only one organization and a small group of people have been "tainted" as you put it. This does nothing to prove the science wrong.



True with some subjects, but simply false with this one.

Fribur, take 5 minutes and do a minimal amount of reading and you will see why the above statement is just ridiculous...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit

You cannot use tainted data to come to any untainted scientific conclusion. The "one organization" and the "small group of people" were relied upon by most, if not all, scientists around the world.

I read it. I'm still confused as to how you think these 30 people invalidate the results of thousands of studies all over the world. Based on the emails that I've read from the "omg horrible scandal," I don't even necessarily invalidate their results. I don't generally take one problem with a given subject and then use it to invalidate an entire branch of science. I am glad that science does not do that either.

Politics, however, use this tactic all the time. Just look at the health care thread on these boards. The bill is now 2000 pages long, with all kinds of complicated provisions and reforms, yet contrarians take one thing they don't like about it (like, "omg illegal immigrants are going to get care!") and then use that to throw out the entire bill as worthless. The bill may be worthless, but it would have to be shown to be worthless as a whole, not through a single part of the bill. It is the same with this research station.

As Time magazine reported last week (December 21 issue, if you want to go find it-- page 26.), "While the e-mails showed that climate researchers could have been more responsive toward skeptics, there's nothing to indicate that widespread scientific fraud was under way. At it would have to have been widespread: the climate research from CRU is just one strand among decades of studies that point toward the conclusion that global warming is real and dangerous and that man-made carbon emissions are the major cause."

Fribur, you do know that the sensors that the CRU were using on the arctic ice were not working, they were saying that the ice pack on the arctic ice was shrinking in fact it was growing.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/03/a ... cord-rate/

Also of the 1000's of studies that were conducted, I will bet the more then 95% of them were using the same theory's and data to prove the same thing.

Here is my point on this, when the scientists are, putting out these studies on the government dime, do you think they are going to put out data that is contrary to the popular belief of the people in office who are giving them money? No of course not they want\need the money to keep there jobs. Do you think the media would report on things that are not with there current view point or report on things that would not cause people to go OMG? no of course not.

My point was never about weather or not the studies were flawed or not, it was simply that, Obama has no timing when to push an agenda.

_________________
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.

Studies are based on data. If the data is tenuous, so are the studies. If you want to assess the quality of a group of studies, you examine the original work which is usually ~25% of them. The remainder are derivatives that cite the original.

Any publication that qualifies the string of emails as "showed that climate researchers could have been more responsive toward skeptics" is putting it obtusely light. They were responsive toward skeptics, and those responses were direct, unpleasant, and affected those peoples' careers.

But those same government funded research centers said the same thing when Bush was in office. Your argument does not hold up.

Government funded research, by the way, is essential; if research was only funded if somehow it might be profitable (as would be the case in a completely private system) entire branches of knowledge would simply be ignored. In fact, I'm sure there are many discoveries that did lead to profitable enterprises that would never have been funded by private companies simply because the profit wasn't initially obvious.

Studies are based on data, sure. That data is not necessarily incorrect because some researchers typed up bad emails. Even if some of the data is incorrect, they are not the only people making these observations. The neat thing about science is that there is consensus on a subject like this (and there is, of that there is no doubt) because of the ability of science to independently verify results of experiments or even the collection of data.

What stinks for me is what is obvious on both sides of this debate. The people here debating right now are biased. I am biased, and you are biased, and we are clearly incapable of stepping out of our bias. When these emails came out, the people like you, with generally conservative political stances immediately jump on it as a chance to try to invalidate an entire branch of science. At the same time, people with generally liberal political stances, like me, tend to want to minimize the supposed "taint" of these emails as not a big deal.

I am more comfortable siding with science. As long as the vast majority of scientists (and I just don't know how you could dispute this) continue to hold to the validity of the man-made contribution to global warming, I am going to trust their judgement. I do not spend my life on this subject; they do. They have better access to the data, to the experiments, and greater education. The vast majority of them do not have political offices to keep in countries where scientific knowledge is woefully lacking in the general public (like ours). I will tend to believe that they are doing their best to do science for the sake of advancing knowledge. This is what I'll stand on, and I will continue to believe this is preferable to standing on a small minority of scientists who disagree, and who are loudly trumpeted by conservative politicians who definitely have political agendas on their minds.

????? its got nothing to do with Bush or Obama, the current political climate is people are bad, until that changes it behooves the scientists to side with the policy that people are causing the earth to heat up.

prof http://www.heartland.org/policybot/resu ... heory.html this got 0 press and did not get funded for more research.

I too am siding with science on this one, which goes to support my point that Obama should not be supporting this as there is no clear indicator that says we as people have any real influence on the environment.

_________________
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.

What does the outcome of their research have to do with the President? They are not funded by the Executive branch.

As to why science is essential, I do not think anyone would disagree with that. No one is beating up on science. Why should people trust the judgment of folks whose own actions have called their credibility into question?

They are not the only ones making the observations, true, but the observations of other researchers are based upon data that originated from them. Data sets that are only partially available in their original form, and which they cannot even tell how or why they were 'modified' the way that they were. When they are asked for the original data, say they don't have it, and are then asked to 'undo' their 'correction' factors and cannot that is a gigantic red flag.

I don't really understand why we put so much energy into this debate.

Putting bad things in the air is bad... so let's reduce the bad things we put into the air. It seems so easy. Not even Rush Limbaugh would argue against that... woudl he?

Orme, that isn't what is at debate in the case for/against man-made global warming and the sham that was Copenhagen. The developing countries (ie India and China) want us (the US and Europe) to shell out tens of billions of dollars to them so they can "punish" us for being developed and contributing so much CO2 into the atmosphere.

The issue with climategate is like what Devil has been trying to say - the core sets of data that those thousands of scientists based their research on were flawed. Each of them did not create their own data sets, they used the work of others that they thought were peer-reviewed and valid data-sets. Why the e-mail messages were so bad is that they point out where one data-set did not provide the results they wanted they plugged in other numbers to get the results they did want.

That is not science. Science is not going into to a question with a desired result. Science is going into a question and testing it every way you can and with every variable to get a valid result. When some issues get political and monies follow certain sides of the answer, scientist are "paid" to have results look a certain way.

Look at tobacco. Forever the industry owned politicians and still we won't stop selling tobacco products even though the users of that product have been shown to be killed by that product.

CO2 is not a poison. Plants need it to create oxygen. We exhale CO2. It is in the sodas we drink. We should be more worried about what is getting into our water than CO2 emissions.

What does CO2 not being a poison have to do with the overabundance of it heating our planet? Irrelevant.

I'm sorry, I should have said this in the earlier post.

You and Devil keep making it sound like the entire branch of science relating to climate warming depends on the data sets from this one entity. Could you back that up with sources, please? You assume it to be so, but I haven't found anything other than right wing blogs that agree with you.

Some? yes. All of it? Hell no. I still trust science over you and Devil.

This isn't pointed at me but I'll respond.

Here you go: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/scienc ... index.html

Yeah, both the wiki site & CNN say nonspecific words like 'most' etc. but both are NOT conservative blogs and at least slightly left-leaning. The fact that I have yet to see anyone defending the science by waving around studies and shouting that "this study didn't use CRU datasets" is fairly telling to me. So, Fribur, I will turn the question around on you: Show me a single peer-reviewed long term serious study that concludes with a decent degree of certainty that human behaviors rather than a larger climactic cycle is the reason for global warming and that global warming is actually occurring in such a way as to raise it to the level of threat that it is being called.

To be clear I have absolutely no problem with the goals of the 'global warming' believers. Less pollution is a very good idea; getting off of fossil fuels is a necessary idea; even helping developing nations to develop in a cleaner manner than we did is smart (although I don't believe that just handing them $$ is the appropriate help). My problem with this whole issue is the lies and deceit that was/is used to create an atmosphere of urgency around the whole matter and to a lessor extent the hypocrisy of those who touted the 'science' now refusing to deal with the manipulation of that science they relied upon.

Frankly in a situation where you're challenging the consensus of thousands of scientists and decades of work, the burden of proof is on you. But none of y'all responded to my earlier requests for links, sources, data, etc, so I don't expect much.

Kind of exhausted with this conversation, but here's a chart that both sides of the debate might find interesting:

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/v ... consensus/

Nope. When someone claims that they can conclude scientifically any result they bear the burden of proof. When someone points to a consensus that was reached prior to the information about the manipulated data then they need to be able to show that the questionable data was not used in reaching that consensus.

Can you show me a link, either to text from the stolen emails or to a statement by an climate expert, demonstrating that ice core, tree ring, sea level, polar ice cap, and direct air temperature measurements have been called into question?

I'm just not sure where you got that idea.

Meanwhile, here's a statement from a periodical you might have read called the Washington Post. It's by the executive editor of Science, and the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... inionsbox1

You might contrast that with Sarah Palin's article that appeared one day earlier in the same paper. Free beer on me for every contradiction you can find.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03402.html

Again, I'm interested to hear where you're drawing your conclusions from, because I'm quite a bit more inclined to trust a brilliant and extremely accomplished scientist than a poorly informed politician with clear partisan motives.

Your mileage may vary.

Noojens, please explain how someone whose background and degree are in Psychology, who was the head of NiMH prior to being named to the NSF by GWB is a "brilliant and extremely accomplished scientist" who is qualified to opine on climate change...

Regarding the burden of proof, let me clarify. It's absolutely true that an espoused scientific theory must be supported with evidence and compelling arguments. This support for the climate change theory has been accumulated through decades of rigorous scientific debate.

You have a good point that if this dialogue were based on false data, its conclusions would be extremely suspect. What I'm asking you to prove is that the data are false. If you can clearly show that, then I agree that the burden is once again on the consensus community to either show why their conclusions still hold, or to draw new ones.

Because he represents perhaps the most respected scientific body on the planet, and is extremely well advised.

Can you answer the same question about Sarah Palin?

here is one link:
graph showing removal of tree ring data

Here of the email messages by Professor David Douglass

Part of the bringing into question is this statement from the emails:


Discusion of the CRU's source code that calls their conclusions into question

These articles are from The American Thinker, a conservative site, but I think more educated than many of the other "Right Wing" blogs.

Why in the hell would I? She has no qualifications...

Thanks for adding something concrete to the conversation, Krby. I'll take a look at your links later today.

Kula: great, glad you acknowledge that. Now we can put aside the debate about which source is more reputable, and get back to my question: where did you get the idea that the CRU emails compromise the scientific consensus on global warming? Krby provided some sources for his opinions; can you?

What are you asking? Without disclosing their methodology, they tacked on actual global temperatures to tree-ring derived historical temperatures then let it be used as the same dataset while also not finding any scientific explanation for the divergence of the datsets in the 1960s. That is a single example among many. The data is bad. There may or may not be man-caused global warming but any study (including the "many" referenced previously) that claims it can come to any scientific conclusion while using that dataset is questionable.

I also take issue with this 'concensus community' you refer to repeatedly. Have they been out front defending what CRU did? nope. I have yet to see/find anything from an actual climatologist whose life's work may have been discredited by use of CRU datasets claiming the science is still solid. Where are they? If I were forced to guess I'd posit that they are scrambling trying to reprove their life's work using non-CRU data.



First, I have never said that the CRU e-mails compromise consensus; until the scientific community actually vets the datasets and methodologies used and climatologists start speaking out again we simply don't know whether there is still consensus or not.. They reveal a pattern of compromised datasets that were used to reach the consensus.

Secondly, Neither source is more or less reputable in the area of climatology and neither source was referenced by me. You brought them both into the discussion.

Thirdly, I have already provided 2 links that disscuss why the 'climategate' scandal has an impact on climatology modelling. WTH have you provided? A link to an opinion piece by a Psychologist. As far as I can tell most climatologists are staying out of the public eye while this whole mess is investigated.

But you can easily, according to you, provide a link to peer-reviewed climatological studies that don't rely on any data from CRU, right?

I suggest you go back and read my earlier posts in this thread.

I'll address your other points when I have some time later today.

had to do it...

Thousands gather to protest Global Warming:

If you're talking about the 2 links you posted with the Real temperature data they only cover periods from 1880 forward and 1959 forward; not nearly enough to look at for climactic change being possibly man-based. DL this study, I think you'll find interesting: http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025

then we need MORE warming

lol

Thanks again for the links, Krby. I’ll start by putting this whole debate into context of climate science, then address those links specifically (I agree with some points the blogger makes, and disagree with some others).

First, two points to make by way of context:

The first point is that the climate change consensus exists regardless of what happened at the Climate Research Unit. The CRU data in question is relevant only to global surface temperature, which is but one of several indicators of global warming. Two other notable indicators are sea level rises and melting polar ice caps. These indicators are completely independent of the CRU, and show consistent warming trends. CRU data also has zero relationship to empirical data on CO2 levels. A good start for these data is NASA's climate change site (also the source of the images below):

http://climate.nasa.gov/index.cfm

Sea levels:


Ice caps:


CO2 levels:


The second point is that the CRU is only one of several global temperature data sets. Earlier in this thread I linked the temperature database maintained by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which again is completely independent of the CRU (different instruments, different methods). An in-depth and accessible discussion of GISS’s history and methodology by Jim Hansen, the GISS’s earth sciences division director, is at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/ ... cience.pdf

Here is the GISS global temperature data, publicly available at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/



Hansen also discusses differences between NASA’s and the CRU’s global temperature data sets, and the importance of maintaining multiple independent sets of measurements. He concludes with the following:

So to recap, the CRU contributes one component of the mountain of data that supports the scientific consensus on climate change. Even if the CRU data is shown to be false (unlikely), the consensus will almost certainly remain that humans are causing the globe to warm. The particulars of how this happens and what exactly the impacts will be are still open fields of very interesting, active research, and IMO climate models should be taken with a grain of salt - but the consensus on anthropogenic climate change remains.


Now, regarding Krby’s sources:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that the arguments can be boiled down to two points: first, the CRU scientists used a shady “trick” to “hide the decline” in tree ring temperature indicators; and second, established climate scientists have conspired to keep climate skeptics’ papers out of peer reviewed journals.

The first is a totally valid point: that chart is pretty damn misleading. Such selective presentation of data is dishonest and reprehensible, no doubt. It should be noted, though, that it was only the presentation of the data that was manipulated, and as far as we know the data itself wasn’t tampered with. Indeed, here are two studies that scrutinize the CRU data, using different methods but agreeing that the data shows no evidence of tampering:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... nt-page-5/
http://www.gilestro.tk/2009/lots-of-smo ... sify-data/

This is the key point: other climate papers are based on CRU data, not the chart. If the data themselves were tampered with, then any papers based on these data are called into question. Such papers would need to be revisited, and their methods and conclusions closely scrutinized. The two studies linked above suggest there was no tampering, but they’re preliminary at best. This is an important area and should be looked into further.

The second point, that of a conspiracy to keep skeptics out of peer-reviewed journals, IMO holds less water. I won’t address it, because the articles you provided actually have several links to justifications by reviewers for denying the papers in question.

So in closing, I think the CRU emails exposed some reprehensible actions. They also exposed some popcorn-worthy drama from the private lives of scientists (which I found pretty fun to read). I'm unconvinced that there's any evidence of scientific fraud, but I'll wait to draw any conclusions on that until the American Physical Society publishes the results of the CRU audit that are scheduled for release in February. Stay tuned.

P.S. Kula I'll get back to ya in a bit.

That is quite an interesting paper! What I found even more interesting was the discussion in the literature that followed it, which pointed out enough errors in the author's calculations that Loehle felt compelled to publish corrections to the paper. The author's own corrected paper is here:

http://docserver.ingentaconnect.com/del ... 44983190DD

An interesting tidbit:

Bold added to emphasize that the charts in the original paper not only failed to include confidence intervals, but also made completely inaccurate claims about global temperatures between 1935 and 1980. The corrected paper concludes that when the empirical GISS data I linked above is taken into consideration, there is no statistically significant difference in temperatures between the medieval warming period and the current warming period.

So guess what! The CRU researchers weren't the only ones to publish blatantly misleading graphs.

Excellent posts. Unfortunately people just don't care about the real data anymore.

They tacked it on to a chart. Can you show me a source that demonstrates that they manipulated the data itself?

I'd love to read any other examples you have. Where are you getting this information from? How are you drawing these conclusions?

If you haven't seen any papers defending the scientific consensus on climate change, you obviously haven't been looking very hard. Here is Nature's response to the CRU email hacking:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 2545a.html

Here is a response by Dr. Ben Santer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a climate scientist with a PhD from the CRU. His "life's work" is most definitely under attack.

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/inde ... en_letter/

Here is a response by Miles Allen, head of the climate group at Oxford:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... phil-jones


Here is a statement, signed by 1,700 scientists in the UK and published on 12/9:


Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/e ... 950783.ece

So there you have four links, the product of about ten minutes of googling. I think if you want to be taken seriously you should turn off Rush, close the ClimateAudit.org window and do the very minimal amount of legwork required to educate yourself on this issue.

Actually, let me rephrase that. I think it's great that you've pursued the issue as far as you have, rather than just consuming what the popular media feed you. It's not easy to wade through all the crap that naive parties on both sides of the debate throw out there to obfuscate things. I also think scientists need to realize that an essential part of their job is boiling their research down to the point where any interested person can understand it. Nobody likes being told they're not smart enough to understand something.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/graph_of_the_day_for_december_21.html

Noojens, what do you think of the explanation given in the above link? I don't know how credible it is (since I am not a scientist and don't play one on tv), but, it does look as though someone may have figured out something about what the email also in that link was talking about doing. Your thoughts?

I have been reading this (and the thread about 'healthcare') since I am always interested in the views of everyone here. I don't want to interfere with your comments and won't participate regularly (I can hear the sighs of relief now! s'ok .. I get it) but I did want to ask the above question and to just give my viewpoint too.

I have come to the conclusion (of my own accord) that I don't care about whether the world is warming or not, nor about whether it is human beings who are doing it or not. If it is, it will take longer than I have here on earth to truly manifest itself, and if it is isn't, then all will be cool.

That said though, I am not 'uncaring' or unconcerned at all. If someone/anyone/the powers that be had said to me that we have pollution problems, I would have agreed and helped to fix that (and I have done my part already and will continue to do so). If they had said, we need to conserve energy, I would have been happy to help with that. Again, I am all for this and I participate as much as I can. If (some) species are dying off because we are destroying their habitats and it seems premature in the grand scheme of worldly things, I am happy to help preserve areas for them to prosper, etc. But, if someone says to me .. the sky is falling, chicken little .. and asks me to jump, clap and pay through the nose so they can make money while we peons deplete our own stashes for that alone, and no one and nothing will be saved, and nothing much will ever be accomplished for any of the above issues .. ummmm nope.

As far as I can see, we really can't fix whatever global warming issue is identified, even if it is real (which I don't buy but I could be convinced if there was truly good evidence and a reason to believe other than someone else getting even more rich and powerful). However, the way I see it we can only work on the little problems one by one (and should, till we see some real results). We could spend much less money and save 5 million kids a year by giving them medicines and water and food and helping provide them with sustainable life giving knowledge, equipment, etc. I believe I heard someone screaming about us spending what you call so much on 'foreign aid programs', but, do I also hear you scream about climate-related spending committments such as the one the great 'I-won' made the other day in Copenhagen? If so, great, and that would at least be consistent. If not, why not?

Spending a fortune to line the pockets of the likes of people such as the Goracle won't accomplish anything near that much. A remote possibility of invoking 2 degrees change would cost us how much? And take how long? And make how much dent in what it really would take to 'save the planet' if the authors of the climate crisis are right?

Just my humble opinion. Thanks for letting me post. Merry Christmas all! Stay well and happy.

Chiasma,

If we took the billions that we are spending (IMO wasting) on the global warming/CO2 issue and focused it on the WATER issue we would greatly and positively impact possibly saving more lives than any of us can comprehend.

Clean, accessible water to everyone should be our mission. Less than one percent of the water on Earth is suitable for human use and/or consumption. When clean water is available quality of life is dramatically improved. Some estimates say that we can provide clean water to everyone that doesn't have it for $50 Billion. Yet these politicians and world leaders are bickering about how much country A and B have to pay countries M through Z for previous carbon uses so they can just line their pockets. IT MAKES ME SICK!

You have countries in Africa where the women and girls spend most of their day going to get drinking water for their homes. They don't get educated -- all they are to the family is a mule that carries the babies and the water.

What is sad to me is that there could be a child in one of those nations that does not have access to clean water that does have the ability to create something that could take us to the next generation of power that doesn't impact nature at all, yet because that child is not getting the needed education to expand their knowledge that solution may never be known.

Hi Chiasma... long time no see!

Noojens... thanks for stepping in. I could have never produced this kind of quality.

All in a day's work! I mean shit, what else was I going to do on my last day before vacation?

Krby, you're completely right - access to safe drinking water is basic human right that far too many people are lacking. I'll just point out that water and energy - at least conventional energy (coal and nuclear power plants use a metric fuckton of water, oil refineries pollute the shit out of rivers and reservoirs, mining operations fuck up aquifers) - are inextricably intertwined. Among the predicted impacts of climate change (again from climate.nasa.gov) are:

Starvation and drought in already economically depressed regions? Awesome.

I heard a presentation from a young Kenyan woman a few weeks ago, where she described the strife her tribe's been facing due to water shortages. Forced migrations, resource wars with neighbors, etc. The huge hydroelectric projects that the Chinese government is planning in Africa (mostly to power Chinese factories and mining operations) will displace literally millions of people from ancestral lands, leaving them adrift and impoverished (not to mention without access to clean water or affordable energy). This shit is real, it is happening, and it is scary.

The developing world needs energy sources other than coal and oil plants (yes, oil is burned for electricity in much of the developing world) and big hydro. Improving the efficiency and lowering the cost of alternative energy sources is what the R&D funds from a cap-and-trade program should be used for. What they will be used for is a different story... I'm just as cynical as you are about the devil's bargains that'll be made in passing c&t legislation.

Getcha in a sec here Chia Thanks for your input!

FYI, Krby posted a link to that page earlier in the thread. I agree that the "trick" they used to hide the weirdness in tree ring data was misleading and dishonest. The data itself doesn't appear to have been tampered with, though, so aside from that one chart, that dishonesty will likely have very little impact on climate science.

I think that's a good assessment of the situation. If you're reading these boards, then you have a computer and electricity, so you're rich enough by global standards that you won't really be effected by climate change. Hell, if you live in an agriculturally-focused community in the US you might even profit from it. A lot of people - the global poor, primarily - will get fucked, though. Sea level rises will displace people from coastal regions, droughts will cause water and food shortages, etc. So it's basically an ethical decision: are you willing to accept some small inconveniences - paying a little more for electricity, or being conscientious about turning off lights and buying efficient appliances - in order to alleviate the suffering that our energy habits are inadvertently causing?

You're right to a point - with the amount of CO2 we've already emitted, some measure of warming is inevitable. But the differences in predicted impacts between a business-as-usual (high emission) scenario and even a moderate reduction in emissions is drastic. A lot can still be done to decrease the impacts of climate change, and some of it (such as using energy more efficiently) will actually save us money. McKinsey & Company (a hardnosed, private consulting firm) released a study in a few months ago that concluded that:

Source: http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/e ... fficiency/

That's $700 billion in savings over 10 years - roughly the amount of the stimulus package, incidentally - while simultaneously decreasing the environmental impacts of energy production. Sounds like a win to me.

Anyhoo, thanks again for your thoughts and happy holidays to you too.

Oops. Sorry. I guess I missed the earlier link to that same article. Remind self not to skip all the links/eloquent scientific explanations.

I agree with a lot you say, Noojens. My biggest beef is really with the way the whole thing is being 'advertised'. It feels as though it is a big scam, which gets my hackles up immediately. I can't remember a time in my life (which has been quite a few years now) that the same arguments about the starving, illiterate, ill-served peoples of the world needing our assistance, and about how we had too much while they have too little, and about how there is too much pollution, species dying out, etc. have not tried to spur us into compassionate giving, to save the world from certain doom, on personal, corporate and governmental/political levels. The only difference now seems to be the 'cover story', and the fact that it has become blatently about 'special someones' making a bundle of money ... for, as I said, probably very little more change than there has ever been.

I rarely ever turn on lights as it is. My husband complains about that a lot and doesn't understand how I can sit in dark rooms all the time. I was trained to keep lights off as much as possible when I was a kid - it stuck, I guess. We have changed out some of the bulbs to be more 'eco-friendly' - to the kind that cost more, don't last much longer and which contain mercury which cannot be disposed of easily, and if you break one you may have to spend thousands to clean up the mess. We used to play with (at home and in school classrooms) mercury (and asbestos too!) when we were kids, and no one told us or our parents it was dangerous - we survived, although obviously my IQ was severely affected. We don't run appliances like dishwashers often (maybe once a week or less, same with washer/dryer, etc.) I wear heavy sweaters rather than keep the heat up at anything near comfortable. We don't have air conditioning for summers - despite them being very humid here, and hot. We could afford those things but we can live without them. I live in a 1700s log cabin, not very posh - but loads of character. Our acre is uncleared .. we give back more O2 than the people down the street with lawns. Anyway, we really are about as 'eco-friendly' in that regard as we can be, given we do live in a country where we can access electricity and do have appliances, etc. I don't feel guilty - and won't. I didn't choose not to be born in deepest Africa .. that was the luck of my draw. I have compassion, do what I can and wish things were different for others without even the luxuries I have .. but I don't want or think it is right to ask me to live like them just because they have less.

We were both laid off several years ago now with no job prospects. We get no government assistance of any kind, nor do we want any. That is part of our 'share' of helping since we could take that and don't. Our 2 real indulgences are tv and internet/computers. And I drive a lot .. I do about a 3k trip every few weeks .. to help take care of my 92 year old father in Canada. Don't have a choice there, until he dies. Can't bring him to the States because of healthcare costs and unavailability here. In fact, healthcare insurance is our largest expense here - more than our mortgage and utilities combined per month - for 2 doctor's visits a year. I pay more than a year's utilities bills for a month of healthcare insurance. How is that working out for me .. lol .. NOT! And we will lose that soon and pay even more with Obamacare - not thrilled. Anyway .. that is off topic ... sorry.

Anyway .. I go on too long .. I am sorry. I promised not to post much, and I won't, after this. I just came on to see whether you guys had replied to my earlier post and was just trying to respond to your well reasoned implicit questions about whether I am willing to pay extra for electricity, etc. to help those who have less. The answer - yes and no. I am very willing IF and ONLY IF I truly can see that it really goes to the people to need it - directly and we can see results relatively quickly. It SHOULD be fast to get them (at least some of) the kind of help they need BUT watching that sort of thing for 50 years or so, I have never seen any improvement over there and one has to question why not, doesn't one? We have been paying taxes and giving extra through various means for those things for eons, with no visible returns as far as I can see. Politics! Corruption! They interfere constantly. Why would now be any different?

So, basically, I have seen too much and am just not gullible any more - not to imply you guys are, mind you. I just do not trust the powers that be any more - they have lied too often, failed too often, etc. I will help those who I can help directly, and who I see helping themselves. I will do my part to keep my lights off and my own 'carbon footprint' small - but I will never buy into the crisis stuff, nor the need to supplement the substantial incomes of powermongers who insist on setting bad examples and treating the rest of us like stupid paeons.

Anyway .. back to your very interesting scientific discussion. I am sorry to have interrupted - some of you are amazingly intelligent and knowledgeable about scientific matters and I admire you. I was and will continue 'listening' - and I thank you for 'the conversation'. I just wanted to make the point that, despite it being interesting, even if true, it may not be either practical or smart to actually be swept along on the tide of the crisis some appear to have 'created' (it really is just a new way of 'advertising' something that has been ongoing for many many years now) because the reality is, as I see it, we can do little, except the little many of us are already doing and we should not be 'told' we 'owe' others more than that, unless they can prove the monies will really get where they should get, do what they need to do, and we see change that is meaningful as a result.

Truly useful technological advances - home based devices of any kind - which result in energy efficiency, reduction of pollution, and self-sufficiency, I am all for. I will be an early adopter of those! Keep them coming. Capitalism (moderate) and energy saving can go hand in hand. In the meantime, though I don't live as I once did in the Yukon any more, we are a lot closer to 'nature' than most are in today's America, and I think that is more than enough. If everyone lived as we do, even with our computers and tv's (none larger than 21 inches by the way, and all LCD - they will be LED when those get cheaper), that would do as much 'energy saving' good as taxing everyone to give Al Gore a way to get even richer - and none of us would lose much at all IMHO.

I hope you are all having a wonderful time with your families today .. enjoying your turkey and trimmings, and eggnog! Gotta go .. I am worse than Tarot tonight - at talking on and on ... eek! Bye for now.

Sorry about the delay in posting but things became rather hectic around here.

Noojens, I really don't know why you keep ignoring the salient points on the difficulties with the tree-ring dataset. They became non-correlative in the 1950s. CRU doesn't have any scientific explanation as to why they became non-correlative; neither does anyone else. But, (here's the important part just so you don't miss it yet again) rather than questioning the entire datasets correlative usefulness they continued to use it without disclosing that fact. They made a huge-ass assumption that prior to the 1950s the tree-ring datasets are still correlative; that is bad science.

None of the datasets you refer to that do not use CRU data are long-term enough to be particularly useful in climate-modelling to determine whether in fact the global warming trend that we are experiencing is caused by man. So, while interesting, using short-term data like them is kind of like looking at this week's unusual freezing and saying that we are on the verge of another ice age.

Story


Is the debate still "over"?

here is yet another Professor of Geology, saying that there earth is cooling not heating
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=10783

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2 ... 9186.shtml

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... o-context/

_________________
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.

Zzzz.

Kula: Already addressed your points. No interest in responding to yet another post of yours, considering how little you seem to have read/cared about my earlier posts, which I put way too much time into.

Krby: I suggest going to the source and reading that prof's paper (search Google Scholar for it, it's publicly available). I think you'll agree that it reads quite a bit different from the article you linked. And c'mon, that article makes the "it's cold this winter, therefore the world can't be warming" argument half a dozen times. You should know better than to take shit like that seriously, heh.

Nice nonresponse, Noojens.

He doesn't need to; he already addressed your "issue" in an earlier post. Would you like him to cut and paste it again?

Ok Fribur, you claim he already addressed it so why don't YOU find the response... God knows I cannot. Specifically:

~Why/how is it scientifically viable to still retain confidence in the correlative value of any tree ring data when there is no scientific explanation for the data becoming noncorrelative in the 1960s?

~How can datasets dating back only to the 1880s provide enough evidence for climatologists to either construct predictive models or determine if mankind's doings have contributed to global warming in such a significant amount as to call it an emergency?

Oh, Fribur... And use only copy/pastes from this thread.

lol... right. Like I'm going to waste my time. Sorry :p

Kinda figured, Fribur. All you've offered in this thread have been a sneering belief in global warming being man-caused because you were told to believe it, an attempt to shift the thread from science to politics, and cheerleading for Noojens.

Fribur is a troll, Kula. Stop wasting your time. He's admitted he's a troll. Move along

Stop sneering Fribur, seriously!
Hilarious.

Here are a few of the direct questions that I have asked you in this thread that you have completely ignored:No response from the Kula.Again, silence from you.
Still no answer.

And I'm not even mentioning the many rebuttals I made to your completely misinformed statements. Rebuttals that you didn't even acknowledge, let alone respond to.

And I should put any more time into indulging your willful ignorance? Fuck that. The only information you seem to care about is the drivel you suck from Rush's hairy bitchtits.

Prove me wrong.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/climategate_cru_was_but_the_ti.html

Too long to repost here, but, I found this article (and embedded links in same) to be somewhat interesting info about the depths of probable American involvement in 'Climategate' - NOAA and NASA implication. In general, I gather they had a bit of trouble with their thermometers ... and some of the data may have gone conveniently missing. Tsk, tsk.

Umm, did you even bother to read the link I posted awhile back or just the corrections? It had a compelling argument about why tree ring data was less than useful. Also it referenced the fact that there are only TWO studies of historical global temperatures that did not rely on tree ring data. Sorry, I didn't realize that you needed all the important parts highlighted for you.


[quote="noojens"]Can you show me a source that demonstrates that they manipulated the data itself? Again, silence from you.
I'd love to read any other examples you have. Where are you getting this information from? How are you drawing these conclusions?Still no answer./quote]

I don't recall questioning the data itself but rather whether the usefulness of the data had undergone rigorous scientific examination given the knowledge that it became noncorrelative to global temperature in the 60s. It may actually BE correlative pre-1880; we just don't know because we don't know why it became noncorrelative. I also don't recall ever drawing any conclusions; that would be what you do, not me.

So, again:
~Why/how is it scientifically viable to still retain confidence in the correlative value of any tree ring data when there is no scientific explanation for the data becoming noncorrelative in the 1960s?

~How can datasets dating back only to the 1880s provide enough evidence for climatologists to either construct predictive models or determine if mankind's doings have contributed to global warming in such a significant amount as to call it an emergency?

This whole debate reminds me of every other issue that all common sense tells you is wrong but big bussiness tried to delay the inevitable conclusions. Smoking, Saccharin, X-rays etc. Do we really need more studies to tell us that huge volumes of CO2 and flourocarbons are bad for the enviroment?

Drajeck, nobody is arguing that.

This is pretty excellent:

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100120/full/463284a.html

Although the bit about the high end models of aerosols is disturbing.

It seems like people are arguing that gloabal warming isn't affected by these items and only a natural occuring event, therefore we shouldn't be trying to curb thier use or stop cutting down the rain forrests etc. If that isn't the case and everyone agrees that we should monitor and regulate these emmissons, what is the conflict of the thread then?

Dude, are you trying to be stupid?

You just wrote:
andWhile I just quoted you writing:
Wow, a conclusive statement where you question the data, in the very same post you were replying to. Do you see how deliberately ignorant you're being?

As for the tree ring issue, it's called the divergence problem and it's been discussed in the literature for a decade plus. It's the center of the debate around the "trick" the CRU used to "hide the decline," which (once again) I discussed many posts ago.

You're right that it's unknown why tree rings ceased to correlate tightly with global temperatures 40 years ago, so their usefulness as a proxy is debatable. Many scientists are thinking about this problem, and it'll be interesting to see some results. Luckily there are many other proxies for global climate, some of which go back hundreds of thousands of years (ice cores), and IPCC conclusions are corroborated by these other sources.

And yeah, I read the one peer-reviewed paper you linked in this thread. Every word. I also read several papers responding to it in the climate literature, that exposed the flaws in the author's methods and the errors in his conclusions. Then I read the author's admission of these errors. Why do you place such stock in a paper that has been clearly proven wrong?

And lest you move the goalposts AGAIN, I'll point out that I'm still waiting for you to grow a pair and respond to ANY of the direct questions I've asked you in this thread.