Climate Researchers Fight Back 641
tomduck writes "The Guardian reports that climate researcher Andrew Weaver is suing the National Post newspaper in Canada in a libel action for publishing 'grossly irresponsible falsehoods.' The Post claimed he cherrypicked data to support his climate research, and tried to blame the 'evil fossil fuel' industry for break-ins at his office in 2008 to divert attention from mistakes in the 2007 IPCC report. This comes fast on the heels of another Guardian article describing lessons learned from the exoneration of UEA scientists involved in the so-called Climategate affair. Are climate scientists finally fighting back against their critics, who they were previously more inclined to ignore?"
Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:4, Insightful)
Real climate scientists have been fighting for years... It is the climate evangelists that have been ignoring everyone else up until now.
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't give a crap about the "climate evangelists" (whatever exactly that is). But if the National Post is simply playing fast and loose with the facts surrounding a scientist, and basically libeling him in the process, I hope they pay, and pay dearly. If you want to debate the merits or faults of a scientific theory, you debate the merits or faults, you don't go around invoking conspiracy theories, and if you are going to stoop to that level, you probably shouldn't actually go accusing the scientists directly, but rather keep it all nebulous. The pseudo-skeptics need to take a page from the anti-evolution crowd. When talking about the evil conspiracy, don't name names, don't make specific accusations, keep it nice and general and that way nobody can go to a lawyer and drag your ass into court.
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's climate change, idiot. The climate will become more extreme, as more energy is pumped into a chaotic system. Their credibility has been exonerated, if you read real instead of faux news sources you would know that. If private industry tries to crap in our air, they will be regulated. I don't crap in their corporate headquarters. Corporations need to be held responsible for their actions, and pay for the damage they force on others. If you don't like it, tough. We all have to share this planet, and we a
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's climate change, idiot.
I think it's even more specific than that. It's about human influenced climate change. Climate Change is a fact. The climate on this planet is constantly changing and has been changing naturally for as long as we have any way of measuring. The causes may be something as simple a cyclical changes in the energy output of the sun, volcanic eruptions, meteor impacts, or a multitude of other natural phenomenons. There's not much we can do to change the normal cycle of climate change. The question is what impact we are having on the climate with the stuff we are pumping in to the atmosphere and what, if anything, we should be doing about it.
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is what impact we are having on the climate with the stuff we are pumping in to the atmosphere and what, if anything, we should be doing about it.
If natural global warming was deemed a threat to us we would have to look for ways to offset it. We are not children you know. It doesn't matter who "did it".
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, climate changes is being run by socialists (who want everyone to drive equal cars), PETA (who doesn't want people eating helpless animals), and the Sierra Club (who wants plants to have rights).
Let me get this straight. You think that socialists, PETA and the Sierra Club have managed to buy out virtually all the climate scientists of the world? Where did they get the money for that? And what evidence do you have for this? For such a massive conspiracy, there would have to be a large paper trail. There would be evidence of these organisations funding research groups, just like we see evidence of anti-climate change think tanks being funded by industry at places like SourceWatch [sourcewatch.org].
I guess you are saying that SUVs don't produce more CO2 than smaller cars, that cows don't produce massive amounts of methane and that deforestation has no effect on the ability of this planet to convert CO2 to O2. Well you would be wrong. On one hand you have these proven scientific facts, while on the other hand you have unproven conspiracies that have been supposedly committed by people who I doubt would have the organisational skills to pull it off. Which seems more likely?
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It sounds like you think they called it climate change to bow to political pressure when it was actually a reflection of how opinions have shifted. The vast majority of climatologists agree that the earth is heating up. The only area being questioned is how much we as humans are responsible and there is plenty of room for debate there.
The obvious conclusion is that humans aren't the sole cause but are speeding up the natural process. This is also based on a lifetime of observation as any elderly person can
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Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:5, Insightful)
I lost faith in the climatologists when they stopped calling it global warming and went for the more neutral "climate change." If that isn't an example of politicizing their own debate then I don't know what is.
What are you talking about? The changed the terminology because most of population, including the mediatainment knowledge-pudding dispensing machine, couldn't muster the neurons to figure out that GLOBAL WARMING != WARM EVERYWHERE. Apparently the concept of global average temperatures increasing and the sometimes non-intuitive results were just too damn complicated and confusing.
In an effort to make things less confounding, they chose climate change. The thinking was to use a term that was temperature neutral and perhaps lower the instances of Joe Simpleton's response of "It dar be cold here, ain't no global wooormin'!".
I hold a skeptics view to the whole Global Warming thing, they say that this is what the earth will do in 100 years...yet they can't guess what its going to do next week with any certainty.
No, you don't hold a skeptics view. You hold an ignorant view. You're statement clearly shows you don't know anything about computer modeling of complex phenomena. You also demonstrate that you don't understand the difference between meteorology and climatology.
You see, a real skeptic is someone who is educated and understand the material they are skeptical about. You're more like the pitchfork and torch wielding peasant; uneducated but fervent in your beliefs.
That and I just read two articles on two different news sites on the Same Day, One claiming that the Spring storms come later and later each year due to global warming and the other claiming that spring comes earlier and earlier due to it.
Again, your criticizing something you don't understand. Try studying (at least) meteorology.
Also, how the hell can they use data that seems to work for centuries "tree rings" and then STOP using it when it doesn't support their conclusions over the past few decades ie the whole Hide the Decline Fiasco.
o_O
It wasn't just tree rings. Look, we don't have climatological data from satellites going back millions of years, so scientists from various branches use proxies. In the case of climatology, scientists use MULTIPLE proxies in order to get a general idea of what the Earth's climate was like.
Now in order to get an accurate picture, and indeed, to even use the proxy it has to "check out" with all the rest of data. If a proposed proxy doesn't match (within reason) the other data then it is tossed out.
In this particular case, the tree ring data held up well as a proxy compared with other sources of data (sediments, isotopes, etc.). However, just recently (within the past 100 years) the tree ring data started to diverge significantly. More to the point, it started to diverge from the actual temperature record (this is being researched). So what do you do? Use the human temperature record which is far more robust and accurate or do you use the RECENT tree ring data which seems to be expressing a flaw?
Upon further research it may turn out that tree ring data is not a good proxy and the whole data set will be thrown out. Any research based on that data set will have to be redone. The process is called science.
Be that as it may, you can't really be a skeptic without having any knowledge of subject your being skeptical about (at least in a scientific aspect). There are legitimate skeptics out there. The ask good solid questions and bring up salient points. But basing your skepticism on your own ignorance of the subject material is like building your house on quicksand.
~X~
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:4, Informative)
As I said above, the term "climate change" was an invention of Frank Luntz for the Bush administration, not something that climate scientists came up with. You can Google it.
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That's classic confirmation bias.
No it isn't.
If you have several proxy data sets that indicate warmer or cooler temperatures including the flora/fauna record and you have one that is out of sync, then in all probability that data set is suspect.
Throwing out data when it doesn't match your preconceived notions (as evidence by data you collected previously) is cherry-picking.
Oh yes, that is cherry picking. But that isn't what happened.
The tree ring proxy data matched very well with all other proxy data sets UNTIL around the 1950's. At that point, the tree ring data started diverging significantly from the temperature record that WE as human beings were recording with TH
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:4, Insightful)
And yours is nothing more than an insult with absolutely no refutation of his argument.
You're right, I didn't. Why? Because no refutation would matter. The difference between short term noise and a long term trend is basic, fundamental statistics. Any introduction to climate science, economics, or any number of other fields would cover this topic. If he wanted to learn the difference, he could find out for himself.
But, of course, he doesn't want to learn the difference. And even if someone explained it to him, he'd ignore it. Why? Because he's already decided global warming is false, and climatologists don't know what they're doing. At that point, confirmation bias will ensure that he never learns anything that disputes this conclusion, simply because he *doesn't care to learn*. Which is, of course, why he latched onto the stupid "durr, they can't tell me the temperature next week!" meme. He already *wants* to believe global warming is fake, and so an idiotic statement like that rings true.
Of course, that's the difference between a real skeptic and a denier. A skeptic hears a claim, then attempts to go out and learn something about it for himself. A denier listens to both sides, then picks the arguments that confirm his beliefs.
You did nothing but attempt to insult him and made your self look like an ignorant ass in the process.
Says ArcherB, the long-time conservative noisebag and Slashdot troll.
Please. Go back into your hole, noisebag. You clearly have nothing of value to contribute.
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:5, Informative)
And, oh yes, the person at the center of the CRU meltdown, Phil Jones, now admits there has been NO GLOBAL WARMING FOR THE PAST 15 YEARS.
Are you still on that? You might want to at least link to the actual interview where that quote is supposedly coming from, which is here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm [bbc.co.uk]
And here is the relevant quote in question:
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
Quite a bit of a difference from what you and that ncpa article are claiming, isn't it? Like always, it pays to go to the source itself. Unless, of course, you have no interest in what's actually happening, and are merely interested in finding your present ideas confirmed.
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:5, Interesting)
Um, you seemed to have ignored the first two thirds of his comment. You know, the part about how NASA assumes that we are .001 of a degree warmer than we were over seventy years ago. Really? We were accurate to 0.001 of a degree when measuring the world's climate average back when the Charleston was all the rage and cars still had wooden tires? And you are seriously willing to give up rights on that assumption?
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There are many reasons to doubt AGW as a legitimate climate change candidate. The shrillness of its proponents not being the least. The FSM is as likely a cause. The sunspot minimum makes a far more beleivable.
Sunspots increase solar radiation, so I guess the minimum is the reason that temperatures have stayed relatively constant then?
Regardless of whether AGW is real or not, the thing that pisses me off about the whole scenario is the number of people using it to reject anything that leads to energy independence. By all means, let's continue chugging oil and making Big Oil execs and their Saudi prince friends filthy rich. I don't particularly care if AGW is real, but if it speeds up solar and nuclear energy re
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are many reasons to doubt AGW as a legitimate climate change candidate. The shrillness of its proponents not being the least. The FSM is as likely a cause. The sunspot minimum makes a far more beleivable.
Sunspots increase solar radiation, so I guess the minimum is the reason that temperatures have stayed relatively constant then?
Regardless of whether AGW is real or not, the thing that pisses me off about the whole scenario is the number of people using it to reject anything that leads to energy independence. By all means, let's continue chugging oil and making Big Oil execs and their Saudi prince friends filthy rich. I don't particularly care if AGW is real, but if it speeds up solar and nuclear energy research and deployment than I'm all for it. You can even say FSM did it, if it makes you happy and reduces our trade deficit.
No one is saying "let's burn oil like there is no tomorrow". What people are saying is that it is cheaper to drill for oil than to catch the unicorn farts required to power our cars, heat/cool our homes, and drive our economy.
I agree with the whole "let's cut our dependence on foreign oil bit", but we are not going to do that by banning all domestic energy production. It will take the reasonable efficiency proposals from the liberals and combine them with the feasible domestic energy policies of the conservatives. This means that we drill ANWR and offshore. This means that we tax that oil and use the money for alternative energy research (AND NOTHING ELSE!). It means that we increase automobile efficiency standards. We build nuclear plants. We build wind farms. We do ALL of what is reasonable, not just what one side or the other wants.
But lets not do it in a such a way that gives more power to the government to control our lives.
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Sorry, the data, collection points (or lack thereof) and analysis methodology make AGW an unlikely hypothesis.
Ya gotta love the touch of using 'about', followed by a world temperature quoted to 1/1000 degree F. why we are justified in assuming such preposterous "accuracies" from processes that have half degree error bars? How do they estimate the Earth's temperature in 1938 to within a half of a degree. I would like to see the procedure used to do that, and the measures employed.
I just did something funny; I ran those numbers through google converting them from F to C. I got something funny considering science is generally done in celsius.
Seems to me including at least two decimal places would be expected from the scientific community and since they are likely to be based on much of the same instruments and post-processing techniques, the error bar for the temperature change would
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Magazines are generally not considered news. Magazines exist to sell magazines, not give you news. And no offense to Senator McCain but Obama pushes paper. Plain and simple.
Likewise, there were FAR more Palin covers than Clinton covers. Guess why?
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I am not defending what the National Post did in any way but their libel nor does the findings by the House of Commons completely exonerate the scientists of the UAE.
While the House of Commons showed there was no proof of "tampering" of the data in the climategate sample it was because the UAE deleted [timesonline.co.uk] all of the raw data in question.
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
There was no way to prove if the data had been tampered with because the data was deleted. The only thing that was left was their "value added" data.
I don't know if what the UAE
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There was no way to prove if the data had been tampered with because the data was deleted. The only thing that was left was their "value added" data.
You don't know what you're talking about [nytimes.com]
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Note the raw data in the link has a few minor holes, this is due to the fact some national weather services (eg: France) will only release their data on condition you keep it private. If you intend to perform a reconstruction be aware the raw data is chock full of anaomolies such as undocumented station movements and typos. OTHOH Jones and his unit have spent the last couple of decades ferreting out a
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So you agree that all those AGW advocates who attack every opponent by questioning their objectivity and ethics ("he's paid by Big Oil, that's all you need to know") or calling them idiots or worse, are in the wron
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You think basically accusing the overwhelming majority of climatologists in the world of being part of a left-wing conspiracy to destroy the industrialized world is civil?
And yeah, I think it's legitimate to question the motives of a scientist whose in the employ of big oil companies when he declares that there's nothing wrong with throwing lots and lots of CO2 into the atmosphere, when that would seem to benefit his employers and himself directly. It doesn't really do climatologists much financial good wh
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Nice parting shot - 'naysayers are cranks or con artists'. I'm afraid that supports what he's saying. If you read through and story about AGW on /., what you see are a lot of skeptics questioning facts and a lot of believers throwing around insults, accusations of corruption, idiocy or being supporters of the Republican party. The differenc
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The higher they raise their prices, the more hybrids/electrics/bicycles get bought.
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> they have to pay out will come from their backers - the oil industry
Do you any evidence of this, or do you just "know"? If I was to put on your conspiracy hat and "follow the money" I see trillions of dollars and power going to government agencies, scientists that "study" the problem are getting more and more funding. Western governments desperately need money to pay for social programs that are unsustainable, and "climate science" is a perfect excuse to tax more. Who exactly is using who?
> Lo
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Peer-review is not supposed to be the end of science. But in global warming we hear "Consensus! Peer-reviewed!" But that is besides the point.
Even saying that, the IPCC WG4 has only 70% of its references from peer-reviewed sources. And even if that is not enough...
Science is supposed to be duplicated and experimented with and replicated before its set in stone as solid. Global warming from greenhouse gases is set in stone. The amount this is warming the Earth is NOT. Feedback effects and factors are n
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:4, Informative)
One example can't be extended to all of 'em, logic fail. Please try again.
Try climateaudit.org or http://bishophill.squarespace.com/ [squarespace.com] in general.
Neither is in the pay of anyone, and have links to many, many more like themselves that are merely studying the science. This issue is big and important enough that it should be able to stand up in the full light of day.
Or talk to Judith Curry, one of the few climate scientists that are willing to point out the flaws in the current process, e.g. here: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/04/squeaky-clean.html?showComment=1271462868897#c1343322932444511542 [blogspot.com]
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm getting tired of reading this nonsense. As someone with a degree in environmental science, I feel the need to point out a few things:
Which is more likely: that scientists got together and colluded to invent a crisis thinking it would make tons of money roll in, or that the wealthy are projecting their greed onto the less greedy? Occam's razor.
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:4, Insightful)
No one goes into the field expecting to make a lot of money.
Yeah, I always find it hilarious when people suggest money as the motivation for climatologists. Oh sure there's lots of politicking that goes on over acquiring grant money, but that's just the money you need to do your research. If there was nothing to research, why would you care about the grant money? It's not like you can use it to buy a Porsche. If you just wanted to do neat but useless stuff on someone else's dime, you'd study something DARPA cared about.
Which is more likely: that scientists got together and colluded to invent a crisis thinking it would make tons of money roll in, or that the wealthy are projecting their greed onto the less greedy? Occam's razor.
Well, Occam's Razor is about refraining from needlessly multiplying entities. Environmental scientists, being nerds, are much less likely to get laid than the MBAs running the fossil fuel industry. Ergo, the science conspiracy theory involves the least multiplying entities. The scientists did it, QED!
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who was alive during the 1870s should see distinct similarities between this disinformation campaign and the once vehement claims that there was "no definitive link" between phrenology and personality.
Sometimes scientific theories turn out wrong. Just because many others think you are an idiot, doesn't mean you aren't an idiot. Scientific theories need to be evaluated under a bright light, not hidden away in a closet, especially when hundreds of billions of dollars are going to be taxed every year based on that theory.
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, they do. And climate theories have been evaluated under a bright light. And unlike N rays, or cold fusion, the consensus of knowledgeable experts has emerged that anthropogenic climate change is a real phenomenon.
No, the economic implications have nothing to do with the science. There is no "especially" here. In fact, your invocation of it illustrates the motivation behind much of the denial: for whatever reasons of political philosophy, many people find the prospect of carbon taxes disturbing, and so are psychologically motivated to deny the evidence.
It's rather like a guy having a heart attack who keeps dismissing it as indigestion; it's not necessarily that he's ignorant of the symptoms, but nobody wants to think that a heart attack could happen to them.
Ah, guilt by implied association (Score:3, Informative)
"Sometimes scientific theories turn out wrong" is just as meaningless and empty a statement about global climate change as "sometimes scientific theories turn out to be right". I could say laypersons doubted heliocentrism, plate tectonics, and evolution too. Would that prove global warming is real?
Certainly, your list of "scientific theories" is dubious at best. Flat earth and phrenology aren't scientific ideas by any standard and cold fusion and N-rays were discredited less than a year after they were p
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone who was alive during the 70s should see distinct similarities between this disinformation campaign and the once vehement claims that there was "no definitive link" between tobacco use and cancer.
This isn't that surprising - the reason the similarities are so striking is because the oil companies are hiring the exact [wikipedia.org] same [sourcewatch.org] people [wikipedia.org] the tobacco industry used.
I have to wonder though - wouldn't the oil companies know that their propaganda artists are the same ones who failed the tobacco lobby?
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Unless, of course, you are a climate scientist who is employed by a big oil company or any other industrial research division, in which case you are clearly seeking money.
Please, every time I hear about how pure the academic scientists are because they aren't in it for the money I want to puke. They may not have gone into the field for the mo
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guess which of the following two grants will get funded and which won't: 1) man is not the cause of global warming/we're along for the ride on a system controlled in large part by solar output and other effects, give us money to study what they are, or 2) MAN IS DESTROYING THE PLANET, WE MUST BE STOPPED, WE WILL ALL DIE IF YOU DON'T FUND THIS RESEARCH.
If either of those grant applications would get funded in your country, then the entire grant system needs to be scrapped and rebuilt - they are both putting the conclusions before the research. Science is very different to lawyering - with lawyering your conclusions come first (i.e. your client is innocent) and you gather as much evidence for your conclusions as possible. Scientists on the other hand have the luxury of adapting their conclusions to fit the data. Sometimes this means a null result, but o
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The weird "thinktanks" and PR companies funded this way don't have any climate scientists and instead have odd failed journalist confidence tricksters such as Lord Monckton.
Those oil funded climate scientists putting forward a contrary view that you say we should be listening to do not actually exist. You are pushing a fairy story.
What all the deniers miss here is that if a climate scientist can prove it's all wrong they wil
Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, pity poor Exxon/Mobil, with its profits on the order of $40 billion dollars a year [cnn.com]. This one oil company could only outspend the entire fscking EPA by a factor of slightly less that four-to-one [gpoaccess.gov] and still maintain a profit. We can see how it is that the poor oil industry only constitutes half of the top ten, and only three of the top five, of Fortune's Global 500.
The taxation levels on oil products are far, far too low. If we paid at the pump for the environmental damage and the foreign policy costs of our oil addiction, gasoline would be at least twice as expensive.
Hmm. (Score:5, Funny)
So you could say that... the situation between climate scientists and the anti-climate-change crowd is heating up?
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I'd say relations between the two are cooling.
Are climate researchers.... (Score:3, Funny)
IMHO, if the guy's data is on target, it should stand on it's own without needing backup via lawsuits.
Re:Are climate researchers.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It would stand on its own, were the media to actually report what the data says. Since they seem to pay no attention to facts, I don't see a problem to poking them with a sharp lawyer and seeing if they'll pay attention to that.
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"It would stand on its own, were the media to actually report what the data says"
The media is pretty much int he tank for global climate change, or global warming, or whatever you're calling it now. Virtually every mainstream media outlet has been pouring out stories about devastating climate change for nearly twenty years now, and probably a bit longer.
When I say 'media', I mean NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Time
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Yet the media is not reporting on the raw data as the raw data was deleted. Instead the data that is being reported on has been altered to fit the model*. Without having the raw data to fall back on and reassess the model it throws doubt upon the entire theory, at least in those who are able to think for themselves. If the original raw data was still available then the theory could be proven or dis-proven. As it currently stands we merely have 2 sides yelling at one another calling the other group a bunch o
Re:Are climate researchers.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, sue them for the illegal lies they are telling so they stop and don't misinform people for profit anymore.
You are recommending the first. My only question is why?
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So people can just say whatever they want about him, with him having no recourse whatsoever (lest he make you think that maybe he really does have something to hide, if he objects to a newspaper publishing that he is a fraud)?
Re:Are climate researchers.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The National Post is free to publish anything it likes critiquing climate change. What it can't do, any more than anyone can do, is libel someone in the process. If I attack child molesters, there's nothing with that. If I declare that you're a child molester, well, that my friend is actionable. They're declaring this guy a fraud, in the general community a pretty serious charge, but in the scientific community it's the most serious charge, and unless they have actual evidence to back up their claims, they very well could be forced to pay damages and publish an apology for their statements. Editorialists and columnists do not have unlimited privilege to libel people.
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"Forced to publish an apology"... now that is something I'd love to see, a judge/magistrate forcing an apology out of a media outlet as part of a punishment. Of course, the judge better be sharp enough to demand it's an above-the-fold apology. None of this "the sky is red" front page headline then "sorry the sky is blue" on page D-19 under the high school prom announcements.
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Isn't this somewhat routine in libel cases?
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Consider that it's pretty damn hard (and should be) to get a newspaper for libel, at least outside the UK, so it's not something you'd see often (and I'd expect, as you note, that it would be in the fact corrections area or letters to the editor)
More generally, requiring apologies in cases of slander/libel cases is standard, as it allows the guilty party to repair the victim's reputation, at least to some degree.
Consider that most of us in academia would rather be caught killing someone than forging data. T
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Re:Are climate researchers.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The newspaper, not surprisingly, has the ability to reach a lot wider audience with what it says that this guy does. The libel laws are there for cases like this when someone lies / misrepresents the truth. Even arguing that he can inform the public of his side easily on the internet, what about everyone who read it in print, or who won't read what he writes because it won't be picked up by newspapers they read?
There needs to be an incentive to not lie about things in print. Saying that lies can be corrected doesn't necesarily fix the harm that was done.
For non-Canadians (Score:3, Informative)
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I guess you don't get Global, it was faux before there was faux. Only in Toronto could a TV station with a 100km broadcast range call itself "global".
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Nice try. Parry Sound didn't have electricity in the 80s, much less TV. I spent some time up north in those years, nothing but bikers, whores and hockey players. Staring stoned at your goldfish bowl is not TV, but is a bit more informative than Global.
Re:For non-Canadians (Score:4, Insightful)
I've just got to ask, what's a "liberal fact"? Facts don't have political leanings. Facts aren't ideological. That's like saying gravity is right wing or red shift is centrist.
This has been the most vile aspect of the Conservative war on science. Anything that disagrees with the corporatist-social conservative-fundamentalist Christian confederation that is modern conservatism is labeled as "leftist" or "liberal". I've debated guys who insist biological evolution and geology are "liberal" sciences. It's absurd.
Whether or not anthropogenic climate change is actually true, it is a scientific theory. It is a-religious and a-political and just generally a-ideological. It's like trying to attach an ideology to hammers or torch wrenches.
Re:For non-Canadians (Score:4, Funny)
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." -- S. Colbert
Re:For non-Canadians (Score:5, Insightful)
Your analogy is bizarre. War is a political exercise. Chemical or nuclear explosions are not. They can be used in a war, but they are a-political. The fact that you can produce a large explosion that can kill people doesn't mean the forces and materials involved have a political bias, any more than a strip of wood does, even if its used to make a bow that can kill people.
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along those same lines: facts are apolitical, but any given interpretation of those facts is unlikely to be as unbiased.
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The theory essentially states that the input of large amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases that have been sequestered for millions of years in the space of just a few centuries contributes directly to climactic changes, and that those changes will become more pronounced in the future.
Now we can debate the merits of the theory, we can debate whether the theory actually explains the data and whether or not the theory's predictions are valid. There is nothing ideological about any of it. The theory may
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The theory is apolitical. The reasoning behind the conclusions is apolitical. The theory was formulated by examining facts, trying to figure out how they fit together, and gathering more facts. The motivations were the usual scientific motives of desire for truth, prestige, and grant money. (Prestige is not only satisfying to the ego, but helps in getting a job one likes.) Note that the desire for truth is usually pretty strong, as in general anybody smart and disciplined enough to be a scientist coul
Re:For non-Canadians (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the thousands of climate researchers are out of the public eye and, guess what? They get the same answers as the results from researchers in the public eye. The amazing thing is that you can throw away all the data that came from the climategate researchers and it doesn't change things at all. It's also amazing that there have been lots of people trying to refute the climate change theories over the last 100 or 150 years and they've never been successful. And after reading all those climategate they haven't been able to find any evidence of the researchers trying to skew the data.
By the way, I know you changed your reference to IPCC later, but you're correct that the IPCC skewed the data that was presented. I know that at least in the data on the expected sea rise that they took more conservative values than are generally accepted, and then applied that a point before 2100 rather than take the rise all the way to 2100. They didn't want to be alarmist :).
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Parent was playing on the "reality has a well known liberal bias" joke. Sans inflection.
Ultimately (Score:5, Insightful)
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Public scrutiny is an interesting concept. I wouldn't, for instance, have the vaguest idea what to do with the raw data coming out of CERN, would you? Meaningful scrutiny comes from people with the skills to scrutinize. While I'm all for public release of data, one of the fears of scientists in this case is that you'll get a whole bunch of people who don't really have the skills to interpret the data making wild declarations, or possibly worse, people who do know how to interpret the data overstating or
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I never said we should maintain ivory towers, but if the fraudsters in the anti-evolution movement are any indication, a lot more pure unadulterated bullshit is going to come down the pike once those numbers are made available. The chief difference is that the fraudsters in the anti-climate pseudo-skeptic community are backed by some of the largest corporations on the planet, where with the anti-evolution crowd its largely moron school boards and a couple of millionaires funding outfits like the Discovery
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How do you figure? How precisely does giving the People of Walmart [peopleofwalmart.com] access to scientific data increase scrutiny? The one thing I find most amazing about Climategate is this apparent perception that the climate change issue is a new one. Like it hasn't been thoroughly researched over the last 40ish years by scientists in many disparate disciplines. As the parent suggests, the deniers have access to the published papers, and they s
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Although I only tangentially work with the scientific community, it's been my experience that if an actual scientist asks another actual scientist for their data, they'll usually get it. However, the general public...not so much. Why? Well, one only has to read the "evidence" presented in the Climategate scandal to see what happens when people who don't understand the science cherry pick what they
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's all well and good to demand transparency and accessibility for data etc, but where is the money going to come from? Who's going to pay for online hosting? Who's going to pay for the researcher's time?
Also, what format will the data take? Will we standardize on one form for every department, or will we be serving up raw data straight from the instruments? We've seen people complain about lack of access to
Re:Ultimately (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a statistical science. But then again, so is radioactive decay. I take it, to be consistent, that you're now going to declare that we can't possibly measure half-lives of many isotopes because it relies on models.
What are you talking about? Are you saying radioactive decay is calculated by using a computer model using hundreds of poorly understood variables (with hundreds, if not thousands of "unknown unknowns"), with very little verification -- similar to climatology science?
What you've done is another favorite anti-evolution tactic, an attempt to declare a particular field of research insufficiently "sciencey", that somehow its tools inadequate or prone to bias, while ignoring that similar tools are used in all other sorts of research.
And what you've done is a favorite religious tactic, which is dismissing anyone as a heretic who dares to question "the authorities", while not even understanding your own authorities at all.
If you think climatology is as solid as physics, chemistry or evolution, then you are simply ignorant of how they all work. In fact, don't take my word for it. Go ask a climatologist research if they think their theories and models are as provably accurate as, say, relativity theory, molecular theory or evolutionary theory. I refuse to believe there is one out there that is so dishonest that they would say their level of knowledge is on par with physicists or chemists.
Re:Ultimately (Score:4, Interesting)
? Are you saying radioactive decay is calculated by using a computer model using hundreds of poorly understood variables (with hundreds, if not thousands of "unknown unknowns"), with very little verification -- similar to climatology science?
While the example is poor, your rebuttal questions shows you know jack about climate models.
You can have a simple 1D climate model that will demonstrate planetary warming based on a handful of well understood parameters. Of course, a 1D model won't tell you a whole lot more than that. In fact, you can drive a full climate model on just small group of critical prognostic quantities. Check out Model E for example (which is a publicly available climate model complete with the data sets to drive it). The model restart files can be stripped down to something like 7 main components.
But what if you want some finer grained information? How does the atmospheric chemistry effect ozone in the stratosphere? How strong are the cooling effects of sulfur dioxide? What is the impact of a .1% change in albedo at the north pole due to pollution? While some of these things only make slight impacts, together they may accelerate or slow down climate change. But in order to study such things, scientists need to gather data AND add more components to the climate model that they're using.
The core of a climate model is, relatively speaking, is very simple. But if you want to study other aspects of the climate you have to add to that core, or roll your own. Be that as it may, even the most basic climate models, which again can use just a few parameters, show that increasing tropospheric CO2 yields a warmer planet on average.
But can you imagine what would be said if a climate scientist held up a simple model? Your argument would then be "it ain't got 'nough parememeters so it kent be right!".
If you think climatology is as solid as physics, chemistry or evolution, then you are simply ignorant of how they all work.
So are you it seems. The climate models ARE based on chemistry, physics, fluid dynamics, atmospheric dynamics, etc.. It's not like they just sat around and said "Hey, let's through a bunch of FORTRAN together and make some shit up." A point argued out of ignorance is still ignorant.
Go ask a climatologist research if they think their theories and models are as provably accurate as, say, relativity theory, molecular theory or evolutionary theory
The theories, yes. The various formulas you come across in climate science are very well established, drawing on everything from EM theory to chemistry. The theories are very solid.
But models are never solid. Anything that includes chaotic interaction (of which, all your mentioned areas have) can never be perfectly modeled. Hence the need for running large ensembles and using statistical methods to get useful information out of them (though depending on what your looking for, you may not need to go so far). This is also why models come with expectations of error and a thorough analysis of the error.
I refuse to believe there is one out there that is so dishonest that they would say their level of knowledge is on par with physicists or chemists.
That's going to come as quite a surprise to all the physicists and chemists in the field. You seem to be under an impression that climate science is somehow an independent field from physics and chemistry, which is most certainly not the case. Read down any roster of climate research groups. You'll find people from fields as diverse as astronomy to computer science.
~X~
Re:Ultimately (Score:5, Informative)
Good peer reviewed journal articles may determine the right from the wrong on the science.
However, if you are an ordinary citizen, hack journalist, or politician, you don't read those. No, the headlines determine the "truth."
Besides, there were allegations here that went beyond the meat of the science and into workplace ethics. If some rag says you sexually harassed your coworkers or embezzled money, and you didn't, you sue. That is what is happening here.
"The time for study is over" (Score:5, Informative)
Said Canada's environment minister John Baird in 2006. He then proceeded to eviscerate all government funding for climate research.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Exonerated? (Score:2, Insightful)
They had 1 day of testimony. And their results still aren't reproduceable.
That doesn't mean that global warming isn't happening, but UEA can't prove it's happening.
What climagate ? (Score:2, Insightful)
there was no 'climagate' but private interests and right wing news organizations (ie fox news) picking and exaggerating on some piece of criticism in climate research. the kind of inside criticism in scientific community which is not only normal, but generally mandated to be there, in order for a research to be considered valid and scientific.
the same kind of news organizations which easily went as far to say 'what global warming, it is snowing here' while doing serious news pieces.
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That would be where they have people fooled. Fox "News" broadcasts very little news at all, even according to its own opinion. The vast majority of their programming is officially editorial, by their own statements.
That's not to say they have any qualms at all about lying during actual news pieces either, since they went to court to defend their right to do precis
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what kind of judicial system a country has to have, for some news channel to win the 'right' to lie while delivering news, one wonders ...
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Because lying itself isn't against the law. Lying under certain circumstances, such as under oath in a court or fraudulently representing yourself in a business deal, is. The specific court case OP is referring to had to do with whistleblower status of two local Fox affiliate reporters who were fired for refusing to voluntarily redact claims made in an expose on rGBH hormones in cow milk. A replacement report was run that countered their claims.
link [foxbghsuit.com]
The court found that the reporters were not eligible to be
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The actual fact is that the original data is still in the possession of the meteorological services that acquired it and own it. CRU never even had the original raw data, so they were never in a position to destroy it even if they wanted to. So who told you that CRU destroyed the data? Fox News maybe? Perhaps you should start getting your news from a more trustworthy source.
That Old Tune? (Score:2, Informative)
Anyone that's done a little research knows the scientists there really did some questionable stuff. They would also know that they've (CRU/IPCC) been taken to task by others in the scientific community for doing so. This suit is about bad journalism. But it does not change the facts about the shenanigans at the CRU.
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Anyone that's done a little research knows the scientists there really did some questionable stuff. They would also know that they've (CRU/IPCC) been taken to task by others in the scientific community for doing so.
There was a small amount of criticism from the scientific community regarding small details, but the consensus was that the leaked emails did reveal a conspiracy, and did not alter any of the science. See: Nature [nature.com], Scientific American [scientificamerican.com] New Scientist [newscientist.com], the Royal Society [physicsworld.com].
Any AGW scientist (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Any AGW scientist (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't scientists playing politician but politicians playing scientist. Of course, lack of transparency is despicable and needs to be dealt with. It sickens me that the publications resulting from research paid for with my tax dollars is often locked behind paywalls.
That said, transparency is somewhat difficult. I have about 50 GB of test results from some research I should be working on at the moment. I can publish it online, but without the software that I use to read the file format it's useless. I wrote that too and could publish it, along with instructions on how to use it, but honestly it would still be very impenetrable to someone not an expert in the field. Now algorithms/ML research is a lot less controversial than AGW, but the point stands. Science is extremely difficult to do right, and to understand. I'd be hopelessly lost if I tried to interpret the CRU data, and I have a very good understanding of scientific and mathematical methods compared to the average person.
People spend years of their life to wrest the tiniest piece of information out of the universe. It's extraordinarily presumptuous to assume that someone can in an hour go through all that information and come up with a logical conclusion. We're talking about a lifetime of work here. Think about your life: could someone with no related knowledge really sift through all you've done in the past ten years and judge it, in the amount of time we're talking about here?
My point isn't that they did or didn't do anything wrong. My point is that neither I, nor Glen Beck, nor a court of law, is qualified to judge this question. To quote from TFA, I have no objection to climate skepticism, it's climate change denial that I oppose. It's very clear to someone with a scientific background to identify the common thread in science denial whether it's evolution, climate change, or the big bang: it's a refusal to even consider the possibility followed with spouting off some Aristotelian-style sophistry. A scientist says "maybe the climate isn't changing" and investigates by looking for arguments. A denier insists the climate can't possibly be changing and anyone who disagrees is part of a massive conspiracy and writes analogies and syllogisms and rhetoric. There are a few scientists who dispute AGW. They aren't the ones involved in fomenting this McScandal.
If my research were as controversial as theirs and anyone who bothered to look at my work in the same detail would be able to manufacture a scandal too, at least if the general public cared about optimizing information gathering. Scientific programming by its very nature results in impenetrable codebases that don't build and extremely complex data sets.
So I don't claim to be qualified to judge. But my sympathies are with the scientists involved because I have an in in science and I find the idea of an oil industry conspiracy far more plausible than a climate change conspiracy, if we really need conspiracy theories to explain ignorance.
Misleading title (Score:4, Funny)
Boy, was I disappointed.
A closer look at the claim and the suit (Score:5, Interesting)
I posted this on the CBC news website:
Okay, I'm going to try to do a bit of an analysis of Weaver's claim. Now, I am not a lawyer - I'm a writer, a researcher, a publisher, and I work part-time doing writing and editing for a faculty of law. So, any errors are my own.
This is essentially a far-reaching libel claim. This means that two things have to be proven: first, that the National Post made a deliberate misrepresentation; second, that the Post did so with malice - they did it specifically to cause harm. If both can't be proven, the claim doesn't stand in court.
So, Weaver is launching a two pronged attack here - the first is against the Post itself for certain articles. The second is against some of the posters commenting on those articles.
First, the National Post itself: this will become a battle of sources. If the Post defends itself on that one, it will attempt to demonstrate that Weaver did say those things, and he's actively trying to rewrite history. So, the Post will have to bring out original rough notes for the articles to back-date Weaver's comments. So long as they can do that, even if the Post did say something wrong, then they can demonstrate that the errors were not deliberate, and the libel claim will fail.
Second, the NP forum posts: this one strikes me as a boneheaded move, frankly. There is simply no way to prove that the forum posters made any deliberate misrepresentations. Even if some of the comments were vicious, there isn't any way to demonstrate that an anonymous voice on a forum was knowingly lying.
Finally, malice: again, another very difficult thing to prove. This would require a paper trail or somebody able to testify that there was a targeted attack. Right now, the claim itself has innuendo, but not a trail to prove an attack.
For those who want to take a close look of their own, the claim is at http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/andrew%20weaver%20statement%20of%20claim.pdf [desmogblog.com]
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Nah, we have to spend more time arguing about global warming. I mean, we have ocean acidification, fragile monolithic electricity grids, and an escalating oil crunch all of which point towards doing most of the same things we would have to do to fight global warming. If we don't sit around arguing about bar charts, we might actually have to get off our asses and go do some of that stuff.
Re:I don't see the relevance... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course we can't; not until the planet is uninhabitable will we know with absolute certainty (ie. can make the statement). We do know the effect of greenhouse gasses, and that we are pumping an unprecedented level of them, on a continuous basis, into the atmosphere, and that the environment is warming.
The best evidence that the environment is warming is the sudden interest in Arctic ownership and access. The same governments and businesses which undermine climate change are jockeying for rights and access here. Do they know something we don't?
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Short time?
You mean 750,000 years of data? That's not a short time.
Plus, there is a ton of data. Read up. Culd new data come in? maybe but you don't sit around and wait for data to support your theory. YOu go with th data you have and modify as new data cmoes in.
Would this make sens:
I believe gravity is happening, but we shouldn't go around saying its because mass bends space until more data comes in.
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But hay they are scientist... we should just trust them, they know what best.
Like hell. I am a scientist, and i don't trust me. In God we trust, the rest of you show me the data.
Re:I don't see the relevance... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't see the relevance... In climate data, that "suggests" global warming, and then the assumption that it is our doing.
Either you're hopelessly biased or you don't understand science. Science is the process by which we hypothesize various things, then test to see which one has the most support, via a semi-formal method. Science never "proves" anything absolutely. It doesn't prove that gravity exists or how it works. It just very, very strongly suggests it.
In order for a rational person to believe anthropogenic global warming is not happening they need to either reject science entirely or they need to have a competing theory with more support. You just hypothesized that the changing climate is the result of natural processes, but if you're being rational, you can't believe that until that theory has more scientific evidence than global warming being largely the result of human influence. That is simply not the consensus of the experimentation and modeling I've seen to date, by a huge margin.
There is always room for an alternate model of global warming. Creating such a model and then creating falsifiable tests to see if it holds up has been a large endeavor among many very well funded scientists. The thing is, none of them have panned out or produced results that compare favorably to man-made global warming. For you to not accept that global warming is most likely strongly influenced by human actions you have to picking and choosing as to when you believe in the scientific method and when you don't.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The biggest difficulty with this issue is that no "experimentation" has been performed, only modeling.
Experiments don't have to be replicating a situation. For example, you can theorize that we'll find a mechanism by which genetic traits are passed on as an experiment to test the evolution of species. If one can show no such mechanism exists, the theory of the evolution of man is falsified. Making any prediction which would falsify a theory is an experiment. Whenever new data comes in the theory is supported or fails and has to be changed or support moves to a competing theory.
This is the biggest difference between evolution and AGW; evolution has millions of final outcomes but AGW has zero.
Not really. Much of the suppor
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No, they don't have to have a competing theory. They have to demonstrate that the anthropogenic global warming theory has axiomatic, logic, data or interpretation flaws sufficient to undermine findings, or that it is an unfalsifiable theory. That is sufficient to disregard the theory.
Not exactly, because any flaws in a theory should be weighed against the success of the theory before you decide whether to use it or not. We know for certain that both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have fundamental
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
a)The Medieval Warm Period is based on European records; it thus could be a local phenomenon, rather than a global one.
That was true ten years ago, today records from Australia and Africa (and others) show similar warming trends in the Medieval time period, confirming that it was a global event.
b) It has been hypothesized by William Ruddiman that the depopulation caused by the Black Death led to lower anthropogenic CO2; the Little Ice Age would thus be a short-term reversal of global warming, which would in fact reinforce the AGW theory. It is necessary to emphasize that this is only a hypothesis.
It has been pretty well established that the Little Ice Age was caused by a sudden release of glacial meltwater from North America rushing into the Gulf Stream, which brings warm water from the equator north to warm the European coastal waters. This influx of cold water effectively shut down the Gulf Stream until the glacial ice rec
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In this case, frankly, it doesn't matter what the newspaper is. If they truly libeled the guy, then they should pay for that. If not, then they're free to publish whatever they want.
I can only say that it's good that this has finally landed in a court, so that the issue can be resolved with all due diligence, rather than by a mob with torches and pitchforks acting on the heat of the moment. Whatever decision comes out of it, I'll trust it much more than any /. speculation, whichever way it is slanted.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Um, why don't you go to their website and download their data and models and do just that? Contrary to what you may have heard, they released all the data they were allowed to. There was data that was owned by various governments that it was illegal for them to release, but everything else was released. Sure, you won't understand it because you don't have the education, but when has that stopped you from commenting before? :)