resemble a two-year-old having a tantrum as they stoutly deny the medieval warm period and that global temperatures have flattened out.
But the climate campaign's most ludicrous contortion is its response to the recent record snowfalls across the eastern United States. Ordinary citizens, repeatedly shoveling snow from their sidewalk, see global warming as a farce.
In answer, the climate campaigners note that "weather is not climate" and that localized weather events are consistent with climate "change." They may be right -- yet these are the same folks who jumped up and down claiming that Hurricane Katrina was positive proof that catastrophic global warming had arrived, even though the strong 2005 hurricane season was followed by four quiet years for tropical storms that made a hash of that narrative.
The ruckus exposes the greatest problem of Al Gore & Co.: They've pointed to any weather anomaly -- cold winters, warm winters, in-between winters -- as proof of climate change. That is, they can't name one weather pattern or event that would be inconsistent with their theory.
The citizenry seems to prefer common sense -- opinion surveys show declining public belief in global warming.
That outcome was predictable. Nearly 40 years ago, the distinguished political scientist Anthony Downs outlined the "issue-attention cycle," a five-stage process.
The public, activists and (especially) the media first discover an issue, then grow euphorically alarmed over it and agitate for action, generating piles of scary headlines.
Then comes the crucial third step -- where the public comes to recognize that the problem has been exaggerated or misconceived, and notice the price tag for sweeping action. This happened last year with the US debate over the "cap and trade" anti-warming bill, followed by the collapse of the Copenhagen process.
That set the stage for Downs' fourth step: declining public interest and media attention -- which yields the last stage, the post-problem.
The climate-change circus isn't yet ready to join such past enthusiasms as the "population bomb" or the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth" nonsense: It has too much political and institutional momentum behind it, and there is no other ready outlet for the nearly endless supply of environmental zealotry.
But the whole climate campaign now resembles a Broadway musical that has run too long, with sagging box office and declining enthusiasm from a dwindling audience. Someone needs to break the bad news to the players that it's closing time for the climate horror show.
Climate sceptics are recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain
Jeffrey Sachs
Guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 February 2010 12.47 GMT
Article history
We must not be distracted from science's urgent message: we are fuelling dangerous changes in Earth's climate
In the weeks before and after the Copenhagen climate change conference last December, the science of climate change came under harsh attack by critics who contend that climate scientists have deliberately suppressed evidence — and that the science itself is severely flawed. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global group of experts charged with assessing the state of climate science, has been accused of bias. The global public is disconcerted by these attacks. If experts cannot agree that there is a climate crisis, why should governments spend billions of dollars to address it?
The fact is that the critics — who are few in number but aggressive in their attacks — are deploying tactics that they have honed for more than 25 years. During their long campaign, they have greatly exaggerated scientific disagreements in order to stop action on climate change, with special interests like Exxon Mobil footing the bill. Many books have recently documented the games played by the climate-change deniers. Merchants of Doubt, a new book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway set for release in mid-2010, will be an authoritative account of their misbehaviour. The authors show that the same group of mischief-makers, given a platform by the free-market ideologues of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, has consistently tried to confuse the public and discredit the scientists whose insights are helping to save the world from unintended environmental harm.
Today's campaigners against action on climate change are in many cases backed by the same lobbies, individuals, and organisations that sided with the tobacco industry to discredit the science linking smoking and lung cancer. Later, they fought the scientific evidence that sulphur oxides from coal-fired power plants were causing "acid rain." Then, when it was discovered that certain chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were causing the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere, the same groups launched a nasty campaign to discredit that science, too. Later still, the group defended the tobacco giants against charges that second-hand smoke causes cancer and other diseases. And then, starting mainly in the 1980s, this same group took on the battle against climate change. What is amazing is that, although these attacks on science have been wrong for 30 years, they still sow doubts about established facts. The truth is that there is big money backing the climate-change deniers, whether it is companies that don't want to pay the extra costs of regulation, or free-market ideologues opposed to any government controls.
The latest round of attacks involves two episodes. The first was the hacking of a climate-change research centre in England. The emails that were stolen suggested a lack of forthrightness in the presentation of some climate data. Whatever the details of this specific case, the studies in question represent a tiny fraction of the overwhelming scientific evidence that points to the reality and urgency of man-made climate change. The second issue was a blatant error concerning glaciers that appeared in a major IPCC report. Here it should be understood that the IPCC issues thousands of pages of text. There are, no doubt, errors in those pages. But errors in the midst of a vast and complex report by the IPCC point to the inevitability of human shortcomings, not to any fundamental flaws in climate science. When the emails and the IPCC error were brought to light, editorial writers at The Wall Street Journal launched a vicious campaign describing climate science as a hoax and a conspiracy. They claimed that scientists were fabricating evidence in order to obtain government research grants — a ludicrous accusation, I thought at the time, given that the scientists under attack have devoted their lives to finding the truth, and have certainly not become rich relative to their peers in finance and business. But then I recalled that this line of attack — charging a scientific conspiracy to drum up "business" for science — was almost identical to that used by The Wall Street Journal and others in the past, when they fought controls on tobacco, acid rain, ozone depletion, second-hand smoke, and other dangerous pollutants. In other words, their arguments were systematic and contrived, not at all original to the circumstances.
We are witnessing a predictable process by ideologues and right-wing think tanks and publications to discredit the scientific process. Their arguments have been repeatedly disproved for 30 years — time after time — but their aggressive methods of public propaganda succeed in causing delay and confusion. Climate change science is a wondrous intellectual activity. Great scientific minds have learned over the course of many decades to "read" the Earth's history, in order to understand how the climate system works. They have deployed brilliant physics, biology, and instrumentation (such as satellites reading detailed features of the Earth's systems) in order to advance our understanding. And the message is clear: large-scale use of oil, coal, and gas is threatening the biology and chemistry of the planet. We are fuelling dangerous changes in Earth's climate and ocean chemistry, giving rise to extreme storms, droughts, and other hazards that will damage the food supply and the quality of life of the planet. The IPCC and the climate scientists are telling us a crucial message. We need urgently to transform our energy, transport, food, industrial, and construction systems to reduce the dangerous human impact on the climate. It is our responsibility to listen, to understand the message, and then to act.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/feb/19/climate-change-sceptics-science
Schuyler
Misanthrope
The debate is kind of over. It's just that people who have a vested interest in adhering to the Alarmist meme haven't quite caught up with it yet. We even have Phil Jones, the ardent warmist, finally admitting publicly that the Medieval Warming Period 'may have been' warmer than today. Scientists (the credentialed peer-reviewed kind) are coming out of the closet to say AGW is BS and that they didn't dare say so or be ostracized. Even MSM is starting to get it.
BTW, the NASA emails were just released, after a years long FOIA request. Same issues: Bogus data caused 'warming.' These guys would be missing data, then plug in the missing data with the exact same data as previous months, use summer months only (Duh!) and generally cause warming to appear where there was none.
Oh, and you know the missing antarctic sea ice? The wind moved it. NASA now admits it. And here's a nice ditty from Anthony Watts.
While some other bloggers and journalists insist that recent winter snows are proof of global warming effects, they miss the fact that models have been predicting less snow in the norther hemisphere. See this 2005 peer reviewed paper:
Frei, A. and G. Gong, 2005. Decadal to Century Scale Trends in North American Snow Extent in Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models. Geophysical Research Letters, 32:L18502, doi: 10.1029/2005GL023394.
It says exactly the opposite of what some are saying now. – Anthony
=====================================
Guest post by Steven Goddard
A 2005 Columbia University study titled “WILL CLIMATE CHANGE AFFECT SNOW COVER OVER NORTH AMERICA?” ran nine climate models used by the IPCC, and all nine predicted that North American winter snow cover would decline significantly, starting in about 1990.
In this study, current and future decadal trends in winter North American SCE (NA-SCE) are investigated, using nine general circulation models (GCMs) of the global atmosphere-ocean system participating in the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC-AR4)…
all nine models exhibit a clear and statistically significant decreasing trend in 21st century NA-SCE
Understand here the deception. You have Warmists running around today claiming that the Washington, DC blizzard is a result of Global Warming! Yet the IPCC models predicted that the extent of snow wouldf DECREASE when it has actually increased. Since this BS has been around for awhile now we ought to be able to discern if the predictive models work or not and what we have found is that they DON'T WORK! It's the same with Nasen's late eighties report to Congress (Another 'we're all gonna die' scenario which turned out to be completely wrong.)
The operative test of 'science' is that it can PREDICT. Well, it's not predicting. The real question herfe is that why, in spite of this overwhelming evidence to the contrary, do the believers continue to believe.
Beep! Beep!
P.S. I'm not understanding why half the time the pics and graphs show up as pics & graphs and half the time they show as 'attachment x' Oh, well. Dunno.
Washington's snowstorms, brought to you by global warming
By Bill McKibben
Sunday, February 14, 2010
RIPTON, VERMONT -- You want to hear my winter weather story? No, really, I know you do.
This Story
The cross-country ski race I've been training for, set for today high in the Green Mountains: cancelled, lack of snow.Meanwhile, across the continent, backhoes and helicopters are moving snow down British Columbia's Cypress Mountain in an attempt to cover the Olympic ski courses, and technicians are burying cooling pipes beneath the moguls to keep them from melting. Some climate-conscious jokers put out a video pushing the sport of "bobwheeling" for future snow-challenged Olympiads.And apparently there was some snowfall in the greater Washington area last week.When you're trying to launch snowboarding tricks on dry ground and simultaneously shutting down the U.S. government because the snowbanks are casting shadows on the Washington Monument, something odd is going on. This isn't a good old-fashioned winter for the District of Columbia, not unless you're remembering the last ice age. And it doesn't disprove global warming, despite Sen. Jim De Mint's cheerful tweet: "It's going to keep snowing until Al Gore cries 'uncle.' "
Instead, the weird and disruptive weather patterns around the world are pretty much exactly what you'd expect as the planet warms. Here's how it works:
In most places, winter is clearly growing shorter and less intense. We can tell, because Arctic sea ice is melting, because the glaciers on Greenland are shrinking and because a thousand other signals send the same message. Here in the mountains of the Northeast, for instance, lakes freeze later than they used to, and sometimes not at all: Lake Champlain remained open in winter only three times during the 19th century, but it did so 18 times between 1970 and 2007.
But rising temperature is only one effect of climate change. Probably more crucially, warmer air holds more water vapor than cold air does. The increased evaporation from land and sea leads to more drought but also to more precipitation, since what goes up eventually comes down. The numbers aren't trivial -- global warming has added 4 percent more moisture to the atmosphere since 1970. That means that the number of "extreme events" such as downpours and floods has grown steadily; the most intense storms have increased by 20 percent across the United States in the past century.
So here's the thing: Despite global warming, it still gets cold enough to snow in the middle of winter. It even gets cold enough to snow in Texas and Georgia, as it did late last week. And the chances of what are technically called "big honking dumps" have increased. As Jeff Masters, the widely read weather blogger, pointed out last week, a record snowstorm requires a record amount of moisture in the air. "It is quite possible that the dice have been loaded in favor of more intense Nor'easters for the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, thanks to the higher levels of moisture present in the air due to warmer global temperatures," he wrote.
The climatalogical climate is only part of the equation. The political climate counts, too -- and there's no question that it's harder to make legislative progress when Sen. James Inhofe's grandchildren are building an igloo next to the Capitol with a big sign that says "Al Gore's New Home." The timing here is particularly tough, for the snowstorms come against the backdrop of renewed attacks on the pillars of climate science -- charges that hacked e-mails show some researchers to be venal or that key scientists have financial ties to energy industries.
Looked at dispassionately, those political attacks essentially buttress the consensus around global warming. If that much money and attention can be aimed at the data and all anyone can find is a few mistakes and a collection of nasty e-mails, it's a pretty good sign that the science is sound (though not as good a sign as the melting Arctic). The British newspaper the Guardian just concluded a huge series on the "Climategate" e-mails with the words: "The world is still warming. Humanity is still to blame. And we still, urgently, need to do something about it."
Looked at dispassionately, the round of snowmageddons crisscrossing the mid-Atlantic carries the same message. But it's hard to be dispassionate when you're wondering, six hours of shoveling later, if there's a good chiropractor in the neighborhood and what kind of dogsled you might need to reach her.It's almost like a test, centered on ground zero for climate-change legislation. Can you sit in a snowstorm and imagine a warming world? If you're a senator, can you come back to work and pass a bill that blunts the pace of climate change? If the answer is no, then we're really in a world of trouble.
Bill McKibben is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and the co-founder of 350.org. He is the author of "The End of Nature" and the forthcoming "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021103895.html
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By Bill McKibben
Sunday, February 14, 2010
RIPTON, VERMONT -- You want to hear my winter weather story? No, really, I know you do.
This Story
The cross-country ski race I've been training for, set for today high in the Green Mountains: cancelled, lack of snow.Meanwhile, across the continent, backhoes and helicopters are moving snow down British Columbia's Cypress Mountain in an attempt to cover the Olympic ski courses, and technicians are burying cooling pipes beneath the moguls to keep them from melting. Some climate-conscious jokers put out a video pushing the sport of "bobwheeling" for future snow-challenged Olympiads.And apparently there was some snowfall in the greater Washington area last week.When you're trying to launch snowboarding tricks on dry ground and simultaneously shutting down the U.S. government because the snowbanks are casting shadows on the Washington Monument, something odd is going on. This isn't a good old-fashioned winter for the District of Columbia, not unless you're remembering the last ice age. And it doesn't disprove global warming, despite Sen. Jim De Mint's cheerful tweet: "It's going to keep snowing until Al Gore cries 'uncle.' "
Instead, the weird and disruptive weather patterns around the world are pretty much exactly what you'd expect as the planet warms. Here's how it works:
In most places, winter is clearly growing shorter and less intense. We can tell, because Arctic sea ice is melting, because the glaciers on Greenland are shrinking and because a thousand other signals send the same message. Here in the mountains of the Northeast, for instance, lakes freeze later than they used to, and sometimes not at all: Lake Champlain remained open in winter only three times during the 19th century, but it did so 18 times between 1970 and 2007.
But rising temperature is only one effect of climate change. Probably more crucially, warmer air holds more water vapor than cold air does. The increased evaporation from land and sea leads to more drought but also to more precipitation, since what goes up eventually comes down. The numbers aren't trivial -- global warming has added 4 percent more moisture to the atmosphere since 1970. That means that the number of "extreme events" such as downpours and floods has grown steadily; the most intense storms have increased by 20 percent across the United States in the past century.
So here's the thing: Despite global warming, it still gets cold enough to snow in the middle of winter. It even gets cold enough to snow in Texas and Georgia, as it did late last week. And the chances of what are technically called "big honking dumps" have increased. As Jeff Masters, the widely read weather blogger, pointed out last week, a record snowstorm requires a record amount of moisture in the air. "It is quite possible that the dice have been loaded in favor of more intense Nor'easters for the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, thanks to the higher levels of moisture present in the air due to warmer global temperatures," he wrote.
The climatalogical climate is only part of the equation. The political climate counts, too -- and there's no question that it's harder to make legislative progress when Sen. James Inhofe's grandchildren are building an igloo next to the Capitol with a big sign that says "Al Gore's New Home." The timing here is particularly tough, for the snowstorms come against the backdrop of renewed attacks on the pillars of climate science -- charges that hacked e-mails show some researchers to be venal or that key scientists have financial ties to energy industries.
Looked at dispassionately, those political attacks essentially buttress the consensus around global warming. If that much money and attention can be aimed at the data and all anyone can find is a few mistakes and a collection of nasty e-mails, it's a pretty good sign that the science is sound (though not as good a sign as the melting Arctic). The British newspaper the Guardian just concluded a huge series on the "Climategate" e-mails with the words: "The world is still warming. Humanity is still to blame. And we still, urgently, need to do something about it."
Looked at dispassionately, the round of snowmageddons crisscrossing the mid-Atlantic carries the same message. But it's hard to be dispassionate when you're wondering, six hours of shoveling later, if there's a good chiropractor in the neighborhood and what kind of dogsled you might need to reach her.It's almost like a test, centered on ground zero for climate-change legislation. Can you sit in a snowstorm and imagine a warming world? If you're a senator, can you come back to work and pass a bill that blunts the pace of climate change? If the answer is no, then we're really in a world of trouble.
Bill McKibben is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and the co-founder of 350.org. He is the author of "The End of Nature" and the forthcoming "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021103895.html
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