ClimateGate and the Climatati

blueblood · December 18, 2009

Not really, its the treatment of scepticism that seems out of whack.

Consider the respected experts who insist cutting the GST was a dumb idea and likewise to arguments against harmonizing the GST/HST. Depending on their own assessment of short-term political gain or risk, political parties of all stripes are both following and ignoring expert economic advice in a seemingly scatter-shot way.

Is it inappropriate to expect policy makers use some sort of standard for measuring or weighing not just the quality but also the quantity of expert scepticism when formulating public policies?

What are you talking about? There was a huge debate all over the MSM over the GST cuts and HST harmonization. They got to present their case, however people didn't want to buy it.

The problem is that where is the global warming skepticism case in the MSM, and when has it been given its proper stage to present it's arguments?

The debate about the massive socialism you advocate has been settled long ago, ordinary people don't want to be poor.

Michael Hardner · December 18, 2009

Is it inappropriate to expect policy makers use some sort of standard for measuring or weighing not just the quality but also the quantity of expert scepticism when formulating public policies?

I'd expect the public to demand that policy makers explain their rationale for economic policy. Why don't we do that ?

eyeball · December 18, 2009

What are you talking about? There was a huge debate all over the MSM over the GST cuts and HST harmonization. They got to present their case, however people didn't want to buy it.

Some people obviously did buy it.

The problem is that where is the global warming skepticism case in the MSM, and when has it been given its proper stage to present it's arguments?

The scepticism must be registering somewhere if the lack of official action to date is anything to go by. The likelihood that Copenhagen will not produce any kind of agreement must be similarly encouraging to sceptics.

eyeball · December 18, 2009

I'd expect the public to demand that policy makers explain their rationale for economic policy. Why don't we do that ?

Aren't we? It seems to me people are always asking policy makers to account for their decisions. Looking at the relative amounts of economic scepticism vs climate scepticism the accounting just doesn't seem to add up.

What part of 95% or more of scientist consensus on AGW is it that policy makers don't get? Given the fact that so much of the scepticism about AGW is economic in nature I'd like to see a percentage comparison of the amount of consensus/scepticism economists have for things like taxes, globalization and other controversial macro-economic policies we have. Am I to believe that 95% or more of economists agree to these when they are made? Are there any examples of policies that were rejected on the basis of 5% disagreeing with them?

Edited December 18, 2009 by eyeball

Argus · December 20, 2009

Terrence Corcoran has a very nice summation of the climategate papers and the revelations they reveal in part one below.

The emails are not a random grab of email records from one scientist's computer or extracted in a coarse raid on the central computer facilities of one climate institute. Only by reading the emails in chronological order, from the first email sent March 7, 1996, by Russian scientist Stephan Shiyatov, from the Laboratory of Dendrochronology, Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology, in Ekaterinburg, Russia -- complaining to British scientist Keith Briffa about funding problems for his tree-ring research -- does it become clear that the emails are part of a conscious and systematic assemblage of 13 years worth of vital communications among some of the world's leading climate scientists.

Terrence Corcoran

Part two

Trouble with Tree Rings

Edited December 21, 2009 by Argus

eyeball · December 20, 2009

I'd sure like to see an audit of the email trails and data sets economists and economic policy makers have been trading, using and just as likely fudging and or deleting for the last few decades.

ClimateGate has convinced me that I can't and shouldn't trust any science or scientist that has anything at all to do with public policy making. From now I will suspect all of them of lying until proven otherwise.

Shady · December 20, 2009

I'd sure like to see an audit of the email trails and data sets economists and economic policy makers have been trading, using and just as likely fudging and or deleting for the last few decades.

So because you think other other areas of study have manipulating, deleting, and fudging thins, it makes it okay for the pro-AGW scientists? However, I'm glad that you finally admit that they've been fudging the numbers. It's a step in the right direction.

Anyways, on to some more interesting climate news. In this case, the term "follow the money" seems to be more than appropriate.

Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr Rajendra Pachauri

"No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year."

Link

eyeball · December 20, 2009

So because you think other other areas of study have manipulating, deleting, and fudging thins, it makes it okay for the pro-AGW scientists? However, I'm glad that you finally admit that they've been fudging the numbers. It's a step in the right direction.

No I don't think it makes it okay at all, I feel badly let down, jaded and even more mistrustful of authority and science in general as a result of this. I suspect you however could care less if some macro-economic policy that helps your bottom line was fudged. So long as economics continues to trump virtue, bring it on right?

Edited December 20, 2009 by eyeball

Keepitsimple · December 28, 2009

....and here's some more IPCC alarmist propaganda exposed - this one on sea-level rise:

But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC's favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a "corrective factor" of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they "needed to show a trend".
When I spoke to Dr Mörner last week, he expressed his continuing dismay at how the IPCC has fed the scare on this crucial issue. When asked to act as an "expert reviewer" on the IPCC's last two reports, he was "astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on sea levels was a sea level specialist: not one". Yet the results of all this "deliberate ignorance" and reliance on rigged computer models have become the most powerful single driver of the entire warmist hysteria.

The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on "going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world".
When running the International Commission on Sea Level Change, he launched a special project on the Maldives, whose leaders have for 20 years been calling for vast sums of international aid to stave off disaster. Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Before announcing his findings, he offered to show the inhabitants a film explaining why they had nothing to worry about. The government refused to let it be shown.

Similarly in Tuvalu, where local leaders have been calling for the inhabitants to be evacuated for 20 years, the sea has if anything dropped in recent decades. The only evidence the scaremongers can cite is based on the fact that extracting groundwater for pineapple growing has allowed seawater to seep in to replace it. Meanwhile, Venice has been sinking rather than the Adriatic rising, says Dr Mörner.

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html

Edited December 28, 2009 by Keepitsimple

Pliny · December 28, 2009

....and here's some more IPCC alarmist propaganda exposed - this one on sea-level rise:

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html

Where's Waldo?

Keepitsimple · December 29, 2009

Another really good article by Christopher Moncton - mandatory reading. He really put in perspective the central argument for/against catastophic AGW.....the entire article is clear and concise but I'll only show the first of seven arguments:

Straw Man 1: “Anthropogenic CO2 can’t be changing climate, because CO2 is only a trace gas in the atmosphere and the amount produced by humans is dwarfed by the amount from volcanoes and other natural sources. Water vapor is by far the most important greenhouse gas, so changes in CO2 are irrelevant.”
True skeptical argument: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, second only to water vapor. It is settled science that the direct effect of adding it to the atmosphere will be some warming – but not very much. The effect of measured changes in cloud cover over the past 30 years has caused at least four times as much warming as CO2, which is a bit-part player. Water vapor concentration – column absolute humidity – increases as the atmosphere warms, theoretically causing an amplifying feedback that is, however, offset partly by the lapse-rate feedback and partly by the cloud-albedo feedback, which the IPCC finds strongly positive when it is in fact strongly negative. Even large volcanic eruptions do not cause significant increases in measured CO2 concentration: to this extent, therefore, volcanoes are irrelevant.

Scientific American’s knockdown of its straw man begins by citing with approval an 1896 paper in which Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish research chemist and Nobel chemistry laureate, had calculated that doubling CO2 concentration (which may happen this century) would warm the world by 6 C° (11 F°). Scientific American carefully failed to cite the 1906 paper in which Arrhenius acknowledged that his previous paper had overstated the position almost fourfold, and said that the direct warming effect of doubling CO2 was just 1.6 C° (3 F°), which might be doubled by the water-vapor feedback. He made insufficient allowance either for the lapse-rate feedback or for the strongly-negative cloud-albedo feedback.

Scientific American continues by saying that volcanic CO2 emissions account for less than 1% of human CO2 emissions each year. Quite right: but no scientist on the skeptical side of the debate attributes recent “global warming” to volcanoes.

Next, the magazine says CO2 concentration has risen since 1832 from 284 parts per million by volume to 388 ppmv. It calls this “a remarkable jump to the highest levels seen in millions of years”. Here, a sense of perspective is needed. For most of the past 600 million years, CO2 concentration was above 1000 ppmv: at least two and a half times today’s concentration. In the Cambrian and Jurassic eras, according to the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC, CO2 concentration was 15-20 times today’s. Therefore, in the perspective of geological time, there is nothing particularly exciting or unusual about today’s CO2 concentration.

The central question in the climate debate is not whether we have added CO2 to the atmosphere, or whether the CO2 we have added will cause warming, but how much warming the CO2 we are adding causes. It is this central, quantitative question that each one of the numerous “straw-man” documents circulating today is very careful not to address. And here is why.

The UN’s climate panel says that the direct warming effect of CO2 (in Kelvin) is the product of its radiative forcing (in Watts per square meter) of 5.35 times the logarithm of a given proportionate increase in CO2 concentration and the Planck parameter (0.3125 Kelvin per Watt per square meter) that converts the forcing to temperature in the absence of any temperature feedbacks or where they sum to zero.

At CO2 doubling, therefore, the direct warming would be 0.3125(5.35 ln 2) = 1.2 K. So even Arrhenius’ second attempt at guessing the direct warming effect of CO2 was exaggerated by one-third.

However, the UN imagines that the water-vapor and cloud-albedo feedbacks are strongly positive, when in fact the first is weakly positive and the second strongly negative. The UN’s calculations suggest that all feedbacks, taken together, almost triple the original direct warming, so that a CO2 doubling will cause 3.3 C° (6 F°) of warming.

The UN gives each of the various direct radiative forcings a “level of scientific understanding”. Most of them are “low” or “very low”. The temperature feedbacks, however, are so little understood that the UN does not assign them a “level of scientific understanding” at all. Indeed, its chosen values for each of the feedbacks are taken from just one paper in the literature, written by the lead author of the UN chapter that mentions feedbacks.

Since nearly two-thirds of the putative warming effect of CO2 comes from these feedbacks, it is on the quantification of feedbacks that the scientific debate rages. The literature is moving in the direction long proposed by Professor Richard Lindzen, who suggests that feedbacks might be net-zero or even somewhat net-negative because the positive water vapor feedback is wholly offset by the lapse-rate feedback and the cloud-albedo feedback. Other feedbacks, by comparison, are of lesser importance.

In short, the IPCC’s estimate of CO2’s warming effect depends on four factors multiplied together: the logarithm of the proportionate increase in CO2 concentration; a coefficient to convert that logarithm to radiative forcing; the Planck parameter to convert the forcing to temperature in the absence of feedbacks; and the sum of all the feedbacks.

All four of these factors are hotly disputed in the scientific literature or in the real-world data, or in both.

•? The logarithm of the proportionate increase in CO2 concentration: Though CO2 emissions are rising at an ever-increasing rate as China and India develop, CO2 concentration has risen in a straight line for a decade, and is now pointing towards just 575 ppmv by 2100, compared with the UN’s central estimate (on the A2 “business-as-usual” scenario) of 836 ppmv.

•? The radiative-forcing coefficient: The UN’s climate panel itself is not clear how much direct forcing will be caused by adding CO2 to the atmosphere. Until 2001, it had adopted 6.4 as the value for this coefficient: then, to take account of the overlap with other (generally net-negative) anthropogenic forcings, it reduced the coefficient by 15% to 5.35. However, there is some evidence that even this value is too high, perhaps by 15%.

•? The Planck parameter: This variable is the most important of the four, for it occurs twice in the calculation. At the surface, its value is 0.185; at the characteristic-emission altitude, it is 0.269; yet the UN’s value is 0.3125, higher than anything in the literature, and a recent paper has suggested that the correct value is the surface value reduced to just 0.15. If this paper is right, the UN’s overstatement of this single parameter, on its own, causes a fourfold overstatement of the warming effect not only of CO2 but of all other greenhouse gases.

•? The feedback sum: Given that feedbacks account for almost two-thirds of the warming that the UN imagines will occur at CO2 doubling, this variable, too, is of key importance. It is now near-certain that the UN has overvalued the water-vapor feedback, and has vastly over-valued the actually-net-negative cloud-albedo feedback. In particular, the literature has established that the tripling of surface warming in the tropical upper air predicted by all the UN’s models as the characteristic fingerprint of “global warming” is absent in observed reality, and that subsidence drying is the reason why water vapor does not accumulate in the upper air as theory had suggested. The literature has also confirmed by measurement what is readily demonstrable theoretically: that the cloud-albedo feedback is strongly negative. The more clouds, the more sunlight bounces harmlessly back to space.

The product of multiplying all of these exaggerations together is itself a very large exaggeration. The literature is increasingly settling around 0.5-1 C° (1-2 F°), not 3.3 C° (6 F°), as the true warming effect of doubling CO2 concentration: but the warming that the UN predicts for the 21st century must be halved again because CO2 concentration is rising towards only half the predicted value for 2100.

The bottom line, then, is that instead of a 3.4 C° (6 F°) warming to 2100 we can expect around 0.25-0.5 C° (0.5-1 F°), an entirely harmless and largely beneficial warming rate. Since CO2 is a powerful plant food, a doubling of today’s CO2 concentration by 2100 will increase the yield of some staple crops by an impressive 40%. The notion that CO2 is any kind of pollutant, therefore, is ill founded.

Next, Scientific American says, “Contrarians frequently object that water vapor, not CO2, is the most abundant and powerful greenhouse gas; they insist that climate scientists routinely leave it out of their models.” Yes, water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas; and yes, models routinely include it. However, as we have discussed, the UN’s climate panel greatly overstates the water vapor feedback.

Finally, Scientific American says that CO2 is the main driver forcing the greenhouse effect, and adds: “Because of CO2’s inescapable greenhouse effect, contrarians holding out for a natural explanation for current ‘global warming’ need to explain why, in their scenarios, CO2 is not compounding the problem.”

This is a classic “straw-man” presentation of the argument, and it is easily answered. Yes, anthropogenic changes in CO2 concentration are the main driver forcing changes in the total greenhouse effect exercised by the entire atmosphere. However, they are not the main driver forcing changes in the total climate. To take one example of a natural forcing many times larger than the tiny CO2 forcing, between 1990 and 2000 a 5% decrease in cloudiness increased the total surface radiative flux by 6 Watts per square meter: yet in the past 250 years the entire CO2 forcing as estimated by the UN’s climate panel was just 1.6 Watts per square meter. It is for this reason that skeptics consider CO2 to be a bit-part player in the climate: it has a role in causing warming, but its role is minuscule compared with natural influences, and is – as our calculations have demonstrated – causing much less warning than the UN’s climate panel imagines.

Link: http://sppiblog.org/news/scientific-american%e2%80%99s-climate-lies

Edited December 29, 2009 by Keepitsimple

waldo · December 29, 2009

....and here's some more IPCC alarmist propaganda exposed - this one on sea-level rise:

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html

Where's Waldo?

:lol: ... Really Simple? ... really Pliny? ... with you guys, it's like shootin' fish in a barrel! Such sad little deniers, you are!

Nils-Axel Morner... the guy is an absolute loon with zero credibility... so, of course, Simple grabs onto him, pumps up his chest and proudly proclaims "more IPCC alarmist propaganda exposed"... Simple is as Simple does...

Nils-Axel Morner: the so-called expert is certainly an expert in "dowsing" (oh my! )... the expert whose 'field' is historical earthquake activity! ... the expert aligned with the (now defunct) energy industry lobbyist group, NRSP

Nils-Axel Morner: the so-called expert who falsely proclaims his status with and the position of INQUA - International Union for Quaternary Research... to the point that the President of INQUA issued this letter to dissociate Morner with/from INQUA

INQUA, which is an umbrella organization for hundreds of researchers knowledgeable about past climate, does not subscribe to Mörner’s position on climate change. Nearly all of these researchers agree that humans are modifying Earth’s climate, a position diametrically opposed to Dr. Mörner’s point of view.

the actual

INQUA STATEMENT ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Nils-Axel Morner: the so-called expert had his paper/position eviscerated by this comment...

We feel compelled to respond to the recent article by Mörner (2004) because he makes several major errors in his analysis, and as a result completely misinterprets the record of sea level change from the TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P) satellite altimeter mission. One major criticism we have with the paper is that Mörner does not include a single reference to any altimeter study, all of which refute his claim that there is no apparent change in global mean sea level (GMSL) [see Cazenave and Nerem, (2004) for a summary]. The consensus of all other researchers looking at the T/P and Jason data is that GMSL has been rising at a rate of 3.0 mm/year (Fig. 1) over the last 13 years (3.3 mm/year when corrected for the effects of glacial isostatic adjustment (Tamisiea et al., 2005)).
Mörner gives no details for the source of the data or processing strategy he used to produce Fig. 2, other than to say it is based on “raw data”. Because the details of the analysis are not presented in his paper, we are left to speculate on how this result could have been obtained, based on our years of experience as members of the T/P and Jason-1 Science Working Team. Mörner was apparently oblivious to the corrections that must be made to the “raw” altimeter data in order to make correct use

of the data.

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Mörner's paper completely misrepresents the results from the T/P mission, and does discredit to the tremendous amount of work that has been expended by the Science Working Team to create a precise, validated, and calibrated sea level data set suitable for studies of climate variations. Finally, Mörner ignores substantial other oceanographic (e.g. Levitus et al., 2001; Antonov et al., 2002; Munk, 2003; Willis et al., 2004) and cryospheric (e.g. Dyurgerov and Meier, 2000; Rignot et al., 2003; Krabill et al., 2004; Thomas et al., 2004) evidence of sea level rise which corroborate the altimeter observations.

Nils-Axel Morner: the so-called expert with a position completely at odds with that of the Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization (CSIRO) - Historical sea level changes Last two decades

High quality measurements of (near)-global sea level have been made since late 1992 by satellite altimeters, in particular, TOPEX/Poseidon (launched August, 1992) and Jason-1 (launched December, 2001) and Jason-2 (launched June, 2008). This data has shown a more-or-less steady increase in Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) of around 3.3 ± 0.4 mm/year over that period.

Nils-Axel Morner: the so-called expert with a position completely at odds with two of the preeminent researchers in the field, Church & White - A 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise - GRL

Here, we extend the reconstruction of global mean sea level back to 1870 and find a sea-level rise from January 1870 to December 2004 of 195 mm, a 20th century rate of sea-level rise of 1.7 ± 0.3 mm yr−1 and a significant acceleration of sea-level rise of 0.013 ± 0.006 mm yr−2. This acceleration is an important confirmation of climate change simulations which show an acceleration not previously observed. If this acceleration remained constant then the 1990 to 2100 rise would range from 280 to 340 mm, consistent with projections in the IPCC TAR.

... hey Simple... trends r us!

Nils-Axel Morner: the so-called expert with a position completely at odds with this reconstruction of global sea level since 1700

We present a reconstruction of global sea level (GSL) since 1700 calculated from tide gauge records and analyse the evolution of global sea level acceleration during the past 300 years. We provide observational evidence that sea level acceleration up to the present has been about 0.01 mm/yr2 and appears to have started at the end of the 18th century. Sea level rose by 6 cm during the 19th century and 19 cm in the 20th century. Superimposed on the long-term acceleration are quasiperiodic fluctuations with a period of about 60 years. If the conditions that established the acceleration continue, then sea level will rise 34 cm over the 21st century. Long time constants in oceanic heat content and increased ice sheet melting imply that the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates of sea level are probably too low.
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We show that sea level rose by 28 cm during 1700–2000; simple extrapolation leads to a 34 cm rise between 1990 and 2090. The lowest temperature rise (1.8C) IPCC [Meehl et al., 2007] use is for the B1 scenario, which is 3 times larger than the increase in temperature observed during the 20th century. The IPCC sea level projection for the B1 scenario is 0.18–0.38 m. Our simple extrapolation gives 0.34 m. The mean sea level rise for B1, B2 and A1T is below our estimate. However, oceanic thermal inertia and rising Greenland melt rates imply that even if projected temperatures rise more slowly than the IPCC scenarios suggest, sea level will very likely rise faster than the IPCC projections [Meehl et al., 2007].

Nils-Axel Morner: the so-called expert with a position on Maldives sea level completely at odds with that of the British Oceanographic Data Centre - Maldives Annual MSL (RLR) plot... oh look, Simple... another trend :lol:

anyway... that's enough for now... given my tryptophan high, it's bloody amazing to be at the keyboard.

Pliny · January 3, 2010

... Really Simple? ... really Pliny? ... with you guys, it's like shootin' fish in a barrel! Such sad little deniers, you are!

I don't think I am denying anything, Waldo. I am a skeptic.

When the data used in models is wrong I would suspect that conclusions are wrong.

When studies are pooh-poohed and every contradictory bit of evidence ignored and every researcher who suggests other than the prevailing mindset is vilified and castigated and discredited, as you so eagerly point out, I would say that perhaps - thou dost protest too much.

There is definitely something to be uncovered here.

waldo · January 4, 2010

I don't think I am denying anything, Waldo. I am a skeptic.

When the data used in models is wrong I would suspect that conclusions are wrong.

When studies are pooh-poohed and every contradictory bit of evidence ignored and every researcher who suggests other than the prevailing mindset is vilified and castigated and discredited, as you so eagerly point out, I would say that perhaps - thou dost protest too much.

There is definitely something to be uncovered here.

Pliny... what took you so long to get back to this thread? :lol:

what's so heelarious is Hackergate no longer has any... any... traction! None - oh my! Yesterday's fabricated news that was so trumpeted by the denialsphere. There's really little challenge in bothering with you (or the likes of Simple) anymore - you're too easy.

perhaps a question, if I might: just why is your self-described skeptical position so one-sided? Doesn't your skepticism allow you to also challenge, also question, the positions held and fronted by the deniers? In that regard, yours is not a skeptical position... yours is a denial position.

you've had a week since my last reply - have you been beavering away to answer my obvious challenge for you to define "what data is wrong"... as "used by what models"... to define "what conclusions are wrong"? As for studies being, as you say, "pooh-poohed", perhaps you need to find better studies - perhaps you need to do a bit of research before you (and Simple) blast forward with your next smoking gun... that blows up on you :lol:

Pliny · January 4, 2010

Pliny... what took you so long to get back to this thread?

There's really little challenge in bothering with you (or the likes of Simple) anymore - you're too easy.

Exactly the reason it took me so long to get back to this thread.

Just thought I would peek in.

perhaps a question, if I might: just why is your self-described skeptical position so one-sided? Doesn't your skepticism allow you to also challenge, also question, the positions held and fronted by the deniers? In that regard, yours is not a skeptical position... yours is a denial position.

Yours is not a skeptical position at all. Yours is a denial of any skepticism.

For proof you only need read the rest of your post.

you've had a week since my last reply - have you been beavering away to answer my obvious challenge for you to define "what data is wrong"... as "used by what models"... to define "what conclusions are wrong"? As for studies being, as you say, "pooh-poohed", perhaps you need to find better studies - perhaps you need to do a bit of research before you (and Simple) blast forward with your next smoking gun... that blows up on you

Nothing really blows up on me except you. The evidence is plain - the IPCC has had their hands sullied and questions must be asked. Apparently, for you, the kool-aid tastes too good and there are no questions to ask.

waldo · January 4, 2010

Yours is not a skeptical position at all. Yours is a denial of any skepticism. For proof you only need read the rest of your post.
Nothing really blows up on me except you. The evidence is plain - the IPCC has had their hands sullied and questions must be asked. Apparently, for you, the kool-aid tastes too good and there are no questions to ask.

au contraire... you fail to understand how this works. You see, skeptics bring forward the challenges and if they have merit... if they have legs... those challenges will stand on their own (science). Scientists live and breathe skepticism - to challenge skeptics is not to deny skeptics... it's to beat back their unmerited and frivolous challenges. In our little MLW corner, guys like you and Simple provide the comic relief by continuing to beat the bushes looking for something... anything... that presumes to challenge the overwhelming scientific status quo. Simple's latest Nils-Axel Morner foray is gold... real gold, particularly given his blustering about "exposing more IPCC propaganda".

no matter how hard you try you can't reasonably... and substantially... connect the dots from Hackergate to the IPCC - even if there was anything there - which there isn't. Like I said, there's no there, there! :lol: Many have tried in these past weeks - nothing has stuck. Like I said, it's old news - yesterday's fabricated denialsphere news that no longer even gets passing acknowledgement... anywhere (other than from die-hard deniers... like you... and Simple).

Pliny · January 5, 2010

au contraire... you fail to understand how this works. You see, skeptics bring forward the challenges and if they have merit... if they have legs... those challenges will stand on their own (science).

Scientists live and breathe skepticism - to challenge skeptics is not to deny skeptics... it's to beat back their unmerited and frivolous challenges. In our little MLW corner, guys like you and Simple provide the comic relief by continuing to beat the bushes looking for something... anything... that presumes to challenge the overwhelming scientific status quo. Simple's latest Nils-Axel Morner foray is gold... real gold, particularly given his blustering about "exposing more IPCC propaganda".

no matter how hard you try you can't reasonably... and substantially... connect the dots from Hackergate to the IPCC - even if there was anything there - which there isn't. Like I said, there's no there, there! Many have tried in these past weeks - nothing has stuck. Like I said, it's old news - yesterday's fabricated denialsphere news that no longer even gets passing acknowledgement... anywhere (other than from die-hard deniers... like you... and Simple).

Seems our skepticism is living and breathing on it's own. You just keep denying.

Are you the shop union leader where you work?

waldo · January 5, 2010

Seems our skepticism is living and breathing on it's own. You just keep denying.

Are you the shop union leader where you work?

no denying your brand of skepticism is one-sided... I would think a 'real' skeptic would challenge all positions, rather than continually - and only - target the overwhelming consensus. Why is your skepticism so narrowly focused to the point of allowing you to blindly accept even the most biased, unsubstantiated, ridiculous and unfounded claims? Does your brand of skepticism have no bounds, no standards, no reservations, no limitations, no ends?

why another of your obligatory socialist slags? Is that what your brand of skepticism rises to when challenged?

Oleg Bach · January 5, 2010

We will never curb climate disruption untill the most powerful and successful men on earth admit that they in the end are utter failures. The male human ego is not about to do that..so we simply have to wait for these old bastards to finally fade into time..Frankly I don't believe they have any replacements to fill their shoes - no one really wants to take on the task of ruling the world after the ultimate project has in eccense failed. So there is hope.

Keepitsimple · January 5, 2010

no denying your brand of skepticism is one-sided... I would think a 'real' skeptic would challenge all positions, rather than continually - and only - target the overwhelming consensus. Why is your skepticism so narrowly focused to the point of allowing you to blindly accept even the most biased, unsubstantiated, ridiculous and unfounded claims? Does your brand of skepticism have no bounds, no standards, no reservations, no limitations, no ends?

why another of your obligatory socialist slags? Is that what your brand of skepticism rises to when challenged?

Have you noticed how quiet things have been since Copenhagen. The CRU leaked information, coupled with the obvious cooling that we are observing has taken the wind out of the Global Warming hysteria. Investigations are quietly underway to determine if/how much the "science" has been comprimised. I have said it before and I'll continue to say it - reasonable people acknowledge that GHG's have a large effect on Climate Change and that humans contribute to GHG's (focused on CO2) - and therefore can affect Climate Change. You Waldo, follow the credo that whatever the IPCC says is gospel. I, like many others, am skeptical as HOW MUCH effect CO2 has on Climate Change. Skeptics always disagreed with the historical baseline temperatures that the IPCC claimed - supposedly showing that current day "warming" was unprecedented. The leaked emails now confirm that this critical foundation was fudged. None of the IPCC "models" predicted the cooling or lack of warming that has been clearly evident - to the contrary - they predicted continued warming at alarming rates. Observation is the final proof of science. It's darn cold out there.....and it's not just the weather.

Britain facing coldest winter in a century: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/gas/6934636/Britain-facing-gas-shortages-as-freezing-weather-continues.html

China has harsh winter, heaviest snowfall in 60 years: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-01/05/content_9263331.htm

Edited January 5, 2010 by Keepitsimple

Pliny · January 5, 2010

no denying your brand of skepticism is one-sided... I would think a 'real' skeptic would challenge all positions, rather than continually - and only - target the overwhelming consensus.

I have often said that the science really isn't my problem with global warming, my problem has always been the alarmist claims and reactionary politically driven solutions such as that presented by such political activists as Al Gore and David Suzuki. So my problem is the politicization of the science.

The fact the science has been marred by political expediency should be one of your problems but doesn't seem to bother you at all. Should we do something about global warming? Only from an anthropogenic point of view. We are well aware of the fact we should minimize our "footprint" from a polluting point of view and I believe we are technologically looking to do that. Science is at work trying to find alternative energy sources and all that.

Now, a big problem in finding alternative energy sources is that government has a vested interest in the status quo. they receive huge revenues from the fossil fuel industry. Not only that but governments, knowing that fossil fuels are so lucrative, have claimed ownership or nationalized 80% of the resource itself. So, in my view, they are in a panic that an alternative energy that doesn't return the same revenues to them as the fossil fuels will leave them broke. The big hurry, it seems to me, is getting other tax revenues to replace losses generated by the reduction of fossil fuel use. So there is an economic aspect to it.

The recent finding of evidence that global warming science has been ideologically tainted merely adds fuel to my skepticism and raises further questions about the scientists involved and what they are forwarding.

Why is your skepticism so narrowly focused to the point of allowing you to blindly accept even the most biased, unsubstantiated, ridiculous and unfounded claims?

My skepticism narrowly focused? I question the whole ideology and now it seems the science as well needs some scrutiny.

Does your brand of skepticism have no bounds, no standards, no reservations, no limitations, no ends?

Yes, it does as a matter of fact. The buck stops here.

why another of your obligatory socialist slags? Is that what your brand of skepticism rises to when challenged?

Is asking whether you are a Union rep a socialist slag? You shouldn't be so sensitive - we are all socialists now. I am just curious as to how far left you really are.

Oleg Bach · January 5, 2010

Sounds like the brighter ones are all becoming wise and observant centralists. The reason some are curious about how far left some are or how far right they are is probably due to the fact that extremism is an illness...the writer might just be asking just how sick the other is.

eyeball · January 5, 2010

...my problem is the politicization of the science.

I feel precisely the same way about the politicization of the science of economics. Edit out what it is they're actually talking about and the alarmism from each side is identical, probably for the same reason.

waldo · January 5, 2010

Have you noticed how quiet things have been since Copenhagen. The CRU leaked information, coupled with the obvious cooling that we are observing has taken the wind out of the Global Warming hysteria. Investigations are quietly underway to determine if/how much the "science" has been comprimised. I have said it before and I'll continue to say it - reasonable people acknowledge that GHG's have a large effect on Climate Change and that humans contribute to GHG's (focused on CO2) - and therefore can affect Climate Change. You Waldo, follow the credo that whatever the IPCC says is gospel. I, like many others, am skeptical as HOW MUCH effect CO2 has on Climate Change. Skeptics always disagreed with the historical baseline temperatures that the IPCC claimed - supposedly showing that current day "warming" was unprecedented. The leaked emails now confirm that this critical foundation was fudged. None of the IPCC "models" predicted the cooling or lack of warming that has been clearly evident - to the contrary - they predicted continued warming at alarming rates. Observation is the final proof of science. It's darn cold out there.....and it's not just the weather.

Britain facing coldest winter in a century: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/gas/6934636/Britain-facing-gas-shortages-as-freezing-weather-continues.html

China has harsh winter, heaviest snowfall in 60 years: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-01/05/content_9263331.htm

do you need to be schooled... once again... on your suggestion (your inference) that global cooling is occurring? It most certainly is not... would you like a link to the MLW post where you last (unsuccessfully) brought this nonsense forward?

no science has been compromised. The only thing fudged is your backside - are you still smiling? :lol:

which denier site has you emboldened to once again speak of climate models... I thought your most recent position/statements held that AGW global warming couldn't be "proved" without models... implying there was no observational foundation. But now, you're back to emphasizing models - how curious! Let's play:

- would you care to provide your support that substantiates your claim that, as you say, all IPCC models "predicted continued warming at alarming rates".

- you've been soundly schooled on trending... but you appear to have a very short retention span. Do you subscribe to the position that the IPCC models project that global average temperature warms monotonically?

- does your linking to extreme weather examples assist your position on climate change? Since you're on a run with your weather links... here's another spin on your Chinese link... I did not know the Chinese had a department of rocket induced climate change! :lol:

Oleg Bach · January 5, 2010

Forget about cooling or warming and concentrate on the fact that we have climate disruption. This atmospheric injury leads to extreme and violent weather that destroys property along with human beings - It must be put in check.