Scientific Journal Nature Finds Nothing Notable In CRU Leak 736
eldavojohn writes with an update to the CRU email leak story we've been following for the past two weeks. The peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature has published an article saying the emails do not demonstrate any sort of "scientific conspiracy," and that the journal doesn't intend to investigate earlier papers from CRU researchers without "substantive reasons for concern." The article notes, "Whatever the e-mail authors may have said to one another in (supposed) privacy, however, what matters is how they acted. And the fact is that, in the end, neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers." Reader lacaprup points out related news that a global warming skeptic plans to sue NASA under the Freedom of Information Act for failing to deliver climate data and correspondence of their own, which he thinks will be "highly damaging." Meanwhile, a United Nations panel will be conducting its own investigation of the CRU emails.
Nice try (Score:5, Insightful)
The real smoking gun isn't the emails - it's the source code [oneutah.org].
They keep talking about those emails in the hopes that no one will call them out on the "VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline"s applied liberally to the raw data.
Really take a look at the graphs in the link above. Plot that array yourself if you don't believe it. No amount of handwaving will explain away blatant lying.
Unfortunate (Score:2, Insightful)
There are items of interest--even if determined irrelevant in the end--to discuss.
This is as if immediately after the Kennedy assassination the government was saying "there is nothing to see, move along, move along"
Re:Same with newscientist (Score:5, Insightful)
A few suspect emails do not destroy millions of man hours of research.
They do destroy faithfulness of the research if the premise those millions of hours spent are false.
Re:Same with newscientist (Score:2, Insightful)
If data that all those millions of man-hours of research is based on is bogus then the conclusions are worthless.
Let me save the UN the time (Score:1, Insightful)
Here's the UN investigation outcome, "those emails mean nothing".
Just wait for it.
Peer-reviewed journal? (Score:1, Insightful)
Is that a journal where the hockey team review each others papers anonymously? No surprise that they won't investigate anything.
I think open source is the answer here. Open source the data, methodologies, any programs used. Anybody else should be able to reproduce the results by themselves. All that research is paid for by the public dime anyway and it's used to set public policy so it shouldn't be kept secret. Oh, and no anonymous peer "reviewing" would be really nice.
re:A few suspect emails do not destroy millions... (Score:4, Insightful)
"A few suspect emails do not destroy millions of man hours of research."
Never mind the quality, feel the weight.
With all the moeny invested (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice try (Score:4, Insightful)
The researchers did not use certain tree ring data post 1960 because it was not properly calibrated to instrumental data. There has been much hoo-hah about this "throwing out" of data when really it is the instrumental data that matters, not the proxy data. If temperature is what you are after, thermometers are the gold standard. Therefore the post 1960 results really aren't in question. Furthermore, many critics of Mann et al. have ignored the fact that this was a single line of data turning a blind eye to the numerous other data sets and proxies that support the same conclusions. I find it disingenuous to claim that all climatology is now in question due to this "trick". I will, however, admit that the researchers should have noted the issues with the tree-ring data in question.
If one completely ignores any of the above data sets (whether they be direct measurements or proxies), there exist many disparate observations of global warming ranging from the rise in sea level which threatens various nations' lands to the melting of the arctic tundra to the loss of glaciation document global warming independently of these scientists' data. All the data seem to indicate is that the warming is happening on a scale that it has not before. By itself, this should indicate that the hockey stick curve is real. But is this warming due to humans?
Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) critics seem to espouse ideas such as the solar cycle hypothesis or Milankovich hypothesis rather than admit that humans can change the atmosphere. On the BBC this morning I even heard a listener letter that explained how volcanoes were the cause of the increased CO2 in the atmosphere. This ignores some of the more obvious ways in which humans can change the atmosphere. This year, the Chinese government limited fossil fuel burning before the Olympics with apparently stunning results. When I was in Beijing for nearly a month 10 years ago, smog was a daily occurance. Even miles outside the city at Badaling (the Great Wall), it was hard to see for more than a mile. Smog is considered to be the third most important greenhouse gas by the IPCC. Evidence that we are changing our own atmosphere by fossil fuel emission is obvious just by looking.
Re:Nice try (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Unfortunate (Score:2, Insightful)
I would compare it more to 9/11, the artificial choice of it's all a conspiracy or there is nothing to see move along. Instead of there are a lot of facts we don't want you to know so please don't look any deeper.
Same thing, "Oh, the EMAILS!". The emails, it's all about the email and a conspiracy! Either you support global warming or your a conspiracy nutter tin-foil hat and all. When really it is the fact that while global climate change is a reality, it is also being used to support an agenda.
The most telling word in the whole article: (Score:2, Insightful)
Denialists.
That's right, anyone who "denies" global warming is human caused is denying the truth.
Some "climate-change-denialist fringe" (also their words in the link) who deny the "scientific case" of human-caused (their words, and honest ones. It does not rise to the level of a theory)
No, they could not be credible scientists that look at the data and see other hypothesis. Nor could they be credible in questioning the base data. The "debate is over".
Sorry Nature, epic fail.
Starting your argument with a personal attack is not good form. You expose your own bias to believe the human-caused global warming hypothesis by doing the very thing the scientists in the emails do: attack and discredit those who disagree with you.
Every scientific theory, and even "laws" like gravity, must stand up to rigorous scientific questioning... or they are merely pseudo-religious beliefs. You might as well declare Al Gore the Global Warming Pope and set up a church in Copenhagen.
The dog that did not bark (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you see in these mails? Remember these scientists think they are talking in private and never anticipated being found out. Are there mentions or references to dark projects? Some references to their agents and their handlers? Strong ideological opinions to destroy Capitalism and install a world Government?
What happened is very simple. These scientists are used to one kind of debate and one kind of rules. Where "the conclusions reached by Kogen, et al [8] is not supported by the evidence presented by them [9],[10],[11]" would be considered a grave insult and might cause loss of reputation. In the question and answer session in a seminar someone saying, "But, Dr Kaplansky, with a sample size of 27, the correlation coefficient you have arrived at is less than experimental error" wouild result in a collective gasp and "ole!" from the assembled people, usually about 20 people who could actually understand the paper being presented.
These scientists are encountering the rough and tumble world of popular journalism, spin meistering. They are clueless about how to handle it. They feel they are being gravely insulted and highly manipulated. They think they are being quote mined, quoted out of context. The journalists are giving totally irrelevant and completely debunked theorists equal time for balance. So they go about in their clueless ways to counter it. They over react, they try to be more guarded, they are trying to write sentences that could not be quote mined.
Now that people have glimpse of the actual communications between the scientists, compare that to say, the hacked emails of Sarah Palin, See where you find more smoking guns.
How they acted? (Score:2, Insightful)
however, what matters is how they acted.
They weren't just saying things in those emails, they were acting on it. Scientific Journal is acting like all those emails were part of a fairytale and none of it ever happened.
In the one email, the author is quoted saying that he "adjusted the numbers." Last time I checked "adjusted" is past tense meaning that he did something. That's not the same as "I can adjust the numbers if you want me to."
If AGW was actually happening, there would be no need to "adjust" numbers and likewise no need to cover up the leaked emails.
Re:Same with newscientist (Score:5, Insightful)
If data that all those millions of man-hours of research is based on is bogus then the conclusions are worthless.
It's lucky then that the data comes from many different independent sources and is therefore not bogus at all then, isn't it?
Re:Data thrown away (Score:0, Insightful)
You realize that them throwing the data away was done for the same reasons the BBC tossed out all those videos and films of old shows -- to save space. So are you going to then use the same logic to deduce that the BBC was willfully destroying evidence of events that happened in their studios to cover up some major wrongdoing? Because that's the level of logical leap many of you are taking here. "If they didn't have something to hide, the BBC would never have destroyed those tapes."
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
You might have a point if the leaked file only demonstrated a single case of data tampering, but it's all over the place. Anyone with a copy of FOI2009.zip and grep can verify this.
Re:Almost (Score:3, Insightful)
It is not the millions of dollars in research grants that you need to worry about. It is the hundreds of billions of dollars in industries that stand to be affected if this research is true that you need to be concerned about. Follow the money.
Re:How they acted? (Score:5, Insightful)
So normalization of data should never happen, no matter what? Have you ever taken even the most basic of statistics classes?
This is the problem with the whole argument right here. You have people that don't have the first clue what they're talking about telling people how they're supposed to do their job.
Re:Same with newscientist (Score:3, Insightful)
Once thing that's certain: this, like all other climate research relating to AGW, will descend into a hyper-partisan he said-she said type argument. This guarantees it will be impossible for anyone unwilling or unable to validate and analyze the data themselves to come to a rational conclusion.
One thing is crystal clear: these guys are biased in a way that is completely antithetical to true scientific research.
Re:Nice try (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice try. The tree ring data was used as a proxy for temperature. The results of this proxy formula didn't match up with actual temperature readings past 1960, so to make their method look like it had more skill (accuracy) than it did, they simply grafted the actual temperature series to the end of the tree ring proxy temperature series. This is what was meant by "hide the decline".
A real scientist would have investigated why the proxy failed to to reflect actual temperatures in recent times, and might have questioned if the methodology actually applied correctly to any time in the past. Instead, they grafted apples to oranges and then told everyone they had discovered something that they had not.
Very bad science. If this happened in any other field, these clowns would be out of a job.
Re:Peer-reviewed journal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that a journal where the hockey team review each others papers anonymously?
No, it's a scientific journal. They don't write about sports.
No surprise that they won't investigate anything.
If you read the article and summary, you'll discover that they did investigate, and found nothing wrong.
Perhaps you should brush up on your reading comprehension skills. Learning a bit about the scientific method would help too.
Worst case (Score:5, Insightful)
1) they're guilty of not properly responding to a FOIA request
2) they've said nasty things about certain colleagues work (but still cited it)
3) they've discarded some data for reasons they should have better explained (reasons that were valid -- it wasn't properly calibrated)
Bad for them personally, but utterly irrelevant to the scientific issue, unless you think it's some kind of surprise that scientists are human and sometimes make mistakes. As the Nature article says, it's laughable. Where's the global conspiracy? Where's the outright fraud of substantial masses of crucial data? Nowhere.
It's worth investigating for the possibility of misconduct, but, sheesh, the actual scientific impact is so overblown it's ridiculous. This is why you have many, many other scientists working on the same issues and completely independent ones: so that even if one of them makes an honest or a dishonest mistake, or one method yields incorrect results, the other people and techniques are likely to find the flaw and correct it.
The only "trick" here is the propaganda trick climate-change denialists are using to divert attention from the actual data and results of the last few decades.
Smoking gun? It's like they've (illegally) broken into the house owned by someone they've publicly accused of murder for a decade and found a plastic gun replica that shoots Nerf balls. Aha!! Gotcha!
Re:Same with newscientist (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice try (Score:4, Insightful)
The researchers did not use certain tree ring data post 1960 because it was not properly calibrated to instrumental data. There has been much hoo-hah about this "throwing out" of data when really it is the instrumental data that matters, not the proxy data. If temperature is what you are after, thermometers are the gold standard. Therefore the post 1960 results really aren't in question
Right, so the reasonable inference would be "this proxy can't event match the temperatures we know for sure -- it's no good, throw it out entirely". However, the scientists in question are so attached to their preordained conclusions that they don't even consider this. Instead, they throw out the data they don't like, and keep what matches the conclusion they want, instead of (at least *considering*) re-evaluating the conclusion to begin with.
So they act like the proxy's correct precisely when they have less substantiation, and its failure to match the most solid data is just a problem they need to patch up later -- the so called "divergence problem". It should be called the, "Do we ever consider we might be wrong?" problem.
Re:Same with newscientist (Score:1, Insightful)
Why would it be lucky, since what you posted simply isn't true?
Re:Same with newscientist (Score:1, Insightful)
[citation needed]?
What's next? Pedophilia? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Nice try (Score:5, Insightful)
Wasn't it so inconsiderate of those trees to change the way the respond to temperature?
I wonder why they don't include other tree ring data [wattsupwiththat.com] or the Finnish [worldclimatereport.com] data? Instead, they used bogus [cfact.eu] data.
And "they" continue to hide [wattsupwiththat.com] other data.
Of course I know the standard responses...I'm not a climate scientist so what do I know anything, Nature is "Dr. Jones Peer Reviewed", everyone else is paid by Exxon, blah blah blah.
Fact is that this issue is now beyond science and is being fought in the public forum. Anyone who would have the world cripple itself economically needs to be 150% above board with all their data and methods. No hiding behind anything. Anyone with a reasonable background in science should be able to take their models apart, thoroughly understand what they are doing and why and be able to replicate their work, from the friggen hunk of wood to the final graph. Hire more people to fulfill FOI request if that's what it takes.
If necessary, they should set aside a few months a year to do nothing but assist others in understanding their methods (never mind that if any other scientist had to help others replicate their work, it would be seen as a sign of fraud). Too important and busy to do that? Bullshit. Given what want everyone to do, they have an OBLIGATION to do that.
And lastly...I'm sorry but if the friggin tree ring data is not valid for assessing temperature after 1960, then it is not valid assessing temperature before 1960.
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
grep? grep only works if you know what you're looking for.
Why the need to supress debate? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's such god-damnned good science, why then are people saying "we must not have any more debate. Debate is closed. It's time to move on."
Re:Peer-reviewed journal? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're this sceptical of the peer-review process, then why aren't you dismissing everything else in science as well? It's done by exactly the same process.
Re:Same with newscientist (Score:4, Insightful)
"A few suspect emails do not destroy millions of man hours of research."
Of course not. But when the main suppliers of that information to policy makers turn out to be advocates of a dogma with a vested interest in manipulating that data, in colluding to hide contrary information, in DISPOSING (whups! accident!) of the raw data sets that they've compiled, attacking critics, and generally behaving as if they have something to conceal, it IS possible for those individuals to taint that research and especially the conclusions drawn therefrom.
Who Watches the Watchmen, indeed?
It's a known psychological fact that very often the victims of a con will be the most vociferous defenders of the con artists - they are now defending their own reputation and self-image, no longer mere facts of 'does this snake oil work or not?'.
Re:The dog that did not bark (Score:5, Insightful)
We thought that the media had grown a pair of proverbial balls after the Bush fiasco, but we were wrong. It almost seems to be going in the wrong direction, where they are less challenging than they were before for fear of *not* getting that interview.
Re:Same with newscientist (Score:5, Insightful)
To be blunt, here's a list of things that I think need to be done. First, all data and processes need to be made public domain. Simply put, proprietary data that can't be released to the public has no place in scientific research. It doesn't matter if industry-paid hacks attack anything they can find. If we can't duplicate the calculations, using your data and programs that went into your research, then we can't say whether you did it at all in the first place.
Second, there needs to be some degree of separation between the politics and the science. For example, James Hansen [wikipedia.org] who currently heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (which is NASA's group for studying the climate) has engaged in a great deal of politics over the years, throwing away any pretense of objectivity. For example, he says [guardian.co.uk]:
In Hansen's view, dealing with climate change allows no room for the compromises that rule the world of elected politics. "This is analagous to the issue of slavery faced by Abraham Lincoln or the issue of Nazism faced by Winston Churchill," he said. "On those kind of issues you cannot compromise. You can't say let's reduce slavery, let's find a compromise and reduce it 50% or reduce it 40%."
Ignoring that carbon emissions can be dealt with through compromise (even in the worst cases) and hence are not like slavery or the spread of totalitarian ideologies, would a person with this sort of viewpoint "cook the books" when it comes to their science? Why not? When I see accusations of NASA data manipulation coupled with refusal to honor FOIA requests and highly ideological, crude public statements like the above of key officials, then it looks like a pattern of unscientific behavior to me. They can at least act like grownups.
The people trying to force carbon emission reduction need to take their time. If they're right, then a little more time will simply solidify their position further, especially since there's no urgency in the matter according to current research. If they're wrong about the need to reduce human carbon emissions, then that'll help humanity collectively. For example, Hanson has been crying "wolf" since 1989. Even if the science is determined now (I still don't believe we've shown that human activity has a significant global warming effect), it wasn't then.
Finally, there needs to be a genuine cost/benefit analysis of the possible choices, including various geoengineering options and procrastination. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I'm tired of the nebulous claims of disaster made by anthropic global warming proponents (Hanson in the linked story above claims "tens of meters" of sea level rise, but doesn't bother to say over what time period this rise occurs).
Re:Same with newscientist (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would it be lucky, since what you posted simply isn't true?
Your post isn't true.
Argument ad infinitum.
Re:Nice try (Score:2, Insightful)
If one completely ignores any of the above data sets (whether they be direct measurements or proxies), there exist many disparate observations of global warming ranging from the rise in sea level which threatens various nations' lands ...which has been either minimal or non-detectable, as opposed to what the AGW fans have been telling us. Not exactly a good point.
to the melting of the arctic tundra ...which can only melt when it's man-caused global warming, instead of the sun-caused version which is probably what's been observed for the last half century?
to the loss of glaciation document global warming independently of these scientists' data.
Except that much of the "glaciation loss" is probably due to lowered precipitation instead of increased temperatures.
Correlation is not causation. Just because the globe got slightly warmer doesn't mean it was CO2-based AGW that did it.
You should also note that if you go back to the beginning of serious AGW science (during the late 1980s), most of their predictions have already been falsified. The globe should be at least a half-degree warmer than observed (check the "Hockey Stick" graph in its earlier incarnations), the oceans should be at least a foot deeper (up to five feet higher today, according to some predictions), and storms should be much, much more severe (they're not). None of these things have happened over the last twenty years, therefore THEY WERE WRONG.
On the other hand, many of the skeptics have been supporting the solar variation side of the theory of global climate change, and (surprise!) it matches up quite nicely to observed temperature changes, including the prediction of the stable/cooling trend in the last ten years.
Re:Nice explanation in potholer54's video (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you people find the time to watch silly videos? Is there an accurate transcript? With still images? Perhaps a normal web page?
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who would have the world cripple itself economically
[Citation needed]
Amory Lovins [youtube.com], Paul Krugman [nytimes.com] and many, many, many others would disagree with you on that point.
Re:Nice try (Score:2, Insightful)
Jones, as documented quite clearly in the leaked emails, has apparently spent years avoiding FOIA requests, even suggesting he'd rather delete data than share it with AGW skeptics.
Sharing data with scientists who already agree with you isn't science. These guys have clearly abandoned science in favor of politics.
Re:Almost (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, that's why this controversy doesn't exist because there in fact were NOT scientists refuting the existing science and there was no group of scientists trying to silence them, nor were there any emails speaking of how these scientists would do so.
Seriously, did you miss that part in this whole scandal?
Re:How they acted? (Score:1, Insightful)
Lies, damned lies and statistics. The point is that it is obvious from the emails that there was an agenda and preconceived ideas about what that facts are. Normalizing data is normal, but not when it is done just to get the result you WANT to find.
Wishful thinking (Score:2, Insightful)
Just because you want something to be true and you can come up with a rationalized answer for why it is true, doesn't mean it is true.
More expensive energy and more expensive products are by definition more expensive. I understand that everything needs to be ramped up. As we develop our understanding and the infrastructure, the costs will come down. But you don't know for a fact it will work. That's why capitalism is great. Risk your own money, not mine. Risk your own financial future, not mine.
Even if someone is right about global warming, that doesn't mean their solution will fix the problem.
Re:Nice try (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How they acted? (Score:2, Insightful)
As you are clearly posting in a position of ignorance let me clear a few things up for you.
1: "Scientific Journal" describes "Nature", it is not the journal's name. It is a peer reviewed international weekly journal of science.
2: They & hundreds of other scientists reviewed the leaked data & correspondence and the published data. They concluded that there is nothing in this stolen data which effects our current understanding of climate science in any way.
3: They also concluded that many people are taking some phrases out of context and insisting that they mean something completely different than the context otherwise indicates. This is what you are doing.
4: Anthropogenic climate change is on going and there is ample evidence of it, even if we were to unfairly discount the work of CRU or the scientists named in this manufactured controversy.
5: That you assert if something was real there would have to be no data analysis or manipulation suggests to me that you have never done any kind of serious scientific investigation... or used a measurement or diagnostic device of any complexity.
Re:Nice try (Score:5, Insightful)
You are repeating old denialists' crap.
Do you want me to find refutations for all of your talking points in 1 min. of Google search?
Yes. Or STFU.
You didn't refute his assertions, you attacked him.
When are you going to learn that this kind of behavior is exactly why many people don't believe you?
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice try (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The most telling word in the whole article: (Score:3, Insightful)
There comes a point where the scientific evidence in support of a theory is so overwhelming that those who deny its truth are either ignorant or denialists.
We don't take HIV/AIDS denialism seriously, we don't take tobacco/lung cancer denialists seriously, we don't take moon landing conspiracy theorists seriously, we don't take young earth creationists seriously. While there is some uncertainty in the ultimate extent of climate change (as with any scientific prediction), the fundamentals (i.e. radiative forcing due to CO2, the fact that we are responsible for recent increases in CO2, the fact that feedback mechanisms exist which enhance our climate sensitivity) are very well understood, and multiple independent measurements of the temperature confirm that the earth is indeed heating at a statistically significant rate.
It's actually funny watching the denialists backtrack further and further at each step that they are debunked. Carbon dioxide levels haven't increased. Okay, they have increased, but humans aren't responsible. Okay, we are responsible, but temperatures haven't increased as a result. Okay, temperatures are increasing, carbon dioxide levels are increasing, and we are responsible for it, but Glenn Beck tells me it's a conspiracy by Obama to introduce a global socialist government. Okay, these conspiracy theories are a little nutty - what's the problem with global warming? We should embrace it. Okay, maybe we shouldn't embrace it, but it's too hard to stop it. Let's give up.
For those who understand the science, there is no doubt in the fact that man is contributing to increases in the global temperature. For everyone else, there's always Fox News.
Honestly, I expected better from Slashdot. Most here seem to have taken the conspiracy theorist nonsense hook, line and sinker.
The Smoking Code (Score:2, Insightful)
The review must not have been that thorough. [wattsupwiththat.com]
Re:Why the need to supress debate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Peer-reviewed journal? (Score:4, Insightful)
So past accomplishments (not denying Nature has had more than a few) pretty much make you permanently infallible, is that what you're saying?
I don't think there should be anything above scrutiny. That's how I understand science.
Of course there is nothing notable (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Same with newscientist (Score:3, Insightful)
Other than the CRU and NASA, who else publishes this data? I was under the impression they were the only two generating global temperature data sets and neither has been willing to show all of their work.
When you have a minute though, you should update the Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] page to add your list of the many independent sources.
Re:Nice try (Score:5, Insightful)
#2 doesn't hold water, scientifically.
If they're going to throw out the tree ring data, throw it ALL out, not just the part you don't like. If it is valid before 1960, it is valid after 1960. Grafting on thermometer data because it fits your desired conclusion is bad science, pure and simple.
It's all a conspiracy, I tell you! (Score:2, Insightful)
Anthropogenic global warming is just a conspiracy by the evil climatologists to steal our money and freedom. Never mind that it's an entire scientific field and thus a massive amount of people would have to be involved in this conspiracy, so many there's no chance they'd go even a day without a leak. Never mind that they've known about and been researching global warming for far longer than governments have been paying it attention, and thus they must've been working on this for decades on the minor chance they'd be able to expand the influence of the next generation of climatologists (or was the earlier research valid but the newer research is somehow flawed?). Never mind that pretty much every major scientific organization backs the theory of AGW; clearly the broader scientific community is just in the pockets of the powerful green lobby (note how green is a color just like red CONNECT THE DOTS MY FRIENDS). Also I'm pretty sure the Freemasons figure into it somehow.
Teach the controversy!
Re:The most telling word in the whole article: (Score:5, Insightful)
"must stand up to rigorous scientific questioning" - true, indeed. The problem is that Global Warming has done so convincingly several times over and still some people refuse to bulge. Hence, denialists.
If this was an ordinary scientific issue it really wouldn't matter: graduate students tend to avoid bad scientists and so denialists die out. Unfortunately, this is not a ordinary scientific issue, but one that begets an extremely important current policy issue; one that may require all sorts of weird things, like actual global governance. I, personally, would very much prefer if the lunatics would shut up and let the rest of us get on to figure out what to do.
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:2, Insightful)
"burn fossil fuels at current rates is not environmentally sound policy."
I would agree. And the only practical answer in nuclear.
I would posit that anyone who opposes nuclear, despite it's impressive safety record and tremendous potential for further efficiencies (breeders, thorium, etc.) Is not truly interested in solving any potential global warming, rather they are in well within the camp that suggests we should all live in grass huts, commune with the animals and eat nuts and twigs.
It is a rather delicious irony that the majority of the rabid anti-nukers from the 60s and 70s are now the rabid anti-fossil fuels and global warming hand wringers.
Re:Loss of trust (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when does the right care about science? They can't even get an issue as simple and data-rich as sex education right, but now I'm supposed to believe that it's all about the evidence?
I used to have doubts about AGW because I heard so many skeptics, but now that they've dropped their masks and are trying to move in for the kill I see that the whole thing is just like the evolution "debate". Conspiracy theories ("It's the evil liberals! They want to destroy capitalism!"), quotes out of context, repeating the same tired debunked arguments year after year... The only difference is that the ideology behind it is a little more popular -- the strawman liberal is apparently a more plausible villain to most people than the strawman atheist.
Re:Nice try (Score:2, Insightful)
grep? grep only works if you know what you're looking for.
Exactly. I loved it when the "sceptics" started claiming widespread fraud at a time nobody could have read all the emails, let alone the rest of the data. The only way to find "incriminating" material this way is by grep or similar tools. Can somebody say confirmation bias [wikipedia.org]?
I know my mailbox contains some things I would not have said in public - and I would dearly love to see some of the mail dumps from the Heartland Institute "scientists".
Re:Nice try (Score:5, Insightful)
So lets have some examples. Or are you just another hand waving "skeptic"?
BTW: The single case you refer to has been explained numerous times as an attemp to DISPROVE a signal had been found. You seem unfamiliar with the concept of self-skepticisim so I can see how that might have escaped your notice. The fact remains that In the end the code was never used and the graph labeled VERY ARTIFICIAL was never published. I'm sure as hell that if I was fiddling data for a global conspiracy I would not put a label like that on the resulting graph, would you?
Re:The Smoking Code (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nice try (Score:5, Insightful)
If anything, this code tells me that whoever wrote it was very careful not to use bad data. Why else would you mark the modification with a three line comment with big letters and double exclamation marks pointing out that the following lines are artificial? The only time I write comments like that is when I want to make sure nobody accidentally compiles the code with it still in there.
This is the opposite of what I would expect from someone in a conspiracy.
Re:Nice try (Score:4, Insightful)
So if you search for "insert fake data here" and you then find it, that's some kind of bias?
OOOkkkkaayyyy.
Re:The dog that did not bark (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet, there are some scientists who end up seeing things that aren't there.
An example from recent times is Benveniste and his "memory of water" results [bbc.co.uk]. Benveniste had become convinced that he and his team had discovered compelling evidence for a real, measurable mechanism behind homeopathy (other than the placebo effect). He had gathered plenty of data to support his hypothesis that water had "memory", and Nature agreed to publish his paper if the science could be verified independently. Benveniste was forced to open his lab and his methods to investigation, and eventually James Randi (for it was he) discovered that bias was being introduced into the experiments because the researchers knew which water samples were supposed to have "memory". With double-blind testing, the evidence for "memory" vanished into the statistical noise.
This is firstly an example of the scientific method working correctly. An extraordinary claim is made, independently tested, and found to be either true or (in this case) false. But, more importantly, it is an example of the scientific method failing spectacularly for Benveniste: a scientist who managed to fool himself. Pons and Fleischmann, the "inventors of cold fusion", are also good examples. Robert Park, author of "Voodoo Science", has filled an entire book with examples like this.
Generally, these people did not intend to mislead. Instead, they fooled themselves. No conspiracy, just humanity.
When I say I am skeptical about AGW, it is because I suspect that climate scientists may also have been fooling themselves. The evidence they present seems (to me) to be very noisy, and I think there may be some degree of "seeing what you expect to see" in the data. Because they have deliberately sought to shut out independent investigators who might have identified problems in the experiments and models, this problem has not been addressed. They may be right about AGW, they may not, but in either case they have not given the impression of sticking to the proper scientific process. Given the massive importance of this issue, and the extraordinary claims that have been made, I feel that extraordinary evidence is warranted. I do not think this makes me a "denialist". I think this makes me a skeptic: someone unwilling to assume that things are true, just because an authority figure says they are.
It makes me very sad to see that Nature is not raising these points and instead brushing them aside.
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
And first most important greenhouse gas is water vapor. Regardless of the truth of AGW, it is not immediately obvious that smog in cities indicates or leads to a significant effect in the atmosphere. I believe in AGW but let's not claim the climate science is easy to understand or obvious. This is why I get angry when AGWers equate those that disbelieve in AGW with creationists; the principles behind evolution are much easier and more intuitive to understand than climate science is.
Re:Nice try (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nice try (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, a logical person. And on Slashdot no less!
What all of this "data" leaves out is the tree-ring minima and ice core acidity peaks that, when integrated with other regional and global climatological events stretching back, at the very least, to 4375 BCE, present a picture of some kind of cyclical, apparently cosmically induced climate cycle. The current period of this cycle is just over 105 years, so any theory that doesn't take into account our position in this cycle--101 out of 105 years (2009-1908)--is suspect. In short, lay the average temperature rise from 1908 until 2009 over that for 1803 until 1904 and see what you get. I would strongly suspect that you will see little if any change cycle to cycle.
Re:Same with newscientist (Score:3, Insightful)
No one can deny that AGW is a highly politicized topic: you have affirmed this by talking about shills. Nonetheless, it would be hoped that scientists have managed to largely stay away from the politicization. These emails show they haven't. They show that even some of the top scientists in the field have been caught up in the political process.
This is bad. It means if you want to know the truth about a topic, you have to investigate it personally. How many of you have even read the IPCC report to see if its conclusions are valid or not? Have you looked at the computer models to see how accurate they are? Because if you've gotten all your information from realclimate.org, or climate-skeptic.com, or any non-peer-reviewed place, you are stepping into the quicksands of politicalization, and as likely as not have been mislead. That may sound like flamebait, but if you think about it, you'll realize it's true.
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that legitimate scientists don't pester for data via legal force, such as FoI requests. They may request it, or not believe results if it's not provided, but the fact that they're resorting to such means suggests bad intent.
Using the force of law to conduct science? Not legitimate in my book.
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
Greed as usual defines what we will support. But hang on a minute, in the west we have become blind to the economic model we live with. Producing something has become so cheap that it comprises less than 20% of what you as a consumer end up paying for it. If protecting the life of your offspring is going to increase the fundamental cost of a thing by 5% for a couple of decades then I think we should be looking at that 80% of the cost of a product to find the savings to pay for the change. Ask yourself if the way our businesses operate today that they cant find 5% of their methods to save the planet and the story looks different. All it requires is that we invest in new technology instead of sticking with old models of business rather faster than the old busineses would like. Can I put up with a 5% decrease in my pension when the recent collapse of the world economic system has reduced my pension by 50%? What planet are you people living on if you belive that existing business models are going to look after you after they have so resoundingly failed us? We can fix the planet at almost no personal cost and you hold out against it because you trust the bankers and their failed economic system, the data says you are crazy. Lets start a new boom based on climate change technology, wake up and stop listening to those who have failed us.
Re:Nice try (Score:4, Insightful)
It is true that water vapor is the strongest greenhouse gas. However, that's certainly not the entire story. It is also true that it is carbon dioxide that is upsetting the balance in the Earth's ability to regulate itself. As humans pump more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere while simultaneously cutting down huge swaths of forest (and thereby harming the Earth's ability to scrub carbon dioxide), the Earth's ability to cool itself is significantly reduced. As this process accelerates, the ice caps melt, releasing more water vapor into the atmosphere via evaporation, further compounding the effect caused by unregulated carbon dioxide emissions.
This all adds up to an accelerating snowball effect that by the end of the century could see average global temperatures increase by six degrees Celsius. That means no more year-round snow and ice on the polar ice caps, sea levels meters above "normal" and a whole host of problems for flora and fauna (us) alike. The science is in, and the denialists are endagering us all.
This is a classic case of Pascal's Wager, except that in this case it is actually a good argument. If we do nothing and anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real, we risk the end of civilization as we know it. If we take aggressive action and AGW turns out to be hogwash, then we'll have taken long steps toward cleaning up our environment: a net positive for many reasons unrelated to AGW, including reduced loss of habitat, healthier oceans (and fisheries), and fewer pollutants in our food and water. Why some people insist that we should continue to rape our planet as we've always done seems, in this light, grossly irresponsible and short-sighted.
I should add that AGW denialists are in the same camp as creationists because they willfully disbelieve science they do not understand so that they can rationalize closely held, pig-headed beliefs which only serve to preserve the status quo. Change is often hard and uncomfortable; even costly. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't embrace it. Read some ACTUAL science instead of letting people with an agenda spoon-feed you lies.
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
Flash!
Website written by Mann supports Mann's theories!
Full story at 11:00!
psuedo-skeptics (Score:1, Insightful)
The water vapour red-herring is #26 on this list [skepticalscience.com] of the most common bogus arguments repeated ad-nausem by "skeptics". Sure the water vapour in the atmosphere warms the planet signifigantly. However the atmosphere is basically saturated with water vapour, pump as much water vapour into the atmosphere as you like and it will fall out as rain with a few days.
You cannot staurate the atmosphere with CO2 (re: Venus) or N20, however you can saturate the oceans with CO2 to form carbolic acid and severly disrupt the very roots of the global food chain.
"I believe in AGW but let's not claim the climate science is easy to understand or obvious.
I agree, the science is not settled [realclimate.org], philosophically speaking science is never settled.
"This is why I get angry when AGWers equate those that disbelieve in AGW with creationists; the principles behind evolution are much easier and more intuitive to understand than climate science is."
Every scientists is a skeptic and the best of them are self-skeptical. However what people like me get angry about is the huge amount of deliberate and coordinated disinformation from lobbyists such as the CEI and the heartland institute. It's bad enough that the intellectually incurious simply accepted their crap on face value and endlessly repeat but what really pisses me off are the large number of politicians who actively push the same nonesense (Senator Inhofe is a particularly bad example).
There is a name for this kind of propoganda it's called "teaching the contraversy" They teach their contraversy in exactly the same manner as creationist teach their's; ie: via paid astroturfer's and web sites such as icecap, WUWT, ClimateAudit and countless other fronts for the FF industry. These are the people I routinely refer to a psuedo-skeptics, many others call them deniers.
Agrguing with these people and their avid followers is very much like arguing with creationists, evolution may seem a simple idea these days but when I went to school in the 60's it was every bit as contraversial and complex [youtube.com] as climate science is today.
More recently the well established fact that smoking causes cancer was also vigoursly disputed by so called scientists. It should come as no surprise that some of the "scientists" spreading FUD on climate are the very same "scientists" who spread FUD for the tabcoo industry in the 80's and 90's (eg: Fred S Singer).
Re:Peer reviewed? (Score:2, Insightful)
And did you "forget" that of the two cases of suggested conspiracy, in the first case the paper discussed was such a travesty against real science half the board of editors of the "peer reviewed publication" resigned in protest, with plenty of evidence that this did not happen after any pressure from the CRU people and that in the second case, the "conspiracy" actually failed to blacklist the publications, since they were actually included in the report being discussed?
So even if there was a conspiracy, it must have been a pretty weak one, failing at getting the desired results?
Or is that too inconvenient a truth for you?
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
If you had bothered to read my links you'd see that Mann refers to other such studies.
Again, do you seriously think that all of climate science hinges of this one study?
Re:Nice try (Score:2, Insightful)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.control.clientsize.aspx
No he doesnt. He just claims to. Examine what he cites.
His first citation (myth #0) is to an IPCC Assessment Report. As you may or may not know, the IPCC does not do peer reviewed studies. The IPCC produces what are called Assessment Reports where they cite peer reviewed studies. In this case, they cite Mann.
His second citation (myth #1) links to his own site, again, and that page cites himself.
His third citation (myth #2) links to a hit piece attacking the messanger.
His fourth citation (also myth #2) links to very unhockey-like stuff.
His fifth and sixth citations (myth #3) links to his own site again.
This goes on and on.
One last time. Care to cite an independent study (one that does not use Mann's or Briffa's data) that produces a hockey sticks? Can you actually do that?
the conspiracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, we all know that Nature, NASA, and the U.N. are prime players in the conspiracy. As are NOAA, the National Academy of Sciences, and the science academies of Brazil, China and India.
I mean, either there's a massive conspiracy by climatologists all around the world, or a handful of corporate shills and religious true believers (including both fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist propertarians) have the media's ear and are quoting stuff out of context and flat-out inventing shit. And that's impossible [unreasonable.org], right?
Re:Nice try (Score:5, Insightful)
I liked your post, it was passionate and articulate, except for this bit of drivel you stuck in there:
This is a classic case of Pascal's Wager, except that in this case it is actually a good argument.
Pascal's wager is never a good argument. It's still a false dichotomy, and even without the usual issue of whether a person can simply choose to change their beliefs (like the original version), it allows the one proposing the wager to set up outcomes favorable to them while ignoring other possibilities.
If we do nothing and anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real, we risk the end of civilization as we know it.
Even if AGW is completely real, it may be more mild that we expect and turn out to be a mere nuisance. Or it may be easy to geoengineer global cooling 60 years from now. Or it might be fairly cheap to build levees around cities, move and rebuild other bit of civilization, ect. Or there may be some other solution that I haven't thought of, or even that nobody has thought of yet.
If we take aggressive action and AGW turns out to be hogwash, then we'll have taken long steps toward cleaning up our environment: a net positive for many reasons unrelated to AGW, including reduced loss of habitat, healthier oceans (and fisheries), and fewer pollutants in our food and water.
If AGW isn't real, and we take aggressive action, we will have wasted trillions that could have been spent on cleaning up real pollution more effectively. And millions die in third-world nations because they aren't allowed to use their fossil fuels to industrialize. And dictators use the threat of AGW to get other countries to give them nuclear tech, which they use to make weapons. And many other things that could possibly go wrong.
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
If they don't publish enough data to support their research, you can say "I don't believe your result" - and in fact journals do require you to publish enough detail and background before they'll accept your paper. If you don't provide enough detail for someone to be able to reproduce your result, your paper will (well, should) be rejected.
Replication of a result means independent replication, not necessarily using the same data or software. A lot of people here seem confused on this point - scientific results are not dependent on the person who did them, so they should be reproducible without resort to the original work.
Occasionally there are some where there simply is no way of getting equivalent data, e.g. if your result depends on some observation of an astronomical event which only you recorded, but that doesn't seem to apply here. Someone else could do the same thing as the CRU team did. Given the importance of the result, this has most likely been done a long time ago. I haven't checked, but that would be typical of an important result - it's rarely the sole example for long.
Re:Nice try (Score:5, Insightful)
If one completely ignores any of the above data sets (whether they be direct measurements or proxies), there exist many disparate observations of global warming ranging from the rise in sea level which threatens various nations' lands ...which has been either minimal or non-detectable, as opposed to what the AGW fans have been telling us. Not exactly a good point.
Sea level changes from 1970 to 2009, compared with IPCC predictions. [scienceblogs.com] (from the Copenhagen Diagnosis, via Tim Lambert on Scienceblogs).
You should also note that if you go back to the beginning of serious AGW science (during the late 1980s), most of their predictions have already been falsified. The globe should be at least a half-degree warmer than observed (check the "Hockey Stick" graph in its earlier incarnations), the oceans should be at least a foot deeper (up to five feet higher today, according to some predictions), and storms should be much, much more severe (they're not). None of these things have happened over the last twenty years, therefore THEY WERE WRONG.
Let us assume that what you say is true. You are basically telling us that we should dismiss climate change research, because (according to you) some of the early papers got it wrong. Can you see the problem with your "reasoning"?
Re:Nice try (Score:4, Insightful)
And lastly...I'm sorry but if the friggin tree ring data is not valid for assessing temperature after 1960, then it is not valid assessing temperature before 1960.
There's about a million possible reasons why tree-ring observations don't seem to work for relatively recent data. It's possible that newly formed tree rings change somewhat in the 30 or 40 years after they are initially formed until they reach a "stable" form. It's possible that the substantial increases in CO2 in the atmosphere in recent years has altered the way that tree rings form.
All measurement methods have their anomalies. MRI scans are a great way to look at the structure of the brain, but they have substantial distortions, that change from machine to machine. Some of these have to do with the type of machine, and some distortions are due to things like the earth's magnetic field or the building that houses the machine. Those have to be corrected for, and it's standard practice. And, scans of young children don't give the same results, because the brain structures haven't matured, so it's difficult if not impossible to distinguish many brain structures. That doesn't mean it's not a useful method, but one does need to keep the limitations and difficulties of each measuring methodology in mind.
There are very accurate temperature measurements recorded for many places dating back to the late 1700s, recorded using a thermometer. If the tree rings for those areas match very well for the 150 years prior to 1960, but begin to diverge after that, it wouldn't be that outrageous to suggest that the inability to use them as a measurement proxy for recent times is just a limitation of the system.
It would be nice to have perfect measurements for everything. However, for those of us in the real world, all measurements have errors and limitations, and we have to adapt for these. Simply dumping uncorrected, uncalibrated, or inaccurate measurements into the pool of data does not make things clearer.
Re:The Smoking Code (Score:2, Insightful)
Er, why do you care about Watts' motives? Aren't the points raised on his site serious enough to merit consideration?
Re:Nice try (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, but I do not buy that. Call me denier.
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
A: "Behold, I have arrived at a shocking result which I have published in this paper!"
B: "How did you do it?"
A: "I won't tell you. You'll have to guess."
Papers have to include a description of how the conclusions were arrived at. That's why "conclusions" is only the last section of a paper, not the whole thing. The principle is that someone can read the paper, go off and do an equivalent experiment of their own and obtain the same result.
The actual raw data doesn't matter. What does you gain by having it? If the result is really revolutionary, people will be rushing to try to independently reproduce it and get a paper of their own. If it can't be reproduced despite much effort, the original paper doesn't look credible.
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's not flawed. You can't just *assume* that the factor didn't matter before 1960, but it's certainly possible, and if you can provide evidence to support that, what's wrong with it?
I was responding to the statement "If it is valid before 1960, it is valid after 1960".
Re:How they acted? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Welcome to Slashdot, you must be new here."
(usually I find the whole meme thing as tired as any old dumb joke, but in this case it seems rather apt)
Smart but insecure mostly-guys attacking true experts in a broken effort to raise their own status among their peer group. It's the old young-gun-figher's
or little-man's syndrome & certainly nothing new here... Well, it's better than the usual method of attacking the weak to show how strong you are.
Re:Same with newscientist (Score:2, Insightful)
The continual stream of false accusations that their opponents are all funded by the oil industry was probably the first thing that got me to suspect something was wrong with AGW. If the sciencee is on your side, then you have no need to ascribe false motives and paymasters to everyone who disagrees with you.
Why is it that nobody assumes all these government-funded people who produce results that say governments should get bigger and more powerful are themselves biased by their funding sources?
Governments have spent billions on AGW research, and are preparing to spend trillions on it. The power and money that governments will control if they can convince everyone of AGW dwarfs anything any corporation ever dreamed of
Re:Same with newscientist (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps he is saying that we should defer committing trillions of dollars to science that has proven to be this poorly done.
Re:Why the need to supress debate? (Score:2, Insightful)
Please note my "climate is just the next soft target for anti-intellectuals after evolution" line on the other comment.
Thor Heyerdahl put what the attitude SHOULD be. A Lutheran minister said to him as a child something along the lines of - God created us all and Darwin worked out how it happened. Science is there to answer the "how" questions and not the "why". It is only a danger to lay preachers spreading falsehoods and using their pulpits for political or financial reasons instead of spiritual reasons. Education is supposed to provide us with fine bullshit detectors to stop us from being taken in by scam artists, and a bit of science helps with that - hence the attack on science.
Unfortunately there are very well funded groups engaged in a PR exercise to attempt to convince everyone that climate change is bullshit because of the next little bit of uncertainty despite there being enormous quantities of CO2 in the atmosphere and plenty of other undeniable facts. They'll just keep nibbling around the edges of the newly found uncertain stuff and pretend that renders the entire thing bunk.
Disaster movies and the science funding bandwagon doesn't help (get more money for effect of climate change on something instead of just studying something), but there is a huge amount of real information out there. It's looking at an incredibly complex thing but we don't have to understand the entire thing to notice something is wrong. We are not close to having a complete understanding of the human brain but doctors can still identify mental illness. We have the equivalent situation here to a PR guy screaming out that we can't say someone has a mental illness because we don't have a clue what a certain hormone does. For a car analogy it's like saying someone was never run down because nobody can recall what colour the car was, even though the licence plate has fallen off at the scene of the accident.
Don't fall for the bullshit.
Re:Same with newscientist (Score:3, Insightful)
No, they're biased in precisely the way scientists should be biased - they've studied the data, drawn conclusions based on this data, and they're passionately arguing for these conclusions in the public sphere. Science isn't some kind of abstract, isolated ratiocination, it's a collective process carried out by a huge number of diverse individual human beings, and the CRU scientists are playing precisely the role they should in this process.
Nonsense. They aren't just arguing for an interpretation, they're manipulating data in unknown ways (admittedly you have to do so in order to aggregate it as they have to), blocking rival research from peer-reviewed journals, refusing to reveal their data, methods, and programs, and generally acting in a way that doesn't allow others to second guess their work. My view is that at this point, if we go the route of some sort of game where the science doesn't matter, then it's everyone for themselves.
This is a joke, right? (Score:3, Insightful)
In short, lay the average temperature rise from 1908 until 2009 over that for 1803 until 1904 and see what you get. I would strongly suspect that you will see little if any change cycle to cycle.
Good thinking. It's a lock that in decades of research, no one else has ever thought to test for cyclical patterns in temperature data.
Clearly you have the improper mindset (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't you see??? By saying that their investigation found nothing wrong, they have proven their complicity in the conspiracy!!
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
You asked for other sources, and you got them. In reply to your question, yes, there does exist other studies.
I repeat; do you seriously think all of climate science hinges on one single study?
#1 cites Mann, yes, but not only Mann.
As other have pointed out already, there's no reason to see a conspiracy because you percieve a difference between these two graphs. Do they use the same datasets and the same reconstructions?
Harsh personal remarks from climate scientists apparently disqualifies them by denialist logic. I guess that logic only applies one way?
Re:Nice try (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nice try (Score:2, Insightful)
No, what you do is you look if there is a systematic bias between the different measurements and assign a higher uncertainty to the tree ring data before 1960. Otherwise every new and more accurate instrument would make all previous data obsolete and you would never be able to do long term studies.
Re:Loss of trust (Score:3, Insightful)
Either the AGW proponents have proved their case, or they have not. It shouldn't matter that their opponents are even less credible than they are.
Ideally, yes. The problem is that I'm not a climate scientist or anything close. Even if I were capable of finding all the relevant journal articles (doubtful) and had time to read and comprehend them (also doubtful), would I be able to interpret them correctly? Probably not. As with most issues I'm not directly involved in, I rely on experts to interpret and summarize the raw research. But even the summaries may not be reliable. It turns out that it's much easier to come up with intellectually dishonest arguments than it is to refute them. My role thus becomes that of a jury -- deciding the credibility of the experts themselves.
The tricky part is that it's not too hard to sound credible even if your arguments are total bunk. Again, I direct you to the evolution debate, in which the proportion of Americans who accept biological evolution hasn't changed in decades despite overwhelming evidence for one side. There are a few things I can work with, though:
1. Most of the skeptics seem to be concentrated in the same chunk of the political spectrum (right/libertarian) and have very strong political, economic, and emotional motivations for their skepticism.
2. The skeptics promote a conspiracy theory involving thousands of people.
3. The motivations given for these conspirators rely on strawman versions of environmentalist and left-leaning positions. Being a left-leaning person myself, I know for a fact that almost none of us are out to destroy capitalism, wreck the global economy, or live out some gaia hypothesis-based escape fantasy, and the few who are have no influence among scientists.
4. The skeptics seem to be almost entirely outside of the earth science community. According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], there are no major scientific bodies who oppose the idea of human-caused climate change.
And a few other things, but I don't want to draw too much from a Slashdot discussion. Against this I have some cherry-picked emails being interpreted by people who seem to have unrealistic expectations for the purity of data, the sorts of things people say in private, and the implications that actually has for a worldwide consensus. Having taken my share of data under time and budget constraints, I'm not that excited by a bit of fudging, and given the items I listed above I don't trust the skeptics to make honest, informed, and in-context criticisms.
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
You're wrong about the poor science part too, but I want to address the real issue.
There's no "let's wait and see" option. We committing those trillions of dollars right now to making things worse very fast. That's the reason for the urgency.
Re:Nice try (Score:3, Insightful)
Pay attention. I already read the American Thinker article you linked previously. As I said in my very first response to you, it does not actually refute anything I've said. You have not "falsified" anything in my post.
I said that in the policy document they combined the proxy and instrumental time series into one synthesis time series, which they did. You have merely reaffirmed this statement of mine, rather than "falsified" it. You then claimed they are "fraudulently" hiding the fact that the series declines, I in turn said that they explicitly discuss the decline in their scientific papers and their reasons for dropping it, and so on. Perhaps you'd like to refresh your memory of the thread before making such statements.
I know you have some emotional need to think that there has been "fraud" proven here, but mindlessly parroting poorly-argued websites that you do not yourself appear to understand does not help to make your case.