The Guardian’s George Monbiot is again calling for resignations at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.
This is a tough time for climate science. The Guardian’s new revelations about the hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia might help to explain the university’s utter failure to confront its critics. They could also explain why the head of the unit, Phil Jones, blocked freedom of information requests and proposed that material subject to those requests be deleted. . . .
The vast body of climate science still shows that manmade climate change is real and that it presents a massive challenge to human survival. But those of us who seek to explain its implications and call for action must demand the highest possible standards from the people whose work we promote, and condemn any failures to release data or admit and rectify mistakes. We do no one any favours – least of all ourselves – by wasting our time promoting false claims.
Can a call for the resignation of IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri be far behind? [UPDATE: Nope. Greenpeace UK is calling for him to step down.]
UPDATE: The NYT reports Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann has been “largely cleared” by an internal university investigation.
Your anthropology textbook says:
It’s precisely our commitment to false claims that binds us together as a community of believers, united and strong, with the confidence that comes from excluding the outsiders we shun. They reject our false claims. We affirm our false claims. That’s what the word “culture” means. And what’s left of culture, if we abandon the beliefs that define who we are? True claims are true for everyone, of all nations, at all times. Only false claims are ours, undefiled and revered. Our solidarity depends on false claims. The alternative is the path of decadence and disease, of the Enlightenment and English imperialists, of the American hyperpower, of corrupt and soulless pacifism, materialism and cosmopolitanism. We defend the false claims, as our fathers once did.
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February 3, 2010, 5:45 amSkyler says:
In other words,
“The proven frauds that claimed there is anthropogenic global warming are getting in the way of our being able to claim there is anthropogenic global warming. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
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February 3, 2010, 6:44 amAnonsters says:
Or the on-going investigation of precisely what happened might help to explain the university’s utter failure to confront its critics [so far].
By the way, did anyone notice the e-mails released on NASA Goddard’s FOIA page, in response to a FOIA request from the denialist community? No, I bet not.
Because they show scientists reacting sanely and responsibly to the whackjobs of the world, and demonstrate not some ZOMG AGW CABAL, but serious-minded, diligent researchers at work. How boring.
Edit: Link: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/business/foia/GISS.html
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February 3, 2010, 7:39 amWidmerpool says:
In the immortal words of Engineer Montgomery Scott as the Toyota-manufacutured warp drive was malfunctioning for the upteenth time on the Starship Enterprise: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Or, to paraphrase the warden from Cool Hand Luke: “What we have here is a failure of credibility.”
You create a credibility gap and it becomes next to impossible to get it back–just ask Richard Nixon and the Republicans in 1974. OH, or for a more recent example, as I peer into my crystal ball, the Democrats in 2010.
Scientists lied, cap-and-trade/Copenhagen died.
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February 3, 2010, 7:59 amK Dackson says:
Anonsters: Protecting teh narrative!
The warmists are finding it increasingly hard to defend their fraud in the court of public opinion.
“Advocacy science” is not science; it’s politics.
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February 3, 2010, 8:17 amK Dackson says:
http://reason.com/blog/2010/02/02/climategate-update-1-the-china
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February 3, 2010, 8:23 amRoger the Shrubber says:
It may already be here — are YOU making such a call?! The suspense is killing me!!
“Can a call for X be far behind?” I love statements like that.
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February 3, 2010, 9:21 amPatrick says:
How’s the Wordpress changeover going? I recommend the Akismet plugin.
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February 3, 2010, 9:24 amBart DePalma says:
Actually, the FOIA released emails are just as damning to the manmade global warming church. GISS analyst Reto Ruedy emails his bosses noting that the US data shows NO warming trend outside of the noise of natural temperature variation. NASA’s MGWC cassandra Jim Hansen makes a similar concession Even so, Hansen has been issuing nonsensical reports claiming temperatures have been soaring.
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February 3, 2010, 9:28 amtamerlane says:
Anonster: Stand firm in your faith. It will provide you comfort in a world you cannot understand or explain. Let the froward fools that suround you mock on. They live in a vacuum where no authority gives them comfort and nothing is absolutely certain. Because they refuse to bend their proud and stubborn necks to the yoke they think they are free.
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February 3, 2010, 9:43 amNobody At All says:
Less water in the Colorado River Basin; increased range and severity of crop disease; decline in rice yields; possible methane bubbling... who cares?
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February 3, 2010, 10:23 amorca says:
Not anyone from Texas (by far, America’s biggest CO2 polluter), not anyone connected to the oil & coal industries, not anyone who hates hippies more than they love their children, etc...
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February 3, 2010, 10:41 amtamerlane says:
Nobody at all; orca; Anonster: Stand firm in the faith, brothers and sisters. The Apocalypse will smite our enemies and prove us right. Already Haiti has experienced the wrath of Gaea. More tribulations are to come.
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February 3, 2010, 10:47 amlgm says:
Has it come to this? Sleazy lawyers can destroy the careers of good scientists over trivial infractions of stupid laws? Why is it that lab scientists prefer to use lawyers rather than rats in lab experiments? (1) People have more sympathy for rats. (2) There are some things rats just won’t do.
Look at the web site http://www.realclimate.org/ . It is “climate science from climate scientists”. There are so many confirmations of global warming at this point that removing any data from East Anglia University will not change the conclusion.
Question: would the fact that the emails were obtained illegally get them excluded in a US court?
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February 3, 2010, 10:48 amSkyler says:
Orca has lost it.
Rather than confront the facts of the fraud, the whale sees fit to defame an entire state based on stereotypes.
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February 3, 2010, 10:49 amArthurKirkland says:
This controversy has become so muddled, and the larger issue is so important, that the solution is obvious:
Trial by ordeal.
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February 3, 2010, 10:50 amShelbyC says:
Lawyers are slimey.
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February 3, 2010, 10:51 amSkyler says:
Lawyers have had a bad rep for many generations, heck even the ancient Greeks had disdain for their “sycophants.” But I think that the proven lying profession of climatology has outdone them, at least for now.
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February 3, 2010, 10:55 amAndy Krause says:
lgm
The “Real Climate” site is not science. It’s a forum for manipulation.
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February 3, 2010, 10:57 amorca says:
Seattle just had its warmest January on record.
Saying the folks who don’t believe in the Theory of Evolution base their opposition to Climate Change on science is...disingenuous.
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February 3, 2010, 10:59 amSkyler says:
Black and white whale again defames an entire state by somehow concluding that all Texans are fundamentalist christians.
And somehow he thinks his opinion of the climatology fraud is credible.
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February 3, 2010, 11:07 amEric Rasmusen says:
The Guardian article is interesting. I’m glad they’re finally publishing a story on it, but it looks to me as if these are emails from the original ClimateGate leak back a couple of months ago. Why did the newspaper wait till now to break this big news?
One possibility is that Mr. Monbiot complained and complained till they did.
Another is that the Guardian journalists really *are* so dim-witted that they didn’t realize the emails were worth looking at till now
Another is that somebody at the paepr who cares more about the paper’s reputation than global warming finally won the argument and they decided it wasn’t too late to pretend it was breaking news, which is plausible since their readers probably haven’t been told the news yet by any of their regular media outlets.
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February 3, 2010, 11:07 amJohnF says:
What the hell does “real” mean in Monbiot’s statement, “The vast body of climate science still shows that manmade climate change is real . . .”?
The question is not whether it’s “real” or not, but whether it is trivial or not. The “vast” body of research does not prove that it is more than trivial, because to make that claim one must adopt a view of feedback mechanisms that does not appear to be valid.
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February 3, 2010, 11:08 amGordo says:
Has any of the global warming denialists spouting off on this thread considered that, maybe the East Anglia climate scientists felt (mistakenly) that they had to be duplicitous because of the utter depravity and unscrupulousness of their opponents in the global warming denialist community? You know, the scientists who are either right-wing nuts, or are taking money from the petroleum industry, or both?
And I’m not talking about the Bjorn Lomborg/Jonathan Adler skeptics, who acknowledge that global warming is indeed occurring but question whether the cure is worse than the disease. I’m talking about the James Inhofe/Rush Limbaugh followers here.
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February 3, 2010, 11:24 amGordo says:
I’m curious as to the connection between the IPCC and the East Anglia scientists that would lead Jonathan Adler to make his what appears to a scurrilous query at the end of this post?
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February 3, 2010, 11:25 amGordo says:
And of course there’s also the ancillary benefits of reduced petroleum/carbon consumption — air that doesn’t kill thousands of people yearly, less money to Chavez, the Mullahs, the Sauds, etc. But who cares about all that, as long as I can drive my Hummer around, eh?
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February 3, 2010, 11:27 amMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
orca,
Seattle just had its warmest January on record.
OTOH, record lows were set across a great swath of the US, while most of Europe was in a positive dither about its own prolonged cold snap. That one (like the American one) likely killed many people. I don’t think you can say the same of Seattle.
Really, can we stop — please — talking about individual weather events as though they had anything (in either direction) to do with the truth about the existence of AGM by themselves? It’s gotten ridiculous. Every time something’s unseasonably cold the “skeptics” leap on it as evidence, and are ridiculed by self-appointed defenders of “science.” But every time something’s unseasonably warm we get the likes of the quoted text above. I do wish we could just talk climate, and leave today’s weather out of it.
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February 3, 2010, 11:27 amMark Buehner says:
Earthquake in Haiti, collapsing banking system, Sandra Bullock nominated for an Oscar.
What was that old chestnut about correlation and causation?
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February 3, 2010, 11:27 amMark Buehner says:
Are you serious? The IPCC worships at the alter of Jones, Mann, and Hansen. They didn’t invent global warming but they did invent catastrophic global warming. And I think invent is the correct term.
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February 3, 2010, 11:30 amGordo says:
So you’re saying because the IPCC listened to the East Anglia scientists, they must be purged, even if they didn’t know about any manipulation of data?
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February 3, 2010, 11:34 amSarcastro says:
Yes! Global warming is disproven to me (though of course, I never believed it!) And, unlike my totally rational never-believing-it-exists, anyone who disagrees with me is clearly drinking the kool aid, and needn’t be engaged on substance!
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February 3, 2010, 11:35 amorca says:
Nope, Texans realize if they have to stop pumping CO2 into our atmosphere most of them will go broke.
To his surprise, even Alan Greenspan learned about bankers during the economic downturn the Democrats have just ended that there are Americans who are more than willing to destroy the world if it puts a few more bucks in their pocket.
That’s exactly what Climate Change theory predicts...
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February 3, 2010, 11:43 amzuch says:
Prof. Adler:
I don’t think that’s a fair summary. They may have dismissed some requests, but they’ve not totally ignored the “critics” (see, e.g., Realclimate.org). And biologists generally don’t bother addressing the Discovery Institute people either, or respond to their demands for data or debates.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 11:45 amMark Buehner says:
I think there are plenty of reasons to purge IPCC quite aside from anything at CRU, but the inappropriate relationship exposed in the emails wherein CRU scientists were shown to be pressuring the IPCC over which studies to include against its own policy certainly seems like a smoking gun.
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February 3, 2010, 11:51 amK Dackson says:
Amazing. I don’t even know if that is an adequate word to describe the convoluted “logic” seen above. The old, “I need to lie because there are people who would disagree with me if they saw the data” ploy.
So people who question are painted as anti-intellectual zealots because they are supposedly getting a few dollars thrown their way by “big oil”?
Nothing at all like the “prue scientists” who collect millions of dollars to build their fearmongering empire on the taxpayer dime, because if there is no dire need to correct a non-existent problem, then there is no need to support our most important work — keeping us gainfully employed.
It’s a fraud, and your side has been exposed. The coverup iw worse than the crime.
Look if you want to believe in the false god of AGW, that is your right. However, if my conversion to your faith is based on coersion and threat of financial ruination, you better be prepared for a fight.
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February 3, 2010, 11:52 amMark Buehner says:
Yeah, sock puppet websites, thats the way a publicly funded lab should address its critics.
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February 3, 2010, 11:52 amMark Buehner says:
Is there some climate theory that doesn’t provide for a variable climate?
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February 3, 2010, 11:54 amegd says:
Does this mean we need to start our own branch of G.R.O.S.S.?
(Get Rid Of Slimy Solicitors)
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February 3, 2010, 11:54 amK Dackson says:
How damn convenient.
AGW predicts unrestrained warming and unrestrained cooling.
Nothing like having your cake and eating it too.
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February 3, 2010, 11:54 amzuch says:
... particularly when the topic is a political “hot potato”, and there’s screaming meanies hired by energy companies with a huge financial stake in the science....
Yes, any scientists caught up in this dynamic need to be more virgin than the Pope. Even though they’re people too. And let’s not demand the same (such as e-mails, funding disclosure, raw data [where there actually is any] from the AGW deniers.... That wouldn’t be fair, would it?
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 11:55 amSkyler says:
I think that was exactly their impression. I think they were just willing to do anything to put forth their political agenda.
Strangely, the people with truth on their side felt no such urge to use lies and fraud. You make a strange claim of “utter depravity and unscrupulousness” but give no examples. In contrast, we can point out quite easily all of the climatologist’s lies and frauds. Well, probably not all of them, yet.
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February 3, 2010, 11:57 amK Dackson says:
Zuch:
The prosecution has to release exculpatory evidence to the defendant. The defense has no obligation to disclose any information that weakens it’s case.
The warmists are prosecuting the case that AGW is a real threat. The deniers are saying “prove it”.
Or so I’m told, because IANAL.
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February 3, 2010, 11:59 amMark Buehner says:
First off– its only become an issue as a result of skeptics being instantly dismissed because of alleged corporate ties, good for the gander. Secondly, ‘deniers’ don’t have to prove anything. They aren’t theorizing. Skeptics are just asking that all the data and methodology be made available. Crazy to ask scientists to show their work with a trillions of dollars and millions of jobs at stake, I grant you that. Especially given all this data that is suddenly disappearing. You know, the great thing about science is that you aren’t supposed to have to take anyone on faith. You never heard Einstein claim the dog ate his eclipse data.
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February 3, 2010, 12:01 pmDudeman says:
I did not know until now that all Climate Skeptics were Creationists. Thanks for the clarification. It’s SO logical. Clearly, no Creationist could base anything on science. That would explain why they float in the air, consume methane, and reproduce asexually.
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February 3, 2010, 12:03 pmorca says:
You are shocked that a theory believed by most reputable scientists makes accurate forecasts?
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February 3, 2010, 12:03 pmK Dackson says:
orca:
I did not know that lying and breaking the law made one reputable.
Fascinating.
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February 3, 2010, 12:05 pmRoger the Shrubber says:
Can a call for the banning of Sarcastro be far behind?
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February 3, 2010, 12:05 pmSkyler says:
Yeah, because having an interest in exposing lies and fraud somehow negates the immorality and criminality of the lies and the fraud.
Heck, that’s even less refined than two wrongs make a right.
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February 3, 2010, 12:05 pm11-B.2O/B4 says:
The problem here is less with the science than the perception, and quite frankly, the AGW promoters brought this on themselves by declaring the debate “over”. If they’d gone the more sedate, less exciting route of actually playing it out in the scientific community before bringing it to the TV cameras and demanding that we all spend tens of trillions of dollars to fix their latest issue, then I’d look with more charity on this.
No, a few bad studies don’t invalidate better research. The problem is, the public was asked to take the word of these people that no reasonable human being could possibly disagree with them, or the policies being put forth by their elected allies. Now they’re caught with their hand in the cookie jar, so to speak, lying and distorting and obstructing. The point is not that this invalidates all research, the point is that “scientists” (zomg scare quote alert) can’t dictate policy based on science while basing their “science” on magazine articles they read in the men’s room of a Denny’s.
If the AGW supporters really want to make their case (and I’m open to hearing it), they need to set their house in order first. They’re gonna need more than Briffa’s two trees to discount the MWP, they’re gonna need to fire Mann and get someone who can do basic math, and they’re going to need to dump Wang, Jones, Pachauri and anyone else caught faking their data. You just can’t stonewall every FOI request, get caught lying on the ones that slip through, then claim that it doesn’t affect the research that you’re still hiding the data on. It looks bad.
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February 3, 2010, 12:06 pmzuch says:
No, they didn’t.
The Republican “Mighty Wurlitzer” has been remarkably effective in putting out all manner of falsehoods. Very significant percentages of Republicans think that Obama’s not a citizen, a socialist, wants the Terra-ists to win, and should be impeached. This is a toxic situation and needs to be addressed (Obama did a small part in rectifying this with his address to the Republicans last week, but that’s just a start). We as a nation won’t long survive such wilful ignerrence. There’s just too many countries out there that will eat our lunch if we insist on being uninformed.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 12:08 pmMark Buehner says:
FORECAST?! Claiming some areas will be unseasonably warm and some unseasonably cold is a forecast?! Give me a break. Now if you could tell me which was which, you might be on to something. By the way, how does this alleged forecast differ from a world that wasn’t warming catastrophically? If our C02 level hadn’t grown in the last century would the earth be a uniform temperature?
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February 3, 2010, 12:09 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
orca,
You are shocked that a theory believed by most reputable scientists makes accurate forecasts?
Can’t speak for K. Dackson, but I am shocked to hear that climate science “forecast” anything at all about the detailed weather patterns in the past month. I’ve heard no actual scientist claim any such thing.
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February 3, 2010, 12:10 pmzuch says:
And the “sceptics” are doing ... well, what exactly? Not science. Just carping. They know how their butter’s being spread, and largely know what “answer” they want to arrive at.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 12:10 pmSkyler says:
egd wrote:
I think G.R.O.S.S. stands for Get Rid Of Slimy LawyerS
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February 3, 2010, 12:12 pmMark Buehner says:
If the earth isn’t warming catastrophically, they are doing mankind an incredible service and saving many lives that will be lost to the pointless destruction of wealth. That much is certain.
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February 3, 2010, 12:14 pmbadlaw says:
Ha, pretty much.
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February 3, 2010, 12:15 pmGuest14 says:
Is this similar to the way the existence of one gay Republican would prove same sex marriage is good policy?
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February 3, 2010, 12:15 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
zuch,
Yes, any scientists caught up in this dynamic need to be more virgin than the Pope. Even though they’re people too. And let’s not demand the same (such as e-mails, funding disclosure, raw data [where there actually is any] from the AGW deniers.... That wouldn’t be fair, would it?
If the “deniers” are doing Gov’t-funded research, such that their work is subject to FOI/FOIA requests, sure, why not? You don’t seem to get that the CRU scientists were attempting to shield their work from public scrutiny under legal disclosure requirements that they knew about from the get-go.
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February 3, 2010, 12:17 pmzuch says:
There’s a good parallel between the “sceptics” and the folks such as the Intelligent Design people. Both are far more adept in saying “I don’t belieeeevvveee yoooouuuu! Show me!” than they are in putting together theories of their own and proving them with results that will stand up. In fact, the major tactic of the IDers is the argument from incredulity [argumentum ad ignorantiam]: “I just don’t know how this could have happened....” Much the same is done by the aptly-named AGW “sceptics”.
Even if it were true that some data had been manufactured or fudged, that hardly changes the picture, any more than Piltdown destroyed evolutionary biology.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 12:18 pmGuest14 says:
I think the point is that the deniers shield themselves from FOIA by never doing any research and, what’s more, never having any data. They just shriek a lot.
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February 3, 2010, 12:19 pmGuest14 says:
This probably isn’t your best example, since many conservative Christians do believe that Piltdown destroyed evolutionary biology.
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February 3, 2010, 12:20 pmMark Buehner says:
So skeptics need to be working harder to prove a negative. Gotcha.
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February 3, 2010, 12:21 pmK Dackson says:
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February 3, 2010, 12:21 pmzuch says:
No. Why should that make a difference? Why not demand they produce the same? There may be stronger legal tools to be able to force such in the one instance, but that hardly addresses the reasons for actually asking for such disclosure, does it?
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 12:22 pmorca says:
What’s sad is the poor folks who live along the Gulf Coast and vote Republican religiously are going to be the first to find out.
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February 3, 2010, 12:22 pmK Dackson says:
As others have stated previously, it is incumbent upon those proposing a theory to make their case. They have not.
The opposition has every right to say to these people “convince me”.
That is what they are doing.
Thecnically, the “deniers” do not have to do any research. All they ask is that they get the data and methods so they can evaluate it themselves and see if there are any flaws in the work.
The warmists need to address those criticisms, and convince the deniers that they are wrong.
That is how science is supposed to work.
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February 3, 2010, 12:27 pmDangerMouse says:
There’s a good parallel between the “sceptics” and the folks such as the Intelligent Design people. Both are far more adept in saying “I don’t belieeeevvveee yoooouuuu! Show me!”
Actually, I think that people are just noticing that the world hasn’t gotten warmer in the last 10 years, notwithstanding the increasingly shrill predictions of the Gaia-worshippers. Reality just isn’t holding up to the idiotic claims of the global warming religionists.
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February 3, 2010, 12:28 pmSkyler says:
zuch,
Yeah, there is no way to get around the facts, so just wildly lash out at a completely unassociated factor. That’s a winning argument.
For all you people defending these frauds, did your mamas ever teach you not to lie? Or did they teach you to only lie if you don’t get caught? Or did they teach you to lie only when you think it’s important?
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February 3, 2010, 12:28 pmzuch says:
What does that have to do with theophylline prices in Sri Lanka?
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 12:31 pm11-B.2O/B4 says:
[quote] Even if it were true that some data had been manufactured or fudged, that hardly changes the picture, any more than Piltdown destroyed evolutionary biology.[/quote]
Perhaps, but how much anti-evolutionary rhetoric and argument has been built on the uncritical acceptance of frauds like Piltdown man? (Hint: my parents are creationists, so I saw all this crap in my childhood). Scientists could have saved themselves quite a bit of trouble and embarrassment with a little more skepticism of bad research which fit their theories.
You just can’t start off with “It’s peer reviewed, it can’t be questioned”, then follow it up with “Even if we faked those few that you caught us in, the rest of it is still valid”. The much vaunted peer review process (the basis of science, IMO) is evidently incapable of telling random hearsay from scientific investigation, at least in this field.
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February 3, 2010, 12:33 pmzuch says:
Then we can just dismiss them, eh? I mean, if there’s a 6.3% chance they’re right (according to someone else’s numbers, because they didn’t do a damn thing except say “I don’t beeeliiievvveee yoouuuu!”), we say they’re right, I guess.... Or, if that doesn’t work, a 1.2% chance...
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 12:34 pmK Dackson says:
zuch:
The warmists (prosecutors) have to release their data.
The deniers (defendants) have no such obligation.
That should be clear even to you.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 12:34 pmMark Buehner says:
Demand what? Skeptics don’t control the temperature data record for the last hundred plus years kept (and adjusted at their whim apparently) by NOAA. Skeptics don’t have the code used to produce the 3 datasets used in every AGW study ever produced. Skeptics don’t have access to government satellites or weather balloons or university records of tree rings.
What are you asking for, aside from some sort of financial connection that will just let you toss more mud in the air? Certainly not any SCIENCE, which is all skeptics have asked for.
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February 3, 2010, 12:34 pmfalafalafocus says:
Just wondering if you have any links supporting your implication that those skeptical of AGW are lying, distorting the evidence, refusing to provide raw data, etc. I’d love to see those.
Please note: complaining about attacks on Obama doesn’t seem terribly relevant on that point, but feel free to give those cites too, if it makes you feel better about your position.
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February 3, 2010, 12:36 pmzuch says:
Of course. Scientific facts are very sensitive to the amount of money [allegedly] involved.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 12:38 pmorca says:
Wrong.
Why should scientists waste their precious time trying to convince people whose paychecks depend on them not being convinced?
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February 3, 2010, 12:39 pmA. Criminal says:
No, the files at that link don’t demonstrate any such thing: they demonstrate quite the opposite.
Your link:
“NASA GISS Temperature Data
> Part 1 (PDF document)
...
> Part 4 (PDF document)”
Files 1 and 4 don’t contain temperature data (I didn’t bother looking at 2 and 3). They contain skewed, off-center and often incomplete images (from which one can’t copy text because there is no text, just pictures of text) of emails about temperature data and other stuff, like
“Dear Gavin
You say in your Salon Interview...” (about pine-bark beetles — file 4, page 610)
Amateur hour at NASA.
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February 3, 2010, 12:40 pmzuch says:
It worked for Dubya, Ctheney, Fleischer, and Perino.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 12:41 pm1040 says:
I hope that Pachauri and Phil Jones are held accountable, and that a full house cleaning is done. I believe that the evidence for climate change will be stronger for this cleaning, even if it takes a year or so to get to a position where all data is scrubbed, and conclusions are vetted. Of course, none of this will stop the conspiracy theorists or those who prefer ad hominem to engagement (on both sides), but the climate change scientists owe this transparency to all right-thinking supporters of the scientific method.
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February 3, 2010, 12:42 pmzuch says:
I thought that the interest of the energy companies was in avoiding cap-and-trade, conservation measures, and the development of alternative energy sources that might affect their profits....
For more on this, I note that “Junkman” Steve Milloy is in on the fight ... just as he was in defending the tobacco companies in decades past....
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 12:45 pm11-B.2O/B4 says:
Zuch, stop pretending that there isn’t a vast amount of money arrayed on the side of AGW. Yes, some oil companies and other corporations are spending money to discredit AGW. But still others, like GE (which has a $45 billion carbon trading sector which will be useless if cap-and-trade isn’t passed at some point) are spending as much or more on the other side. False dichotomy is false.
“Our opponents are all funded by evil corporations looking to subvert the scientific process, but our side only gets donations from wealthy groups of people with the betterment of the world and mankind in mind.”
Oh, and East Anglia gets money from Exxon, BP, GE, etc...so if that’s enough to invalidate the science, have at it.
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February 3, 2010, 12:45 pmK Dackson says:
zuch:
Once again, the “Look! A squirrell!” tactic. Nice try but no dice.
I did not know those guys were scientists. We all know that all politicians are not reputable.
Please stick to the topic.
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February 3, 2010, 12:48 pmzuch says:
Well, in the limited sense that they have no data, you’re right. But they ought to disclose e-mails, funding, and methods. For the reasons I’ve stated above. The reason they should disclose is not because Fifth Amendment non-incrimination provisions apply to them (at least we hope not), because they don’t ... or that FOIA laws cover gummint entities ... but rather because this is simple honesty and candor and helps evaluate what kind of persons they are.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 12:50 pmNobody At All says:
Mark: NOAA’s GISTEMP data (raw and processed) and coding are publicly available.
Raw data:
— GHCN v. 2 (and documentation of how the dataset was constructed)
— USCN v. 2 (dataset documentation collected here)
— SCAR (and dataset documentation)
GISTEMP ModelE code
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February 3, 2010, 12:52 pmzuch says:
You mean, “if they’re right, they’re right in a good way. And if they’re wrong, they’re wrong in a bad way, as well, right? But that begs the question, doesn’t it?
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 12:53 pmzuch says:
On the contrary, I think it does go to my point. See this comment.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 12:58 pmK Dackson says:
zuch:
You are very quick to impugn people who question the motives and honesty of people who have proven to be less than honest.
The fraudsters of AGW will be relegated to the dustbin of history.
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February 3, 2010, 12:59 pmzuch says:
Do you know about Type I and Type II errors, and test power?
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 1:00 pmK Dackson says:
zuch:
are you always so aggressive defending known liars? Do you work for the Obamabots or Soros? Or is it Moveon.org? Greenpeace? WWF? Who funds you?
Really, all we ask is for a littel honesty and candor here?
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February 3, 2010, 1:02 pmzuch says:
What a wonderful defence of ID!!! You should seek a summer internship....
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 1:03 pmK Dackson says:
Type I error: Believing in AGW as fact.
Type II error: Defending AGW as fact.
Test power: Using your power to make up bogus test to support Type I and Type II errors.
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February 3, 2010, 1:04 pmorca says:
Nope.
China and Germany are both now exporting billions of dollars worth of green, renewable energy sources.
The deniers have cost America its share of the fastest growing manufacturing business around.
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February 3, 2010, 1:04 pmA. Criminal says:
The “theory” here, I suppose, being that the climate is changing and always has been changing, and that weather also changes. As far as “accurate forcasts,” are you claiming that AGW supporters predicted unusually cold weather in those specific areas, or did someone just predict that “the weather changes in various ways everywhere all the time because it always has been doing so”?
If the former, please provide a link. If the latter, then why not just STFU?
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February 3, 2010, 1:05 pmK Dackson says:
zuch: Is defending liars really that profitable?
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February 3, 2010, 1:05 pmyankee says:
Yes it has!
Right-wing delialist claims about the Earth not having gotten hotter are based on comparisons to 1998, which (at the time) was the hottest year on record, approximately 0.3 degrees C warmer than the average from the previous five years. The claim that the climate hasn’t warmed in the past decade is based on the fact that the average global temperatures for 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2005, and 2008 were all colder than 1998. But the 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2007 global average temperatures were approximately the same as 1998, and 2009 was hotter. Since 1998 was the hottest year on record, the average of the 2000–2009 decade was above the average of the 1990–1999 decade. The five year rolling averages have also increased.
If you look at a graph of the data, it’s quite clear that 1998 was an outlier, considerably warmer than the years immediately preceding and immediately following it. Overall, temperatures have been increasing.
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February 3, 2010, 1:07 pmDangerMouse says:
Let me get this straight: believers in global warming are found to have fudged the data, produced wildly unrealistic reports that have to be withdrawn, are found to have broken the law, are receiving financial incentives from millions of dollars in grants (or from setting up carbon-trading firms, or from payments from GE and others who sell “green” technology), among other things, and it’s the people asking to review the so-called “scientific methods” who are somehow at fault?
Notwithstanding zuch and orca’s new religion of earth-worship, no one else is buying what they’re selling anymore. The only problem they have are the so-called intellectuals who bought into global warming and are now trying to figure out a way to drop it without looking like morons.
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February 3, 2010, 1:07 pmSigivald says:
The vast body of climate science still shows that manmade climate change is real and that it presents a massive challenge to human survival
Even if we, as Monbiot wishes, believe the first half of that (and I don’t, given that so much of the “body of climate science”, so-called, is based merely on models and repetition based on the pseudo-raw data we now know is completely compromised...), none of it “shows ... that it presents a massive challenge to human survival”.
The absolute worst-case guesswork provided by the science (again, see above caveat for how seriously it should be taken) suggests only that it would have serious human costs — but the idea that it will destroy the species?
Utterly indefensible, especially as a conclusion from “the vast body” of research, even with the “challenge” qualifier.
Zuch: “Carping”? Pointing out that the so-called science is not science is not “carping” — it, in fact, serves actual science. Actual science, you see, is based on actual data and inquiry based on it, not ideologically manipulated cooked numbers. When you “hide the decline”, you reveal that you’ve long previously stopped doing science.
Criticism is a productive and creative endeavor, and absolutely necessary for scientific (and philosophic) rigor.
It would be nice to have a rigorous and well-supported dataset on which to build hypotheses and models of climate (and anthropogenic climate effects) — but demanding that the wrongthinkers “show their funding” is not how science is done. If their claims are wrong it doesn’t matter where the money came from. If their claims are right, it also doesn’t matter.
Science is good or bad without reference to who funded it. The data and the conclusions are what matter, and their accuracy doesn’t depend on whether the researcher is dependent on state grants fueled by climate hysteria or on evil bad oil company money.
(PS. Are you aware of the CRU email talking about how Shell gives them funding? Does that affect the quality of their research? If so, how, and in which direction?)
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February 3, 2010, 1:08 pmzuch says:
Actually, it has. The first decade of the 21st century is the warmest on record in recent times. But I think I addressed your comment in the rest of the comment you quote:
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 1:11 pmzuch says:
<*BZZZZZT!*> Wrong. No cigar for you.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 1:13 pmA. Criminal says:
Well, that’s part of it. The real reason they should freely and voluntarily disclose, as SOP and without being asked, any and all information about their research is because transparency and reproducibility are the basis of science. They were acting like politicians or lawyers, not scientific researchers.
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February 3, 2010, 1:16 pmDangerMouse says:
Actually, it has. The first decade of the 21st century is the warmest on record in recent times.
Assuming that THIS data isn’t cooked as well (which is unlikely), “recent times” of course, don’t include the middle age period where it was a hell of a lot warmer. Which, of course, blows all of your sky-is-falling crap right out the window.
Yawn.
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February 3, 2010, 1:17 pmyankee says:
Was the hottest year on record at the time, I mean. It isn’t anymore!
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February 3, 2010, 1:17 pmSkyler says:
self deleted
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February 3, 2010, 1:17 pmK Dackson says:
Type I error: Believing in AGW as fact.Type II error: Defending AGW as fact.Test power: Using your power to make up bogus test to support Type I and Type II errors
<*BZZZZZT!*> Wrong. No cigar for you.Cheers,
Learn to recognize a joke when it’s presented to you. Keeps you from looking like the humorless b@stard we all know you are.
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February 3, 2010, 1:21 pmChrisTS says:
Amen.
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February 3, 2010, 1:24 pmzuch says:
Hate to say it, but Piltdown aroused almost immediate scepticism, and was debunked not by creationists, but by other scientists.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 1:24 pmK Dackson says:
Well we all know that the UK Met office has declared the winter of 2009-10 the warmest on record for the UK.
They took the average temperature of the 15 warmest days between 1 Nov 2009 and 1 March 2010.
What, wer’re only in February?
Well, they did have a warm November.
And nothing tastes as good as cherry-picked data pie.
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February 3, 2010, 1:25 pmKirk Parker says:
Sorry, but that’s a complete overstatement of what “peer review” is. Far from being the whole of science, it’s merely one little (and easily-abused) protocol used by scientific publishers to keep embarrassingly-bad papers out of their journals.
And all: I know it’s the term that’s been used to frame this debate, but can I just rant for a moment about how sick I am of the fatuous phrase “climate change”? Is there a theory anywhere, with the slightest hint of credibility with anyone, that holds that earth’s climate could actually be stable? These people aren’t studying “climate change”, they’re studying “climate”. Or maybe that’s the problem...
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February 3, 2010, 1:29 pmzuch says:
So you agree the “sceptics” ought to disclose all their funding and turn over their entire e-mail logs and contents?
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 1:31 pmzuch says:
Oh, I don’t know. I’m just not sure they did everything on the “up and up”. And until they “prove” this to my satisfaction by giving me all their e-mail logs and all their financial records, don’t you think I’m justified in being just the slightest bit leery of them? Obviously, they’re hiding something....
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 1:37 pmMatt says:
Anthony Watts and crew are virtually at the center of the CRU East Anglia Climategate fiasco.
From one group of impericists to another...this is ground zero on this front...;) http://wattsupwiththat.com/
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February 3, 2010, 1:39 pmzuch says:
Do they get to decide who’s hired there?
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 1:42 pmzuch says:
The sceptics aren’t scientists? Who wouldda thunk it?
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 1:44 pmzuch says:
Nobody. :-( OK?
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 1:47 pmSkyler says:
Yeah, anyone with a theory that wants to be believed should air all their data openly. Duh.
You can’t turn this on its head though, and demand that the people who see the proven fraud must also disclose something. There is nothing for them to disclose because they’re not putting for a theory.
I really think that no one can be so illogical as to claim there is parity in positions here.
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February 3, 2010, 1:47 pmK Dackson says:
Idiot. I mean they guys you referred to in your original post Bush, Cheeney, etc.
And you knew that.
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February 3, 2010, 1:54 pmyankee says:
Linky? I checked their latest news releases, weather news releases, and climate change news releases, and none of them have any such claim. I didn’t see anything about it on the rest of the website either. This claim about the UK Met appears to be based on an opinion column by Dominic Lawson in which he quotes a comment made by someone claiming to be a UK Met staffer in an “internet posting to a newspaper.” Not exactly a smoking gun!
I haven’t even been able to find any confirmation that this was a real comment: he doesn’t link to the comment, give the name of the newspaper or the handle of the person claiming to be a UK Met staffer, or provide any other basis for his assertion. My two minutes of google research have produced only quotations of/links to the Lawson article. I haven’t found the (supposed) comment or any links to the comment.
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February 3, 2010, 1:56 pmfalafalafocus says:
zuch: Oh, I don’t know. I’m just not sure they did everything on the “up and up”. And until they “prove” this to my satisfaction by giving me all their e-mail logs and all their financial records, don’t you think I’m justified in being just the slightest bit leery of them? Obviously, they’re hiding something....Cheers,
To reiterate, I asked the following:
Your answer does not address my question. Should I assume you don’t have an answer to my question?
If so, you would have saved me a bit of time by just saying: “I don’t have any evidence suggesting that the other side is lying, cheating, or stealing and I appologize for making that implication without any evidence.”
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 1:58 pmzuch says:
This “hide the decline” foofrah has been addressed already here and here.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 2:01 pmzuch says:
You mispelled “ignorance”. If you want to convince me that you didn’t mispell “joke”, then you might try a substantive response to my question.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 2:05 pmzuch says:
Nonsense. I want to see their e-mails and bank statements. Otherwise, how can I trust them (at least WRT their assertions of “proven fraud”)?
But I’m glad you admit they have no theory. Just like the ID folks.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 2:10 pmzuch says:
You might think about the original comment you replied to a bit more, then. Do you think that I’m truly insisting that everyone ought to be this open with all their affairs? All I was pointing out is that those demanding such from the climate scientists ought to hold the other side to the same standard.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 2:15 pmyankee says:
Frankly, if we are looking for dishonesty, try representing an internet comment by someone claiming to be a Met staffer as the views of the Met.
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February 3, 2010, 2:18 pmK Dackson says:
Type I error: Believing zuch is willing to have an honest debate.
Type II error: Believing zuch is capable of having an honest debate.
Better?
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February 3, 2010, 2:20 pmShelbyC says:
addressed how? One just says it’s OK to hide the decline, and the other says the comment was made 10 years ago.
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February 3, 2010, 2:26 pmA. Criminal says:
Every bit information used to make any kind of “scientific” statement should be freely accessible to anyone who’s interested; I’m surprised that anyone considers this controversial in any way. Statements of science, of course, don’t depend in any way on who funded what, nor is the source of funding used as part of the scientific process. If someone is paying them to come up with bogus conclusions, that will be revealed by irreproducibility (“science”) without any knowledge at all of who paid for it, since knowing who paid for what doesn’t prove anything at all.
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February 3, 2010, 2:27 pmSkyler says:
zuch:
Indisputably a troll.
I never claimed to have a theory. I don’t pretend to know what the weather will be like tomorrow or the next day or a million years from now. I don’t need an alternate theory for the purpose of saying their theory is full of beans.
Zuch knows this or else he’s deranged. He deserves no more time.
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February 3, 2010, 2:34 pmwfjag says:
Oh really?
Economic impacts from the promotion of renewable energies: The German experience (Final report – October 2009) http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/germany/Germany_Study_-_FINAL.pdf
The “green industries” subsidies in Germany are up to $240,000 per worker per annum. With the deficits the US is running up, I don’t think we can afford all these “green jobs” you’re so excited about, nor can we afford the costs of subsidizing the “green energy” you want to export. The only non-polluting (from the stand point of not releasing CO2) energy sources that are economically viable are nuclear and hydro-electric from dams. But, the US hasn’t opened a new nuclear power plant in over 30 years, and I can’t find any information on a major new dam for hydro-electric power in the past 50 years. Solar power (in all its forms), wind, geo-thermal and other “green” energy sources require massive government subsidies, and still don’t always break even. That China and Germany, for their respective domestic political reasons, choose to heavily subsidize “green industries” and “green energy” projects is not a convincing reason for the US to do so.
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February 3, 2010, 2:46 pmNobody At All says:
If you’re interested, GISTEMP is all publicly-available:
— USHCN v.2 raw data is publicly available (and documentation);
— GHCN v.2 raw data is publicly available (and documentation);
— SCAR raw data is publicly available (and documentation)
The GISTEMP ModelE code (and documentation) is also publicly available.
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February 3, 2010, 2:54 pmzuch says:
From one:
From the other:
Clear?
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 3:03 pmwfjag says:
Well, Mom said I should go to law school. So, . . er . . , I guess the answer is “No.”
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February 3, 2010, 3:04 pmzuch says:
When the “conclusion” (by mostly people who have [or think they have] a financial iron in the fire) is “I don’t believe it”, how do you reproduce that? But the cumulative AGW work is adding more and more evidence every year and holding up. Not so, the “research” of the ‘sceptics’.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 3:06 pmzuch says:
You should have some evidence their theory is wrong. That’s the way science works. Absent that, your approach is “ID rewarmed”.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 3:09 pmK Dackson says:
Since zuch refuses to acknowledge that the only people who need to prove anything are the people promoting the AGW hypothesis, it is pointless to discuss the issue with it.
zuch’s studiously ignoring this obvious truth about how the scientific method is performed makes it incapable of rational, or honest, debate.
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February 3, 2010, 3:12 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Especially because of the inherent dishonesty of the phrase “warmest X on record,” without pointing out how short that “record” really is.
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February 3, 2010, 3:14 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
I believe he was talking about the other AGW scandal, in which the IPCC admitted that some of the stuff they published was not peer-reviewed as they had claimed and in fact some of it was just made up. Like the Himalaya glacier thing.
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February 3, 2010, 3:16 pmK Dackson says:
And the hits just keep on coming:
In looking at four possible allegations of research misconduct, the committee determined that further investigation is warranted for one of those allegations. The recommended investigation will focus on determining if Mann “engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities.”
http://live.psu.edu/story/44327
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February 3, 2010, 3:19 pmFedya says:
By the same token, did the people who debunked cold fusion have a theory?
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February 3, 2010, 3:22 pmSkyler says:
Environmentalism has long had a bit of a religion about it, but now it has gotten to an almost jihadist level.
Green Peace feels justified in acts of piracy on the high seas and is rewarded with a tv show that portrays them as (rather incompetent) heros. Scientists feel justified in planting lynx hair on a trap to justify more research dollars and shutting down development. Sierra Club feels justified in portraying the Spotted Owl, which ranges throughout the length of the continent, as being a specific species of Northern Spotted Owl and shuts down logging.
It’s like a little child that never learns to suffer consequences from bad behavior. Most of these thugs and frauds have been punished in the public’s eye (maybe the lynx guys were punished) and now the result is that the environmental fascists feel free to try to take over the world’s economy with their fraud.
And just like a radical jihadist will not listen to reason and agree to live in peace with others, global warming advocates won’t admit when the fraud is so obvious and will keep inventing one more reason to justify the lies.
It’s over zuch. Proven lies. Can’t be defended. The enviro jihad must end.
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February 3, 2010, 3:28 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
This is wrong on so many levels. Like the facts and the logic.
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February 3, 2010, 3:46 pmzuch says:
They publish papers and give results and conclusions. That’s the way science works. Saying “I don’t believe it” is not a very convincing rejoinder (particularly when a lot of the people that say this are suspected of ideological biases, or of confusing the alleged monetary costs of policies that might be illuminated by the research with the validity of the research itself).
I’d point out that the standard for publishable results is generally a rejection of the null hypothesis at the P<.05 level or greater, which builds in a great preference for accepting the status quo already. When there’s papers that reject H[0] at that level, the burden of “proof” shifts substantially, and it becomes necessary for the ‘sceptics’ to explain why there are such results or to produce different results themselves, before adhering to the null hypothesis (or some other hypothesis they’ve come up with themselves).
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 3:53 pmrarango says:
Perhaps my understanding of science is wrong, but cold fusion fell on the inability of Pons et al to replicate it.
I thought replication, and not the proposal of alternate theories, was the gold standard of experimentation.
Given the model used by the AGW proponents, if they provide the model, coding and (scrubbed) data, their results should be replicable. Or is my understanding of science totally wrong.
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February 3, 2010, 3:55 pmArrowSmith says:
When reducing 25% of GDP is the main goal, don’t let real science get in the way.
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February 3, 2010, 3:57 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
zuch,
As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678–682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.
I still don’t understand how a temperature-vs.-ring density plot came into use at all if it diverges radically in the most recent (and therefore, for temperature at least, most reliable) end of the dataset. I understand that there’s a complicated model in use here, with many more variables than time, local temperature, and ring density in play. Still, if the purpose is to estimate temperatures at earlier times, and the model is admittedly useless as regards recent temperatures, I don’t see why you would trust it at all wrt older ones. It must have been calibrated to something — presumably to the older temperature data that it actually fits, rather than to the recent ones that it doesn’t. But that means that you already have earlier temperature data, yes?
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February 3, 2010, 3:57 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
That doesn’t make any sense. “Sceptics” [sic] aren’t putting forth affirmative claims, but are demanding that the purveyors of such claims prove those claims. Whether “skeptics” are getting funded by Exxon or by Mother Theresa, is irrelevant to whether the theory of AGW is supported by the evidence.
Are you at all familiar with the scientific method? Do you understand the concept of a null hypothesis?
(Now, if some skeptic does make an affirmative claim — e.g., “carbon dioxide can’t cause warming” or “the 1990s were one of the coolest decades in history” — then of course he or she should be transparent as well.)
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February 3, 2010, 4:05 pmorca says:
Quoting “research” from an Exxon-funded phony research outfit isn’t really much of an argument.
Their sole reason for existence is to keep America hooked on dirty fossil fuels as long as possible.
It’s true the German government provided some funding for their “green” industry, but “green” exports will soon account for a third of Germany’s (the world’s leading exporter) exports.
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February 3, 2010, 4:12 pmBrianMac says:
Is significance testing so pervasive in climate science? I can see it being used to determine whether temperature changes are within the range of what we would expect from natural variations. But beyond that, how widely is it applied? It’s not exactly epidemiology, where hypotheses about causal relationships can be formulated and then tested statistically.
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February 3, 2010, 4:17 pm1040 says:
Of note: Mann cleared of scientific misconduct charges after investigation.
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February 3, 2010, 4:27 pmzuch says:
Yes. HT physics.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 4:39 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Only if those papers are based on valid data! It’s the data itself being called into question, not just the conclusions that are being drawn from the data. Or, to put it more simply: GIGO.
If there’s reason to doubt the data (either because of error or fraud), then you can’t reject the null hypothesis regardless of what proof your adversary has; the burden of proof doesn’t shift.
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February 3, 2010, 4:40 pmbiscuit says:
Remember folks, Mr. Adler believes that global warming is real, that man contributes to it and that it is a serious problem.
So the best way to do something about it is to post scores of blogposts that quibble with the facts of global warming and the credibility of people who (ostensibly) agree with him.
Keep up the good work!
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February 3, 2010, 4:40 pmzuch says:
False. If you’re talking about Sea Shepherd, that’s a different organisation.
You ought to be careful about slinging such accusations around. You know, glass houses, stones, and all....
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 4:48 pmzuch says:
It’s a proxy. You can run the data without the older proxy temps. Feel free to do so.
In some locations (and times), yes. In others, no.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 4:52 pmzuch says:
Yes. I’ve TAed stats and published papers. I’ve discussed (or attempted to discuss) it above.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 4:54 pmzuch says:
You find it constantly in error bars and confidence intervals. When the 95% confidence interval excludes the null hypothesis, this is the same as rejecting the null hypothesis at the P<.05 level (two tailed).
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 4:59 pmzuch says:
That would be covered under the rubric of “explain why there are such results”. As to fraud, the PSU report says, as for Mann, there was none. So which side was dishonest here? Explaining the results as due to error is (or at least should be) putting forth an alternative “theory” (albeit not a very scientifically illuminating one).
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 5:04 pmkdackson says:
proxy = fabricated “data” to match desired outcome.
P < 0.05 = standard for “average” science.
p < 0.001 = standard for drug trials
p < 0.1 = grasping at straws.
And guess where AGW proponents data fall? How about barely making the p < 0.1 cutoff.
Then the excuses come.
Like using 15 cherry picked trees in Siberia to act as a global proxy for the temperature record.
Real convincing.
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February 3, 2010, 5:13 pmrarango says:
OT, but I gotta ask. Zuch: what is that avatar you are using?
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February 3, 2010, 5:16 pm11-B.2O/B4 says:
I don’t know, why don’t we FOI them to find out.........oh wait, nm.
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February 3, 2010, 5:25 pmzuch says:
Gravatar. A Napoleon wrasse.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 5:25 pmrarango says:
Zuch–thanks
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February 3, 2010, 5:30 pmzuch says:
Cite for this ‘fact’ about AGW data? (also for the “P<0.001″ standard for drug trials claim).
But FWIW, even P<0.10 is right 90% of the time. Which easily beats “more probable than not”.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 5:31 pmSkyler says:
Hah!! Just like the “Ordeal” thread, a reliance on faux math. I think this math is about as reliable as the type used to pretend that there is AGW.
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February 3, 2010, 5:31 pmzuch says:
Further info: Shot at the Blue Corner in Palau, Jan, 2005.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 5:34 pmSkyler says:
And now resorting to veiled threats!! A completely empty man.
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February 3, 2010, 5:35 pmwfjag says:
You might try reading sources other than Greenpeace affiliated sites on environmental and economics issues. Might I suggest the WSJ, and start with The ‘Green Jobs’ Myth (Feb. 1, 2010), http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204575038901453463856.html :
Or, how about Spain’s experience. Try Study of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources (March 2009), Universidad Ray Juan Carlos, Madrid, Sprain, http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf
It concludes that (1) every renewable job created by the Spanish government destroyed an average of 2.2 other jobs; (2) for each “green” megawatt installed in Spain destroyed 5.39 jobs in non-energy sectors; (3) only 1 in 10 jobs created in Spain were of a permanent nature, while with 2/3s of the“green jobs” were temporary jobs in construction, fabrication and installation jobs and 1/4th of the “green jobs” were in administration, marketing and projects engineering; so that (4) only 1 in 10 of the “green jobs” was related to permanent operations and maintenance of renewable power systems; and (5) that since 2000, Spain spent $774,000 to create each “green job”, including subsidies of more than $1.3 million per wind industry job. To quote from the study:
This sounds like the Spanish version of “saved or created” jobs, meets the Son of TARP. However, instead of “Too Big to Fail”, we’ll have “So Big It Must Fail.” But, that’s what results from magical thinking, which is about all that the hype about “green jobs” and “green energy” amounts to.
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February 3, 2010, 5:38 pmSkyler says:
As I read it, they only cleared him of three of four charges.
And as I recall, OJ Simpson was found not guilty, yet is still paying damages to Nicole’s family to this day.
Who are you going to believe, a bunch of academicians who are colleagues of worldwide conspiracists or your own lying eyes?
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February 3, 2010, 5:40 pmGordo says:
I can only hope that Senator James Inhofe and Rush Limbaugh, among others, are indeed consigned to the dustbin of history. Hopefully for their heirs, they won’t be the villains in the greatest global catastrophe since the Ice Age, as viewed in the late 21st century.
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February 3, 2010, 5:45 pmorca says:
wfjag,
Again, jumping from an Exxon-funded phony grass roots propaganda shop to one of Rupert Murdoch’s rags isn’t very persuasive. Covering the spectrum of opinions from a to b as they say. Neither is posting reams of spam.
Citing all that oil and coal industry propaganda can’t change the fact that China and Germany are now exporting billions of dollars worth of renewable energy equipment every year.
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February 3, 2010, 5:49 pmDavid Schwartz says:
Rejecting at the P<.05 level just means that you have to reject 95% of the data to support your hypothesis. This seems to be more or less what’s been going on. All it takes is 20-fold difference in the scrutiny given data consistent with your theory and the scrutiny given data inconsistent with your theory. Again, this seems to be exactly what’s going on.
As for the skeptics needing to produce different results themselves, if someone claims they can predict the future, what different results can you produce yourself? (Predict the future differently? Fail to predict the future?) Isn’t it sufficient simply to show that the vast majority of their testable predictions have not come true?
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February 3, 2010, 5:49 pmkdackson says:
orca:
Since China is THE biggest emitter of CO2, why don’t they use some of that equipment themselves?
I mean, hell, they pirate everything else, why not steal that technology?
Could it be that it’s just overpriced crap?
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February 3, 2010, 5:54 pmSkyler says:
Orca, as a manufacturing engineer, I can tell you that your argument is absurd. Manufacturing in the US has become too expensive for just about any product that doesn’t have to be built locally or doesn’t have a need for very specific skills. It’s kind of a really big part of the economic problems we have. Or maybe you haven’t been paying attention to all the businesses moving their operations to China and Malaysia.
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February 3, 2010, 6:00 pmorca says:
My hybrid was made in America.
They are indeed starting to use it.
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February 3, 2010, 6:11 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
zuch,
It’s a proxy.
I know it’s a proxy. My point is that, as a proxy, it must have been calibrated against a set of data including previously-known temperatures, and yet it’s at the near end, where we have the best temperature data, that it’s so at variance with the actual temperatures as to be embarrassing.
You can run the data without the older proxy temps. Feel free to do so.
“Run” them in/on what? A proprietary program implementing a proprietary model, neither made public?
[me:]But that means that you already have earlier temperature data, yes?
[zuch:]In some locations (and times), yes. In others, no.
So the tree-ring data are to fill holes in the older temperature record. And we can be confident that the proxy accurately represents temperatures in times and places for which our other data are sparse-to-nonexistent; though if you venture to compare the proxy temperature to actual temperature any time in the recent past, it confessedly doesn’t work at all.
Look, I know we have few enough sources of information about temperature before the time human beings started measuring it directly, and I’m impressed by the ingenuity scientists have shown finding proxies. But this particular proxy ...
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February 3, 2010, 6:15 pmNobody At All says:
The measurement data and chronology indices is publicly available here; documentation for the sensitivity analysis is publicly available here; the results of multiple, independent analyses can be seen here; and to quote Steven McIntyer’s criticism of Yamal:
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February 3, 2010, 6:35 pmMatthewM says:
Zuch: The sky is green.
Me: No it isn’t. My eyes see blue.
Zuch: No, you can’t say the sky isn’t green unless you provide me with a theory showing why the sky isn’t green.
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February 3, 2010, 6:45 pmwfjag says:
Response: Lots of assertions, but no citations or analysis. Putting your fingers in your ears and saying loudly “I don’t believe you, so I won’t listen to you, so you must be wrong, because I disagree with you” is neither argument nor proof.
What are the subsidies and incentive that the importers of the “renewable energy equipment” receive? Or, another way of phrasing the question, what are the life-cycle costs of such equipment?
For tax reasons, it likely was assembled in the US. More pertinent are questions like where were the parts manufactured?; where was the machinery used to manufacture the parts and machinery used to assemble the parts manufactured?; where/how was the waste produced during the parts’ manufacture and assembly disposed of?; what is the life-cycle pollution of your green-mobile (e.g., batteries are fairly nasty in terms of the pollution produced both to manufacture and to dispose of)?
This is the same China that is bringing on-line a coal-fired electric power plant every week; the same China that has recently completed construction of several of the largest dams ever built with the accompanying destruction of large areas; the same China in which the air quality in its capitol city rivals London’s in the 1840s; the same China that blocks UN action against the Sudan pertaining to the genocide there because of its contracts with the Sudanese government for oil exploration and production, which oil is exported by the Sudan to China and which oil revenues pay for the arms that the Sudanese government uses to continue its genocide; and, the same China whose quality control is so poor that toys manufactured there contain lead and other metals levels in their paint and on their surfaces to pose health hazards? Just want to make sure that we’re discussing the same place. A few show projects by a dictatorship isn’t strong evidence, especially from a regime with a history of building show projects.
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February 3, 2010, 6:59 pmCurious says:
can somebody post a graph of global temperature for the past 12,000+ years? (somebody upthread linked to a graph of the temps for the past 1000 years, but i remember seeing a graph over much longer time scales that places the past few years in context. I would prefer that a true believer give me the link. Thanks.
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February 3, 2010, 7:04 pmorca says:
Probably funding them with the all the money they’re making selling the rest of the world wind turbines.
Green is big business. America can’t afford to let the primitive resource extraction industries hold us back any longer.
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February 3, 2010, 7:06 pmzuch says:
LOL. Clueless ... and paranoid. Glad I’m me and not you.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 7:08 pmAnonsters says:
As usual, a VC AGW thread becomes an utter lollercaust.
If you posters keep this up, VC will lose whatever reputation it may have had for having reasonably sane readers.
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February 3, 2010, 7:11 pmDr. Weevil says:
orca writes (4:12pm):
“Quoting ‘research’ from an Exxon-funded phony research outfit isn’t really much of an argument.
“Their sole reason for existence is to keep America hooked on dirty fossil fuels as long as possible.
“It’s true the German government provided some funding for their ‘green’ industry, but ‘green’ exports will soon account for a third of Germany’s (the world’s leading exporter) exports.”
In other words, just as Exxon has a huge financial incentive to disbelieve in AGW, whether it is true or not, the entire nation of Germany has a gigantic financial incentive to believe in it, whether it is true or not. Even if the earth is not warming, even if the ‘green’ exports will have no significant effect on temperatures, even if (hypothetically) the earth is actually cooling and we’re just about to enter the next Ice Age, even if ‘green’ exports will increase the effects of said hypothetical new Ice Age, Germany will still make billions exporting their (hypothetically) useless or downright harmful ‘green’ stuff. And orca can’t see the problem. He just assumes that only opponents of AGW have a financial incentive to believe what they believe, even as he quotes the evidence showing that he is wrong. How much money has Al Gore made pushing AGW? Tens of millions, isn’t it? But somehow only AGW opponents and skeptics are influenced by money, even those who aren’t making a penny off their opposition.
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February 3, 2010, 7:15 pmzuch says:
Dishonest or fraud was one of the allegations he was cleared of:
The one remaining allegation, which they will investigate further, was that he might have called the deniers dirty names or something else impolite.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 7:24 pmzuch says:
This is simply false. Where you get this idea, I don’t know, but, as Wolfgang Pauli would say, “It’s not even wrong....”
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 7:28 pmzuch says:
As someone else pointed out, the GISTEMP data and the programs are available publicly.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 7:31 pmzuch says:
Wow. That’s a zinger. Too bad it has no relationship with the situation at hand. To begin with, the deniers aren’t saying they have their own data (“My eyes see blue”).
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 7:35 pmNobody At All says:
I personally cannot remember a global temperature graph covering the past 12,000 or so years, though I’ve seen both shorter and longer intervals; but the data from 92 different temperature reconstructions is publicly available here.
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February 3, 2010, 7:48 pmDavid Schwartz says:
Suppose two populations have the same mean, but I hypothesize that they have different means. If I analyze 20 studies comparing the means at the .05 level, 19 of them would be expected to conclude that they have the same mean and 1 of them would be expected to conclude that they have different means. If I post hoc find reasons to reject the 19 studies that concluded they had the same mean but do no such subsequent investigation of the last study, I will conclude that they have different means. That is how confirmation bias works.
Please explain to me how this is “not even wrong”.
I once worked for a company that had to submit a random number generator to independent testing. They subjected it to 200 tests, each at the P<.01 level. It failed two of those tests, exactly as one would expect and was granted certification.
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February 3, 2010, 7:52 pmRPT says:
NY Times:
“Panel Absolves Climate Scientist
By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: February 3, 2010
WASHINGTON — An academic board of inquiry has largely cleared a noted Pennsylvania State University climatologist of scientific misconduct, but a second panel will convene to determine whether his behavior undermined public faith in the science of climate change, the university said Wednesday.
The scientist, Dr. Michael E. Mann, has been at the center of a dispute arising from the unauthorized release of more than 1,000 e-mail messages from the servers of the University of East Anglia in England, home to one of the world’s premier climate research units......”
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February 3, 2010, 7:56 pmNobody At All says:
I love it when climate skeptics lecture on confirmation bias.
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February 3, 2010, 7:58 pmAnonsters says:
Am I the only one who finds that mildly creepy?
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February 3, 2010, 8:33 pmzuch says:
... if they have the same mean. But most studies aren’t run 20 times. I have no idea what you mean by “rejecting” in this strange context, but if you’re rejecting the one aberrant study, you’re rejecting a single study here, not data (and this gets into meta-analysis) And that study contains only one twentieth of the data, not 95% of the data. If, OTOH, you are rejecting the 19 studies (with 95% of the data points) that showed no difference, you’d be foolish because the meta-statistics are almost exactly what you would expect if there was no difference.
Huh?!?!? What 19 studies [in the current context, or in pretty much every scientific context]? And if indeed there’s good reason to reject the 19 studies that show no effect, then you’re simply left with one valid study (at whatever level of significance you found). Which should be taken at face value (unless your reasons for rejecting the 19 studies apply to that one as well).
Explained above. Even in your strange scenario, you’re rejecting (if you’re doing things right) only one twentieth of the data, not 95%. No reasonable person rejects 95% of the data (without good reason) ... well ... except the deniers here that keep saying that study after study is cooked....
Exactly. They rejected 2 of 200 tests (1%), not 95% (or 99%).
I still think that the Pauli comment applies to your confused analysis here. I can’t discern a coherent wrong argument. Sorry.
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 9:00 pmzuch says:
My take on it was they were going to look into whether he said anything nasty or impolite about climate sceptics:
and:
Cheers,
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February 3, 2010, 9:10 pmDavid Nieporent says:
Yes, and the same China which refuses to agree to any carbon-emissions standards.
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February 3, 2010, 9:12 pmAnonsters says:
I’m not sure any of that makes it any better. I mean, say he blatantly failed at III & IV. That pretty much just makes him a douchebag, doesn’t it? Since when do university boards of inquiry convene in order to investigate douchebaggery? (Wouldn’t it pretty much be a full-time board?)
I dunno, just seems a little heavy-handed. He’s been cleared of the misconduct charges. Move on, PSU.
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February 3, 2010, 10:08 pmSkyler says:
He hasn’t been cleared by a jury of his peers, yet. Only by his fellow elites. I’m looking forward to the criminal and trials for attempt to defraud the government!
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February 3, 2010, 10:48 pmCareless says:
From one:
From the other:
Clear?Cheers,
You’re very, very confused about what science requires. If you have something that you think reflects temperature at various times and, when your temperature data from other sources is at its best, it doesn’t match up and you don’t know why, you have yourself an unreliable indicator of temperature. You can’t just throw out the post-1960 data. You need to throw either all the tree data, or all the non-tree data, or provide strong evidence of why the tree data diverged from temperatures post 1960.
Anything else is pure cherry-picking
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February 3, 2010, 10:53 pmCareless says:
Anyway, Zuch has this weird desire to defend all of pro-global warming research/researchers, no matter the facts, and he appears to be willing to drag the actual science behind and evidence of warming down into disrepute to defend a few former scientists who abandoned their jobs to become advocates.
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February 3, 2010, 10:55 pmzuch says:
Oh, I agree. Kind of like nailing Clinton on the mealy-mouthed MRPC/ArkRPC 8.4(c), which — if uniformly applied to all lawyers — would realize Shakespeare’s fondest dreams. Except there, they actually require dishonesty, deceit, or misrepresentation (which is not the least bit uncommon amongst lawyers), not simply bad manners.
But I suspect the investigation will conclude that Mann was at worst ill-mannered and less than gracious to the denialists, but did nothing actionable.
Cheers,
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February 4, 2010, 12:56 amzuch says:
<*Ding! Ding!*> Thread winner.
I’ll bet you are. Bought your popcorn already, I’m sure. Should have stuck with Cheetohs, though. That crapfluff never goes stale, so you could wait it out in comfort.
Cheers,
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February 4, 2010, 1:01 amzuch says:
No sir, I’m not. I’m quite sure I’ve more published papers than you.
They might reasonably have thrown out the tree data altogether. Throwing out “non-tree data” would be throwing out actual recorded temperature records, which doesn’t seem wise. But there is evidence that tree ring data from earlier was a good proxy, regardless of the later divergence (of still unknown cause). And scientific panels that have looked at the matter have concluded that retaining the older data that showed less divergence was not unjustified, particularly given the lesser amounts of actual temperature observations available from such times.
And without the tree ring data, the picture is still pretty much the same.
They said that in the link I cited. This needs investigation, but lack of an answer (at the current time) is hardly fatal to the overall picture.
Cheers,
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February 4, 2010, 1:11 amzuch says:
You mean like defending Mann, who’s variously been accused of fraud, cheating, e-mail destruction, bad science, etc., by the denialists, when an inquiry into these allegations has shown no actual evidence of such?
Who’s the ones here that seem to be on the short side, factually speaking?
Cheers,
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February 4, 2010, 1:16 amorca says:
Nope,
Even ignoring Climate Change, billions of humans have a desire to live their lives more energy efficenty for financial reasons, health reasons and freedom from religious fanatics of all confessions reasons.
A desire German and Chinese workers are going supply them the means to satisfy.
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February 4, 2010, 3:31 amDavid Schwartz says:
Something strange is going on. My posts are showing up delayed and sometimes not at all. I wrote a long response to zuch that seems to have disappeared into the ether. But I’ll summarize:
If you believe something that is false, and you test it at the P<.05 level, one in twenty times, your belief will be confirmed. 19 out of 20 times, it will be rejected.
However, if you can find justification to reject the 19 of 20 studies that contradict your believe and don’t find justification to reject the 1 of 20 studies that support it, you can continue to find more and more evidence to support your belief as long as you continue to do this.
This is easy to do if there’s at least something wrong with every study. So long as you don’t look too closely at the ones that support your beliefs and look as hard as possible as the one’s that refute it, an entire discipline can maintain this.
And, in fact, it really does not require you to reject 19 out of 20 studies, for one reason. A prevailing belief will change that balance. First, confirming studies will find it easier to get published, since they “seem right”, while non-confirming studies will find it harder.
Second, there’s a lot of wiggle room in climate science — cases where a wide variety of numbers are equally justifiable and you pretty much just have to pick on. Well, which one will you pick? The ones that produce the answers you know are wrong or the ones that produce the answers you know are right?
We now know the IPCC process was riddled with this. Speculation in a press interview was claimed to be scientifically-proven while strong studies that contradicted the gospel were suppressed to avoid “diluting the message”.
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February 4, 2010, 8:18 amShelbyC says:
Well, hopefully you have lots of money invested in these efforts.
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February 4, 2010, 9:15 amflyovertard says:
per the AGU article:
“The results indicate that if future warming occurs in the basin and is not accompanied by increased precipitation, then the basin is likely to experience periods of water supply shortages more severe than those inferred from the long-term historical tree-ring reconstruction”
In other words — it will be dry if it doesn’t rain.
Absolutely brilliant! — you can’t make this stuff up!
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February 4, 2010, 9:21 amNobody At All says:
It isn’t.
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February 4, 2010, 9:32 amOrson Buggeigh says:
Note to Zuch and Orca and other defenders of the AGW perspective:
1. Mann has’t really been cleared of anything except bad academic conduct. Note that academics are reluctant to chasten their own. The allegeldy professional organizations of academic historians tried hard to look the other way and ignore Michael Bellesiles. What forced Emory’s hand was the bad press they were getting from people who played up Bellesile’s academic misdeeds. My guess is much the same will be required here. It would be much more interesting to see someone charge Mann and others for violations of FOIA. I suspect answers in open court, under oath would be much more complete and interesting than those in a faculty conduct committee hearing.
2. The problem with Orca and the others trying to force the economy to change to the green dream is that this isn’t being drive by actual market demand. Gore’s proposal, and the IPCC are trying to effect change by government regulation. Since the science is NOT settled, and there is very little empirical evidence to support a radical re-structuring of the economy along the lines suggested by Al Gore in “Inconvenient Truth” there is no reason those of us who do not share Mr. Gore’s views should agree to impovrish ourselves to enrich him and Dr. Mann.
In short, I’m all for telling the assembled climate change crowd in Copenhagen to go to hell and mind their own business. If their proposals actually made any business sense, people would not have to be forced to move in that direction, there would be an existing demand. There is none. There is also no empirical evidence of man-made global warming that has been given to the skeptics, despite their persistent requests for it by people the AGW group call ‘climate change deniers.” This is not only bad science, it is enough to give reasonable people good reason not to trust Dr. Mann, Mr. Gore, or the IPCC.
3. To the “Would YOU want to release your e-mails?” crowd: We are talking about public documents. The public has paid for this research, and they should have every right to see what they are getting for their money. Hence the FOIA requests. I work for a public university, and we are all reminded, at least once a year, that we are using public computers, which makes our e-mail and other documents produced on them subject public property. The not so subtle reminder comes out repeatedly: Your computer is for public business, not private e-mail. This argument that the scientists have a right to keep their e-mail about their publicly funded research conducted on publicly funded computers is specious.
It has been said repeatedly: Environmentalism, especially relating to climate, has become a religion. Actual genuinely skeptical scientific inquiry has not been part of the discussion among those who believe in Man Made Global Warming.
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February 4, 2010, 10:02 amzuch says:
Nope. It will dry up unless something else changes and it rains more.
Cheers,
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February 4, 2010, 11:53 amSkyler says:
And one thing’s for sure: We won’t be able to trust the climatologists who claim to explain what those things might be that change.
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February 4, 2010, 12:51 pmzuch says:
The ones that explain why we’ll get more rain, the basin won’t dry up and everything will be hunky-dory? That would be your champeens.... They haven’t followed through.
Cheers,
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February 4, 2010, 1:42 pmNobody At All says:
There is no need for trust. Multiple, independent sources of data are publicly available for your review, as is homogenization documentation & coding, and as is climate sensitivity documentation and modeling. Some of these sources have been linked to on this threat; some on others; few are very difficult to find for someone competent with google. Literally thousands of studies have been published; the fact that publishers choose to enforce a paywall does not mean that it does not exist.
Nor is there need to trust the Department of Defense when it states that it must prepare for global warming to be an accelerant of political instability and conflict.
But, at some point, there is need to set aside hubris and indignation, and proceed with an open mind.
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February 4, 2010, 2:19 pmSkyler says:
Yes, open minds are good. I wish the AGW jihadists would be open minded and admit that fraud has been committed and that climatologists will not be trusted again for a loooonnngggg time.
All that supposedly available data is irrelevent. Can’t trust it. Can’t trust analysis of it. Can’t trust the theories behind it. Can’t trust anything about it.
That’s because they have been proven to use lies, fraud, intimidation, and political muscle to try to get their agenda to succeed.
I’ll trust the common sense notion that you can’t measure a “global” temperature within an accuracy of tenths of a degree when the raw data can only be accurate within 2 to 3 degrees at the best of times and when the measurement stations are moved, changed, and fabricated. Correlating ancient temperatures with modern measurements using different standards is an invalid hypothesis, especially when the results are not consistent.
The whole mess is based on lies, and this is no longer debatable.
It’s time for the climate jihadists to get open minds, apply real science from the most fundamental levels and stop the lies.
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February 4, 2010, 2:39 pmNobody At All says:
I’m sorry, is data that I linked previously “supposedly” available, or is it available? Again, there is no need for trust. You may examine the data. See above.
This isn’t a disagreement about theory, it is a simple unwillingness to confront contrary evidence.
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February 4, 2010, 2:58 pmzuch says:
... when an investigation just cleared them of this. Yep, that’s keeping an “open” mind ... one of .0003 Torr.
Cheers,
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February 4, 2010, 3:17 pmSkyler says:
The data can’t be trusted. Examination of untrustworthy data is a useless endeavor.
The theories are bogus because they are made based on data that can’t be trusted and by people that have proven to be frauds, or controlled by frauds.
Explain how anyone can claim with a straight face how we can decide on a “global” average temperature? Now add in that the measurements are taken from arbitrary locations and do not cover most parts of the world. These locations are haphazardly maintained. These stations can only measure to an accuracy of 2–3 degrees for a specific time. Then extrapolate these measurements to cover an entire year and get a result within a tenth of a degree.
I didn’t fall off of a turnip truck.
Now, include into this mess the idea that they can determine temperatures from ancient times by measuring even scarcer points of time that cover even less of the Earth. And yet still they extrapolate to get a measurement within a tenth of a degree.
They think we’re stupid.
We’re not taking it anymore. Even if people were silenced and intimidated to not object in the past, we’re not going to be silent anymore. PROVEN FRAUD.
Just take your AGW theories and put them with the fountain of youth, the perpetual motion machine, the trial by ordeal, and all the other hooey of witchcraft, and get out of here. We’re not taking it anymore.
They lied. They were caught. They should be jailed.
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February 4, 2010, 3:21 pmSkyler says:
Zuch,
An investigation by biased colleagues has claimed to partially exonerate ONE of the frauds, not all of them.
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February 4, 2010, 3:24 pmzuch says:
If this is “common sense”, it’s wrong.
That’s not how it’s done. Validation of proxies can be done, so that proxies from earlier years can be trusted to some extent. That is how it was done.
That is not what the reviews that looked into the matter found. In fact, they found the opposite, so perhaps it’s time for you to re-evaluate your “conclusions”.
Cheers,
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February 4, 2010, 3:24 pmzuch says:
Translated from Denialist into English: “The theories are bogus because they say something that I don’t want to hear.”
Followed by: “Those that say such things must be frauds because I don’t want to believe them.”
Cheers,
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February 4, 2010, 3:28 pmzuch says:
Oh, no one’s “decid[ing]” it. They’re calculating it (or an estimate thereof). And the data and methods for doing so are available. That’s science.
Cheers,
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February 4, 2010, 3:30 pmNobody At All says:
This is an excellent summary of your position. Thank you.
By failing to examine any contrary data, one can conclude almost anything. But it fails to be accurate, or persuasive.
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February 4, 2010, 3:31 pmzuch says:
They’re “frauds” because you don’t like what they say. Their peers are “biased” because ... once again ... you don’t like what they say. Bet you don’t have many friends (and any potential candidates are the better for it, I’m sure).
Cheers,
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February 4, 2010, 3:33 pmSkyler says:
They are frauds because they have proven time and again to use lies to promote their agenda. Nothing they do or say is trustworthy. They can’t be believed.
You can’t seek the refuge of the liars to prove that they aren’t lying.
If they wanted to ever have an honest conversation, they blew it.
Can’t trust them. Can’t trust anyone trying to defend liars.
By defending these liars, you are either gullible, which seems unlikely, or you are untrustworthy yourself.
Climatologists, the proven frauds, need to purge their ranks, and start from zero in attempting to understand the climate. Everything that has been done about climate for the past 30 years is now nulled.
Can’t be salvaged without a complete overhaul. It is pointless to persist in defending it. They need to go back to the beginning and create a whole new body of literature and analysis that gives a very skeptical view of any data collected within the past thirty years.
No other method can restore trust.
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February 4, 2010, 3:44 pmzuch says:
Nope. In fact, he was cleared of three of the four synthesized allegations, the three having to do with fraud, hiding or destroying data (allegation 1), destroying e-mails (allegation 2), and misuse of confidential or privileged information (allegation 3). The one remaining allegation (which will be investigated) seems to be the one about “bad academic conduct” (i.e., was he impolite to the anti-AGW people). As for the science, the NRC panel gave him a thumbs-up on that.
On what basis?!?!? FWIW, the PSU report cleared him of the allegations of e-mail destruction.
You sound like you’d like a witch-hunt; prosecute him for sumptin’or’other because you don’t like what he says....
Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence!
What’s good for some people isn’t necessarily good for energy companies. Unenlightened self-interest still persists in capitalism.
Were you saying this when the Dubya maladministration was stonewalling all FOIA requests (and Congressional requests) for e-mails?
But FWIW, Mann turned over all his e-mails (and even those that mention him or his work) to the PSU committee, and they were all reviewed as part of the investigation.
Cheers,
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February 4, 2010, 7:35 pmzuch says:
Just like they need to start the health care debate all over from scratch .... ought to last at least until November....
Well, that settles it.
Thread winner #2.
Cheers,
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February 4, 2010, 7:38 pmSkyler says:
Yes, because you never even got into the ring, Zuch. You’re in some imaginary world where reality doesn’t really seem to come into effect. You ignore all the evidence of fraud and just keep repeating that it’s not fraud.
You’re like the pet shop owner in the Monty Python skit. Despite all the evidence, you just keep denying the parrot is dead.
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February 4, 2010, 8:26 pmzuch says:
You mispelled “allegations”. Which a couple of panels have looked at now, and dismissed as lacking any substance.
You, OTOH, ignore the data (and that’s all the data, not just the tree rings you’re allergic to).
Now that’s avoiding any acquaintance with reality.
Cheers,
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February 4, 2010, 9:21 pmSkyler says:
And now you’re delving into pettiness.
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February 4, 2010, 9:23 pmDavid Schwartz says:
Sure, but if you do that too early, you’ll wind up pouring an awful lot of money down a rathole. Think about all the money invested in electric cars before the basic battery and motor technologies were ready. If you pick a technology too soon, you may pick the wrong one and wind up with billions invested in a hydrogen infrastructure just as something much better comes down the pike.
So in order to act rationally on this desire, we have to know how urgent it is. Rushing it will lead to highest costs and inferior solutions.
Just in the area of nuclear, the best designs are changing fundamentally every few years.
I’m all for getting government out of the way. For example, large solar facilities have to go through ridiculous levels of emissions certification when they effectively have no emissions. But dumping money requires picking winners and losers. That’s even hard for the market to do if even the best plans won’t make an actual profit. The market will distort to finding the plans that can best attract government funding.
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February 5, 2010, 6:29 amNobody At All says:
Are you for disallowing power plant costs to be placed in the ratebase of a utility’s (monopoly) service area? This would level the playing field quite a bit, I think.
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February 5, 2010, 11:25 amDavid Schwartz says:
In principle, yes I am. But in this system, I don’t think you can make that work. That’s because the same companies that are granted a monopoly service area are also required to provide power, under some circumstances, at a loss. In order to fund that guarantee and keep it from bankrupting them, they may have no choice but to leverage their monopoly to finance power plants.
In a completely free market, they would be able to turn off your power if they couldn’t acquire power at a price you were willing to pay. But due to the natural monopoly on the “last mile” and the fact that we live in a world that is in many ways distorted from a completely free market (for better or for worse) rules from that fantasy world don’t always work correctly in this one.
If your local monopoly power “last mile” provider were never required to sell you electricity at a loss, but could float your rates based on spot rates or let you buy long-term contracts from them or others at your option, then yes, I would oppose allowing utilities to put anything in the ratebase for their legally-granted monopoly other than the costs of providing and maintaining the “last mile” service. I think fully separating the “natural monopoly” parts of utilities from everything else is a good way to deal with natural monopolies, even if it does force some diseconomies.
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February 5, 2010, 12:50 pmNobody At All says:
This analysis applies to completely vertically-integrated markets. That is, not the U.S.A.
Ever since 1996, transmission has been open-access. Some markets — notably, almost the entire Eastern Interconnection, the CAISO service territory (California), and ERCOT (Texas) — have separated generation, transmission, and distribution functions; have implemented wholesale electricity markets that independent power producers sell into; encourage transmission investments by merchant companies; a few (a few places in Texas) have retail competition.
Even in the Western Interconnection, IPPs develop a great amount of today’s power. (The overwhelming majority of these plants are natural gas and wind farms.) Local distribution utilities (granted a service monopoly, with a duty of of service and a rate of return guaranteed by the ratepayers trapped within the monopoly territory) either sign long-term power purchase agreements with independent power producers, or — where there is a wholesale market — purchase power directly off the market or through a power marketer.
All of which is to say: there is a thriving private industry of independent power producers, and when a powerplant is financed through ratepayer-supported guarantees, it directly crowds out this market.
This public subsidy of ratepayer-financed generation is absolutely enormous, and unnecessary.
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February 5, 2010, 1:50 pmNobody At All says:
(I could have written my last comment a bit shorter, for which I apologize.)
Given that distribution monopolies may protect themselves from wholesale energy price increases by entering into long-term power purchase agreements, or by enter into long-term hedging transactions for purchases on the wholesale market (quite common for sellers, at least), then by this reasoning they should not be allowed to finance powerplants through their service monopoly, no?
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February 5, 2010, 2:26 pmDavid Schwartz says:
It’s a close question and one I’m not really qualified to answer.
I think if the customers were free to enter into the long-term contracts and the monopolies free to float the customers’ rates (or shut off their power if the spot rate exceeded the customer’s desire to pay) then I would definitely say they should not be allowed to finance powerplants through their service monopoly.
On the other hand, were the transmission providers prohibited from entering into long-term contracts and required to guarantee rates to customers below the spot rate and prohibited from turning off service if electricity got too expensive, they they definitely should be allowed to.
The real situation is complex and to the extent that I understand it (and frankly, I keep confusing California’s old rules with the current ones and with the Federal ones), it’s somewhere between these two extremes. So it’s in the area I consider to be somewhat gray.
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February 5, 2010, 6:37 pmNobody At All says:
For any particular jurisdiction, the rules relevant here are not gray; and overall, some fairly straight-forward claims can be made.
In particular, a distribution utility under the kind of ratemaking described here (i.e. utilities that earn a return on equity (e.g. 10–12%) on capital investments included its “rate base” — including power plants — apply for permission from the public utilities commission. (Typically, this permission is called something like a “certificate of necessity and convenience.”) A CNC showing will typically require evidence both as to the utility’s anticipated demand, and ways in which that demand can be met — either by construction of a powerplant, or by purchase of energy from another source.
So, to the extent that these kinds of regulations are relevant here, the principle — how to meet a duty of service and earn a guaranteed rate of return on equity — is fairly straightforward, not gray.
Also not gray: IPPs typically do not construct many coal plants. Natural gas and wind is preferred. Large, capital-intensive coal plants are typically financed by inclusion in the monopoly rate base, upon which monopoly utilities are guaranteed a 10–12% rate of return on equity.
So, for all the hand-waving about government interference and picking/choosing technologies, let’s talk about what is happening here: government is financing, through grants of monopoly power, large coal projects typically rejected in the IPP market, by picking such technologies in regulatory proceedings.
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February 5, 2010, 6:50 pmDavid Schwartz says:
Of course. IPPs generally don’t need to provide reliable power. They can opt for cheap power and sell it when it’s working. They don’t have to buy power on the expensive spot market when the wind doesn’t blow. Or they can turn the plant on only when the rate is high enough. So they can build plants that are cheaper to build and tie up less capital even if they use more expensive fuel because they can sell electricity for more and need never sell it at a loss.
I’m not convinced that these disparities aren’t due to the fact that the transmission companies can be forced to sell power at a loss. That’s what I’d have to believe to agree with you. (And it may be that it’s 100% true. I admit that I don’t have enough information to render a useful judgment. But that’s why I can’t sign onto yours.)
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February 5, 2010, 7:04 pmNobody At All says:
Maybe this is the crux of the misunderstanding. “Transmission” companies (by which I think you mean “distribution” companies, right?) are responsible for distributing power to the entire service area. The types of assets here are the low-kv disribution lines, neighborhood transformers, etc.
(As a matter of history: these monopolies were granted because it is generally not profitable to distribute power to rural areas with few people.)
The generation of power is a separate function. A distribution company which doesn’t hold generation assets (e.g. when California forced distribution utilities to divest themselves of generation assets) isn’t earning a rate of return on generation assets. It does, however, pass through the cost of obtaining power. The PUC typically divides these costs among various types of consumers (e.g. industrial/commercial/residential.)
If I read you correctly, your objection is to the actions of the California PUC, during the 2000-era electricity crisis, which refused to raise customer rates to cover the costs of obtaining power, sending distribution utilities careening towards bankruptcy.
In return for the grant of a distribution service monopoly, a utility takes on the risk of serving that territory. California, in effect, refused to allow the utilities to transfer that risk to another party: not to power providers (or power marketers) through long-term power purchase agreements, not to financial intermediaries through hedging transactions, not to customers through rate increases.
This is silly. (I believe that california utilities now enter into long-term PPA, own their own generation assets, and — I would expect, but do not know — are permitted to enter into long-term hedging transactions).
It is also tangential to the issue here: over half of the country is located in an RTO with wholesale transactions — i.e. we have moved away from the monopoly model. Financial institutions routinely take on the risk of price shift, and millions of people are reliably served through wholesale transactions.
It overwhelming the outdated, non-market, cost-of-service rate-making model that continues to construct coal plants today. It is *this* model that people must consider, when discussing public financing and technology-picking.
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February 5, 2010, 7:25 pmCassi Stretz says:
Hi there, I came across your blog site through Msn while trying to find Weather Balloons and your post caught my interest .
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February 6, 2010, 4:42 amDavid Schwartz says:
Are distribution companies *required* to provide power or are they only required to distribute it if it is available for less than they can charge for it? That’s what it comes down to.
If a distribution company only “passes along” power and adds a fee, then I would completely agree with you — they should not be allowed to use their legally-granted monopoly to subsidize a power-production business. However, to the extent that they are ever required to provide power at a loss, they must be permitted to invest in hedging and pass along those costs, whether that means building coal plants or entering into long-term contracts.
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February 6, 2010, 6:06 amNobody At All says:
In return for the grant of a government monopoly, and a guaranteed rate of return on distribution assets, a distribution company is assumes the risk of serving the monopoly territory. That is the deal.
There are several ways in which distribution companies may mitigate or disperse this risk. As I mentioned before, it may transfer this risk via long-term power purchase agreements to generators or power marketers; if buying on the open market, it may transfer price risk to financial institutions via hedging arrangements (as sellers do on routine basis).
Typically, customers do not bear the risk of price increase between periodic planning periods. (e.g. not without an “integrated resource planning” ratemaking proceeding.) It is generally agreed that it makes little sense to deprive customers of competitive suppliers, and also force them to bear the risk of price change. Think about it.
That being said, the California energy market was a somewhat strange situation in which there was massive wholesale market manipulation, and distribution utilities could not sign higher-priced longer term PPAs in order to mitigate short-term price risk, or enter into similar arrangements.
As I explained earlier, this has little to do with the fact that coal plants are picked and chosen by bureaucrats, and financed by guarantees issued by the ratepayers trapped within a government-issued service monopoly. This directly displaces a long-term power purchase agreement with an IPP (or power marketer), who most likely prefers to build a natural gas or wind farm.
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February 6, 2010, 11:14 amNobody At All says:
Edit: Tangentially, if the issue is whether rates should have risen during the electricity crisis, I would come down on the side of “yes.” Either the ratepayers or the taxpayers were going to bear the high costs; I would have preferred the ratepayers to do so. However, given the clear evidence of market manipulation — and I am a strong proponent of RTOs and the CAISO — I also think that disgorgement and fines should be due in such a situation. It should also be recognized that it was a horribly designed market.
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February 6, 2010, 11:22 amA Most Convenient Lie says:
The near certain fraud is proclaiming that global warming is meaningfully anthropogenic. There is no evidence that man has caused significant temperature variations. The earth has, however, experienced substantial temperature variations in the past wihtout man’s contribution. Not only has the earth gone through an ice age, it has also gone through a huge spike in temperature, much higher than today, during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. And yet today, truly miniscule variations in temperature by comparison are laid at the feet of mankind and disaster is predicted with a near religious fanatacism.
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February 6, 2010, 3:11 pmDavid Schwartz says:
So long as distribution companies are *required* to provide power, even at a loss, I would have a hard time supporting anything that prevented them from using the money they get for providing power to reduce the risks that they will be required to provide power at a loss — even if that means building coal plants.
A better solution would be to make distribution companies only distribute. Give them a monopoly territory, but just let them tack on a distribution fee for the power they distribute. Then there would be no reason to permit them to bundle anything but the costs of distribution and maintaining distribution into their charges.
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February 7, 2010, 3:50 amNobody At All says:
I disagree with this reasoning, based upon what are widely recognized as a stronger application of market principles, but no matter.
The clear point here is that your approach advocates bureaucrats picking a technology — coal — rejected in the IPP marketplace, and then financing it through the grant of a government monopoly.
The next time you make a point about picking and choosing and financing power plant technologies rejected by the marketplace, please keep this in mind.
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February 7, 2010, 9:41 amNobody At All says:
(Tangentially: If a distribution company wished to finance a coal plant on a balance sheet not guaranteed by ratepayers in its monopoly territory, and that PPA were simply bidding against other PPAs; that’s a different story. We’re discussing coal plants built on a ratepayer-guaranteed balance sheet, where equity holders are treated like debt and guaranteed a rate of return.)
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February 7, 2010, 9:48 amDavid Schwartz says:
As I said, I’d prefer a system where the distributors were not required to guarantee to provide power, even if at a loss. But given that they are required to provide power, even if at a loss, it makes no sense to prevent them from ensuring that they have a ready supply of power, even if that means building coal plants.
It makes no sense to say “you must provide power, but you cannot build power plants”. If you do, the IPPs will skim the cream and leave the distributors no way to buy the power they are required to provide.
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February 7, 2010, 10:15 amNobody At All says:
Nobody has said this. There is a difference between:
1) Providing power on a balance sheet supported by a ratepayer-guaranteed rate of return to equity and debt;
2) Providing power on a balance sheet not supported by ratepayer guarantees.
And the following simply does not describe the US energy market:
It makes no sense to say “you must provide power, but you cannot build power plants”. If you do, the IPPs will skim the cream and leave the distributors no way to buy the power they are required to provide.
There are a multitude of ways in which distributors may purchase power, especially in an RTO. Subsidizing the financing of coal plants by government-backed monopolies is simply one; and clearly the most anti-market when the technology selected is one rejected by the IPP market.
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February 7, 2010, 10:51 amDavid Schwartz says:
The IPP market is subject to different pressures than the distributors are. It doesn’t follow that just because IPPs have rejected coal plants, distributors would do so too in a free market.
For example, IPPs that opt not to enter into long-term contracts could easily prefer solar plants. They can sell power cheap when they have it, and people will always be willing to buy because coal and natural gas plants cost money to fuel. I can imagine a market where the only profitable IPP technology is solar, since fuel is free. Yet clearly distributors can’t invest in solar because they have to provide power even when the sun isn’t shining. IPPs don’t unless they choose to.
The “must provide power even at a loss” provision puts the distributors in a completely different game from the one IPPs are in. They will invest in the most reliable technologies, even if they cost more per Kwh.
But you are right, of course, allowing distributors to finance power production does distort the market. It’s simple to fix — make distributors only distribute power. Their distribution business should not buy or sell power except as an intermediary, they should not need contracts or generation facilities.
However, so long as they are required to provide power, even at a loss, it makes no sense to say they should not be financing power plants. Part of what an end-user gets from a distributor in the current system is a guarantee that power will be available. That is part of what end users pay for, and it is logical to use their money to ensure that power can be provided.
Remove the requirement that distributors ever provide power at a loss and I’ll be 100% on your side. You can still create separate entities required to provide power at a loss if you want.
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February 8, 2010, 4:59 amNobody At All says:
David:
I guess that we’re done with this. But listen: you go to a bank and ask them to finance a coal plant without ratepayer guarantees. Ask your shareholders to. And let me know how that works out.
Because your argument (“it’s not market forces”) is good, except that it crucially depends on ignoring the market. And your argument about the industry (“monopoly distributors need to build generation to serve the territory”) is good, except that it crucially depends on ignoring the industry.
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February 9, 2010, 8:52 pm