Climategate

[HOZ]

[Bagor]

Reports continue to roll in..........

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8387137.stm

Sea levels are likely to rise by about 1.4m (4ft 6in) globally by 2100 as polar ice melts, according to a major review of climate change in Antarctica.Conducted by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), it says that warming seas are accelerating melting in the west of the continent.
Ozone loss has cooled the region, it says, shielding it from global warming.

Two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected that the global average sea level would probably rise by 28-43 cm (11-16in) by the end of the century. But it acknowledged this figure was almost certainly too low, because it was impossible to model "ice dynamics" - the acceleration in ice melting projected to occur as air and water temperatures rise.
Launching the SCAR report in London, lead editor John Turner from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) suggested that observations on the ground had changed that picture, especially in parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet.
"Warmer water is getting under the edges of the West Antarctic ice sheet and accelerating the flow of ice into the ocean," he said.

"The temperature of the air is increasing, the temperature of the ocean is increasing, sea levels are rising - and the Sun appears to have very little influence on what we see," he said.

But there are contrary reports that climate scientists have been manually melting the ice and been observed jackhammering large chunks off.

and the conspiracy has now reached global pandemic proportions ....

The report - Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment - was written using contributions from 100 leading scientists in various disciplines, and reviewed by a further 200.

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by Bagor

I love the word "sustainable". Throw it into a sentence and everything is hunkey dorey. Bethcha it's the most common word over 10 letters in annual reports.

Curious ... define your "interpretation" of it.

I'll go back to my definition of unsustainable.

In the next 20 years India will have huge food shortage issues (famine) due to a collapse of their water table as a result of unsustainable use.

My definition of sustainable is balancing economic interests with environmental ones. The truth is too much of the world's economy and technology is reliant on oil and gas, and you're not going to change that over night.

The idea of shutting down the oilsands for example is pure nonsense. It's not going to happen. The economic impact is too significant. But there are ways to make the oilsands more environmentally friendly (tailings ponds being one of them).

[Bagor]

That's fair enough and thanks. I just feel that the word has been hijacked a lot and is one of those words that is often casually thrown into annual reports for the sake of aesthetics. Sorta like mitigation in environmental statements.

[Pastiche]

My definition of sustainable is balancing economic interests with environmental ones.

Where does the book definition of sustainable fit into that definition? Weird.

[GreenLantern]

Originally Posted by driveway

I hate it when people who don't understand what science is or how it works complain about it, use it poorly or denigrate it.

Carl Sagan said it best..

We have designed our civilization based on science and technology and at the same time arranged things so that almost no one understands anything at all about science and technology. This is a clear prescription for disaster.

I think that is what we are seeing now. People who really do not understand how atmospheric science works are jumping to very offensive conclusions about climate change at the slightest change in direction.

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by Pastiche

Where does the book definition of sustainable fit into that definition? Weird.

He didn't ask me for the book definition, he asked me for mine.


I appreciate that climate change is important and of course I believe it's real, but I think social impact has to be put into that equation as well. I think that a lot can be done to reduce environmental impact while still not crippling the world's (more specifically, Calgary's) economy.

Anyone working in this city is in some way shape or form tied to the oil and gas sector, cut off that demand, this city dies. Call me selfish but I don't want to see that happen.

But hey, what do I know, I'm not a scientist (nor do I pretend to be).

[Jetsfan]

Here is an article from a former New Zeland Prime Minister making parallels between Green Politics and Organized Religion.

It's finally happened. Green politics is officially a religion and deserves the rights of other faiths.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10612602

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by Jetsfan

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10612602

Oh, come on now.. you know you can't trust Michael Moore!!

I dunno how being green is a "religion" in that there is far more science behind environmentalism than there is behind any of the major religions.

But if protecting the biosphere - our air, water and land - for future generations is a religion, then call me a zealot. It's something that I consider extremely important.

[HOZ]

Originally Posted by Bagor

Reports continue to roll in..........

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8387137.stm






But there are contrary reports that climate scientists have been manually melting the ice and been observed jackhammering large chunks off.

and the conspiracy has now reached global pandemic proportions ....

Copenhagen is just days away. Got to ratchet up the hysteria. Did this report use CRU cooked data? Why....yes it did.

I hear polar bears are falling from the sky now!

SCANDAL
One theme, in addition to those already mentioned about the suppression of dissent, the suppression of data and methods, and the suppression of the unvarnished truth, comes through especially strongly: plain statistical incompetence. This is something that Henderson's study raised, and it was also emphasised in the Wegman report on the Hockey Stick, and in other independent studies of the Hockey Stick controversy. Of course it is also an ongoing issue in Steve McIntyre's campaign to get hold of data and methods. Nonetheless I had given it insufficient weight. Climate scientists lean very heavily on statistical methods, but they are not necessarily statisticians. Some of the correspondents in these emails appear to be out of their depth. This would explain their anxiety about having statisticians, rather than their climate-science buddies, crawl over their work.

I'm also surprised by the IPCC's response. Amid the self-justification, I had hoped for a word of apology, or even of censure. (George Monbiot called for Phil Jones to resign, for crying out loud.) At any rate I had expected no more than ordinary evasion. The declaration from Rajendra Pachauri that the emails confirm all is as it should be is stunning. Science at its best. Science as it should be. Good lord. This is pure George Orwell. And these guys call the other side "deniers".

******
Remember that this is not an academic exercise. We contemplate outlays of trillions of dollars to fix this supposed problem. Can I read these emails and feel that the scientists involved deserve to be trusted? No, I cannot. These people are willing to subvert the very methods--notably, peer review--that underwrite the integrity of their discipline. Is this really business as usual in science these days? If it is, we should demand higher standards--at least whenever "the science" calls for a wholesale transformation of the world economy. And maybe some independent oversight to go along with the higher standards.

[HOZ]

Wall Street Journal

Follow the money trail! Those gosh darnit Big Oil companies....

But the deeper question is why the scientists behaved this way to begin with, especially since the science behind man-made global warming is said to be firmly settled. To answer the question, it helps to turn the alarmists' follow-the-money methods right back at them.

Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents hacked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he'd been awarded in the 1990s.

Why did the money pour in so quickly? Because the climate alarm kept ringing so loudly: The louder the alarm, the greater the sums. And who better to ring it than people like Mr. Jones, one of its likeliest beneficiaries?
Thus, the European Commission's most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that's not counting funds from the EU's member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA's climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA's, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. The states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In Australia, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal.
And all this is only a fraction of the $94 billion that HSBC Bank estimates has been spent globally this year on what it calls "green stimulus"—largely ethanol and other alternative energy schemes—of the kind from which Al Gore and his partners at Kleiner Perkins hope to profit handsomely.


Yearly 2008 Profit Total for Big Five Oil Companies Still Hits $114 Billion, Picking Consumer Pockets Around the World.

[photon]

The data's only cooked if you don't understand what they mean when they say "trick" and "hide the decline" (hint, it's not what you would first think).

Plus there's other sets of independent data which say the same things.

The claim they're anxious about having statisticians examine their work is false, climate data was given blindly to statisticians (i.e. they weren't told the data was climate temperatures), and all the statisticians also found warming.

None of the emails actually have anything to do with the scientific results, and even if they did there's other data sets and such which are saying the same thing.

[HOZ]

Originally Posted by photon

The data's only cooked if you don't understand what they mean when they say "trick" and "hide the decline" (hint, it's not what you would first think).

Plus there's other sets of independent data which say the same things.

The claim they're anxious about having statisticians examine their work is false, climate data was given blindly to statisticians (i.e. they weren't told the data was climate temperatures), and all the statisticians also found warming.

None of the emails actually have anything to do with the scientific results, and even if they did there's other data sets and such which are saying the same thing.

What data? They flushed it all down the toilet. It is GONE. NADA. NOT THERE.

All there's left is their "tricked-up" stuff.

And yes their e-mails DO have something to do with data and statistic results. Try reading the articles I posted.
Climate scientists lean very heavily on statistical methods, but they are not necessarily statisticians. Some of the correspondents in these emails appear to be out of their depth. This would explain their anxiety about having statisticians, rather than their climate-science buddies, crawl over their work.

[photon]

Originally Posted by HOZ

What data? They flushed it all down the toilet. It is GONE. NADA. NOT THERE.

All there's left is their "tricked-up" stuff.

And yes their e-mails DO have something to do with data and statistics. Try reading the articles I posted.

The original sources are still there, people who have a problem with the science are free to go and obtain it or purchase it as necessary. Heck tons of it are available for free to download.

Articles aren't science. The articles I've read take "trick" and run with it without bothering to find out what they're actually saying, so if they can't even get that right what hope is there they'd be able to understand the context of all the emails.

There'll likely be an investigation, and it may show people not behaving professionally, which happens. However I haven't seen anything yet which affects the actual science.

None of that does anything to the scientific consensus, you can remove the HADCRUT3 data entirely from everything and the same conclusions are still reached.

[photon]

Originally Posted by HOZ

Climate scientists lean very heavily on statistical methods, but they are not necessarily statisticians. Some of the correspondents in these emails appear to be out of their depth. This would explain their anxiety about having statisticians, rather than their climate-science buddies, crawl over their work.

Sure this is what the article says, and sure an individual may be out of their depth in one area or another, no one can be the best at everything in every field. However as I already said the claim that they are anxious about having statisticians look at the work is completely false because it's been given blind to statisticians who supported the findings.

Kinda hard to hide your work when you're giving it to statisticians to review. Heck they didn't even tell them what lie they wanted the statisticians to support!

[automaton 3]

The raw temperature data is gone, apparently destroyed.

All that is left is what they call "quality controlled and homogenized data". Also read "altered".

Without the raw data it is impossible to re-create and verify their method of "quality control and homogenization". Whether it was unintentional or not, this calls into question any research which is based on this altered data.

[photon]

From what I've read some raw data is gone from that University.. because the license of the raw data they obtained dictated that once it was "used" it was to be destroyed. (Incidentally this is part of the FOI requests too, some licenses restricted sharing the raw data, so requests for the raw data would of course be denied).

That doesn't say that the source of the raw data deleted their data. In fact probably the opposite because if a source licensed their data they did so because they saw value in it, so they're not going to delete their data. Anyone else is free to go to that source and get the data themselves to make their own paper that contradicts the ones out there (which no one has done for some reason).

And the amount of unavailable data being talked about is small...

http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/...news/CRUupdate

Over 95% of the CRU climate data set concerning land surface temperatures has been accessible to climate researchers, sceptics and the public for several years the University of East Anglia has confirmed.

“It is well known within the scientific community and particularly those who are sceptical of climate change that over 95% of the raw station data has been accessible through the Global Historical Climatology Network for several years. We are quite clearly not hiding information which seems to be the speculation on some blogs and by some media commentators,” commented the University’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research Enterprise and Engagement Professor Trevor Davies.

....

The remaining data, to be published when permissions are given, generally cover areas of the world where there are fewer data collection stations.
“CRU’s full data will be published in the interests of research transparency when we have the necessary agreements. It is worth reiterating that our conclusions correlate well to those of other scientists based on the separate data sets held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS),” concluded Professor Davies.

So a bit different than the "ZMOG TEH DATA!!1!" than many of these blogs and sites are reacting to.

[Bagor]

Originally Posted by HOZ

Copenhagen is just days away. Got to ratchet up the hysteria.

Agreed, sciences vs cartoons isn't going to do it. Time for another blog or something. How about ... it was colder today in Ottawa than it was yesterday? There's a start.

Originally Posted by HOZ

Copenhagen is just days away. Got to ratchet up the hysteria. Did this report use CRU cooked data? Why....yes it did.

Oh ... Looksie. I'm a skeptic and I can roll my eyes when I make things up. . Well young skeptic ... you are just plain ..... WRONG!

Data is discussed in chapter 2 of the report which is linked in my previous post.

The two main climate reanalysis data sets are: the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) - National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) climate reanalysis data set that is referred to as the NNR data set (Kalnay et al., 1996; Kistler et al., 1985) available from the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); and ERA-40 climate reanalysis data available from the ECMWF

And looksie here. They're even saying that the data is available to save the hacking trouble.

And what's this? More data? What's going on? Loads and loads of it.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/

Surely there must be ample here to make a strong argument against the science ........ or at the very least come up with a witty cartoon or two or a decent blog.

Have at er ...

and Photon ... you beat me to it with the 95% of the data being available.

Told you this was just like the creationist/evolution debate. I've linked years and years of data, CRU has always had their data available. But the crucial missing link is the 5% that hasn't been released yet.

Yet there is zero evidence of one credible criticism using the data that has been available from all corners of the globe for years.

[HOZ]

Originally Posted by Bagor

Agreed, sciences vs cartoons isn't going to do it. Time for another blog or something. How about ... it was colder today in Ottawa than it was yesterday? There's a start.


Oh ... Looksie. I'm a skeptic and I can roll my eyes when I make things up. . Well young skeptic ... you are just plain ..... WRONG!

Data is discussed in chapter 2 of the report which is linked in my previous post.

And looksie here. They're even saying that the data is available to save the hacking trouble.

And what's this? More data? What's going on? Loads and loads of it.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/

Surely there must be ample here to make a strong argument against the science ........ or at the very least come up with a witty cartoon or two or a decent blog.

Have at er ...

and Photon ... you beat me to it with the 95% of the data being available.

Told you this was just like the creationist/evolution debate. I've linked years and years of data, CRU has always had their data available. But the crucial missing link is the 5% that hasn't been released yet.

Yet there is zero evidence of one credible criticism using the data that has been available from all corners of the globe for years.

Check the references on the actual study! Well....lookie, lookie.

IPCC 2007. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
IPICS 2008. International Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences - white papers. In: Wolff E, Brook E (eds). http://www.pages.unibe.ch/ipics/steeringcommittee.html.
MANN, M. E. and JONES, P.D. 2003. Global surface temperatures over the past two
millennia, Geophysical Research Letters, 30, doi: 10.129/2003GL017814.
JONES, P.D. 1995. Recent variations in mean temperature and the diurnal
temperature range in the Antarctic, Geophysics Research Letters, 22 [11], 1345-
1348.

Sheesh... Maybe Mann and Jones peer-reviewed themselves on this study?

So far from you we have gotten basically
1. Your science sucks
2. You don't know anything
3. Check the real science out

without even considering what we are saying. That data from the CRU has shown that Phil Jones(about to be investigated) and Michael Mann(under investigation) and those that work for them have, at best, been very incompetent, dishonest and unethical. At worst, they have committed fraud, fixed data to torque the results to get huge grants (95 billion!). When you lose Monbiot as a booster for the 2 biggest proponents of the AGW theory.....and saying what I have just typed. What do you have left?

AGW theory has to be considered very suspect. Until more and better evidence is presented showing something to the contrary, the Earth has warmed due to natural phenomena and committing trillions to to combating AGW is idiotic.

[Bagor]

Originally Posted by HOZ

Check the references on the actual study! Well....lookie, lookie.

Sweet jebus. looksie. There's a huge difference between citing a paper and using their data as you claimed.

Let me give you an example where they're cited.

Consistent with this picture, a comparison of reconstructions of Southern Hemisphere temperature (Mann and Jones, 2003) and ice core proxies for atmospheric circulation covering the last 2,000 years suggests that in general temperature and circulation intensity are associated such that cooler temperatures coincide with more intense atmospheric circulation and warmer temperatures with milder circulation (Mayewski and Maasch, 2006)

Looksie here. Comparing results and observations with previous studies IS NOT the same as "using" their data and in other cases citing it as part of a literature review.

Let me guess Mann and Jones spend all their spare time throwing rocks and pissing in the ocean and are directly responsible for the 5cm sea level rise in the last 15 years (80%) more than was projected.

What's your thoughts on this observed, recorded data?

Originally Posted by HOZ

without even considering what we are saying. That data from the CRU has shown that Phil Jones(about to be investigated) and Michael Mann(under investigation) and those that work for them have, at best, been very incompetent, dishonest and unethical. At worst, they have committed fraud, fixed data to torque the results to get huge grants (95 billion!). When you lose Monbiot as a booster for the 2 biggest proponents of the AGW theory.....and saying what I have just typed. What do you have left?

Hmmm ... thousands of scientists? What do I win?

Originally Posted by HOZ

So far from you we have gotten basically
1. Your science sucks
2. You don't know anything
3. Check the real science out

1. How would you know? All you've got is regurgitated blogs and cartoons
2. OOOOOHHH! That sure told me
3. Blogs and cartoons it is then ....

Get going on that data Hoz, there must be a good cartoon or two in there.