Climate Change and the Integrity of Science 1046
blau tips news of an open letter from 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences, including 11 Nobel laureates, decrying the "recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular." The letter lays out the basics of the scientific method, and explains how certainly highly-regarded theories — such as the big bang, evolution, and Earth's origin — are commonly accepted due to the strength of the evidence supporting them, though "fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong." It goes on to "call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them." According to the Guardian, the letter "originated with a number of NAS members who were frustrated at the misinformation being spread by climate deniers and the assaults on scientists by some policy-makers who hope to delay or avoid making policy decisions and are hiding behind the recent controversy around emails and minor errors in the IPCC."
always the loudest wins. (Score:3, Insightful)
In science vs media,
Re:always the loudest wins. (Score:4, Insightful)
Fortunately that is not true over the long run, having argued the case for AGW on slashdot for the last decade I can say that the slashdot consensus on AGW has done a complete 180 degree turn around in that time. Ten years ago I was definitely in the minority and was constantly modded down for debunking basic stuff such as the "volcanos release more CO2 than mankind" myth. Sure there's still a minority who for political or religious reasons will never accept that mankind can warm the globe but the rest of us (including me) are now much better informed for having had the amature scientific debate.
The public argument about the science of AGW is very similar to the public argument over smoking causing cancer. The strength of the FF lobby and their pet politicians is orders of magnitude greater than the strength of the tabacoo lobby in it's hayday. Scientists have not failed to communicate the science of AGW but they have not yet been successfull in battling the anti-science forces who know full well they are engaging in propoganda and witch hunts in an effort to keep the public in confused darkness. However you are right, it does not reflect well on society that there is still a vast army of usefull idiots [wikipedia.org] who accept and parrot the anti-science position without question.
But all is not lost, unlike propoganda and politics, science is objective and always wins in the long run. Evolution, plate techtonics, and AGW, are "scientific facts" where people can see the evidence for themselves. Gun laws, abortion rights, and what to do about AGW, are subjective and those are the wedge arguments that, fueled by the blind faith of politics and religion, will rage forever.
Re:always the loudest wins. (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone who spent a decade battling Creationists on talk.origins, I can tell you right now that the pseudo-skeptics pretty much ape the anti-evolutionist pseudo-skeptics to the letter. It's like they lifted the Panda's Thumb tactics and applied it to climatology.
Re:always the loudest wins. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not surprising, it certainly seems like a lot of anti-evolutionists are also in the anti-AGW battle. I suppose there's a couple of reasons for that. For one AGW questions the literal truth of the Bible, because if AGW is true, then maybe God didn't really give the world to Christians to do with as they wish. The other big reason is that anti-evolutionists have a tendency to be anti-science, thus it is natural for them to take up any side which questions the credibility of scientists and scientific consensus. Evolution is just the wedge issue that they're hammering away at to try and break science.
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The warming trend is 0.14deg/decade, define "catastophic".
For AGW you can falsify it by showing Fourier's spectral analysis techniques don't work and therfore throw out much of astronomy, cosmology and quantum mechanics as a side effect. I imagine if you can manage such a
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The problem with "AGW" is that it is bad science and mostly public relations, not necessarily actual science. I can name numerous sorts of problems with those who are pro-AGW just as those who are blatant deniers are equally out to lunch.
A great part of the problem is that head smacking obvious issues like what caused the medieval global warming (hint, it had almost nothing to do with human impact on the environment) and the subsequent cold period that sort of peaked some time around the period of the Amer
Re:always the loudest wins. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody knows what caused the anomally known as the MWP but the fact that it was regional rules out the sun and other global phenomena. Whatever it was, it does not imply that CO2 is not causing the current warming. I'm sorry I only skimmed the the rest of your rant but that initial logical fallacy was enough to inform me that you are ill equiped to constructively critisize climate scientists.
Re:always the loudest wins. (Score:4, Insightful)
The existence of a medieval global warming period seems to be an article of faith among opponents of global warming, even though the evidence that it was global rather than regional is much weaker (PDF) [psu.edu] than the evidence for modern global warming. The oddest thing is that they seem think that the possible existence of some additional mechanism that is not understood whereby the earth could warm more than is expected from current global climate models models should make people less concerned about the possible consequences of modern global warming. If the medieval warm period was indeed global, it would argue that there is some additional mechanism that could add to or amplify the modern CO2 induced warming so as to cause global temperatures to shoot up even higher than projected.
Politics (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Politics (Score:4, Insightful)
It won't work (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It won't work (Score:4, Insightful)
When I read this summary, I thought "hurray, the antagonistic, dogma-preaching 'scientists' were finally going to be told that debate IS allowed and questioning the data and methods IS allowed and you don't get to question the ethics of the guy with the opposing ideas just because he disagrees with you." But no, it's the ones who need control that are complaining about being picked on. The poor dears, they behave boorishly in public and then cry about how boorishly they are being treated.
It pays to keep people uneducated: it's easier to scare, persuade, and misinform them.
And that's why every time you ask a strong AGW proponent to support his claims he resorts to name calling and saying things like "it's a fact" and "the debate is over". Never explain how you got to your conclusion, pretend the other guy is an idiot for asking, and you'll have "uneducated, scared, misinformed" people at your feet. And the scareder they are, the more money they'll keep pumping into research on how to "fix the crisis."
I know "climate scientists" who behave exactly that way, so pretending they don't exist won't earn you any points in this discussion.
Re:It won't work (Score:4, Insightful)
Rather than continuing to escalate the rhetoric, climatologists need to return to their core data and analysis methods to present their cases in a fair and rational manner.
I do believe this has been going on for a long time now. It's called publishing in peer reviewed journals. Thousands of times.
It seems that the published science is so compelling that every national science academy, scientific society and professional body of international standing that has expressed a public position has asserted the reality of AGW.
If this reasoned published evidence is good enough for the leading bodies of world science, then I'd say you need some very cogent arguments to dispute it. Hand waving doesn't cut it.
You are to brutally honest, full of it.
Re:It won't work (Score:4, Interesting)
And you wonder why people get sick of hearing nonsense like "mystery models with hidden data"? Because it is fundamentally a lie repeated by people like yourself either willfully or through being too lazy to actually look and see what is publicly available. I recommend that you start at the handy page of links provided by the climate scientists who run the RealClimate site. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/ [realclimate.org]
On that page you will find links to NCDC raw station data which is used to compile the NCDC and NASA GISS global surface temperature reconstructions. You will also find links to the Global Paleo Climatology Network, maintained by NOAA, containing vasts amounts of proxy data such as tree rings ice cores etc. You will also find links to freely available climate model code. And lots more besides. Try visiting the NASA GISS site where just about everything they do is downloadable - data, papers, models, code - the lot.
This single page of links provides any thinking person who posseses the requisite skills, with sufficient information to begin their own evaluation of climate science. Or you could start by reading some of the published research.
People will stop saying "you are full of it" when you stop constructing straw men and telling porkies.
Re:It won't work (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, so because "Proponents of AGW are asking for societies to completely revise their infrastructures and policies" they must be wrong. Notice that your argument is fundamentally ideological. And still you demand respect for it?
Re:It won't work (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you don't. If you did, you'd already know that the CO2 levels are rising (measurable, and an indisputable empirical fact), that CO2 absorbs more energy from infrared light than most other atmospheric gasses (also a verified fact) and that the CO2 almost certainly comes from the burning of fossil fuels (the C12 ratio is higher, due to fossil carbon lacking C14), and you'd accept that there is a warming trend, and that the warmest decade on record has occurred at a solar minimum.
There's absolutely nothing to this that resembles the "supernatural".
"Hidden data"? You have a wealth of open data to examine. Which algorithms are hidden? Have you even been looking? No? You're just making stuff up, or copypasting from unverified claims — all the while pretending that your own faults are the faults of science.
I'll say this: you're not scientifically inclined at all. Otherwise, your arguments would probably have been with a slight scientifically orientation. There is none.
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There may be rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. The question, however, is what can be attributed as the source, what is the cause and what are the consequences of that CO2 rising?
BTW, in terms of the algorithms being used and looking for the "hidden data"..... you had better believe I've gone looking for it, and yes I've had some climatologists at a loss for explaining why some numbers have been changed on the electronic versions of the data which are simply missing from the hand-written records of ea
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As I pointed out, there is no scepticism in osgeek's AGW denialism. It's simply ideology. Concluding from "this will be too expensive" to "this can't be happening" has nothing to do with scientific scepticism at all, and you make no argument at all yourself. I didn't conflate anything: osgeek isn't a sceptic, he's a denialist.
Re:It won't work (Score:4, Insightful)
Concluding from "this will be too expensive" to "this can't be happening" has nothing to do with scientific scepticism at all
You'd be making a really compelling argument if he had said it can't be happening. Since he didn't say that but that they should expect scepticism and meet it head on instead of "politicking, obfuscating, and downright covering things up" then it would seem that straw man arguing and insults are the most effective weapons at your disposal, which is to say you lack facts and reason. Otherwise stop with the straw man arguments and present your facts and reason.
Re:It won't work (Score:4, Interesting)
And with all due respect, considering the gravity of this matter, skeptics are a bit unwise to require this incontestable proof to be served on a silver plate in front of them. This kind of attitude that "if someone doesn't convince me, then it isn't true" is a bit dangerous.
If AGW is happening, you should be asking for completely revised infrastructures and policies, for you own sake. It is your responsibility and in your own interest to find out what the truth of this matter is. Skeptics shouldn't expect others to do this work for them.
Maybe we live in different parts of the world, but I don't share your view of how skepticism has been dealt with. On the contrary, I find it commendable how some find the effort to continue arguing with, usually misinformed, deniers. But there comes a point when the discussion needs to be settled, because it could truly go on forever, or there will be no time left to act.
Precisely that, is what peer-reviewed scientific journals are for. Have you been reading them?
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And with all due respect, considering the gravity of this matter, skeptics are a bit unwise to require this incontestable proof to be served on a silver plate in front of them. This kind of attitude that "if someone doesn't convince me, then it isn't true" is a bit dangerous.
Gotta run, so can't reply to everything, but that's a bit of a Pascal's Wager. Like the fallacy of the wager, the fallacy of that is that there are infinite things that can do us in environmental disaster, war, asteroids, gray goo, skynet, etc. As a society, we don't have time to evaluate and consider them all. Climatologists really need to toe the line on following the very best Scientific methods so that those of us sincerely interested in doing the right thing won't be turned off or confused by waters
You missed something important (Score:3, Interesting)
We've been painted with the brush of religion because market research shows the people are more comfortable talking about people's motives than they are about the actual issues. That was probably determined very scientifically.
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Which really explains the need for this 'open' letter, which just happens to be hidden behind a pay wall.
As an adamant supporter of the Scientific method, I have to wonder why so many in the AGW camp are not concerned that data and methods have been lost. I'm also more than a little puzzled about how peer review became friend review for AGW supporters and fiend review for any doubters. Call me old fashioned, but I liked the IPCC report more when it still showed the MWP and RWP. If AGW is correct, why
Re:It won't work (Score:4, Insightful)
There is, in addition, the problem that we already have nice solid evidence of an earlier spring (the yearly spring dip in the Keeling Curve is beginning earlier), and we have a mechanism dead to rights for why increased CO2 should make the earth warmer. The science on this is not weak; our main problem is that we are trying to get data out of a noisy system, and there's no control. In contrast, the it's-not-happening crowd does not have a good explanation for why it should not be happening, nor do they have good data showing that it is not happening (noisy data has the annoying property that it proves nothing for nobody, neither presence or absence). They do sometimes say things that sound scientific, but those typically get holes punched in them with a quick visit to Wikipedia. So, not really.
As far as "trying to shut up the other side", well, yeah, it gets f*cking frustrating, if you're not just arguing with other academics, but instead have to deal with a well-funded FUD and PR campaign, that can even afford to buy senators. This is not an ordinary "scientific debate".
Re:It won't work (Score:4, Insightful)
If we're serious about GW, we start with an increasing CO2 tax, beginning at somewhere between $10 and $50 per ton of CO2 (think, burning 100 gallons of gasoline). You'll notice the price differential, but we've had worse fluctuations in recent years. And it goes up, and everyone knows it goes up. Europe is an existence proof for how we can live pretty well with half the CO2 footprint, and high gas prices.
At a certain CO2 tax, alternatives become economically interesting. Don't fart around with random subsidies and targeted stuff like that, just make it clear what will happen, and let the market go at it. DO see about a national effort to upgrade the power grid.
But, such a tax, certainly means the end of the coal industry, probably in my lifetime. They won't be able to compete, unless they can make the whole sequestration thing work. And they might.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now, we have nothing that can replace fossil fuels as an energy source within the next 20 years.
In my opinion, it would be more cost effective to address the symptoms of global warming than to try and remake our economies to try and stop it.
Re:It won't work (Score:4, Insightful)
Europe is an existence proof for how we can live pretty well with half the CO2 footprint, and high gas prices.
Europe would be a good example only if the US were to completely alter it's population distributions to match those of Europe. The US is BIG. The US population and it's cities and towns are much more spread out, with large areas of the continent that are relatively sparsely populated, but yet that population is a significant portion of the total population.
Even US cities are different. Most US cities aren't that old compared to most European cities, and the many cities designed/built (as well as expansions of existing cities) after the Model 'T' era were laid out with automobiles in mind. Many European cities are hundreds of years old, built when most people walked and those with freedom and means rode horses and horse-drawn wagons, carts, etc. This means the cities are much more compact, which makes things like mass transit, walking, and bicycling much more practical and economical.
As far as these scientists and their statement, I agree with others here who've expressed the opinion that they're only hurting the pro-AGW camp. The best thing they could do would be to advocate for a full disclosure of all raw data and have it made available to anyone, and set up something like the X-Prize for anyone that can come up with a decently-working climatological model whose code and algorithms can be released publicly and tested by anyone willing to do so.
The fact that those leading the charge behind AGW and cap-n-tax stand to make Sagans of dollars from it, along with more political power and government control over the people, coupled with this reluctance to release methods/data & attacks against anyone who questions their conclusions, makes me extremely skeptical.
There may be, in fact, an AGW crisis looming that threatens mankind. Unfortunately, the sloppy and ideologically- and politically-driven "science" and election-campaign-like tactics using personal attacks, etc have completely wrecked the debate and delayed or killed any chance of doing anything about it for years or decades.
The world just isn't going to give up many trillions in wealth, sacrifice many lives, reduce individual freedoms, lose national sovereignty, and destroy the standard of living of many millions without solid, verifiable, and dire reasons. This has only reinforced skepticism.
Strat
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Speaking only for myself, my skepticism stems from an apparent lack of transparency of the data, evidence of cherry picking data to meet an agenda, a lack of transparency of the algorithms used to massage the data, and the tell-tale vitriol spewed toward anyone who questions the above.
While I agree overall and wish things were more open, it's very important to take that in context. FoIA requests are being used as weapons. Anyone working anywhere near climate science is on the defensive precisely because they have such powerful attacks come in from all directions. It's really no surprise that people are sick of answering the same questions, disproving the same lies, etc.
The only problems I've noticed with the CRU stuff are the same problems I see in every other scientific field: 1) mos
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So your complaint is with politicians being hypocrites? I would like to know what that has to do with the science?
Re:It won't work (Score:4, Informative)
There is no such thing as AGWs. "Global Warming" has now become "Climate Change".
It did, for the same reason why Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging became simply Magnetic Resonance Imaging: the gullibility of a common man.
Apparently, there are still too many idiots unable to comprehend the concept of averaging temperatures across the globe, so as soon as they see one place that didn't warm up for one year, they get confused by the "warming" bit in "global warming", and decry it all as a conspiracy theory by a socialist world government.
Still, it's just a name change for the sake of PR. Global average temperature keeps going up [wikipedia.org] - the planet is warming.
Re:It won't work (Score:5, Insightful)
That is because of the AGW proponents who would shout as soon as one place was warmer than the year before that it was "proof" of AGW.
They're idiots, too. The correct course of action when dealing with such is calling them out, though, not repeating the same mistakes, or using them as an excuse for perpetrating flawed reasoning.
There were even AGW proponents who would claim that both warmer than normal tempatures and cooler than normal temperatures were evidence of AGW.
That's a perfectly valid claim, if we're talking about regional temperatures. In some regions, GW does indeed manifest as a cooling in local climate patterns, even in very long term. It's just that there are more regions which warm up, hence why we get warming on average.
and no loud voices from other AGW proponents saying that they are exaggerating
I've seen many feedback from climate researchers warning about sensationalizing AGW, actually. Precisely because they don't want people to "cry wolf" lest they be disbelieved by the time it's actually scheduled to come...
The problem is that all that stuff gets reported by mass media, and mass media wants a drama, not facts (because drama sells). So when a researcher says that some glacier somewhere might be melting because of GW, you get newspapers with front page stories saying "argh all ice is melting we're all gonna die in 2020!" (I really wish they'd use that spelling, too - it'd be very apropos in the context) - throwing in stats such as "this summer has been the warmest in last 20 years" as a kind of proof. And, of course, there's no way in hell they're going to quote a climate scientist whose study they "based" the article on saying "geez, guys, it's not really all that bad - it's much slower than that!" - unless he goes all the way to the opposite extreme and starts spouting about socialist conspiracy etc.
That works both ways, though. Say, "climategate" is by and large a creation of mass media, too - driven by demand for drama in this particular area, especially in U.S. As usual, when you get past the screaming newspaper headings, the reality is much more bleak and uninteresting.
Mark my words, today's journalists should be the second in the line to the sharks, right after lawyers.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Long term global temperature trends are still UP, not down.
Re:It won't work (Score:4, Informative)
And you can than the previous administration for that. On Frank Luntz's recommendation [wikipedia.org], they started using the phrase "Climate Change" instead of "Global Warming" to make it sound less frightening.
Re:It won't work (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientists in this letter are not however encouraging people to educate themselves. They're encouraging blind acceptance.
I don't care which side you agree with in any debate -- its the sign of a weak argument to require the silencing of your critics.
Re:It won't work (Score:5, Insightful)
I like how the summary mentions "climate deniers". Does anybody seriously deny that there is such a thing as climate? I thought it was all about it warming up (or not) because of human activity.
For me it doesn't speak very well for the um... Climate believers(?) sense of rational argument. No, the opposing view isn't questioning our computer models or the accuracy of our data. Nope. They deny climate altogether!
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There are lots of theories that we take for granted and which we rely on scientists to tell us the truth. Take the General theory of relativity for example. Even though I have a background in physics, I still don't have the math expertise to prove it. Yet I "believe" in it. Why? Because all the scientists claim that it's true. They say they've proved it and over the last 100 years, no scientist has challenged it. So I take their word for it. I h
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I think part of the problem is something most of us here on /. are blind to, namely that there is a large fraction of the population who do not understand the scientific method and have been brought up on a culture of relative right and wrong.
Who is at fault in a traffic accident? Depends on who has the winning lawyer.
Did that CEO break the law or just push the law to its limit but did not step over it?
And who made those laws anyway? If those laws were repealed would that CEO suddenly be "right" again?
I was
Integrety (Score:3, Insightful)
Too bad the denialosphere doesn't have to live up to the same standards of integrity that scientists have to.
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"If they'd made their data available in the first place, so others could check their work, we wouldn't be having this problem now."
They did.
"Instead they tried to suppress debate"
They didn't do it.
"and lost or corrupted the original data"
They hasn't done it.
"to the point that if there IS a problem we won't be able to reliably document it."
They hasn't done it.
You really should have present us documents of every second of your life. You hasn't done this, so we can safely assume that you are raping your daught
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I'm also a scientist, and let me tell you, I keep EVERYTHING (as does everyone that I have ever dealt with). I have lab notebooks in my lab going back to the 70's, full of every bit and byte of data that we have generated, across countless comings and goings of post-docs, technicians, and research associates.
Re:Integrety (Score:5, Informative)
You want some AGW data? Here's [realclimate.org] an aggregate of a bunch of different universities' measurements. I look forward to your analysis of it.
Oh, do you want Michael Mann's (the hockey stick guy) data specifically? Here's the data behind one of his most recent papers. Note that he's included his Matlab code.
The whole "show us the data" thing was kind of an issue before, but now there's just no excuse. I bet you still don't know what to do with it, even now that you have it. I sure don't.
Re:Integrety (Score:4, Funny)
Is what I meant to say. Clearly there's a conspiracy to keep this data from your oh so capable hands!
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You work with what you have. The temperature records they are working with have been collected over the past 150 years or so by hundreds of different entities around the world without any consideration of some of the things they're being used for now. It'd be great if we could go back and redo the observations but we can't. Of course the more recent the observations the better confidence we have in them especially since the 1950s.
Lots of raw data is available at the National Climate Data Center [noaa.gov]. Interes
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Go to the NOAA/NCDC web site to get their code. It's available. Go the the NASA/GISS web site for their data and the Model E code, one of the major GCM's. Read the published papers for methodology. It's mostly out there if you care to put in the work to examine it. There are links to lots of data and code on this page [realclimate.org].
Specifically... (Score:5, Insightful)
No mention (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No mention (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No mention (Score:5, Insightful)
I was thinking the same thing. Apparently, subverting the peer review process to keep contrarian papers from being published is OK; complaining about it in public is EVIL.
You're right. Here are some of the conclusions the scientists have made about climate change.
Well go on then, refute them. I eagerly await your reasoned discourse replete with accurate facts and figures explaining why it is all, in fact, a crock and a sham! If the evil money-grabbing scientific conspiracy community won't accept or peer review your findings, then I'm sure Slashdot will. What have you got to lose, eh?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I will take a shot at it.
First of all, there is the interesting question of quantification. I have seen some predictions that start with the CO2 stuff and come up with a lag time of what, 600 years. science does not have to be quantified by any means, but none of your points are very interesting without some verified numbers. overwhelming natural processes is a bit interesting, but it is not that anyone can really claim that natural processes should dominate. Now I do like the acidification of the ocean
Re:No mention (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, but somebody has been lying to you. The raw, unadjusted data is owned by various national meteorological services, and it has not been destroyed. Some of it is available for a fee, but quite a bit is available freely. You can find it here [realclimate.org]
Certainly. Such a comparison may be seen here [wordpress.com]
Mod Parrent Down, wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
The second link you posted there clearly refutes your claim (but you do have to actually read it to realize that). How you got modded to +5 is beyond me. You moderators need to actually click and read stuff before you endorse it like this.
Also, these graphs show what we (by that I mean people actually involved in computer modeling, since you obviously have no knowledge of it) call a calibration period. When you are constructing a model, you have a number of theoretically justified, but generally unmeasur
Re:No mention (Score:4, Insightful)
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What I find amazing about climategate is that in 10yrs worth of emails the propogandists could only find a handfull of quotes to take out of context and twist to suit their agenda. Similarly in 20yrs worth of IPCC reports the only genuine error found s
Re:No mention (Score:4, Informative)
I think the specific thing you are referring to is the publication of the Soon and Baliunas paper in Climate Research in 2003. It was a paper that should not have been published without major revisions. Among the criticisms [wikipedia.org] of the paper they used precipitation proxies where they should have used temperature proxies and they took regional temperature changes as global changes. Half of the editorial staff resigned when the publisher wouldn't allow the chief editor to print a rebuttal of the paper. Even the publisher eventually admitted it should not have been published without revision. Like the editorial staff Phil Jones questioned why anyone would want to have their name associated with a journal that would publish such junk. Maybe that's why the journal went downhill.
The majority of sources cited in AR4 were peer reviewed (12900/18500 according to one {skeptic} source). The IPCC AR4 report has 3 sections.
Working Group I is about the physical science basis of climate change. I believe you'll find that nearly everything cited in the WG1 section is peer reviewed and anything that wasn't probably could have been.
WG II is about the impacts and our vulnerability to climate change. There are more non-peer reviewed references in this section but I'd be surprised if the peer reviewed cites didn't outnumber them still.
WG III is about mitigation, what we can do about it. By its very nature it has some political aspects to it and cited many government, NGO, and business sources as well as peer reviewed papers. This is where you will find most of the non-peer reviewed cites in the AR4 report.
Finally, a paper is not necessarily worthless just because it is not peer reviewed. I think you have to examine it on a case by case basis to determine its worth.
Re:No mention (Score:5, Informative)
It then goes on to talk about the recent "americans are bombarded with cancer" report:
(Agreement with or refutation of the specifics of the case being made are left as an exercise to the reader.)
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I don't see how regulating the amount of emissions amounts to "complete control", though. We already regulate other polluters - for good reasons - so why not CO2?
So, that means regulating everybody, because everybody emits CO2. If we regulate every activity that causes the emission of CO2, we regulate every activity. Now you may be fine with that idea, but don't try and say that you haven't heard of proposals for complete control of all economic activity, because you just called for it.
Additionally, I don't consider CO2 a pollutant. Please list one other pollutant regulated under the Clean Air Act that the complete absence of would destroy the overwhelming majority
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So, that means regulating everybody, because everybody emits CO2. If we regulate every activity that causes the emission of CO2, we regulate every activity.
Wow, what a strawman. By that logic, we already regulate every activity - ever heard of taxes?
Additionally, I don't consider CO2 a pollutant. Please list one other pollutant regulated under the Clean Air Act that the complete absence of would destroy the overwhelming majority of life on this planet.
It's a matter of quantity (like so many other things). We're not talking about regulating how you breathe, or how cows fart. We're talking about regulating extremely large-scale emissions (in cases of cars, small emissions that add up very quickly due to large scale of the phenomenon), that, by all scientific accounts, have direct observable and undesirable long-term effect on our environment.
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And you're not just a loudmouth on the internet? The numbers scientists are publishing don't add up. That's well established and deserves debate.
Their models haven't come true, which means their models are faulty. That's what science is all about.
Here's a clue for you: getting published has a lot to do with grant funding, not good science. A lot of good science is done in home basements and garages and gardens every day of the year and isn't published. A lot of good science is being well-funded by grou
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This attitude is like saying you're never going to use open source again until all open source developers admit that the Debian OpenSSL incident proved that open source is fundamentally and flawed.
Like the Flat Earth Society (Score:4, Insightful)
We have essentially the same thing today. No matter how much evidence is shown for evolution, anthropogenic global warming, and so on, the fundamentalist wackos will rail against it and find some rationale for continuing in their thoroughly disproved ideas. About 25% of the American public cannot in any way be convinced, no matter how much evidence is shown them. These are the same people who think Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, and who still believe Obama is a Kenyan citizen and George W Bush actually cares about them and their Christian religion.
Re:Like the Flat Earth Society (Score:5, Insightful)
Dyson doesn't deny the science - he disagrees with the severity and importance of the consequences. I think he's wrong, but he's no denier.
Re:Like the Flat Earth Society (Score:4, Insightful)
If nothing else, I would expect the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's as much the fault of AGW denialists as it is of the fanatics. Just look a few posts above yours, how somebody who's merely expressing his concern for the measures proposed to combat AGW is used to prop up the validity of the denialist movement.
If nothing else, I would expect the /. crowd to be at least a little skeptical of *anything* that causes vast sums of money to change hands.
Sure. But the mark of a true skeptic (as opposed to a denialist) is that a skeptic can eventually be convinced, and this has been going long enough that true skeptics are somewhat scarce these days.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wherever the money goes, wherever politicians make it go, it probably shouldnt have gone there.
So, who should make it go? Blood-sucking corporations nobody has elected?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget that the biggest spokesman for AGW, old Al Gore himself, has set himself up to be a carbon billionaire and while he tell everyone else to use public transport he flies around in his own private LEAR JET which he has the 500 pound brass balls to say is "carbon neutral" because he pays HIMSELF carbon credits!
And the problem is?
Are you saying that his company isn't actually offsetting his carbon emissions?
Does anyone complain when the President of Ford buys a Ford?
Or when the owner of construction firm pays his own company to build his home?
If Gore's company is doing its job, what's the problem with him paying them?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Remember, back in the 70s, the climate scientists were telling us all that we were going to go into a massive ice age at any minute.
Wrong. [ametsoc.org] The rest of your comment is pretty much as spectacularly wrong as the tidbit I quoted.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually they weren't [skepticalscience.com]. It is illustrative of the level of propaganda being generated by those who hope to discredit climate science either on ideological or financial grounds that this long-debunked urban myth continues to be repeated and believed.
This too is a falsehood [skepticalscience.com]. But l
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Yeah, right. Scientists don't know nuthing. I always discuss global warming with my neighbour Joe. He hasn't finished high school, but he knows a lot more than them puffed nuts, with them numbers and formulas, specially after he downs a few beers. He's a fuckin' genius!
And what if he's wrong? It ain't like global warming's gonna affect us, anyway. Not like that Big Bang thingy, if that ain't a lie, oceans will rise and we're all gonna die!
Main points (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA says:
Exactly.
The problem is political, not scientific. Exxon & Co. have managed to convince the tin-foil-hat gang that all scientists are united in a vast conspiracy against people who own SUVs.
Scientists are scientists, not marketeers, how can they convince people who believe the world is 6000 years old that CO2 does absorb infrared radiation?
Re:Main points (Score:5, Insightful)
Academia can be very insular. It's publish or perish and it's difficult to get published if the editors think you're part of the "tin-foil-hat gang" or being paid by Exxon. There is also a great bias against publishing negative results. Climate science is full of models that are plugged into a computer and out comes a result. These models depend on many variables, some of which are measured, some of which are estimated, and some of which are guessed. In addition the whole algorithmic process by which the "model" works is at best an approximation. Certain methods of modeling future climate result in lots of warming, some less. Right now there are large margins of error and much disagreement about exactly how "much" climate change we will experience.
Now, it certainly seems plausible that there are models out there with variables and assumptions that result in no warming, or a cooling. What is the likelihood these would get published based purely on their results? Not good. Well then what is it about a model that makes it better than others? It's ability to "predict future changes" when plugged in with past data. However, as we go back in time we quickly start losing variables in quantity and precision. 100 years of good solid data (if it's even that much) is not much when it comes to modeling how the Earth's climate changes over it's vast history.
We are at least aware of many radical changes in climate that had nothing to do with humans over the Earth's history. If we can't account for those, then we are woefully unprepared to predict future changes.
The issues are very complicated, but it's not quite correct to say that scientists are solely interested in "truth". Academia has a culture, and this culture can create biases. These biases can affect entire research programs in ways that are more nuanced than simple conspiracies.
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Maybe. Now go look at the changes in the human condition since the scientific method was created in the 17th century and compare the evolution in these 400 years with the 40000 years that preceded it.
Where are the contrarian models? (Score:3, Insightful)
Close to 100%. There are "fringe" journals such as the notorious Energy and Environment [sourcewatch.org] that are extremely friendly to critics of global warming. While not highly regarded by serious scientists, there is little doubt that E&E would publish such a model. Besides, one can publish one's model
I don't want to be alarmist... (Score:5, Funny)
It's like Upton Sinclair said... (Score:5, Insightful)
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
Those dummies (Score:5, Funny)
Shouldn't have used an 8-bit int for their member count. Oh well, at least it's unsigned.
Signatories are very biased (Score:5, Funny)
There's a LOT of Political Power (Score:4, Insightful)
to be harvested amongst the people who don't understand Science, specifically Climate Changes. Its much easier to convince people its all conspiracy to waste their money and that they should oppose it, than it is to educate them in something extremely complex and involved - and which we are still figuring out. :P
The Climate Change deniers can muster a lot of political capital by marshalling all the ignorant masses against making changes that might cost them money but are intended to be for the good of us all.
Personally, I expect humanity will do precisely *nothing* that is effective to deal with climate change and that millions of people will have to die first before the rest of us accept the fact that our lifestyle and population growth has been writing checks we couldn't afford, and now the collection agency is here for their money. Lots of corporations owned by rich individuals have made trillions of dollars off of the world's resources without worrying about environmental impact - now we deal with it. Tons of damage has been done to the environment by those same companies and we are left to pay the bill. Our great grandchildren will *still* be paying that bill I expect, those that aren't dead that is.
Do I want to see responsible research, yes of course. Will it happen? I am sure its happening now. Will the media report on it and the average human learn to understand it? No way. The Media has no interest in dispensing the truth, the average person is too stupid to understand, and doesn't want to hear anything that implies *they* have to make sacrifices and can't get the latest shiney.
When enough humans have died that we no longer can cause global warming, thats when things will settle down again. Humanity is too stupid and shortsighted. Its much more important to figure out whats happening on America's Got Talent...
Yes, I am a bit cynical and bitter today, what clued you in?
Re:There's a LOT of Political Power (Score:5, Insightful)
What money? Do you know how much funding your average climatology research unit gets? I bet you it's nowhere near BP or Exxon Mobile's profit margin this year. Hell, even Al Gore's much reviled investments into carbon offset companies don't amount to much more than a minuscule portion of that, and we're not talking about Al Gore here - we're talking about academics doing research.
Seriously, this is saying "Hey look, those guys get a drop of water! Don't pay any attention to our swimming pool!"
Climate Deniers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Climate Deniers? (Score:5, Funny)
"The holocaust was undeniably real"
Nope.
"because there are still some living eye witnesses"
Worldwide Jew conspiracy.
"photographs"
Faked.
"original videos"
Staged.
"documents"
Faked and/or misrepresented.
"etc. that clearly prove that it happened."
Hah! You are sheeple if you believe in that crap. Hail Halliburton!
hmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Over 10% in such a short period of time? That's pretty impressive. Of course, virtually every major scientific society in the world [skepticalscience.com] has previously come out in support of climate science and concerns about global warming
Question (Score:4, Interesting)
At least it's an opportunity for psych science (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a proud skeptic, that is, somebody who wants to see evidence of extraordinary claims.
George Monbiot has pointed out that "skeptic" is not an appropriate word for somebody who goes far out of their way to ignore evidence presented to them and seizes upon the thinnest contrary statements. That was his defense of the word "denier" and it started me using the word again. I remained skeptical until about five years ago, when the evidence started to look very convincing. Then the 2007 IPCC report won me over.
What we're seeing the last few months is, to me, a fascinating study of how resistant people are to news they don't want to believe. The climate science has been slowly building up for decades, one peer-reviewed article after another, one dataset after another, the same story emerging from multiple angles. The scientific disputes dwindled away until we now have 97% of climate scientists surveyed last year on board with the same basic conclusions. Some thousands of scientists represented by the IPCC summary.
Yes, Michael Crichton was correct that science isn't subject to voting and one guy can be right and a thousand wrong. But public policy makers should go with the preponderance of evidence, just like a court; leaning to the views of a small minority is not sound policy-making. If 97% of 1000 nuclear scientists thought a nuclear plant would blow up, would you build it?
Then along comes "climategate" and everybody is actually told that they are being read a few sentences cherry-picked from thousands of E-mails, stripped of context. Hundreds of voices protest that the word "trick" is widely used for legitimate data manipulations.
Nonetheless, not only do the denier voices, many of them from organizations shown to be funded by Exxon, immediately proclaim this to outweigh decades of work by a couple of battalions of PhDs, the general public starts polling sharp drops in agreement with climate-change theory that had slowly won them over.
Conclusion: when people don't want to believe something because of its terrible costs, you have to convince them with a weight of evidence on the order of magnitude of 1000:1.
A thousand to one. Oh, man, we get all the hard jobs.
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Heh... Sometimes you also have to do it for things that people don't want to believe because of their cherished notions that run so counter to the idea you're proposing.
World not being Flat... ...and MANY, MANY more.
A heliocentric universe as opposed to a geocentric one...
Disease vectors...
Antibiotics...
The problem with anything world changing/shattering is that it absolutely does require that level of weight of evidence. And if you want the honest trut
Re:Bad analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
We either accept the methods by which the big bang, evolution, and climate change (along with pretty much everything else we think we know about how the world works) are understood, or we don't. If we do, then the economics are irrelevant: the universe doesn't care about our economy. If we don't, then we should have a better reason for this decision than saying "the motivations are different," because the universe also doesn't care about motivation, at least as far as we can tell.
In other words, you're letting your politics interfere with your understanding of science. Thanks for providing such a useful demonstration of how this works.
Science always predicts the future (Score:5, Informative)
*ALL* science is about predicting the future. If you have a theory that cannot make predictions, then it's not a scientific theory, it's not right, it's not even wrong [wikipedia.org].
Re:Almost Godwin... (Score:4, Informative)
climate deniers
Wow, is that what they're called?
A skeptic is someone who is dubious of a claim, but is willing to be persuaded by sufficient evidence. A denier is someone who will never be persuaded by any amount of evidence. There's precious little skepticism with regards to climate change these days, because the evidence is sufficient to convince those who were initially skeptical, but there's a hell of a lot of denial. If people who still refuse to accept the evidence don't want to be called "deniers," then you're welcome to come up with a different word -- but you can't have "skeptic," because that word already means something different.
And you can take your Godwin and stuff it. Godwin's Law is invoked when someone brings Hitler or the Holocaust into the conversation where they don't belong. So far, the only people doing that in this conversation are the climate change deniers. You don't get to, er, deny other people the use of the word "denier" just because it's often used with the word "Holocaust" in front of it. The verb "to deny" is a perfectly good English word going back to the 1300s, and it can be used in reference to many, many things that have nothing to do with the period from 1933 to 1945. In this particular case, the label fits: deal with it.
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Mostly because the medieval warming period seems to have only occurred in the northern hemisphere. There are indications that it did not occur in the southern hemisphere. I haven't seen any good studies that show that it was a global phenomenon. As such it's not as important to the global climate.
However, let's say that it did exist globally. Even studies that favor the idea of a global medieval warming period show that current temperatures are warmer than those during the medieval warming period. Addi
Re:Here's a quote (Score:4, Informative)
In the academic arena ripping each others ideas to shreds is standard fare. No one is suggesting Lomborg committed fraud or going after him personally. People are suggesting he is wrong. Given that many of his more outlandish claims appear in paperback rather than in peer reviewed literature this is better than he deserves.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No one is suggesting Lomborg committed fraud or going after him personally. People are suggesting he is wrong.
When you call the title of your book The Lomborg Deception [amazon.com], it's pretty hard to say you are not going after him personally. Deception by definition implies fraud.
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Regrettably, that's true. It gets complicated because the side with all the scientists is almost certainly right. However, a lot of the "everyone elses" on either side are driven by special interest, money, dogma, what have you. It's embarrassing to me (as a non-climatologist scientist) that a lot of environmentalists (for lack of a better term) are approaching the situation no better than the global warming denialists.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, in terms of the public debate, this is really the problem. People are arguing about what Rush Limbaugh and Al Gore are arguing about global warming. It does not matter one whit what either of these idiots think about global warming. What matters are the actual facts and the actual science. Everything else i
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you do not understand the risks of AGW. It's not that the warming is unprecedented (your point #2). It's that the warming will cause effects that will make it hard to support the seven billion humans living on Earth. For example, a sea level rise of one meter will cause hundreds of millions of people to have to relocate, at a cost of trillions of dollars. It doesn't matter that the sea level was hundreds of meters high at some point in the distant past. In short, it's the effect on humans that is the da
Re:So convince me, then (Score:5, Insightful)
The temperature of the earth is warming over time.
It only matters if the temperature of the earth is warming through the timeframe that humanity has been settled throughout the globe, or at least within a range of climate zones.
The amount of this warming is unprecedented.
Again, this only matters within the relatively short timeframe that humanity has been settled throughout the globe, or at least within a range of climate zones.
The warming will continue past the point where the earth's feedback mechanisms can correct it.
... in the short term. It doesn't matter if the earth can correct in 100,000 years. What matters is whether the earth can correct what we are doing in 100 years.
The warming will cause catastrophic impacts to life on earth, particularly humans.
This one is okay, but how falsifying this falsify point 5? Also, this is one of the few points you listed that is pretty well proven. See sea level rise [wikipedia.org], which will have catastrophic economic consequences at the very least.
The warming is caused by human activity, if not entirely, then mostly.
This is totally irrelevant. What matters is whether humans can do something to reduce the warming, and only that they can do enough to avoid a tipping point at which catastrophe is inevitable. Yes, this implies that humans have something to do with the warming if one is arguing for reduced emissions as a solution, but who knows what percentage it is? If we are responsible for 30% of the warming, will reducing warming by 20% reduce the likelihood of catastrophic warming?
Re:So convince me, then (Score:4, Informative)
Alright.... let me start with your corollaries.
The temperature of the earth is warming over time.
Correct. Specifically, the global average is going up over at least annual periods, and generally decadal periods.
The amount of this warming is unprecedented.
Incorrect. How warm it has been in the past is irrelevant to whether the earth is getting warmer right now. That's only a data collection issue, not a theory issue.
The warming will continue past the point where the earth's feedback mechanisms can correct it.
Not quite. The concern is that the warming will continue past the point where short-term feedback mechanisms can correct it - things like seasonal rainfalls, ocean currents, etc. Politicians specifically are only marginally interested in whether there's a 50000 year cycle that can correct the current temperature increase.
The warming will cause catastrophic impacts to life on earth, particularly humans.
Define catastrophic. Was Katrina catastrophic? Seems like it was. And yet, not much actually happened. Is general population migration catastrophic? Is the wholesale change of a populations way of life catastrophic? To some, it is. Generally, it is to the people affected by it.
The warming is caused by human activity, if not entirely, then mostly.
Sort of. I'd put it as "human activity has a significant impact on warming".
Right now, I'm looking at two largely correct corollaries, one irrelevant one, one that depends on where you are located, and one that is somewhat misleading. There's plenty of evidence for corollary one, models that predict the third one, regions that demonstrate the impact of localized changes in precipitation for the fourth one, and plenty of evidence for the fifth one.
Now to your questions.
What is the optimum temperature (or range) of the Earth?
The question is wrong, because as is it has no answer. The earth has no optimum temperature (unless you count the one that allows for rock to stabilize and not become an ionized plasma). What you want to know is what the optimum temperature range is for human habitation. As you can see by the current population distribution, it is quite wide, which could lead to the assumption that the optimum temperature range for human habitation is just as wide. That's incorrect. If you drop an Inuit into the Brazilian jungle, a Massai into the Midwest, or a Midwestern farmer into the Alps, they will die very quickly. See for example the pilgrims who first arrived in North America: they nearly died from starvation, even though the temperatures weren't that much different from what they were used to.
As a result, the answer to that question is: exactly the one that you have right now around you. Civilizations have adapted to work in their current environment. Change that only a bit, and the impact on the people can be devastating.
When has it been at that temperature in the past?
See above for why this question doesn't give you a useful answer.
Has it ever been outside that temperature in the past?
Most decidedly. However, you don't want to go through the change again.
How, specifically, do we know this?
Historical records of both temperatures (inferred and directly recorded), and of historical records that chronicle the result of dramatic temperature changes.
In particular, how does one define the temperature of the Earth, and how does then measure that?
It's a good question. In general, it is understood to be the yearly average of multiple points across the globe, preferably along all latitudes and longitudes. But yes, temperature measurements are difficult, and it requires a lot of work to make sure that datasets from one source can be used for comparison with other data sets.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part."
- Richard Feynman