Looks like the whole concept of "global warming" is up for debate now:

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/ ... n-display/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02186.html

Hey, back off. They're peer reviewed!

Bye bye cap and trade.

Yeah, I get pretty annoyed at "there's no such thing as global warming" people too-- only one's worse than them are the, "the earth is only 6000 years old" people.

You display an astonishing command of the details of the controversy, Fribur.

True joxur, but his response kind of proves the point of how we got here in the first place.

- A conspiracy to delete e-mails to circumvent British FOIA laws.
- Modeling programming code with comments like: "Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!"
- A conspiracy to artificially inflate historical data.
- Coordinated efforts to oust climate skeptics from editorial positions at trade journals.

This is an excellent article, with citations directly from the e-mails and links to them.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/three-thin ... imategate/

With all this in mind, this important point:
This controversy is a huge step back for climate change advocates. It gives skeptics a rather large piece of ammunition. An investigation should happen. It's a shame, really. Rather than let the science speak for itself, they tried to make it look worse than it is, and it will hurt the cause in the long run.

Yup. I see two issues at hand in the debate. Firstly, whether the planet's climate undergoes change (cyclical or otherwise). There is plenty of data to demonstrate this, and it makes complete sense that the system would not be in a condition of steady-state. Just like we can't predict when another Ice Age will, or would occur, but know there is a pretty good chance one will occur given the history of the planet (core samples, etc).

Secondly, whether there is evidence of 'anthropogenic' warming; or climate shifts due to human actions. This can be demonstrated locally, cities and population centers are warmer than the land was before they occupied it. Same as a room gets warmer with people in it. On a scale of the Earth, it's not as clear cut. Neither is it clear cut, apparently, in an atmospheric sense.

My initial read on this is that there are some pretty distressing elements here. They seemed to possess knowledge that the models they use to predict climate change are blunt and they could not correlate them to what actually happened over some span they applied them to. And additionally, when they figured this out rather than conclude that either a) what they predicted is not the case, or b) the model is inconclusive; they concluded that the model is wrong because it doesn't show them what they *know* must be happening. Which the model was supposed to be a predictor of in the first place. The basis on that thought is not at all scientific.

The honest answer is just that they can't tell yet.

A question for the global warming "skeptics": how likely do you suppose it is that these emails were published in their original form -- unedited, unembellished -- by the folks who stole them? I suggest you approach this question with the same healthy skepticism you bring to bear on climate science.

But even if these emails are 100% legit, all they suggest to me is that scientists are human. All scientists at some point in their career are tempted to present results selectively in order to support preconceived ideas. The honest ones refrain. There were some dishonest scientists exposed in these emails, and their careers and credibility will suffer for it.

As far as the "revelation" that global climate models are imperfect - no shit. It's well known that climate science is extremely difficult, and climate events are often highly nonlinear. It's not models, however, but empirical data that clearly show that global temperatures are rising in direct proportion to greenhouse gas levels. Correlation, not causation - but a strong enough correlation to be highly suggestive. So it comes down to a question of risk. Maybe the thousands of scientists around the world who've been working on this problem for decades are full of shit. Maybe they're a bunch of lying hacks who're blinded by political interests. Maybe temperatures will drop no matter what we do. But what if they're right? What if even a few of the predicted impacts actually happen? Are cheap gas and power worth those risks?

Now I freely admit that the exact nature of those risks isn't well understood - this is the turf of climate modelers. Lots of room for debate here. It's pretty likely, though, that rich folks (which you are, in global terms, if you live in the US) probably don't need to worry about the direct impacts like rising sea levels -- as usual it'll be the poor who get fucked. But you might find it interesting to read what the Pentagon has to say about the other risks. (Source: National Intelligence Council report to Congress, June '08)

If you're interested, check out the blurb at the end of the testimony that talks about the weak points of climate models, and how the NIC analysis accounts for them.

Who are you talking to? I've never seen any climate skeptics on this forum, unless you count Devil, I wouldn't put anything past him.

me????

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

As an employee of an educational institution, I'm concerned about the character assassinations that these folks pursued in order to discredit people who did research with a different outcome than they desired. The effort to totally seal off from debate people who found results that conflicted with their agenda without any concern for objectivity is quite disturbing.

I wonder what other areas of academia are also being treated this way.

As to concern about the hacking, I find it hypocritical that the NYT would publish Sarah Palin's hacked emails but would not publish the emails in this case. Shouldn't a newspaper at least attempt to portray itself as fair?

LOL... the press has been doing things like that forever, if your not one of them they will stop at nothing to slam and smear you all over the pages, but if you one of them, they see nothing.

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

It proves quite a bit more than 'they are human'. And thousands of scientists may agree, but how many of those used their models and their papers as references? Much of academia is derivative work.



Source?

He was talking to Sarissa.

I'm not a climate skeptic. I'm a bad science skeptic, and I do not believe in the precautionary principle.

I agree. Bad science is bad science and any science that states that it can predict outcomes on systems as large as planetary climate with any certainty is bad science.

Anybody here old enough to remember the 80s conviction that we were headed into an ice age?

That would be the guy, from Denver(I will not call him a climatologist) that Al Gore quotes

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Yes, of course research builds on past work. In fact, there is an enormous body of work on climate modeling, dating back decades and still evolving. There are hundreds of climate models, and many studies analyzing their assumptions, numerical methods, sensitivity to inputs, and predictive power. The IPCC has explained in depth the uncertainty in climate models, and taken that uncertainty into account in their '07 synthesis report. Again, it's well known that there are many difficult problems in climate models - clouds, aerosols, volcanic events, computational limitations, etc. - and good scientists therefore take their outputs with a grain of salt. These emails bring one particular model under even higher scrutiny, and if it's found to be fallacious then it will be corrected, its simulations will be re-run, and its outputs will be reconsidered.

Mauna Loa Laboratory's CO2 data
and
NASA Goddard Institute's temperature data

Go nuts.

The debate is whether the cause of global warming is anthropogenic.

If it could be unambiguously accounted for, it would by definition not be uncertain. Considering that the 'noise' is in all likelihood non-periodic, that portion of the methodology is suspect as well. The problem I have with the affair, is that consistently definitive projections are being presented with consistently undefinitive models. Test and re-test? Awesome, that's a worthy enterprise. Presenting the output of an alpha product as gospel? Not so much.

The emails question more than one model, they question the methodology the group uses. It also brings into question the results of other groups reaching the same conclusions. And that is of course putting it mildly. Do we know if this is indeed isolated, or has their data tainted further studies?

And, I asked for a source from which the conclusion is drawn. Those appear to be raw data. Two similar graphs are not necessarily correlated. Many measurable quantities on this planet follow a pattern of linear increase.

Did you? All I saw was:

Not the clearest of inquiries.

But I applaud your curiosity. You seem like a bright guy, and you have the data. If you're truly interested in the subject, why not run a few sophomore-level statistical analyses and see what you come up with? If you'd like to check your results, you're no doubt familiar with any number of web searching tools.

As for your questions about how the methodologies of different climate research groups compare, why not follow your curiosity by reading a few of their papers? If you are truly skeptical of their results, that seems a reasonable starting point.

Or you can just take what the popular media tells you at face value and call yourself a skeptic. /shrug

I'm a skeptic an everything. Climate change... sure the planet/solar system could have long lasting cycles we do not understand yet. But I do believe that humans under estimate the impact of over population.

I'm also skeptical of alternative energy solutions. People screaming for wind energy all over I think might be suprised what kind of effect it will have 50 years from now.

Yes, and the Ozone hole and in the 70's they said we only have 20 years worth of oil and gas left and on and on.

I am glad that these email messages have been put on display. We don't need to put detrimental limiters on our economy like the so called cap and trade bills when 1) we are in/trying to com out of a recession or 2) the science that they are using to indicate we must do something is greatly flawed.

Alternative energy sources are good for augmenting our electrical grid. Wind and solar are good for adding additional electricity, but right now they do not have the ability to provide the 100% demand that we require.

Now that I just can't get behind. Science has been able to accurately describe systems far more complex (e.g. neural networks) and far larger (e.g. galaxies, galactic clusters, and "the universe") than earth's atmosphere. What makes bad science bad is lack of scientific rigor - it's not about complexity or size.

I'm not convinced that pricing carbon would be a "detrimental limiter on our economy," although it will definitely make fossil energy more expensive. But I'd like to think the money raised through cap & trade will be used to fund R&D in competing technologies, spurring innovation and accelerating the learning curve, economies of scale, and other factors that may make non-fossil energy sources cost competitive on their own merits. We've had two centuries to learn how to mine, transport, and burn fossil fuels very efficiently, and today's low energy costs reflect all that industry evolution. I'd argue that similar investment in clean technologies will have similarly impressive results.

That's the theory anyway, we'll see what actually gets written into legislation.

As for your point #2, of course I'd argue that the science on the whole isn't flawed, but really that's beside the point. There are other very good reasons to invest in future energy technologies, such as decreasing our dependence on foreign oil, investing the trillion+ dollars a year we spend on energy domestically rather than in unstable regions, etc.

I have to be honest, while the scandal itself is worthy of a "what the fuck were you thinking" bitchslap, this doesn't really change my opinion on the whole global warming debate in any significant way.

I suspect this is largely because most of my thoughts on the matter are based on the idea that lowering the impact of our existence on the planet is a good thing, even if it costs us more to do so, rather than having had it based on some science backed doomsday scenario.

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Pretty much what Noojens said. Personally, I've relegated a list of conservative blogs for daily laughs on the subject. Tons of ignorance born out of pure political alignment, which is always an odd mixture of funny and scary.

hmm, looks like the University of Missouri wants the bill to not be passed as it would cost them additional millions of dollars:

{full story here}

Perhaps they should invest in cleaner energy then, which is costing you, me, and everyone else millions in extra health care costs.

I have, at length. I've also posted here about it, at length. I'm just curious about where you found the information to draw that conclusion. If all that is behind the statement is a pair of tables, it's ok to say that. There's no point in looking at them if there's no proof they are correlated in the first place. One can average anything, it doesn't follow that the result is meaningful. If it were indeed that simple, there would be no debate.

We can describe neural networks, because we invented them. We can describe the galaxy because it's far less complicated than an atmosphere. There's much less 'going on' there, and fewer variables.

This:



I hope most folks can agree with.

Yes, I can agree with it 100%. When people are FORCED to make changes that are more expensive and are punished for not making changes then that is a problem. People should be rewarded for doing good in this area. Give people/businesses rewards for having a smaller impact and you will have more people get behind it. Punish people for not changing and you will have more resistance and people fighting, kicking and screaming.

This is what is so neat about cap and trade-- it does this. Businesses that don't need the pollution credits they have (because they have the smaller impact you mention) can sell them to companies that need them for cash. Cap and trade, by it's nature, allows both positive and negative reinforcement, creating all kinds of incentives for companies to clean up their act.

Sarissa: I guess I'm unsure what exactly you're asking. You've stated yourself that the two quantities are linearly increasing, a correlation which in itself, I agree, is basically meaningless. But when this is coupled with some simple physics (CO2 absorption spectrum vs. solar spectrum, observed greenhouse effect in other planets, etc), to me it becomes "suggestive." Do you disagree?

As for the rest, this feels a bit like pulling teeth. I never suggested there's "no need for debate" -- in fact, time and again I've said things like "climate models should be taken with a grain of salt," "lots of room for debate here," and so on.

Re: neural networks, I was talking about brains, not programming constructs. Or are you suggesting that we invented brains?

Re: galaxies and the atmosphere, I agree with you that there's less "going on" with galaxies (or at least, that we require less granularity of predictive power). Kula's argument, however, was that it's impossible to understand the earth's atmosphere because the system is too large. Galaxies are larger than the atmosphere, yet fairly well understood, hence size is obviously not the limiting factor. I think it's silly to suggest that ambitious science is bad science.

I've linked a few sources in this thread; if you'd like to meet me halfway perhaps you could link to what you've written "at length" in this forum, or share what you've learned from the papers you've read.

I'm asking what the origin of the statement is. Is it a book, a paper, intuition, grape vine, yadda yadda?

Sure, in the biological sense the networks are very complicated. So, with an imperfect level of knowledge can we make the same sorts of claims about them as we can about the climate? Galaxies are dimensionally larger, but are made up of objects we generally define as closed systems. We can say where they are, what they're 'made' of, how fast they move, etc. But we can't say what the wind speed on an extrasolar planet is or how frequently it rains. So, it may be physically larger but the size of what we are looking at is not.

Not sure what re-hashing everything will accomplish. Anyway I'm not that much into it to remember what I posted. Usually just pointing out weird things like extra decimals appearing, error disappearing, or measurements of things like ocean acidity with strange precisions. Haven't seen much interesting lately, excepting this little nugget leading in to the climate summit.

True, dat; where the US has the issues with this is that there are two many regulations in the US (not to mention taxes) so it is easier and cheap and more profit to move a manufacturing plant to a third world county that does not have the regulations on CO2 emissions, or to China or India who have also said publicly that they will not abide by the last global warming treaty or what ever the hell it was called. Now I am not saying that we should do this but we do need to keep our manufacturing profitable, to do that we would need to low regulations.

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Well, if we can get these scientists away from climatology and back to the serious business of creating hot women from scratch, we'll all be thankful in the end.

LOL

the only issue with this is these aren't real scientests...

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

I call bullshit. I was listening to NPR last Wed on my way home from NY and they had a scientist on who said this was bullshit. That the temps have actually dropped and that CO2 was still rising, debunking the theory that you state. It was a great interview that lasted well over an hour that defended some theories and blew others away. I just wish I could remember the guys name. I searched all over NPR for the interview. It was good listening.

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"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
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VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

I'd be interested in knowing what interview it was, because the one I heard on NPR the other day (Diane's show) was a scientist saying that we are still on track to be the hottest december, and more importantly the hottest decade, on record and that it was unfortunate that this incident was going to be used to ignore the actual temperature data.

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Yup. Call whatcha like, but if you want to be taken seriously you should provide better support than "someone said it on the radio, but I don't remember who." I'd be interested in reading a transcript or hearing the podcast or whatever.

Yeah, so would I. It wasn't a female host. I rarely listen to NPR so I am not sure who it would have been, but it was from around 11-2PM on Wednesday, the 25th.

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"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
_____
VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

Is Obama just stupid????

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/12/18/ ... index.html

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Climate change: The time for talk is over!
Health care: The time for talk is over!
Stimulus: The time for talk is over!

This badly needs a South Park episode.

Why is it stupid? Just curious.

Because it's a re-wording of the line the world has had since Kyoto. The time for inaction is over (as soon as we get China on board). I just don't see China buying off on it. There's no reason to.

Pile on the rest of what is going on at the conference and it's hard to say the barrier is being 'all talk'. Some significant concerns have been raised, and those need to be addressed.

Both China AND India have walked out.

http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_br ... rt_1324981

this is so true..



Other then what Sarissa, Said; It has just come out that all or most of the "experts" that the US has put their faith in for climate change may have been using skewed models.

Why have China and India walked out, these regulations are no good for build up an economy which both of these counties are doing, what these people want to do is why over the top.

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

MY GOD MY EYES MAKE IT STOP!

I fucking hate politicians.

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and they both want "reparations" from the US and other western nations.

If you mean this "climategate," then by "all or most" you actually meant a tiny few of the thousands of scientists in collective agreement on the status of our climate. You need to take off the blinders, my friend. This isn't a controversy, except among conservatives.

I have to ask, have you actually looked at the data in question? Do you actually understand that the data in question was accepted and used by scientists around the world in their own investigations into global warming?

Let's look at the simplest of the data that was manipulated: tree rings. Ok, tree rings were considered one of the truest ways to measure global temperature. We were all taught that in middle school. Well, it turns out that tree rings were discovered to be unreliable data sets when compared actual global temperature measurements dating back to the 1960s. Rather than questioning the data derived from measuring tree rings pre-1960s, the scientists in the UK simply took the pre-60s data and tacked on the actual temperature measurements. So the historical dataset that worldwide scientists relied upon in their modelling was possibly faulty.

Bad science? yup. Fraud? I don't know, it depends on their motivation.

Regardless, at this point we really have no idea whether or not the historical data backs the assumptions made to conclude that the current warming trend is substantially different than previous warming trends; whether man has impacted the climate significantly.

My gut says that we are having an impact and not a good one but the science is now unreliable.

No, I have not read the details. I am not that interested, frankly. The idea that 13,000+ scientists have already agreed based on 100s of studies done on the subject is enough for me to trust their opinion over the opinions of conservative politicians. That's enough for me. A few emails from a single institute doesn't change that, for me.

That’s the thing Fribur, the 100s of studies are in question right now, and there are just as many scientists that have concluded that there is not enough "solid" data to conclude, humans have any real influence on the climate.

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Also Fribur, I am not getting into whether or not this is Good Science or not. But what I was saying is that now is was a very poor timing on Obama's part trying to push this, when there is a controversy about it.

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

There could be over 9000 studies per scientist, the number of either doesn't affect the reason folks should be concerned. The root cause for concern is that the data upon which they are based is what is questionable. And it is potentially unavailable in full (they do still have it in part for sure).

Statistical analysis of fudged data gives fudged results. Statistical analysis of a fudged model gives fudged results. Studies derived from a fudged paper are themselves fudged. It propagates through the whole system.

It's because the errors propagate as you manipulate the data. So in essence you have a base data set with some natural +/- error in it. Then you add a +/- fudge factor. So your number x represents (x +/- error +/- fudge). When you perform mathematical operations on it, those deltas are multiplied, divided, added, subtracted along with the 'real' number. If they're adding whole integers to it as correction factors, the % error can be huge.

Your 13,000+ scientists based their studies on the same data and that dataset has now been tainted by manipulation and a lack of scientific vigor. Those 13,000+ scientists didn't know the data was faulty but it was.

It's good to know that you don't care about facts though...