At last! The controversy is over. It turns out the "scientific" claims promoted for decades by whiny self-righteous liberals were a lie, a fraud, a con--and we don't need to change after all. The left is humiliated; the conservatives are triumphant and exultant.
The year is 1954, and the "science" that has been exposed as a "sham" by conservatives is the link between smoking and lung cancer. Welcome to Tobaccogate, as Fox News would call it. The conservatives are championing professor Clarence Cook Little, who says he has discovered insurmountable flaws in the use of statistics and clinical data by "anti-tobacco" (and quasi-commie) scientists. The press reports the "controversy," usually without mentioning that Cook Little is being paid by the tobacco industry. A relieved nation lights up--and so, over the next few decades, millions of them die.
It is happening again. The tide of global warming denial is now rising as fast as global sea levels--and with as much credibility as Cook Little. Look at the deniers' greatest moment, Climategate, hailed by them as "the final nail in the coffin" of "the theory of global warming." A patient study by the British House of Commons has pored over every e-mail from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and interviewed everyone involved. Its findings? The "evidence patently fails to support" the idea of a fraud; the scientists have "no case to answer"; and all their findings "have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified" by other scientists. That's British for "it was a crock."
Yet a startling amount of denialism now, like Climategate, travels across the Atlantic from my country--Britain--to the United States. Yes, I know our accents make us sound instantly plausible, but it's time Americans knew who these Brideshead bull-scientists really are.
To read the rest of this article over at The Nation, click here.
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The REAL STORY is that a set of plutocrats: Koch Industries, Exxon, China, Saudi Arabia, and others run well-funded campaigns to discredit all negative climate information and to intimidate and silence those who publicize mountain stacks of evidence supporting anthropogenic global warming.
But climategate's impact now extends to inciting death threats to climate scientists: www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/hacked-climate-emails-death-threats
www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/09/2766874.htm?site=thedrum
This dovetails with our generally retrograde views:
a) China and the U.S., the two biggest CO2 polluters, are the remaining majors still questioning whether anthropogenic global warming is real. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy
b) Except in the U.S., universal health care is standard policy in industrialized nations. This applies to 12 American states (including Panama, Cuba, and Trinidad/Tobago), 30 Asian countries, and virtually all of Europe. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care
c) The U.S., ranks 17th, ahead of Islamic Turkey but behind all other developed nations surveyed, with 40% marking "true" the statement, "Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_controversy#Outside_the_United_States
http://mother-earth-journal.com/2010/03/16climatologists-targets-of-hate-mail-death-threats/
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2009/s2766202.htm
Maybe some people think it's still the thing to do to 'kill the messenger', eh? Only there's no king anymore. Oh, I forgot. There's Exxon, the Bush dynasty and Goldman-Sachs. Oh well. Noblesse Oblige and White Man's Burden, I suppose.
Her comments started with this:
The primary frustration with these investigations is that they are dancing around the principal issue that people care about: the IPCC and its implications for policy. Focusing only on CRU activities (which was the charge of the Oxbourgh panel) is of interest mainly to UEA and possibly the politics of UK research funding (it will be interesting to see if the U.S. DOE sends any more $$ to CRU). Given their selection of CRU research publications to investigate (see Bishop Hill), the Oxbourgh investigation has little credibility in my opinion. However, I still think it unlikely that actual scientific malfeasance is present in any of these papers: there is no malfeasance associated with sloppy record keeping, making shaky assumptions, and using inappropriate statistical methods in a published scientific journal article.
The corruptions of the IPCC process, and the question of corruption (or at least inappropriate torquing) of the actual science by the IPCC process, is the key issue. The assessment process should filter out erroneous papers and provide a broader assessment of uncertainty; instead, we have seen evidence of IPCC lead authors pushing their own research results and writing papers to support an established narrative. I don't see much hope for improving the IPCC process under its current leadership
By Judith Curry
Question: Does Dr. Curry think AGW is not real? Answer: No
Question: Does Dr. Curry think AGW is not a serious problem? Answer: No.
The historical temperature record and the paleoclimate record over the last millennium are important in many many aspects of climate research and in the communication of climate change to the public; both of these data sets are at the heart of the CRU email controversy. In my opinion, there needs to be a new independent effort to produce a global historical surface temperature dataset that is transparent and that includes expertise in statistics and computational science. Once "best" methods have been developed and assessed for assembling such a dataset including uncertainty estimates, a paleoclimate reconstruction should be attempted (regional, hemispheric, and possibly global) with the appropriate uncertainty estimates. The public (and some scientists) has lost confidence in the data sets produced by CRU, NASA, Penn State, etc. While such an independent effort may confirm the previous analyses, it is very likely that improvements will be made and more credible uncertainty estimates can be determined. And the possibility remains that there are significant problems with these datasets; this simply needs to be sorted out. Unfortunately, the who and how of actually sorting all this out is not obvious. Some efforts are underway in the blogosphere to examine the historical land surface data (e.g. such as available from GCHN), but the GCHN data set is apparently inadequate in terms of completeness.
Comment: Note the following line: "The public (and some scientists) has lost confidence in the data sets produced by CRU, NASA, Penn State, etc."
Indeed, here's two of your direct quotes:
""Richard2 I'm a Fan of Richard2 I'm a fan of this user 20 fans permalink
You may be reading the tea leaves wrong. Oil companies may invest in alternative fuels because they realize that the age of cheap oil is over, not because they fear the earth will warm. The Age of Peak Oil may have arrived. There is still lots of oil out there in the world, under the oceans, but it will be very expensive to find and extract.""
Then again , you've also stated...
" Richard2 I'm a Fan of Richard2 I'm a fan of this user 21 fans permalink
"Our fossil addiction" has raised the standard of living of millions of people, in many nations around the world. If someone wants to give up their fossil addiction, they can try living in North Korea or Haiti.""
Either way, Richard2, you seem remarkably glib on matters of principle.
Lighten up on us.
Really now that is just sooo yesterday.....Just like the climate change!
Let's move on Mavericks !!! ! WooHooo!!!!
[overheard at a Sara Palin Rally]
Answer: Infinitesimal
The IPCC now agrees. See the IPCC Technical Report section entitled Global Warming Potential (GWP). And the GWP for CO2? Just 1, (one), unity, the lowest of all green house gases (GHG). What’s more, trace gases which include GHG constitute less than 1% of the atmosphere. Of that 1%, water vapor, the most powerful GHG, makes ups 40% of the total. Carbon dioxide is 1/10th of that amount, an insignificant .04%. If carbon dioxide levels were cut in half to 200PPM, all plant growth would stop according to agricultural scientists. It's no accident that commercial green house owner/operators invest heavily in CO2 generators to increase production, revenues and profits. Prof. Michael Mann's Bristle cone tree proxy data (Hockey stick) proves nothing has done more to GREEN (verb) the planet over the past few decades than moderate sun-driven warming (see solar inertial motion) together with elevated levels of CO2, regardless of the source. None of these facts have been reported in the national media. Why?
If CO2 levels were cut to zero, we'd all die. That's why nobody is proposing that. Or, for that matter, to cut them to 200 ppm. No one suggests that lower is always better, just that there is a range that leads to relatively stable climate. In the real world, we are currently in danger of running out of that range on the high side, so remarks about going too low are irrelevant, or intentionally distracting.
Limited as I am to 250 words, I can only say that Michael Mann is a hack.
Careful though, you will annoy the wack jobs on both sides of the argument(those that assume that any questioning of scientific "consensus" is an oil company plot, and those that assume any science in support is a conspiracy by scientists)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/17/giss-metar-dial-m-for-missing-minus-signs-its-worse-than-we-thought/#more-18590
The problem with METAR reporting errors is worldwide. I’ve found many examples easily in my spare time. Let’s take for example, a station in Mirnvy, Russia. It is in Siberia at 62.5° N 113.9° E and has an airport, is part of GHCN, and reports in METAR format.
Weather Underground logs and plots METAR reports worldwide, and these METAR reports are from their database on November 11th, 2009.
It shows a clear error in the 12:30PM (330Z) and 1 PM (400Z) METAR report for that day:
UERR 010330Z 22005G08MPS 9999 -SN 21/M23 Q1026 NOSIG RMK QFE738 24450245
Note the missing ” M” on the 12:30PM (330Z) and 1 PM (400Z). It happens again at 2PM (500Z). Of course it isn’t very noticeable looking at the METAR reports, but like the GISS plot of Finland, stands out like a sore thumb when plotted visually thanks to Weather Underground:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/08/et-tu-lt/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature_measurements
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record
Also, as a Navy meteorologist, you must see satellite sea surface temperature reports blip constantly.on your screens, right? Not just from NOAA buoys and satellites, but the Navy's own network, which funnels data through FNMOC and NRL Monterey, right? And like their NO GAPS forecast model, doesn't NRL run its own global circulation models? I mean here's what they say at: www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/
"Our nowcast/forecast and simulation systems have broad and direct application to issues related to Naval operations (ASW, Search and Rescue, Amphibious Landing, Mine and Special Warfare, Mission Planning, etc.), simulation and design of Global (and Local) Ocean Observing Systems (GOOS), AND MANY FACETS OF GLOBAL AND CLIMATE CHANGE CHALLENGE."
After all, our Navy does need to know about diminishing Arctic sea ice and many other aspects of global climate, which is the main reason they bothered to train you as a meteorologist, right?