Climategate's Final Days 872
The Bad Astronomer writes "Climategate may be on its way out. An investigatory committee at Pennsylvania State University has formally cleared climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann of any scientific misconduct. Mann was central in the so-called Climategate scandal, where illegally leaked emails were purported to indicate examples of scientists trying to cover up any lack of global warming in their data. This finding by the committee (PDF) is another in a series of independent investigations that have all concluded that no misconduct has occurred."
We All Wish (Score:5, Insightful)
Climategate's Final Days
Bullshit. If you think this means it's over, you're not familiar with the debate.
Immediately following Climategate Nature [nature.com] released an editorial saying no controversy found in the e-mails. That didn't seem to matter at all.
The more respected global warming papers have been published and accepted in peer reviewed journals. Point out any global warming denialist papers that have done the same. I think the most you'll find are papers that suggest global change could result in positive things in some areas. I don't know of any saying that climate change is not happening.
Your fundamental problem in arguing with a person who denies global warming is that they use erroneous logic. They find one uncertainty or minor flaw in a study and suddenly volumes of studies -- even those unrelated -- can be thrown out and dismissed. If it isn't in Mann's research, if it isn't in the East Anglian e-mails, it's somewhere else. You just have to face that logic and move on past them. Oh, and for future articles, Bad Astronomer, using cute otter lolcats to fire back at your opponents [discovermagazine.com] isn't exactly the hallmark of a logically sound debate. It's little more than an ad hominem attack.
If you think this is the 'final days' of this mess, you are sadly mistaken. Not until first world countries find it hard to get by will the majority of them step up and realize it. The election of Virginia State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli shows you got a whole state who would like to sweep this inconvenience under the rug and want you to stop trying to hinder their economy with your "research and science."
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Insightful)
Your fundamental problem in arguing with a person who denies global warming is that they use erroneous logic. They find one uncertainty or minor flaw in a study and suddenly volumes of studies -- even those unrelated -- can be thrown out and dismissed.
Not to mention you have right-wing pundits who don't understand*** the science, the statistics, or the processes involved, and when something like "Climategate" comes along, they don't understand the context or what the "scandal" really is. Suddenly everyone is a scientist and they can all understand things they've never even been interested in studying before.
And the sad thing is, people who believe everything these people say (like my mom and several of my neighbors), go out and forcefully repeat it all anytime something tangentially related comes up in a conversation.
***Most likely, they could understand, but they choose not so they can deny the facts and get away with it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely! Not only that but you have left-wing pundits who don't understand the science, the statistics, or the processes involved, and ... Sudd
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, only one of those sides is supported by scientific consensus. What do you think about left-wing pundits railing against creationists? They're not even evolutionary biologists!
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Insightful)
This is to say, not at all.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In other news, BP's internal investigation turned up no evidence that BP was in any way at fault for the Deep Horizon oil spill.
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure the newspapers and TV stations will be all over it. The headlines tomorrow will be nothing but apologies for dragging him through the mud for months on end and how the climatologists are right after all.
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Interesting)
Go further back to the way blood circulates in the heart. In 1533 Michael Servetus published a paper saying the heart pumped the blood, as opposed to previous western belief that blood flowed like the tides, which some religious people put mythical significance to, and made part of their superstitions. If blood was pumped, then it would in some way continue to assert the superiority of science in furthering the human quality of life. By the early to mid 1600's William Harvery showed that the heart pumped blood. Here is the interesting debate. In the very early years of the Common Era, many philosophers though that the heart had an active role in pumping blood, but if you read the history, it seems like there never any consensus prior to Harvey, and that the tide theory was a valid conjecture.
The point is that as advance as we think we are, we are only a few hundred years out of the supertitious muck in which we tortured and drowned little girls to prove they were not witches. In which we would not wash our hands to save children. Some us may see it as 500 years since Galileo saved us from the myths, but in practical terms it has not been nearly that long.
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Insightful)
They find one uncertainty or minor flaw in a study and suddenly volumes of studies -- even those unrelated -- can be thrown out and dismissed.
Tellingly, the same tactic is used by Creationists to try and discredit Evolution.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There aren't any peer-reviewed publications because those who control the publications wont publish dissenting opinion, and you can prove there's no validity to the dissenting opinion by pointing to the lack of peer-reviewed publications....
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. Which is why we can totally find references to researchers blocking climate change skeptics from publishing in all of those emails that got leaked, amirite?
Oh, wait. I'm not? There's no reference to them blocking things at all in their personal emails? You'd think you'd at least find some reference to it, wouldn't you... UNLESS THE RELEASE OF THE EMAILS WAS A CONSPIRACY DESIGNED TO HIDE ANOTHER CONSPIRACY!
[dun-dun-dun!!!!!!!!]
Or, you know, you could grow the fuck up. The fame one would gain from publ
That's not even what this debate is about (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because that's not what the debate is about. The Earth's climate is ALWAYS changing, as everyone well knows. Examining ice cores, fossils, geologic record, etc, prove that the Earth's climate is never steady and has always been changing. In fact, it has been both much warmer and much colder than today at various times in history.
The people you bash as "deniers" are actually not denying climate change, but are instead debating the following points that you seem to be ignoring. They argue that:
So you are right that the debate isn't over, but not for the reasons you describe. The debate will continue because people like you don't understand what the debate is about (you seem to think it's about whether or not climate change is happening), and because people like you are making a crisis out of nothing. If man-made global warming is happening, is that a crisis? It may be, if it can be proven that human activity is truly the primary cause. But is climate change in and of itself a crisis? Given that it always changes back and forth, I would say definitely not. Should we shut down our economies and destroy our industry just because the climate is changing, just like it always has? Definitely not! It's just something life has to adapt to. But as long as people like you continue to stick their heads in the sand and scream that change that always happens is "a crisis", and as long as you refuse to see what the debate is actually about, then people like me will keep fighting to educate you.
Main Point: We don't argue that climate change isn't happening, and if that's what you think the debate is about then you are completely wrong.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The people you bash as "deniers" are actually not denying climate change, but are instead debating the following points that you seem to be ignoring.
This is incorrect. Plenty of them still actually flat-out deny climate change as a phenomenon. The points you cite amount to little more than hand-waving attempts to distract from the real issues, and have only come up when they were confronted with undeniable evidence that climate change is happening at a rapid rate.
The deniers are deniers of reality. That they change their arguments on a whim is standard practice for disingenuous people with an agenda. They are fully deserving of the title.
Re:That's not even what this debate is about (Score:5, Informative)
Main Point: We don't argue that climate change isn't happening, and if that's what you think the debate is about then you are completely wrong.
It's interesting that you brought that up, given the history of the climate change "debate." Because until about 10 years ago, saying global warming doesn't exist was the position of the deniers. The position was that global temperatures were not increasing. Then the position was changed to admitting that that temperatures were increasing, but no faster than historical rates, even though it's clearly exponential growth. (i.e. the hockey stick, and yes, even the "new" "refined" hockey stick) Even earlier this year you had conservatives mocking global warming because of a blizzard [politico.com].
You're the one that doesn't understand the history of your own position.
As a historical parallel, I suggest you read up on cancer and the tobacco lobby. "Doctors smoke Camels," but the tobacco industry knew they caused cancer [youtube.com]in nineteen-fifty-fucking-three [usatoday.com] , yet they denied it for 45 years. Even recently before Congress, the CEOs of the tobacco industry declared under oath, I believe that nicotine is not addictive [youtube.com], even though the American Heart Association (you know, doctors), have said "nicotine addiction has historically been one of the hardest addictions to break."
No you're being played, but you don't realize that, because you're too "intelligent" and "independent" to realize it.
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone who is not in favor of the chicken-little approach to climate change, I would like to comment on this. I speak for no one but myself and would be happy to find errors in logic.
We *know* through geological records that this planet has undergone many changes in climate, including ice, flood, fire, drought, etc. Scientists *think* - based on the limited evidence available - that greenhouse gasses are the culprit. This time. Scientists also *know* that mankind, through industry and machinery, produces greenhouse gasses. Therefore mankind must be the cause. It's been a long time since I took logic, but as I see this as a questionable conclusion at best.
Assuming the information I have read is correct, greenhouse gasses are caused by nature far more than man. I can't find the reference, but recall a study published last year that showed the bovine population - both dairy and meat - producing more greenhouse gasses than all of mankind. So... do we eat less beef and drink less milk?
I believe that we have a responsibility to be good stewards of our environment, and as such should take reasonable precautions to protect our planet. However, let's not confuse that with the 'sky is falling' mantra. It may very well be, but when we speak in a geological time frame even as short as man's sojourn on this planet... there is simply insufficient evidence to be certain. That does not absolve us from responsibility as stewards, but it should temper our responses.
My conclusions:
1. Anyone who claims that the climate is not changing is lying to themselves.
2. Anyone who claims that they can prove WHY the climate is changing is lying to the rest of us.
3. Anyone who claims to have a solution is trying to sell you snake oil.
Regarding the OP, I sincerely hope that this issue isn't over. This is a debate that should continue.
Cheers
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Insightful)
It's weird how people think they can add to a debate with experts while being absolute non-experts themselves.
Tell me, can you apply some of your good old common-sense reasoning to the search for the Higgs boson? How about helping out with the search for the proof of the Riemann Hypothesis? At the very least, you should be able to look over the existing efforts and put forth some of your "just can't see" wisdom to filter out the dead-end proofs.
If you can't apply your aw-shucks logic to these problems, then why do you think climate science is any different?
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Informative)
If you can't apply your aw-shucks logic to these problems, then why do you think climate science is any different?
Because you can see the climate. Well, actually not, only the weather, but that's not a visible difference.
People like to argue about things that they have an intuition about. That they can see, touch and grasp with their senses. We are biologically evolved that way, to have an opinion on our environment.
The Higgs boson and mathematical theories don't fall into that category, and as such they are left alone. A discussion about climate change on Venus would not yield 1% of the opposition.
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Funny)
can you apply some of your good old common-sense reasoning to the search for the Higgs boson?
Have you looked under the couch cushions?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
then why do you think climate science is any different?
Because climate science is more akin to the psychological sciences. Mostly conjecture, due to its still-primitive nature, and the near-impossibility of arranging controlled experiments (we don't have duplicate earths). Their disciplines barely rise above the level of primitive Greek physics (you throw a ball in the air, it will probably fall back down, but we have no idea know how fast it will be moving).
Re:Throwback (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. The journal "Nature" doesn't understand statistics. And neither do all of the scientific review boards looking into this.
As for "code", do you even know what the "code" you were looking at was from and where it is used, if at all?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's appeal to authority. And referring to an expert is *NOT* by definition a logical fallacy.
It's only a logical fallacy when the "authority" is not an "authority" on the subject being debated.
Example:
A statistician makes a claim that the mathematics being used by a climatologist are inaccurate, and the climatologist cites another climatologist (as an authority) who backs up his claim, THIS is an appeal to authority fallacy.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not about how big a percentage of the whole we add, but what effect that addition has.
Imagine the climate as two rope pulling teams. If you add a mere 5% manpower on one side, it can shift the whole situation from an overall stalemate with occasional drifts back and forth to a clear win for one side.
In a complex system, the effects are seldom proportional. But to deny the effects of human pollution is like denying that smoking is harmful because of a single study that was inconclusive, or because a single study showing ill effects was shown to be flawed. The evidence is still overwhelming, and you have to have extraordinarily tinted glasses not to see what it points to.
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Insightful)
If the entire remaining 5% is strictly from man, I just can't see that being a significant contributor to the speeding of this natural process.
Take a barrel full of water. Every minute, add a gallon of water and remove a gallon of water (plus or minus a tablespoon). Now repeat the same experiment, but this time, add a gallon plus a cup and only remove a gallon. Note what happens with the barrel's water level.
Natural sources are very closely matched with natural sinks. And it's not just because "the world keeps itself in balance" or any new-agey thing like that which ascribes an almost conscious effort on the part of the planet to maintain the status quo. Volcanoes and other "old carbon" sources have a very small impact on planetary carbon, excepting extremely severe eruptions. It's a fraction of a percent of the of the carbon added to the atmosphere. Almost all carbon added to the system naturally comes from decaying organic matter. But that organic matter was created from the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or oceans. So *of course* they're going to match up; it's a nearly 1:1 relationship.
That's not what you care about. You don't care about things decaying the same amount that CO2 was taken out of the system, because obviously that's not going to change anything. To counter significant new CO2 inputs that are *not* balanced by carbon sinks, you must increase the planet's rate of sequestration, to trap more of the carbon taken from the atmosphere. While lots of carbon cycles in and out of the atmosphere from photosynthesis and decay (most of that 95% figure), the planet has a (comparably) very slow rate of removing carbon from the atmosphere and oceans for geological timescales -- only enough to roughly cancel out volcanoes and other proportionally very small "old carbon" sources. Unfortunately, the studies done thusfar show that the rate of natural sinks' carbon sequestration ability is declining, not rising, as our planet warms and our CO2 concentrations rise. In the long term, life may adapt in a manner to be able to use and sequester more CO2 (see the PETM below), but that's geological timescales.
Finally, I always like to mention to the AGW folks that 10,000 years ago the place where I live was completely covered by a glacier. I'm very glad for global warming, because where I live is now a beautiful region inhabited by a multitude of species both migratory and permanent.
The last glacial maximum peaked 20,000 years ago at about 8-9C lower average planetary temperature than today. That's a rate change of one degree per ~2350 years. We're currently increasing at about 1 degree per 40 years. Notice the difference? The last glacial was not anywhere close to what we're currently experiencing. The closest natural analogy we have is the PETM [wikipedia.org], 55.8mya, where a huge natural influx of CO2 and methane caused a rapid planetary temperature spike. The sudden climate change altered the world so much that we give the new era a different name -- the Eocene. Also, take a lesson from the last glacial about the power of a few degrees temperature change on ice coverage, sea levels, etc. The planet's climate has a lot of inertia, but inertia doesn't hold you off forever.
If you're trying to say "a warmer world is a better world", that depends. Certainly in the long-term, warm eras have tended to be more biodiverse and biomass-rich than cold ones. But we're talking geological timescales here. Transitions between climates, in the sort of timescales humans care about, are full of extinction and hardship for life. And cities and cultures don't just get up and move to areas that have been made newly "better" from areas that have been made newly "worse". Infrastructure is largely fixed in place. You can't just haul roads and skyscrapers en masse from the Florida Keys to Saskatchewan.
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, be let's not assume that our climate is simply a barrel full of water. How about a half-full Olympic pool? I think that's where the whole debate should be. We definitely have an effect, but how big is that pool?
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Insightful)
Like I always tell people when it comes to global warming:
Believe that we are the only thing impacting the climate is fucking stupid. At the same time, believing that we aren't having any impact at all is just as stupid.
I never understood why it's so hard to find other people who don't subscribe to one extreme or the other when it comes to climate change.
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, who have you ever heard say that humans are the only thing affecting climate? I have literally never ever heard that, except perhaps from deniers mis-characterizing their opponents.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
who have you ever heard say that humans are the only thing affecting climate? [...] from deniers mis-characterizing their opponents.
You answered your own question: Very efficient.
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Insightful)
Poor bastards. Those two idiots have been swelled into a veritable army of "global warming catastrophists". Love this debate...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
*always* treat a weapon as if it is loaded, that's just common sense. Always treat blanks as if they were live ammo. Never assume a weapon is safe.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted, these are the same people who think an unloaded gun is just as dangerous as a loaded gun, so...
Well, failing to drop either one will get you shot by the police, so....
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The same my step-dad taught me when I was a child, and something that both my fiancee and I still adhere to when cleaning our own firearms.
That being said, honestly truly believing a gun can just "go off" even when unloaded is...well, that's just special.
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Insightful)
All guns are always loaded.
That reminds me of when a friend of mine had just cleaned his 1911 .45 and it was lying on the table. I asked him if I could see it and he said "sure, it's unloaded." I said "yes, it is loaded and there's one in the chamber, too." He smiled at that. Now, it really was unloaded and I inspected the chamber to verify it was empty. The point is even after doing that I still treated it as though it were loaded and cocked, keeping my fingers away from the trigger and pointing it in safe directions only. It's not so much a matter of whether or not it was likely to discharge as it clearly wasn't going to; it's about having a healthy respect for the power of such a device and treating it with a certain discipline. Doing otherwise is how foolish and tragic accidents happen.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Fictional? No, certainly not. Keep in mind that where I work is a place where people regularly hang pictures of Obama and Pelosi in their offices...and these people I mentioned in my other post are, for the most part, socially shunned due to their political beliefs.
They're like the Glenn Beck of Democrats. Seriously creepy people.
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Funny)
Seriously? Look, Obama I can see. Not that I agree with that sort of thing but his is a charismic, photogenic personality.
But Nancy Pelosi? Where exactly do you work? Hell?
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Informative)
Yea, but at least the scientific evidence is on their side. I mean, with the heat capacity and warming of oceans, the fact that the earth is heating insanely fast is not even a question, its a blatantly obvious fact. The earth has never heated by this much, this fast, in any history we can read. It typically takes thousands or tens of thousands of years, and happening within the past 100 years, more than half of the increase in the past 50? That is not natural.
We put out a lot more CO2 than the earth itself does, and our cow farms (don't get me wrong, I love eating meat) produce a shit-ton of methane, but you are right. The earth produces a ton of greenhouse gas, water vapor. And as the oceans rise due to the other greenhouse gasses, more of the water moves into the air, the climate becomes less stable, and traps more heat.
Also, those of us that actually know our science, know all of your arguments have to do with air and surface temperature, or solar patterns. Well, right now we are at a very abnormally low solar minimum, and as for air/surface temperature, you could not possibly be more wrong. Let me show you what I mean:
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/hs456.ash1/25081_334304084498_536119498_3617109_7576783_n.jpg [fbcdn.net]
The heat capacity of the atmosphere and earth's surface is so low, that it varies drastically within a few hours every day. Bodies of water, on the other hand, hold about 100x as much heat per unit volume. I have been debating global warming for a damn long time, and NOBODY has ever had a damn thing to say about the real global heat content (including oceans), just debating bullshit air temperatures, which account for almost nothing compared to ocean temps.
Every argument has idiots that don't understand the concepts and subscribe to it, but global warming deniers don't have anyone that understands the concepts , otherwise they wouldn't deny it. And seriously, don't reply angrily until you look at the link, it is an incredibly simple graph of heat content. Not rocket science, I am sure that even you can do it.
Also, some people believe science without question, because science has a solid foundation upon which it is built, the rest is idiot media sources perverting what science has to say to reach some end goals. The uninformed church going conservative on the other hand, doesn't have any logical foundations on which it is built, besides the bible (which is very not solid).
And please, criticize the ocean data, or apologize for being an idiot. Otherwise I am sure you will be modded flamebait even worse for running off like a coward. Anybody who knows about global warming knows that air temp doesn't matter in the big picture of the climate, and knows that the evidence is so overwhelming that somebody would have to disprove the info on ocean heating to make a valid argument. But again and again I just see the same shit come out of you people "air temps, air temps, air temps" is all you know how to fucking look at, and the actually CO2 and methane levels, you don't have a clue how much society produces compared to natural causes, right now people make about 50x as much as nature puts out.
One last thing, like republicans, especially the overly christian kind, don't try to use guilt to try to shame people into accepting government oppression, excessive violations of privacy and freedom, and moral regulation that parallels that of what churches want.
Actually, this is not true (Score:5, Informative)
We put out a lot more CO2 than the earth itself does,
Actually, it's not even close [wikipedia.org].
We put about 5% of the carbon into the atmosphere, but that 5% is enough to tip the balance and cause CO2 levels to rise, because the biosphere cannot absorb it.
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Funny)
For every uninformed church-going conservative, there's an uninformed liberal who watched Al Gore's movie, ...
This would be heaven.
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Insightful)
The Earth will easily compensate for any CO2 humans dump in the atmosphere - the question is how quickly is does so, and how high the spike can get. Even if we dumped all the CO2 in all the buried fossil fuels into the atmosphere this year, that would be just a blip in the rock cycle, corrected quickly in geological terms (in 10 million years you probably couldn't tell the difference, in 100 million you certainly couldn't).
We actually have no idea what regulates the CO2 level in 100 k year cycles. Something causes temps and/or CO2 levels to drop abruptly every 100 k years or so (and apparantly it's dramatic, 10 degrees or so in just a couple decades), but no one knows what. Are we causing long-term warming, or just causing the thermostat to trigger sooner? No way to answer that yet. It's certain that the climate was not stable before man came along - we're messing with it, but we didn't make it unstable where it used to be stable.
Technology allows population growth, but also leads to popultion shrinkage (world pop will likely peak at 10B). Technology allows us to clear forests, but eventually allows us to stop clearing forests (America has had significant growth in forested area in the past 50 years thanks to more productive farming). Technology will eventually make burning fossil fuels pointlessly expensive.
Re:All policy makers (Score:4, Informative)
Wait, who have you ever heard say that humans are the only thing affecting climate?
Anyone who has ever said that expensive changes in industry will result in significant change in global warming. So, basically any policy maker, and pretty much every single person at those AGW global summits.
Really? Please cite one that has actually said that. They may say that humans are making a very significant impact on the climate, but they don't say that we're the only thing affecting it.
Think in binary much? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who has ever said that expensive changes in industry will result in significant change in global warming.
Really? So by saying that changing human industry will affect global warming, that implies that only human industry affects global warming?
Hey, my solution that includes HCL and H2SO4 is too acidic! I claim that if I decrease the amount of HCL, it will be less acidic. Ergo I am implying that H2SO4 does not affect the pH of the solution.
Wow. Pojut complained about people at the two extremes, but what about people who think only the two extremes exist?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Believe that we are the only thing impacting the climate is fucking stupid.
Nobody relevant believes that. Even the most basic presentation of climate science is of studying natural climate change and establishing humanity's role within it.
I never understood why it's so hard to find other people who don't subscribe to one extreme or the other when it comes to climate change.
I don't believe for a second it's hard to find those people. In a town where I'm surrounded by drama-loving enviro-hippies, I rarely
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Insightful)
Here we go again: after fighting strawmen for a while, you make a bold unsubstantiated claim. It is certainly NOT agreed that CO2 has only small effect, nor is that supported by any science. Rather, there is strong geo-historical evidence to suggest CO2 level has very strong correlation with surface and atmospheric temperatures, as well as credible theories explain causality from concentration to temperature.
And hey, for good measure you attach this to goofball conspiracy theory. I think I need to attach your arguments as poster-child for kinds of bullshit climate change deniers use.
Exactly right (Score:4, Insightful)
I never understood why it's so hard to find other people who don't subscribe to one extreme or the other when it comes to climate change.
Because people are inherently unsatisfied with the answer "we don't know, and cannot know".
And at the higher levels, because trillions of dollars are at stake going either direction. It pushes the rhetoric and arguments to one side or the other - by necessity, since the tendency is for each side to engage in greater and greater bombast until those of us in the middle have a hard time being heard as neutral without being cast to one side or the other, because all people know is either extreme.
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Insightful)
Just a minute:
No skeptic is claiming that humans have no effect on the climate. Skeptics are working from a scientific point of view - they admit that the evidence for CO2 being a greenhouse gas is overwhelming and that pumping lots of it into the atmosphere will have an effect, an effect as the IPCC says of about 1 degree of warming.
There may be a minority of vocal idiots who deny all science, but they're a minority, not the majority of skeptics.
The skeptic is (justifiably) skeptical about the _unproven_ claims of a positive feedback which will cause runaway warming.
Climate models are not sufficient proof - they are retrofitted to fit past data and cannot be shown to produce accurate results. We simply do not know enough about the climate.
They also criticize some of the studies done which purport to show that recent warming is unprecedented, which it is one of the main arguments of climate catastrophists - it seems not to be the case.
Add in some very bad mathematics which in which data gets divorced from its physical meaning, questions over the way data is gathered and the effectiveness or spending billions on trying to prevent change (at the cost of other programs which will definitely help people here and now and their descendents) and we should be skeptical.
Of course, it is easy to paint skeptics as right wing conservative nutjobs who are all in the pay of big oil (despite big oil benefiting from climate change legislation) and who have no interest in science. That is why all those scientists (from other disciplins) have signed petitions in support of Mann and friends - because that's what they've been told, not because they've examined the evidence themselves.
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Insightful)
The earth has been both hotter and cooler than it is now.
Yes, that's exactly the kind of erroneous logic eldavojohn was talking about. Thank you for providing such a good example.
the global warming nuts haven't really provided much evidence
Climate scientists have provided volumes of evidence. Just because you don't like the fact that it proves you wrong, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Insightful)
"Refuting" your statements? You make it sound as if you presented a series of sound, rational arguments that demand a point-by-point rebuttal.
What you did in actuality was to toss around a few smug insults and then go on to deny the existence of the reams or peer-supported research that exist on this issue.
You don't deserve a refutation. You deserve to be sent to the corner and made to wear a pointy hat.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You display your astounding ignorance of the concepts of religion, nutjobs, and proof.
Ironic, really.
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Informative)
The temperature peaked around 8000 years ago and it's been getting cooler since then up until industrialization started the current warming. The global trend was a cooling one and it did start warming. Have a look at this graph. [wikimedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The earth has been getting warmer for thousands of years. Right now, where I am sitting, there used to be 2KM of ice. That ice is clearly gone now. That glacier has melted. Our current glaciers are just continuing to melt.
Your reasoning is flawed, and is based on an ignorance of the scientifically determined factors that affect the climate. If I may summarize the structure of your argument: The climate has changed in the past. Humans have not always existed. Therefore, humans cannot be causing climate change now.
The implicit reasoning is flawed because overemphasizes some causes of past warming, namely orbital fluctuations and asteroid collisions with the Earth, while underemphasizing the past role of greenhouse gas conc
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Insightful)
while underemphasizing the past role of greenhouse gas concentrations in causing the Earth to warm.
There is none. That is, there is no evidence that greenhouse gas concentrations have caused the earth to warm in the past. There are correlations between CO2 and warming, but they have been an increase in CO2 after a period of increased warming, not the other way around. Of course, it makes since that it can happen, there is just no evidence that it ever has.
And if the climate is currently warming, and we can (and have) eliminated other possible causes for that change, then human produced greenhouse gasses are the most likely cause of our current warming.
There is no way you can make the claim that every possible cause for warming except human produced greenhouse gasses have been eliminated. In fact, this is the essence of the real debate. We simply do not have the level of understanding of climate change that you seem to think we do. Human-released greenhouse gasses are, in fact, a small factor in the climate no matter how you look at it, based on our current understanding. And while it can be shown that human activity is correlative with recent temperature increases (depending on how that data is collected and interpreted), saying that all but the release of CO2 have been eliminated as causes is disingenuous, at best.
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Informative)
See? This is what eldavojohn was talking about. You make a baseless assertion that the 'global warming nuts' have no evidence. Well, you are wrong. In fact, the amount of comprehensive, cohesive evidence supporting global warming is astounding. Why do you say it isn't? You obviously have no idea how much evidence is out there and you haven't read any of it. In fact, the evidence is so great, the burden of proof is now on those who deny global warming. So, where's your proof that this literal mountain of evidence is either wrong, or does not exist?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
We aren't assholes, and we have proved our claims. It is not our problem that you have not read or understood the proof.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Calling your opponent a fucktard hardly helps make your case. In fact, reasonable undecided readers will likely write you off for using the word.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php [skepticalscience.com]
http://www.pewclimate.org/global-warming-basics/facts_and_figures [pewclimate.org]
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ [epa.gov]
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html [nationalgeographic.com]
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ [skepticalscience.com]
http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/ [grist.org]
http://www.ecosalon.com/top-10-global-warming-denier-arguments-debunk [ecosalon.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Correct... but irrelevant [Re:We All Wish] (Score:5, Insightful)
The earth has been both hotter and cooler than it is now.
That is correct... but irrelevant to the question.
Anthropogenic global warming is not instead of natural variations-- it is in addition to natural variations. Natural variations don't suddenly vanish now that we add carbon dioxide to the air.
...I'm all for taking better care of the planet, but the global warming nuts haven't really provided much evidence and they're the ones making the allegations.
The way I see things, if you make a bunch of claims, the burden of proof is ON YOU... not the people you're speaking to.
By "global warming nuts," you apparently mean "the scientists who actually study the problem."
By "the burden of proof is on you" you apparently mean "...to prove the correctness of scientific results to people who aren't willing to take any effort to look at the actual science, but will believe any criticism with no skepticism whatsoever."
There is a lot of science... this is not made up. (And it dates to way before Al Gore, who's not a scientist.) Have you actually read, for a start, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Working Group I Report on Physical Science Basis of Climate Science [www.ipcc.ch]? What? No? Because you already read in a blog somewhere that it's a hoax, so you don't need to read it?
So, uh, if you won't actually read the evidence, how can any possible amount of evidence convince you?
More science still (Score:3, Informative)
Have you actually read, for a start, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Working Group I Report on Physical Science Basis of Climate Science?
Yes. Have YOU looked into the problems [google.com] with said report? Because science doesn't stop with one report . Science means other people get to question your results, your assumptions, and your methods.
Science means other people get to ask exactly how you arrived at a conclusion and you tell them so they can reproduce your results or raise issues with your methods. Yet what the
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I only skimmed the results and read some of them that looked promising (a Google search results page is not exactly the best way to do these sorts of things), but all the problems, the few there are, appear to be in the Working Group II report. The one he linked to was the Working Group I report, and was even explicitly labeled as such. If you know of "the problems with said report", it'd be nice if you could provide some sources, preferably reasonably credible ones, that actually point out such problems.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Have YOU looked into the problems with said report? Because science doesn't stop with one report .
But the IPCC report isn't just one report. It is actually a meta study that summarizes all the other reports out there. So if you find a problem with one of the reports that is cited by the IPCC then you can just ignore that and look at all the rest.
The problems that have been found with the IPCC reports have not changed the findings because they are such a tiny proportion of the referred works. And none of the problems have been with the actual science that underlies climate change (which is what the Worki
Re:More science still (Score:5, Insightful)
GL: Have you actually read, for a start, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Working Group I Report on Physical Science Basis of Climate Science?
SuperKendall: Yes. Have YOU looked into the problems [google.com] with said report?
Gadget Guy: [...] And none of the problems have been with the actual science that underlies climate change (which is what the Working Group 1 Report is all about). The original poster is correct: the science still stands.
Wow, somebody who gets it. That's exactly right; I was citing the Working Group I Report-- The Physical Science Basis [www.ipcc.ch]-- because that is the one summarizing the basic science, which is what the deniers are denying. (And, as someone pointed out, it's a summary of the science, not the actual science. It references review articles that summarize real science, so it's a place to start learning about the science, not the place to end.)
Moving on from this, there are very real questions such as, what are the effects? Is this bad? If so, how bad? What should we do about it, if anything? What are the effects of these possible actions we might take?
Those are good questions; some of them are very hard questions, and they are worth a serious debate. But that serious debate has been short circuited, because there is a very loud contingent of deniers who basically shout down the very existence of the effect.
The result is that, by denying the physics in the first place, the deniers have pretty much abandoned the actual debate to other extreme.
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Funny)
the global warming [scientists] haven't really provided much evidence
You obviously pay very close attention. Kudos for your attention to available information.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
He was mistaking using the term "peer review" when he should have said "scientific advancement."
"Peer review" is exactly that: a review of a paper by your peers, who should know as much as you do about the subject and can find the mistakes you've missed.
"Scientific advancement" does indeed require independent reproduction of experiments.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
On a 'science' website - this gets modded 'Insightful'? Scientists are a little clique of conspiracists set on imposing their politics and energy ethics on the poor old USA.
Wow. Good luck with the future, you've clearly lost your minds.
Re:You missed part of the controversy (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a starting point [guardian.co.uk] for you.
More damagingly, he added in an email to Mann with the subject line "HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL": "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer review literature is!
This has, rightly, become one of the most famous of the emails. And for once, it means what it seems to mean"
Or, you could just try using google.
Funny how we have to keep re-posting links to the actual emails when all you have to do is claim it's all a lie and a fantasy.
Re:You missed part of the controversy (Score:5, Informative)
Having seen both of the papers in question, I can tell you that they wouldn't pass muster as undergraduate term papers at Podunk U.
The fact that those papers somehow made it into reputable journals is the real scandal.
Re:You missed part of the controversy (Score:5, Insightful)
In which case, all you have to show is that (a) one of those papers was a serious scientific article, and (b) it wasn't in fact published. IIRC, both of those papers were published, although I don't remember where. I have no idea whether they were serious scientific papers or prejudiced hack jobs.
If an authority in a field says that a certain paper is nonsense, it's wise to consider the possibility that it actually is.
This won't stop the denialists (Score:4, Insightful)
One can never satisfy a conspiracy theorist.
Re:This won't stop the denialists (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, you CAN, but it's something they are trying to cover up.
Also irrelevant [Re:This won't stop the denial...] (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not a conspiracy theory. It's an orthogonality problem. If you have a Medieval Warming Period (MWP) -- then temperatures *aren't* unprecedented and become mathematically decoupled from CO2. Mann's "Hockeystick" graph erased the MWP -- problem is, the approach is worthless, and while Mann may believe it (again not conspiracy theory), it isn't true. Thus we still have the MWP (and the RWP, the Minoan, and the Holocene optimum) -- all of which were warmer than today and none of which had AGW contributions.
Also irrelevant, I'm afraid.
Apparently somebody once used the word "unprecedented," and the deniers used that as a lever to say "Well, if we can just attack that one word, which we will do by defining the word "unprecedented" the way we choose to and then show that the current curve isn't unprecedented, then we have debunked all of global warming! If one single word used by a popularizer can be attacked, the whole of the science is wrong!"
The anthropogenic global warming, basically, says that carbon dioxid
Uh... no issues? (Score:5, Insightful)
1.there were emails clearly indicating that they were politically involved, ie they'd exagerate to scare people. Hardly a scientific attitude
2.there was some pretty perverted data analysis to get to "expected results"
There's no denying there are climate changes going around. But
1.calling it man-made is complete speculation at the current point(yes it is, there's correlation at best, no proof of causality)
2.calling it warming is kind of fucked up since it's warming in some places, and cooling in others
3.no proof either that anything we do can change anything about it.
Oh and there is a non negligible part of the climate scientific community that *disagrees* with how things are being presented.
Climategate? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but isn't getting sick with dieases like cancer from a contaminated environment deserving more funding for research than climate research? Why are they getting all that attention and research dollars? Are we being played into fools to keep on looking up at the sky at the weather instead of the ground we're standing on and the quality of air we breath?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The headline belies the content... (Score:5, Interesting)
The damage has already been done (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as the lay public is concerned, the damage has already been done. They were already convinced that these were a bunch of self-serving interests promoting their cause, and the leaked emails affirmed it for them.
Re:The damage has already been done (Score:4, Informative)
If you want the data, go here [realclimate.org].
Though, lacking the ability to do a google search is hardly a recommendation of someone's ability to deal with the data and draw any meaningful conclusions anyway...
Just a bit of bias there (Score:4, Interesting)
You article author says this about himself:
"Since Day 1 of this I have been calling it a non-event, a manufactured controversy by global warming denialists trying to make enough noise to drown out any real talk on this topic. "
Hardly an unbiased observer. I, for one, really hope that there isn't anything to 'ClimateGate' but if you've read anything about it at all, you know that the problem wasn't the emails, but in the leaked data sets and source code. The emails show typical petty human behaviour. The data and source code suggest the possibility of cherry picking of data, and mathematical modeling to reach a predetermined conclusion. That is what worries me, but I admit I don't have the expertise to make a determination on my own.
Sunshine and openness is only way to ever end this debate over global warming. All research, results, and data sets should be publicly available. Is that really too much to ask?
Necron69
Re:Just a bit of bias there (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
(Of course, I am assuming that you DO write code and that your organization ISN'T criminal. Otherwise disregard this.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually that's exactly what the leaked data and source code do not show. That's why all these investigations have found no wrongdoing. In science, cherrypicking or fabricating data is wrongdoing, whereas merely being a couple degrees shy of completely transparent is imperfect but forgivable.
University panel declares university innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
News at 11.
Hardly an independent panel. And really, they did say he was incorrect to not have real statisticians working on the results - which invalidates much of the published work.
You can say he was cleared, but that's only of purposeful intent to mislead - what the report is basically dancing around is that he misled through poor application of scientific principals. And isn't that what really matters here, that the scientific method is carefully applied instead of fitting data to a pre-concieved conclusion?
Re:University panel declares university innocent (Score:5, Informative)
Universities regularly find faculty guilty of various forms of misconduct. Check out the Ward Churchill case, for example. Or any number of the recent data falsification scandals in Physics.
It's in the university's best interests to appear to support honest investigators. Not doing so reduces applications, donations, and ability to land grants.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I started to worry about your credibility when you started claimed that scientists (I am one) are all about Gaia. Nearly all of us think it's fringe nonsense.
If you haven't bought into the Gaia hypothesis and are the least bit sceptical about anthropogenic climate change the surest way to a failing grade is to try to discuss this with a professor.
While I won't say that no professors ever lowered a grade over something so dubious, I will note that at virtually every school this is a firing offense and therefore happens rarely. This doesn't stop people like yourself from claiming academic bullying though. (Seldom do you guys ever seem to come up with examples, and never anything that would sho
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That is to say, you can't bring up monetary incentives as proof of accuracy without noting that there's a lot of money going both ways - which is true in the meta-sense of the global warming debate. There are literally trillions of dollars, not to mention the very notion of who controls industry, at stake in this discussion.
You have a very novel definition of "a lot" then. There are trillions of dollars on one side (the carbon industry), and low tens of millions on the other.
No one gets rich doing science.
Re:State alone, 500k (Score:4, Informative)
Just for the record, $500 K over 5 years is pretty small change for research, overall. That won't even hire a post-doc once you take out the overhead.
And Cuccinelli will go .. la la la can't hear you (Score:3, Insightful)
The VA State Attorney General still has his own investigation (which TFA mentions) which is supposed to root out Mann's monetary fraud when he was at UVa. Yet this is the same AG who claims his own anti-Healthcare lawsuit [timesdispatch.com] against the Federal government won't cost the state more than the $350 filing fee. Somehow I don't think that he gets the irony of this situation.
And yes I do realize that this comment is more fitting for Craigslist than /.
News stories were retracted, as well (Score:5, Interesting)
The story in The Sunday Times of London that kicked all this off has been fully retracted [newsweek.com] with several uses of the phrase "We apologise." The German newspaper that reported that the IPCC erred in its assessment of climate impact in Africa also retracted that story [wissenslogs.de].
Speaking as a journalist, the most damning phrase I see in The Times' retraction is this one (boldfaced emphasis mine):
So what really happened there? It sounds suspiciously like somebody high up at The Times or News Corporation didn't like the point of view presented and changed it to fit his or her own worldview, facts be damned.
lol wut? (Score:3, Interesting)
From the PDF...
On and about November 22, 2009, The Pennsylvania State University began to receive
numerous communications (emails, phone calls and letters) accusing Dr. Michael E,
Mann of having engaged in acts, beginning in approximately 1998, that included
manipulating data, destroying records and colluding to hamper the progress of scientific
discourse around the issue of anthropogenic global warming, These accusations were
based on perceptions of the content of the emails stolen from a server at the Climatic
Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Great Britain as widely reported,
Given the sheer volume of the communications to Penn State, the similarity of their
content and the variety of sources, which included University alumni, federal and state
politicians, and others, many of whom had had no relationship with Pel1l1 State, Dr. Eva J.
Pell, then Senior Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School, was
asked to examine the matter. The reason for having Dr. Pell examine the matter was that
the accusations, when placed in an academic context, could be construed as allegations of
research misconduct, which would constitute a violation of Penn State policy,
Scientific hijinks!?!?! Somebody get me Penn State on the phone, NOW!!
You'd think they might have mentioned that he worked there. But maybe that only amuses me...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So?
Ok, good...
Re:Come on. Stop with the bullshit and be hoenst. (Score:5, Insightful)
People on the right (not necessarily applying that label to you, mind) seem really hung up on the question of whether human action is causing global warming (those that are able to get past arguing over whether it's even happening, that is).
I'm not as interested in that question, frankly. The way I look at it is this: every single homo sapien that lives or has ever lived has been on this one planet. As far as we've been able to tell, homo sapiens is the only "intelligent" life that's ever evolved anywhere, certainly in local space. I'm of the mind that that's fairly important and worth preserving. And this planet is the only one we know of that can support homo sapien life on some of it's surface some of the time, and even then we're on a climactic knife-edge. A little bit of change in any direction and we have reasonable concerns that the whole semi-stable equilibrium we're in will skew off wildly. It looks like that's what happened on Mars, and there's no reason to assume it can't happen here.
Taking all that in mind, until we have a way to live and thrive off-planet, we absolutely have to do what we can to keep this planet healthy, where healthy is defined as "able to support a large human population". If Earth winds up looking like Mars, knowing the planet is just going through a normal geological cycle that we didn't cause is not much comfort. Not that there will be any complex life anywhere in the Sol system to mourn us.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And if the NSF discovers that Mann was committing fraud and Penn State did nothing... what do you think the NSF will do to not just Mann's funding, but everyone else's at Penn State? It's in Penn State's best interest to be extra careful over allegations of fraud (especially very public ones that the NSF is certainly aware of), not try to wave it away.
Your conspiracy theory, while I'm sure it lets you ignore contrary evidence well, doesn't make any sense.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Those papers should be peer reviewed to ensure that the science in the paper is sound (not necessarily *right* - a published theory may later be proven wrong).
The letters in question were hacked from a mail server and released by the hackers.
I am not a scientist, I am sure some other
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, and those guys who destroyed John Kerry's (admittedly already-weak) presidential bid through that swiftboat nonsense? They're for hire.
A group of dissatisfied conservative alumni used them to remove the president of my alma mater a few years back. They rallied the usual suspects (Limbaugh, WND, etc.) and within a few months the president (and the college by extension) was a liberal bogeyman. In turn, the president was fired, and the state pulled a great deal of funding from the college.
ACORN (who wer
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
None of those things point to actual corruption, or the fabricated issues which led to the organization's dissolution.
The District Attorney for Brooklyn, the California Attorney General, and the Government Accountability Office all cleared the organization of any wrongdoing.
Other investigations are still ongoing, but are expected to produce similar results.
Newsweek and Factcheck.org found the claims about 2008 voter registration to have been grossly overstated, and largely incorrect. It's also no surprise
Rational Skepticism (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't deny the Earth has shown some slight warming, warming which brings us nowhere near the levels that Earth has successfully endured in the past. I have concerns with CO2 being named as the scapegoat. I take issue with models being called science. Models are part of the hypothesis. Every other field of science requires a testable, and repeatable experiments. It's what makes science great, because it can weed out free energy nuts that power their cars with cold fusion and water. Evolution, for a long time, really was a hypothesis that fit the facts. It needed DNA to tie it all together and really put the last nail in the Creationist coffin. It appears that climate science is exempt from this requirement (a test of what the model concludes) before calling conclusions facts. The problem with the Warmers is that when a question is asked, the debate that follows is usually just a bunch of name calling. Two things separate science from religion. Science assumes a lack of knowledge or that the knowledge we currently have is incorrect. Religion assumes it is right. Science wants to be challenged by anyone, where religion demands it be challenged by no one. When you deny anyone's right to ask "why?", then you are spewing dogma.
CO2 is rising, no doubt about that. My issue is that it only makes up about .04% of the atmosphere. Venus and Mars both have vastly higher amounts of CO2 compared to us (~95%). One planet is scorching hot, and the other is very cold (with some tolerably warm spots for our future explorers). Venus is fairly convincingly attributed to the Greenhouse Effect. Mars has an atmospheric CO2 content that by volume and mass is greater than Earths. Why is Mars not hot? Why does the greenhouse effect not slip out of control there? The odds of IR radiation striking a CO2 molecule on the way up on Earth is extremely small. If this weren't true, IR pictures of fields and cities would be blurred by the scattering caused by CO2. Increasing CO2 from .04% to .05% still keeps those odds extremely small. If it is absorbed, the CO2 with kick out a another IR photon, the whole idea of the Greenhouse Effect. To anything in the atmosphere, most directions lead to space. For me to accept a model, it must apply to Mars and Venus equally, without modifying constants. Yes that means the must account for all the variations, from deflection from our magnetic field of higher energy particles to atmospheric density to distance from the Sun. Without these factors, people are taking variables and assuming constants out of them. If you take a model for Earth and plug in all the same factors for Mars or any other planet into it, but are stuck with "we don't have that variable in this model" then your model is incomplete and inaccurate. That model should work anywhere, like all other physics does. If you want to convince me you've pegged the source of a less than %1 difference in temperature, then you better account for all these variables much wider than %1 difference.
The Sun is the primary sources of heat on Earth, far outpacing every other source. Are there any direct recordings (not by tree ring proxy) of variations in luminosity over the same period of time? We are kept warm by it at 150 million kilometers away. Think of the vast amount of energy that has to be releasing to do that. Even slight variations would affect us. The Earth is a very good black body, like the other planets. By the math for black body radiation, the Earth is emitting around 10% more heat that it gets from the Sun, due to geothermal heat.
I am seriously concerned that real ecological issues like pollution and conservation of resources have been hijacked by the invisible, marketable demon of CO2.
Re:It won't matter (Score:5, Informative)
Have you read the IPCC working group reports? They cover that chain of proofs pretty well.
If you have and you still don't think that global climate change has been proven, what level of evidence would it take to prove it to you? After all, you use the quotation that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; what level of evidence would you consider to be extraordinary for the theory of global climate change?
Honestly though, I'm not certain I'll get a reasonable answer from you. The two links you provided are pretty tangential to your point. Don't like the US surface station data? Well, the European and Japanese surface station data shows the same trends. Don't like any surface station data? Well, the satellite data shows the same trends. Hell, even the decrease [wikipedia.org] in average bird sizes [wordpress.com] over the last 46 years is indicative of an upward trend in average temperature. Even data from studies that are entirely unrelated to climate science show indications of increasing average temperatures! How is that not extraordinary?
Re:It won't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
These start with the claim that the Earth is warming and end with the claim that therefore catastrophe will result. (Well, and more frequently these then pass on from that to claims that if we undertake to destroy the economy in a particular way, the catastrophe will be prevented or attenuated.)
I like how you accuse one group of alarmism, and then go on immediately to blithely dismiss all manner of regulation as attempts "to destroy the economy". In other words, you start with the claim that some people are trying to regulate, "and end with the claim that therefore catastrophe will result." I'd say impending wholesale destruction of an economy is an extraordinary claim, and like you say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So where's your evidence that environmentalists are trying to destroy the economy? Where's your evidence that environmental regulations will even come close to destroying the economy if passed?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They didn't challenge the credibility of a scientist. To do that, they would do the difficult work of producing incongruous reproducible scientific results.
Instead, they did the easy thing, which was to illegally hack into a computer system and leak private, misleading emails to a conspiracy-minded population of kooks ready to take individual words or phrases far out of context to reinforce their preconceived notions.
But, like you said, if they had "challenged the credibility of a scientist or his research"